Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 6): Zombies Ever After Read online

  Zombies Ever After:

  Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse, Book 6

  © 2016 E.E. Isherwood. All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  From E.E. Isherwood

  Since the Sirens

  Siren Songs

  Stop the Sirens

  Last Fight of the Valkyries

  Zombies vs Polar Bears

  Zombies Ever After

  Post Apocalyptic Ponies

  Post Apocalyptic Mustangs

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  Zombies Ever After Introduction

  We last saw Liam in Zombies vs Polar Bears as he prepared to leave the den of the patriots in downtown St. Louis. He wasn't interested in civil war—he just wanted to get back to Victoria.

  Victoria, meanwhile, took some time to herself to reflect on the past she left behind in Colorado. While investigating the third floor of the Whitaker research lab on the campus of her university, she came across a video feed showing her dorm room. An old acquaintance called to her from the darkness…

  And Grandma was still in Cairo, Illinois. She became a pawn between General Jasper and Elsa Cantwell, but now there's nothing but zombies in front of her and the defenders of the town.

  Book 6 begins with a look back at how John Jasper found himself in the watery ditch north of Cairo.

  Welcome back.

  E.E. Isherwood

  September, 2016

  You wrecked my truck, boy.

  You ate my dog, boy.

  Have you lost your mind, boy?

  When our love died, my heart shattered.

  But my soul escaped, boy.

  Now you run from me, so run, boy, run.

  --Midnight Foxes (found scratched on basement floor)

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1: Run, Boy, Run

  Chapter 2: Midnight Foxes

  Chapter 3: Tracers

  Chapter 4: Homecoming

  Chapter 5: Bathed in Fire

  Chapter 6: Trust Issues

  Chapter 7: Run, Girl, Run

  Chapter 8: Victoria's Secret

  Chapter 9: Mile 444

  Chapter 10: Freefall

  Chapter 11: Warfighter

  Chapter 12: Gator Ride

  Chapter 13: JDAM

  Chapter 14: Jane

  Chapter 15: Fighting Retreat

  Chapter 16: Chloe

  Chapter 17: Debbie's Double Barrel

  Chapter 18: Secret Mission

  Chapter 19: Uptalk

  Chapter 20: John Wayne

  Chapter 21: Threat Level 5

  Chapter 22: Simple Solution

  Chapter 23: Elma Jean

  Chapter 24: Non-Linear

  Epilogue

  Musings of an Author

  About E.E. Isherwood

  Other books by E.E. Isherwood

  Connect with E.E. Isherwood

  Prologue

  Major General John Jasper sat on a hard chair. He'd been tied to it by the same team that captured him on the levee outside of Cairo, Illinois. He had a bag over his head, reminding him of any number of interrogations from his time overseas. There, he was on the other side of the cloth. The hours of monotony gave him plenty of time to think about what he did wrong. Explosions and gunfire rattled the room from somewhere close by. His men were out there, fighting.

  Elsa and her team had bagged him while he maneuvered the ad hoc battalion of Army units near the big ditch to the north. For some reason, she wanted all his men outside the town, though his military brain could fathom no legitimate reason for doing so. The Paladins were not well-suited to direct fire. That's why he had them among the houses to the south, so they could rain the hurt on the zombies as they came over the interstate to the north. Keep the fighting miles from population, instead of at the front gate.

  Homeland Security had taken charge of all military operations inside the continental United States, getting around Constitutional roadblocks, as part of the government's response to the zombie outbreak—he'd long since given up trying to call them by other names—and her role in Homeland gave her direct control of his units. Up until that day she'd deferred to him on tactical issues. He never imagined she would relieve him of duty. How many other two-star generals could she tap here in Nowhere, USA?

  “I did everything she asked, and she still sacked me,” he thought. Though, being totally honest with himself, he knew what he did wrong.

  “Mrs. Peters. I shouldn't have gone to see Mrs. Peters.” Elsa never prohibited his movements, but she did suggest the 104-year-old woman was her prisoner. By all indications Elsa had made every effort to kill her, which was confusing as hell, since she was supposedly cured of the zombie plague.

  And then you broke her out.

  It seemed the chivalrous thing to do. Marty Peters had gone loopy from heat exhaustion because Elsa had cut her air conditioner power cord, and the temperature in the room had gone into the stratosphere. If he hadn't gone there, she would be dead.

  “So what's the score, general?” he said to himself. “Elsa knows where Marty came from, and knows the doctor who cured her. That doctor went AWOL; then Marty shows up in Cairo. Elsa finds the old woman and locks her up, intending to kill her. Why? She wanted me to go track down the good doctor. Why?”

  Nothing made sense. Zombies. Elsa. Cures, or no cures.

  Elsa wasn't who she said she was. He was sure of that. Homeland Security was led by boot-licker bureaucrats whose idea of “security” was patting down toddlers and feeling up women at airports. Obviously, they failed in epic fashion in preventing travelers from bringing in the plague from overseas. He was far from a patriot in the vein of the Patriot Snowball movement, but he didn't believe for one second they were capable of causing the zombie plague. His sources all insisted it came from overseas. Homeland dropped the ten-thousand-pound ball.

  And that's why she wants to blame old ladies and rogue administrators.

  So, Marty Peters was the good guy. Whatever else she had going on, she was an enemy of Elsa Cantwell. That made her his friend, though it didn't elude his steel trap mind that his biggest assistance to his new ally was getting himself relieved of duty and tossed out of the Zth World War, just when it was getting important he be there with his men. She was probably back in her prison room by now. Or dead.

  He tried for the hundredth time to jiggle his hands in the bindings. Unlike the movies, he was unable to free himself and make a heroic escape. Before all this, he was comfortable in his desk job—a few years from retirement and the good life on a tiny wooded lake somewhere—and his physical training had been a bit lax. That was costing him, now.

  A door opened, then closed. Someone had come into the room. He tensed up, listening.

  “Hello, John,” a female voice taunted.

  “Good—” he didn't know if it was day or night. “—morning?” He'd been taken at dusk, and it felt like days since he'd been hauled away.

  “Not quite.” Elsa pulled the bag from his head. He was in the same room where Marty had been kept. The dirty motel was near the front gate o
f the town, which explained how he heard the fighting over the levee, to the north.

  And Elsa had completely changed. Far from the attractive, but reserved-looking blonde woman he'd known since she arrived in Cairo, she had transformed into—

  “You're undoubtedly wondering why I'm dressed like this?” she nodded to him as his eyes adjusted to the dim light of the room. He couldn't take his eyes off her, despite his inability to properly focus, or his general disdain for her.

  The woman was in her thirties, but had the body of a woman in her twenties. She looked like she had just come from the gym, where she apparently ripped up the StairMaster as well as the free weights. She wore tight-fitting black capris and a similarly tight orange sports bra. But now that he could see the silhouettes of her powerful legs and the muscle definition on her arms, he could see she'd been a wolf-in-sheep's clothing all along. He was focused on her mind, and the dumb decisions she seemed to make. It never crossed his mind she was as strong as this…

  “Did you know eight of the ten women in my graduating class were CrossFit champions in their respective countries? I was top girl for several years in my home country of Iceland. Look it up sometime.” She laughed. “You probably thought I was a pushover, and that's why you didn't respect me in our meetings, or when you went to free Mrs. Peters from this detention facility.” She swept her arms around the room.

  “I didn't know this was a prison.”

  “No, I guess you weren't as smart as I'd hoped. Maybe losing you won't be the blow I thought it would be.”

  He couldn't help feel the sting of that statement. Elsa's six-pack abs drew his eyes when he should have been paying attention to her words. He missed some of what she said next.

  “...and that's why you're here, John. I told you I needed someone I could trust to do what was asked of them. You've gone off the reservation. Now you have to pay for that, I'm sorry to say.”

  He looked up, to her cool blue eyes. With the blonde hair he really could imagine she was from Iceland, though her English was flawless. “I thought she was a threat. I had to see for myself. But she's just an old lady. All I did was get her medical help.”

  He was telling the truth, though now he was glad he set her free.

  While she responded, Elsa untied the rope around his feet, then his hands. “John, there's so much you don't know, I wouldn't know where to start. Homeland Security has many branches, and the division I work for has been planning for this event for a long goddamn time, and you and that old lady aren't going to mess it up for me. That's the main thrust of what this is all about tonight.”

  As the ropes came off his hands, he imagined himself lunging at her and putting a stop to whatever it was she was doing, but his old arms had been bent backward, and the soreness prevented him from moving them quickly to his lap, much less using them to tackle her.

  Her quads bulged in her stretch pants.

  “I know what you're thinking, John. Can you take me? Well, Major General, do you think you can take down a helpless little girl like me?” She laughed, knowing his impotence at that moment.

  “It's not very fair. I can't even move my arms.” He tried to convey bravado, but the truth was still unflattering to a career soldier. He finally got both arms to his lap and rubbed his hands to restore blood flow.

  “I'll tell you what I'll do,” she said as she walked to and opened the motel room door. “If you can get by me in the next sixty seconds, I'll let you go on your way. If you don't, I'll kill you.” She giggled. “Sounds fun, doesn't it?” Her smile was evil.

  He took a deep breath and continued to rub his hands. The feeling was just starting to come back.

  “Fifty seconds left, John.”

  “Give me a second.”

  “You don't have many of those left. You aren't getting out of this door.”

  Another ten seconds went by. He tried to stand, which went better than he assumed it would. He plopped heavily back down. A plan formed in his head.

  More hand rubbing. “Why are you doing this? You can't off a two-star just because...”

  He hoped that was true. It would have been accurate before the sirens.

  “That's what I've been trying to tell you, stud. I can do whatever the hell I want.”

  But why? Who the hell are you?

  “Thirty seconds left. Tick tock.”

  John imagined himself doing the actions, knocking Elsa down, then running for his men. Maybe he could convince them to arrest her. It wasn't very clever, but most military actions succeeded when they were dead simple.

  “Wow. Nothing? Are you just going to die there? I'm so disappointed in you.”

  He feigned having trouble standing. When he made it to his feet, he turned part-way around and pretended to lean on the chair back.

  With a firm grasp in both his hands—still in pain—he lifted the wooden chair from the floor and turned as fast as his body would allow, throwing it the ten feet over to Elsa. In his head, he intended to follow the chair for a deadly second strike, but that turned out to be something his thirty-year-old self could have done. Not his current self.

  Elsa was clipped on one arm. She let out an ambiguous sound, like air hissing, as she dodged. It took John several seconds to reach her. He knew he'd taken too long.

  The smile on her face invited the challenge.

  They met a few feet from the door, but Elsa dipped low as she put a shoulder into the side of his ribs. He tried to grab her.

  What the!

  His arms slid harmlessly over her oiled-up midsection. She'd positioned herself behind him and in one fluid motion put her arms around his neck and flung herself onto his back. He saw himself in the dirty mirror on the wall. A bemused look on his face signaled his acceptance of how this was going to go down.

  Elsa's knees dug into his back as she pulled on his neck. The woman knew her stuff.

  He let himself fall backward, praying he'd crush her. The stars in his eyes from her painful grasp didn't give him many options.

  “I should have walked her out the door with her on my back. Then I would have won the bet,” he thought as he hit the carpet.

  Things happened so fast he couldn't keep up. Elsa hung on but flipped around from his back to his front as he fell backward. He landed on the hard carpet, and she let go for a brief second but re-mounted a second later. She straddled his neck, so her strong legs trapped his head.

  He looked up at his beautiful killer.

  “Nice try, John. It restores some faith in my decision to bring you into my circle, though you ended up failing all around. Most people do. Half the people are below average, all the time, don't ya know? You can take comfort you have a long line of failures marching before you.”

  His face was probably beet red, though he couldn't voice a witty retort. It didn't matter. Her thighs were crushing him.

  “Good help is so hard to find, but I'll muddle through this.” She hunched over, bringing her face as close to his as she could. “I'm taking your soldiers, John. I'm taking them into the wild, and I'm going to use them up. I needed all your boys outside the fence so these dumb townies had no idea you would abandon them. And, since you won't be alive to explain, they will curse your name until they're all dead, too. Two problems solved, with the bonus that the fault is all yours. You will be forever known as the general who killed Cairo. Maybe they'll make a monument after this is all over.”

  She didn't wait for a reply, though she called to someone outside the room. “Zeke, I need you to toss the general in the pit after I get all the soldiers beyond the highway. I want these people to have his body handy, so they don't come looking for him.”

  “Yes, ma'am.”

  “We leave this dump in five.”

  Chapter 1: Run, Boy, Run

  Nineteen days since the sirens.

  Liam halted between two floors of a St. Louis skyscraper. He pulled the backpack from his shoulder and set it on the floor. There was enough light from above he could see what he was doing. Loo
king down the dark stairwell, he'd soon need a flashlight.

  He'd just left his mom, Travis, and Haylee on floor 42—they were all influential members of the Patriot Snowball—so he could get back to Victoria. On the steps, alone, he could think things through.

  He put on the tan T-shirt given to him by Travis. It said “Yuengling Drinking Team” in big block letters on the front. It struck him as funny he wouldn't legally be able to drink for another five years. The Old World standards had likely been thrown out, though. He could probably walk in and get served at any bar, as long as he had something to trade. Paper money would soon be worthless. It hadn't crossed his mind much lately because there was nowhere open and nothing to buy. His cheap wallet was back in Grandma Marty's basement. He'd tossed it on his bed that first day after he came home from the library. It held his library card and an Imo's Pizza punch card. He was only two visits away from his “frequent pie-er” bonus pizza.

  Mmm. Pizza.

  He was near-starving. His mouth watered at the thought. Pizza and beer. Two joys of life now fading from the planet. He rooted through the backpack Travis gave to him as he left the lair of the Polar Bears. As he guessed, it had two of the energy bars—both strawberry flavored—that had been handed out by local governments at the outset of the collapse. Travis had packed three of the FEMA-issued plastic bottled waters, too.

  His thoughts turned inward once he had the shirt on. He was on the cusp of doing something stupid, again. Leaving the safety of the group of freedom fighters so he could go out—alone—and run the streets back to Victoria seemed more and more insane as he thought things through. Was he doing it because he'd been dazzled by Victoria earlier that day when they were both alone in her old dorm room? He didn't like to think of himself a victim of circumstance, but it sure seemed like he was going back to her because he was “girl crazy,” or something.

  It didn't change the fact he was crazy for her. He'd told Travis he'd tear the heads off every zombie between himself and Victoria if he had to. In the relative calm of the stairwell, that still held true. Given the choice of fighting in a war alongside his mom—even if he agreed with her—or going back to be with the girl of his dreams, he thought he was making the right call. His mom didn't need him. Victoria did.