Zombies Ever After: Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse, Book 6 by E.E. Isherwood Read Free Book Online

locale. She let out a little whimper. “I'm
sorry. I shouldn't have said that.”
    “No, it's fine. I was big into video games...didn't pay
attention to the news. I missed a lot.”
    “We were trying to drive back from touring in Colorado when
the world went south. We gave a ride to our roadies and PR people, as
well. Our tour bus ran out of gas. We watched as it was attacked and
turned over by a mob. Our driver was killed, but the rest of our
group was herded down here...by those men.”
    She choked on a sob. “They offed Mick—our bass
guitarist—outright. But they kept us girls...”
    He didn't sweep his light over the cages, but he allowed an
inkling of understanding to seep into his brain. All the caged
zombies had been women. None of them had much in the way of intact
clothing. The inference was still too much for him. The thought of
his mother, or Victoria, in someplace like this...
    I have to get back to her.
    He didn't want to continue to press her for answers, but...
    “How did they all become zombies?”
    She looked at him for a long moment.
    “What's your name?”
    “Liam.”
    “Hi, Liam. I'm Denise. Well, my stage name is Monique, but I
guess that name is dead, now. You haven't heard of me, anyhow.”
She laughed a sad laugh. “Us girls were taken upstairs. We'd
get some food and water, and allowed to clean ourselves up a little,
but then...”
    He looked at her expectantly, but eventually he figured out what
she was avoiding.
    She went on. “Sometimes others came through the trapdoor.
Men would be shot on sight. Women would be tossed in the cages.
Sometimes that meant other women were taken out , to make room.
That went on for a month, it seems...”
    “This is day twenty since the sirens.”
    “Oh. It feels like forever. Well, one day—not sure how
many days ago—one of the new girls on the far end of the cages
started acting funny. We could all see it happen. When we figured out
she was infected, we all screamed for our lives...but no one heard
us. She converted the other two in her cage, and then the disease
spread down the cages day after day. When it got into the one next to
mine, me and two women I didn't know started to throw ourselves at
the front door and we managed to bend the lock. They built these
things for dogs, not humans.”
    She paused, thinking.
    “But the real dogs were upstairs. My two friends ran up
there to break out.”
    She teared up and spoke with reverent tones. “They shot them
in the head and tossed them back down the steps. I was so scared I
was next...”
    She sniffled. “When nothing happened, I moved them into the
last cage to get the bodies away from me, but there was nowhere for
me to go that was safe, so I returned to the steps. At least I
couldn't see any of those sick women.”
    “And the men never came down to check on you?”
    “Naw. I think they infected us. Put us out of our misery.
They argued constantly about money and drugs and turf while we
were...up there.”
    It was horrible to contemplate.
    “Are you...infected?”
    “Kid, I'm having a real bad day,” she said with a
spark of defiance, “what the ever hell makes you think I care
if I'm infected, now?”
    Deep down, he wanted to express his intention to save her. She'd
been through so much, he felt it was his duty to bring her to some
form of safety. Make it all worthwhile. But the Zombie Apocalypse
didn't work like that. Not anymore. There were no happy endings, as
far as he could tell.
    The best he could do was get her to temporary safety, with the
expectation the place would fall apart soon after that. The whole
town was in danger of becoming one big war zone, if the patriots
really intended to make a stand here. If he were in charge, he would
take the patriots to some other city. A city not on the
priority list for the remaining all-powerful government forces, led
by the National Internal Security agents. That seemed like a solid
strategy to him, though he freely admitted military