Free Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 1): Since the Sirens by E.E. Isherwood Page B

little of the early morning light was making it through. He
didn't have his flashlight with him. The floor was covered with
debris, so he had trouble moving to a window to let in some light.
When he finally did pull back the curtains he was stunned at what he
saw in the tiny apartment.
    Blood. Lots of blood.
    There were lots of clothes scattered on the floor, along with sofa
pillows, what looked like a tablecloth, and smatterings of shoes,
purses, and other accessories. It looked as if Angie's entire
wardrobe had spilled out onto her floor for some unknown reason. For
a further unknown reason, everything got covered in blood.
    It made Liam shudder to think of Angie losing all that blood while
knowing she was still walking around somewhere outside. It didn't
seem possible any disease process could produce such horrible
results.
    Is she really dead?
    He wondered if a zombie could be someone who was still alive? He'd
read books with many different definitions of zombies. Some were
back-from-the-dead undead. Some were recently dead who reanimated in
a fashion, but remained dead. Some were alive, but infected with
something that made them as good as dead. Would the people walking
around his neighborhood fit into any of those neat boxes?
    He still had a job to do up in the apartment, and he began to
hover around the edges of the room where the blood was absent and
some semblance of order still remained. He could still detect some of
the personality of the woman who, until recently, was someone Liam
admired.
    Here was a picture of Angie with her granddaughter—a pretty
blonde with her arms slung around her grandma, giving a big hug. Liam
picked up the simple desk frame to get a better look in the low
light. He purposefully turned away from the main part of the room
with all the gore on the floor. He wasn't without feelings, but true
empathy didn't come naturally to him. However, the events of the last
24 hours had awakened something urgent inside him—he suddenly,
desperately, wanted to know if the girl in the picture was safe
somewhere. He knew it wasn't likely he'd ever know.
    He took a deep breath, then resumed his circuit of the main living
area. He tried to think where a woman would put her car keys in her
own home. His keys were always in his pocket or on his nightstand, so
he thought to check the bedroom, but turned up nothing.
    He walked back out the bedroom door and noticed Angie's cat was
hiding amongst some of the clothing on the floor. Not in the middle
of the room, but near the edge of the cyclone of destruction. The
little guy was probably scared to death. He moved to kick off some of
the clothes which were on top it—and saw with horror that the
cat was not only dead, but lying in a pool of blood with most of it's
insides ripped out.
    Liam couldn't help himself—he threw up.
    Disgusting.
    Standing there trying to recover, he noticed the keys were hanging
right next to the doorframe on the way out of the apartment.
Had he known they were there, he could have avoided this whole mess.
If if if.
    He hurriedly grabbed the keys from the hook and rushed out the
door toward the stairs.
    It was the last memory he had for a while.
    2
    Marty heard the sound of someone falling down the stairs. It had
been a scarce 24 hours since the last person fell down those
stairs—so there was no mistaking it this time.
    Liam had gone up into Angie's apartment to retrieve her car keys,
but she hadn't considered whatever made Angie sick could have still
been up there—waiting to pounce. Maybe it was something simply
floating around in the air as a pathogen. What had she done? What
kind of caretaker was she?
    The front room's door was wide open into the stairwell. If Liam
was now sick he could come right through and it would all be over for
her. She was paralyzed with indecision. She could try to close the
door. Or do nothing. Such a dumb mistake.
    She knew she couldn't just sit and wait to die, so she repeated
the previous day's