Last Fight of the Valkyries (13 page)

He thought that was a rebuke. His eyes must have betrayed him.

“No, no. I didn't mean it like that. The only thing we can
count on out there is each other. I mean it when I say no one has
said anything nicer to me. I've never had someone I can...count
on...absolutely like I can with you. Looking back at boyfriends in my
life, I don't think any of them would have been able to hang with you
in the Zombie Apocalypse. Makes me wonder what I saw in them in the
first place.”

He didn't think he was anything special. He certainly wasn't that
strong. He wasn't a genius. He wasn't a fighter by nature. Most of
what made him “special” was his desire to
not
be a
dope in front of her. He worked extremely hard at that.

They briefly kissed and then separated before they walked up the
ramp to the boat. It was irrational, but he hoped Blue saw them
together. He couldn't afford the distraction, but having a pretty
girl on his arm stroked his ego in a strange new way.

Is this what married men feel like?

As they reached the boat, he pledged to stop thinking such
thoughts and just focus on the mission. He tried to look at it as a
military operation.

First, travel. Second, find the quarry and get inside. Third, do
something. He called it X because he didn't really know what he'd
find. Then, his plan went into the weeds: do Y and Z and then
somewhere down the line get back here to Grandma and report the
findings.

And it all started with the pretty girl.

No, she's just a girl, not pretty. At all.

“Hi guys. Welcome aboard,” Blue said with great cheer.
“You can lay your weapons up there,” she pointed to open
floor near the front. Some other gear was stowed there.

“Thanks.”

The boat was about thirty feet long. It had a large compartment
surrounding a couple seats right in the middle. A steering wheel and
radio equipment was on the dashboard in front of the right-hand seat.
The other seat was on the left side of a small aisle to the front of
the boat. There were buttons and levers on a dashboard panel in front
of that seat too, though its function wasn't obvious.

As he looked around, Blue continued, “This is a Corps of
Engineers service boat. They use them to inspect survey markers,
buoys, and other equipment up and down the river. This one makes a
regular run up to the north, and then it comes back.”

“How the heck do you know that,” Victoria asked.

“Hospital. I went in with you.” She smiled at Liam. “I
met the captain while I was there. We got to talking. He lost his
partner a few days ago.” She looked around at the sound of
someone approaching.

“Here he comes now.”

The man was a caricature of a salty old sea captain. He was tanned
to the point of being cooked. He wore a loose button down shirt that
may have been a Hawaiian shirt at one time, but now was faded almost
to white. His jeans were covered in grease or something grease-like,
though he evidently tried to wash it out from time to time. The large
work boots and faded camo boonie cap completed his ensemble.

He had thick facial hair which was mostly gray. His thick eyebrows
sat above his angry eyes.

“You said you were bringing soldiers.” He looked
around dramatically in front of Liam and Victoria. “I don't see
soldiers.”

“Hi. Yeah. I said I would find fighters. These two pulled me
out of the city. See? Fighters.”

The captain gave a distasteful look at Liam. He gave a too-long
look at Victoria. The sirens in his head began to spin up.

“Well. I guess if they rescued you...” He looked at
Blue, and Liam noticed his eyes flitted here and there over her
figure. He ran over a mental checklist; a reference dive into his
post-apocalyptic literature. Was this going to be the guy that offed
him so he could float down the river with two young women as his
prisoners? It had happened before, though he couldn't think of a
specific instance from his books to give him guidance.

But he had to pull up the big boy pants. He gripped his spear a
little tighter. “We may not look it, but we
are
fighters, sir.” He didn't think he quite had the hang of
projecting an aura of competence in fighting, though he certainly
felt confident of his fighting abilities if Victoria was at risk.

“I'm Liam, and this is Victoria.”

Oh man! I should have used fake names.

The captain seemed to appraise him once more, but gave him no
clues as to his conclusion. Instead, to Blue he said, “All
right, girl. We'll go north. But if one of them things gets aboard,
they better earn their keep.” To Liam, he only said, “The
name is Jam. Go sit down.”

Evidently manners were a forgotten art on the water.

4

The boat, dubbed
Lucy's Football
, cleared the moorings and
the captain seemed to take it slow while he went over some gauges
inside the enclosed work area he had in the middle of the boat. There
was no room to sit in the front, and Liam wasn't invited into the
enclosed cabin, so he chose to stand in the back of the boat. He hung
on to a tie-down just outside the plexiglass windows of the captain's
area. Blue remained inside with the captain, leaving him alone with
Victoria.

She stood next to him at first, but the captain came out and
yelled at them to split up so they weren't both on the same side.
“You're weighing us down on the starboard,” he said in a
loud, gruff voice.

Victoria stood on the opposite side, facing Liam. “Are we
gonna have fun, or what?” she asked with a big smile.

“Always something to do in the Zombie Apocalypse.”

He knew they were going on a dangerous journey, but he couldn't
help him but try to take the edge of their nerves by trying to be
funny.

“Yarg! You young whipper-snappers are jammin' me garbage
scow. Your whale of girl be weighing us down!” He pretended he
was smoking a pipe as he spoke, and he and Victoria both laughed.
Already thinking of what to say next, he turned to see a motion in
the window next to his head. The captain was scowling at him. Liam
froze where he was, hand up to his mouth and all.

The captain cracked open the small door. “These walls be not
soundproof.” Far from being a good-humored response, his face
displayed real disgust, seemingly out of proportion to Liam's antics.
He slammed the door shut once more.

He was still frozen with his hand at his mouth. He swiveled his
eyes just to confirm the captain was looking away, and then he
pretended to take one final pull on his imaginary pipe before putting
it away. The dual outboard motors throttled up and they both had to
hang on as the boat accelerated into the huge waterway.

The most prominent feature of this part of the river was the
number of barges. The entire shore was lined with them. As they
cleared the other ships near the dock where they launched, the river
was almost solid with the rust-red and dull grey shipping barges
common on the big rivers of the Midwest. Either every barge captain
for a thousand miles decided to dock here, or these people collected
barges like trophies. It made for a jaw-dropping introduction to the
journey.

The boat raced out into the middle of the channel, heading for a
large bridge crossing the Ohio. He'd seen it while in the town up on
the levee. It was graced with metallic girders and was painted an
ancient sea gray. As they closed the distance, he could see a few
people walking the roadway up there, but there were no vehicles in
sight. Above it, there were huge sea birds darting in and out of
massive nests placed on top.

The far side of the river looked like a popular gravel bar during
a college fraternity float trip. Hundreds of barges had been run up
onto the shore to keep them from floating away. The only thing he
didn't see were coeds dancing up on the mud banks next to their
boats. Instead, there were serious-looking men tying off huge ropes
or driving excavating equipment to make more room for more barges.
Several dredging barges were pulling silt and mud from the riverbed
to improve the clearance of the towboats pushing their cargo into
parking spaces.

He wanted to ask the captain what all this was about, but he also
wanted to keep his mouth shut. As they went under the bridge, he
began to understand the scale of the whole operation. The Mississippi
river joined with the Ohio at a great junction and full and empty
barges were parked over every square inch of that intersection. There
were more tows pushing barges in ones and twos as they came off the
Mississippi. They pushed them into the parking lot on the Ohio side.

Liam couldn't see any pattern to their machinations. From water
level, all he could see was the sides of barges almost 360 degrees
around him. Barges were twenty deep on each side of the river.

“Amazing, isn't it?” Victoria spoke loud enough to be
heard over the motors.

“What do you think it's all for?” he retorted. It
looked like a massive recovery operation, though he wondered what was
inside all the thousands of holds. When he was at the top of the
Arch, he watched a barge pass by laden with infected souls standing
around like they were on a sunset cruise. Did they end up here?

Then he thought of all the barges which broke through the blockade
of debris back up in St. Louis.

“Hey, do you think Duchesne's body is here somewhere?”

“Oh. I hope not.”

The man had been killed by a barge. It would be fitting if he did
end up here.

The Mississippi wasn't quite as filled with barges. They seemed to
be using the Ohio side as the corral for all the loose livestock.
However, as they sailed along for a few minutes, it became clear
there was a complex operation on this river too. They'd seen it from
up on the levee the day before.

On the right, there was a long, thin island covered with trees.
There was a narrow strip of water between the island and the shore,
which Liam imagined was the pit lane of a race track. It was filled
with the metal barge cargo haulers. When they reached the far end,
Liam was impressed with the recovery operation guiding rogue barges
to the safety of the small passage. A few pleasure boats drifted down
the river too, and the smaller tows pounced on them like herding
sheepdogs. The larger tugs waited nearby for larger runaways. Others
worked their captured boats into the pit area as he watched.

He counted at least ten tugboats operating in the waters near the
mouth of the recovery zone. About half of those were the larger tugs
designed to push heavy loads on the riverways. There was clearly
still a lot of loose boats floating from the north if that many boats
were still netting them.

The last thing they saw of Cairo was the dredging operation for
the anti-zombie ditch. Much of the dirt for the hole was stacked on
the south side of that excavation, presumably so the defenders would
have clear fields of fire on any zombies that somehow cleared the
scorched flatlands to the north and made it into the ditch. If they
managed to survive that long, they'd have to climb the formidable
southern bank and then continue up the pile itself.

He turned around to see if Victoria was seeing the same thing. “Do
you think that ditch will hold off the zombies?” They'd
discussed secure bases before, but Liam always referenced his zombie
literature when the subject was broached. His research would say
there was nowhere on Earth that was safe from the zombies. But he
hoped some places were safer than others. Cairo seemed pretty
prepared, and he was willing to revise his previous guess that the
place would last only two weeks. He allowed they might make it for
longer.

When she didn't answer, he turned to face her. “What?”

Victoria looked at him with sadness. She shook her head no. “The
zombies will make it in. Maybe one of these barges will tip over and
spill hundreds of them onto shore. Maybe just one will float from
upstream and shake himself off in town. Maybe one is already there,
just waiting for someone to open the wrong door. I just don't think
anywhere is going to be safe until every one of those things is dead
and buried. Or burned.”

She turned to look out her side of the boat.

His enthusiasm for Cairo's chances waned. The ditch was impressive
and the cooperation it took to get it in place was a bright spot in
the otherwise blight-stricken world of the plague, but in the end,
she was correct. The length it survived was secondary to the fact it
would
fall.

With her back to him, he spoke, but only to himself. “I
think you pulled exactly the right lesson from my books. You didn't
even have to read them.”

5

Liam and Victoria got tired of standing in the hot sun, so they
each took a seat on the rear deck, facing each other from opposite
sides. They could speak if they needed but, for the most part, they
were silent as the boat plowed the waves up the dirty river.

Several times along the way, they'd feel lurches to either side as
the boat swerved around and through debris or runaway barges. One
item in particular bothered the captain enough to leave his cabin and
stand on the back deck as the boat idled. They all stood and watched
as a huge tank of some kind floated by.

“It's a propane tank. A big one. A fifty-foot whale!”
the captain said. Then he said he'd have to call it in to the teams
in Cairo so they didn't miss it.

It gave Liam a narrow window of opportunity to talk to him. “Why
are they collecting all that stuff?”

The captain paused, seemed to consider a response, then continued
inside. Blue, standing in the doorway, spoke quietly. “They're
trying to gather supplies, instead of letting them drain out into the
Gulf of Mexico.” She closed the door, choosing to stay inside.

Liam broke the rules. He walked over to Victoria.

“Why do you think she's staying inside with him? Aren't we
better company?”