Last Fight of the Valkyries (16 page)

Saffron became dizzy at the excitement. Standing after so much
time off her feet made her head spin. Now she was in real danger.

“Why should I care?”

The instinct to die fought the instinct to live.

“You have to live. You have to take care of
them
.”

“I'm sorry, momma, I can't. They've been lost.”

On her knees now, her hands gripped the sun-warmed metal to remain
stable as she watched below. But the wind increased. Dangerously so.
It beckoned her. It wanted to see her fly.

“I could just tip forward and be done with it.”

“No, turn around. Stay alive. There is hope.”

“Ha!”

She looked once more below, though her eyes swam in white streaks.
The black dots of the copters cavorted with those in her vision.
There was nothing to be gained in watching.

All she could do was slide herself on her knees. A little at a
time, she turned to move back to the lamp.

When she faced the proper direction, the wind became a tornado. In
front of her, causing the grief, was a dark angel.

Inside the windshield, a man gave her a thumbs up sign.

“Well, that was unexpected.”

Time faded out once more.

Liam knew he was asleep. He'd drifted under with the rhythm of the
boat on the river. What he didn't know was how he got to
this
place.

The cityscape was from his video game,
World of Undead
Soldiers
. It wasn't unusual to dream about the game—he
played it all the time. For the past six months or so, he'd been
having gaming dreams so much he considered cutting back his game
time, though that was a short-lived hope once the light of day caught
him. Until today, he hadn't had any gaming dreams since the sirens...

The game wasn't known for complicated story lines or missions.
Often it simply came down to how well the characters could aim and
how fast they could reload their guns.

He had a gun. A combat shotgun.

“My favorite. Oh yeah!” The thing had some heft to it.
The folding stock was retracted, making it easier to carry, but less
accurate to fire. With some effort, he extended the stock and pressed
it against his shoulder as a test.

“Nice.”

He searched himself for ammo and was pleased to find a mag pouch
hanging off his belt. He didn't know how many shells were in there,
but he guessed about fifty. That was the limit in his game.

It didn't seem safe to remain in the middle of the road, so he
trotted over to the nearest skyscraper entrance. From there, like his
game, he'd assess the landscape and determine his next steps.

The changing perspective allowed him to look up and see the
building across the street was on fire in several places, mostly near
the top.

“Eye-candy, put in there by the game developers.” It
really did feel real, but he saw the little details that were
inserted to make the city more dynamic and interesting. The fires,
the torn sections of roadway as if bombs had fallen—or sewers
had collapsed, and the bodies…

A body lay just ahead. It was propped against the outer glass of
the front facade of the building. Blood was smeared in a short streak
behind the man's head. Cautiously, he approached the victim. He was
dressed as a businessman. There was a hole behind his head, in the
glass. It was a telltale sign of what happened to him.

“Zombies always die by a shot to the head. Is that a
universal truth?”

They also die if you blow them to bits. Or dip them in acid. Or
freeze them and then break them apart. Or...

Yes, there were many ways to kill, but on the open streets, by
average people, there was only one realistic method.

Destroy the brain.

He moved on to the edge of the building, and could see down the
next street. His mission came into focus. A big yellow school bus
hunched on flat tires at the next intersection. And yes, he lamented,
it was surrounded by a couple dozen zombies. They pawed at the door
and left sickly reddish brown streaks wherever they touched the clean
yellow exterior.

“Why does this seem so familiar?” His game had many
types of missions for players to challenge themselves. Some required
attacking the zombies to force the way to rescue. Others demanded the
player survive for a period of time against an ever-growing horde.
The most complicated required stealth. Getting around a city crawling
with zombies was something he knew a little about…

“There are always weapons up in the buildings.” The
game allowed players to carry one weapon at the outset, but others
could be picked up on the map. If this was a dream meant to mimic the
functionality of
Undead Soldiers
, he'd have to go up into the
burning building.

He broke the glass next to the dead man. In moments, he was inside
and in the staircase. He clicked on his flashlight—players
always had one available in the game—and made it to the first
floor without incident. It wasn't long and he was overlooking the bus
from a corner office.

“Could I shoot them from up here?” He judged he had 50
shells. Their effectiveness was reduced at his current distance. He
was maybe thirty yards from the bus. He could hit them, but not be
sure he'd damage the heads. That would be a necessity.

He stood and watched, wondering what his next course of action
should be. Go up the stairs to find any number of rifles, compound
bows, or fire axes, as he'd do in his game world, or go back outside
and distract them, kill a few, and make it into the bus just to see
what's inside. From there, who knows. He'd learned it was best not to
overthink the scenarios. After all, the game was designed to be
played by kids, and they didn't have the same game problem-solving
skills as a sixteen-year-old.

He felt mildly bad for feeling pride in that statement, but it had
to be true.

Nearly about to turn around, he saw movement across the
intersection. Someone was crouched behind a column under the building
across from his own. The person wore all-black clothing. He couldn't
make out anything more.

Studying the scene, he noticed someone else on the diagonal
corner. And a third could be seen below the remaining building on the
other corner.

In a flash, he realized what was happening.

“Cooperative play!” He had three helpers in the game
with him. Together they were challenged to secure the bus. Now it all
made sense.

They came out shooting. He watched the one across the street he'd
seen first, as that one was directly in his line of sight. He too had
a shotgun—

“A girl!”

The player was using a female avatar. Not uncommon in the game.
Whether it was an actual girl was less clear, though doubtful. He
looked at his own body to see if he was an avatar, but felt relief
that he was really him instead of his in-game avatar.

The rules of this place were nebulous.

She led with a shotgun, rattling off six shots with great
precision. She only missed one of her targets on the third shot. She
put it down with the fourth. She fired slugs. They ripped great holes
in the heads of those she targeted to die.

When she ran out of shells, she ran down the street to his right,
reloaded, and then began moving back toward the zombies. The small
crowd of them around the bus pulled itself apart as the zombies
individually pursued the three killers on the three corners of the
street.

“I should be down there.”

Not knowing what else to do, he squatted down at the door of the
office and aimed upward into the glass, intending to make a hole so
he could shoot down. He ticked off the safety, then let a round go.

“Crap!”

It put a small hole in the window, but it didn't shatter apart as
he'd hoped.

He got back up to look at the girl below. He wondered if, here
inside his dream, the girl was Victoria. It would make sense he'd
dream about her, since she was literally feet away from him on the
boat. But the girl definitely had black hair. It was both darker and
longer than Victoria's. He couldn't see her face to be sure.

She had made a lot of progress. More zombies lay on the ground
behind her, and he could only marvel as she swung a fire axe at a
charging businesswoman. She let go of the axe as it, and the zombie,
fell to her side.

The other fighters were similarly dispatching their cadre of
infected. One of them had a sword. The last one had a baseball bat
with spikes on the end. She swung it and twirled it in her hands like
an expert baseball player showing off in the batter's box.

He saw his reflection in the glass. His mouth hung open.

The girl below swung her shotgun by its heat shield at a small
male in a bright blue ball cap running toward her. He could almost
hear the thunk sound through the thick glass. The hat, thick with
blood, popped off his head and fell to the ground.

She ran back toward her building, reloading. A few zombies trailed
her.

“I need to get down there.”

He ran through the building, retracing his steps. He stepped out
of the broken front window and turned to run toward the bus. But when
he came around the corner, the action was over. The girl wasn't
anywhere to be seen. None of them were.

It was irrational, but he worried they were inside the bus. In the
game, all the players had to be on the victory point in order to end
the game in a victory—kind of like capture the flag. If one of
them was missing, and the game ended, it was considered a loss for
all of them.

“I'm here!” He kept his shotgun out, but he ran as
fast as its bulk, and the heavy ammo pouch, would allow. In moments,
he arrived at the outer layer of dead zombies. Each had a grisly
entry and exit wound from the high-velocity slugs.

The going was tough as he closed the distance to the bus doors. He
became aware of the blood stains on the sides and the glass on the
doors was smeared to the point he couldn't see inside.

Somehow he knew the doors would open.

No one was in the driver's seat. A sign on the top riser said,
“Watch Your Step.” He ascended the few steps and peeked
over the railing so he could see into the seating area.

“Liam?”

“Grandma?”

He rose to the main floor, and looked down at the tiny form
sitting in the first seat. She looked as small as the school kids
that should be on a bus like this.

“Oh, it's good to see you again. You always rescue me.”

There was some truth to that statement. He had rescued her from
Hayes and Duchesne, but he got the sense she was talking about
something different.

“This dream is very odd, Grandma. What is this place?”

She looked at him for a long moment, her head tilted a little to
the side. “Liam? Is it really you? You've never spoken here
before.”

He returned the confused look, thinking that he'd never
been
here before. Instead of an answer, he looked into the back of the
bus. The three players were there, just as he'd expected. They were
huddled in the last row of seats, talking to each other.

“I—”

He did a double-take. One of the figures had turned her head, he
was sure they were all girls now, to reveal a blue bow.

“I think I'm in
your
dream.”

He turned back to her, but she was gone.

Looking up, the girls were gone.

Thinking of his game, he realized the match had ended.

The screaming in his head was real.

2

“Liam! Wake up.” Someone shook him hard.

“I'm up. I'm up.”

The boat had slowed on the river. He got off the fiberglass floor
and looked where Victoria pointed.

A large mud flat ran along the riverbank. It was about a hundred
yards wide from shore to open water and ran for a mile in each
direction. Up the river, a barge had run aground and tipped in the
deep mud, allowing its contents to escape. A hundred zombies spilled
out and were waist deep in the quagmire along the muddy bank.

Victoria pointed to a small figure struggling in the mud, well
downriver from the bulk of the zombies, and nearly half way across
the flats—heading for the water. Several infected struggled in
the mud near the figure—they were leaders of the slow motion
escape. The animated figure waved arms in the classic symbol of “I'm
here. Save me!”

Liam's instincts kicked in.

“We have to save her.”

“Her?” Victoria mused. She looked again, as if to
confirm his observation.

Banging on the window of the control room, he pointed to the girl,
hoping it was understood what he wanted. In a moment, the door opened
and Blue came out.

“The captain said we can't get involved. It could be a trap.
He also said you shouldn't be standing out in the open like you are.”

That got his attention. He looked around, suddenly aware he was
standing hilariously upright on the back of a huge bullseye on the
river. He began to crouch, but reconsidered.

“We can't leave someone to die. Why did the captain slow
down—” He decided to yell to the captain directly. “Why
did you slow down if you weren't going to save her?”

“
She
is very persuasive.”

Liam could only assume he was talking about Blue. He studied the
look on her face. He imagined he saw an agreement there.

“All...right.” He let the words drawl out of his
mouth, while he thought of a response.

They were about twenty-five yards from the edge of the mud flat.
The current wasn't as strong toward the shallows. He saw how it was
going to play out.

Sitting down, he took off his shoes and socks. Then, with some
embarrassment, he took off his jeans. Then his shirt. He thanked the
fates for putting him in boxer briefs today.

“Don't leave without me.” He shouted it to the
captain, but was looking at Blue. He couldn't quite figure out how
she and the captain fit together.