Last Fight of the Valkyries (23 page)

His earlier theory on bloodhounds really troubled him though. He
had begun to believe they were using their senses to follow the cars
well beyond the ability of any zombies to follow them from outside,
but if those howlers somehow tracked them in the dark, then no
distance would be enough to get away. They'd be overwhelmed as more
zombies followed those howls even if they made it to the center of
the earth.

Victoria whispered to him, as if unsure it was something he wanted
to hear. “If we get attacked from behind, we'll never be able
to fight back in the dark. We could turn on some headlights of these
cars and maybe see where we are. At least we wouldn't be surprised.

Liam stopped. With a slap, he smacked his own forehead. “Of
course. Argh, I'm such an idiot. We're walking by two huge
flashlights every time we pass a vehicle.”

He gripped Victoria firmly and guided his lips to hers, hitting
her nose first.

“I love you,” he whispered. Louder, he said, “You
may have just saved our lives.”

They waited until they found another car with an LED. It was the
only way to see the interior and ensure no zombies waited for a
doorman to let them out. It only took a few minutes.

Liam opened the door and fumbled with the steering column until he
found the lights. When they turned on, the headlight beams deflected
off the sports car in front of them and sent light in all directions.
His eyes took a minute to adjust. He turned on the dome light so he
could see into the rear seats, though nothing of any value was back
there. Some baby clothes and a broken down cardboard box.

He jumped out.

“OK, this is our chance. Search the cars. Turn on the
headlights of every car we can find. If we find a flashlight, we can
run ahead and leave the zombies behind us.”

Until we hit a wall.

He kept his negativity in check, but at some point the mine had to
branch off or end or do something. It couldn't go on forever like
this.

Then they'd have to fight. Him, his girlfriend, and two
scaredy-cats.

A thought flew into his funnel—too many years growing up on
a British train show—and it seemed impossible, but he actually
thought he'd rather have Grandma with him than these two walking
colors.

“At least she made
me
stronger.” He hadn't
intended to say it out loud, but Victoria was close enough she heard
him.

“That's so weird, I was just thinking how much I miss
Grandma.”

More lights came on ahead as Pink or Blue found another car with
working headlights.

Behind, very close, he heard the familiar howl.

“Grandma, I hope you're praying for us.”

“Amen,” answered Victoria.

Two days since the sirens.

Indigo Hamilton woke up where she went to sleep. In the front seat
of her mom's car, in traffic. She wasn't sure how long she'd been
out, or how far they'd moved, but she took her nap in the middle of
the day and it was now dark outside.

When her mother saw her stir, she smiled. “I'm sorry, we
haven't gotten very far.”

Indigo looked around, gaining her bearings. “We haven't
moved at all, have we?”

She eyed the back seat of the small car, wishing the rest of her
family was with them. They'd tried to get out of St. Louis when all
the commotion started up—that's what her mom called it—and
they'd been separated. The cell phone network had gone up and down,
but after a long string of failed tries, they'd finally established
the rest of the family was leaving St. Louis with other relatives.
The message was short and clear: get out of St. Louis.

They were facing east, toward Indianapolis—home to her
relatives. But the highway had been stopped since last night. Her
mom's face held back the fear. Only her eyes betrayed her. She was
unable to squelch it completely, and Indigo had a sixth sense for the
feelings of others.

Ahead, many people had pulled over to the side of the highway and
lay in the grass, waiting. She wanted to get out and stretch, but
something told her to stay in the car. It wasn't so much the rumors
of vicious attacks by sick people, but more of a superstition. As if
exiting the car would be the last thing she ever did, so she needed
to make it count.

Another hour went by as they sat listening to music on her
smartphone. She had it plugged into the charger and the aux port, so
they could hear the music through the speakers of the car. As one
song bled into the next, the line ahead started to display brake
lights in the night. It meant people were starting their cars, and
finally, the line was starting to move.

“Hey, lookie there. We're moving.” Her mom was
genuinely happy. The veil of fear slid away for just a little while.
People in the grass jumped up and ran to their cars before the line
left them behind. Frantic merging followed, but people were mostly
civilized about letting them back in. Her mom even let in a large
passenger van, proving that the fear truly had receded.

But a mile along and Indigo felt it return in a wave.

“Oh no. What's this?”

The highway was blocked ahead. The powerful red warning lights on
top of the twin spans of the bridge laughed at them from above. They
were so close to escaping the gridlock of St. Louis, and now they'd
reached the end. In her head, Indigo imagined them smashing through
the construction barrels guiding them all off the highway, but just
in front of the bridge they could see piles of box-like containers
stacked and arranged to create a makeshift wall across the entire
eight lanes of highway. The bridge was closed in both directions.

And those left on this side were being directed to an off ramp.
When they reached the bottom of the ramp, they could turn left and
follow the bulk of the traffic. Or turn right down a narrow road.

“That way will take us back to St. Louis,” her mom was
talking to herself as she pointed left, but Indigo offered her own
suggestion.

“Then let's not do that. Where do you think
those
people are going?” The cars turning to the right were
continuing south along a dirty paved road. There were no road signs
or other clues as to where they were going.

“What's the worst that can happen? We all get stuck in
traffic?” Her mom chuckled, as did Indigo, but she knew her mom
was scared. She was getting there too.

The traffic bunched up again, and soon she saw the same white van
ahead of them.

A man ran out of the weeds and up to the van. She was only half
paying attention until someone in the van opened the door for a
moment and then some kind of altercation took place. It ended with
the man getting a kick to his chest. He tumbled back into the weeds
next to the road, then got up and ran past Indigo without a sideways
glance.

“Did you see that?” She felt the panic in her voice,
but her mom was in the driver's seat and didn't have a line of sight
to the passenger door of the vehicle ahead. All she saw was some
crazy guy run by.

“Yeah, hardly the time to be out jogging.” Her chuckle
was forced. She kept her eyes forward. Indigo fingered the door lock
button, thankful it was already locked.

Several minutes passed without a word. The music continued to
drone, but she wasn't listening anymore. When one of her favorite
songs came on—an upbeat anthem—she ripped the cord out of
the radio. The music was replaced with that horrible emergency
broadcast loop.

“...we advise you find safer jurisdictions. No emergency
services are currently in operation. If you have an emergency—”

She shut it off.

If you have an emergency, no help is coming.

She willed herself to become invisible. She willed the car to
become invisible to “the crazies” going for jogs outside.

“There's another one!” She surprised herself and her
mom at her exclamation. A man stumbled along the road in the same
direction they were going. He was on her side, so she could watch him
up ahead. As each car or truck passed, he tried to grab on. He more
or less bounced from car to car like a sad version of Frankenstein
until he reached the van in front of them. Those people, possibly
angered by the last pedestrian, opened the door swiftly. It struck
the passerby with a thud loud enough she heard it behind the closed
windows of her own car. The man went tumbling off the road.

As her car pulled alongside the downed man, she could see he was
covered in blood. At first she believed the car door had done the
damage, and indeed it had caused some blood on the man's forehead,
but the man's neck was a neckerchief of blood. The top of his tan
shirt looked like a red dickie. The thing—she couldn't call it
a man anymore—looked up at her from the ground.

She slouched in her seat, willing it to ignore her.

Please go to the next car.

Her car lurched ahead with traffic, and in time, she risked a look
out her window. The man was no longer in view. It probably
did
go bother other cars. She thanked her lucky stars.

As she turned forward once more, she was just in time to see the
sign indicating where they were going.

“A quarry? This whole line is going into a quarry? Really?”

Her mom clutched the wheel in a vise grip. She rode the bumper of
the van ahead of them. “We go where they go.
Anywhere
but here.”

Indigo wondered if
anywhere
was always better than here.

2

At one critical junction, Indigo saw they had a chance to divert
from following the crowd. There were railroad tracks going next to
the mine, they shot off into the darkness toward a cliff face being
lit up by the lights of the cars now entering the property.

“Mom, maybe we could drive down those tracks? Get away, you
know?”

To her credit, her mom did look where she pointed, but the
response was typical. “No, we have to stick with the crowd.
Someone up ahead knows where we're going. Maybe they set this up to
protect us?”

Indigo felt the car tilt forward as it started down the slope of
the mine's entrance road. Once she was into the event horizon, she
could see the snake of headlights going round and round the spiral
until they disappeared to some point below. Her panic was building.

“Mom, we can't go down there. There's no way out!”

“Oh honey, we have to follow instructions. All these people
can't be going down there without guidance. It will be fine.”
Her tone betrayed her words.

That's the universal parent red flag for “I don't know what
I'm doing!” Indigo recognized it, and her fear spiraled worse
than the road.

After they were committed, and had gotten through most of the
first loop, Indigo was in five alarm fear territory. Several times,
men and women had run by them in both directions. Some screaming to
turn around. Others screaming the cars weren't moving fast enough. A
couple times, she looked out her window into the rocky cliff face of
the mine wall and saw dark shapes clinging to the shadows. She
imagined they were sleeping.

Yes, of course they're sleeping.

Eventually she stopped looking out her window.

“Mom...do you think A-Z and Saffy made it over the river?”
The terms of endearment for her sister's sprang from their mom. The
woman loved her nicknames. Her friends called her sissy. Even at the
hospital.

Indigo took a long time to respond. Her eyes stared into the back
of the white van. She didn't know for sure, but she suspected her mom
had a fear of driving along the cliff's edge, though it could also be
a hundred other fears in the dark of night. When she did respond, she
almost didn't recognize her mom's voice. It had become deep and
husky, like she was straining hard to speak.

“This isn't a safe space. This isn't a government help
center. This is...a death trap. I've taken my daughter into a death
trap.”

“Mom!” Her mom jumped, as if she was asleep. “You're
scaring me. Quit it!”

She looked at her with sadness in her eyes. “I'm so sorry. I
can't do this. I just can't.”

Indigo felt the fear bubble over. Not just her, but the whole line
of cars. More people ran by, in both directions. The traffic had
stopped. The van ahead had gone dark. They turned off all their
lights, apparently parking right on the road. Looking down into the
pit, many others were shutting off their lights. A great mass of cars
at the bottom were already mostly off; they'd lined up to park at the
bottom. She could see into a gaping maw at the bottom of the mine. A
line of cars poked inside. Their lights remained on.

“I can't. I just can't.”

“Mom. I said quit it.” She was stern, but she didn't
know where this was coming from. She'd never known her mom to act
like this.

“This was a mistake. We can't die like this. We won't die
like this.”

More people ran by, most went down the road now. Several screamed
as if they were dying.

Without warning, a man fell from the sky and slammed onto the
front hood of their car. He didn't hit it square though, he hit the
very front edge. Her mom began to scream. Indigo covered her ears,
but couldn't look away.

Slowly, the man got up. His face was a wreck. One eye...was
missing. Blood covered his left side. Maybe it was all from the fall,
but she didn't think so.

The man was lit by the headlights of the car. With deliberate
motion, the man walked to the inside edge of the mine. Without so
much as a look either way, he stepped off the edge to points unknown
below.

That was enough to break her mom. In seconds, the hysterical woman
had opened her door and began running back up the hill.

“I'm not going in there. I have to get out. Go back!”
Those were the last words she could hear from her mom before she
became background noise among all the other screaming and shouting.