Last Fight of the Valkyries (26 page)

Is anyone good, anymore?

The game represented an era he would never get back. It was the
past, just as sure as cavemen or covered wagons. Though both, he
dourly noted, would find homes in the current world more readily than
a video game. He desperately wished he could jump in the game and
never look back.

“I, uh,” he shook his head and tried to wipe his tears
like it was no big deal, “just got a little nostalgic, I guess.
I played this game on the very last day of...how things were before
the zombies.”

As his vision cleared, he could see the game wanted his login
information. He prepared himself for the laughter.

“Meat me in Yonkers? What kind of a name is that?”
Blue asked.

The loading panel popped up once he was in the game world, and the
three girls saw his avatar in all its glory—all
her
glory.

“What. The. Hell?” Blue actually pointed to the girl
avatar.

The game designers let players build their own characters. It was
very flexible, and Liam was proud he had chosen an avatar that would
stand out amongst the millions of other players in the game. “Meat
me in Yonkers” was a tiny young black woman, with her hair in a
tight bun on the back of her head. She wore exactly what you'd
imagine of a sixteen-year-old boy's imagination: black combat boots,
a tight-fitting red dress cut low so her cleavage showed. He liked to
think of her as part Lara Croft and part Alice, and just as tough.
He'd never seen another player with the same look.

The girls were stunned to silence. He started talking to
compensate for the awkwardness.

“So yeah, Yonks has lots of weapons she can use, but right
now she has a Katana on her back while she holds her M16. I gave her
raw meat gauntlets for her arms—the zombies bite on those if
they get up on her. She's got knives and a couple of guns strapped to
her legs under her dress. And—”

“Why is she black?” It was Pink.

“Yeah, Liam, why is your super-hot chicky player avatar
black? Why isn't she a super-hot brunette future nurse avatar?”
He could hear the smile in her voice behind him. She took things even
less seriously than he did sometimes. She had described herself.

He admitted his earlier sadness was sloughing off. He turned to
the pair of part-black young girls standing next to him, seeing them,
not as colors this time, but as parallels to the woman he had built
inside the game. A woman he admitted he found to be a very
attractive, though fake, amalgam of strong females from the movies.
He'd never, until that moment, thought of why he made her black,
other than it made her look exotic. If he squinted his eyes, he could
imagine either of the twins stepping in for Yonks. That unsettled
him.

Unable to answer beyond a shrug, he turned back to the game.
Inside the virtual world, the pretty young woman stood inside a
convenience store.

“This is where you start. It's a safe base to stock up on
supplies.”

A virtual man walked in and a voice bubble popped up over his
head. Yet, they heard no sounds. He turned up the volume on the
computer and heard a woman's voice. No one was ever what they seemed,
inside the game.

Just like the Apocalypse.

5

“—hear me, can you?” came through the speakers.

He spoke at the screen, hoping there was a microphone attached. It
was too dark to see for sure. “I hear you. Who are you?”

“Don't worry about that. The less you know, the safer we
both shall remain.”

The woman's voice had a tinny quality to it, like it was coming
from the far end of a long tube. It had a vaguely non-human quality,
though he could still understand it perfectly.

“OK, then what are you doing inside this game?”

“Extra layers of protection. Your email is almost certainly
monitored. Chat from there would also be tracked. I knew you had this
game and while we are in here, our transmission is encrypted.”

Inside the game, another text window came on screen. It was used
by players who didn't have microphones, though that was so rare, he
almost never used text chat. Now a text message appeared.

“Liam, continue talking. This chat window is secure.”

“Seems legit. I guess. But why should we listen to you?”
Liam spoke, continuing the charade.

On the screen, the words popped up as the person on the other line
keyed them in. The same person, he assumed, spoke over the speakers,
though he had to focus on the text to read it.

“Liam. Can't trust anyone. The triplets with you are
something new. Not sure if can trust. I erased the data on the chip
you got from Colonel Rufus McMurphy. If you were caught with it,
you'd be shot on sight.”

He was less concerned about the three girls with him being spies,
than with the data chip. The colonel had entrusted it to him, and
he'd allowed it to be deleted back in Cairo.

He talked, probably with inane babble, to the computer screen as a
distraction while he typed. “Who is listening in?”

In seconds, a reply came back. “You met them already. They
are the group most responsible for unleashing the plague on us
Americans. But plague was already overseas when they did it. It was
cover-up to blame others.”

Liam had a hard time with the timeline of the various plagues
ravaging the world. He'd need an outline when he wrote his book.
Hayes and Duchesne had both agreed it was the NIS—National
Internal Security—that released the plague that infected humans
in such a horrific way that Liam could only describe them as zombies.

The NIS is listening.

He typed back, “All right. Nothing secure anymore. How do I
know I can trust you?”

The reply came back after a delay. All the words splashed on the
screen at once. “You don't. But I hope to gain your trust after
I show you this. Sadly, unless you have headphones there is no way to
prevent this from behind heard, and possibly recorded on your end.”

The screen froze, then returned to normal. The male avatar moved
inside the virtual store until he stood next to a TV on the wall. On
the screen, totally incongruous with the game itself, was an image of
Colonel McMurphy. When Yonkers stood close to the screen within the
screen, the video began. It started with the colonel speaking into
the camera. Liam recognized the backdrop as the tent at Elk
Meadow—the research facility where he'd met the man.

He looked around for headphones, wondering if it was even worth
it—anyone listening in would have to come deep into a mine full
of zombies to give him a spanking. Before he could do more than
glance around, the video started.

“Hi Susan. I hope this makes it to you. If anyone knew I
made these videos, I'd probably be tossed into the zombie pen I've
got out back. This is conspiracy stuff beyond anything I thought
possible. I don't even know where to begin...”

At his desk, the colonel picked up a picture frame and showed it
to the camera. It had a red-haired woman and a young teen about
Liam's age. It was the photo the colonel would give to him later.
When stuff went nutso at the camp...

“This is why I'm doing this. Why I'm risking everything.
These two people right here.”

He put the frame down as he spoke faster, and slightly quieter.

“Two days ago, I was shown something. I know you'll find
this hard to believe, but I'm not crazy. Please know that. I...I've
seen the dead walk. I mean real dead people, putting one foot in
front of the other. These people, these government pinheads, think
they've stumbled on the secret to immortality. Argh, how do I say
this without sounding crazy here?”

The gray-haired man looked away, then back at the camera with a
direct gaze at him—though Liam knew he was really talking to
his wife.

“I saw a dead man rise from his pine box. They threw the lid
open, and as God as my witness, something wicked and evil possessed
that body and it pulled itself over the edge and it fell onto the
floor. Then, with great effort, it stood on its feet and ambled
toward us...”

Liam saw fear in his eyes, even two days removed from the event.

“The eyes, dear. The thing had no eyes...but it could see. I
could feel its stare on me. It came for me.” He laughed a
nervous laugh. “But they turned on special lights which froze
it in its tracks. Then they ushered us out of the control room and
back to our trucks. They said we had to know what was coming so we
had the stomach to do what needed doin'. I've been thinking about it
ever since. Not getting any work done here, and Hayes is riding me
hard to have things ready.”

He again looked off camera. This time when he continued it was
almost a whisper.

“Susan, I have to tell someone. I can't trust anyone here
with me as it's clear Hayes has ears everywhere. I don't think he
works for who he says he does. He has more power than he lets on.
They have me doing research, but his team—his Riverside team—is
light years ahead of the rest of us. I asked where they got the man,
coffin and all, and all they said was the man did his duty for his
country once when he died, and a second time when he came back to
life. That can only mean one thing: they pulled him from an actual
cemetery. Why would they do that, Susan? Why?”

He readjusted himself at his desk, almost pleading with his wife
to believe him.

“I do know this much: the dead man was dressed in army
fatigues. They were very old, perhaps World War II vintage. I think
he came from the National Cemetery over at Jefferson Barracks. It's
by that big quarry—”

The screen froze inside the game.

Everyone was frozen outside the game, too.

6

“Is that the answer?” Liam asked it rhetorically,
though he didn't really intend to ask it at all—at least not
out loud. He'd been trying to square the men and women he'd seen
suffer under the effects of the zombie plague since day one. Were
they dead people infected with something that brought them back to
life, or were they living people so sick they appeared dead? The word
“zombie” was something he ascribed to them, though the
more popular, and he had to admit more accurate, term most people
used was
infected
. They had been stricken with a sickness, but
the disease process remained a mystery to him, even after meeting the
guy who concocted the disease in the first place.

One of the plagues.

Yes, there was that. The big difficulty for them all was there
were at least three different viruses involved with this devil's brew
of apocalyptic pandemics. Hayes had said as much. But now, if the
colonel was telling the truth, the actual buried-in-the-ground dead
could also get infected and be made to rise from their graves. That,
right there, was the exact definition of a zombie. The thought did
not give him comfort.

He answered himself. “The answer to the big question of
whether these are zombies or not.”

Blue laughed, “Who the hell is askin' that question? The big
question is where do we go to get safe. Does your computer friend
have that answer?” She leaned toward the computer and repeated
herself. “Where can we get safe, Honkey Tonk?”

Liam didn't correct her mistake. His avatar wouldn't have the
answer. That honor belonged to the male avatar—Anonymous.

The woman on the audio link did respond by typing something in the
screen.

“Liam. Please clear your three friends from the terminal. I
have to say something for you alone. Please hurry. This link won't
last forever. Once they figure out where you are, they'll cut me
off.”

He wanted to ask question after question, but she instilled a
sense of haste into him.

“Guys, give me a minute?” He winked at Victoria,
though in the soft blue light he was unsure if she caught it.

The twins mumbled, but walked away from him nonetheless, toward
computers on the other side of the room. Victoria seemed less sure of
leaving, but she walked several paces in the opposite direction. The
control room wasn't much bigger than his family room back at home, so
they all remained close. But they couldn't see the small text on the
screen, he was sure of that.

“OK, I'm alone,” he typed.

“Liam. I'm being told there is someone trying to trace this
connection. I've got a very talented crew working with me. I was able
to see you inside the Riverside Hotel—you got my message about
shutting off the power. I had hoped that by cutting the power, it
would trap Hayes in the building until the good guys could get there
and snatch him, but you know how that went.”

Yeah, he knew. The power went out, the zombies spilled out of
their cages, and he and Victoria had to rappel down the outside of a
skyscraper to escape. Hayes just got in his helicopter and seemingly
had it much easier. The mysterious call to Victoria's phone actually
endangered him more than it ever was a threat to Hayes. But, as
Grandma would say, “The Lord works in mysterious ways, or
sometimes not at all.” It all worked out because he and
Victoria made it work out.

“We do have people on the ground near you. There's a man
we've contacted on the radio named Jason Hawkes on a bluff near that
mine. Get out of the quarry and find him. He can help you stay safe.”

Figures it would be him.

“We walked through his camp. One of our party said he was
with bad guys. Gun runners or something. He kind of creeped us all
out. Should we go back?”

“Hang on.”

A full thirty seconds passed as Liam stared at the blinking cursor
on the screen.

“Liam, this is very important. If I get cut off, you must
get out of the mine. They'll be coming.”

His mind swam in questions.

“Liam, you've found triplets. You have to get them out of
there. You are in great danger.”

That was the second time she'd used that word. He heard a movie
line echo in his head. He didn't think the word meant what she
thought it did…