Last Fight of the Valkyries (29 page)

“Then the Army came. A few days ago.”

“The Army?” Blue lit up. “Are they here to
rescue us?”

“I wish,” Black replied. They somehow tapped into the
feed on the drone and told the boys they were coming in. They got
really weird though. Said I had to hide, just for my own safety. We
argued, of course—I didn't want to hide when rescue was so
close. But they pulled guns on me. Threatened me. So they let me out
into the next room and gave me a light and told me to go find a quiet
place and stay silent.”

“None of it made sense. Until I heard the shooting. I saw
the Army guys come through the control room. Three of them. They just
kept going into this room, then they disappeared in the darkness. I
haven't seen them since.”

Liam realized what she was saying. “They're still here? How
long ago was that?”

Black turned around, facing the room. “That was yesterday.”
She held up her arm and pointed to her wristwatch. “This was
Timothy's. I took it from his body.”

None of it made any sense.

“So the Army came through, and killed the Army guys?”

“Nope,” Black replied, “they weren't Army.
Neither group was, it turns out. Just a bunch of boys pretending.
Doing work for their bosses up there.” She pointed up, her
meaning clear. “Timothy was still alive when I found him. He
told me why he'd been killed. He told me what he was protecting. It
was why the other group had come here.” She was thumbing in the
direction out the window.

“What, Black? What were they protecting in there?”
Blue asked.

“It sounds cliche but you really have to see it for
yourself. Words don't do it justice.”

She collected herself, then made like she was going to open the
door. She pulled a lever on the wall. Lights in the larger room
started to spark. “It will take the lights a while to warm up.
We'll get out there just in time to see them come on.”

On the computer monitor, Liam noticed all the guns outside had
stopped firing. Somewhere along the way, he failed to notice the lack
of gunfire outside the room. But he still jumped when the banging
began on the metal door.

Black saw he was looking at the drone footage. The screen showed
the other side of the door. More and more zombies stacked up in the
frame. The front cadre beat on the door with great force, though for
once, Liam felt confident they could not break it down no matter how
many were out there. Only a few could assault the door at the same
time because of the small flight of steps leading to it.

Black returned to the terminal. With the mouse, she whisked the
drone into the darkness and landed it. “We need to save its
power in case we need it later. I don't think we can grab it through
the door anymore to recharge it.” She laughed a little, though
the implications were anything but funny.

On her feet again, she moved to the interior door. “Hurry,
guys. You've got to see this as the lights come on.”

“But you said the Army guys are still out there, somewhere,
right?” Liam was concerned they were about to be ambushed.

“They aren't Army. And yes, they
are
still in the
room. But they won't give us any trouble. I took care of them.”

Without waiting for a reply, she ran out the door.

“Come on, hurry!”

5

Liam followed Black's two sisters, with Victoria in tow. Nothing
made any sense. He thought it was the lack of proper light playing
tricks on his mind. Everything seemed out of balance in the darkness,
low lights, and long shadows everywhere.

And the heat. The new cave was a raw shock. Hotter and drier than
the summer day outside.

Ahead, Black flicked on a high-powered flashlight as she jogged.
The room was larger than the last one, or at least higher. He saw the
glint of metal hovering on each side of him, though he couldn't make
out the shapes. On the walls and columns of the room, lights began to
flicker. They reminded him of the ancient lights in his high school
gymnasium. They seemed to take an eternity to light up. His teachers
were always hesitant to turn off the lights for short periods of
time, because they took so long to come back on.

They were coming on now.

“Hurry! We're almost there.”

She was twenty-five yards ahead, but Liam saw her come to a stop.
She turned out her flashlight, but there was a low light from the
cumulative effect of all the lights around them starting to come on.

They arrived together in what turned out to be a large
intersection in the center of an incredible interior space hollowed
out of solid limestone. He was covered in sweat from just a few
minutes of running.

Black spoke. “Some dumbass got the idea a quarry would be a
safe place to go in the event the dead started to walk the earth.
Timothy said it was because of some TV show about zombies—those
fake people hid in a mine and made it look easy. But people who came
into this mine never found safety.” She paused dramatically,
apparently because she was being dramatic. “And
this
is
why.”

The lights remained dim, but Liam could now see most of the
cavern. Indeed, it was a cavern. It was much bigger than he
imagined—hundreds of yards in every direction from where they
stood. They were smack in the middle. A row of raw stone columns
extended along an axis he imagined as north and south and another
went east and west. They'd come up the north-south axis. The ceiling
was probably forty feet above the solid rock under their feet in
every direction.

And as far as he could see in every direction, the floor was
crammed with tanks. Genuine armored fighting vehicles. Parked in tidy
rows.

Victoria whistled.

Liam was speechless.

The lights continued to brighten. Each degree of brightness seemed
to reveal another row of tanks further in the distance.

Black continued with her dramatic revelation. “Timothy told
me he was part of a group fighting the people who released the
plague. These tanks would eventually be used to take back the land
stolen by those people. You know, so the United States could
rebuild.”

Liam still had no response to the number of tanks arrayed before
him. He believed he was somewhat of an expert in tanks—he'd
played military-themed games over the years—but he only
recognized some of the models.

In front of him, he saw line after line of the M1A2 Abrams. It was
the main battle tank of the U.S. military, and one of them had
recently saved him and Grandma from the advancing zombies. He
remembered them well. But he also saw tanks he pictured as being from
World War II. Sherman tanks. They were endless. He turned around and
saw other models he thought he knew, but wasn't sure. One long row
appeared to be Russian. He might even see a short row of German
tanks. How they were here, he couldn't even guess. To what end?

He was dizzy at the sight of the tank farm. If any Army could get
all these tanks working, even if they just got the Abrams tanks
working, they would be unstoppable.

A snippet of his conversation with Duchesne popped into his head.
He mentioned people waiting in their bunkers until the time was right
to rebuild. Government functionaries, business leaders, corporate
cabals, and the heads of state. All of them were sitting in safety
somewhere. Is this what they would use when they reclaimed the
country?

“I wanted to kill these guys, but I didn't have it in me.
The Patriot Snowballers might have unleashed the plague, but I don't
think these three pushed the button to do it.” She had walked
toward the first row of Abrams tanks and pointed to the one on the
corner. “So I put them inside and sealed up the hatches.”

Liam's head spun.

“Wait a second, wait just a second. Do you mean to tell me
the Patriot people released the plague?”

“Yeah, Timothy talked about it all the time. Showed it to me
on his news websites. They marched on Washington D.C., and wrote out
their demands. They wanted the President to give up his term. They
wanted to strengthen the Tenth Amendment—something about States
having more rights. They basically claimed to want to go back to 1776
and start over. Naturally, the President refused. And when he did,
the Snowballers just released the plague along with their manifesto,
claiming that if they couldn't have the government they wanted,
they'd just blast the world back to the Stone Age so they could start
over and make things better. Can you believe that shit?”

It was the exact opposite story he'd heard from Hayes and
Duchesne. They had said it was the President who had released the
plague, because he wanted to kill the Snowballers marching on his
seat of power.

Both sounded reasonable, except for one little detail. The list of
names of his family. Anyone related to Rose Peters—his grandma
from Colorado. She'd helped the Patriots along. She'd—

His mind threw out a curveball. Something so far-fetched he wanted
to laugh. A laugh wouldn't come out in the face of so many tanks.
This had grown much bigger than a world-ending plague.

What if they targeted my family because they thought we were
the terrorists.

And, taking it to the logical conclusion…

Grandma Rose released the plague, making the rest of her family
enemies of the state.

It sounded absurd. But then, so did zombies. So did everything
he'd heard in the past few weeks. Multiple viruses. Grandma's
visions. Just being here in this room. It was all absurd for a
teenager who, until recently, spent all his time playing
fantasy-based video games. Now those fantasy games seemed like pale
imitations.

“No, that's not right.” Victoria started to speak up,
but Liam caught her.

“Hey, can I talk to you for a sec?” He didn't give her
a chance to respond. He pulled her backward, away from the triplets.

Over his shoulder, he called, “We'll be right back.”

When he thought they had enough space, he spoke quietly.

“My dad had flags of a Polar Bear in his ammo room. That
person on the computer said my dad was friends with the Patriot guy
we passed on the ridge. And Duchesne admitted it was the President
who released the plague on them. If we tell Black we have sympathies
with the Snowballers, she might throw us in a tank, too.”

Victoria's reply wasn't what he expected. “
Do
we have
sympathies with them? What if Black is right? How can we be sure?”

“No! We don't—” He said it too loud, but he was
angry she would even suggest such a thing.

“Shhh! Take it easy. I was only playing devil's advocate.
I've met four members of your family; you aren't the type to release
a plague.” She laughed while holding his hand firmly.

His hackles laid back down. To be fair, he tested the devil's
idea. His brain processed an image of Grandma Rose pouring out a vial
of glowing green goo into the drinking reservoir of a big city. Then
he tried to analyze whether it was possible. He tried to square that
with the image of that same Grandma running to rescue him from
drowning all those years ago. The math didn't add up.

“No, my Grandma would
never
have done that. The
Snowballers have to be the good guys. And anyway the colonel said the
plague started overseas. He never mentioned patriots or presidents.”

A voice called out from behind them. It was one of the triplets,
but Liam couldn't identify which. They all sounded the same, he'd
decided.

“They got out!”

Liam found himself in a strange place. He was happy the good guys
escaped, but he was cavorting with the girl who had somehow captured
them. That made him a potential enemy, rather than a friend.

He felt exposed standing in the open, so he grabbed Victoria and
ushered her between two of the big Abrams tanks.

Right into the barrel of a gun. It was attached to a Patriot.

6

“Don't say a word. I don't want to hurt you two.”

Liam raised his arms, spear in hand. He backed up to be next to
Victoria. Together, they barely fit in the space between the two
tanks.

“Liam? Victoria?” A girl called loudly for them.

A long period of silence ensued. Part of him imagined the triplets
running in and out of the tanks like bad-ass video game avatars from
World of Undead Soldiers
. This scenario would fit well in the
game. Survive at all costs, save your captured friends. But the whole
episode ended with a bit more realism than his game.

A male voice called out. “We've got them, Dave.”

The man pointing the rifle at them motioned to Liam. “Go
ahead, let's go see what we can see.”

He grabbed Victoria's hand as they backed out. The three girls
were several tanks down the row, sitting on the ground with their
hands on their heads. They looked beaten.

Black saw them. “Sorry guys, I didn't know there was a hatch
on the bottom of the tank.”

“It's OK,” Liam said. “I think these are the
good guys.”

“What? No! They killed Tim and Frank.”

The guy behind Liam spoke loudly toward the girls ahead. “They
tried to shoot us. We didn't want to kill them.”

To Liam—or no one in particular—the man grumbled: “We
should be killing those dead things, instead of each other.”

“Amen, brother,” is what came out of Liam's mouth.
After he'd said it, he waited for a response. The man became quiet as
they walked the remaining distance to the girls. Liam and Victoria
took a seat with them.

“I heard these two talking about being with the Bears,
Clarence. Said his father's one.”

“We can't take a chance. Maybe it's a trick. Those last two
guys almost tricked us, too.”

Dave seemed uninterested in pushing the issue.

Liam was also unsure he wanted to push the issue. If they were
truly Patriots, he believed they'd come to no harm. However, if they
were part of the NIS, or just about any other government agency, they
might come to harm for being associated with an anti-government
group. Especially if the official word going around was that they
were responsible for releasing the plague on everyone else. He had to
admit, it was brilliant propaganda. Foment unrest against the
citizens so they, the agents of the government, could swoop in and
pick up the pieces. But he knew it was never that simple. There were
plenty of good guys in government, too. There was no litmus test to
determine the good guys from the bad, except by their actions. So
far, this group of men had been treated like criminals. Would they
reciprocate?