Last Fight of the Valkyries (7 page)

Her anger at what the zombies had done—what someone had made
them do—burned like a tiny sun in her chest. But for now her
mission was much more basic than revenge. It was survival. The
computer showed her the location of the MRAP moving around the nearby
streets. If she timed it right she would have a shot of catching it.

Blue cinched up her pants. She didn't understand who she was, why
she went into a hotel filled with a horde of zombies, or how'd she
survived. All she knew for sure was she had to catch that truck.

Blue held the shotgun as best she could, and started over the
edge. She pulled up the goggles so they wouldn't distract her. She
didn't need them anymore, anyway. She could hear the engine of her
target.

Liam woke up in a dingy room draped with tacky wallpaper showing
little toy soldiers. The small bunk bed mattress sagged sadly as he
tried to sit up. The top bunk sagged in a similar fashion above him.
He ran his fingers through his wild hair, expecting to pick out
pieces of mud and debris left from his swim in the Mississippi, but
he was surprised to only find clean hair.

He looked at the pair of cargo shorts he wore—not his—and
became concerned that if he couldn't remember a shower or how he got
dressed, someone had to have done it for him. He was pretty sure it
wasn't Great Grandma.

Well, that's embarrassing
, he said to himself.

His arms were sore, and scraped up one side and down the other.
Bright sunlight shone through the small, bare, wood-framed window. It
drenched his skin as if he were under a microscope. The scratches
were souvenirs from his days of travel and survival since the sirens
went off...he didn't know how many days ago. The most momentous event
in human history and he had no idea how long ago it happened.

Grandma would probably say it doesn't matter. Just live in the
day. Or some other platitude that was both generic, and true. He
didn't quite have the same knack for positivity she did.

The room contained nothing but the bed and a small desk, with no
chair. Several bottled waters sat on top of the desk; they called to
him.

As he gained his feet, he felt pretty good. He had a hard time
remembering the details now, but he knew he hit his head when he fell
on the hood of the MRAP. And then—it got fuzzy. As if to
acknowledge his memory, he touched the side of his head. It was
tender with a small pliable scab, but he must not have come out too
bad if he didn't have a bandage.

The water invigorated him. He downed a whole bottle and reached
for another, but checked himself from grabbing it. Voices carried
from beyond the room. He went for the cheap brass handle on the
wooden door. He had to know his situation.

He opened the door to step out, but once opened, he hesitated in
the entry for a long time. The tiny undecorated living room was part
of a small residential house. There were many people lounging about.

Grandma thumbed through a magazine as she sat next to a pretty
young girl on a squat cloth sofa. A half dozen other people sat on
old metal chairs or sprawled on the wooden floor. Most appeared to be
about his age. Their heads were buried in tablets, smartphones, and
laptops. Many wore headphones, and none looked up at him. The
detached companionship reminded him of any number of school functions
over the years.

“Grandma,” he called.

Grandma Marty turned and gave him a big smile. So did her friend.

No way.

“Victoria?”

She stood up and moved the four paces across the room, and gave
him a tight hug. When she pulled away, she kept her arms around his
neck as she spoke. “I'm glad you're OK. The wound didn't look
bad, but it did bleed something awful. I was afraid you were going to
be out a lot longer.”

He had a million questions. But only one thing was on his mind in
the moment.

“Victoria, you're gorgeous.” As he said it, he had a
momentary flash of embarrassment. Paying compliments to girls was
brand new territory for him, and doing it for a girlfriend in front
of a room full of peers was cutting edge. But after all they'd been
through together, he had no plans to spend his time navel-gazing
about his feelings for her. No one else seemed to care.

She had cleaned up. She wore a perfectly white tank top with a
modest neckline. Her shirt bracketed her cheerful silver cross
necklace. She wore a pair of dark blue jeans, and even still had his
belt around her waist—along with his leather holster, though it
was currently empty. She found a relatively new pair of running
shoes—they were white and bright yellow. But mostly he was
impressed by how well she cleaned up her face.

Almost since they'd met, her face had suffered extensively. First
when she was beat up in the Arch by looters, then when she'd fallen
after getting shot, and finally when she lost her tooth jumping in a
creek. The tooth was still missing, but it didn't detract from her
image. Now those bruises were nearly healed and she had a chance to
comb her hair and put it into a ponytail.

Her emerald eyes pierced his blues. She stood on her toes, gave
him a quick peck on the lips, and separated. Liam was aware again of
all the other young people in the room.

And Grandma. He moved to the sofa with great cheer; he sat next to
her while Victoria scrunched in on his other side, with her legs
folded under her.

“Hi, Grandma. How ya doing?”

“Oh, Liam. I'm so happy to see you all right. You gave us a
fright on the plane.”

“I don't really remember the flight.” He looked
around, trying to look out the windows to the street beyond. He saw
other houses; his first impression was he was in some beat down
little subdivision in the suburbs of St. Louis. “We aren't at
Camp Hope, are we?”

“No, I'm afraid not.”

Victoria jumped in, “We're in Cairo, Illinois.” She
pronounced it like care-oh ella noise.

He looked at her and she returned a smile. She was being silly.

Grandma continued. “That's right. The military brought us
here, along with everyone who made it from that terrible stadium.”
She paused while she appeared to swish her tongue around inside her
mouth. To Liam, it reminded him of a stereotypical thing an elderly
person might do, but he did it himself as he watched—suddenly
aware he was still very thirsty. “When the plane was airborne,
I thought they were going to open the hatch and throw us off the
back. The Marines weren't too happy we helped bring the infected onto
the field.”

“We killed all those people.” He said it, echoing
himself from inside the MRAP while still in the city, though he
couldn't decide if it was absolutely true. He hoped Grandma would
tell him he was being dramatic.

“Well, we did let the infected into the stadium. I guess we
have to take the blame for it.” She crossed herself.

No, we can't have really killed them. All of them.

He looked at Victoria, hoping she would argue the point, but she
stared at the floor in front of them, suddenly very quiet.

Liam kept going. “OK, so we killed them. We didn't ask to be
there. We didn't know they were there. We just wanted to survive.”

Once he'd said it, he knew what was coming. He stepped on every
landmine in their short discussion.

He waited for it, but neither seemed willing to rub it in. “Of
course everyone would want to survive. Some would do more than others
to make that happen,” he imagined they'd say. “And Phil
tried to warn us,” they would add.

Wanting to move past the ugly truth, Liam asked, “So what do
we do now? Grab Mel and Phil and get back to my parents at Camp
Hope?”

The strange silence continued. While the rest of the people in the
room continued to push buttons and play games, Grandma and Victoria
were both uncharacteristically quiet. The fashion magazine idled on
Grandma's lap.

“What? My parents are coming here?” He smiled, but he
could tell by their faces that wasn't it.

“Come on guys, you're freaking me out. That's not funny when
zombies walk the Earth.”

He had a hard time looking at both of them, since they were
sitting on opposite sides, but he did catch a nod between them.

“Liam, when we got off the plane we didn't find Melissa or
Phil.” Victoria held his arm as she continued, “We don't
know for certain they didn't get off the plane when it landed, but
nobody remembers seeing them. They wouldn't just run away. The only
thing that makes sense is they never got on in the first place.”

Liam had been with Phil almost since the beginning. He'd come to
think of him as part of his A-team of survival experts. Melissa had
been a good solid addition too. He thought she may even have been
more valuable than Phil for her military prowess.

“OK. So we go out and look for them. Scour the camp.”
He looked at Victoria, knowing Grandma wasn't going to be doing much
search and rescue at her age.

Victoria gave him sad eyes. “Liam...”

“What? What am I missing here?”

Holding his arm tighter, “Liam, that was two days ago. You
were exhausted. Injured. We didn't want to wake you up for this. If
they were here, someone would have found them by now.”

He flopped backward into the cushion of the sofa. Now Grandma held
his other arm. He felt like his head was spinning, even though he
felt fine. He thought Mel and Phil had been harmed by the
survivalists back at Camp Hope, but he left before he was forced to
see that truth. Then they showed up in the MRAP and saved him,
Grandma, and Victoria in the city. And then...

“Two days? A lifetime of things could happen in two days. We
have to go look for them. And then we have to find my parents.”
He said it without conviction. His whole life recently had been a
series of rescues. How many more could he endure?

On the other hand, sitting on his butt was the last thing he
wanted to do.

2

Liam's compass spun wildly. Here, he was elated to be safe with
Victoria and Grandma. Over here, he was angrily accepting that Mel
and Phil were almost certainly dead. Finally, as the compass finished
its sweep, he was terrified his parents sat back at the Boy Scout
camp worrying about his fate.

He reached for his phone. Two days ago, it was waterlogged and
presumably broken. Today…

“Um. My phone's gone.”

“No, I have it.” She pointed to a nearby table. “I
charged it for you. They have everything here for techies. I also put
it in a sealed plastic bag. For the next time you go swimming with
it.”

She chuckled.

"It's working again?" he said excitedly. “Thank
you!”

He jumped off the couch, grabbed it and removed it from the bag,
and thumbed through the screens to get what he wanted. While he
worked, he continued, "Victoria, get in there with Grandma. I'm
going to take this photo if it—"

For many days he lamented he never took Victoria's photograph with
his phone. In the Old Days, he would take pictures of urinal cakes as
goofs to send his friends. Now, taking such pictures seemed the
height of civilization. But before he could get the camera app
loaded, he saw something else.

"Oh no. I have a text message. I'm not sure who it's from."

Victoria hopped up to get a look at his phone's screen. She looked
at the message and the phone number where it originated, but said
nothing further.

He looked up and saw Grandma with a patient face. As always.

"OK, Grandma, this is what it says, but I don't get it."
He cleared his throat as if it were an important radio announcement.
"Liam. Need to go to Koch Hospital Quarry. See research."
The number was prefixed by the 435 area code. It was from the day
before.

"Grandma, did you send this? Like you did the other one."
Back at the Riverside medical lab, a strange message had appeared on
Victoria's phone, supposedly sent by someone using Liam's phone.
Grandma was holding it at the time, though the message could have
been sent hours earlier based on how frequently the cell phone towers
dropped service.

"Oh, I'm afraid it wasn't me. I don't know how that other one
was sent to Victoria either. I only barely managed to contact you,
Liam."

It was true enough. She had gotten one message through to him,
giving him an X to mark the spot where she was being held captive. It
was by far the most important text he'd ever gotten—and it came
during a gunfight to boot. But now...

Victoria finally spoke. "I should tell you this town has the
internet. It even has cell service, though the people who run the
place say most of the other towers are down in the surrounding
states, so there aren't really many people to talk to."

"Wait, internet is working? How?"

Victoria sat on the arm of the sofa. "From what I've
gathered, this place is a hub of sorts for all the surrounding
country. When the zombies came, local governments and some military
retreated here and brought as much tech as they could. There's a huge
parking lot with nothing but tractor trailers and generators humming
next to them. But," she heaved a large sigh, "like the cell
towers, there's not much to do on the internet because lots of the
cities are completely offline."

Liam wasn't exactly sure how the internet worked, but he knew
there were transmission lines between cities which carried data—they
were always laying more fibre cable next to highways. But if the
cities were dead, there'd be no one to manage the hubs, and with no
one to manage those, it was only a matter of time before they either
went offline because of power loss or even something as dumb as a
zombie tripping over a network cable. Not many techs would be on duty
either.

"So we have cell phones but no one to call, and internet but
no websites to visit."

Victoria nodded solemnly.

"Children, don't fret. Liam, I'm sure your parents are fine.
We're safe. That's what they'd want for you. For you both." She
winked at Victoria; her smile was reassuring.