Last Fight of the Valkyries (8 page)

Liam studied the area outside the home's windows. Again he saw the
small, squat houses nearby, and appreciated how forlorn they seemed.
A few people milled about on the tiny street—there were small
weed-strewn sidewalks, but people studiously avoided them. The yards
were unkempt, and judging by the age and condition of several
derelict cars and trucks parked under huge shade trees, were that way
even before the Apocalypse. He peered out as far as he could and saw
some multi-story stone buildings a couple blocks over. Mostly he saw
grass though. Like houses had once lined the streets, but only one or
two out of ten still managed to survive.

Kind of like us.

"Are all these people," he turned to those sitting in
the room with him, and quieted his voice, "are we all refugees
here?"

Victoria answered, "When we got off the plane, they took you
to a large tent. It looked like it was for the Army or something.
Most of the Marines from those planes went there too. They all had
something wrong with them it seemed," she chuckled, "though
they weren't complaining as much as you."

He put his hand to his head wound without realizing it. "Well,
I wasn't right in the head."

With a smile, she continued, "They wouldn't let me stay with
you, and I needed to take care of Grandma. They walked us all a few
blocks from the landing area and handed us off to some town officials
for temporary housing. We got in a golf cart and they ferried us here
and told us to get comfortable. They said the residents of this
street had all gone and we were welcome to stay wherever we could
find room. Grandma and I chose this house because...it had the least
blood inside."

Liam gulped. His stomach was legendary for betraying him in the
sight of blood, though he was getting better about it.

“They gave us some clean clothes, a bar of soap per house,
and told us we could get water over at the courthouse. And...we
haven't heard anything for two days.”

“How did I get here?”

“I ran back and made sure you found your way to me. To us.”
She pointed to Grandma, though she smiled, too.

Liam didn't want to ask the next question. It had been bothering
him since he woke up and it would forever burn bright until he knew
the truth.

“So how did I get in these clothes?”

Victoria's face turned red, but said, “What are you, five?
Would you rather Grandma got you out of those filthy clothes and
cleaned you up a little?”

As he thought about it he came to the conclusion that no, he
really wouldn't prefer Grandma handle that particular chore.

As was common with the trio, they all had a good chuckle at Liam's
expense.

3

Liam and Victoria left Grandma in the refugee-filled home and
walked toward the center of town. Victoria knew the way. He wanted to
see things for himself, and she seemed happy to get out with him.

As they walked, Liam tried to reply to the mystery text, but
nothing came back.

“I have service. It should be going through.”

“Yeah, well maybe
they
don't have service,” she
looked over to see the phone number again, “in the 435 area
code. Where is that anyway?”

Liam shrugged, ready to write it off, until he remembered where
they were.

“Hey, I can look it up!” He giggled as he tapped the
browser for the internet. With a few swipes and clicks he had his
answer. The biggest search engine survived the zombies, so far.

“This is what I've been missing all these weeks. The ability
to answer simple questions.” He held the screen in front of
Victoria's face as they strode down the middle of the car-less
street.

“Utah.” She said it in a deep voice, as if it revealed
a mystery.

Liam brought it back, then looked at it for several paces. “OK,
that tells us nothing.” He couldn't help but be disappointed,
but he didn't know why. He had his answer, after all.

On his mental map, Utah was a veritable black hole. He knew
Colorado as mountainous. Nevada had Las Vegas. But Utah?

“I don't know about Utah, but I do know about Illinois.”
She pointed ahead. “I don't think we're going to get in there.”

Ahead of them, at the large stone building being used as the
command center for the town, a large crowd of people hovered about.
The diverse group appeared agitated.

As they approached the outer fringes, Liam took Victoria's hand.
She gave him a smile, then put on her serious face.

“Excuse me,” she called to a smattering of people on
the outer edge of the crowd, “what's happening here?”

A middle-aged black woman dressed in black slacks and a
long-sleeved black shirt with a sequined cat outline on the front
answered her call. “You don't know?” She made a pointed
effort to look Victoria up and down. “You folks come in here
and take our houses and you don't know what's going on?” She
ended with a very deliberate “humpf” sound.

Victoria looked taken aback. Unsure. So Liam tried his hand.

“Sorry ma'am. I hit my head and have been in the hospital.
My girlfriend has been watching over me. We really don't know.”

The woman's mood softened, but just a little. “You two
little kids don't have to worry about it, but us older folks do. Food
rations is being tied to work on the line. Can you believe that
shee-it?”

Liam and Victoria both looked at each other with blank faces.

“Are you kidding me? How long you been out?” She began
speaking very fast. “When the Army came in here, the first
thing they did was clear half the town and put us all together like
sardines. Then they watched us like hawks. Next thing they began
burning all the trees north of town. All of them! Finally, they began
digging
the line
.” She said it with dramatic flair, but
seemed disappointed it didn't elicit a reaction from them. “Oh
fine. The line is a big ditch they been digging up north of here to
cut across from one river to the next. Ohio to Mississippi. We'll be
on an island. Get it? They gonna keep them zombies out of here
completely once it's done.”

“Wow, that's a really good idea,” Liam volunteered.

“Yeah? Then you go up there and dig! I'm too old and tired
to be digging holes.”

“Ma'am, why don't you want to dig? Isn't it going to protect
all of us?”

Victoria added a soft hum in agreement, as if it were perfectly
obvious.

The woman turned hostile. “Oh sure. You come in, take my
house. Take over my town. Interrupt with all your comin's and goin's
with those awful planes. And then you bring those infected people to
Cairo's doorstep. Dontcha' know we've been getting' along jus' fine
until you'all show'd up.” Her dialect seemed to change the
angrier she got.

Victoria pulled his hand, moving him.

“Oh yeah! You two gonna go back home and sleep while I gotta
dig yo' damned hole!” Other agitated people turned their
direction. Many, but not all, were black. Victoria whispered that the
town, until the sirens, was a sleepy and predominantly black
community.

They moved around the crowd for several minutes, but there was no
one in the middle giving work assignments or otherwise signifying
someone in charge. As they walked, they saw the crowd was actually a
queue, and the line went inside a large three-story building that
looked like something out of the 1800's. It was made of large stones,
ringed by a low black metal fence, and even had old-looking
decorative cannons at the corners of the small patch of grass
surrounding the structure. On the backside, people walked out with
shovels, and headed north.

Liam wondered if they were going to hand
him
a shovel.

As if reading his mind, Victoria spoke quietly, “I think we
better head back. I'm not sure what we can do here. This wasn't
happening the last time I was here.” They'd gone around the
building and came back along the other side of the angry residents.
“Though I vote we take a different street to avoid that mean
woman.”

“Agreed. Though if someone came in and took over my street—”
He hesitated as it dawned on him someone
did
come in and take
over his street. They were dead when they arrived too. “Follow
me.”

When they reached the area where the lady had chided them, she was
still there, yelling into the air at no one in particular. He didn't
know why it bothered him so much, but he couldn't walk away without
responding to her accusations.

“Ma'am?” He got her attention quickly, as she'd been
eying him as he approached, though she tried to feign surprise.

“You two again?”

“Look, I appreciate what you said. I lived south of St.
Louis up until about two weeks ago.” Actually, he thought, even
that wasn't true. He lived in the city of St. Louis two weeks ago.
But the story was the same everywhere. “I lived in a nice
little subdivision, a lot like this place,” he swept his hand
behind him, “but if they're digging a ditch to keep out the
z—the infected—you better be out there digging.”

She looked taken aback, but he kept going.

“On my street, when the infected arrived, they came by the
thousands.” He began to speak louder. “First in ones and
twos, but they never stopped. And my street was filled with refugees,
just like your town. People who came from the north, hoping to outrun
the sick.”

He was aware a few more people were listening.

“They came into my backyard. They broke through my window.
We ran to the basement. They
filled the entire house
. To the
brim. Anyone left outside...was dead.” He left out most of the
grisly details of his rescue: blood dripping through the floorboards,
pieces of the zombies strewn over his lawn, the loss of Victoria.
“When we finally came out of our home, the sick had moved on.
But my house was destroyed. My neighbor's house was burned to the
ground. In fact, my whole neighborhood looked like a war zone. And
almost no one else survived.”

He knew he was exaggerating for effect, but the end result was
perfectly true.

“I can never go back home.” He paused, amazed that he
had a considerable number of people listening. “It was wiped
off the map by the zombies.”

He felt he had them. Surely the message was clear, though he
didn't intend anything more than convincing the lone woman. But she
pulled the wrong message from his speech.

“Zombies?” She said it loudly, as if to bring the
listeners back to her side. “Look child, I appreciate your
fantasies, and I'm sorry your house got burned down, but I'm not
scared of no zombies. Nuh uh. Last year I had a robber break in and I
shot 'em dead, yes sir. If these zombies make it to kare-roh, you can
bet they gonna get what's coming to 'em.”

Then, with a flourish she turned away from him and yelled, “And
I ain't digging no damned ditch!”

Liam let himself be pulled forcefully by Victoria.

4

They were halfway back to their temporary house when Liam finally
stopped.

“All right, that didn't go as planned.” He looked at
her and couldn't help but smile in her presence.

“What? What's so funny?” A crooked smile hung on her
face.

Liam's smile grew bigger. Most of his smile was because he just
liked being around her, but a not inconsiderable part was because of
what he saw in the yard behind her.

“You know, you may regret joining up with me for the
Apocalypse.” He nodded to the pile of bikes under the massive
tree in the unkempt lawn behind her. “I'm going to take one of
those bikes and go look at this ditch they're digging. I'm not going
to spend my life lounging in a house like those kids back there and
I'm not going to push a shovel either. Not when there are bigger
problems facing us all...” His speech petered out.

Her smile didn't diminish. “So, what I'm hearing is that you
suffer from ants-in-the-pants syndrome, and it just won't let you
settle down and watch the grass grow. Maybe enjoy a lemonade on a
quiet patch of backyard? Stuff normal people do?”

Liam wanted to be a writer. He had more or less took an oath at
the dying figure of Agent Duchesne that he would document the
destruction of the world, if for no other reason than ensure the
proper people were blamed when the history books were finally printed
again. He couldn't tell a story if he was thumbing a smartphone with
other teens, or “shoveling shit in Louisiana” while a war
was going on. He would have to give credit to General Patton for that
bit, if he remembered.

They walked through the yard and Liam reached out and touched
Victoria's side. “You're it!” He took off running through
the tall grass, laughing. He made his way to the bikes.

She sauntered along to the pile as he was pulling one out. “Not
in the mood for games?” He grinned.

“You'll know when I'm in the mood for games, mister.”
She was stern, but she was seldom able to pretend to be angry or mad,
which was something Liam loved about her.

Fortunately, the bikes they selected hadn't been there for very
long. The tires were low, but not flat. Liam didn't even flinch at
the need to ride a bright lime green women's cruiser. Victoria's was
pink.

The town of Cairo was smaller than he thought it would be. He
could see most of it by looking in all directions along the gridded
road system. The central building they'd just left was about midway
between the north end of town where there was some kind of metal
gate, and the south end of town where there were lots of trees.
Beyond and above the trees he saw two metal-trussed bridges. It was a
mystery where the bridges went, or what they crossed. He assumed it
was the two rivers.

Riding through the town, he saw many more refugees. If he didn't
know they were there, he might have missed them. Most were faces
inside the dark interiors. Hiding.

Others were bolder, like them, and stood on the stoops or walked
in the nearby yards. Some waved. Most kept to themselves. By and
large, they were white with a few rare other assorted races, leaving
Liam to wonder whether the woman back at the building was telling the
truth. Did all these people come in and kick the native residents to
the curb? He didn't doubt it would be done by "the authorities,"
but the biggest question was why. Why go through the trouble of
kicking people out? Why not just have refugees live with the natives?