Last Fight of the Valkyries (9 page)

Once again he turned introspective, remembering how he felt when
those refugees came up his own street. Or when they were on the
highway. Everyone wanted the refugees to
keep going
. For
several minutes, he churned the pedals as he followed Victoria.

She pointed to her left. "Let's go that way. It looks like
there's a way to get up on that levee."

The levee wasn't obvious from inside the town, but as they neared
the edge he was struck by how big it was. It was basically a
miles-long huge pile of dirt, covered by grass. "It looks like a
prison wall. The town is a prison."

Victoria replied, "With walls like this, I wonder why they
need to dig a ditch?"

Liam had no idea.

The grassy slope was too steep to ride. They hopped off and pushed
their steeds up the incline. With a huff, Liam pushed his onto the
flat gravel service road on the ribbon of levee above the town.
Victoria was a moment behind.

"Wow," he said.

She repeated him as she saw the same thing.

They were at the highest point of a narrow peninsula. From his
position, the levee road receded into the distance to the south,
toward the two large bridges. Looming large to the West was the
Mississippi River. The ugly brown water moved fast. He could see that
from several hundred yards away, across some newly planted farmland.

"What in the heck is
that
?" She pointed to a side
channel of the Mississippi river. It was about a mile long and
completely filled with barges, barge towboats, and smaller
watercraft. At the head of the inlet were two bright white towboats
pushing drifting boats and other debris into the protected harbor.

"It looks like they're junk collectors," he replied.

Across town, to the east, lay the Ohio River. He couldn't tell if
the locals had a similar operation on that side, but it was similarly
filled with barges, towboats, and a multitude of other boats.

Victoria pointed north. "Let's go up that way." She
didn't wait for an answer, she just started riding.

"Hey! Wait up." He jumped on his bike, steadying himself
as he tried to get the pedals moving, and rolled after her.

He didn't catch right up. She was pumping hard to stay ahead of
him. She turned back once with a wry smile, daring him to catch her.

They both laughed as he rose to the challenge and tried in earnest
to catch her. The sub-par inflation of the tires and the uneven
surface of the gravel road made it hard going for both of them. When
they reached the junction where the levee going north met the one
crossing the north boundary of the town, Victoria stopped with a
skid.

Liam was only a few seconds behind her. "I was going to get
you," he shouted with joy.

The mirth drained away when he saw why Victoria had stopped.

She turned to him. "I think we found
the ditch
."

He took in everything and had a new perspective on the geography
of the town. It was bracketed on three sides by the waters of the two
big rivers. The land pointed like a finger to the south. At the very
southern tip, the two bridges spanned each river. On the north side,
where they held their bikes, the levee provided one layer of defense
against the farmland and patches of forest to the north. However, the
authorities had taken it several steps further. The levee was the
first layer. About a hundred yards north of the massive levee was a
similarly impressive trench. It was filled with heavy equipment and
hundreds of people with shovels. On the western edge, where it would
have met the Mississippi, men were crawling over large wooden beams
drilled up and down in the mud. It was a check dam to keep the water
out until the ditch was ready. Liam could see the plan was to create
a type of moat in front of the levee. On paper, it was a very
formidable barrier of entry to the town.

North of the ditch was a swath of destruction of charred and
barren land. The woman had mentioned burning. All the trees and
vegetation had been stripped from the land—giving the defenders
clear visibility up to the interstate miles to the north.

All told, this town had used its unique geography to maximum
effect.

Liam reflected on every book about zombies he'd ever read. No
matter how strong the fortress, no matter how dedicated the watchmen…

“I give this place two weeks.”

5

Victoria gave him a knowing look. “This is where you tell me
what you're thinking, right?”

He laid his bike on the gravel, and tentatively felt his head
wound after it was down. “Did you know today was my birthday?
When I checked my phone earlier I noticed a little reminder.”
He walked off the pathway to sit on the upper incline of the levee,
facing the Mississippi and the workers at the ditch. He spoke as
Victoria did the same.

“I've decided I'm going to be seventeen from now on.”
He looked at her as she sat next to him. “Do you think people
will believe I'm seventeen?”

“Why? Why seventeen?”

He took a long time to look out over all the work being done on
the defenses of his new home.

“Because of
that
. Because of zombies. Because of
people like Hayes. The survivalists. The military. I can't be a kid
anymore. This place, this situation we've found ourselves in—it
requires someone older. And, because no one is going to be checking
ID in the Apocalypse, I figure I can get away with it.”

He'd made the realization about identity many days ago. He just
never imagined he would be one to capitalize on it.

“Well, I
guess
it makes sense.”

Feeling the need to justify himself, he continued, “That
woman back there, she's wrong. She can complain all she wants about
digging and losing houses. But you've seen them in action. If the
zombies come through here in the numbers we saw in St. Louis, even
the ditches won't help them. Then she'll wish she'd been out there to
make the ditch a foot wider or deeper, instead of causing trouble.”

He pulled at some grass, then turned back to her. She was very
close. “I hate to admit this, because I've spent two days in
recovery, or whatever, but I want to leave. I want to find my
parents. I want to—” He slid his phone from his pocket
and showed it to her. “—find the reason for this text
message. And to do that...you and I can't get stuck in this place
handling dirt. The woman did have one thing right: there's no way she
should have to dig if all those people in our house are just sitting
around playing video games. That won't last long. When the military
comes calling, we need to be gone.”

“Hmm. Well, then it sounds like we have a few pieces of
housekeeping to take care of before we get started.” She
coughed to get his attention. When he turned in her direction, she
notified him of her intentions by puckering her lips.

When their kiss was over, she pulled away with a broad smile.
“That's for the big one-seven. Happy birthday.”

Thinking fast, Liam shot back, “Actually, why don't I say
I'm eighteen instead. Happy one-eight?” He puckered his lips,
but she gave him a mock slap on the cheek instead.

“No way you're getting past me. If you're gonna be eighteen,
then I'll have to change my age to nineteen. Pretty soon we'll both
be thirty and I don't want to age that fast.”

She tried to fake a stern look, but relented under his puppy dog
eyes. “Oh alright. I'll give you one to grow on.”

Liam and Victoria kissed for a length of time well short of what
he wanted, but given the hard labor being done on the fields below
them, he grudgingly admitted she got the time exactly correct. They
both stood to leave.

“Wait a minute.”

“We should leave, there's a truck coming.” She pointed
the direction they'd come from. A white pickup truck was slowly
driving along the gravel road on top of the levee. It was still far
down the line.

His phone was already out, so he had no problem calling up a map.
Much of the internet was down, but luckily he was able to access the
map service of one of the largest online search engines. In fifteen
seconds, he had what he was looking for. “Wow, the internet is
fast when no one's on it.”

“Koch Hospital Quarry. That's what the message said.”
He paused, looking at the data. “Oh crap. I know this place.”

He held up his phone to show her, but she didn't recognize it. He
pocketed his phone and talked as they gathered their bikes.

“Let me take you back in time...oh, about two weeks...a
young boy and his hot, overdressed Apocalypse Friend took a ride on a
train to escape St. Louis. Ringing any bells?” He knew it
would, she was there. “And on that train ride, they happened
upon a pit quarry where cars drove off the nearby highway into a loop
the loop going down into the mine—”

He was trying to be funny, but made a sad observation that
tempered his humor. He ended it abruptly with, “—it's the
place where Jones died.”

They walked down the inside slope of the levee, into town.

“The place was crawling with zombies. You really expect to
go back there?”

Liam thought about the irony. They took a train out of the city on
a rail line that ran along the edge of the Mississippi River. Later,
they paddled a boat up the river right along the same route. The big
difference was they were too exhausted paddling the boat to dwell on
the fact they had been there before. Now, the thought of going back
to the place Jones sacrificed himself by driving a large dump truck
over the zombie horde wasn't sitting well with him.

“I don't want to. Thinking about all those zombies from that
train ride gives me the creeps. But we know the zombies have been
moving around, called by the sirens downtown and then chased out
again when they shut off. We might be OK.”

Liam expected her to point out the weak link in his plan: “might.”

“Well, step one of your plan was kissing me. What's step
two?” She paused, but caught herself. “And you can't say
kissing again.” She laughed as she sat up on her bike, ready to
pedal back to the house.

“In that case, step two is finding weapons and food. Step
three is finding transportation north. Step four is...”

As they rode and discussed their goals, he realized how flimsy the
whole thing sounded—when spoken out loud. On the thinnest of
clues, he was going to head out into the wilderness with his
girlfriend, on the off chance something was going on at the very
quarry where he witnessed thousands of zombies attacking living
people trying to escape the city. At best, they might find clues as
to the origin of the plague as the text message suggested. At worst,
they might find themselves dead.

None of the alternatives were attractive though. Being put to
work, used up, on a futile effort to forestall the zombies from
kicking this place into the river. Or put in prison. He wondered if
he was a wanted man by the Marine Corps.

As he rode, the part of his brain where he compartmentalized the
concept of “hero” spilled out into his psyche. It tended
to get him into danger, but he looked into the small homes as he rode
by. Each was filled with refugees from somewhere else. Memphis. St.
Louis. Cincinnati. And he couldn't help but think each and every one
of them was going to die soon, unless someone did something more than
dig ditches.

They need someone to be the hero.

He wanted to be the guy to look ahead for them. See the big
picture. He could think of plenty of examples of literary heroes even
younger than him. He wasn't just going sit around and wait for
someone else to be that hero.

Thinking back to the crowd complaining about the digging, and the
crowd of wretched people already doing the digging, he understood
that just because there was a Zombie Apocalypse in progress, it
didn't mean everyone magically joined hands in a mutual effort to
survive. The old problems remained: mistrust, allocation of dwindling
resources, self-defense, food, water, power, internet. There were ten
thousand things the good people of Cairo, Illinois had to deal with
on any given day. All of it was tactical—local.

Liam thought of himself as a strategic thinker. His books all said
the hero would have to break out from the rest of the population. It
would take someone with foresight to save mankind by finding the
cure.

It isn't down in that ditch. But maybe it's down in a quarry.

He tried to convince himself it was a hero's plan.

Liam was willing to travel anywhere if he thought there was a
chance they'd learn something new about the crisis afflicting the
world, but he liked to have as much intel as possible when he put his
life on the line. The text message was cryptic, to be sure. The only
other possible clue was the data chip he carried—

—he slapped his pocket, worried the photograph had been
taken when he...was stripped...of his old clothes. Victoria had
indeed replaced it.

Phew.

He'd been thinking about the data chip during their bike ride and
was struck by something so obvious he'd almost missed it.

“When we get back to our house, we should see if any of
those guys have a laptop we could borrow. If we can find one with a
card reader, we might be able to read what's on the colonel's data
chip. Then we might know more about what we're dealing with.”

“Sounds good!” Victoria reveled in the breeze as they
cruised through the squat houses of the residential area. He let
himself go, just a little, and simply enjoyed his time with her
having what, in the old days, was called “fun.”

By the time they reached their destination, Liam had already
prepared his speech for the other kids inside. As he laid his bike in
the grass in front of the house, he noticed some downed branches and
small trees on the side of the property.

“When we leave we can check out those trees to see if we can
make some spears. They look like the size we need.” Victoria
nodded as she parked her cruiser.