Last Fight of the Valkyries (11 page)

Struggling to regain himself, he replied, “No, ma'am. It's
just that if you were bringing these sick people here—well,
you've got them in the middle of the city. Surely you see the huge
risk you're taking? This is the plot of a bad horror movie. Why
aren't you sending them to my camp out in the country where their
ability to escape and do harm is minimized? I have a ten-foot fence
around the entire place and soldiers prepared to defend it.”

“You military men are all the same. Always thinking about
the fight. Do you have any idea how many bombs have been dropped
overseas trying to squelch outbreaks? How many tanks have ground the
infected to paste to reduce the spread? Satellites. Aircraft
carriers. Stealth bombers. All manner of killing. And do you know how
much that military thinking has helped the cause of mankind?”

“Right here.” She held up her hand, making the symbol
of zero. “Squat. Sure, maybe it bought you and me some time to
prepare our Last Will and Testaments, but the reality is no one will
be around to read them. And do you know why, Colonel? Can you think
beyond the bullet?”

She took a step back.

“Camps. Cordons. Cities. It won't matter. But maybe I'm
being unfair. You don't know what humanity is dealing with. Well, I'm
not gonna tell you. I'm going to show you. This isn't patient
zero—we've had no luck finding that prize—but this might
be patient 100 or 1000. Close enough to the beginning to expose the
flaw in your mindset.”

She pulled out a key card and moved to a nearby door. The colonel
and his camera followed.

“Get yourself together, old man. What I'm about to show you
is going to cause you to soil your pants. I hate to be so blunt, but
you'll have to prove me wrong.”

Liam was on the edge of the seat to see what was inside, but the
colonel's camera drifted with Jane as she opened the door and walked
with it.

He's checking her out.

Liam struggled to understand why the colonel would be drawn so
obviously to the attractive woman—knowing he had a wife and
son—but he remembered the girl in the nightgown in the rail
yard as well as the strange attraction some of the zombies had on
Victoria on floor twenty. Perhaps the colonel was similarly affected.

As the door opened, she drifted with it.

“
This
is where the infection will take humanity.”

When she was concealed by the heavy and very open door, the
colonel seemed to be released from her spell and he turned to focus
on the big revelation.

He looked into the wrecked room, and saw the plague victim
standing inside the darkened space.

“Oh my God in Heaven.”

4

Liam didn't know what he was looking at. It was obvious to him it
was a zombie, but it was unlike any he'd seen since the sirens. He
wore a military uniform of some kind, but it had been muddied and
bloodied, making it impossible for Liam to identify. The thing's skin
was plastered to its bones, as if it had no muscle mass. The skin,
where visible, was black.

“The eyes,” the colonel whispered.

Off camera, the voice of Jane answered. “Yes, the eyes are
haunting, huh? We haven't quite figured them out, but we know they
can sense living humans, even in their...condition.”

Liam could stare because the colonel was staring. The zombie had
no eyes in his sockets, but he—it—seemed to look directly
at the camera. His arms and legs were bound in heavy chains to a
large metal box behind him. The beds had been removed from the room.

“Where...where did you find this one?”

“Funny you should ask. This is a local—found him down
in a quarry of all places. We call him Twelve.” Liam hoped the
colonel would ask about the name, but...

“This man looks—”

“Dead? Yeah. The infected like him are pretty much dead.”

“So, my camps have to prepare. How do I cure
this
?”
He shook his head in the video. “No. This has to be some kind
of mistake. A prank. Right?”

Liam appreciated that Jane had seemed to keep him off guard
whenever they interacted, and she did seem to have a twisted sense of
humor. Maybe this was an elaborate prank. Some kind of initiation for
the grisly business they'd soon be doing.

“Can I have your sidearm?”

The camera turned to her, then with a series of shakes, it
displayed a man's hand holding a large pistol.

“I'm afraid it isn't very modern. I've had this 1911 since I
entered the service.”

“Oh yeah? When was that? No, I don't care.”

A series of loud bangs resonated in the camera's audio, though
they came across as impotent pops on the tinny speakers of the
laptop. She was shooting the zombie in the chest. Liam didn't count
how many rounds she'd fired, but in moments, the camera panned from
the zombie's chest to her outstretched arm with the quiet gun, then
back to the zombie. Either she'd run out of ammo, or had proven her
point.

“You still think this is a prank?” she yelled.

Liam knew both their ears would be ringing.

“Lord help me, I don't. What
is
that?”

“It doesn't scare you?”

He seemed to consider. “I, uh...”

“Let me put this another way. Do you think I should have
sent this to your happy little village, now that you've seen it?”

Liam was impressed. The colonel had no response to her relentless
attack.

After a few moments, Jane began talking in an almost-normal voice.

“Colonel, I showed this to you, but I want you to know there
is almost no one on this continent that knows what you now know. Can
you imagine if this
got out
?” She'd said it in a funny
way, as if she was goading the old man.

At last, he seemed to regain his composure. But as before, the
colonel only went for the questions of consequence. “Why are
you showing me this, Ms. Spencer? This isn't about camps or cures, is
it?”

She laughed. “You want to know something funny? You had it
exactly right. The cure to these things is bombs and grinding under
tank treads with extreme malice. The rest of your Army is doing that
overseas. Giving you, me, and other scientists the time we need to
prepare our country for what's ahead. I brought you here, Colonel
McMurphy, because I need to know I can trust you. It's going to take
men of your caliber to bring us through this plague and I don't have
time to run an extensive profile on you. If I felt you were someone I
couldn't trust, I might have just shoved you in the room with Twelve
here.”

The colonel's camera panned to her face. It was deadly serious,
but at the extreme end of an awkward silence, she cracked a smile.

“I'm joking, of course! Health and Human Services would
revoke my parking pass if I did that. I mainly wanted to see if you
would freak out on me.” She turned serious. “Sir, if
there's one thing we need, it's people who can follow orders without
freaking out. When these things show up in your camp, you are going
to need a steady hand at the helm. I need a steady hand out there.
Can I count on you?”

The camera turned back to the zombie in the tattered uniform. When
he began speaking, he did not look back at Jane.

“Yes, you can count on me, ma'am.”

The video stopped.

Liam set the laptop a bit off to his side, and turned to Victoria.
“So the colonel knew about this all along. He knew there were
these dead—things—out there, but he never showed one to
me. He never even mentioned it. He seemed to be focused on...”

He looked out into the yard. It was vibrant green. Alive.

“The colonel stayed focused on curing the other disease.
Hayes and Duchesne said there were three viruses out there. This
dead, whatever it is, creature is not the same as the zombies we've
been seeing all over St. Louis. Or Chicago. Or anywhere.”

He recalled the Riverside Hotel had each floor labeled to signify
which city the zombies had come from. Hayes said they were different
depending on where they found them. But which floor had this
particular zombie been on?

“He said something about the regular old flu being the first
virus. Then a modified flu virus was the second virus. And finally,
the third virus was more like Ebola. But what virus can bring the
dead back to life?”

He laughed, going back to his books on zombies. Just when he
thought he'd come to terms with the presence of blood-sucking
zombies, he was faced with the textbook definition of a zombie. Now,
even after seeing it with his own eyes, he had difficulty accepting
such a creature existed.

A small window popped up on the screen, asking him to confirm the
update of some piece of software. He tapped the no button, then
returned to the window containing the videos.

He clicked the next one.

5

It was another introductory video, back in the colonel's tent.

It began with a long pause. He sat at his desk turned away from
the camera. Liam couldn't tell for sure, but he believed he was
looking at the photograph of his wife and son.

“This next video is what this is all about. Ms. Spencer
probably didn't know that I'd figured out where that soldier had come
from. She said she trusted me, but I'm sure she didn't fully trust me
if she didn't give me the courtesy of telling me the origin of a man
who had so obviously been found near a military cemetery. But she'd
given me enough. He was U.S. Army, but his uniform was from World War
II.”

In the video, he turned to the camera as he swiveled his chair.

“Susan, I hope this video reaches you. I think you are the
only person who would believe I'm not pulling an elaborate hoax when
you see this. I need someone to know about this, or I'll go insane.
I'm going to do everything I can to send all these videos to you, and
you can decide who needs to see them. You have these videos, the Mile
444 files, and all the research on the more recent infected I could
put on this datachip.”

The video flicked off.

“Liam, is he talking about the same quarry?”

“Yes, there are one too many coincidences about that quarry.
And it's next door to the Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery.
That's the exact kind of place where one might find a soldier dressed
in World War II garb. Though I have no idea why he would have been
found in the quarry.”

“Well then, that's where we need to go. This proves it.
Those people were doing something down there. We just need to find
out what.” She seemed chipper.

“You seem to be enjoying this. Did you see the same video I
did?” He laughed, but it was insincere.

“Oh yeah, zombies, zombies, and...oh yeah, zombies. So
what's new? Look, Hayes and Jane and whoever else they work for are
obviously up to no good. You said it yourself. We can either stay
back here safe and snug until the zombies come for us, or we can
throw ourselves into the impossible task of going
out there
to
take the fight to them. They already shot me once. I've got eight
lives to go.”

I still don't think we watched the same video.

Her enthusiasm took the edge off what he'd witnessed. She had a
knack for that.

“OK then, let's see what we're in for...”

But the screen was frozen.

He tried to push the mouse around with the tiny touch pad, but the
computer had locked up. Over the years, he'd probably seen ten
thousand computer lock ups. He pressed the power, waited several
seconds, then pressed it again so it would restart.

“You're right. I am anxious to get out there and figure this
out. The colonel was frightened by the sight of the zombie, but other
than being way uglier than the zombies we've been dealing with, it
didn't look any worse.”

He bumped her with his shoulder as the computer beeped during
reboot.

“I have to admit, I'm so glad we met. I'm so glad you stuck
with me throughout all those weeks of running around and confusion. I
wouldn't want to go back out there without you.”

He looked at her face, longing for another excuse to kiss her, but
the computer was back on the desktop, waiting for him to do
something. He almost found the willpower to turn away from her, but
she grabbed him.

“Liam, I'm not blind to the danger. Deep down I'm scared to
death of what I saw on that movie, and what's out there. Zombies. The
dead. People like Duchesne and Hayes and the NIS. But I'm more scared
of sitting here and dying with this whole happy town. I'm scared of
being told to dig in the mud until the guns run out of ammo. I'm
scared of starving to death. I'm scared of pretty much everything.”

She touched his elbow with her fingertips.

“So don't take my willingness to seek out danger as
recklessness or, God forbid, a suicidal streak. I'm glad too, that I
have you with me. We aren't quitters.”

He turned back to the screen, biting his tongue as he felt himself
get emotional.

She's willing to follow me into the circles of Hell.

He imagined the spiral road of the pit quarry as just that:
Dante's nine circles. The rest of the world was the tenth circle...

Finally, the computer was ready, as was he. He called up the file
browser, and searched for the data chip once more. He was sure he'd
gotten himself back, but was puzzled by what he saw on the screen.

He pulled the data chip out, then placed it back into the slot.

Still, what he saw was not right.

“Um. I think we have a problem.”

He clicked the keys, moved the mouse, and cycled through menus.
Finally, after many long minutes and several queries by Victoria, he
knew what had happened.

“Our data just got erased.”

Victoria, not one for cussing, simply said, “Well, poo.”

Liam set the laptop aside and looked out into the yard. He felt as
if he'd just been scammed and had his bank account drained. There
wasn't a thing he could do about it.