Last Fight of the Valkyries (17 page)

He looked at Victoria, aware he was almost naked, smiled, and then
jumped feet first over the side. It only took a few strokes to reach
the beginning of the muddy bank. He easily made it ashore, but was
disheartened to see how far his hands and feet sunk into the loose
mud where it transitioned with the water. It was the consistency of
very wet play dough.

Once he was on the edge of the mud field, his struggle began. The
mud was hungry as it chomped at his feet and refused to let him pull
his legs back out.

Speaking aloud, he tried to calm himself. “How did she get
that far in the mud?”

The girl was making forward progress, but the mud got deeper the
further she went. The last ten yards for her would be up to her waist
if she let herself sink down too much.

Liam took a different tact. He let himself fall sideways so he
could get his whole body on the muddy surface. It worked to an
extent, though it was almost as difficult to move himself forward. In
an instant, he was covered with dirty mud.

“We've got ya!” he shouted to the young girl. She too
had become a filthy mess. Her clothes were caked with the mud.
Wherever she'd come from, she'd been in mud there too.

“Help me. Don't let me die.”

“You and me both,” he replied to himself.

The infected were closing the gap. They too were covered in the
mud, making it difficult to identify their sex or occupations. A
couple had long stringy hair, suggesting they were females. All of
them were hideous crawling through the viscous mud.

The boat behind him revved its engines, though he couldn't tell
what it was doing. A few moments later, he heard Victoria call his
name. When he turned around, he could see the boat had gone upstream
and was now drifting back down, closer to the mud than when he
jumped.

Victoria threw a spear toward him. Her intentions were good, but
she evidently thought she was going to hit him with it, so she
underthrew it. Instead of reaching anywhere close to him, the thing
splashed in the water and sank.

He sighed.

“It's OK,” he shouted back. He was shocked how tired
he'd become from just the short distance he'd made it into the mud.
He turned his attention back to the girl. She'd stopped. They looked
at each other at the same moment, and he saw the exhaustion.

“I'm not going to let them get you. Keep moving. I will
too.” They were about twenty feet apart. The handful of zombies
struggled behind her. One had fallen behind. It appeared as if it had
sunk so far in the mud it would never get free. A gangly little man
made the best progress toward its prey. It flailed and flopped on the
surface, much as Liam was doing. There wasn't much time left.

He pushed himself forward, though it struck him he had no weapons.

“Maybe I can hurl harsh language at them,” he joked.

The boat was revving up again. He heard a splash, but he was too
close to the girl to turn around now.

“I've got you. Just a few feet more.”

He was tempted to tell her not to look back, but it seemed silly
to say now. They could both hear the angry moans of the sick chasing
her, though only Liam could see them.

As she closed the distance, he had a piece of inspiration.

“I want you to get out of the mud if you can. Lay on top of
it. And slide toward me.”

She did as he instructed, while he did the opposite. He dug
himself into the mud so he was standing in a muddy pit up to his
thighs.

“I'm going to pull you and then let go,” he shouted.

She said nothing, but her eyes told him she'd heard.

The last few feet were a struggle for her and Liam hoped she
wouldn't look back, but when their fingers touched, Liam did as he
promised. He grabbed both her hands and pulled her toward him and
then kept her going on top of the mud for another five or six feet.
It was enough to get her out of immediate danger.

And himself into it.

3

When the girl slid by, she nearly ran into Victoria.

“Victoria!” She had jumped over the boat just like
he'd done, but instead of showing up empty-handed, she brought their
one remaining spear.

She had stripped down to her underwear, the same as him. Despite
all the danger, he found himself looking at her body. During her
struggles through the mud along the path he had taken, she noticed
his dumb looks.

“Eyes forward, soldier!” She smiled, but it was grim.

Liam assumed she was going to toss the spear to him, but she kept
coming until she was next to him.

“What are you waiting for? Get out of here. She'll need help
to the boat.” There was no ambiguity in her statement.

She stood with her legs slightly spread, a little ahead and behind
her. The fighting stance indicated her willingness to engage the
first zombie. He'd wriggled through the mud and was only a few feet
from her now.

His options were to either wrestle her for the spear, or get the
hell out of there.

“You better follow me.” He threw himself backward into
the deeper mud, behind her. As he righted himself in the disturbed
mud, his eyes were drawn to her muddy figure. He noted, with some
innocence, that she wore the same black boxer briefs as him. It must
have been all that was available at for refugees in Cairo.

Victoria lifted her spear, then let it drop onto the head of the
zombie. Liam couldn't see it, because she was between him and the
infected, but he heard the sucking sound as the spear came out.

She looked around for the other zombies. He saw them too,
coalescing toward her from various angles. Reading the angles, she
made a decision to run for it. She pulled a leg out with her own
sucking sound, and soon faced Liam.

“What are you gawking at? Git!”

It was all the prodding required. He turned around, and he was
confident he could hear her sloshing loudly behind him as they headed
for open water.

Victoria did stop once. He turned when he didn't hear her moving,
and was impressed as he watched her again lift the spear over her
head and slam it into one of the female zombies with the seaweed
hair. Victoria caught her looking up from a prone position on the
mud, and the spear drilled into her eye. He did not watch it come
back out.

The boat remained out on the water, doing the equivalent of a
hover. The motor was holding it still against the current. He saw the
shape of the captain inside his bubble, while Blue stood in the back
with an anxious face. From time to time she would wave, as if
beckoning him to hurry back to her.

“Where else am I going to go,” he muttered to himself.

When he reached what he judged was the absolute edge of the mud
flat, he turned around again. Victoria was pushing herself hard
through the mud, chased by a curious group of flailing mad pursuers.
Everyone was coated with the mud over most of their bodies, including
Victoria. She must have fallen when he was faced the other way. She
was still spitting the stuff out as she slid up to him.

Just before she arrived, he dove out into the water. He had a
terrible deja vu though, which insisted he look over his shoulder—to
be absolutely sure she followed him. Still gripping her spear, and
moments ahead of the four remaining zombies, she jumped, or more
properly, fell into the slow-moving waters.

They drifted as they swam, and the boat began to drift backward as
well. The zombies continued their pursuit as well, unaware they
couldn't swim.

“Or, maybe they can swim.” He wondered about that,
then remembered the zombie under the water back in St. Louis. After a
few more strokes, he did absorb the implications. Suddenly he
imagined zombies littered the riverbed below him.

He drifted and paddled water while he looked for Victoria. She was
nowhere to be seen.

“Victoria?”

Panic swept through him. He'd drifted with the current fifty or
more feet from where he'd fought his way ashore. The muddy bodies of
the two dead zombies lay like small mounds of dirt over their graves.

On the river side, he saw the girl as she boarded
Lucy's
Football
.

But no Victoria.

Then he felt a bump against his upper leg. A grip. Then a poke.

His skin crawled. He wanted to scream in fear, but didn't know
how. He was too scared to remember.

When Victoria popped out of the water with her eyes closed, he
couldn't have been more shocked. He tried to yell at her, but still
nothing would come out.

“I'm so sorry. I wanted to get this mud off before we got
back in the boat.”

She floated next to him, with a bemused look. “What?”

Should I tell her she almost made me scream like a schoolgirl?

He liked to be honest with her, but that felt a little
too
honest.

“I'm glad you made it, that's all. I didn't see you in the
water until just now.”

He figured that was a good explanation.

The boat had drifted closer to them, so getting out of the filthy
water would be much easier. Liam was glad; he'd nearly reached his
limit of endurance after creeping through the glue-like mud.

Blue had tossed a rope ladder over the side. Victoria made Liam go
up the ladder first. He didn't know why until he was half way up and
his rear was hanging in the wind.

“Oh, right.” He tried to hold his dignity as he
climbed aboard. Blue's grasp as he cleared the edge was both welcome
and a reminder he was nearly naked.

I almost died, and all I can think about is girls.

He wondered if his brain was programmed that way, or if there was
something wrong with him.

He sat down hard against the inner wall of the boat, where he'd
been sleeping before he was interrupted from his slumber. In moments,
a soaked Victoria slapped down on the deck across the boat from him.
She looked a lot more winded than she let on in the water. Her chest
heaved up and down. Sitting as she was, her toes touched his. For a
moment, that was the most reassuring feeling in the world.

That's when he noticed the girl he'd rescued. She was on the floor
at the very back of the boat. He'd missed her coming in. But now…

Her muddy clothes were only marginally cleaner after a dip in the
water. Her hair was still a mangy, tangled mess of long black locks
coated in the thick mud. Only her face was clean. Liam got his first
good look at who he'd risked his life to save.

The girl looked just like Blue. As in,
exactly
like her.

4

“Guys, this is my sister, Saffron.”

“Pink,” the girl repeated.

“Uh, I mean Pink.” She laughed, as if it was no big
deal. “She came out of St. Louis and got stranded out here.
Lucky we came along when we did, hey 'sis?”

The girl huddled on the floor, but didn't say anything further.

Liam had nothing but questions. About ten to be exact, but he
started with the most basic.

“Why do you call yourself colors?” He looked at Pink,
but it was obviously addressed to both her and Blue. He thought both
of the mixed-race girls were very attractive, though both were very
short for teens.

The girls shared a look, then Blue answered. “It's from a
book we read last summer. Every year, our local library has a reading
contest and me and my sister here have our own competition to see who
can read the most books. We both got caught up in a series of books
about magical Adepts. The main hero is the Blue Adept, so naturally I
chose Blue. I think Saffron just likes the color Pink.” She
smiled at the slouching figure on the floor. The other girl tilted
her head up and gave a thumbs up, then tilted her head back to her
chest.

He didn't want to bother the new girl, but Blue was fair game.

“But why now?”

Liam heard her response, though he thought he was hearing himself
talk.

“Don't you get it? Everything is gone now. No more school.
No more libraries. No more nuthin'. We can be whoever we want.”

It made sense to him. He changed his age on the fly, for the same
reason. But there was one troubling fact emerging from the cloud of
his recent incident in the mud and water. One that made him feel
chilled to the bone, even though the hot sun beat him from above. He
wasn't ready to voice it to the group, though he would definitely be
asking Victoria as soon as he could.

Why, pray tell my dear Watson, have I rescued two colored twins
from near-certain death? What are the odds?

Grandma had recently said some things were improbable, though not
impossible. This seemed to be one of those improbable coincidences.

He was dying to ask Victoria, but she had also curled up in a ball
and shut her eyes. He too felt the pull of sleep. It seemed the only
safe thing to do these days in the long, hot afternoons. Especially
when you are safe on the back of a boat, well away from the zombies
lurking below...

He felt himself tip sideways a little as the boat accelerated.

Blue excused herself to return the captain's side. She pulled open
the door and stepped into the interior. Then the captain put the
hammer down and they began to fly up the river. He shut his eyes,
believing there was nothing else to do with most of his crewmates
asleep.

Before he knew it, Victoria tapped him on the shoulder. When he
opened his eyes, she sat next to him. He had to look away, as she
still wasn't dressed properly.

“Oh, grow up, Liam,” she giggled. She spoke so only
Liam could hear. “Listen, something isn't right here. What are
the odds you pull Blue off the MRAP one day, and practically the next
day you pull her sister—PINK—out of a random mud bank?
This can't be a coincidence.”

He followed his heart, and leaned in to kiss her.

When he was done, she wore a big smile. “What was that for?
Saving your life?”

“Oh, man. I forgot all about that. I think it happens so
often these days, I don't even notice.” He laughed, but there
was an underlying sadness at the necessity of it. “But no, I
kissed the smartest girl in the world. Or, at least the girl who
thinks along the same weird lines as me. I had just made the same
observation and I was sad to see you had gone to sleep. I really
wanted to ask you that exact question.”