Last Fight of the Valkyries (21 page)

When they met, the girls pointed in the direction they were
already moving. “We're leaving. Just go!” They each
carried their crude weapons.

Liam was unsure. “We have to tell the captain where we're
going.”

“Trust me, the captain isn't who you think. We have to run.”
They didn't wait. Liam watched them get lost in the underbrush.

“OK, this is weird.”

Victoria agreed, but had no brilliant ideas.

“Follow?” He was inclined to follow them, if only
because they were more pleasant than the captain. Whatever that man
had going on with Jason, the look in their eyes during their brief
exchange earlier told him they were both driven men.

She nodded, and they began to trot after the girls.

They caught up at almost the same point they'd been overlooking
the pit mine earlier. When he reached the clearing, he searched the
sky for more planes.

“We're going down in that mine to look for clues about the
zombie plague.” The literal truth fell out of his mouth before
he was able to stop himself.

The girls both turned to him with a smile. “As long as you
keep the captain away from us, we're with you.”

“Why? What's wrong with the captain? Why were you so chummy
with him?” He eyed Blue.

“Run with us, and I'll tell you.” She and Pink started
along the cliff edge, heading around the outside of the mine toward
the far side where they could descend to the first level of the
spiral road to the bottom.

The girls were small for teens, but they were quick. Though Pink
seemed to lag, she wasn't struggling. Liam's overactive imagination
began to wonder if she was sandbagging earlier just so he would help
her up those rocks. When he caught up to them, Blue began to share
what she knew, just as she'd promised.

“When I was in the hospital down in Cairo, I listened to
Pete the whole night he lay there in a state. He died the next
morning, but he told me everything I needed to know about the
captain.”

She breathed heavily as they jogged.

“And what was that?” He was unhappy to realize he also
sounded winded. He'd lost much of his base of fitness after two plus
weeks of a horrible diet, high stress, and no training.

Hard to get training miles in during the Apocalypse.

“They're part of some secret group that runs guns up and
down the river. They communicate with other groups hidden along their
route, like that fuel barge thingy we saw.”

More running.

“I got him to take us in exchange for my silence, but he
changed the terms on me. I don't want to discuss it, but I'm not
going back.”

Many thoughts swirled. How would they get back to Cairo? What if
the captain was following them? Will he want his Glock back? Out
here, a gun was the equivalent of a gold brick. Surely he'd want it
back.

They continued to run, though Liam felt worse and worse about it.
He checked behind them as often as he could, and didn't see any
pursuit. That meant exactly nothing. He knew that from hard
experience.

It took them ten minutes to run around the curve of the cliff and
reach the gentle slope going down to the top level of the mine. The
last time he'd seen this place, it was crawling with thousands of
zombies, and a lesser number of human survivors, but now all he saw
were empty cars and the dead.

The dead.

Something about that word made him stop.

“Hey, hold up.” The twins ran a few paces, but did
come to a halt. Victoria ran up behind him.

“Does anyone else find it odd the dead bodies are still down
there? How long does it take for bodies to break down or get eaten?
It has been two weeks since we were here, and those bodies are all
still where we left them.”

He could see the biggest piles near the railroad tracks. That's
where the most shooting happened, so the most bodies were stacked up
there. But he could also see a path of crushed and dismembered
zombies lying on the road below. That was where Jones ran over the
dead with his dump truck—before falling over the edge.

“Hey, I see Jones' truck.” It was a bit of a
non-sequitur, but he was stream-of-consciousness now. “And
those bodies over by the railroad tracks, Victoria and I helped make
those piles.”

Pink chose that moment to speak up. “Wow, you are one bad
ass, Liam.”

He turned to Victoria with a shrug, then Pink. “Uh, thanks.
There were lots of people on the train though, not just me.”

Victoria, ever helpful, expanded his thought. “But it was
Liam's idea to use the dump truck. He helped save lots of people with
that one.”

He looked at her to find her smiling. He raised his shoulders as
if to say, “Why?” She loved to rib him when he tried to
play down his heroics.

Maybe he was a hero of a sort, but the real hero died in that dump
truck. The mood of the group was already fragile, so he didn't want
to use it as an opportunity to dwell any further on the sacrifice of
Officer Jones. It steeled him to man up for what was ahead.

From his vantage point, he could see the spiral road full of cars
falling down into the mine.

Lots of heroes died there.

2

They drifted among the cars as they went down. He was in front,
with Blue. Victoria and Pink were a couple car-lengths behind,
quietly chatting.

“Why this mine? What are you looking for?”

The answers to that question were endless. How do you explain you
are trying to save the world? But he'd already blurted out the thrust
of his mission earlier.

“I'm trying to find the cure to the plague. I
was...told...this was the place to look.”

“Who told you? What could possibly be down there? You sure
you trust them?”

Her questions hit the mark. A random phone text message was a
flimsy premise to pack up from a safe city, travel by boat hundreds
of miles, and then try to gain access to a pit mine he was pretty
sure was packed with zombies. Yet, he'd learn to trust his instincts
the past couple weeks. They often—not always—put him on
the correct path. Plus, this time, he had no other options if he
hoped to do more than sit things out in a safe house.

“A friend gave me a tip. This mine is supposed to have some
kind of information that will help Victoria and I track down the
people who made the plague so we can get help curing it.”

She was quiet for a long minute.

He tried to make the sale, though he didn't know why he should
care what she thought. “You probably wouldn't believe this, but
we actually met one of the guys who released the plague. We helped
kill him.”

There was a lot of nuance in the real story, but he didn't have
time for a data dump.

Still, she remained silent for another couple minutes while they
continued by car after car. They passed the wreckage of the dump
truck that Jones drove off the edge. He wasn't surprised to see there
was no body inside the cab, even though the superstructure of metal
was crushed and ripped apart. Other than one cursory look inside, he
didn't make a big deal about what was otherwise a very sad moment for
him. Victoria made no effort to stop, either.

“You really think there's a cure for this?” Blue
pointed to the line of cars. He almost answered with a snap reply,
but he took some time to think over the question. The implication was
much broader than he'd given her credit for, initially.

Since the sirens blared, he'd seen things getting worse from one
day to the next. There were some high points, such as Camp Hope, but
even that had been overrun and he had no idea how it fared today. Or
if Mom and Dad were making out OK there. Cairo held out some promise,
though he'd already accepted it was doomed. He kept that thought in a
locked vault deep inside him, because he couldn't spend his days
worried sick about Grandma. If the zombies overran the place, she'd
be the first casualty. He was sure of that. But, through it all, his
only tangible hope for surviving the zombie infection and all it
brought was that he would document everything—with a notebook
he'd had yet to find—and eventually play a part in rebuilding
once they'd gotten the zombies sorted. He had to believe the cure was
both literal and figurative.

“Yes. My Grandma once said something to the effect the cure
starts with me. If I'm not willing to go out and find it, the world
would die. Everyone thinks someone else is going to do it.
Eventually, someone has to do it. So why not me? And Victoria of
course, we're partners.”

“Is she your lover? I see the way you look at her.”

Liam felt his face explode in redness. “I, uh. We? I'm not—”

Blue laughed. “Say no more, Mr. Smooth. I was just asking
for a friend.” She made sure he was looking; she winked at him
and nodded her head backward.

Liam stammered, trying to formulate a reply. Eventually he bagged
the idea and just shut up.

About halfway down the spiral, they came to a large white
passenger van. They'd been talking in normal voices up until that
point, but they all shut up as it became obvious what was inside.

“My God.” Victoria had caught up and stood by his side
as they looked ahead.

The van was filled with the infected. At least as best they could
see. The large windows lining the van were all filled with bloody
hand prints. As they watched the shadows inside, bloody hands rubbed
in several spots on the glass.

It was like some kind of sick wind-up toy. The longer they
watched, the more animated the hands became. They swished faster and
faster along the glass, then they began to pound from time to time.
The van started to rock slightly.

“Move it.” Liam spoke forcefully, but in a hushed
voice.

They formed a line as they walked between the edge of the road—and
the twenty-foot cliff below them to the next level of the road—and
the van itself. The passengers erupted in screams and moans, creating
a terrible storm inside the confined space. The van rocked wildly and
hands started to pop through the glass. Blood flowed in torrents as
flesh was sliced by the glass. The friendly carpool van soon had
several streaks of red as macabre accents.

As they all ran, Liam turned back to see the first bloody mass
pour out the shattered side window.

“Don't stop, guys. One of them just got out.”

He ignored that several other cars also had moving shapes inside.
If people were already sick, or bitten, as they made their way down
this ramp, it wasn't a big leap to imagine them turning into zombies
inside their vehicles, and then sitting there until something drove
them to get out. He was horrified to realize they were now bait as
they ran past more and more cars with deadly fish in their glass
bowls looking for their first meal.

The only creature in pursuit, so far, was the one from the white
van. And, because Liam was accustomed to disappointment these days,
he wasn't surprised at all when he tried to guess how fast it was
moving. It was going very fast.

In fact, one might say the thing was running.

3

Liam tried to get a feel for the land. They were getting close to
the bottom, but it would still be many minutes before they covered
the distance to the black hole down there. He had no idea what they'd
find at the entrance. It could be blocked or stuffed with zombies.
They needed to take it slow.

A hundred yards ahead, he saw what he needed.

“Guys! Jump in the back of that pickup truck. We have to
fight this zombie before we go further down.”

He hoped they'd heard him. It was dangerous to call out, but they
were spread out and he had no other option, short of stopping and
fighting alone. He knew that was as good as suicide, in most cases.
It wasn't that he was scared of fighting any one zombie, but he had a
primal fear of twisting an ankle or getting his head stuck in a drain
pipe and then dying the death of an idiot.

It was always safer to stay with your team. He'd learned that in
video games, and used those lessons now in life.

Pink and Blue were already inside the bed of the truck, their
makeshift weapons at the ready. Victoria scrambled up next. He
followed her in, spear under his armpit.

When he turned around, the zombie was nearly upon them. It had
made good time down the slope of the road. Others followed. He looked
across the pit to the road above and saw a few figures here or there
stumbling down the road. They weren't moving very fast, but those
zombies would go until they reached whatever was at the bottom, now
that they had something to chase. If his group started at the bottom,
they could have sucked all the zombies right out the top of the
place.

If only.

Liam braced himself with his spear. Victoria had the Glock out.

“Don't shoot unless you have no choice.” He assumed
she understood why.

She turned to the twins, eying the wrench. “Are you going to
use that?”

Pink timidly handed it to her. Blue kept her grip on her metal
rod.

The running zombie was blood-soaked, but it was once a teenage
girl. Thin and slight of frame, it was covered completely in both wet
and dried blood, as if it had been soaking in the stuff for days. The
fresh blood was undoubtedly from its escape through the broken
window. She wore tattered jeans shorts, though he couldn't tell if
they were designed that way or had been torn recently. She had on the
remains of a tasteful light-colored top, though its color was
difficult to guess given the red all over it.

The girl zombie surprised him by zigging behind the sedan behind
the pickup truck. She jumped up onto the back and, as she found her
feet, continued running over the roof and onto the hood. Then she
jumped the gap between the two vehicles and made a clumsy effort to
grab onto the tailgate. Her subsequent fall would have been comedy
gold if she weren't trying to eat them.

The girl screamed in an unworldly howl.