Last Fight of the Valkyries (3 page)

They settled on trying to get into Busch Stadium. Liam suggested
it because it was obviously a large flat area that, if empty, would
provide a good way to ensure no zombies were anywhere close to them
if they stopped.

No one could think of anything better. All the roads and highways
out of town would be crawling with the outward bound zombies, as well
as the derelict cars facing into town—relics of that last wave
of refugees trying to find safe harbor at the Arch.

That didn't turn out so good.

2

Mel continued to knock over the zombies as she drove around trying
to find the stadium. Everyone knew it was close, but the city looked
different when sick and bloodied people were on every street corner.
She drove until she found the stadium and then the service entrance,
when a decision needed to be made.

“How do we get in? I can ram through the gate, but then
we're vulnerable inside.”

Phil seemed ready to offer a reply, but shook his head in the
negative as he peered out his window.

When he didn't offer up any ideas, Liam turned around to those in
the back.

“Just ram it,” was the consensus. In various ways, and
with different reasons, many in the back waved off the idea of any of
them getting out to open any doors. Liam could see outside. They were
right to be afraid. Though that gave him an idea.

“Hey, why don't we use the gun,” he pointed at the
roof, indicating the big chaingun mounted on the roof the MRAP, “and
eliminate these zom—infected—before we open the gate by
hand?”

Phil answered, while Mel drove. “We only had a few rounds.
We ran out of ammo shooting zombies back on the raised highway just
before you came into our view. It's basically a big decoration now,
unless we can somehow get some replacement rounds for it.” He
laughed, knowing it was impossible.

Unless they could find an armory. Liam searched his memory for one
of the zombie books he'd read in the past. He recalled a scene where
the heroes found an armory in Denver and liberated some ammunition.
It would be like gold in a world where it was required reading to
kill innumerable infected to stay alive. Maybe someone he knew had a
line on an armory in St. Louis. Now wasn't the time to ask.

The only way for a vehicle to get into the stadium was to ram the
big gate which linked the road with the deep outfield. It was the
entrance used regularly by the Clydesdale's—a huge horse team
that pulled a wagon full of beer around the ballpark to fire up the
fans.

Mel had been driving in circles on the streets near the ballpark.
“OK, I'm going to push us through the gate and hope I can break
the lock without ruining the gate itself. If we can get through, and
if the gate can be closed again, we'll need someone to jump out and
swing the gate shut and then I'll park just on the other side of the
gate so that nothing can get through.” She shouted her plan so
everyone in the back could hear her.

Liam heard some low groans. He knew no one had any desire to open
those back doors. Even if it meant they'd be making themselves
safer—eventually.

Short of getting out first and trying to open the gate by hand, it
was their best option among a precious few.

Phil craned his neck to look out the window up into the walkways
and balconies of the stadium above. “I don't think the stadium
is empty. Not that we can stop now.”

Mel had been keeping the speed steady, but hit something that made
the whole truck bounce a foot or two off the ground and sway
dangerously side to side. Several more people slid off the top and
windshield.

“Dammit! I don't know what that was. Maybe a motorcycle on
the ground. I keep killing them...” Liam could tell how hard it
was to see anything now with zombies thick in the streets, people
hanging on the windshield, and splatters of blood drying and smearing
on the glass. There weren't as many zombies on the street as they'd
seen at the TV station, but it was still suicide to stop or consider
getting out. Except someone had to do just that if they were going to
reach a safe harbor.

“That's it. I'm going for it. Hold on guys, I'm hitting the
gate.”

Liam held on while looking back at Grandma to be sure Victoria had
her. Victoria looked in his direction with a tight-lipped smile. She
gripped Grandma as best she could. He returned the smile and focused
on the action up front.

Mel did as she said. The MRAP sped down the street next to the
ballpark, but as she approached the gate, she braked until she was
moving at walking speed. When she hit the big metal gate, she gave it
some gas to push on through. The gate made a loud plinking sound as
the padlock shattered, and it seemed to be slightly off kilter, but
it did open.

She proceeded beyond the gate and then stopped.

“OK, guys. You have to get out and shut that gate.”

Liam looked back. He could see the reluctance. But one of the
older men braced his rifle and held his hand on the rear doors.

“You guys ready?” the man asked.

The response was tepid, but they too readied their weapons and
leaned toward the back gate.

With a flourish he opened the double doors; they swung outward.
Zombies were everywhere beyond the open gate, but the very first
thing that came inside was a living person.

The man looked like a professional acrobat. He must have been
hanging on the rear portion of the roof. When the door opened, he
flung himself downward and shot inside the compartment. The man who
opened the door got a shot off, maybe thinking it was a zombie.

“Holy crap!” he cried as he fell under the weight of
the other man.

The zombies outside were unable to laugh at the improbability of
the scenario. Instead, they advanced.

“Zombies. Shoot them!” cried one of the Boy Scouts. He
too was armed. But he wasn't at the back of the truck. Another man
was at the end of the bench seat opposite Victoria and Grandma. That
man had been watching the tumbler on the floor, and he took his eye
off the outside world.

Liam saw it all happen in slow motion, unable to shout or
otherwise warn the victim. First, the zombie closed the distance to
the truck, like he'd been watching the man on the top and was ready
for the doors to open. Next, he mounted the rear steps—there
were three of them below the back doors. Finally, he flung himself
onto the man sitting by the door.

These zombies defied classification. Liam had been trying for
weeks to put them into the pantheon of zombie types. They seemed to
crave blood, rather than the stereotypical “brains” so
preferred by zombies of old. If they had their druthers, they always
struck for the neck. Somehow they knew it was the easiest way to tap
into the blood supply of the victim. Liam imagined it was an
ingrained superstition in humanity about Vampires. However, if an
open carotid artery wasn't immediately available, the zombies would
gnaw on any open flesh they could find. The one thing they didn't
do—and something Liam never understood when he saw it in the
movies—was tear out the insides or destroy the literal brains
of their victims. How could the virus spread if the primary means of
transmission was eating the victim? As with so many things the past
few weeks, reality was much more mundane than the movies.

The zombie bit into the final man's wrist. He screamed in pain,
and tried to pull away, but the zombie had gripped onto his forearm
with both hands—staking his claim on the prized flesh.

The man underneath the guy from up top saw what was happening and
made an effort to kick the zombie back out the door, but the weight
on him made him ineffective in that task.

The tumbler, an unkempt twenty-something man dressed in long gray
suit slacks and a filthy white t-shirt, realized the situation and he
too began kicking—but instead of kicking the zombie, he kicked
the man who was bitten. He too was tangled with the guy below him,
but he supported himself with one arm and one leg and executed a
powerful kick to the victim's face. The Scout dad didn't see it
coming. With a dazed look, he let himself be pulled out the back by
the zombie on his arm.

That was bad, but one of the Scouts—probably the man's
son—tumbled out after him, shotgun in hand. The rest of the
people in the back were momentarily stunned to silence. They heard
five or six shotgun blasts before there were too many zombies for the
boy to fight. Liam started moving at about shot four.

He was still unarmed, but he pushed himself against the tumbler
man. He used his own modest girth and the element of surprise to
catch the man in an awkward position. Liam couldn't lift him on his
own, but the man underneath used the relief to grab the killer's neck
and push him backward.

Liam kept going. His anger at what the man had done, fused with
the fear he felt at being so exposed, gave him the strength to shove
the guy right through the rear door. The man fell to the pavement,
very near the dying boy and his dead father. There were about ten
zombies hovering over their finds, and a hundred or more within a
stone's throw. Liam just hung onto the latch of the back door, trying
to comprehend it all. Closing the gate was not possible now.

Someone pulled him back in. One of the dads. Another man was on
the other side, bringing his rifle to bear on the moving targets just
yards away. Everyone was screaming now.

Liam focused on the most important voice in the confusion: Mel's.

“Hang on!”

3

Mel put her foot on the gas and the MRAP lurched ahead. If Liam
hadn't been paying attention to her voice, he might have taken a dive
when it happened. He looked at the bodies on the ground behind them,
thinking how easily it could have been for him to get pulled out.

The truck ran right through a second wooden outfield wall gate.
Mel didn't wait to see if they could close it. She went through much
too fast. It shattered. There were too many zombies behind them to
contemplate a fast fix.

“We'll do a loop and—”

Liam struggled to get over the legs of those sitting in the rear,
aware the rear doors were swaying back and forth in the open
position. He gave Grandma—finally awake—and Victoria a
quick look and a thumbs up as he got to the front of the compartment.

Ahead, barely visible through the blood stains on the glass and
the last two survivors clinging to the hood, Liam recognized the two
U.S. Marine Corps V-22 Ospreys. But it was difficult to ascertain
what was happening until Mel turned to the right, toward left field,
when they got a better look through the clear window on her side.

The Ospreys had their propellers spinning, but the rear doors hung
open like the tongues of two tired hound dogs. They were near first
base and third base, respectively but turned so they unloaded toward
each other. He saw no movement inside the cargo areas. Outside, on
the dirt of the infield, a handful of Marines pointed weapons at a
large group of survivors near the dugouts.

“What the hell is going on here,” he asked anyone who
could see the action.

“It looks like the Marines aren't here to rescue these
people,” was Phil's answer.

Liam knew where at least some of the Marines had gone. They died
in the cavernous circular hotel near the Arch. It was the same place
he, Grandma, and Victoria had escaped that very morning. He began
responding to Phil when Mel veered sharply toward the planes.

“We have no choice. Our only hope is to get on one of those
and get out of here.”

Phil gave a quick sigh. “I doubt they'll welcome us with
open arms.” He thumbed toward the crowds ahead. “Doesn't
look like they're letting anyone in, and I'm not sure I want to fight
the U.S. military. In fact, I know I don't.”

That gave Liam an idea. Was he listed as a fugitive from his brief
visit—and evasion—from the Marines? He could turn himself
in. It was a smarter play than fighting.

“Get me close. I think I can get us in.”

Mel and Phil looked at him with the “he's just a crazy kid”
eyes, but didn't second guess him.

Liam met the commander of one unit of Marines back at Camp
Hope—the base of operations for the Boy Scouts in the south
suburbs of St. Louis. The commander had been looking for the man who
was responsible for kidnapping his great-grandma, so Liam was
inclined to help him. However, Liam couldn't absolutely trust him, so
he and Victoria slipped away and rescued Grandma on their own. Liam
hoped they'd also welcome him because of the information he carried
about the fate of the Marines in the Riverside Hotel: all dead.

“OK, Liam, I'm going to park us just beyond that one on the
left. Since the doors are already open in the back, we can
practically jump right onto their ramp.” She was gracious
enough not to mention they might be shot on sight as a threat to the
Marines guarding the planes.

There were so many things going on at once Liam could hardly keep
up. A Scout in the back shouted a warning that the infected now
poured through the ballpark gate—they were following the MRAP
like hungry Piranha to a ham hock. Phil said he saw people in the
stands surging for the aircraft too. Ahead, the Marines holding back
the crowd turned uncertainly as they had threats in every direction.
Getting surrounded wasn't what it used to be...

Liam thought, “At least no one is shooting,” just as a
shot rang out.

The ballpark exploded in gunfire.

In the rear of his truck, men and boys shot at the zombies as they
approached. Mel had swerved right as she drove into the stadium, but
many of the zombies made a z-line for the noisy Ospreys rather than
follow her. The MRAP and the fastest zombies arrived at the first
base Osprey at almost the same time. The Marines defended their patch
of dirt, but diluted themselves to absurdity in the face of so many
hostiles.

“What do we do now?” Liam asked the crew cabin.