Last Fight of the Valkyries (10 page)

“And also,” he continued, “if we find a laptop,
and if it has a card reader, and if we can borrow it, we should go
somewhere private to look at this.” He patted his pocket. “As
much as I would love to get a group of friends to go with us to
investigate that mine, I don't want to be responsible for anyone.”

He saw her look. “You are all I can handle.”

“Handle? You think you can handle
me
?” She
hopped around the back tire of her bike and stretched out to capture
him, but he sidestepped her and started to zig zag across the yard.
She gave chase and for a few moments they ran in crazy circles,
laughing and giggling.

It ended when Liam slipped in the tall grass, and Victoria tripped
and fell over his legs. They both ended up on their backs as they
caught their breath.

“Oh man, we're going to have chiggers out the yin yang,”
he said. He looked at his legs below his cargo shorts. The grass was
thick and unkempt.

“Chiggers?” she replied.

“You don't have chiggers in Colorado?”

“You mean mosquitoes?”

“No, much worse.” He stood back up, sticky with sweat,
and brushed his exposed lower legs. She wore jeans, so she focused on
her arms. “Everything is always worse, these days.” His
mood turned sour. “We can't even enjoy five minutes of fun
anymore.”

“Hey.” She looked at him while she held her arms in
front of her so he could pull her off the ground. “I had fun on
our bike ride. That was nice.”

A tour of our zombie defenses; every boy's dream.

He smiled, partially mollified. It
was
fun. Her smile cut
through almost all his other worries, save one.

“Do you think Grandma will be safe here? Will she be OK
without us to look out for her?” He scanned the neighborhood. A
few people walked up and down the street; they looked lost. He
imagined each house had a similar group of strangers trying to get a
handle on what they were going to do next to survive. His path led
back to St. Louis, but Grandma's days of travel were likely over, at
least until she had both reliable transportation and somewhere safe
to go.

“I think you worry too much, Mr. Peters.” She gave him
a playful push and took off around the side of the house. He was left
standing there. An older couple happened to be walking the street
nearby and he felt their eyes on him. They gave him a little wave.

He returned a clumsy salute, then gave chase.

2

Victoria volunteered to go inside and secure a laptop. It took her
about five minutes and she came out and sat down on the back porch
steps next to him. She handed him a very thin silvery model.

Liam's expression presented a question for her.

“I just flashed my eyebrows and a young lad about your age
surrendered his laptop for me.” She giggled playfully.

He had no idea whether she was telling the truth. The look on his
face said exactly that.

“Oh Liam, you're too gullible. Do you think I'd do that?”
She didn't give him time to answer. “No! I told Grandma what we
needed and she asked the other kids. A youngster gave up his laptop
for her, along with this funny card reader, just like you asked.
Lucky, huh?”

He tried to mask his naivete with a laugh. He truly had no idea
what she was capable of doing with her charm, though he had no doubt
she could make a formidable opponent when she put her mind to it.

“OK, let's see what we've got.” He pulled out the chip
from off the back of the photograph. He punched it into the tiny card
reader, pulled up the hard drive, and saw it was filled with video
files. He was tempted to start at the end, but decided if they were
going to honor the man's memory, they should at least view them in
the order he'd labeled them.

The first video showed Colonel McMurphy at his desk inside the
dingy tent where Liam had originally met him. He was the
administrator of the Elk Meadow research camp. In the video, he had
set up the camera in the back corner of his tent so it put him in the
center of the frame, but whoever sat at his desk would be in the
frame too, facing the camera. His first reaction was to wonder if his
first visit was in this list of videos somewhere. Was he that
important?

“Test. Test. Test. I'm Colonel Rufus McMurphy, recording
this for anyone I deem important enough to need to see it.” He
laughed like he just told a sad joke, then stood up and moved toward
the camera, apparently to turn it off.

The video was short and sweet.

The next one was just as short.

“I don't know how to use this video editing software, so I
just have to put whole movies into my folder. The next video is when
I first met Ms. Jane Spencer. Health and Human Services.”

Liam had heard that name before. When he saw her on the video, he
knew for sure.

“Our friend, Jane!”

“Shh!” was Victoria's reply.

In the video, the red-headed woman walked into the tent wearing a
white button-down blouse, with the top couple buttons undone—not
unreasonable given the apparent temperature in the scene. She also
wore a long black skirt and a military-style cap which looked
completely out of place.

He'd never seen Jane wear clothing like that, so he thought it was
kind of funny. “Wow. She's dressed like she's in a music
video.”

Victoria elbowed him to be quiet, but he heard her laugh too.

Jane walked in and reached across the colonel's desk to shake his
hand. She leaned over, giving the colonel an inappropriate view down
her shirt.

Victoria gave a curt whistle. “Wow, she's workin' him.”

“Welcome to the Elk Meadow Camp, Ms. uhhh?”

“Spencer. Jane Spencer. HHS.” She held his hand for a
moment, looked pointedly in his eyes, then pulled back. “Thanks
for inviting me here.”

“Please, sit down. I'm afraid we don't have all the creature
comforts yet, but we do have chairs.”

She took a seat.

“Colonel, I'll get right to it. I'd like this camp to be the
first fallback position for our main operation in downtown St. Louis.
As you've been briefed, we're expecting a large number of—let's
call them immigrants—who will be residing in our—hotel—down
by the Arch. The facility is very secure, so don't concern yourself
with worry there, but we can't control what happens in the streets
outside that facility and it could make operational security of our
personnel very difficult. I like to plan three steps ahead in
everything I do, and I believe having this delightful country retreat
as my first fallback will be advantageous to us both.”

“Both?”

“Of course. You see, my group has access to all manner of
government equipment. Even some cutting edge stuff they haven't sent
out to you Army-types yet. If you take care of protecting my refuge
here, I'll provide you with as much gear as you require.”

“That's very generous of you. I guess HHS is pretty much
running the show now, huh?” He tried to be friendly about it,
but Liam detected a deeper question there.

“Strictly speaking, I'm not with HHS. More of an adjunct
working with the Centers for Disease Control, but for the purpose of
placing me in an org chart, HHS is close enough. I was told I could
count on your team to execute our mission though; does that sound
right?”

Liam saw through her conniving ways. Did the colonel?

“Yes. I've been instructed to give you every accommodation
here.”

“Thank you, Colonel, I really appreciate that. But don't
worry, it's not like I'm going to take your air conditioned tent or
anything, I'll just be looking for a dry space on a rainy day. I can
depend on you for that, right?”

“Won't be a problem.” His tone was neutral.

“I'm going to leave one of my assistants here to discuss the
details with you. I have to be getting back to my main office to
continue the preparations there. Time is growing short.” She
paused for a moment, studying the colonel, as her demeanor changed
from pleasant to inquisitive and then back to jovial. “However,
in the next week or two, I insist you come downtown to see what we're
doing. I think you are the type of man who would like to know what
he's fighting for. And fighting against. Deal?”

The colonel nodded.

“Work it out with my assistant.” She stood up and
moved closer to his desk. She held her arm out for a handshake, and
waited this time for the colonel to reach across his desk to her.

Liam spoke up. “Did you see that, she made the colonel lean
over to shake her hand. She put herself in charge.” None of it
came as a surprise. Hayes and his wife had run around like they owned
the Apocalypse. It was because they were part of the National
Internal Security organization, or were, and literally
could
do whatever they wanted.

She was gone in moments.

In the video, McMurphy slumped in his chair. He picked up the same
photo he would later give to Liam. He held it as long as he could
until one of his helpers walked in.

The video ended.

3

Liam's finger hovered over the button to start the next video. “So
we know Jane was over the colonel, but this doesn't really tell us
anything new, right?”

“Not that I can see. Let's check out the next one.”

The colonel began with another introduction video. He was at his
desk. “I'm not proud of this next one. I acted like a teenaged
boy, but it's important I show the world what we're dealing with.”

The intro ended and Liam clicked the next one. Instead of a view
from the corner of the tent, this one was obviously a hidden camera.
It looked like it was a view from the front of the colonel's face.
Liam could imagine a camera on the rim of his cap, or possibly on a
pair of glasses. The scene re-focused as he changed directions with
his head. It opened with him walking behind Jane inside the Riverside
Hotel. Liam and Victoria both knew the place as a dark stinky place
full of zombies, but in the video, it was bright and fresh.

“Welcome to my secret lair, colonel. Moo ha ha.”

Spencer was laughing hysterically and pretending to pet an
imaginary cat. She wore another white blouse, and with the improved
camera quality, Liam could see it was wildly inappropriate and
revealing. She also wore a tight pair of khaki shorts.

Victoria had no comment on her obvious flaunting of
her...assets...in front of the colonel.

“Oh, lighten up. I'm just having some fun.”

“With all due respect, there's nothing fun about this
virus.”

Spencer switched gears in one fluid motion.

“Shall we get right to it?” Her alternating demeanor
was unsettling. Taken with her dress code, Liam wondered if she was
trying to keep the older man off balance.

She began walking across the large open room. Liam recognized it
as the top level of the hotel.

“Colonel, what do you know so far about the virus?”

The colonel had to talk to her back as they both walked.

“I'm afraid we know very little. My camp has had a few
potential infected, but they all turned out to be carrying the actual
flu,
influenza
. I've not seen the Doomsday Bug. Not sure I
would know it if I saw it.”

“Yuck, I hate that name. It should have been named something
cool like Terminator Flu or The Fifth Horseman. Something
Apocalypse-y. Don't you think?”

He said nothing.

“But OK, whatever. I'll show you the virus. Stay with me
through here.” Spencer had crossed the room and plunged down
another stairwell. It was very dark. She was just a shadow in the
video. Liam's eyes had yet to adjust to the switch from daylight to
this. He had just about adjusted to total darkness—

Without warning, the colonel ran into something. The camera
rattled and flickered.

“Oh, sorry ma'am!”

He had run right into her backside.

“Mmm hmm. The lights in this stairwell aren't working. This
is our floor.”

He followed as she went out into the well-lit floor, the camera
struggling to adapt to the changing brightness. The colonel's camera
observed everything on each side, as if he were trying to avoid
looking at the woman ahead of him. Other men and women in military
uniforms walked around on this level, though none were close. They
were on a circular walkway looking out over the wide open interior of
the tubular hotel. Again, Liam had recently been in that exact place,
though he didn't know what floor they were on.

“My team has been busy in several parts of the world, doing
research on this thing. Trying to get clues on its origin. How we
might contain it. So far, zip.”

She walked along the inside railing, dragging her hand on the
metalwork, giving the colonel the opportunity to look over the side
with his hidden camera. More workers were on other floors, moving
here and there. On a floor very near the bottom, the video showed
someone in a neck collar with a long pole attached behind them, being
pushed along by two helpers. The person was covered head-to-toe in
some kind of mesh wrap. Hard to say for sure from so high up, and the
video was unable to clearly identify the situation beyond that.

“What are they doing down there with that man?” He
pointed down. She looked over the side as she walked, and answered in
a distracted fashion.

“Ohhh, they're probably bringing in another flu victim.
Finding a room.”

“Ma'am, are all these rooms filled with the sick? Are we
safe here?”

She giggled slightly as she replied, “Don't be ridiculous.
Even we don't have the resources to fly in that many sick people from
across the globe. No, we put a score of the newest victims down on
the lower levels. Up here, we keep a few special cases, like the one
I'm about to show you.”

He tried to stifle his own laugh, but couldn't prevent it from
coming out.

At that, Spencer stopped and turned around. She looked right into
the camera.

“You think what we're doing here is funny?”