Last Fight of the Valkyries (27 page)

“Triplets? I have twins, plus Victoria. Not triplets tho.”

Another long silence.

A burst of characters shot onto the screen, as if someone cut and
paste a long answer. It was an email message from someone named
Indigo Hamilton to “Mom.”

“Dear mom. I know you'll never get this. I know you're dead.
But if you ever do see this—by some miracle—I wanted to
tell you I love you and I miss you. Things are getting bad in here.
More infected at the exit of the mine and more people in here dying
and becoming infected. I'm not sure what I'm going to do next. I love
you. Love to Saffron and Azure. Goodbye for now. XX OO IH.”

“We identified your two friends when you entered the mine.
We've confirmed they're all sisters. The third one is in there with
you, unless she died. She sent her email from the terminal you're
using.”

The words flew as he watched.

“Liam, someone on the outside got the idea it takes three
people to study the effects of the plague. We're trying to figure it
out on this end. Does that mean anything to you?”

At that moment, he remembered the words of Colonel McMurphy as he
was in the throes of the virus. He said something to the effect he
couldn't totally trust Liam because there were groups that would love
to steal his information. That man did indeed have a lot of secret
information, though in the end he did share it with Liam by giving
him the data chip. Over the past few days, he'd allowed that data to
fall into the hands of whoever was at the end of the digital link
ending on this computer screen. Not only would it take him too long
to explain everything that he'd experienced with Grandma, himself,
and Victoria, he wasn't willing to trust that information to someone
named Anonymous.

“No, sorry.”

“OK, that's OK. Get the missing girl if you can, but get
out.”

His high paranoia returned. He imagined it was Hayes on the other
end, or his red-headed wife, guiding him on another misadventure so
that he could take over at the last second and avoid doing all the
hard work. He'd done that on his initial escape from St. Louis, and
he'd had Liam and Grandma jumping through hoops all the way up until
the point he took her blood sample with him, after she'd been
infected by him. He wanted to end the call.

“Right. So how do we get past all the zombies out there?”

“More than one exit. Schematics. You have to get out. Find
Jason. He knows your Dad. Friends. Patriots. Get—”

The text just ended.

Outside the room, through the broken glass of the small door, red
emergency lights began to spin. They looked like the lights you'd
find on the top of a police cruiser.

Liam and the girls walked to the shattered door still being
blocked by the useless metal bar. It was rust red, with a stamped
badge on one end from a 4x4 company.

Sirens began to howl. First, far away in the mine. As each new
horn started, he could tell they were getting closer. In a minute, a
siren spun up just outside the door. The room with the dump trucks
blocking the entrance was very large now that they could see it all,
but remained practically empty. He already knew there was a garage
door on the near wall, but he saw another large door across the vast
room. Large rounded pillars of rough stone supported the ceiling
throughout.

There was a missing triplet somewhere nearby.

Triplets. Three players in his weird
World of Undead Soldiers
dream. He knew now, looking back, those girls were all very
similar to the two standing next to him, which meant the remaining
triplet would fit into that dream too.

When he got on the bus in his dream, Grandma had wondered if he
was really in her dream. What if she was in his? Both in the same
dream? And, if that was true, was he responsible for bringing the
girls to his side?

He turned to the cavernous space next to the control room, to peer
through the larger glass windows on that side. If the third girl had
been in this room, it made the most sense to think she'd continued
into the adjacent room.

“Blue, Pink, you have a sister, don't you? You're triplets.”

“Yeah, so?” Blue didn't seem to find it odd he would
know that.

“Did you know she was here? In this mine?”

The girls walked up to him as Pink responded, “Indy? She's
here?” She shook Liam's arm. “Where? Where is she?”

“That's what we're going to find out.” He pointed in
the direction he was going, urging them to follow. When he reached
the glass door, he looked out into the still-dark room carved from
stone. On the near side of the room, he saw a double row of blue
string lights lying on the ground. They made a type of path into the
darkness, though he couldn't see where they ended while he was still
inside the control room.

“Victoria, you with me?”

“Of course. What's wrong, Liam?”

He wished he could tell her. He'd shut off the computer before
anyone could see what the woman on the other end had transmitted.
Someone was coming for them from outside. Zombies were blocking their
escape. A set of triplets would soon be his responsibility. A
mysterious typist gave him instructions he couldn't believe, not
completely. And, to top it all off, the person they were trying to
link up with was a friend of his dad. He didn't think it would help
with morale if he dumped that on her, even if he could get her away
from the other two.

He held the door handle, about to pull it, when one question
popped in his head he knew had an answer. “Blue, Pink, if we do
find your sister,” it was completely silly to think it, and it
felt silly to ask it, but he thought it was important enough to push
through all that and ask, “what color will she be?”

The response was even and simultaneous.

“Black.”

Liam wasn't surprised. There was something odd about the girls,
beyond the strange way they just dropped into his life. Again,
questions stacked up inside his brain. What were they doing before
the sirens? How come they got separated? What were they doing in the
weeks since the sirens? What made them go to the particular spot
where he found them?

Not impossible. Just improbable.

Those words echoed from Grandma. What would she say about these
two? Back in Cairo, she seemed to know Blue from a dream she'd had.

That's another question!

But he had to tuck all those questions into their own drawers. He
was much too busy being scared. The three girls had lined up behind
him as they walked into the vast chamber. The line of lights on the
ground led off into the darkness. Just enough to see the way, but not
bright enough to cut through the pitch black elsewhere. The
reflection of blue on the rough ceiling was the only comfort. It felt
like walking over a rocky covered bridge with an abyss on each side.

His brain created wild fantasies about creatures in the darkness.
Here, he could see a multi-tentacled monster; there, he could see a
hockey-masked murderer holding a machete. His eyes strained to see
the edge, they wanted to see the edge, if only to assign the proper
scale to the place. They tried, to no avail. Eventually he determined
it would make him feel much better to watch his path along the blue
lights and ignore everything else.

A hum came from the darkness ahead. The sound bounced off the raw
earth all around them, but Liam thought he recognized the source.

“Hold up. Do you hear that?” He took a knee as he said
it. The blue light was still dim, but his eyes had gotten used to it.
The walkway lights were now illuminating the large cavernous room. He
could see the floor and ceiling, and one rough-hewn wall was about
fifty feet to his right. The left wall was still hidden, somewhere
out in the darkness beyond the ability of the ambient light to reach.
Or, more likely, beyond the ability of his own eyes to register. He
did see great columns of rock, spaced every fifty feet or so; they
held up the roof.

The girls all heard the sound, but no one offered any suggestions
on what it might be.

When it arrived, it was as he expected. The drone generated a
slight breeze as it hovered about five feet above them, just below
the rock ceiling. Earlier in the day—or yesterday, he'd lost
track of time—a similar drone had hovered above the boat.
Whether it was the exact same model, he couldn't say.

“You want me to bash it in?” Blue asked. She picked up
a fist-sized rock to make her point. The captain would have shot it
down.

He realized he was in charge. Looking around, he saw the three
girls crouched in an arc behind him. Now, seeing the formation, he
was literally leading them.

Time to say something smart.

“No, whoever is using that drone is here in the tunnels with
us. We can't turn around on account of the zom—infected. We
need to make friends.”

...or we're dead.

He thought he did pretty well.

Because he didn't know what else to do, he waved at the drone.

It hovered in place, but he knew he was being observed. He felt
the eyes through the camera of the sophisticated hardware.

“We only want a place to hide. We won't take your food.”
It seemed reasonable to assume the craft could hear audio.

The drone tilted gently and began to move. It got lower, scooted
around Liam, and seemed to focus on the girls. After a few moments,
the drone moved even closer to the girls. It was closest to Blue.

“I could knock this thing out of the air...just say the
word.”

“No!” Liam wasn't sure what he was supposed to do, but
he was confident no good could come from destroying the aircraft.
“Just let it look.”

It hovered for a full minute, then moved to Pink. Liam's
imagination took flight and he began to fret the thing had a gun, but
his rational side fought back at the notion. There were a lot more
efficient ways of killing than putting a gun on a drone, especially
deep in a dark mine.

Just turn out the lights.

He shuddered at the thought. They were at the mercy of the lights.

The drone seemed to finish its sweep. The fan noise increased as
it tilted again and went the opposite direction—back toward the
control room.

“Well, they know we're here,” Victoria said with some
amusement.

Blue, ever serious, replied, “We've just been checked out by
a creepy machine, and you think it's funny? The captain was right
about you two.”

“What does that—”

The sound of the drone whizzing by cut off Victoria mid-sentence.
It appeared to continue ahead, but it stopped and came back to hover
in front of them. Then it jumped ahead, then came back.

“I think it's trying to tell us something,” Victoria
observed.

It was pretty obvious the drone wanted them to move forward. Liam
stood and was ready to follow when he caught the sound of something
behind them. The blue lights on the path far behind them started to
wink out.

“Guys...”

They all looked behind. The lights continued to wink out, though
it was random. One wink here. One there. Sometimes they'd come back
on for a second, then die out again.

The drone actually bumped Liam in the back. His muscles locked up
in fright, until he realized what it was.

“OK, guys. Droney says we've got to move. I'm gonna say we
should run.”

Blue, as if in a dream, replied, “Those are people. Heading
this way.”

Liam knew he had to move, but the surprise of the drone on his
back and the sight of a crowd so thick it choked the lights behind
them made him hesitate. The twins started to run. Victoria grabbed
him by the arm.

“I'm following you,” she said.

“Yeah...we should run now.” He said it to her, but the
words were meant for his legs. They weren't listening to his brain.

Luckily, Victoria pulled him.

They ran after the drone.

2

The cavern was immense. The large columns on the left continued as
they ran. In a couple minutes, they came to the first body on the
ground. Despite everything, the twins stopped when they reached it.

It was badly mangled and despite the blue ambiance, he knew the
pool of liquid underneath the corpse was blood red. He'd seen lots of
zombie remains over the past weeks—this one had been shot by a
powerful caliber. It had ripped several holes in the torso and the
killing shot was on the side of its head. A large piece of skull was
missing.

On any other day, he might have lost his lunch at the sight.

This time he kept it together. “Keep running, guys.”

In moments, they saw more bodies. Then scores of them. Finally,
hundreds. They were piled up in an arc from their left to their
right. The bodies got so thick they had to step on them to keep
moving forward.

Pink whimpered as the number of bodies increased. The stink grew
in tandem.

Blue seemed to take it all in stride until she had to climb on the
first one. “I...I don't know if I can do this. I don't know
why, but I'm...”

Liam, already on a small pile of the dead, steadied himself by
holding the belt of one of them, and turned around.

He wanted to be brave, but his speech started with an involuntary
shiver. “Uh...I don't like this either.” A million
thoughts scrambled his brain. He wondered if he should cajole them
with kind words or yell at this with anger to get them moving. If he
failed to inspire them, they might die. On the other hand—

“Fight or die, girls. We don't care.” Victoria pushed
Liam from behind. “You, too. Keep moving.”

A hand reached out for his leg. When it grabbed him, he screamed
like a girl.

Real smooth.

All the girls screamed in reply; Victoria recovered the fastest.
She pushed him harder.

That got him moving. He fumbled with his spear, but he couldn't
see the face of the one pawing at him. It would take time to find it,
and digging through the bodies was low on his list right now.