Last Fight of the Valkyries (34 page)

The back door had no exits. Scratch.

The vault door didn't open. Scratch.

The railroad tracks had to go somewhere...

He began to see where the triplets were going with this. They'd
been on that side of the room. Maybe they found an exit.

He reached the last tank just as the girls dodged a zombie and ran
into the drop out room.

Suicide? That's their plan?

Victoria ran up against him. She, too, saw where the girls had
run. There were only a few lingering zombies in the last row. It was
now or never.

In his ear, she asked, “Do we follow them?”

It was time for the hero to make his choice. He saw no reason to
follow them, but he thought back to all the strange coincidences
which drove them all together. He found all three sisters in
mysterious circumstances. Perhaps dumb luck. Or maybe something else.

But something, for sure.

“Let's follow. Don't ask me why, cuz I don't know. Call it
faith.”

He was down in a moment. He speared the closest zombie as Victoria
hit the ground next to him. She also used her makeshift spear, but it
ran through the neck of her target. She yanked it out and pushed it
away instead. They ran for the opening with no room to spare. Liam
was unsurprised to see some of the undead soldiers walking down the
main aisle as if they had been tracking them.

“Hurry! Inside.”

The light of the tank hall reached into the drop out room, but
without the flashlights of the Patriots, it was more dark than light.
Liam had to do a double take when he saw one of the triplets rise up
into the darkness on the ceiling.

“What the?”

He ran over to the hole, his eyes trying to adjust to the
increasing darkness.

He saw the dark shapes of the three girls above him. They each
straddled the rough cut hole like they were climbing a chimney. There
was enough room for all three of them.

“What the hell are you doing? Is this your plan? To die in
here?”

Black called down. “No dummy. There's eight feet of earth
above us. We just have to dig through.” She paused while she
adjusted her footing and climbed another foot. “What are you
waiting for? Fight or die,” she said. “Start digging a
grave if you want to live.”

Liam was mortified. He stepped back, so he couldn't see the girls.
He noticed they had a piece of a broken casket below the hole. They'd
used it to climb up.

Victoria grabbed the box, moved it to the next hole, then stood
there looking at him.

“What are you waiting for? I need you to pull me up.”

He turned back to the opening—the soldiers ambled ever
closer. Other zombies hovered behind the first cadre of the old
soldiers. He imagined it was a sign of respect, but maybe they were
lined up by speed.

He got up onto the casket, put his spear into the grasp of his
belt, then pulled himself up into the grave with a boost from
Victoria. The limestone opening was perfectly spaced so he could put
a foot on each side and hold himself in the gap. Victoria stepped up
on the box below him, looked once over her shoulder, then she grabbed
for his hands. As he straddled the rock faces, he held her in his
arms.

“Don't pull me up yet.”

She hung for a second, then she used her feet to kick over the box
below her.

“OK, now would be good. Hurry!”

Liam's strength ran hot and cold. He felt very drained as she hung
on. But the shadows on the rocks below suggested the zombies were
close. Her life was literally in his hands. He pulled with everything
he had. When she was high enough, he pulled her into his chest and
she grabbed hold of his body. Then she aligned her legs so she also
straddled the grave.

“Climb!”

It really didn't need to be said, but he said it anyway.

They managed to climb all the way up to the wooden blockage they'd
seen earlier when they had flashlights. The air was cold, like death,
despite the heat of the room they'd just been in. He felt a chill
rock his body as his sweat cooled on his skin.

He used his spear to pierce the wooden roof. It was very thin
plywood. Within a few minutes, they had the plywood removed. It
dropped to the floor, and now they had raw dirt above them. An image
popped into his mind of all the dirt falling from above, pushing both
of them down to the floor, but that didn't happen. It was packed too
tightly.

Below, the dark shadows hovered. His eyes took time to adjust, but
soon he could see the soldiers packed tight directly below—arms
up, straining for prey.

Victoria took one end of the narrow grave and Liam planted himself
on the other. He had his spear, and she had her makeshift wooden
poker. Together they began thrusting up into the dirt. It fell in
clumps on top of them, then down onto the zombies standing below.

“Uh oh. Let's say by some miracle we get through all this
dirt. It's just going to make a pile below us and those things are
going to climb up here and get us. Wouldn't that be a funny way to
die?”

“We can't worry about it now. We have no choices anymore.
Fight or die, right?”

She was right of course, though he was left scratching his head
how he had allowed this to happen.

Maybe this was the only possible way out. If that was true, the
triplets may have just saved their lives.

If not, at least we'll already be in our graves when we die.

Small comfort.

5

Hours ticked by, though time lost all meaning in the insufferably
cramped space. With each thrust of his spear, Liam felt himself
losing steam. The cool he had felt upon climbing into the upside down
grave had long since given way to extreme heat. The heat of exertion,
yes, but also the heat of stress and the pressure of standing with
legs spread across the gap for hours on end. He'd had no water for
hours, and had sweat out buckets since.

“Hey! Kid! I don't hear that spear.”

He snapped out of his stupor. He'd been staring upward, but he
wasn't moving his digging implement. Victoria, without knowing it,
may have saved his life—again. It was becoming a regular thing
with him as they pushed higher. He was drifting.

“Don't call me kid, kid.” He let out a raspy laugh.

“Don't fall asleep!” She yelled it, more for the shock
value than any real need. It did help him focus.

The pile of dirt below was getting higher. He could sense, rather
than see, they'd made a lot of progress upward. His feet were now
spread across the gap into the dirt walls, instead of the rock layers
below. That at least gave his feet some relief. But not his legs. Or
his arms. His arms were screaming louder than the sirens on day one.

Another heft upward with the spear released a little more dirt.
He'd gotten good at closing his eyes as the debris came down, but
this time he was too slow and some of the dirt got in his eyes. It
surprised him he had almost no tears in his eyes to wash it away.

He coughed. There was a lot of dust in the air. The floor beneath
them was hard to make out between the darkness, the dead standing
there, and the dust itself.

“Hey—” He coughed violently. Speaking while
inhaling the dust nearly made him fall.

When he settled back down, he finally got it out. “We uh, we
might be getting close. Dry dust from up top can only mean we are
reaching the surface.”

“Keep digging.” She sounded tired, but her voice
remained strong. He could no longer see her at all, though she was
only a couple feet away. He could tell by her voice she was a little
lower than him, but he wasn't surprised given the low quality wood
she was using to crack soil over her head. He had unwittingly taken a
solid tool for the task, the sharp edge of the spear had long since
been worn down.

He braced himself for another push upward.

“This is it,” he said without enthusiasm.

“You've said that the last 100 times.”

“And this time I'm going to be right.” It was the only
thing that kept him going. The supreme thought that one of these
times, he was going to poke through the sod and end this nightmare.

By returning to the regular nightmare of the topside Apocalypse.

Everything is crap now.

His psyche was at low tide. Which was why he was so surprised when
he felt his spear go up and out through the top. When he pulled it
back down, he closed his eyes as the dirt and dust coated his head
and face. Then he opened his eyes and was rewarded with the piercing
ray of light coming through a tiny hole.

“Liam?” His name was an echo.

“Liam!”

“What?”

“You're staring up. Are you in there?”

With even the drip of light coming through, Victoria was able to
see what she was doing and clear a section of the dirt on her side so
she could reach the top. Together, they widened the hole so they
would fit through.

Liam hesitated.

“What is it?”

“I don't know if I can lift my arms above my head one more
time. And to get out through that hole...”

“We'll need our arms. OK, let's rest for a minute.”

Liam wasn't going to argue, but he really wanted to do more than
rest. He wanted to sleep. He tried to lean back against the rear wall
of the grave so he could rest his upper body.

“Stay with me. Don't you dare.”

“Huh?” He knew what she wanted of him, but he really
needed to just take a little breather.

“Liam, dammit, stay with me!”

That got his attention. “Why Victoria, I've never heard you
cuss like that.” He knew that was a half-truth. She normally
was very reserved in her off-color commentary, though she did lay
down some foul language when they escaped the city and thought
Grandma had died. “It isn't very ladylike.”

He was joking with her, but he saw the smile on her face too. She
pulled out the big guns to keep him awake.

“Are you ready to get out of this grave? I sure as hell am.”

Liam, ever smiling, only replied with a long, “Umm,”
as in, “Umm, I'm gonna tell.”

He had to admit, if she was trying to goad him into trying to
climb, it worked. Not because of what she said, but that she'd said
it at all. Her minor breach of language etiquette told him she was
seriously worried about him.

He pushed up with his legs. He would have to use his arms, but
first he could position himself a little higher on the wall. He'd
gotten his head into the narrow part of the hole above, not quite
poking out of the grave itself, but his arms soon would be.

“Wouldn't it be funny if there are a pack of zombies above
us?” He said it to be funny. His dark humor was meant to ward
off the bad thoughts, as odd as that felt to him.

“I doubt zombies would hang around in cemeteries. There's no
fresh victims there.”

“You know, I was thinking the very same thing.”

He threw his spear up through the hole, then with all the energy
he had left, he pushed his arms up as well. He had to work away some
of the loose dirt, but he was able to use his arms while he pulled
his legs up the sides of the walls. Like some sick worm, he slid out
of the grave onto his belly. The headstone was only inches away.

“Charles Everett. U.S. Navy. Blah blah blah. 1943.”
His eyes couldn't focus on all the words.

He slowly turned around to look back down the hole. A pretty face
looked up at him.

“Victoria!”

“Yeah, I'm still here. Care to help?”

He hung his arms down and pulled up her wooden pick. What was once
several feet long was now about the size of a dagger. It must have
broken apart as she tore into the dirt.

“Hold on to me and use your feet to climb. The edge is too
unstable to put too much weight with your arms.”

“That's perfect. My arms are toast.”

He knew the feeling. It took him a long time to get her out of the
hole, but soon she lay next to him on the lush green turf of the
cemetery.

Sleep sounded divine. As did water. A tall cool glass of Mountain
Dew would be salvation.

“Liam!”

“Why are you screaming at me?”

“I called your name about five times. You aren't responding
to me.”

He couldn't think of anything funny to aid his defense. All he
could say was, “Oh.”

She continued when she had his attention. “Look, over
there.” She pointed, though she didn't raise her arm from the
ground.

A large hole had been excavated from the grave next door.

6

He took a moment to scan the cemetery landscape. Tens of thousands
of white headstones stood in martial rows on every hillside as far as
he could see. They'd emerged on a flat, low section of the cemetery.
Slopes rose on either side, though he literally thanked God there
were no zombies anywhere in his field of view. That, at least, gave
them some time to rest.

The girls were nowhere in sight. He figured they made good on
their plan to separate from him.

He rolled over toward Victoria. She was filthy. Her face was
covered in dirt and mud, like she'd been at an expensive spa and had
it caked on. Her white top was now mostly brown from all the dust and
dirt that mixed with her sweat. The bottom half of each of the legs
of her jeans were well-soiled with mud. That was from planting her
legs in the muddy walls for—

He looked at his watch. It was late afternoon, but he had no idea
how long they'd dug. He didn't think to check the time when they
started out. For every minute of however long they were in the grave,
he thought the climbing zombies were going to come up and grab him,
but they never did. The creepy soldier guys just stood vigil, moaning
and clawing upward, but the dirt that fell on them was spread out and
compacted.

In the bright light, he could hardly believe such a scene was mere
feet away. The sounds from below were muffled by the soddy edges and
thick earth in the hole.

“Where do you think they went?” He could hardly talk.