Last Fight of the Valkyries (5 page)

She still had all her memories of Al and what he told her a short
time ago about the mundane nature of all the “miracles”
she'd witnessed. Her faith in God was unwavering, but her faith in
miracles and Al's role as an angel had been dowsed as sure as her
swim in the muddy Mississippi today. The notion she could hear the
thoughts of the kids, or could control any zombies was just... She
put two and two together now: Al wasn't real. Couldn't be. He was
part of the breakdown of her mind under all the stress. Maybe an
aneurism was responsible for her mental issues…

Or the infection they put in my veins.

The rocking in the back of the big truck was lulling her to sleep.
Her last thought was that she was so glad Victoria had allowed her to
rest her head on her shoulder. She'd nap, just for a little while…

She recognized the girl as she entered her dream.

2

The girl came back to life, or it felt like it anyway. Air rushed
into her chest. She sucked in the stench of death, and was tempted to
cough it back out. But not yet.

“Am I safe?” she wondered.

Her eyes were open, but the darkness was absolute. Her imagination
placed her inside a shipping container, or an old walk-in freezer, or
maybe on top of her Catholic school church altar. Those were places
constructed from her memories, though she'd never woken up in or on
any of them.

Careful to listen for clues, her body remained rigid—willing
itself not to give away its master.

“Scare much?” She tried to recall the time
before
,
but drew a blank. Only her long-term memories were intact. “My
name is...Azure, but I go by Blue now. I came here... Then the
zombies...” She lamented her memory failed her on the most
important questions.

What she did know was that zombies ruled the darkness. It was time
for action.

Below her, something was wet. Viscous.

“Why blood? Why can't I wake up in ice cream or ketchup?
That way I'd know this was all fake.”

Sitting up was difficult in the confined space. Things were
stacked on her feet and legs. Bodies. Not one. Not two. Many. She
felt the tangled hair wrapped around one hand. She slid herself from
underneath the dead weight and got into a crouching position.

“I bet I'm covered in blood.”

Her ears were attuned to the dark. The muffled silence indicated
an interior room, but she also detected a wisp of distant gunfire.

Testing her body, she rose and made contact with an object leaning
against the nearby wall. It slid and rattled to the floor with a
muffled clang. The sound was unfortunate, but oddly comforting. She
reached down and lifted the cold combat shotgun. She ran her hand
along the stock, taking note of the shells affixed to the side. She
came up with six plus whatever's in the barrel.

“Someone was very thoughtful to leave this with me,”
she thought.

Feeling the front of her shirt, it was covered in the red stuff.
She just knew it. Her pants were similarly smeared. The only question
now was whether any part of her was free of it. She tried to wipe her
hands clean when she heard a sound she recognized—the
stutter-shuffle of zombies.

“No. Not happening.” Her brain tried to establish an
action plan. Fighting zombies in the dark was lose-lose. That she
ended up in this room under a bunch of bodies proved that.

Crouching, she searched the corpses near her feet for a
flashlight, lighter, or pack of matches. Surely one of the dead had
been a smoker.

“Don't call me Shirley!”

“Why did I just think that?” Her mind dug deep for a
second and an echo of a man speaking popped into her mind's eye.
“When you start your new life, echoes of the old will bounce
around like the embers of a fire, burning one final time.”

The first body she searched was a man. He had nothing in his
pockets. The second body was a woman. She wore a pleated skirt. She
had massive trauma on her left side. Blue put her hand in the mess
before she realized what it was. She stifled the shock of revulsion
as if her life depended on it. The third body was intertwined with
and below the other two. It was also a man, but it was
jittery
.

She pushed off the two people stacked above him, and found a small
throwaway lighter. Working fast, she struck the tab and the thing
sparked, providing a snapshot of the wider room—like a bat
using sound.

“No. I didn't just see...”

For the first time, she lost hold of her fear response. She gulped
air.

Flick. The entire space was lit, for half a second.

Men and women stood nearby, inside—whatever it was she was
in.

Flick. She looked at the wall closest to her. It was a good-sized
room, not the confined closet her mind constructed. She was in the
corner of the larger space, so it felt tighter than it really was.
Glad she wasn't in a tiny coffin, but distraught the room could hold
an undead football team, she tried to stay positive—she was
alive.

“Am I? If I was still dead, would I know it?” It
seemed too fantastic to contemplate, but she took inventory and was
comforted by her breathing. “Of course I'm alive.” It was
the kind of thing someone says when they wake up in a room full of
dead people. The kind of dead people that want
you
dead.

“Not this girl.”

Flick. She could see a door handle—five feet to the left.

She ran the numbers on a) getting to the door and b) getting
through the door. These were very important because c) was getting
eaten by zombies. Her goal was to do everything possible to avoid
option Charlie.

“Charlie Mike. Continue Mission.” It was another
ember.

Flick. Shuffle.

Flick. Movement. A groan.

She was almost within reach of the handle, standing among bodies
in varying states of death. Some were writhing on the floor. Others
were already on their feet. She tried to stay on task. The metal hook
looked industrial. The kind you'd find in a hospital, an office
building...or a hotel.

“Yep, there's the little hanging sign. 'Do not disturb.'
That's irony right there.” The only remaining question was
whether the door was locked. Then it would be an easy out.

Long experience told her nothing was
ever
that simple when
Death was standing behind you.

Flick.

The door had a deadbolt sixteen inches above the main handle. It
would have to be tossed before the wooden door would swing inward.

She chanced one last look over her shoulder.

Flick.

They were only a couple feet from her now.

“Screw this!” she shouted while tossing the lighter;
she'd either escape or die trying.

She lunged, turning the deadbolt—though it wasn't
locked—while swinging the handle in a fluid motion. It swung
inward, and hit a body on the floor, but her adrenaline gave her the
strength to slip through. An attempt to shut the door behind her was
thwarted by her slippery hands and the arms of the undead already
grasping for her. She tumbled out of the cavity into natural light.
The checkered carpeting of a hotel walkway rose up to meet her
face—along with scores of dead zombies scattered about. A
massacre had taken place here.

On her feet like lightning, she ran the numbers. What were her
chances of survival?

“Hello computer?” An ember of a man talking into a
computer mouse.

Her vision blurred for just a moment. She became aware of
something near her face—inside her goggles—just outside
her field of vision. It was fast-moving green text on a translucent
background. Her first impression was of a computer interface. Just
thinking the word “computer” brought the interface
directly into her field of view. It was distracting as she ran in the
hallway.

“So I went crazy in that room. Wonderful.”

The multitasking began.

“I'm in a silo? No, a hotel.” She was inside a
circular hotel with a hollowed out atrium from top to bottom. Must be
thirty floors. An elevator shaft on the far side went all the way up.
The walkway ran all the way around the hotel with a railing to
prevent accidents on the inner side, and the doors to the rooms on
the outer side.

“Of course I'm at the top.”

She looked back at her pursuit. There were six of them. They
weren't as fast as her, but she knew they were relentless. The
closest zombie—a woman dressed as a nurse—had a shimmer
around her. It tripped something inside her brain, and the computer
interface identified the runner for her.

>>Subject: A. Beckitswith. Nurse. Last known residence:
Atlanta, GA. Employer: Center for Disease Control. Deceased.

The interface threw gigs of data at her—online photos, data
streams, social media feeds. None of it relevant to this moment.

“Turn off!” She willed the computer to stop. It merely
paused, and moved to the side of her awareness. She almost pulled off
the computer goggles, they were already very loose, but she didn't
want to lose them.

Her confusion allowed A. Beckitswith to catch up. Blue stopped and
planted her feet. She maneuvered the gun in her hands, gripped the
barrel like a baseball bat, and swung as hard as her pixie-frame
would allow. The synthetic stock made contact with A's temple,
splitting the skull with a satisfying crack. Blood splashed
everywhere from the wound, dousing her front side and a wide swath of
the brand new carpet.

A. Beckitswith fizzled to the floor as zombie number two
approached. Another four were closing behind their leader. Fighting
was in her veins, but “better part of valor” was an ember
from deep inside; it insisted she run.

While fast-jogging, she reached down to the stock of the Mossberg
A590A1 shotgun—a model she knew just by looking at it—and
pulled shells off the ammo attachment and pushed them into the feeder
port. She only needed two because it was already carrying four
shells. She put the extra back into the strap and racked the slide in
one powerful up and down motion. Since it was already primed with a
round in the barrel, the unspent shell popped out, bounced off the
wall, and Blue deftly caught it and fed it back in.

“Seven shots ready to go.”

The pursuing zombie had the shimmer as the interface displayed
stats.

>>Subject: N. Dawes. Nurse. Last known residence: Chicago,
IL. Employer: Center for Disease Control. Deceased.

“I think I see a pattern here.”

The four other zombies were quite a bit behind on the walkway, but
they were also dressed like the two nurses. They were far enough back
she could ignore them, for now. The lone chaser, Ms. Dawes from
Chicagoland, was hopelessly outclassed in a footrace. Seeming to
realize this, she flung herself over the edge of the balcony.

Still moving, Blue veered to the interior edge and looked over.
The zombie was there, propelling herself—itself—along the
edge of the stout steelwork of the railing. She wasn't going faster
than Blue, but it was a new variable that troubled her.

“What other tricks do you have?”

The red glow of the EXIT sign blazed away ahead. She could leave
this whole episode behind her. Blue plowed into the steel door of the
stairwell with her shoulder—and bounced backward with her head
bobbling. Even the computer interface wandered haphazardly.

Blue stumbled around, yelling loudly at the pain—and her
stupidity—as she tried to regain her senses. It was only a few
moments of delay, but it
was
a delay.

Ms. Dawes came over the top of the railing, five feet from her.
She didn't perch on the top like a cat, but she very nearly did. Blue
could see the ruined skin of the dead nurse. If she were in a
cartoon, her neck would have a very distinct chomp outline. The
carotid artery was messily severed, and the resultant blood splatter
had covered the nurse in brackish liquid, now dried. Her eyes carried
the tell-tale sign of the Double-E. Bloody eyes with gobs of it
pouring out the bulging sockets.

They collided, and both careened off the hard metal door. On
second glance, she knew why it hadn't opened. Some
wanker
had
welded the damned thing shut.

The shotgun squirted out of Blue's hands. The nurse had a hundred
pounds on her and pushed her to the floor. Blood bonded with blood as
the pair splashed across the carpet. Blue was smaller and faster, and
infinitely smarter. She played her hand at just the right time,
pushing herself off the slippery nurse before she could take a
cartoon-sized bite from her own neck.

She tumbled to her gun and grabbed it as she sprang to her feet.
Moving fast, she eluded the sprawling zombie and resumed jogging
around the loop. Another EXIT sign was on the far side. It was the
only obvious course of action.

Chancing a look over the side again, she was dismayed to see
movement on many of the lower levels. Zombies made the most noise
when they knew victims were around, and the z-cophony of undead was
unnerving inside the large structure.

“Makes me want to toss myself over the edge.”

She stopped running at the thought. She
did
feel as if
throwing herself from the ledge was a viable plan. “I can't be
more than two hundred feet up. I could land on a tree down in the
lobby.” It made perfect sense. “I'm superhuman, after
all.”

Blue smiled as she imagined herself getting up on the railing,
leaning over...and then she'd just keep going. The feeling was
palpable. The desire to escape. Escape
downward
. It was the
fastest way.

She looked straight down and caught movement on the walkway below
hers. A teenage girl in a bloody blue raincoat looked straight up
with her blood-drenched face. She had a shimmer around her. It was
both horrible and beautiful. She
want
ed
Blue to jump...

The computer spun up, providing real-time analysis.

>>Subject: T. Lowry. Offspring of Z. Lowry. Last known
residence: Kansas City, KS. Employer: State of Kansas. Deceased.