Valkyrie: Rat in the Dumpster (4 page)

If it doesn’t, we’re dead
, Rat thought. The screams of the approaching ghouls were louder.

Clint knelt by one of the dead National Guardsmen, “Hallelujah, M4’s not M4A1’s.”

“What?” Rat asked.

“Their rifles. Grab one, and all the magazines you can find…”

“Shouldn’t we be getting in the tank?” Katy asked.

“Never, ever, walk past weapons,” Clint yelled. He slung his AR-15 over his shoulder and sighted down the M4. “M4 has a three shot fire mode, M4A1 replaced it with hair-brained full auto. Stupid John Wayne shit. Can’t hit crap in full auto.”

One ghoul was out ahead of the others.

Clint took aim and pulled the trigger once. The M4 gave three sharp pops, one after the other, and the ghoul went down.

Rat grabbed an M4 and ran toward the back of the Bradley.

Clint glanced left and right toward the advancing horde, “Good idea, kid.” He ran past Katy and Rat up the ramp.

Rat looked at Katy, “I thought he said he couldn’t run?”

“I heard that. Get in here!” Clint yelled as he made his way to the front of the Bradley.

Rat and Katy stood at the top of the ramp and pointed their M4’s out the back.

Rat suddenly realized she had no idea how the rifle worked.

“Clint! How do you close this door?” Katy screamed.

Clint paused for just a second near the front and shoved a lever. The door groaned, and then rose slowly.

“Well, I’ll be damned. She’s got power. Hydraulics are working,” Clint laughed as he disappeared into the driver’s compartment. “Let’s see if the rest of this shit works.”

The door was still rising slowly.

Rat looked at Katy, “Is it supposed to move this slow?”

A grey hand appeared in the space between the door and the bulkhead directly in front of Rat’s face.

She screamed as the door continued to close. The creature outside shrieked as the hand was severed at the wrist.

Katy and Rat stared at the hand lying on the steel deck.

The Bradley shuddered as a throbbing roar filled the interior.

“Hot damn! We got half a tank of diesel and she’s purring like a kitten,” Clint yelled over the engine noise.

Rat could hear cries coming from outside.

“Damn! We are covered in those ugly bastards. Get up here, Rat,” Clint yelled.

Rat staggered forward as the Bradley lunged ahead, “What do you want me to do?”

“Get in the turret. There should be a joystick to the right. Move it around, try to dislodge those bastards.”

She climbed up into a thin padded seat and found the joystick, “Like this?” She moved it and the turret rotated. There were screams outside as several of the ghouls tumbled to the ground.

“Keep it up,” Clint said. “Hang on, going to get a little bumpy.”

The Bradley’s nose rose into the air with a screech of metal.

“What was that?” Katy yelled.

“Toyota,” Clint said as the Bradley climbed and crushed the cars beneath it. “Man, I love this thing.”

“How do I make the guns work?” Rat asked.

“Joysticks in the center. There’s a viewfinder just above them. Use the one on the right, the other is night vision.”

Rat looked through the periscope. Ghouls ran toward them up the bridge.

She pressed the button and the machine guns roared to life. There was no need to aim for their heads, everything the twenty-five millimeter slugs touched disintegrated whether it was a ghoul or an automobile.

Rat was laughing as the guns roared, deafening her. She had no idea why she was laughing, maybe it was because for the first time in twenty-four hours she felt like she was back in control of her own life. She liked that feeling.

She let off the trigger, “Hey, Clint?”

“What?”

“What’s a T-O-W?” Rat said as she read off the letters over some controls near the machine gun controls.

“Never you mind about that – it’s a TOW rocket launcher. Keep your hands off that damned thing. You might blow the damned bridge right out from under us.”

Carter heard loud gunfire coming from the bridge and smiled. That sound meant they had secured the Bradley. He loaded the last of the supplies onto the stretcher.

He heard the thud and immediately knew what it was. Stages have catwalks. They have ropes and pulleys, they have scaffolding with lights.

They also have trap doors under the stage.

Trap doors.

And, one of them just opened.

Clint turned left onto the street as Rat swept the machine gun around, clearing the road in both directions. He spun the Bradley around and backed up the steps, stopping just short of the front entrance.

“Pull that lever below you, Rat,” Clint said.

The rear door began to lower.

Rat kept sweeping the machine guns side to side taking out the ghouls as they approached.

The front entrance opened and Consuela ran up the ramp along with her kids.

“Where’s Carter?” Katy yelled.

“I don’t know,” Luis said. “He went back to get the medical supplies.”

“I’m going after him,” Katy said.

“No,” Rat yelled. “Get up here and run this machine gun. I’ll get him. Close the rear door when I get clear.”

“Listen, kid, I’m going to drive down the street and back,” Clint said. “Otherwise, they’re going to mob us.”

“Just come back for us,” Rat yelled as she ran down the ramp. She closed the door to the Robinson Center.

Consuela said something to her as the door to the Bradley ground shut, but she couldn’t hear it.

Rat pulled the Glock from its holster and dropped the magazine. One bullet in the magazine, one in the chamber.

She pushed past her “kill zone” of tables. An idea they hadn’t needed.

A figure stood on the stage, lit by the battery powered lanterns that had held the shadows at bay during the long night. Now the cavernous room seemed to be filled with shadows.

The man on stage wasn’t Carter. He was too short, and he moved in slow, jerking movements.

Rat knew his clumsy motions would become fluid as soon as he had a target.

“Hey,” Rat said out loud.

The ghoul turned and growled.

She fired once and the ghoul’s throat exploded. It went down instantly.

“Carter?” Rat called. She was crying. “Carter, where are you?”

She walked onto the stage, past the dead ghoul.

The halo of lantern light showed a spatter of bright crimson on the wooden stage.

“Carter?”

She crossed the stage, looking at the trap door. Nothing moved. The stretcher lay on its side, the supplies strewn across the stage.

Light flooded the back of the stage. The door to the roof was open.

Time to leave
, Rat thought. No reason to see. You already know.

She climbed the stairs.

She could hear the rumble of the Bradley as Clint cruised back and forth on the street below.

Rat walked onto the roof. She ran forward as something moved in her periphery.

Carter stood a few feet to the right of the door.

Rat backed away. She realized she was walking away from the door, away from her way out, but she couldn’t leave him like this.

Jack Carter stared at her with eyes leaking black ichor.

She was crying harder now, “I told you. Damn you, Carter. I told you it wasn’t safe.”

He moved toward her. He was stumbling as if he was unsure of what he was doing. Then he growled.

Rat raised the Glock. “We shouldn’t have come here.”

He moved forward and Rat backed up.

“Damn you, Carter. Damn you for making me do this,” Rat fired.

Carter dodged to the left.

The bullet buried itself in the wooden doorframe.

Rat looked down at the Glock. Empty.

Carter was smiling.

“Yeah, screw you, man,” Rat said. She was standing on the edge, her back to the open air.

Carter ran toward her.

“Oh, no,” Clint said. He stared through the viewport at the roof. He stopped the Bradley.

Rat stood on the edge, and he watched as she fell backward.

Carter followed, like a trapeze artist flying through the air trying to catch his partner.

A brick wall stood between the Bradley and the alley, but Clint knew no one could survive a fall from that height.

“What happened?” Katy asked.

“They’re gone,” Clint said. He turned the Bradley left and drove onto the bridge. When they reached the other side, he turned to the northwest and home.

Rat was falling. She felt the wind at her back, that sickening feeling of weightlessness in her stomach from a thousand childhood nightmares. Only this time she knew she would not awaken with a start - she would bounce on the pavement.

The Carter ghoul was above her, diving to his own death, trying in vain to reach her with his hands, his teeth.

Something exploded around her, and the air was filled with the stench of garbage.

The dumpster
, she thought.
I landed in the dumpster.

Trash bags burst open all around her. She hit hard, the wind was knocked out of her and her head ached.

She was still looking up. Carter. He was still falling toward her.

But, something black was approaching from her right. The steel door of the dumpster had been propped open against the brick wall of the theater. It had been jarred by the impact and it fell on top of her.

She caught sight of Carter’s grinning face as the world went black and the steel door was suddenly a gong as Carter crashed against it, bending it in above her.

Two weeks later… had it been two weeks? She wasn’t sure. It was hard to move around. She ached all over. The bugs were everywhere.

But, there’s only one Rat.
She laughed at this thought. The real rats had left the dumpster. They knew a sinking ship when they saw one.

The first week she had listened to the ghouls as they prowled outside. She listened as they ate Carter’s body. They were efficient.

Katy had been wrong: they didn’t need to see you to know you were there. They staggered around outside, their brains unable to comprehend the need to lift the lid. But, they didn’t go far. They could smell her, she knew it.

The second week, other things had come. They growled louder than the ghouls. Sometimes they howled. They ate the ghouls.

They could smell her too. Sometimes they tried to lift the lid and Rat held on for dear life. She felt like a clam trying to hold out against a starfish. The starfish always wins in the end.

It was almost over. She was asleep more often than she was awake. Sooner or later, one of the werewolves would pull the lid open as she slept.

She heard thunder and smiled. Rain. Water. Maybe the werewolves didn’t like rain. Maybe they would leave for a while, let her die in peace. Maybe the rain water would leak in and she could have a drink. Just a little water and she would die happy.

The thunder continued. It didn’t come and go. It was constant.

The werewolves growled and then there were explosions.

The dumpster rocked sideways as something tore a hole the size of an orange in the metal above her head and blasted one the size of a grapefruit through the back as it exited.

The creatures outside were screaming, and then they went silent.

The lid raised and Rat blinked against the dim light that flooded the dumpster.

A boy no older than her stood above her. He was tall, at least six and a half feet and painfully skinny with ridiculous sideburns.

“Holy shit,” he said. “It’s a girl.” He was talking into a Bluetooth headset.

Rat looked at him, “I have bugs in my hair.”

He shook his head, “I’ll clean them out.” He leaned in and slid his long arms under her, lifting her away from the garbage.

“Monkey, haul ass!” a man’s voice called out over the thunder.

Rat looked toward the sound.

A huge semi, twice as big as anything she had ever seen sat at the entrance to the alley. A massive gun turret in the truck’s nose turned to the left and the machine gun fired again. Tracer rounds flashed within four feet of them.

“Hang on,” the boy cried and he was running with her toward the sand colored truck. She heard growling behind them, close. There were more werewolves.

She looked at the emblem on the semi’s wide grill and read the word VALKYRIE as they dashed past. Then he was climbing onto the back, carrying her in one arm as he climbed through a hatch into the darkened interior.

The hatch closed and the boy laid her down on a padded seat.

The truck roared and began to move.

She looked up at a man sitting in the driver’s seat.

He stared down at her, “Jesus, she’s just a kid.”

The boy was brushing her hair with his fingers, combing out the bugs.

She smiled at him, “What’s your name?”

“Aloysius Monk. They call me Monkey,” he said with a smile. “What’s your name?”

“Rat.”

“No, sweetie, it’s okay. There are no rats on you. I’ve almost got the bugs out of your hair,” Monkey said as he stomped the maggots on the floor.

Rat smiled and fell asleep.

You’ve read the short story, now read the novel, Valkyrie: The Road available through Amazon.com

Valkyrie is two-hundred thousand pounds of armor plate, a rolling fortress travelling the road from Chicago to New Orleans in a post-apocalyptic future. Trading goods between vampire controlled Chicago and a New Orleans dominated by Vodou, the human crew of Valkyrie face werewolves, ghouls, and cannibals in the ruins of the Midwest.