“You've been up here the whole time?” Victoria asked.
John pointed to the bodies in the nearby barge. From up in the bridge they could all see down into the cargo area and what was inside.
“I had to be sure what I was dealing with. I followed Liam and this other girl when they brought those older women.”
Victoria smiled at Liam like she was proud of him.
“I'm here to kill Elsa,” he said with a stoic voice as he and everyone else felt the towboat accelerate.
“Get in line,” Liam responded. “She's pretty much the top person responsible for giving us the zombies.”
“I almost can't believe that. I was with her in Cairo. I've seen her operate. She's smart and seems full of herself, but destroying the world? I always thought it would be a man in a big chair with a white cat.”
“I've been trying to figure this out,” Liam explained, “because I promised the dead fiancé of that maniac I would find out whoever was responsible and make sure the world knows who to blame. Does this ship have recording equipment?”
Bill, working the controls of the ship, nodded.
“Then we have the evidence we need. If we get this to someone in charge, we can—”
“There is no one in charge,” he replied to Liam. “The government has been pared down below the critical mass needed to keep things operational. Yes, there are military units still fighting along with the convoy, but I'll be damned if I can find anyone higher than me in the chain of command. And look at me—a two-star general piloting a barge. That's the extent of my authority.”
The three kids gave him serious looks.
“One thing at a time. First, we save the ship. Then, we get that bitch—”
“She's my mom,” Debbie said vacantly.
He paused to consider the poor girl's situation.
“I'm sorry your mom is the queen of all bitches.”
Debbie gave him the faintest of smiles in return.
2
Bill the pilot had the barge moving at what John thought was a high rate of speed. The water was fairly calm, but swirled in muddy eddies all the way across. The dull green superstructure of the bridge towered above them and the shadow of the highway soon eclipsed the sun. They were heading for a gap in the fleet of parked barges. Apparently, the towboat operators frowned on parking barges near the bridge pylons. That gave them all the room they needed.
“You're gonna feel a jolt,” Bill warned. “Brace yourselves.”
Ten seconds later they all leaned forward as the front of the barge ahead of them ran part-way up onto the riverbank underneath the bridge. Bill gunned the engines then throttled back. The towboat drifted with the current, but he increased the propeller speed. He used the powerful engine to push against the current. As long as they kept at it, they could hold the barge partially on the shore.
“With a little luck, we can pull her back off.”
Luck. Yes. An ICBM's-worth of luck.
“What do we do now?” Liam asked.
“You guys go back down into the hold. Make sure those SS guys knows what we're doing. Keep an eye on those snow birds,” he said with a smile.
The two girls ran out right away, but he stopped Liam.
“Your grandma is still alive. I saw her this morning back in Cairo.”
Liam stepped back in the room.
“Where?”
John pointed down and across the river to the point of land formed where the Mississippi River and the Ohio river joined together. It wasn't more than a mile away.
“I left her with Chloe, one of the few people I trust over there. She'll get her to that point," he showed Liam the southern tip of land where his people were waiting for him, "and then they'll get out of Dodge. The zombies have taken the rest of the town. Be quick.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Your grandma was very proud of you. I thought she was nuts when she first told me about you. Going off into the wild. Getting yourself in sticky situations like this one. But you did good. I had a whole Army battalion behind me, and I couldn't pin Elsa down.”
“Well, we don't have her yet, but thanks to your recording device we have the evidence we need.”
Liam gave him a thumbs up before taking off after the two girls.
“Bill, if you show me what to do, I can man this station while you get below.”
“Pfft,” he huffed out. “You Army men are all the same. Always want to be the heroes.” Bill gave him a harsh look but cracked himself up before John could reply.
“Let me guess. Navy?” he said cheerfully to Bill.
“Yep, did a tour in 'Nam on the America. SAR, mostly.”
“Well Bill, USN, we're about to see the might and fury of United States Air Force.”
“So they're going to miss us by a whole state?”
They shared a laugh as the roof dropped in on them.
Chapter 24: Non-Linear
Liam's awareness returned, slowly.
His face was on well-manicured grass, which was odd because his previous memory was running down the length of the industrial-metal decking of a Mississippi River barge…
“What happened?” he asked himself.
While sitting up, he discovered Victoria. She was similarly sprawled on the turf next to him but also stirring. Her black tank top and faded jeans appeared fresh out of the washer. His “gifted” black honey badger t-shirt had returned to just-bought condition as well.
“Liam?”
“I'm right here.” He reached out and touched her hip to let her know he was close.
The grass was bright green, as if lit by the sun, but when he turned to the sky it was dark as night. Stars and constellations graced the heavens from horizon to horizon around him. Only the waterfall blocked his—
“A waterfall from space,” he said rhetorically.
“I'm not feeling right. I'm hallucinating,” she answered.
“No, I think we both are.”
They helped each other so they could stand and properly take in the view. The waterfall fell from the darkness above, which made him realize something was affecting his perspectives. Stars above were clear, like each one magnified when he looked at it, but if he saw them from the corner of his eye they fell back among their peers.
“It's all real,” said a weak voice behind them.
Liam spun around, knowing it was Grandma.
“You're alive!” he shouted, followed a moment later by, “I think.”
His excitement was tempered by the impossibility of everything around him. They all hugged while Grandma sat on a stone bench at one edge of the grassy patch, near a cliff overlooking an ocean. They watched the green-tinted water light up with the ferocity of an electrical storm. As far out as he could see, the water appeared agitated under the surface.
“I'm so happy to see you,” Victoria said while they held each other tightly.
“Grandma. That woman dug up—” his voice wavered, “—Dad. Elsa infected him, like those soldiers we saw in the mine. He attacked Mom.” It was all he could say before getting too emotional.
The hug continued while Grandma spoke.
“Mercy, me. I'm so sorry you had to see that. Just remember, it wasn't your dad. Jerry died a long time ago.”
Liam found himself impressed with her composure. Jerry was her grandson, after all.
Finally, with one final squeeze, he stepped back. He and Victoria took a seat on opposite sides of her, so they could all watch the spectacle in the water.
“What is this place?” he asked, assuming she would know. “Are we dead?”
“I don't think so,” Grandma replied. “This is where Al has been taking me ever since the zombies arrived. He said this was inside my own mind.” Her speech slowed as if she didn't believe those final words. “Which means you two can't be real.”
Liam protested. “We're real! I was running with Victoria, and Debbie, when I...blacked out...I think. I'm not really sure. But I'm not in your imagination,” he said with convict
ion.
“I remember the same thing. I was running with Liam when I heard a loud banging noise, followed by blackness. I should be on the barge.”
Grandma made a sound. An audible “hmm,” like she was impressed.
“I don't know. Maybe this is real.”
“Where are you? I mean out there?” he asked.
“I'm in a truck in Cairo. I'm with Chloe. A sweet girl who is a friend of the man protecting the town. I heard...a sound. Chloe screamed. I think I hit my head.”
“A friend?” Liam spoke with disbelief. “Elsa said she had an agent of hers bringing you to her. She was excited to hurt you. She wanted to hurt all of us—our whole family—because of Grandma Rose. She wants to be president of the country or something.”
“Chloe isn't a spy,” she said, but Liam wasn't happy to hear a wedge of doubt in those words.
They sat in silence for a couple of minutes. No one seemed to know what to say next. Liam certainly didn't. If they were dead, it was a nice place to end up. If they were still alive, he couldn't imagine what had brought them there.
“Does it always take this long when you come here?” he asked her.
“No, usually Al is here guiding me. Or he takes me other places, like that bridge from your book.”
He laughed gently. “I wish we were there. I'd like to go into those books for real. Maybe if we're dead, that's what the afterlife is all about? Experiencing the memories of others. We can drop into story after story, forever.”
“I wouldn't want to drop into the books you read, Liam,” Victoria said from the other end of the bench. “I've had enough of zombies and scary stuff for the rest of my life.”
“Oh, they're not that bad. None of them really scared me. They weren't real, you know. This is real.” He laughed. “Not where we are now. I mean the world with barges and infected and ICBM's.”
“ICBM's,” he and Victoria echoed the letters.
They both leaned forward to look at each other across from Grandma. “The missile hit us. That's why we're dead,” he said with the sound of “of course” in his tone.
“None of you are dead.” The voice sounded electronic at first, but resolved into a man's voice. Like it was adjusting itself.
They all got up.
2
“Al!”
“Great-Grandpa? You're real?”
“Hiya Marty,” the man said. “Hi Liam.”
“He's not really Al,” Grandma offered.
“No, it's a convenient form so that I can communicate with you.”
“What do you look like, then?” Victoria chimed in.
Al smiled broadly. “You all love to ask questions.”
“You've been talking to my Grandma all this time and you haven't shown her what you actually look like?”
He put on a brave face, but he was terrified inside. Dealing with zombies was one thing, but interacting with ghosts was upping the “OMG” factor.
“I can see there's no use in continuing until I explain what I am.”
Liam nodded, as if that would force Al to continue down that line of thinking.
“I will tell you, and show you, but first I want you to take a short walk with me. Deal?”
Everyone agreed, but when he reached for Grandma to help her move, she had already started. She didn't need a hand. Her back seemed straighter, and thus she appeared taller. The hair remained white like the snow, but her gait suggested a much younger woman.
They walked around the pond below the waterfall. It appeared as a grotto of ferns, shrubbery, and exotic flowers. The water was clear and deep, and he could see to the rocky white bottom below the surface. A small creek flowed from the pond toward the cliff near the ocean.
“I've explained this all to Marty. This waterfall is a representation of how she sees my computer network. All the planets are linked on the waterfall like computers on the internet. Some stations are lit up, and some are dark. It all depends on a few factors I'll get to in a moment.”
"A computer system?" Marty asked quizzically. "This isn't outer space?"
"You'll see," Al assured her.
Liam was dizzy looking up at the tumbling water. He recalled a photo of Angel Falls in one of his school textbooks and imagined this was higher and wider than that one, but without any frame of reference to compare and contrast, he had no way to know. As they rounded the pool and approached the falling water, it became obvious the water was frozen—not moving.
“The water is moving, Liam. But it moves at Galactic Time, which is different than how you experience time.”
“It's amazing,” Victoria said, sharing his sense of wonder. She held his hand while pointing to everything, like a kid at the zoo. “Are we moving fast or does Galactic Time move slower?”
“GT moves at a glacial pace compared to how you experience time. It has to so that I can manage everything that needs...managing. I'm not all-powerful, you know,” he said while smiling at her.
“So what are you?” she countered.
“That's coming. Just a little bit farther.”
He led them to the edge of the waterfall. A rocky face sat off to the right side, and an inset door was apparently their destination.
“I've been in there,” Grandma said, possibly to calm everyone.
“Indeed, my dear woman. You have. She helped save you kids when you were sucked under that debris a couple of weeks ago. Did she ever tell you that?”
“No,” Liam said with understanding. “But I always wondered how that zombie swam up and pushed us to safety. That was you?”
“Oh, Al exaggerates. He did all the work. I was a bystander.”
They all arrived at the door. “Marty, you could run down a thief and still call yourself a bystander,” Al said with a healthy chuckle. “I always believed you were going to save the world. I think that day will come. But, more immediately, we talked about how you could survive the disease, didn't we.”
“You helped me,” she admitted, “along with God.”
“Yes, but God helps those who help themselves. And you three have been helping yourselves—I don't mean it like you've taken from others, I mean you've kept each other alive. Always looked out for each other, and the people you met along the way.”
“But I infected people,” Victoria said quietly.
“There are lots of carriers, my young friend. You mustn't fault yourself for what was done to you.”
“I...I killed people?”
“Not at all. You were used to spread the disease. At this point, I'd wager everyone has been exposed to it. And...once you found Marty.” He seemed to be building up to something, but he held it to himself.
He continued. “You have to understand this. I can't bring you to this place. You have to find it yourself. To do that, there must be three...um, let's call them inputs because I can't think of a parallel. Three people tied together in both proximity and through their emotions. You three have succeeded in that regard, where few others have even tried. Your love for each other has emotionally invested the three of you, and that energy is what has allowed Marty to open this door.”
The door was ajar by about six inches.
“That's where I helped control the swimming zombie,” she added. “There were blue dots and red dots, and such...”
“We just gave him a little nudge,” Al said while passing through the doorway. “But that's because there was only one of you. Now, we have the proper number.”
Liam walked into the room, feeling like he was in a dream. If he was dead, which was still a real possibility, he couldn't figure out why he put a dumpy-looking old computer on a table in the middle of the control room he now entered. It looked like it was about a hundred years old, and had a computer screen with plain green characters on a black background.
Unable to ignore it, and sure it was the answer to whether he was dead or alive, he walked right up to the terminal. A single line flashed patiently at the top of the screen. On. Off. On. Off.
“Welcom
e aboard.”
3
“This, my heroic trio, is the payback for all your recent suffering and trauma. It isn't actually the little computer you see here. This is just what Marty sees in her mind when she thinks about the word 'computer.'”
“Oh, Grandma,” Liam said with some humor. “You're way behind the times.”
"This is why the waterfall is representing all the computers in the world. It's hard for her to visualize such a complicated system without using cosmic terminology."
"That makes perfect sense." He turned to Grandma. "Computers aren't magic or outer-spacey. They're just a bunch of bits and bytes and hard drives..." In just a few words, he'd managed to hopelessly complicate things for her.
"Or, they could also be seen as one computer linked to a waterfall of other computers." Her imagination had built this place. He couldn't explain his feeling of disappointment. He imagined how fantastic it would have been to be dead and have the universe at his fingertips.
“So, how do we use this "waterfall" computer?” Liam said. Turning to Al, “Can we use this?”
“Yes. All three of you can.”
He re-oriented on the terminal. “How?”
“You three have to touch it. It's the final physical link which will confirm you three have access to what's inside. Marty often speaks of miracles. This is the miracle. You three are the first to figure it all out.”
Liam looked at the other two. Neither Grandma nor Victoria showed any recognition at what they'd done. Al seemed to respond to their doubt.
“Just touch the computer, please.”
Again, he looked at the others. Victoria remained still, but Grandma moved closer to the console. She reached out to touch it. “Al hasn't lied to me in all this time. I think we can trust him.”
“If it's good enough for Grandma, I'm in,” said Victoria as she, too, reached out for the computer.
Al stood off to one side, a kindly smile on his face.
“Well,” Liam said with a deep sigh, “if this is some kind of a trick, it's been pretty magnificent.”
“Not a trick,” Al said as Liam reached out his hand.
A series of words sounded in his head—like magic.
“System Boot: Standby for recognition sequence.”
Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 6): Zombies Ever After Page 32