Valkyrie: Rat in the Dumpster

by Tony Bowman

  “We can barricade it, Rat. Trust me. It’s either this or we hike across the bridge to the FEMA office – and I sure as hell don’t want to walk through there at night, do you?”

  Rat shook her head and put her hand on the Glock’s grip. The gun comforted her. “Carter, we can stay the night – but this place is a death trap. Promise me we’ll book out of here at dawn, please?”

  Carter started to say something.

  “Stop right there! Don’t come any closer!” a woman’s voice called from the glass door to the Robinson Center.

  Rat pulled the Glock and took aim.

  Carter stepped into her line of fire, “Wait! Don’t shoot, Rat.”

  “Dude, never block my shot. Are you nuts?” Rat complained.

  “Carter? Is that you?” the woman asked.

  Rat could see her now: a blonde woman wearing a blue police uniform.

  “Yeah, Katy, it’s me,” Carter called toward the door. He turned back to Rat, “Put it down.”

  “Hey, you tell her to put hers down first.”

  “Rat, I know her. She’s a cop. Put the gun down.”

  “Behind you!” the blonde cop yelled.

  Rat spun on her heel toward the street.

  A dark shape was running toward them from across the road. Even at this range, she could hear the raspy breathing of one of the black ink zombies.

  Rat fired twice.

  The creature jerked backward as both bullets hit it square in the heart.

  It stopped running in the middle of the street, looking down at the black stains on its shirt. Then it screamed and ran straight at Rat.

  She fired again. This time the bullet rocked the monster’s head back as its forehead exploded.

  Head shot, Rat thought. Of course it would take a…

  The creature staggered to the left and shook its head. Then it screamed and ran toward her again.

  “No fucking way,” Rat whispered as she fired round after round toward it.

  Carter raised the twelve gauge and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.

  He ran toward Rat and shoved the shotgun into her hand, “Here. Make this work.”

  Rat racked a shell and fired.

  Five feet away, the monster’s head exploded in a spray of black and gray. He tumbled onto the steps at Rat’s feet.

  Rat pumped another shell just to make sure. “I shot it in the head. Nine-millimeter. Head shot didn’t kill it. That’s not possible.”

  “Well, the shotgun took care of it.”

  She looked at him, her eyes wide, “Because I blew its head off completely. How many shells you got?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “Oh, man. We’re going to need more shotguns, Carter.”

  The blonde cop stepped up beside them, “You two better get inside. These things have been prowling around here for hours.”

  We’re all going to die, Rat thought.

  The marble atrium had windows floor to ceiling thirty feet high. The few occupants of the Robinson Center had piled whatever they could find against the bottom six feet of the glass. Hand carts, tables, and chairs had been stacked haphazardly across the atrium.

  “They don’t seem to pay much attention unless they can see you,” the policewoman said as she came in beside them and chained the front door shut. She held out her hand to Rat, “Katy Ingraham.”

  She nodded, “Rat.”

  Katy looked at Carter who just smiled and shook his head.

  “Nice to meet you…”

  “Carter, we need to get out of here,” Rat said. “It isn’t safe.”

  “Katy, anybody hurt?” Carter asked.

  “Scrapes and bruises. We had one get bit,” Katy said as she looked at the floor. “He didn’t make it.”

  Carter pushed the stretcher of supplies toward the open door to the theater, “I’ll check everyone over.”

  Rat stepped in front of the stretcher, “Hey, man. I’m serious. We need to get out of here. We’re sitting ducks in here.”

  “Rat,” Carter said. “You need to calm down. We’re safer in here than we are out there.”

  “No, Carter. We’re not. Out there, we can see what’s coming. If they storm this place, we’re toast.”

  “It’s not so bad. It’s more secure than it looks,” Katy said. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

  Carter smiled, “Go on with Katy. I need to go help these people.”

  “They just finished renovating this place,” Katy said as they walked. She pointed at the emergency exits. “Those doors only open from the inside. As you can see, we’ve barricaded them.”

  They reached the end of the hallway. She pointed to a glass doorway. It was also barricaded. “That’s the entrance to the parking garage. We blocked it completely. We even pushed a couple of tons of junk into the stairwell. Nothing can come up into the center.”

  “Look, you’ve done a good job, it’s just… Boxes are meant to be opened. Sooner or later, something will.”

  Katy smiled and Rat found herself warming up to the cop, “Okay, Rat. What do you suggest we do?”

  Rat was used to adults patronizing her. They all did it. But, she didn’t sense this in the woman’s tone. She bit her lower lip and looked back down the hall to the entrance. “The weakest spot is the front entrance. That’s where they’ll break through. Chain all the inner doors to the theater except one. Setup barricades there.”

  Katy smiled, “A kill zone?”

  “We’ll take a few out with us. Of course, if those flying things come back it won’t matter.”

  “Come on,” Katy said. “Time you met everyone else.”

  The Robinson Center Theater was cavernous. Thousands of people could sit in the main area or in the balcony above and watch the play or listen to the orchestra below. But tonight, only a handful of people sat near the stage.

  “This is everyone?” Rat whispered as they walked down the aisle.

  “Yes,” Katy said. “Eight, counting you and Carter.”

  “Ow! Damn, that hurt worse than the claw did in the first place,” an old man yelled from his seat on the edge of the stage.

  “Sorry, Mr. Turner,” Carter said as he wiped at the wound on the man’s upper arm with a piece of gauze.

  “Call me Clint, Doc.”

  “You were lucky. Any deeper it might have cut something important.”

  “Rat, this is Clint Turner,” Katy said.

  The old man squinted at her with sharp blue eyes above his long white beard, “Rat? What the hell kind of name is that?”

  “Mine.”

  The old man smiled and laughed, “I like her.”

  “Clint, Rat here thinks we need a kill zone at the theater entrance,” Katy said as she pointed back at the door at the top of the aisle. “What do you think?”

  “What do I think? What kind of damned fool question is that? That’s what I told you when we first barricaded the doors.”

  Katy looked at Rat and smiled, “Well, I’m going to leave it to you two tactical geniuses.”

  “We’re going to need more of those tables like you stacked against the windows out front,” Rat said.

  “There’s a ton of them back stage,” Clint said. He stared at her hip. “You know how to shoot that Glock?”

  “Yeah, but we need shotguns. You have to take their heads off.”

  “No, you don’t. You need to hit the brainstem. Aim just below the chin or in the mouth. With that nine-millimeter piece of crap you’d best try for the throat – less bone to get in the way.”

  Rat shook her head, “How do you know that?”

  The old man reached down and picked up an AR-15, “Because I stood up on the roof and shot the bastards till I figured it out.”

  As Rat and Clint stacked tables against the open door at the top of the theater, Clint told her he had come into Little Rock for supplies that morning. His home was thirty-five miles northwest of the city.

&n
bsp; “You some kind of hermit or something?” Rat asked.

  Clint scratched at his beard, “What makes you say that?”

  “I don’t know, you just seem like a hermit.”

  “Yeah, well, just ‘cause a man chooses to live by himself in the woods and prepare for the breakdown of western civilization don’t necessarily make him a hermit. Makes him a visionary. In this case, makes me look damn near like a genius, huh?” Clint said as he steadied a wooden table across the doorway. “’Course, I was expecting government black helicopters, the new world order, or terrorists. I wasn’t expecting space aliens and zombies.”

  “You think they were aliens?” Rat asked.

  “Well, they sure weren’t terrorists.”

  “Los demonios,” a woman said. She looked to be in her mid-thirties. She was carrying two bottles of water and pressed one into Rat’s hand.

  “Gracias, Consuela,” Clint said as he took the second bottle of water from her. “Rat, Consuela Munoz.”

  “Los Demonios?” Rat repeated.

  “Demons. From the Bible. The winged creatures were demons,” she reached out and touched the crucifix around Rat’s neck. “A good Catholic girl like you should know that.”

  “Oh, I’m not Catholic. The nuns at the home gave me this.”

  “Mama! I have something on the radio,” a boy called out from the front of the stage.

  Rat looked at Clint.

  He smiled at her, “Go on, Rat. I’ll take first watch on the barricade.”

  “This is the Global News Network broadcasting on shortwave from Los Angeles, California. The demon cloud is now eight hours from Los Angeles. We have lost contact with our affiliates in Denver, Saint Louis, and Chicago, in addition to the entire east coast,” the announcer’s voice said over the small battery powered radio in Luis Munoz’s hands.

  “The phenomenon evidently began in Charlottesville, Virginia twenty hours ago. As the cloud reaches an area, all communication is lost from the region. People who have managed to leave the cloud shrouded area are telling stories of winged creatures killing indiscriminately. There are also uncomfirmed reports of creatures who infect people with a rabies like illness. The press is referring to these creatures as ghouls because they have been observed consuming the bodies of the dead.”

  Ghouls, Rat thought.

  “The government is warning people to seek shelter indoors.”

  A second voice cut in on the radio, “There are other things in addition to the ghouls and demons…”

  “We don’t know that they’re demons,” the first voice corrected.

  “Fuck off. I saw them in Salt Lake City before we flew out. There were people drinking their victim’s blood. And, there were these huge monsters covered in fur – like werewolves.”

  Rat looked up at Carter, “Did he just say werewolves?”

  Luis nodded, “And vampires. I swear to God he described vampires.”

  “Don’t blaspheme, Luis,” Consuela whispered.

  “Sorry, Mama.”

  “There’s no such thing as vampires or werewolves,” Carter said as he knelt down by the radio.

  “Yeah, well a few hours ago there was no such thing as demons or ghouls,” Rat grumbled.

  “It’s hysteria,” Carter said. “That’s all. People are scared.”

  The first announcer continued, “The president and vice-president are dead. Air Force One was shot down by an unknown individual as it was coming in for a landing at LAX shortly before noon…”

  The second announcer was laughing, “Unknown individual? Seriously? We have it on video – a guy walked onto the runway, drew a circle around himself, mumbled some Latin, and launched a fireball at the plane. A witch killed the president.”

  Consuela genuflected, “God rest their souls.”

  Rat grabbed Carter’s lapel, “We have to get out of here.”

  Rat had found a stairwell backstage that led up to the roof. She stood looking out at the fires burning on the north side of the lake. The fires on their side had died out. The distant flames lit the underside of the grey cloud in shades of amber and crimson.

  “It’s dangerous up here,” Carter said as he walked up beside her.

  “It’s dangerous down there too,” Rat said. “Werewolves?”

  “We haven’t seen anything like that,” Carter said.

  “Doesn’t mean they’re not out there. Carter, please, first light let’s get out of here. We’re going to die in this place.”

  “So, we’re just supposed to leave everyone behind down there? Katy, Clint, Mrs. Munoz and her kids?”

  Rat stared at the skyline, “Clint will make it on his own. The rest of them won’t. Katy’s holding this place because, in the back of her mind, she thinks the cavalry is coming. They’re not. Consuela’s waiting on God. He’s not coming either.”

  “Got it all figured out don’t you?”

  “I know we’re going to die here.”

  “You’re a survivor, Rat. You got that cold detachment. You can look past the blood and the horror and do what needs to be done.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “My point is, you need to make some space in that sociopathic brain of yours for some compassion. You’re a survivor, Rat. But, that’s not enough. You can save these people. People like you and Clint, you’re wired different from the rest of us. And, I think this day is the reason people like you evolved – to help the people around you survive.”

  Rat shook her head, “First light, I’m helping myself. You’re welcome to come with me.”

  Rat spent four hours covering the “kill zone” she and Clint had created, allowing the old man to sleep.

  Carter’s words had bothered her. She had always prided herself on being able to take care of herself, but now what she had once thought of as her best trait made her feel cowardly. Rat looked toward the stage. Consuela and her three children were huddled together in the padded theater seats. Katy was curled in a fetal position on the stretcher while Carter slept on the stage below her.

  Clint snored leaning back in a theater seat near Rat.

  She was almost seventeen. These people were adults – most of them anyway. She wasn’t responsible for any of them.

  So why did she feel like a piece of crap?

  Clint woke up at six AM and Rat left the barricade to him. She climbed the steep stairs backstage to the roof.

  The dawn was strange. A barely discernible lightening of the grey cloud above lent a soft white glow to the streets of Little Rock. She looked out at the mist-shrouded lake and the bridge that ran by the Robinson Center and across to the other shore.

  Empty cars were packed bumper to bumper across the bridge.

  The fog shifted. Near the center of the bridge, a massive shape loomed.

  Rat leaned forward on the roof edge, mindful of the long drop to the alley below with its line of dumpsters. She squinted, trying to make sense of the shape in the middle of the bridge.

  And, then she knew.

  “What the hell did you drag me all the way up here for?” Clint complained as she half dragged him across the flat roof.

  “You know about military stuff, right?”

  “Yeah, what…”

  “Is that a tank?” Rat asked pointing toward the bridge.

  Clint shrugged free and squinted. “No. That ain’t a tank.”

  “Well, what is it then?”

  “That kiddo is an M2 Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle.”

  Rat smiled as the fog whispered away, revealing a huge sand colored vehicle on treads. “It’s a tank.”

  “No. Not technically. See that gun in the turret there? That’s a twenty-five millimeter machine gun. A tank would have a breach loading cannon of some type…”

  “How many people can that thing hold?” Rat asked. Her mind was racing.

  “Umm, nine I think. You got the driver, the commander, the gunner, and six troops…”

&
nbsp; Rat threw her arms around Clint’s neck and kissed his cheek.

  “What’s that for?” Clint asked.

  She was smiling from ear to ear, “We’re getting out of here. All of us.”

  “Okay, just slow down a second,” Katy said. They were all standing on the stage listening as Rat talked. “Clint, did you see that tank yesterday?”

  Clint rolled his eyes, “For Pete’s sake, it ain’t a tank. I keep telling you…”

  “Clint!” Katy said.

  “No, I didn’t see it. There’s dead National Guard boys lying all around it. Looks like they tried to take the bridge and hold it. Didn’t work out for them.”

  Katy nodded, “Could you see exhaust? Is it still running? For all we know, it could be out of gas. The batteries could be run down. The inside could be filled with ghouls.”

  Rat shook her head, “We won’t know till we check it out.”

  “No,” Katy said. “It’s too risky.”

  Rat gritted her teeth, “Who put you in charge?”

  Katy pointed to her badge, “The city of Little Rock. I’m the only police officer here, and public safety is my job. We’re going to stay here until help comes.”

  Rat laughed, “Help? Nobody’s coming to help us. Everybody’s dead, lady. We’re on our own.”

  Katy shrugged, “Okay, Einstein. Say we get the tank… sorry, the Bradley. Where are we going to go? The radio is dead silent. There’s no place to go.”

  Clint scratched his chin, “That ain’t necessarily so.”

  “Tell them, Clint,” Rat said.

  “My farm is thirty-five miles from here. I got food, survival rations. Enough to feed the eight of us for a decade at least. Solar power. And, I got guns. A lot of guns.”

  Consuela took his hand and smiled, “Thank God for crazy rednecks.”

  Katy looked at Carter.

  He smiled, “They make sense, Katy.”

  “Damned right we make sense,” Clint said. “That little pink haired kid’s a genius.”

  Katy looked at the floor, “Consuela, you and your kids are my number one concern…”