Liam saw fear in his eyes, even two days removed from the event.
“The eyes, dear. The thing had no eyes...but it could see. I could feel its stare on me. It came for me.” He laughed a nervous laugh. “But they turned on special lights which froze it in its tracks. Then they ushered us out of the control room and back to our trucks. They said we had to know what was coming so we had the stomach to do what needed doin'. I've been thinking about it ever since. Not getting any work done here, and Hayes is riding me hard to have things ready.”
He again looked off camera. This time when he continued it was almost a whisper.
“Susan, I have to tell someone. I can't trust anyone here with me as it's clear Hayes has ears everywhere. I don't think he works for who he says he does. He has more power than he lets on. They have me doing research, but his team—his Riverside team—is light years ahead of the rest of us. I asked where they got the man, coffin and all, and all they said was the man did his duty for his country once when he died, and a second time when he came back to life. That can only mean one thing: they pulled him from an actual cemetery. Why would they do that, Susan? Why?”
He readjusted himself at his desk, almost pleading with his wife to believe him.
“I do know this much: the dead man was dressed in army fatigues. They were very old, perhaps World War II vintage. I think he came from the National Cemetery over at Jefferson Barracks. It's by that big quarry—”
The screen froze inside the game.
Everyone was frozen outside the game, too.
6
“Is that the answer?” Liam asked it rhetorically, though he didn't really intend to ask it at all—at least not out loud. He'd been trying to square the men and women he'd seen suffer under the effects of the zombie plague since day one. Were they dead people infected with something that brought them back to life, or were they living people so sick they appeared dead? The word “zombie” was something he ascribed to them, though the more popular, and he had to admit more accurate, term most people used was infected. They had been stricken with a sickness, but the disease process remained a mystery to him, even after meeting the guy who concocted the disease in the first place.
One of the plagues.
Yes, there was that. The big difficulty for them all was there were at least three different viruses involved with this devil's brew of apocalyptic pandemics. Hayes had said as much. But now, if the colonel was telling the truth, the actual buried-in-the-ground dead could also get infected and be made to rise from their graves. That, right there, was the exact definition of a zombie. The thought did not give him comfort.
He answered himself. “The answer to the big question of whether these are zombies or not.”
Blue laughed, “Who the hell is askin' that question? The big question is where do we go to get safe. Does your computer friend have that answer?” She leaned toward the computer and repeated herself. “Where can we get safe, Honkey Tonk?”
Liam didn't correct her mistake. His avatar wouldn't have the answer. That honor belonged to the male avatar—Anonymous.
The woman on the audio link did respond by typing something in the screen.
“Liam. Please clear your three friends from the terminal. I have to say something for you alone. Please hurry. This link won't last forever. Once they figure out where you are, they'll cut me off.”
He wanted to ask question after question, but she instilled a sense of haste into him.
“Guys, give me a minute?” He winked at Victoria, though in the soft blue light he was unsure if she caught it.
The twins mumbled, but walked away from him nonetheless, toward computers on the other side of the room. Victoria seemed less sure of leaving, but she walked several paces in the opposite direction. The control room wasn't much bigger than his family room back at home, so they all remained close. But they couldn't see the small text on the screen, he was sure of that.
“OK, I'm alone,” he typed.
“Liam. I'm being told there is someone trying to trace this connection. I've got a very talented crew working with me. I was able to see you inside the Riverside Hotel—you got my message about shutting off the power. I had hoped that by cutting the power, it would trap Hayes in the building until the good guys could get there and snatch him, but you know how that went.”
Yeah, he knew. The power went out, the zombies spilled out of their cages, and he and Victoria had to rappel down the outside of a skyscraper to escape. Hayes just got in his helicopter and seemingly had it much easier. The mysterious call to Victoria's phone actually endangered him more than it ever was a threat to Hayes. But, as Grandma would say, “The Lord works in mysterious ways, or sometimes not at all.” It all worked out because he and Victoria made it work out.
“We do have people on the ground near you. There's a man we've contacted on the radio named Jason Hawkes on a bluff near that mine. Get out of the quarry and find him. He can help you stay safe.”
Figures it would be him.
“We walked through his camp. One of our party said he was with bad guys. Gun runners or something. He kind of creeped us all out. Should we go back?”
“Hang on.”
A full thirty seconds passed as Liam stared at the blinking cursor on the screen.
“Liam, this is very important. If I get cut off, you must get out of the mine. They'll be coming.”
His mind swam in questions.
“Liam, you've found triplets. You have to get them out of there. You are in great danger.”
That was the second time she'd used that word. He heard a movie line echo in his head. He didn't think the word meant what she thought it did…
“Triplets? I have twins, plus Victoria. Not triplets tho.”
Another long silence.
A burst of characters shot onto the screen, as if someone cut and paste a long answer. It was an email message from someone named Indigo Hamilton to “Mom.”
“Dear mom. I know you'll never get this. I know you're dead. But if you ever do see this—by some miracle—I wanted to tell you I love you and I miss you. Things are getting bad in here. More infected at the exit of the mine and more people in here dying and becoming infected. I'm not sure what I'm going to do next. I love you. Love to Saffron and Azure. Goodbye for now. XX OO IH.”
“We identified your two friends when you entered the mine. We've confirmed they're all sisters. The third one is in there with you, unless she died. She sent her email from the terminal you're using.”
The words flew as he watched.
“Liam, someone on the outside got the idea it takes three people to study the effects of the plague. We're trying to figure it out on this end. Does that mean anything to you?”
At that moment, he remembered the words of Colonel McMurphy as he was in the throes of the virus. He said something to the effect he couldn't totally trust Liam because there were groups that would love to steal his information. That man did indeed have a lot of secret information, though in the end he did share it with Liam by giving him the data chip. Over the past few days, he'd allowed that data to fall into the hands of whoever was at the end of the digital link ending on this computer screen. Not only would it take him too long to explain everything that he'd experienced with Grandma, himself, and Victoria, he wasn't willing to trust that information to someone named Anonymous.
“No, sorry.”
“OK, that's OK. Get the missing girl if you can, but get out.”
His high paranoia returned. He imagined it was Hayes on the other end, or his red-headed wife, guiding him on another misadventure so that he could take over at the last second and avoid doing all the hard work. He'd done that on his initial escape from St. Louis, and he'd had Liam and Grandma jumping through hoops all the way up until the point he took her blood sample with him, after she'd been infected by him. He wanted to end the call.
“Right. So how do we get past all the zombies out there?”
“More than one exit. Schematics.
You have to get out. Find Jason. He knows your Dad. Friends. Patriots. Get—”
The text just ended.
Outside the room, through the broken glass of the small door, red emergency lights began to spin. They looked like the lights you'd find on the top of a police cruiser.
Liam and the girls walked to the shattered door still being blocked by the useless metal bar. It was rust red, with a stamped badge on one end from a 4x4 company.
Sirens began to howl. First, far away in the mine. As each new horn started, he could tell they were getting closer. In a minute, a siren spun up just outside the door. The room with the dump trucks blocking the entrance was very large now that they could see it all, but remained practically empty. He already knew there was a garage door on the near wall, but he saw another large door across the vast room. Large rounded pillars of rough stone supported the ceiling throughout.
There was a missing triplet somewhere nearby.
Triplets. Three players in his weird World of Undead Soldiers dream. He knew now, looking back, those girls were all very similar to the two standing next to him, which meant the remaining triplet would fit into that dream too.
When he got on the bus in his dream, Grandma had wondered if he was really in her dream. What if she was in his? Both in the same dream? And, if that was true, was he responsible for bringing the girls to his side?
He turned to the cavernous space next to the control room, to peer through the larger glass windows on that side. If the third girl had been in this room, it made the most sense to think she'd continued into the adjacent room.
“Blue, Pink, you have a sister, don't you? You're triplets.”
“Yeah, so?” Blue didn't seem to find it odd he would know that.
“Did you know she was here? In this mine?”
The girls walked up to him as Pink responded, “Indy? She's here?” She shook Liam's arm. “Where? Where is she?”
“That's what we're going to find out.” He pointed in the direction he was going, urging them to follow. When he reached the glass door, he looked out into the still-dark room carved from stone. On the near side of the room, he saw a double row of blue string lights lying on the ground. They made a type of path into the darkness, though he couldn't see where they ended while he was still inside the control room.
“Victoria, you with me?”
“Of course. What's wrong, Liam?”
He wished he could tell her. He'd shut off the computer before anyone could see what the woman on the other end had transmitted. Someone was coming for them from outside. Zombies were blocking their escape. A set of triplets would soon be his responsibility. A mysterious typist gave him instructions he couldn't believe, not completely. And, to top it all off, the person they were trying to link up with was a friend of his dad. He didn't think it would help with morale if he dumped that on her, even if he could get her away from the other two.
He held the door handle, about to pull it, when one question popped in his head he knew had an answer. “Blue, Pink, if we do find your sister,” it was completely silly to think it, and it felt silly to ask it, but he thought it was important enough to push through all that and ask, “what color will she be?”
The response was even and simultaneous.
“Black.”
Chapter 12: Columbarium
Liam wasn't surprised. There was something odd about the girls, beyond the strange way they just dropped into his life. Again, questions stacked up inside his brain. What were they doing before the sirens? How come they got separated? What were they doing in the weeks since the sirens? What made them go to the particular spot where he found them?
Not impossible. Just improbable.
Those words echoed from Grandma. What would she say about these two? Back in Cairo, she seemed to know Blue from a dream she'd had.
That's another question!
But he had to tuck all those questions into their own drawers. He was much too busy being scared. The three girls had lined up behind him as they walked into the vast chamber. The line of lights on the ground led off into the darkness. Just enough to see the way, but not bright enough to cut through the pitch black elsewhere. The reflection of blue on the rough ceiling was the only comfort. It felt like walking over a rocky covered bridge with an abyss on each side.
His brain created wild fantasies about creatures in the darkness. Here, he could see a multi-tentacled monster; there, he could see a hockey-masked murderer holding a machete. His eyes strained to see the edge, they wanted to see the edge, if only to assign the proper scale to the place. They tried, to no avail. Eventually he determined it would make him feel much better to watch his path along the blue lights and ignore everything else.
A hum came from the darkness ahead. The sound bounced off the raw earth all around them, but Liam thought he recognized the source.
“Hold up. Do you hear that?” He took a knee as he said it. The blue light was still dim, but his eyes had gotten used to it. The walkway lights were now illuminating the large cavernous room. He could see the floor and ceiling, and one rough-hewn wall was about fifty feet to his right. The left wall was still hidden, somewhere out in the darkness beyond the ability of the ambient light to reach. Or, more likely, beyond the ability of his own eyes to register. He did see great columns of rock, spaced every fifty feet or so; they held up the roof.
The girls all heard the sound, but no one offered any suggestions on what it might be.
When it arrived, it was as he expected. The drone generated a slight breeze as it hovered about five feet above them, just below the rock ceiling. Earlier in the day—or yesterday, he'd lost track of time—a similar drone had hovered above the boat. Whether it was the exact same model, he couldn't say.
“You want me to bash it in?” Blue asked. She picked up a fist-sized rock to make her point. The captain would have shot it down.
He realized he was in charge. Looking around, he saw the three girls crouched in an arc behind him. Now, seeing the formation, he was literally leading them.
Time to say something smart.
“No, whoever is using that drone is here in the tunnels with us. We can't turn around on account of the zom—infected. We need to make friends.”
...or we're dead.
He thought he did pretty well.
Because he didn't know what else to do, he waved at the drone.
It hovered in place, but he knew he was being observed. He felt the eyes through the camera of the sophisticated hardware.
“We only want a place to hide. We won't take your food.” It seemed reasonable to assume the craft could hear audio.
The drone tilted gently and began to move. It got lower, scooted around Liam, and seemed to focus on the girls. After a few moments, the drone moved even closer to the girls. It was closest to Blue.
“I could knock this thing out of the air...just say the word.”
“No!” Liam wasn't sure what he was supposed to do, but he was confident no good could come from destroying the aircraft. “Just let it look.”
It hovered for a full minute, then moved to Pink. Liam's imagination took flight and he began to fret the thing had a gun, but his rational side fought back at the notion. There were a lot more efficient ways of killing than putting a gun on a drone, especially deep in a dark mine.
Just turn out the lights.
He shuddered at the thought. They were at the mercy of the lights.
The drone seemed to finish its sweep. The fan noise increased as it tilted again and went the opposite direction—back toward the control room.
“Well, they know we're here,” Victoria said with some amusement.
Blue, ever serious, replied, “We've just been checked out by a creepy machine, and you think it's funny? The captain was right about you two.”
“What does that—”
The sound of the drone whizzing by cut off Victoria mid-sentence. It appeared to continue ahead, but it stopped and came back to hover in front of them. Then
it jumped ahead, then came back.
“I think it's trying to tell us something,” Victoria observed.
It was pretty obvious the drone wanted them to move forward. Liam stood and was ready to follow when he caught the sound of something behind them. The blue lights on the path far behind them started to wink out.
“Guys...”
They all looked behind. The lights continued to wink out, though it was random. One wink here. One there. Sometimes they'd come back on for a second, then die out again.
The drone actually bumped Liam in the back. His muscles locked up in fright, until he realized what it was.
“OK, guys. Droney says we've got to move. I'm gonna say we should run.”
Blue, as if in a dream, replied, “Those are people. Heading this way.”
Liam knew he had to move, but the surprise of the drone on his back and the sight of a crowd so thick it choked the lights behind them made him hesitate. The twins started to run. Victoria grabbed him by the arm.
“I'm following you,” she said.
“Yeah...we should run now.” He said it to her, but the words were meant for his legs. They weren't listening to his brain.
Luckily, Victoria pulled him.
They ran after the drone.
2
The cavern was immense. The large columns on the left continued as they ran. In a couple minutes, they came to the first body on the ground. Despite everything, the twins stopped when they reached it.
It was badly mangled and despite the blue ambiance, he knew the pool of liquid underneath the corpse was blood red. He'd seen lots of zombie remains over the past weeks—this one had been shot by a powerful caliber. It had ripped several holes in the torso and the killing shot was on the side of its head. A large piece of skull was missing.
On any other day, he might have lost his lunch at the sight.
This time he kept it together. “Keep running, guys.”
Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 4): Last Fight of the Valkyries Page 20