“Don’t stop. Just get through them,” Liam shouted with fear in his voice. He pulled Grandma across.
He had no choice. Without guns, knives, or spears, the only weapon they could wield was speed. There were easily a thousand dead bodies floating in the eight feet of red-tinged water inside the barge hold. The darkness at the bottom, and the movement he imagined there, nearly caused him to “break and run” as they said in his computer game. He wanted more than anything to just swim ahead and leave his friends behind. Wanted more than anything to be out of this deathly sick water forever. It was completely irrational and was the last thing he would do at any other time. But now, he was ashamed he even thought it.
The middle of the barge wall did have a ladder leading out of the hold up to the narrow deck around the hull. But the strong currents flowing into and around the hold made getting there difficult and slow.
He felt his legs and lower body being pushed, pulled, and punched by whatever was below. Taken with the cracking sounds from crushed debris and the noise and spray of the filthy water, he found himself overwhelmed with stimuli. It took everything he had to reach the ladder, and it took every ounce of his being to let Victoria go first so she could help get Grandma up the ladder. Meanwhile, he left himself exposed to the lurking evil below the waves.
The barge started to tilt more severely. Victoria was at the top, but Grandma was still on the ladder. She was unable to lift her leg from rung to rung and hang on at the same time. Victoria had to come back down and lift her slowly and deliberately up each rung. It was slow going.
“You have to hurry. Pull her up!” he said with something approaching anger. Lower, he said, “Please.” He felt a lump in his throat as he couldn't shake the thought something was going to grab him from below. So many bodies, some of them almost had to be reanimated zombies. It was how it happened in the movies.
He gripped the ladder as the whole barge shifted. He stepped up a rung as Grandma started to move up. The water inside the hold met with a new influx of water from over the side, and the wave action shifted the horrible cargo, bringing corpses to the surface again and exposing him to the stench of the recently deceased. It was a powerful and disgusting miasma of rot and death.
And they are moving down there.
He was paralyzed with fear for several long moments as his imagination reveled in the drama. Finally, he checked on the women. He was shocked to see the ladder was empty. They had made it up and moved out of his sight on the top deck. He had to assume they were safely on firmer ground—well, as safe as anyone could be in the middle of the river on a great shipwreck wrapped around a highway bridge.
The barge continued to tip upward, and the water pulled him down as the boat shifted. The cargo hold was nearly topped off with water. Some was rushing back out. Would it sink by tipping straight up and down as he had seen with other barges? He didn't have time to wonder. It tipped back down to a shallow angle, and was held there by the rush of incoming water. Amidst the sloshing cadavers, he turned around to try the ladder again. It wasn't as steep now though the boat was starting to shift downward once more. He'd have to hold on carefully to each rung so as to not slip off, and he'd have trouble getting over the lip at the top, but it wouldn't be impossible.
He had just found purchase on the rungs with his feet when something grabbed his leg and pulled.
The shock forced him to slip from the rung he'd been holding for support. As he dipped below the waves, he reminded himself to thank God.
You saved two out of three of us. Thank you.
He waited for the bite, too exhausted to fight it.
6
The expected bite never came. As he regained the surface, a living person used Liam's body to pull himself up and over to grab the ladder. In a moment of resignation, he could only watch as Duchesne ascended right over him. He held the ladder and kicked at Liam to get him to float out into the dead bodies. An effort which worked. He went underwater as he slid backward through the frozen arms.
When Liam came back up, he saw Duchesne made it to the top of the ladder. Liam struggled to stay afloat; he pushed off the bodies as they shifted in the current.
Don't look at them.
He ignored the rotting faces and focused on Duchesne as he crested the top. He waited while the boat tried to settle again. The lower it got, the easier it would be to gain footing on the deck. This gave Liam the opportunity to catch up. He pulled himself through the bodies, grabbed the ladder, and hauled himself up. A few rungs were all it took to reach the man's lower pant leg.
Liam wrapped his arm around Duchesne's ankle and flung himself outward. Whatever Duchesne had been doing, he lost his grip and fell roughly into the pool of undead. Liam held on the whole way down. It wasn't a soft landing for either of them. Duchesne was beyond angry.
“Liam, you just signed your own death warrant.”
He had fallen more or less straight down, but the barge itself constantly shifted as it slid up and down on its perch on the front edge of the blockage. Duchesne and Liam and their dead friends sloshed around as if in a bathtub.
“All you do is kill people. Why can't you just let us go? We just want to be left alone.”
Liam let himself be pulled with the water away from the ladder, while Duchesne had pushed his way through the dead to be closer to it. Liam was willing to let him climb again because he didn't think he had the energy to stop him. He knew he couldn't win a physical altercation.
Duchesne drew up the first few rungs of the ladder and turned back to Liam. “You're just a little kid. You have no concept what it means to control the fate of billions, so pardon me if I don't care about you or your opinion. I really wanted to keep the three of you together—see how valuable you are to HQ—but I think I've had enough of you and your girlfriend. All I need is your Grandma. You're going to die on this wreck.”
The whole barge shifted considerably as he digested the words. Duchesne held on to the ladder while he went sloshing twenty or thirty feet sideways. He tried to see out of the hold to get a better sense of the wider disaster, but he could only see the tops of the pylons of the nearby bridge.
Duchesne reached the top lip despite all the movement.
“Liam, on second thought, I think I'll do some experimenting with Victoria, just for fun. Consider it a parting gift to for your antics back on the interstate.”
He was so tired, he could only fight back with words. “You already paid me back for that one. Remember? You punched me!”
Instead of a witty rejoinder, Duchesne simply smiled and extended his middle finger.
Liam dug deep. If he was goading him to action—and Liam didn't care—it worked. He began pushing through the dead. He wished he'd been able to get some payback on the thugs who beat up Victoria back at the Arch. Now Duchesne claimed he was going to hurt her, too.
I can't allow that.
**
I am Victoria.
After jumping out of the barge to the nearby roof of a house, Victoria helped Grandma come down off the side of the barge as it dipped low. The wave action helped, though she still slammed down hard.
“Gotcha, Grandma,” she said just after an “oomph” sound escaped.
“Thank you. Sorry for that.”
Unlike the inside of the barge, the world out in the open of the massive river stoppage was in a deadly flux. They sat on the remains of a shingled rooftop. It had been pushed up and onto the debris pile. She had no clue how it held together.
“Grandma, I have to help Liam. He hasn't come over the top yet.”
“Yes, dear. I'll be fine down here. Go!”
In the time it took for her to get Grandma settled on the roof, the barge had pushed up and then fallen back down. She could see a large group of loose barges heading their way from up the river. It looked like someone had deliberately let them all go at the same time. She estimated they had a couple minutes before the wave of iron came slamming in. She intended to use that time well.
&n
bsp; First, she ran over some broken wooden beams that separated from the roof and grabbed a rope hanging over the edge of Liam's barge. It took incredible effort, as her upper body wasn't as strong as her leg muscles, but she gained purchase on the tilting top deck of the flat barge. She could see down into the hold. Duchesne hung from the top rung of the ladder, yelling back to Liam. Liam appeared tiny in the morass of bodies sloshing inside the gigantic hold.
She sized up her options and ran along the edge as she lined Duchesne up for a powerful body slam. He gave Liam the finger as she left her feet. She didn't believe it when he started to turn her way.
7
He was already on his way to try to stop Duchesne when he saw Victoria run up the deck from behind and push him so he fell backward off the ladder. She performed magnificently as she both grabbed him and pushed herself off the side of the deck. They went tumbling into the middle of the barge, and sloshing water carried them all the way out to the edge. He paddled toward them, beat down but not quite out.
Duchesne recovered quickly. He pulled himself onto the upriver side of the deck, which sat near the surface of the water, and kept himself steady. Liam watched as all kinds of small boats, shipping containers, and a million kinds of floating debris moved to and fro not far out in the river. Every last piece headed for the glorified beaver dam.
“Nice try, Victoria. I was hoping we'd get a chance to meet up close and personal, for Liam's sake, but I think I may just leave you both here.” He wiped blood from under his nose, and angrily spit it from his mouth.
“You will never touch me, you sick sonofabitch. I'll hold you down and drown you myself before I ever let you take us again.”
Liam reached her side, unsure on how she planned to execute that threat, but ready to help.
“Too funny. What are you two kids going to do from down there in all those dead bodies? You going to make them come back to life and jump out and kill me?”
Could we?
Liam looked around, wondering if any of these bodies were still alive. Zombie “alive” anyway.
“Maybe I'll just run around this vessel, grab Grandma, and leave you two here? Let the river take care of you.” After a brief pause, he reconsidered. “No, that makes me sound inept. Maybe I'll come back and shoot you both from my helicopter. Hmm, how's that sound?”
Liam saw something approaching on the river. Heading his way, fast.
“Duchesne, what will it take for you to help us get out of here alive if we promise to help you with your experiments? I hate your guts, but the safety of that fortress sounds pretty good from where we sit.”
“Liam, no! What are you saying? I'm not going with him, safety or not. You said we'd take our chances out in the world, together.”
“Aww, how sweet. You two can argue about it all you want. I've already decided I can do this without you two.” He pulled out a handgun from a holster just behind his hip. “Maybe a helicopter is too dramatic. Maybe I'll make sure it's done right and shoot you both myself, right now.”
He knelt on lip of the barge, unable to stand up. He brought the gun to bear, even as the ups and downs of the wave action intensified. Only Liam knew why.
Liam watched the barge towboat—basically a huge tugboat designed to be the engine for dozens of linked floating cargo carriers—pushed a handful of barges directly for them. He heard a dull roar, suggesting great violence was approaching from out on the water.
He threw his last die.
“You lose, Duchesne. Hayes used fake blood on Grandma. She wasn't infected. She isn't the cure. Your men died for nothing. Now you'll die for nothing, too.”
He looked at Liam for a long couple of seconds, calculating. He lowered his gun, just a little.
“So young and naive. I'd almost rather keep you alive just to watch your expressions over and over.”
He seemed to think on it.
“Try this one for size. Are you ready? Hayes and I agreed to tell you that so you'd be inclined to leave him up in his ivory tower.”
He found that very funny, giving a hearty laugh.
“So you see, she was infected. Checkmate, you little punk.”
Liam didn't know how to respond. It was one of his rare moments where his reservoir of snark just spit out blanks. The boat began to lean upward, forcing Duchesne to grab on tighter to the lip of the hold. It didn't stop him from continuing to prod Liam.
“The best part is, you'll never know. You're going to die in there. So long.” He laughed, and tried to raise his weapon, but he became distracted as the tipping accelerated. He managed to fire once before the end.
“What the…!”
The leading barge was on course to t-bone them. It pushed a rush of water in front of it. When the wave arrived, it first dropped the barge down in a great trough, and then raised the entire barge up and then down as the crest arrived. Duchesne fell backward over the side; he got sucked between both boats. The incoming barge hit the blockade almost exactly where Duchesne had been standing, and the violence of it warped the heavy steel frame of their hull. Liam and Victoria sloshed hard against the incoming wave and were thrown again toward the opposite side of their boat. The whole thing shifted under them as the captain of the towboat plowed his cargo into the blockage. It went right over the top of them.
Liam's final act was to pull Victoria directly in front of him, so that he had his arms and legs around her. She did the same in response. He had no time for words, but he looked directly into her beautiful emerald eyes and gave her a wink. It was the kind of thing Grandma liked to do when she was up to mischief. Now it felt like an appropriate remembrance of her.
She has no fear. I wonder if my eyes appear as strong to her?
The driving force of the rogue barge pushed theirs down into the undertow, and drained all the bodies, their own included, into the river, and then under the debris field.
He had just enough time to thank God for letting him die with his friend.
It never occurred to him to pray for a miracle. He'd long since assumed he'd used them all up.
Chapter 16: Tribulation
Marty felt Victoria set her down on the smelly surface of the roof. She encouraged Victoria to run off and help Liam. After a short rest and a short crawl to somewhere a little safer, she felt a head rush as she passed out.
“Hello, Martinette.” The entity using her late husband's identity was back. He stood in front of the open door of the strange room with the computer sitting on the table. “You've done it.”
Marty stepped slowly toward the portal.
“What is all this? What will I find inside?”
“The end. And the beginning.”
Marty reached her limit with his doublespeak. “I will not go in that room until you give me a straight answer.”
Al smiled. “I have no doubt you'd stand here for eternity, my dear.” He stepped into the room, and went to the other side of the 8088 computer sitting on the table. “This really is the end of the line for you, Marty. No one can get you across the river,” he spoke faster, “but you can still save the kids. That's worth coming in here, isn't it?”
“I'm...dead?” She looked over her shoulder to see the stars above. “Oh dear Lord, the stars are going out.” She struggled to keep her composure.
“Yes. I told you before, we're together inside that marvelous head of yours. But, this place is real. You can really save them. All you have to do is come to me.”
She didn't want to surrender the vision of the starfield, though it darkened at an alarming rate.
“So you can help me save them?”
“Together, I think we can, though you may not like my methods.”
That gave her pause. An image popped in her head of a pitchfork-wielding devil. A smooth-talking, dangerous being, full of seemingly good ideas that are actually traps for mankind. She was raised believing the Devil was real. Lately she'd seen the dead walking, the innocent die, and a too-good-to-be-true mirage of her husband whispering ideas to he
r in her mind. It wasn't a far reach to see evil at play.
“Marty, you know I'm not the Devil. Why do you think such horrible thoughts of me?”
“Because you've done nothing to help me all the times you've visited.” But she halted again. That wasn't exactly true. “Well, I suppose some of what you said was useful. I just don't know who or what you are. That makes it hard to trust you.”
“Fair statement. But your friends are out there now. Do you want to know who I really am, or would you prefer to save their lives?”
It wasn't a difficult choice, put in the starkest terms.
“Alright. As long as I don't have to sell my soul. I won't do that for any price.”
“That's a deal. For now, let's see what your computer terminal will let us do.” He motioned for her to come through the door.
Marty took a tentative step forward, and stood at the threshold. Many things swirled through her head, including thoughts of God, death, and the destruction she'd witnessed. But she also saw Al, the real Al, in her mind. She pictured him back at home, sitting on the couch reading his newspaper. He looked up and smiled at her. A small but significant symbol of his undying love, even as he neared his own passing. She also thought of Liam and Victoria…
“I see them. They fell in the water.”
Trap or not, she charged through the doorway to be near the computer. “What do we do?”
“That's my girl,” he said with the thick Jersey drawl he turned on when he wanted to impress her.
A spark of energy coursed through her and reached out to Al and to the ancient computer console. Rather than make any effort at working the ugly gray keyboard, “Al” just put data on the screen using a mix of voice commands and complex hand motions. An incredible amount of data displayed at first, but he pared it down at an impressive speed. What was left on the screen was a series of dots. Two blue dots marked Liam and Victoria—very close together but underneath the collapsed bridge. Beyond them was another blue light—her. She was almost directly above the other two. Appropriate, as they were even now slipping below her under the wreck. Elsewhere the screen was filled with red dots. Some were very close. Since she didn't see other people walking around the debris, she assumed they were zombies.
Since The Sirens Box Set | Books 1-7 Page 84