North of the ditch was a swath of destruction of charred and barren land. The woman had mentioned burning. All the trees and vegetation had been stripped from the land—giving the defenders clear visibility up to the interstate miles to the north.
All told, this town had used its unique geography to maximum effect.
Liam reflected on every book about zombies he'd ever read. No matter how strong the fortress, no matter how dedicated the watchmen…
“I give this place two weeks.”
5
Victoria gave him a knowing look. “This is where you tell me what you're thinking, right?”
He laid his bike on the gravel, and tentatively felt his head wound after it was down. “Did you know today was my birthday? When I checked my phone earlier I noticed a little reminder.” He walked off the pathway to sit on the upper incline of the levee, facing the Mississippi and the workers at the ditch. He spoke as Victoria did the same.
“I've decided I'm going to be seventeen from now on.” He looked at her as she sat next to him. “Do you think people will believe I'm seventeen?”
“Why? Why seventeen?”
He took a long time to look out over all the work being done on the defenses of his new home.
“Because of that. Because of zombies. Because of people like Hayes. The survivalists. The military. I can't be a kid anymore. This place, this situation we've found ourselves in—it requires someone older. And, because no one is going to be checking ID in the Apocalypse, I figure I can get away with it.”
He'd made the realization about identity many days ago. He just never imagined he would be one to capitalize on it.
“Well, I guess it makes sense.”
Feeling the need to justify himself, he continued, “That woman back there, she's wrong. She can complain all she wants about digging and losing houses. But you've seen them in action. If the zombies come through here in the numbers we saw in St. Louis, even the ditches won't help them. Then she'll wish she'd been out there to make the ditch a foot wider or deeper, instead of causing trouble.”
He pulled at some grass, then turned back to her. She was very close. “I hate to admit this, because I've spent two days in recovery, or whatever, but I want to leave. I want to find my parents. I want to—” He slid his phone from his pocket and showed it to her. “—find the reason for this text message. And to do that...you and I can't get stuck in this place handling dirt. The woman did have one thing right: there's no way she should have to dig if all those people in our house are just sitting around playing video games. That won't last long. When the military comes calling, we need to be gone.”
“Hmm. Well, then it sounds like we have a few pieces of housekeeping to take care of before we get started.” She coughed to get his attention. When he turned in her direction, she notified him of her intentions by puckering her lips.
When their kiss was over, she pulled away with a broad smile. “That's for the big one-seven. Happy birthday.”
Thinking fast, Liam shot back, “Actually, why don't I say I'm eighteen instead. Happy one-eight?” He puckered his lips, but she gave him a mock slap on the cheek instead.
“No way you're getting past me. If you're gonna be eighteen, then I'll have to change my age to nineteen. Pretty soon we'll both be thirty and I don't want to age that fast.”
She tried to fake a stern look, but relented under his puppy dog eyes. “Oh alright. I'll give you one to grow on.”
Liam and Victoria kissed for a length of time well short of what he wanted, but given the hard labor being done on the fields below them, he grudgingly admitted she got the time exactly correct. They both stood to leave.
“Wait a minute.”
“We should leave, there's a truck coming.” She pointed the direction they'd come from. A white pickup truck was slowly driving along the gravel road on top of the levee. It was still far down the line.
His phone was already out, so he had no problem calling up a map. Much of the internet was down, but luckily he was able to access the map service of one of the largest online search engines. In fifteen seconds, he had what he was looking for. “Wow, the internet is fast when no one's on it.”
“Koch Hospital Quarry. That's what the message said.” He paused, looking at the data. “Oh crap. I know this place.”
He held up his phone to show her, but she didn't recognize it. He pocketed his phone and talked as they gathered their bikes.
“Let me take you back in time...oh, about two weeks...a young boy and his hot, overdressed Apocalypse Friend took a ride on a train to escape St. Louis. Ringing any bells?” He knew it would, she was there. “And on that train ride, they happened upon a pit quarry where cars drove off the nearby highway into a loop the loop going down into the mine—”
He was trying to be funny, but made a sad observation that tempered his humor. He ended it abruptly with, “—it's the place where Jones died.”
They walked down the inside slope of the levee, into town.
“The place was crawling with zombies. You really expect to go back there?”
Liam thought about the irony. They took a train out of the city on a rail line that ran along the edge of the Mississippi River. Later, they paddled a boat up the river right along the same route. The big difference was they were too exhausted paddling the boat to dwell on the fact they had been there before. Now, the thought of going back to the place Jones sacrificed himself by driving a large dump truck over the zombie horde wasn't sitting well with him.
“I don't want to. Thinking about all those zombies from that train ride gives me the creeps. But we know the zombies have been moving around, called by the sirens downtown and then chased out again when they shut off. We might be OK.”
Liam expected her to point out the weak link in his plan: “might.”
“Well, step one of your plan was kissing me. What's step two?” She paused, but caught herself. “And you can't say kissing again.” She laughed as she sat up on her bike, ready to pedal back to the house.
“In that case, step two is finding weapons and food. Step three is finding transportation north. Step four is...”
As they rode and discussed their goals, he realized how flimsy the whole thing sounded—when spoken out loud. On the thinnest of clues, he was going to head out into the wilderness with his girlfriend, on the off chance something was going on at the very quarry where he witnessed thousands of zombies attacking living people trying to escape the city. At best, they might find clues as to the origin of the plague as the text message suggested. At worst, they might find themselves dead.
None of the alternatives were attractive though. Being put to work, used up, on a futile effort to forestall the zombies from kicking this place into the river. Or put in prison. He wondered if he was a wanted man by the Marine Corps.
As he rode, the part of his brain where he compartmentalized the concept of “hero” spilled out into his psyche. It tended to get him into danger, but he looked into the small homes as he rode by. Each was filled with refugees from somewhere else. Memphis. St. Louis. Cincinnati. And he couldn't help but think each and every one of them was going to die soon, unless someone did something more than dig ditches. They need someone to be the hero.
He wanted to be the guy to look ahead for them. See the big picture. He could think of plenty of examples of literary heroes even younger than him. He wasn't just going sit around and wait for someone else to be heroic for him.
Thinking back to the crowd complaining about the digging, and the crowd of wretched people already doing the digging, he understood that just because there was a Zombie Apocalypse in progress, it didn't mean everyone magically joined hands in a mutual effort to survive. The old problems remained: mistrust, allocation of dwindling resources, self-defense, food, water, power, internet. There were ten thousand things the good people of Cairo, Illinois had to deal with on any given day. All of it was tactical—local.
Liam thought of himself as a strategic thinker.
His books all said the hero would have to break out from the rest of the population. It would take someone with foresight to save mankind by finding the cure.
It isn't down in that ditch. But maybe it's down in a quarry.
He tried to convince himself it was a hero's plan.
Chapter 4: Ghosts of the Colonel
Liam was willing to travel anywhere if he thought there was a chance they'd learn something new about the crisis afflicting the world, but he liked to have as much intel as possible when he put his life on the line. The text message was cryptic, to be sure. The only other possible clue was the data chip he carried—
—he slapped his pocket, worried the photograph had been taken when he...was stripped...of his old clothes. Victoria had indeed replaced it.
Phew.
He'd been thinking about the data chip during their bike ride and was struck by something so obvious he'd almost missed it.
“When we get back to our house, we should see if any of those guys have a laptop we could borrow. If we can find one with a card reader, we might be able to read what's on the colonel's data chip. Then we might know more about what we're dealing with.”
“Sounds good!” Victoria reveled in the breeze as they cruised through the squat houses of the residential area. He let himself go, just a little, and simply enjoyed his time with her having what, in the old days, was called “fun.”
By the time they reached their destination, Liam had already prepared his speech for the other kids inside. As he laid his bike in the grass in front of the house, he noticed some downed branches and small trees on the side of the property.
“When we leave we can check out those trees to see if we can make some spears. They look like the size we need.” Victoria nodded as she parked her cruiser.
“And also,” he continued, “if we find a laptop, and if it has a card reader, and if we can borrow it, we should go somewhere private to look at this.” He patted his pocket. “As much as I would love to get a group of friends to go with us to investigate that mine, I don't want to be responsible for anyone.”
He saw her look. “You are all I can handle.”
“Handle? You think you can handle me?” She hopped around the back tire of her bike and stretched out to capture him, but he sidestepped her and started to zig zag across the yard. She gave chase and for a few moments they ran in crazy circles, laughing and giggling.
It ended when Liam slipped in the tall grass, and Victoria tripped and fell over his legs. They both ended up on their backs as they caught their breath.
“Oh man, we're going to have chiggers out the yin yang,” he said. He looked at his legs below his cargo shorts. The grass was thick and unkempt.
“Chiggers?” she replied.
“You don't have chiggers in Colorado?”
“You mean mosquitoes?”
“No, much worse.” He stood back up, sticky with sweat, and brushed his exposed lower legs. She wore jeans, so she focused on her arms. “Everything is always worse, these days.” His mood turned sour. “We can't even enjoy five minutes of fun anymore.”
“Hey.” She looked at him while she held her arms in front of her so he could pull her off the ground. “I had fun on our bike ride. That was nice.”
A tour of our zombie defenses; every boy's dream.
He smiled, partially mollified. It was fun. Her smile cut through almost all his other worries, save one.
“Do you think Grandma will be safe here? Will she be OK without us to look out for her?” He scanned the neighborhood. A few people walked up and down the street; they looked lost. He imagined each house had a similar group of strangers trying to get a handle on what they were going to do next to survive. His path led back to St. Louis, but Grandma's days of travel were likely over, at least until she had both reliable transportation and somewhere safe to go.
“I think you worry too much, Mr. Peters.” She gave him a playful push and took off around the side of the house. He was left standing there. An older couple happened to be walking the street nearby and he felt their eyes on him. They gave him a little wave.
He returned a clumsy salute, then gave chase.
2
Victoria volunteered to go inside and secure a laptop. It took her about five minutes and she came out and sat down on the back porch steps next to him. She handed him a very thin silvery model.
Liam's expression presented a question for her.
“I just flashed my eyebrows and a young lad about your age surrendered his laptop for me.” She giggled playfully.
He had no idea whether she was telling the truth. The look on his face said exactly that.
“Oh Liam, you're too gullible. Do you think I'd do that?” She didn't give him time to answer. “No! I told Grandma what we needed and she asked the other kids. A youngster gave up his laptop for her, along with this funny card reader, just like you asked. Lucky, huh?”
He tried to mask his naivete with a laugh. He truly had no idea what she was capable of doing with her charm, though he had no doubt she could make a formidable opponent when she put her mind to it.
“OK, let's see what we've got.” He pulled out the chip from off the back of the photograph. He punched it into the tiny card reader, pulled up the hard drive, and saw it was filled with video files. He was tempted to start at the end, but decided if they were going to honor the man's memory, they should at least view them in the order he'd labeled them.
The first video showed Colonel McMurphy at his desk inside the dingy tent where Liam had originally met him. He was the administrator of the Elk Meadow research camp. In the video, he had set up the camera in the back corner of his tent so it put him in the center of the frame, but whoever sat at his desk would be in the frame too, facing the camera. His first reaction was to wonder if his first visit was in this list of videos somewhere. Was he that important?
“Test. Test. Test. I'm Colonel Rufus McMurphy, recording this for anyone I deem important enough to need to see it.” He laughed like he just told a sad joke, then stood up and moved toward the camera, apparently to turn it off.
The video was short and sweet.
The next one was just as short.
“I don't know how to use this video editing software, so I just have to put whole movies into my folder. The next video is when I first met Ms. Jane Spencer. Health and Human Services.”
Liam had heard that name before. When he saw her on the video, he knew for sure.
“Our friend, Jane!”
“Shh!” was Victoria's reply.
In the video, the red-headed woman walked into the tent wearing a white button-down blouse, with the top couple buttons undone—not unreasonable given the apparent temperature in the scene. She also wore a long black skirt and a military-style cap which looked completely out of place.
He'd never seen Jane wear clothing like that, so he thought it was kind of funny. “Wow. She's dressed like she's in a music video.”
Victoria elbowed him to be quiet, but he heard her laugh too.
Jane walked in and reached across the colonel's desk to shake his hand. She leaned over, giving the colonel an inappropriate view down her shirt.
Victoria gave a curt whistle. “Wow, she's workin' him.”
“Welcome to the Elk Meadow Camp, Ms. uhhh?”
“Spencer. Jane Spencer. HHS.” She held his hand for a moment, looked pointedly in his eyes, then pulled back. “Thanks for inviting me here.”
“Please, sit down. I'm afraid we don't have all the creature comforts yet, but we do have chairs.”
She took a seat.
“Colonel, I'll get right to it. I'd like this camp to be the first fallback position for our main operation in downtown St. Louis. As you've been briefed, we're expecting a large number of—let's call them immigrants—who will be residing in our—hotel—down by the Arch. The facility is very secure, so don't concern yourself with worry there, but we can't control what happens in the streets outside that facility and it could make ope
rational security of our personnel very difficult. I like to plan three steps ahead in everything I do, and I believe having this delightful country retreat as my first fallback will be advantageous to us both.”
“Both?”
“Of course. You see, my group has access to all manner of government equipment. Even some cutting edge stuff they haven't sent out to you Army-types yet. If you take care of protecting my refuge here, I'll provide you with as much gear as you require.”
“That's very generous of you. I guess HHS is pretty much running the show now, huh?” He tried to be friendly about it, but Liam detected a deeper question there.
“Strictly speaking, I'm not with HHS. More of an adjunct working with the Centers for Disease Control, but for the purpose of placing me in an org chart, HHS is close enough. I was told I could count on your team to execute our mission though; does that sound right?”
Liam saw through her conniving ways. Did the colonel?
“Yes. I've been instructed to give you every accommodation here.”
“Thank you, Colonel, I really appreciate that. But don't worry, it's not like I'm going to take your air conditioned tent or anything, I'll just be looking for a dry space on a rainy day. I can depend on you for that, right?”
“Won't be a problem.” His tone was neutral.
“I'm going to leave one of my assistants here to discuss the details with you. I have to be getting back to my main office to continue the preparations there. Time is growing short.” She paused for a moment, studying the colonel, as her demeanor changed from pleasant to inquisitive and then back to jovial. “However, in the next week or two, I insist you come downtown to see what we're doing. I think you are the type of man who would like to know what he's fighting for. And fighting against. Deal?”
The colonel nodded.
“Work it out with my assistant.” She stood up and moved closer to his desk. She held her arm out for a handshake, and waited this time for the colonel to reach across his desk to her.
Liam spoke up. “Did you see that, she made the colonel lean over to shake her hand. She put herself in charge.” None of it came as a surprise. Hayes and his wife had run around like they owned the Apocalypse. It was because they were part of the National Internal Security organization, or were, and literally could do whatever they wanted.
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