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 “oomf” 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, go dear. I'll be fine down here.”
“Pray for us?”
“Of course. 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.
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 with 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 tow—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 tugboat 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 her 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.
Now most of the red dots disappeared, leaving only a handful of yellow dots.
“OK, these are the ones we want. The swimmers. One is nearby.”
“Are you saying this computer can control the zombies?”
“Wouldn't that be great? No, Martinette, I'm saying this terminal will allow us to project emotion to one particular zombie, much like you could sense the thoughts and emotions of Victoria and Liam on the rubber boat. Only this time the link isn't with someone close to you, which is why we need this computer to focus it.”
“But the zombies are dead. Right?”
“Unfortunately, yes. But they still have primitive functions requiring low-level activity in their brains. Motor control. Hand-eye coordination. Hunger. That sort of thing. They may look evil, but they're not possessed demons. They're more akin to rabid animals. Those animals are filled with primal needs. All we're going to do is give a nudge toward one of those needs.”
He began entering a long sequence of characters, much too fast for Marty's tired eyes to follow. It took several minutes, leaving her itching to ask what was taking so long.
“I sense your concern, but time doesn't flow the same when the brain is near death. Trust me. Rest assured this little computer is merely symbolic. Your brain is the real engine I'm manipulating. I'm working as fast as your brain can process data.”
“Oh dear. I'm afraid my old brain isn't much good for that. This is the first time I've used a computer.” She gave a little chuckle despite the circumstances.
“Don't worry about that. Your brain is already a supercomputer, even if you don't use physical computers.”
“OK, I think I've got everything lined up. Sadly, the element of chance cannot be factored out of my equations. This is, as you would say, a best guess.”
“I guess you can't be a Devil or an Angel if you aren't all-powerful. I don't know if that makes me feel better or worse.”
“Not even God would want to eliminate random chance. If that were true, nothing would be able to happen without his express consent. Why would a supreme being would want that kind of minutia to tend? To say nothing of free will.”
“So you could still be a Devil. Oh my lands.”
“I guess you'll just have to find out when you find out, Martinette. Are you ready to roll the dice?”
“I don't gamble.”
“Fair enough. I'll do it.”
He simulated a cup of dice being tossed. To Marty's dismay, more and more dice spilled from the cup. It was a never-ending stream of six-sided chance cubes coming out of an impossibly deep cup.
All she could do was pray.
2
Liam was in a dream world. He opened his eyes during his underwater journey, and was dismayed to look down into the greenest water he had ever seen. Light filtered down through holes in the pile up above, into the murky water, and it stretched down below them. His eyes burned in the dirty water, but he didn't figure he'd be needing them if he was dead.
From below he saw something impossible.
I say that word a lot these days.
An impossible hand reached up to him.
The hand was attached to an arm, which was connected to a body. The thing's face was death itself. Black eyes. White skin. Nondescript black clothes.
Drowning and death by zombie. What a way to go.
He hoped Victoria had her eyes closed so she didn't have to meet her fate like this.
The zombie swam directly at them, even as the current pushed them downriver underneath the monstrous wreck. Liam imagined himself kicking it, but the current was too strong to move his legs.
The zombie rammed them. Instead of chomping a leg or hanging on to get a better place to bite them, it kept kicking upward. It changed their trajectory in the current. Instead of going down or sideways in the turbulence, they went up.<
br />
His head popped up in a cave of sorts. The zombie still pushed upward, even though they were now half out of the water.
“Victoria!”
“How did you do that?”
He had no time to respond. He wondered what he should do to the zombie swimming against him like a robot. They were all intertwined in some metal supports from the downed bridge. He grabbed on as best he could. The concrete deck was in pieces but the flat surface was just behind them.
Should I kick him away or say thanks?
It felt horrible but he kicked the zombie away. It lost contact with his body, squirted by Victoria—giving her a terrible fright—and fell under the surface going toward the back of the small cave. It kicked the whole way.
I'm so sorry. And thank you.
“We're still alive, Liam. This is a miracle.”
Thinking of the mysterious zombie, he tended to agree. Some kind of miracle just took place. Liam yelled “Thank you, whoever did that!”
Victoria responded, “Thank you, God!”
“Yes, thank you God.”
Liam used the support beams to work himself around the tangled mess of crumpled superstructure, toward the opening up to the surface of the wreck. Victoria followed.
“You saw Duchesne die, right? That wasn't just a dream was it?”
Liam replied to her. “He was—”
He paused. Duchesne definitely fell directly into the path of the incoming juggernaut, but he'd read enough books to know that didn't mean anything.
“He's most likely dead. Though I'd have told you we were most likely dead, too, if you had asked a minute ago. I think we're safe for the moment.”
Inwardly, Liam knew that last bit was a stretch. None of them were safe in the post-collapse world, but more immediately they were in mortal danger just for being on the shifting river wreck. They still needed to find a way off.
He reached the sunlit hole in the broken bridge deck above them. There was plenty of room for him to crawl through and slide onto the surface. He landed on the side of a flipped barge, floating as part of the mass of junk. More free-floating barges were crashing into the blockade. They needed to get off the drift.
Stop the Sirens: Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse, Book 3 Page 29
