Free Last Fight of the Valkyries by E.E. Isherwood

sleep while I gotta
dig yo' damned hole!” Other agitated people turned their
direction. Many, but not all, were black. Victoria whispered that the
town, until the sirens, was a sleepy and predominantly black
community.
    They moved around the crowd for several minutes, but there was no
one in the middle giving work assignments or otherwise signifying
someone in charge. As they walked, they saw the crowd was actually a
queue, and the line went inside a large three-story building that
looked like something out of the 1800's. It was made of large stones,
ringed by a low black metal fence, and even had old-looking
decorative cannons at the corners of the small patch of grass
surrounding the structure. On the backside, people walked out with
shovels, and headed north.
    Liam wondered if they were going to hand him a shovel.
    As if reading his mind, Victoria spoke quietly, “I think we
better head back. I'm not sure what we can do here. This wasn't
happening the last time I was here.” They'd gone around the
building and came back along the other side of the angry residents.
“Though I vote we take a different street to avoid that mean
woman.”
    “Agreed. Though if someone came in and took over my street—”
He hesitated as it dawned on him someone did come in and take
over his street. They were dead when they arrived too. “Follow
me.”
    When they reached the area where the lady had chided them, she was
still there, yelling into the air at no one in particular. He didn't
know why it bothered him so much, but he couldn't walk away without
responding to her accusations.
    “Ma'am?” He got her attention quickly, as she'd been
eying him as he approached, though she tried to feign surprise.
    “You two again?”
    “Look, I appreciate what you said. I lived south of St.
Louis up until about two weeks ago.” Actually, he thought, even
that wasn't true. He lived in the city of St. Louis two weeks ago.
But the story was the same everywhere. “I lived in a nice
little subdivision, a lot like this place,” he swept his hand
behind him, “but if they're digging a ditch to keep out the
z—the infected—you better be out there digging.”
    She looked taken aback, but he kept going.
    “On my street, when the infected arrived, they came by the
thousands.” He began to speak louder. “First in ones and
twos, but they never stopped. And my street was filled with refugees,
just like your town. People who came from the north, hoping to outrun
the sick.”
    He was aware a few more people were listening.
    “They came into my backyard. They broke through my window.
We ran to the basement. They filled the entire house . To the
brim. Anyone left outside...was dead.” He left out most of the
grisly details of his rescue: blood dripping through the floorboards,
pieces of the zombies strewn over his lawn, the loss of Victoria.
“When we finally came out of our home, the sick had moved on.
But my house was destroyed. My neighbor's house was burned to the
ground. In fact, my whole neighborhood looked like a war zone. And
almost no one else survived.”
    He knew he was exaggerating for effect, but the end result was
perfectly true.
    “I can never go back home.” He paused, amazed that he
had a considerable number of people listening. “It was wiped
off the map by the zombies.”
    He felt he had them. Surely the message was clear, though he
didn't intend anything more than convincing the lone woman. But she
pulled the wrong message from his speech.
    “Zombies?” She said it loudly, as if to bring the
listeners back to her side. “Look child, I appreciate your
fantasies, and I'm sorry your house got burned down, but I'm not
scared of no zombies. Nuh uh. Last year I had a robber break in and I
shot 'em dead, yes sir. If these zombies make it to kare-roh, you can
bet they gonna get what's coming to 'em.”
    Then, with a flourish she turned away from him and yelled, “And
I ain't digging no damned ditch!”
    Liam let himself be pulled