Read Online Last Fight of the Valkyries by E.E. Isherwood - Free Book Online

him as part of his A-team of survival experts. Melissa had
been a good solid addition too. He thought she may even have been
more valuable than Phil for her military prowess.
    “OK. So we go out and look for them. Scour the camp.”
He looked at Victoria, knowing Grandma wasn't going to be doing much
search and rescue at her age.
    Victoria gave him sad eyes. “Liam...”
    “What? What am I missing here?”
    Holding his arm tighter, “Liam, that was two days ago. You
were exhausted. Injured. We didn't want to wake you up for this. If
they were here, someone would have found them by now.”
    He flopped backward into the cushion of the sofa. Now Grandma held
his other arm. He felt like his head was spinning, even though he
felt fine. He thought Mel and Phil had been harmed by the
survivalists back at Camp Hope, but he left before he was forced to
see that truth. Then they showed up in the MRAP and saved him,
Grandma, and Victoria in the city. And then...
    “Two days? A lifetime of things could happen in two days. We
have to go look for them. And then we have to find my parents.”
He said it without conviction. His whole life recently had been a
series of rescues. How many more could he endure?
    On the other hand, sitting on his butt was the last thing he
wanted to do.
    2
    Liam's compass spun wildly. Here, he was elated to be safe with
Victoria and Grandma. Over here, he was angrily accepting that Mel
and Phil were almost certainly dead. Finally, as the compass finished
its sweep, he was terrified his parents sat back at the Boy Scout
camp worrying about his fate.
    He reached for his phone. Two days ago, it was waterlogged and
presumably broken. Today…
    “Um. My phone's gone.”
    “No, I have it.” She pointed to a nearby table. “I
charged it for you. They have everything here for techies. I also put
it in a sealed plastic bag. For the next time you go swimming with
it.”
    She chuckled.
    "It's working again?" he said excitedly. “Thank
you!”
    He jumped off the couch, grabbed it and removed it from the bag,
and thumbed through the screens to get what he wanted. While he
worked, he continued, "Victoria, get in there with Grandma. I'm
going to take this photo if it—"
    For many days he lamented he never took Victoria's photograph with
his phone. In the Old Days, he would take pictures of urinal cakes as
goofs to send his friends. Now, taking such pictures seemed the
height of civilization. But before he could get the camera app
loaded, he saw something else.
    "Oh no. I have a text message. I'm not sure who it's from."
    Victoria hopped up to get a look at his phone's screen. She looked
at the message and the phone number where it originated, but said
nothing further.
    He looked up and saw Grandma with a patient face. As always.
    "OK, Grandma, this is what it says, but I don't get it."
He cleared his throat as if it were an important radio announcement.
"Liam. Need to go to Koch Hospital Quarry. See research."
The number was prefixed by the 435 area code. It was from the day
before.
    "Grandma, did you send this? Like you did the other one."
Back at the Riverside medical lab, a strange message had appeared on
Victoria's phone, supposedly sent by someone using Liam's phone.
Grandma was holding it at the time, though the message could have
been sent hours earlier based on how frequently the cell phone towers
dropped service.
    "Oh, I'm afraid it wasn't me. I don't know how that other one
was sent to Victoria either. I only barely managed to contact you,
Liam."
    It was true enough. She had gotten one message through to him,
giving him an X to mark the spot where she was being held captive. It
was by far the most important text he'd ever gotten—and it came
during a gunfight to boot. But now...
    Victoria finally spoke. "I should tell you this town has the
internet. It even has cell service, though the people who run the
place say most of the other towers are down in the surrounding
states, so there aren't really many