“Uh,” said Albert.
When Arlene waxed poetic, she was a happy camper. “Mission went well, did it?” I asked. “All right, let’s apply the beauty treatment.”
Albert bravely set the example, squashing several of the lemons and a lonely lime between his big hands then applying the result to his face. Arlene followed suit, and I, after taking a deep breath, dug in. There were plenty to go around. Then I noticed that Jill was hanging back.
“You’re going to have to do this,” I told her in my friendly voice.
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” she said, only the second time she’d pulled the sullen bit around us. I could well imagine her giving this treatment to the President of the Twelve full-time. I wouldn’t fault her for that.
“It’s not that bad,” said Arlene, rubbing one down the side of her own leg. Staining camo wear was a nonproblem.
“Okay, okay,” Jill said, picking one up and tentatively applying it to her nose. “It’s gross,” she said with heartfelt sincerity.
“Here, let me help,” I said, becoming impatient. I took a lemon in each hand, squeezed, and then began rubbing the results in her hair.
“Hey!” she said, backing away.
“No time to be belle of the ball,” I snapped, continuing the operation on her face.
“Hey!” said Arlene, coming over, taking one of the lemons out of my hands and brandishing it under my nose as if it were a live grenade. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Doing my bit for truth, justice, and the American way.”
“Uh-huh,” said Arlene, reeking of a lack of conviction. “Fly Taggart, I need to explain this to you so that you will understand.” Smiling pleasantly, Arlene stomped on my right foot.
While I was digesting all the implications of her argument, she whispered in my ear, “She’s a woman, not a child.”
“Don’t treat me like a child!” Jill chimed in, as if she could hear.
“Don’t act like one.” I leaned close, ignoring Arlene, and spoke to Jill as I would to one of my squadron Marines who was acting out. “Listen up, ma’am. When you’ve got a set of butter bars, you can start thinking and making decisions. But until then, you do what I say, and I say this stuff is going on now.
“We’ve done your hair and face; next step is the rest of your body. You want to do that yourself, or do you want to give me a thrill by having me do it?”
She stared, then took the lime I held out. Test time was over for now.
We finished applying the lemons. Jill made faces but did fine; I hoped she wouldn’t stay pissed for the rest of the mission. Arlene lemoned the backs of the rest of us where we couldn’t reach, and then I did the same for her. After that, we bid farewell to our alley and moved out.
Albert took point and led us toward the railway station. I took the rear. Fortunately, now that we smelled like zombies, we could walk openly and carry our weapons. We rounded a corner and found ourselves in a mob of the previously mentioned. I could see Arlene start to tense up—understandable after what she and Albert encountered at the grocery store. But a moment later she was putting on a good act, probably better than mine.
For a moment I worried about Jill’s performance: arms straight out like a bad copy of Frankenstein’s monster, legs too stiff and jerking as she walked . . . too exaggerated. She’d never make it on the legitimate stage. But the zombies didn’t seem to notice.
We passed through an archway and suddenly we were surrounded by imps, hell-princes, and bonys, with those damned rocket launchers strapped to their backs. I watched the bonys walk with a jerking motion so bad I could imagine strings pulling them as if they were the puppet skeletons I’d seen in Mexico during their “Day of the Dead” festival. If I hadn’t already seen one in action in the truck, I’d think they were fake. One thing: they gave me new appreciation for Jill’s performance as a zombie.
Then came that lousy moment when the Forces of Evil unveiled yet another brand new, straight-off-the-assembly-line monster. This one wasn’t inadvertently funny in the manner of the bonys. This one was just plain disgusting.
The word fat barely described the awfulness of this sphere of flesh. We passed close enough to smell years of accumulated sweat, a neat trick considering how new the model had to be. The thing made me think of a planetoid trapped in Earth’s gravitational field, only’ this hunk of flesh comprised fold upon fold of nauseating, ugly, yellow, dripping, flaccid chicken flab.
Of course, that was only a first impression. As it came still closer, I decided that it was a lot worse than I first imagined.
All I could think of was a gigantic wad of phlegm carved by flabby hands into a semblance of the human form with two beady pig’s eyes sunk deep into the grotesque face. At the end of each tree-trunk arm was a massive metal gun, starting at the elbow.
In a choice between being blasted by those guns or touched in any way, there was no contest. I could imagine a lot of names for the thing, and I was sure Arlene would have some ideas; but I wanted Jill to have the honor of naming this one. She’d probably come up with a better name than the different terms for excrement unrolling in my mind.
There were plenty of other monsters and zombies through all this, more than enough to keep us all on our toes and plenty scared. But this thing was just too much for my stomach.
The two steam-demons looming up before us were more dangerous; but there was something almost beautiful about them in comparison. They were well-shaped, with good muscle tone showing on the parts of them that were flesh instead of machine. Even their metal parts seemed clean and shiny compared to the dingy, rusty-looking metal tubes sticking out of that fatboy. I knew I was in trouble when I started making aesthetic judgments about the monsters.
I didn’t like the way the zombies hemmed us in. I pushed left and right, trying to lead my troops out, but always shying away from the vigilant hell-princes and bonys; they kept getting underfoot . . . whenever I’d try to ghost, there they were.
It took some moments for the penny to drop: we were being herded like cattle. By the time I realized it, it was too late to get out; the zombie mass funneled together, headed toward a large building. My heart went into overdrive, and I was already starting to calculate the odds of bolting, when Albert leaned close and rumbled into my ear, “Here’s some luck—they’re driving us into the train station.”
I looked, and by God if he wasn’t right. They were putting us on a bloody train!
A man’s heart deviseth his way: but the Lord directeth his steps.
The only possible fly in the ointment would be if the damned train were headed east; but I had a gut feeling it was headed straight into Los Angeles.
We couldn’t avoid the steam-demons; they were standing at the boarding ramp to the open cattle car that was already starting to fill. Well, we’d decided to take the first opportunity to get aboard, and this surely was some sort of sign.
Those old nuns of mine were receiving a lot of prayers from me lately. I could never imagine saints or angels; so when I got in one of these moods, those withered souls in black and gray habits played across my memory. I used to think the nuns that taught me were ugly old crones. With what I’d been seeing lately, they had taken on a new beauty in my mind’s eye.
My prayer was simple. Don’t let fatboy get on with us, please; pretty please with a Hail Mary on it.
It was easy to stay together; there wasn’t any room to be separated. We were packed in like the Tokyo subway at rush hour. Of course, I realized that if we were separated, we’d have the devil’s own time trying to get back together.
When all this was over, I thought I might give religion another shake; as the door to the cattle car closed, I saw that we weren’t going to have to put up-with fatboy: it got onto another car.
“It’s open in the back!” said Jill in surprise. At first I made to silence her for fear we would attract attention, but there was so much noise going on around us that our words wouldn’t be noticed over the roaring and gro
wling filling the narrow space. We were being pushed toward the rear of the car, where instead of a solid wall, there was an arrangement of vertical wooden posts with horizontal metal slats running through them.
“That’s some window,” Arlene commented.
“I see that none of you were brought up around livestock,” I said caustically. “It’s a cattle car.”
With a grinding sound, the train started forward with a great lurch, throwing us into our rearward neighbors, who growled and pushed us back. The former humans who were now zombies did not behave nearly so well as humans would have; some responded to being jostled by firing off a few shots. “Great!” shouted Arlene.
“If this escalates, we’ll be wiped out in here!” I hollered back.
“What can we do about it?”
“Nothing!” I admitted. Time again to trust to luck. The nuns must have been working overtime, because the shots suddenly ceased. I glanced over and saw Albert with his eyes closed, moving his lips silently. I supposed that if praying was going to save us, this was a job for the pro.
Jill grabbed the back of my pants; it was a good idea—I grabbed Arlene, and she caught Albert.
We traveled past several small towns that evidently held little of interest. The night sky had a weird glow, but I still preferred it to the return of day, if that sickening green sky was waiting for us. It was too dark to make out details, but occasionally we saw fires burning on the horizon, funeral pyres to mark the passing of humanity. We finally came to a violent stop and there was more jostling. Our luck was still with us; the gunshots did not resume.
“Damn, I wish we could see through the door,” I said. Behind us was a splendid view of a smashed building and a nice stretch of barren countryside; but heavy sounds in front of us indicated some action.
“The designers must not care if the cows are well-informed,” said Arlene.
As if in answer to my request, the heavy wooden door in the side of the train was pushed open to unpack some zombies, and we were greeted by a sight you don’t see every day. A contingent of steam-demons was being herded by a spidermind. They were guarding what appeared to be a truck dolly in which a human form was wrapped up in bandages from head to toe. There was a slit for his eyes, but that didn’t help tell us anything about the man or woman propped up on the dolly; we could only assume this was a human because there were straps across the figure—a dead giveaway that he was a prisoner.
The sight made me remember Bill Ritch. The only human they would take care to preserve with his mind intact was a human with knowledge they needed and couldn’t extract without destroying . . . which meant that here was someone else we should either rescue or kill. He couldn’t be left in the hands of the enemy, giving them whatever they needed. They marched forward out of sight, the steam-demons tramping in eerie, mechanical lockstep.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Arlene bellowed at me.
“Loud and clear!”
“They’ve got their tentacles on another of our tech lads!”
“Listen up!” I screamed. “Have plan!” They gave me their undivided attention, easy to do in such cramped quarters. “Grab guy! Run!”
Arlene rolled her eyes, unimpressed.
“How—move?” shouted Jill.
“Slowly!”
While we considered the strengths and weaknesses of our position, the monsters took the bandaged figure toward the front of the train. Although we couldn’t see very well, it was easy to figure out what happened next.
The train started up again, having received its important cargo.
“Forward!” I screamed. “Make path!”
Jill wriggled her hand slowly out to where she was able to extend her fingers and . . . the best way to describe it was that she goosed the zombie-woman in front of her. The nervous system of a zombie isn’t great shakes compared to when it was alive, but there were sufficient sparks left to kindle into fire.
The zombie-woman didn’t jump or make any sort of exclamation; but she did move forward with sufficient force to dislodge the smaller male taking up space right in front of her.
Jill let Albert get in front of her. He had a lot of mass and widened Jill’s narrow opening. The objective was clear: push forward to the connection between the cars. With the speed of a snail we inched forward. I figured that so long as we didn’t piss off any of them enough to shoot at us, we were doing all right.
Just about then, one of the zombies took a potshot. I didn’t see any particular reason for it; but what was I doing, trying to apply reason to zombie behavior?
The bullet struck another zombie in the throat, and it went down gurgling. We were packed so tightly, like Norwegian sardines, that further attempts at argument by projectile would probably annihilate the population of the cattle car.
Jill drew the small .38 caliber revolver we’d given her and looked scared and determined both at the same time.
“Hold your fire, Jill!” I shouted. She didn’t make me repeat it. The zombie with the itchy finger kept firing wildly and suddenly connected with a point where a metal slat and wooden post came together. A heavy zombie near to the point of impact fell back against the weakened spot and suddenly went right through, leaving a huge hole big enough for even Albert to fit through. “New plan!” I bellowed.
22
By now the train was up to speed again, smoking along at 300, 320 kilometers per hour. At this speed, the wind could be considered a refreshing deluxe feature for the typical bovine passenger. As I attempted to squirm through the opening, I quickly learned that a typhoon-strength head wind could slow down the most dedicated Marine.
The main thing was not to drop my shotgun as I climbed on the sill, leaned out into the hurricane, and stretched up until I reached the railing along the outside top of the train. I hoped the zombies wouldn’t pay any attention to this latest change in their environment. At some level they were still human enough to resent this ridiculous crowding, or they wouldn’t be exchanging shots. Maybe our team would rate zombie gratitude for giving them elbow room.
While standing on the sill, leaning forward into the wind, holding the railing, I reached down to help Arlene. Her slim, dry hand slipped into my sweaty paw, and I noted that it was cold. Arlene always had trouble keeping her extremities warm. I hoisted her out and up to the roof, where she hooked her legs to hang on so she could lean back down. Then Arlene helped me take care of Jill.
I didn’t blame Jill for being terrified. But I was surprised when she started shaking. Or maybe it was just the train rocking violently back and forth. I guess this would be an experience to write home about, if there were still a home. No matter how brave and grown-up this fourteen-year-old wanted to be, she was having one wild-ass situation after another thrown at her and had to handle each without benefit of training.
The terror in her eyes didn’t prevent her doing what she had to do, and I didn’t pay attention to the tears. The angle was bad, but Jill weighed almost nothing—and I heaved a sigh of relief as I finished handing her up to Arlene.
Albert was a problem. He was a big guy and not as gymnastically oriented as Yours Truly. Arlene and Jill attached webbing to the railing, then attached it to Arlene. The webbing is extraordinarily strong, able to hold tons before ripping. We didn’t go into hell without taking some decent equipment! No way was Arlene going to fall with that stuff on her.
Now Arlene and I could help Albert up. It was a lot easier than blowing away a steam-demon.
We might even have enjoyed our time on the roof if not for the hurricane head wind. It smelled a whole lot better than inside.
We lay on our bellies, and a ferocious gale battered us. But we weren’t blown off; in fact, we could stand shakily, leaning into the wind. I figured there must be some sort of air dam up front, otherwise, 300 kph would have swatted a standing man off the top of that train like finger-flicking a fly.
“Listen up!” I shouted against the gale. “Single-file! Forward! Slowly! Don’t fall!”
Arlene put her mouth right up to my ear. “How far L.A.?”
“Two hours—dawn—rescue human or kill him!”
“What?” screamed Jill, clearly horrified. She was plenty loud enough to be heard. There was no need to explain to two old soldiers like Arlene and Albert. I’d stopped thinking of Jill as a young teen, but there was no getting around the fact that she was a civilian.
“Death better than fate!” God only knew how much she heard, but she clenched her teeth and said nothing more. The brutal arithmetic inside my head could wait for another time; I hoped she would never have to decide who lives and who dies. Sometimes I envy civilians.
There was nothing else to say. Besides, we’d all be hoarse from shouting if we didn’t shut up.
I went first; it was my party. I set the pace nice and slow. It took nearly a quarter hour to crawl the length of the train; fortunately, the track through Arizona was pretty straight. But the natural swaying of the cars could still hurl any of us to certain death; the rails were laid for cargo, not passengers.
I looked back frequently; we didn’t lose anybody. Next stop: Relief City! Two cars ahead was the flatcar with a complement of one spidermind, one steam-demon, and one human wrapped like a Christmas mummy and strapped down tight. The spidermind was between us and the human, the steam-demon on the other side.
It occurred to me that these superior examples of alien monster-building might sniff us out better than the lesser breeds; and the wind did a lot to erase our lemon odor. In our favor, we were way downwind. The wind was so damned loud, I didn’t think they could hear us either.
I gestured to Arlene. Time for the Deimos veterans to do their stuff. We crawled closer, where I could see a very narrow gap between the cars . . . too narrow for the adults.
I noted the fact that the spidermind was so big, a couple of its right feet dangled limply over the side of the flatcar . . . and that gave me an idea.
But it was too narrow for the adults. Only Jill could fit
Oh man, this was my nightmare come true. It was never supposed to be a walk for the kid—but this? Throw the raw recruit, not even driving age yet, into the meat grinder against a spidermind and a, steam-demon? It was criminal . . . homicidal!
Hell on Earth Page 14