by Adam Baker
She grasped grab-irons and hauled herself back up to the walkway. She returned to the cab. She sat in the driver’s seat: a leather bar-stool patched with duct tape.
A small brass plaque screwed to the console.
Montreal Locomotive Works.
The engine had, in a previous life, been owned by the Canadian Pacific Railway.
She looked over the console once more and tried to decipher the controls. Dials. Switches. A red brake handle. A directional selector. An eight-speed throttle. None of the controls would respond.
She paced the cab and examined wall boxes. High-voltage warning zags. Locked. She hammered them open with her rifle stock.
STARTER CURCUIT
She cranked a lever to On. She flicked banks of breaker switches, turned every light green.
The cabin overhead bulb lit up. The filament emitted a weak, flickering glow like candle flame.
She tried the ignition. A jolt ran through the locomotive, a cough like the engine engaged but immediately cut out.
A winking red light.
BATTERY WARNING
Lucy snatched keys from a wall hook and jumped from the cab.
Jabril wiped dust from the washstand mirror. He was stripped to the waist.
He poured a bottle of mineral water into a tin bowl. He unzipped a wash bag. He stripped naked and soaped himself down. He rubbed shampoo into his hair until it frothed, then emptied the basin over his head.
He towelled himself dry with his army jacket and threw it in the corner.
He tested the battery of an electric shaver. He scoured away grey stubble. He combed. He dabbed cologne onto his neck.
He buttoned a pristine white shirt. He turned up his collar, draped a black silk tie round his neck and tied the knot one-handed. He shrugged on his suit, tied shoes and tucked a silk handkerchief into the breast pocket.
White linen. In a dirt-poor country where most people were a couple of generations clear of camel-trading Bedouin, his white suit screamed status. A guy who spent his life behind a desk. A guy who gave orders. A guy that didn’t break sweat. He could walk down any street. Nobody would mess with him.
He took another Turkish cigarette from his gold case and lit it with the click of his lighter. He checked the magazine of his compact Makarov pistol and tucked it in his waistband.
He pulled a second Louis Vuitton suitcase from beneath his cot and flipped latches.
Blocks wrapped in wax paper. PE4-A, Portuguese high-grade plastic explosive.
A box of detonators.
Hundred-metre rolls of twin-flex phone cable.
He unwrapped a slab of explosive. He slapped it against the washstand mirror, kneaded it against the glass. He mashed a detonator into the clay and spliced cable.
He backed out of the room and down the corridor, spooling cable as he walked.
A storeroom.
He kicked open the rough wooden door. Document boxes.
Jabril kicked over the boxes. Forms and files. Digital video tape and CDs. Hard disks and flash drives.
Paper spilled across the floor. Records of terminal trials: observation notes, temperature graphs, X-rays.
Black and white photographs showed a series of anguished, naked men tied to the necropsy table, and the frame-by-frame progress of infection.
Jabril slapped a patty of explosive against a ceiling beam and ran cable.
There were jerry cans in the corner of the room. He uncapped a can and pushed it over. Gasoline gulped from the nozzle and soaked paper.
He backed out the room, running command wire.
The holding pens. Two freight containers sitting at the end of a tunnel. The container doors had been removed and replaced by welded bars. Crude jail cells.
Jabril instinctively covered his mouth and nose with the hooked stump of his arm. The tunnel used to smell of faeces. Most soldiers wouldn’t approach the place unless they were ordered to pull sentry duty. If they were forced to stand guard, they would plug their noses with toilet tissue sprayed with deodorant. Some of the prisoners lost bowel control each time a removal team arrived to extract a fresh victim. The men would huddle in shadows at the back of the container. They would piss and soil themselves.
Jabril would make the selection. The team would drag the semi-conscious man clear while his companions were kept at bay with Taser batons.
The inmate would be marched to the cavern labs, thrashing as he saw the zinc table and nylon restraints waiting to receive him.
‘Cameras running.’
A lab tech would tightened wrist, ankle and chest straps, tug buckles and checked for slack.
‘He’s secure. Go ahead.’
That long, despairing shriek as the prisoner lifted his head, watched a needle prick the skin of his forearm and deliver its lethal load.
Jabril had spent his working life in Baghdad instigating torture and executions. He would work his way through a prisoner list as he sipped his mid-morning coffee. Part of the daily routine, like glancing through the sheaf of anonymous denunciations that arrived by mail each morning.
He leafed through intelligence reports and circled names. His subordinates understood the code. A cross meant arrest and detainment. A circle meant interrogation. A red tick meant death. He didn’t have to give a direct order. The words never passed his lips. He didn’t have to hear the screams. He didn’t have to smell the sweat, piss and blood of the torture cells.
But the Spektr project gave him the direct power of life and death. He stood in front of the prisoner pens every couple of days, surveyed the snivelling men and made his choice. He would point out his chosen victim, watch them cower from his pointed finger like he was aiming a gun. It was intoxicating. God-like potency. A heart-galloping thrill, like illicit sex.
Jabril stood by the bars and stared into the dark cave-mouth of the empty freight containers. He could still hear the ghost-screams, feel the old flutter of excitement.
He set the suitcase down. He popped latches. He slapped explosive against timber wall props and pushed detonators into the putty. He twisted together frayed copper strands and ran cable.
Voss climbed a ladder to the locomotive walkway. He entered the cab.
‘How’s it going?’
‘Wish we could get hold of Gaunt. Break fingers until he showed us how to crank up this fucking thing.’
‘Think he knows how to run it?’ asked Voss.
‘How did he know about the mine? The lab? Someone gave him a detailed brief. They might have told him about the train.’
Voss didn’t reply.
Lucy crouched and pulled a battered ring binder from a shelf beneath the engineer’s console. She flipped pages.
‘This baby is some kind of diesel/electric hybrid. I’ve got juice to the driver’s desk, but I’m getting some kind of power warning.’
‘I checked the track,’ said Voss. ‘The switch-rails are set to put her in a parallel siding.’
‘So fix it.’
Voss jumped from the cab. He walked the track in front of the locomotive. He examined the rail switch. Mechanical operation. No hydraulic actuators, no electrics. A tall lever next to a rail junction. He threw his bodyweight against the lever. It wouldn’t shift.
He headed down the tunnel. He searched for something he could use as a sledgehammer.
A couple of flatbed freight wagons. He pulled bundles of tarpaulin aside. Rotted planks. Chains. Yellowed al-Ba’ath newsprint. A heavy, rusted wrench.
Voss hefted the wrench.
He became aware of a distant figure in the periphery of his vision. A man stood at the end of the tunnel, back-lit by cavern arc lights. Hunched, simian. He was staring at Voss.
Voss stood back from the wagon to get a clear view. He glimpsed a red boiler suit as the figure ducked into shadow.
‘Gaunt? Gaunt, is that you?’ His voice echoed and died.
Voss walked deeper into the tunnel, boots crunching on shingle. He crouched and peered beneath a row of ore hoppers. He glimpsed
bloody, bare feet and the legs of a tattered red boiler suit.
An infected soldier.
‘Here I am, you raghead fuck. You want meat, come get it.’
He glimpsed a horribly distorted face watching him from behind a wagon. Flaking flesh. Strange, tumorous eruptions.
‘Come on. What are you waiting for?’
The face ducked out of sight. Sound of clumsy, running feet.
Voss threw down the wrench, drew his sidearm and ran between ore trucks in pursuit.
Jabril entered Lab One. He wriggled his hand into a surgical glove, and tugged at the latex cuff with his teeth.
He took a gas mask from a wall hook and pulled it on.
He unlatched the refrigerator. A cascade of nitrogen fog. Storage jars. Body parts held in sub-zero stasis.
He propped the door open. He wrenched the power cable from the back of the freezer. The temperature read-out blanked. Cooling fans slowed and died.
He dumped the suitcase on the necropsy table.
He stroked the mirrored metal. He contemplated the wrist and ankle straps, the drain hole at the foot of the table to help sluice blood.
He had supervised the murder of forty men. Stood outside the lab units and relished muffled screams as the men were strapped down and forcibly injected.
He was both horrified and aroused by the memory.
The freezer storage jars were already starting to defrost. Water dripped and pooled on the plate floor of the lab.
He slapped explosive against the side of the freezer and wired det cable.
Jabril mashed a nub of explosive onto the roof panel above the table. He pressed a blasting cap into the putty and strung detonator wire.
He stepped through the doorway into Lab Two.
Cultivation equipment laid out on steel counters. A bio-weapon production line. Microscopes. Centrifuges. Fermentation reactors.
Glass crunched beneath the leather soles of his Oxford brogues. Broken flasks. Culture dishes.
The growth chamber. Legs, spines and lungs suspended in frosted vats. Each body part floated in a thick serum of amino acids and bovine placental tissue. Metallic tendrils erupted from flesh and bone as if reaching out, seeking a fresh host to invade.
Jabril slapped explosive against the glass. Submerged body parts shivered and twitched.
He wired detonators.
Lab four.
He crouched, span wing nuts and flipped latches. He opened the steel sarcophagus. Konstantin, laid out like Tutankhamen, arms folded across his chest.
Jabril moulded a fist-sized nub of C4, wired a blasting cab, and wedged the explosive between the dead astronaut’s fingers.
He left the lab units and crossed the cavern.
The bio-dome. Spektr, under arc lights.
A stack of chemical drums. Skull stickers streaked with corrosion. Jabril rolled yellow drums of peptone, ethylene and paraformaldehyde, and stacked them beneath Spektr.
He tore nubs of plastic explosive and mashed them onto each drum lid with the heel of his palm. He took a fresh reel of cable from the case and ran det cord.
A flicker of movement. A figure outside the opaque plastic of the containment dome.
A red boiler suit brushed against polythene. Jabril crouched behind the drums and drew his pistol. He watched the blurred figure stumble the perimeter of the containment dome, hands sliding and squeaking across taut plastic.
He heard the echo of dragging footfalls as the figure shuffled down a passage, away from the cavern.
Jabril slowly climbed to his feet and continued to rig the bomb.
Subject Nine
Lucy walked deep into the tunnel. She passed a row of flatbed cars and ore hoppers.
She found a small locomotive. A small diesel engine hitched to mine wagons, paintwork streaked with corrosion.
The engine cowling had been removed, and the motor stripped for parts.
Maybe the starter battery was still in place. Maybe it still held a charge.
She ran a quick circuit of the locomotive, rifle raised. All clear.
She climbed the ladder and pulled open the cab door. Trashed controls. Smashed dials and frayed cable.
Another mummified corpse. An engineer in a boiler suit. He was crouched prostrate, face to the floor like he was kneeling in prayer.
She prodded the dead man with the barrel of her rifle. The desiccated cadaver toppled over. The yellow wooden handle of a screwdriver wedged in his eye socket. The guy had knelt on the plate floor of the cab, positioned the screwdriver, then drove his head down onto the spike.
Must have been hell. That final night when infected prisoners broke loose and ran riot. Troops mown down by terrified Russian overseers. Young men blowing their brains out, slitting their throats, hugging grenades, anything preferable to joining the mindless mutant legion.
Lucy jumped from the cab and surveyed the exterior of the locomotive. She searched for a battery compartment.
A big metal box on the rear footplate between buffers. Padlocked. She shot the lock and kicked open the lid. A big Exide 32-volt power cell. Four times the size of a standard car battery.
Faint crunch of shingle.
She jumped from the locomotive and crouched on the track. She peered beneath wagons. She glimpsed the legs of a red boiler suit.
Jabril knelt beneath Spektr and continued to wire yellow drums of formaldehyde and ethylene.
His companion had returned. A shambling figure in a red boiler suit. A crimson ghost shape glimpsed through opaque plastic. The figure circled the perimeter of the containment tent. Bloody handprints on polythene.
‘I’m sorry, my friend,’ murmured Jabril. ‘I’m so sorry. It will be over soon.’
Jabril recognised the tall, thin figure in the boiler suit. Corporal Haq.
Haq and his twin brother Abdul tried to flee the valley one night. They wanted to reach Fallujah, make sure their mother had survived the war.
They blacked their faces with boot polish and ran from the mine. They managed to evade Russian sentries at the head of the ravine and climb the moonlit valley walls.
Abdul triggered an anti-personnel mine halfway up the slope and was blown to flesh-scraps and blood-vapour. The blast drew searchlights and soldiers. They found Haq cradling his brother’s leg.
They dragged Haq back to the mine. They shaved his head and dressed him in a boiler suit. They sprayed a big nine on his back and pushed him into a holding pen.
Jabril brought him water.
‘Come to gloat?’ asked Haq.
Jabril passed a bottle of mineral water between the bars. Haq took a sip and threw the bottle to fellow prisoners cowering at the back of the freight container.
‘I’ll talk to Ignatiev. Do what I can.’
‘If you really wanted to help, you would pass me a gun.’
‘They will never let you escape.’
‘I don’t plan to escape.’
‘Just hold on. Let me argue your case.’
‘Listen to yourself. You are a major in the Mukhabarat. You should be the authority here. Not these foreigners.’
‘Our world has changed.’
‘You think it will be any different for you? Sooner or later, you will find yourself behind these bars.’
Jabril held up his hook.
‘They want young men, in good health.’
‘Then you will simply be executed.’
‘You think I don’t know what Ignatiev has in store? None of us will leave this place alive.’
Later that night Jabril visited the lime pit. A trench dug in the valley floor near the citadel. Stacked lime sacks. A mass grave.
The pit held a mound of eviscerated bodies caked in white powder. Strong stench of acid decay.
He shielded his mouth and nose with his sleeve.
Arms. Legs. Exposed ribcages. The eviscerated bodies twitched and stirred as they slowly dissolved into caustic lime slurry.
Lucy hit the pressel switch on her chest plate.
; ‘Mandy. I need you back here.’
Amanda jogged down the tunnel.
‘Babe?’
‘Over here,’ shouted Lucy.
Amanda climbed onto the rear plate of the freight locomotive.
‘Give me a hand with this thing,’ said Lucy.
They unscrewed terminals and struggled to lift the massive battery from its box compartment. They lowered it down to the track. They pulled on gloves, each grabbed a handle and carried the power cell down the tunnel, muscles straining.
‘Voss says there are infected guys running round the mine,’ said Amanda.
‘No wonder the fucks from the citadel didn’t follow us,’ said Lucy, panting with effort. ‘There’s something else in here. Something worse.’
‘We better find Jabril and warn him. He might get jumped.’
Jabril crept down a passageway lit by bulbs screwed to roof beams.
He stalked the figure in a red boiler suit. The suit had a big fifteen sprayed on the back. The revenant’s bald head was punctured by a crust of metallic tumours, like a rippled steel skull-cap.
The creature stopped. It sniffed the air.
It turned. It saw Jabril and snarled.
Jabril put a bullet between the creature’s eyes. Gun-roar echoed down the passageway.
The prisoner fell against the tunnel wall and slid to the ground.
Another creature watched from shadows at the end of the passageway. Jabril raised his pistol and took aim, hook-arm steadying the gun. A bald, emaciated mutant thing. Number nine sprayed on the breast of the boiler suit.
Haq.
Jabril hesitated, and lowered his pistol. The figure ducked out of sight.
The moment Jabril discovered the full extent of the Spektr project, he decided to destroy every piece of equipment in the valley. Obliterate it all.
Ignatiev often talked about Phase Three. He mentioned it to technician colleagues while Jabril was in earshot, disregarded his presence like he was a pet or a piece of equipment.
Jabril put it together: