by Chris Lowry
“Would that work? Or knock it off the tracks?”
“Yeah, derailing is a real possibility.”
“What if we hopped the train?” asked Rook.
“Hopped it?” Crockett snorted. “It’s going a hundred miles an hour.”
“Now hold on Crockett,” said Lt. “The kid’s got something going here. You thinking like a bunch of hobos Rook?”
“Yes sir,” the young man scratched his chin. “I remember watching a bunch of bums do it outside my house in our town. We lived right by a bend in the tracks and they always had to slow down to take it.”
“How slow we talking?”
“Not a hundred,” said Rook. “Thirty miles an hour.”
“We still can’t run thirty miles an hour,” snorted Crockett. “And we have to stop it here.”
He pointed to the road.
Lt squinted his eyes at the men and nodded.
“Which one of you can climb a rope?”
The others looked at each other then back at him.
“Come on Babe, with those shoulders, you’re telling me you can’t climb a rope?”
“I haven’t done it,” Babe shrugged. “Not that I can remember. Maybe.”
“Yeah, maybe ain’t gonna cut it for what I got in mind. You mess this up, we’ll be picking pieces of you up off the track. Alright, Suds, you’re with me. The rest of you, get those Licks over here and line ‘em up on the track. Train’ll come by and slice those heads right off for us. Save us some work.”
He made a slicing motion with the edge of his hand.
“Me and Suds are going on a little adventure. You boys get in those nests, four in one, three to the other and line up to get the Licks guarding the train. They ain’t gonna like it when we stop.”
“What are you going to do Lt?”
Bonney grinned like a certified madman.
“You boys ever hear of Tarzan?”
The Lt led Suds further up the tracks at a fast jog. They had dropped their packs back at the nests, and were running light with rifles and pistols. Lt had a small pouch strapped to his waist, but that was it.
That’s all they would need if the plan worked.
If it didn’t, they would miss the train and the rest of the squad would watch it go by, then come clean the mess.
“How? Far?” Suds gasped.
“Keep going,” Lt ordered.
He was looking for a particular spot. The tracks ran between two ridges, the eastern portion almost against the tracks, while the west gradually drifted in a slope away from the escarpment.
Lt checked his watch and started hunting the nooks and crags as they pounded along the wooden ties.
“There,” he pointed and stopped.
The ridge was thirty feet high, with a row of trees leaning over the edge. He went to the rock and crumbled it in his fingers.
“This ain’t gonna be pretty,” he told Suds. “Keep your weight spread out on your toes. Don’t move your hands til your feet are set.”
He demonstrated, doing a starfish like move on the rock, his cheek pressed close against it.
“It’s only a couple of stories. You just follow me up, nice and easy,” the Lt started climbing.
Suds watched until he got twelve feet up, close to halfway, then put his fingers in the same holds he watched the Lt use and followed.
Rock, dirt and grit cascaded down onto him each time Bonney moved, but Suds kept his mouth closed and eyes screwed tight into slits. He moved almost by feel, toes clenched in the edge of his boots.
“I’m up,” Lt called down to him.
He felt a surge of relief and reached for the next crevice. It crumbled under his finger and he slid down the rock face, landing hard and cracking back on his elbow.
It dropped by his side, numb.
“You alright?”
Suds cradled his injured elbow, fingers tingling as the nerves raced signals to his brain.
“Arms busted,” he called up.
“Damn it,” Lt cursed. “Alright haul your ass as fast as you can back to the others.”
“What about you?” Suds called up.
“Well I guess I’m going to do the damn thing now that I’m up here,” said Lt. “Go on, get now.”
Suds rocked to his feet, picked up his fallen rifle and started hobbling up the track. His arm throbbed with each step, but he guessed he was lucky it was just that. He could have landed on his spine, broke his back, broke a leg. Something worse.
At least he could move.
“You hear that train coming, you get off the tracks, you hear?” Lt yelled at his departing back.
“Yes Sir!” Suds shouted back and hobbled a little faster.
Lt watched him leave then put him out of his mind. The boys would have to take care of their selves while he did what needed to be done.
He reached into the pouch and unfurled a two inch climbing rope. He tested one of the leaning trees with the bottom of his boot, slamming it three, four times to see if it rocked in the soil.
It held.
He stretched to tie the rope in a sliding knot around the farthest branch, using his eyeball to aim the angle.
It had to work. He wasn’t sure if it would, but it had to.
Lt had just enough time to wonder if Suds was going to make it back on time when he saw something glint in the far distance.
He adjusted his rifle, checked his pistol was strapped in the holster, and wrapped the rope around one hand. He gripped a little higher with the other and blew out a long slow breath between his lips.
“Stupid,” he said out loud. “Anyone else would have come up with this half ass plan, you would have shot it down like nobody’s business.”
He pulled on the rope in a nervous twitch, testing the hold as he perched on the edge of the ridge.
“Swinging down on a moving train. Dumb. Just dumb ass.”
The tree with the rope shifted and pitched over the side of the ridge, his tug disrupting the roots in the soil.
“Son of a bitch,” he had time to sigh.
Then the rope on his hand yanked him off balance and dragged him to the overhang. Lt had just enough time to unwrap his hand, the rope fiber burning a line across his palm before it pulled him over.
He lay with his head, arm and half his chest over the edge of the rock and watched the tree crack on the tracks thirty feet below, bounce and pitch over the side so it was just on one rail.
Lt could hear it now. The train coming, the rails screeching as metal on metal rocked and vibrated toward the bend. It was slowing down, but thirty miles an hour made it seem fast to a man standing still.
He huffed up, looked at the remaining trees and tried to formulate a plan.
“Out of rope,” he grunted.
Then the train appeared. A big lumbering diesel. Sleek front, headlight on, yellow stripes over gray paint. It roared, the noise bouncing off the rocks and reverberating across the slope beyond.
It passed under him, and he could see a boxcar directly behind the engine.
“Stupid!” he shouted above the noise and ran along the ridge to the corner and jumped.
Lt landed on the boxcar top, near the engine. Momentum threw him off balance and he sprawled forward, slipping over the side of the rolling square.
Slick metal slid under his fingers as his legs went over first, dragging the rest of him until his fingers on the burned hand caught the edge of the roof.
He clung there for a second, no time to catch his breath as the wind buffeted him, and mother gravity tugged him, encouraging him to keep falling.
The physics of centrifugal force yanked on his legs, holding them out from the boxcar wall.
Lt surged onto the roof, crashing his waist into the edge, pinching his balls. He ignored the searing pain and kept rolling until his whole body was flat on the roof and he could finally breath.
“No time to rest Billy,” he said to himself and grinned.
Just because his men couldn’t call him the Kid d
idn’t mean he couldn’t in the privacy of his own time.
He unstrapped his rifle, checked the safety and hobbled up to the diesel.
A compartment at the rear was raised, so the engineer could see over the front of the giant motor stretching in front of him.
Lt ducked down to peer into the grimy window. He could make out three shapes. Two aliens and one human.
He had to sling his rifle again and use his arms to balance as he leaped across the five foot divide between cars. He landed on the diesel roof, grabbed the edge and swung onto the narrow catwalk leading to the door.
Windows lined the engine compartment.
He’d been seen.
A Lick whipped the door open and raised a blaster.
Lt dropped to a knee as he yanked his .45 out. The red blast seared the air over his head as he flicked the safety and sent a round into the Lick’s snout.
It pitched over the side of the train.
“Damn,” Lt muttered.
If the second Lick was smart, he’d hole up in the compartment, use the doorway to keep Bonney out.
But Alien soldiers didn’t always exhibit human behavior.
This one followed his buddy out, blaster aimed lower and melted metal in front of Lt’s face on the catwalk with a shot.
Bonney answered with a shot of his own, sending this one back into the compartment in an ichor splattered mess.
Lt tripped over the body as he fumbled into the compartment.
The human engineer screamed and raised one hand, the other feeling for a pistol. Lt raised his own.
“This here ain’t a train robbery,” he said. “But freeze.”
The hand kept moving.
Lt lowered his aim and destroyed the man’s knee.
His screaming took on a different pitch as he fell back on the plastic covered engineer’s seat.
Lt moved up to the controls and ignored the man’s sobbing.
“How do you stop this thing?”
The man ignored him and kept crying, clutching his blasted kneecap.
“I don’t have time to parlay with you,” Lt yelled and whacked the man’s leg with the pistol. “Stop this thing.”
The man screamed again, tears and snot streaming down his face. But he reached up to a control, pressed a button and fell back.
Brakes squealed and shrieked as the wheels slid to a stop on the metal track. It took four minutes for the train to come to a complete halt, and by that time, the engine was well past the ambush site.
Lt reached up, took the pistol the engineer was trying to grab.
“If you move, I’ll shoot your other knee,” he warned the man and jumped over the dead Lick to the catwalk.
He peered down the track at the row of boxcars in front of his squad.
Three of the doors rolled back on their tracks, exposing Lick soldiers.
Then the real fighting began.
CHAPTER
There were two dozen at least, firing from the black interior of the boxcars.
Lutz, Rook and Crockett in the nest facing them, separated by thirty yards.
The Licks had high ground and superior numbers. The red blasts from their lasers raked the dirt around the nest, smoke from the first fight still a fog lingering over the landscape.
The second nest was further back, closer to Lt and the engine. Babe rocked out of the hole and charged toward the boxcars, at an angle they couldn’t fire on.
It worked both ways. He couldn’t shoot at them either.
Lt watched him for a moment, then figured out what he was doing.
Another distraction.
Bonney grabbed the narrow metal ladder leading to the roof of the boxcar and rocketed up as fast as he could. He pounded along the top of the cars on the metal grid bolted in place in the center.
Babe would get there first, he thought as he ran.
He hoped his Sgt could hold out that long.
Babe came in range and plopped on his belly, presenting a smaller profile. Then he aimed into the darkness of the boxcar and waited for a red blast to illuminate his target.
One second later he pulled the trigger and sent a shot into the Lick that fired.
Three seconds after that, he got another.
Then they had his position.
A blast exploded the dirt in front of him.
Rook popped up and sprayed into the box car. His jack in the box worked, bringing the blasts back to him. A Lick in the second boxcar aimed and fired.
The laser ripped through Rook and launched him backwards out of the nest.
Lt heard Lutz scream his name.
Then he dropped to the edge of the boxcar, leaned down and sent three shots into the rest of the Lick soldiers hiding in the dark.
Babe jumped up and ran for the second box car, facing the same problem he had with the first. The angle was wrong.
The Licks in the second and third car saw a human down and concentrated their fire on the nest. Lutz and Crockett were pinned down.
Waldo, Danish and Leroy ran up to join Babe. They reached the field of fire, spread out and started firing into the boxcar, until they drew return fire.
Lt skipped past the second boxcar and jumped to the third. He dropped over the edge, peered over.
A Lick soldier was waiting. It aimed at his head.
Then it’s snout exploded as Suds ran up screaming, shooting.
Lt sent shots into the interior before they could fire back at Suds.
He jumped up to run back and help, but silence descended over the battlefield. Babe and the others had taken care of the second boxcar.
Bonney climbed down from the roof.
“Waldo, Babe, Leroy, check inside,” he yelled.
Suds cradled his rifle as he looked into the third car, eyes wide in pain and adrenaline.
“Clear!” he called out.
Lt ran over to Lutz and Crockett where they kneeled over Rook.
“It’s bad,” Lutz said in a fast high voice.
“Just keep calm, alright,” Lt kept his voice low and even. “That was some damn fine shooting Rook. You saved my life.”
“I did,” Rook whispered.
“Damn right you did. And I fucking appreciate it, no bones about it. You saved us all.”
He glared at the smoking wound through the middle of the boy. The flesh was sealed in some spots, cooked in others. A mishmash of meat and organs that were never supposed to see the light of day lay exposed in the red open wound.
“Ya’ll stay with him,” Lt grunted. “Babe?”
Babe stood by the second boxcar door.
“Lt!”
He jogged over to Babe, checking on Leroy and Suds.
“What we got?”
“Prisoners,” said Babe.
“We don’t take prisoners,” Lt reminded him.
Babe shook his head.
“Not us,” he tilted his chin toward the car. “Them.”
Lt stuck his head inside the car for a look. Three people huddled at the far end of the open space, backs pressed tight against a stack of canned goods.
“Son of a bitch.”
He had never heard of Licks taking prisoners, nor had they encountered any being transported before.
“Ya’ll must be some important sumbitches, huh?” he called out to them.
They didn’t answer, just watched him.
“Fog of battle,” he told Babe. “Get ‘em out of there, then check on Suds. Busted up his arm before we jumped the train.”
Babe nodded and pulled himself up into the boxcar to round up the survivors.
Lt ran up to Leroy.
“Supplies, Sir,” the man reported. “Just like we were told.”
“Good man,” Lt locked eyes with him, and Danish. “Check the rest of the cars, then clear a path. We can reach these first four when the supply trucks show up.”
“Yes sir,” they answered.
“We’re on a clock,” he reminded them.
Babe herded the three survivors out in
to the sunlight. Lt watched them squint for a few minutes, then went over to find out who they were.