by Kirk Allmond
Tookes squeezed the throttle, pushing the locomotive forward, gradually increasing speed. In a very short time, he had the locomotive going wide open, and the speedometer was pegged at eighty-five miles per hour. They screamed down the tracks for nearly half an hour when Max pointed across a field.
"Daddy, there's the big 8!"
Victor followed his finger and saw the sign of a Super 8 motel. He brought the train to a stop and climbed out on the roof with Sammie. Through the scope, he saw a horror scene. A single woman was in the parking lot, wielding a machete like a sword. She moved in a way that reminded him of old Bruce Lee movies. They were about a mile away, and he couldn't see well enough to see if it was Renee, but unless Renee was immune like them and had gained some ninja power, this was not her.
"Leo, get Marshall and me there. John, can you shoot from here? I need one of us here with Max."
"Of course I can, mate."
Victor climbed down to the ground, drew his hatchet and pistol, and stood next to his brother. Marshall had his hammers out, then Leo grabbed their shoulders and all the air was sucked out of Victor's lungs.
They reappeared at the edge of the parking lot, and the three of them waded right in. They walked in a line, Leo wanting to stay close in case they had to bail out. The woman, who was definitely not Renee, was in the middle of a sea of zombies. She was tall, around five feet seven. Her long brown hair had sun-bleached strips of blonde through it. She was clearly a super human. She didn't just resemble Bruce Lee; she was Bruce Lee. She even sounded like him.
The three of them fought towards the kung-fu girl, carving a path through the ocean of undead. Marshall and Victor each took the front, and Leo took out anything that got close. Victor had almost forgotten what a joy it was to watch Leo work. She had lately taken up such flashy fighting styles, with the teleporting and flying; he'd forgotten how sexy the way Leo moved was. Leo walked along with them, except when something got close. Then she blurred away. She swung her arms in huge arcs, moving so fast that they could hear the whoosh of the blades.
Marshall was having a blast; he'd shouldered one of the hammers and focused just on the short-handled one. He spun it, keeping it moving at all times, whirling around. When a zombie got near, its head disappeared. Victor thought Marshall was trying to get the corpses to flip in the air. He spun the hammer and swung it like a martial artist with nun-chucks, over his shoulder, around his waist, under the other arm, and down on top of a zombie skull. He hit a walking corpse so hard, the hammer stuck. He yanked on the hammer at the same time as he planted his foot in the chest of the corpse, kicking it ten feet back into the crowd of zombies, toppling several of them.
Victor was having the most trouble because he had no physical enhancements. He could tell what each attacker was going to do before they did it, but he was just a normal man, and he was getting tired. He focused all of his effort on picking strikes that required the least physical exertion. The group stepped up, bringing Tookes within arm’s reach of three zombies. He parried their hands with his hatchet, knocking two zombies away. The last one managed to get a hand on his arm. He twisted it towards the corpse's thumb and then brought the hatchet down on its skull in an overhand chop, reminding the thing that it was indeed dead.
"On my planet, when you're dead you stay dead!" he yelled, trying to get his energy up.
John fired two shots from over a mile away. The first bullet impacted the side of Vic’s hatchet, changing the direction of his swing enough that the hand ax buried itself in the forehead of a zombie Victor hadn't seen coming up on his side. The second bullet put down the one Vic had been aiming for; the force of the impact launched the zombie into a back flip. The dead zombie landed on its face, revealing a hollowed-out skull. Its entire brain was missing from its head.
Leo, who never really took her eyes off Victor, saw him struggling and shifted more towards his side, helping him occasionally, letting him slow down and catch his breath. He had no idea how ninja-girl kept going. She'd been moving full speed since they started, but even she was starting to slow down and get a little sloppy. One got too close, only to have its head vaporized, followed two seconds later by a crack from the direction of the train.
“Nice shooting, John,” Victor sent.
"Hi, I'm Marshall," Victor heard Marshall say to her over the din of several hundred zombies pressing in on us from all sides.
"Holy shit, you mean I'm not the only person alive? If I believed in God, I'd be thanking Him right about now. Too bad you couldn’t have shown up ten minutes ago," she said. "And by the way, your gunner got gore all over my favorite fucking fatigues. You owe me a new pair!"
"Sorry about that. I'm pretty sure he saved your life though," Victor said as only a few zombies separated their circles.
"What brings you out to this lovely spot?" Marshall asked.
"There's a woman and two kids up in room 203. My friend and I were driving by and saw her fighting a zombie with a little girl in her arms. She killed one of these things, and then she ducked back in her room about thirty minutes ago. My friend and I killed a bunch with my shotgun before she was bit. She didn't make it. That's when you three or four including your sniper showed up."
"The woman in the room is my sister. I only recently found out she was still alive. We came down from Virginia to get her."
"Oh. Good,” she said flatly.
“I can talk to people telepathically, and I can do this from very far away,” Victor sent to her. “But I didn't know she was surrounded until just about forty-five minutes ago. We came the minute I found out.”
“Telepathy; from the Greek tele, meaning ‘distant’ and pathe, meaning ‘affliction, experience;’ is the induction of mental states from one mind to another. The term was coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Fredric W. H. Myers, a founder of the Society for Psychical Research, and has remained more popular than the more-correct expression thought-transference. Many studies seeking to detect, understand, and utilize telepathy have been done within this field. Claims of telepathy as a real phenomenon are at odds with the scientific consensus. According to the prevailing view among scientists, telepathy lacks replicable results from well-controlled experiments,” Kris thought. Victor was confused. It was Kris's thought, but it came through in an odd voice with a clipped British accent.
"What was that?" he asked as they continued fighting towards the stairs.
"A photographic memory and some fun useless facts," she said.
Victor watched the colors of her aura swirl. She wasn't exactly lying, but she wasn't telling the whole truth. He didn't want to push her, since they just met and she didn't know him. She was trying to help his sister, apparently lost a friend in the process, and didn't seem much like talking. For some reason, he decided showing off a little bit would help. Victor was normally very charming. Something about Kris put his charm on its end. "Watch this," he said.
“John, can you clear us a path to the stairs?” He sent the message so both she and John could hear it.
Within a second, thirty zombies collapsed, their heads exploded almost simultaneously into a cloud of pink mist. As they heard the gunshots from the first magazine John fired, thirty more fell. It took about one-and-a-half seconds for the sound to travel from the train to the steps of the hotel. In that time, John had reloaded and fired off another magazine. While they advanced through the holes John had made, he cleared the steps.
"Damn, how many fucking gunners do you have?" Kris asked.
Leo laughed. "Only one, but he's a hell of a show off when there's a cute chick around."
Leo popped up to the top of the stairs and blurred her way down, killing the last few zombies in their way.
The four of them walked up and knocked on the door.
"Renee, it’s Vic. Marshall and I brought friends."
"How do I know you're really Vic?"
"Remember the time Marshall and I tried to tear you apart in the car, each of us pulling on your arm?"
; "Yea," she replied.
"Never happened," Victor said, telling an old family story. To this day, Renee was sure her brothers tried to tear her in half on a car trip when they were all kids.
"You might just have Vic's memories."
"Renee, open the door before I have Marshall break it down. We have to go; Max is not far from here. He brought us to you."
"That’s the impatient Victor Tookes I know!" said Renee as the deadbolt clicked in the door.
Renee looked terrible. She was excessively skinny, but she was alive, and Vic’s heart soared seeing her, Maya, and Holly sitting on the bed.
"VERN!" she yelled out, giving him a huge hug. "Marsh!" she exclaimed, hugging Marshall.
They all stepped into the room and locked the door. "Leo, can you get Renee and the girls to the train from in here?"
"Sure." She stepped towards the two girls and said, "Hi, I'm Leo! Want to get out of here and go see your cousin Max? Your mommy's coming with us, but I need to pick you up. Is that okay?"
The two small children nodded. Renee looked amazed that the Australian woman had been so easily able to charm her kids, who were normally very shy.
"Renee, if you would grab my shoulder. Girls, this is going to be cold, like getting a bath. Can you hold your breath? I'll count to three."
Both little girls nodded again.
"Here we go! One. Two. Three!" They all disappeared.
"Kris? Want a ride out of here?" Marshall asked. "There's still a couple hundred zombies out there, and we're not fighting our way out. We have a safe place with a couple hundred survivors. We could use a good fighter like you."
"Sure. I'm not much of a fighter, but let’s see where this takes me. You're the first living people I've seen in months. I don't have anything anymore," she replied as Leo reappeared in the room. "Plus, I get the feeling I won't have much of a chance out there without Mac."
"Three to beam out, Leo," Victor said as he held out his hand. Leo put hers on top of his, Marshall on top of hers. Kris slowly put her hand on top of Marshall’s. They disappeared from the hotel room in a swirl of black dust.
Chapter 13
Homeward
With the entire group back on the train, it took a few minutes to get everything going in the engine. Renee and the kids set up in the car. Kris, Marshall, and Victor stayed up in the locomotive. When the engines were humming along, Tookes engaged the motors. The final step was to release the brake and put the train in reverse. Now they were pushing the car up the track, running backwards.
"Marshall, I'm going to climb out and keep watch. If I see something, I'll let you know," Victor said, leaving the conductor’s cockpit.
The large man watched his brother walk out of the cockpit and then turned his attention back to Kris. Her dark brown hair had been pulled back into a loose bun, and her dark eyes stared out of the window of the locomotive. She had her arms wrapped around her body, and her mouth was drawn into a tightly controlled, forced neutral expression. It seemed like she was keeping a deeply set terror at bay.
"So," Marshall said, "are you from Virginia?"
The woman was silent for a moment and then glanced over to him and shook her head. "Nah. Nags Head, North Carolina—born and raised."
Marshall smiled lightly. "I love that area. Best sunsets on the east coast."
"Yeah," she agreed. "I think so too." Kris shared his smile and found she no longer felt uncomfortable around him. He was handsome, that was clear. His facial structure was strong, and his shoulders were broad. His appearance was similar to Victor's, but his hair was significantly lighter than his brother’s was. Marshall's eyes were dark and kind with a smile that came easy. Kris liked him.
Outside the cockpit, Victor was climbing up the ladder to the roof of the engine. Once at the top, he jumped the two feet to the top of the shipping container.
“That bump was me, buddy. I'm on the roof keeping watch. Can you tell everyone in there?” he sent to Max.
“Yes, Daddy. Hold on tight!” he replied.
As the train clacked down the rails, Tookes sat on the edge of the container and tried to plan his next step. Frye is still a threat, and as long as my family is at the plantation, he would keep coming after us, he thought, rubbing his hands together. Frye wasn't the sort who gave up easily, but neither am I. He was attempting to accomplish a mission objective, and I am defending my home place and my family. Tookes really wanted to believe that Frye was a good guy, even if he didn't like his methods. Frye was human, and there weren't enough humans left anymore to kill them needlessly. Everything must have a purpose.
Victor really wanted to talk to him and have Frye see the errors of his actions. In a way, Tookes understood his motivation. If Tookes didn't have the burning drive to destroy every zombie on the planet, he could see why someone who didn't have anything to lose would try to make the end of their days as comfortable as possible.
On the other hand, he also wanted to kill him. The thought of him putting his hands on Max was enough to make Victor's blood boil. Frye came to my house, killed my men, and abducted my son. There is no law anymore. There is only a man's ability to defend what was his, he thought as the world flew by. Vic's moral compass had a hard time allowing him to walk up to Frye and kill him. Ultimately, he wasn't convinced that Frye couldn't be reasoned with and that he was unable to be changed. He knew he had to give it one more shot. Victor's thoughts circled around Frye and what he would do next as they sped down the rails.
Down in the cockpit, Kris suddenly stopped talking and turned to lean her head out of the window of the locomotive. Her hair whipped around her head, and she squinted against the sudden rush of air.
"What?" Marshall asked and took a step towards her.
Kris lifted her hand and closed her eyes. Her face softened, and she fell into deep thought. Marshall watched her, feeling very confused. What was she looking at?
Her eyes opened. "Fuck me, we've got company."
The train slowed and pulled Vic from his thoughts. Tookes stood up to go back to the locomotive to see what the holdup was. By the time he was climbing down the ladder, the train had come to a complete stop.
"What's up?" Tookes asked.
"Kris heard something hit the tracks ahead."
"A tree, actually. Quercus alba," she paused and then added, "White oak." Kris shook the knots out of her hair and pulled her brunette locks back into a loose bun. A few shorter strands of hair lined her thin face.
"Kris, how far can you hear?" Tookes asked. "And how do you know it's an oak?" He watched her aura turn purple, which was a sign of defensiveness.
"You didn't hear that?" Her surprise would have been believable to anyone else, but her aura remained a deep purple.
"I don't trust random circumstance, and it's really random that a tree fell across the tracks ahead of us," Victor said.
Kris's aura gained yellow stripes, a sign of surprise. Tookes wasn't sure what she was surprised about. It certainly wasn't a stretch that a tree falling across the tracks wasn't a random circumstance. Did she know something about it? If this was an ambush, she could be in on whatever was going on here. Victor decided to test her little bit.
"Kris, do you know anything about the men up ahead?" he asked calmly.
"Other than that there are eleven of them? I don't know a damn thing," she replied.
"How do you know?" he asked.
She sighed. The color of her aura shifted, and she was getting annoyed with her interrogator. "I can hear their heartbeats," she said. "Two of them are recovering from some physical exertion, and they're carrying a huge-ass saw. Most of them are nervous."
"Do you think it’s a trap?"
Kris thought for a moment before adding, "I don't know. I don't know them, and I don't know you. Would you trust my answer either way?"
"All of us have some form of power. Yours appears to be hearing." Kris snorted back a laugh, but Vic continued anyway. "Marshall here could probably lift this train over the tree you hear
d fall. Leo can outrun bullets. John never misses with a gun or any other projectile."
"Fancy," she said, crossing her arms.
Victor ignored her. "The good news is that you're immune to the parasite that causes the dead to walk. The bad news is that you've been bitten at some point."
"Ain't that the truth? What's your claim to fame?"
"My friends call me Tookes. My family calls me Vic. I'd like to count you as a friend. My power is much more subtle. I can read the auras of the living, and I can see people's decisions before they act on them. I knew you were surprised when I asked you about the men, and I saw you feeling defensive when I asked you about your hearing. I understand not wanting to lay it all out on the table. I just need to know if you're with me or if you're with them."
Her aura went back to deep purple. Kris was sitting on the edge of rage, and if Tookes pushed her any harder, she was going to shut down. "So I know your name now. Big deal. I don't even know who you are or if you're worth my trust," she said. "So you have some telepathy shit? That's fun."
"Every one of us has killed more zombies than we care to think about. I'm just a father trying to make a safe place in this horrible world for my son to grow up," he said softly. "You're welcome to come check it out. I believe that every human life has value, and I don't want to kill any humans. I've also noticed that through the end of the world, it seems as though more bad guys survived than good guys. I'm trying really hard to be a good guy."
"Okay," she said flatly. It was clear that Kris was no longer in the mood to talk.
"So," he continued, "there appears to be an ambush ahead. The best way out of an ambush is to spring it early." A plan was already forming in his head.
"Marshall, I want you to drive the train up ahead. When you near the tree, slam on the brakes and stop the train, like you're surprised. John, Leo, and I will have the people wrapped up by the time you get there."
Kris stood there looking at him, her arms folded across her chest.
"Kris, I'm not going in trying to kill anyone. In fact, I'm going to go talk to them. I'm going to cover my ass though. I could use someone who can fight like you, but if you want to wait here or ride in the car, I understand."