Dark Humanity

by Gwynn White

  He walked over to the little green sports car, and she followed. The car itself was ancient. It wasn't as old as her, but she remembered seeing the model back in the 1950s and 60s. It was a coupe with a white vinyl top and open windows; the insides were covered with bird droppings and nesting materials. The green paint was well faded on the top, though it was still evident on the sides—bird filth notwithstanding. It appeared to have been on the bridge for decades, maybe much longer.

  “This could be the most important car you ever see. Do you know why?”

  “I can't think of any reason. I've never seen this car.”

  “I'm sure you haven't. It's OK you don't understand the connection yet. That it's here tells me you are very close to realizing your full potential in this world. I can't say much more than that, or I could upset the delicate balancing act that is leading you down this path. But you should take great comfort at seeing this particular car, in this particular place.”

  She looked at the car, then at Al.

  “You look like Al, and my Lord, how I wish you were Al. But you can't be. Who are you, really?”

  “You are very perceptive indeed. No, having conversations with the dearly departed is generally frowned upon by ... the system. In this place, I can look like anyone you have in your memory, put you in any situation you can imagine, and if I'm really lucky, I can guide you on your journey through this troubling time.”

  She suddenly felt exhausted.

  “Mister whoever-you-are, will you please tell me why you've been masquerading as my husband in these dreams?”

  “Dearest Martinette, I never intended any harm to you. The closest approximation to my true nature is what you would call an Angel. I serve the Light.”

  She looked intently at him.

  “You're an Angel of God?”

  “I make no claim to understand my Creator, though, like you, I hope to see His true face someday. In many ways, I'm just as real and fallible as you.”

  She crossed herself, knowing she would have to ask the next question.

  “I mean no disrespect, but how do I know you aren't lying to me again by saying that? Who you serve.”

  Al considered. He stood up.

  He snapped his fingers. Standing there in front of her as far as she could see over the bridge were row after row of the infected. An impossible number. Most were missing limbs or had large chunks torn from their bodies. All were ruined in form and substance. Somehow they were standing there, unmoving, all the way to the other shore.

  Al called out to them, “I serve the One True God. You shall bow in His name.”

  And then ... impossibly ... they all bent to one knee.

  And then ... predictably ... she fainted and fell back to the ground.

  Falling. Falling. Falling.

  “OH, MY GOD!”

  Grandma woke up with a yell. It must have been a nightmare, because she practically exploded awake, tipping dangerously forward in her wheelchair. Victoria was closest and had the good sense to grab her as she leaned forward. It was a near-run thing. Would Grandma survive falling flat on her face? After surviving so much, that would be a horrible way to go.

  Liam moved closer and spoke softly.

  “Grandma, are you OK? You were having a bad dream.”

  “No. Yes.” She looked around and reoriented herself on the rail yard. They'd found it after much walking and just as dusk fell.

  “No, I wasn't having a bad dream exactly. Yes, I'm fine now that I know where I am.”

  “Sorry. It's just that you made a lot of noise. We're kind of hiding here from ... them.” He didn't know how to say it any more plainly without making her feel bad.

  He and Victoria were crouched together next to her, listening to see if any zombies had become alerted by her nightmare. In the vast rail yard, it didn't seem likely, but he took no chances—made no assumptions—anymore.

  After several minutes, he breathed out a silent sigh of relief. Nothing seemed to have been attracted to them. They were hidden in the narrow corridor between two lines of train cars. The train yard offered many such hidey holes, and most of the police group was in between the same two trains. Hiding and staying quiet. Resting after their run down the railroad from the Arch.

  By virtue of their slow movement with the wheelchair, he, Victoria and Grandma found themselves at the very back of the line, though the biggest cop—Jones—was also back there with a shotgun. He was the rear guard.

  Liam's group was near the last car of one of the parallel trains. As things settled back down, a face popped around that last car, looking into the dark corridor between both sets of tracks. Liam could clearly see the black man's eyes—along with his red ball cap. He was a living, breathing person. Jones happened to be facing his way, so Liam made a motion for him to turn around. Jones did and casually moved the shotgun resting against his shoulder to a more actionable position in front of him, though he kept it pointed down.

  The visitor paused for a second before walking into the gap between the two lines of cars, with his hands and arms reaching outward to show he was unarmed. He wore a white t-shirt, and even in the low moonlight it was apparent he had a lot of bloodstains on it. He did have a weapon: an ornate gold-plated pistol stuck in the waistband of his jeans.

  Liam felt his pocket for his pistol but made no effort to draw until he saw where this was going. Jones would be far more intimidating if weapons were required.

  The man looked over his shoulder, back around the train car, before turning his attention once again to Liam and his friends. He appeared to be studying the situation, making a decision. Jones stood quietly, making no threatening gestures; just holding his shotgun in a position where he could swing it into action instantly.

  Seemingly satisfied, the man motioned with his arm, signaling someone out of sight to come to him.

  Liam's hand was inside his pocket, unlatching the safety. If there were more than a couple men, he knew he'd probably be outgunned in this narrow space, but he was going to help Jones, no matter how futile.

  Ten seconds later, a black teenage girl trotted around the corner, toward the group. She was followed quickly by a younger girl holding the hand of a third small girl. Then a couple of very young black boys came around. They were followed by a string of about ten black children of varying ages. A couple of grown women followed the procession. Impossibly, another handful of small kids followed them, including one or two small white children. Finally, another grown black man rounded the corner. The only difference in attire and appearance with his mate was the large number of gold chains draped around his neck. Liam couldn't help but remember a different encounter with a man wearing so many gold chains …

  The men followed their charges. They ran by Liam with grim smiles, unaware of his internal confusion, and soon disappeared down the line. No words were exchanged.

  Liam's hand left his pistol as his blood pressure slowly came back down from the stratosphere. For several minutes, he wondered if anyone else in the large group of survivors would be surprised by this unlikely mix of people running by, but thankfully, no gunfights erupted. Well, not anywhere close. Gunshots were so common as background noise in the distance he didn't even notice it.

  He and Victoria were both exhausted beyond words. They settled in next to Grandma, using his backpack as their mutual pillow. Jones hunkered down several paces toward the back of the line.

  “Get some sleep, guys. I've got this,” Jones whispered as they tried to get comfortable.

  “I'll make sure he stays awake,” Grandma said sweetly. “I've been asleep in my chair most of the past few days.”

  “No arguments here.” Looking over at Victoria, her eyes were already shut.

  He felt the world owed him a nice night of sleep.

  It wasn't long before he was out.

  Seemingly seconds later, he woke up when Jones gave him a manly chuck on the shoulder while holding a hand over his mouth. Jones was in his face giving the “quiet” symbol. Nex
t, he did the same for Victoria.

  Jones pointed underneath the last train car and made a motion suggesting they look below to see what was on the far side.

  In the low light of a partial moon, he could see lots of undead meandering around an open section of the rail yard. They were moving without a unified purpose but were more or less facing south. It was impossible to know how many were out there.

  Completely exhausted, he didn’t feel like he was awake. Probably, this was some kind of nightmare in which he was sitting in a train yard with fifty other people, hoping everyone could be quiet so as not to alert the insatiable, bloodthirsty zombies. Going along with the dream, he calculated the odds of warning everyone.

  He soon edged back toward a deeper sleep, his mind aimless. The shambling dead still hadn't noticed anyone. Were they able to see in the dark? Did they have hearing or smell that was better than a live human? No one really knew the capabilities of these creatures, other than their one apparent skill—finding blood.

  He questioned if they did have any superpowers, like in any number of books he'd read on zombies. Some were fast. Some were strong. Some couldn't be killed except by complete decapitation. Some were supernatural spirits. Some …

  Zombies aren't real. They're just sick humans, right? Hayes had laughed at that word.

  In real life, the sick are just sick. Rather than the archetypical zombie running around shouting, “Brains!” these were just housewives, bankers, and students who got sick with a disease that seemed to cause them to wander around aimlessly. But they had a plague so bad it kept killing even after the host is dead. If they knew healthy humans were hiding so close, they'd be swarming to the buffet table.

  All we need to make this scene uber-surreal is the idiot priest who tries to reason with them because he believes they are still the children of God and gets eaten, dying with that look of shocked surprise on his face. He looked down the path to see if a priest was coming.

  “Hello, Father Cahill!” he called out.

  A shove woke him up.

  “Stay awake! You're mumbling,” Victoria whispered into his ear.

  He looked around for the priest and realized he’d been dreaming. Or hallucinating. Either way, he could put everyone in danger if he let his exhaustion get the better of him. He smiled at her and tried to stay focused on the figures moving around on the other side of the tracks.

  They seemed to float gently in the cool evening air. The moonlight gave them a ghostly pallor. A dreamy look—

  He fought to keep his eyes from closing again. For some reason, he thought of flapjacks.

  Minutes went by, and a new stimulus arrived. There, not fifteen feet away, was the most beautiful girl he'd ever seen. She was dressed in a sheer pink nightgown that absorbed the light of the moon and made her seem to glow.

  He stood to get a better view, like a Peeping Tom at the girl's summer camp, but felt no embarrassment as he memorized her curves.

  “Aw yeah. Victoria, you look amazing tonight.”

  She smiled broadly at him and slowly removed one of the straps of her gown, letting it fall off her shoulder. It revealed just a little more of her ... He was pleased to see the shimmer of her gown was now drifting in his direction.

  He was panting. He knew it was wrong to behave like an—an animal—but he was reveling in it. He shouted, “Victoria, kiss me!”

  A hand shook him violently.

  “Liam. Seriously? Wake up!” a girl whispered forcefully in his ear.

  He opened his eyes and turned.

  Victoria seemed pretty angry, but she put a finger to her lips to tell him to be quiet.

  He glanced around. She wasn't in a revealing pink gown. Instead, to his utter horror, he saw a similarly shaped blood-drenched teenage girl. It appeared as if someone threw buckets of the stuff on her.

  Oh, God, no!

  The zombie wore a pink nightgown.

  “It's not possible.” He whispered it to himself. What was he going to tell Victoria—“I was dreaming, and you were wearing a slinky nightgown, but you turned out to be a blood-soaked zombie”?

  The blood-covered teenager was moving in his direction. Lots of her friends on the far side of the train car were heading the same way now.

  Oh, crap! What have I done?

  A train horn blasted, and he covered his ears. An engine was spinning up somewhere in the yard. A few moments later, a repetitive “bang bang bang” drew closer and closer to them. When the train car behind them banged, he knew what it was. A train was starting to move, and the noise came from each car catching and pulling the car behind it. The final “bang” sounded seconds later, and the whole train was in motion.

  The train between them and the zombies remained still, but they could walk right around the last car. The moving train behind him would catch the attention of every zombie in sight.

  We have to get out of here.

  He looked at the moving train, and a plan occurred to him. He immediately hated it, but a good plan now was better than a perfect plan tomorrow. Thank you General Patton!

  Jones was still with them, a few feet away.

  “Jones, we need your help.” He spoke at a normal volume.

  “What you gonna do, kid?”

  He moved over to Jones and hurriedly shared his plan. The big man made a whistling sound as if impressed, then looked at Grandma. Liam figured he was sizing up his idea.

  “I don't think I could do a better job. Let's do it.”

  He and his shotgun moved to block the corridor so Liam and the girls could get in position.

  Liam yelled, “Victoria. Help Grandma out of the chair, please.” He ran to his backpack, put it on, then folded the wheelchair down in several fluid motions; he was getting good at it. Then he quickly explained his plan to Victoria and Grandma.

  As best he could tell from his position the moving train was about twenty cars long, with at least one engine pulling it. Most of the cars were empty coal tenders, along with a few liquid-haulers and two flatbed cars, both with tractor-trailers on their backs. One of the flatbeds had already passed. The other was the very last car. That was their target. Grandma couldn't very well run and catch the first one. She wasn't going to be climbing ladders to get up on the coal cars either.

  The rest of the group of police and gang members was jumping onto whatever cars were closest. He couldn't see the entire group in the black of the night, but he suspected they all had the same idea. To make sure, he yelled, “Everyone jump the train!”

  The zombies were rounding the corner of the parked train. The other train was still moving slowly like it was taking its time feeling through the gloom ahead. He began to wonder if it would be too slow, and whether those dead people might also climb on board.

  Victoria supported Grandma while he grabbed the big wheelchair. He'd been handling it for a couple of days now and knew it had some heft to it, but he was surprised to find he could barely lift it. As Jones let loose with the first shell, he tried to heft the chair up onto the passing flatcar.

  He got it into the air, but it was a horribly placed toss; the chair careened off the side of the car and fell into the rocks next to the tracks. He decided to let it go. With a quick jog, he jumped onto the small ladder near the front of the flatcar and climbed aboard.

  Several zombies closed in on Jones but he shot several of them in quick order. There were lots more. He needed Jones more than anyone right now.

  “Walk with the train!” he shouted.

  He ran to the back of the flatcar, which was also the end of the train. Jones was backpedaling rapidly, firing a couple shots and then reaching into his pants pocket to grab more shells.

  He pulled out his gun. He threw off the safety and kept the gun low while he looked for easy targets. He could hit just about any of the zombies in his immediate vicinity, but to be effective with the little gun he needed a clean shot to the head. That made things tricky. It was dark. He was moving. The zombies didn't want to be shot ...

&
nbsp; “Jones, you have to run; Grandma is walking up the line!”

  Jones was in the middle of a reload when one zombie got too close to ignore. In one smooth motion, the big man bashed in the infected woman’s face with the butt of his shotgun.

  “Stay down!” Jones yelled.

  A half a dozen others were close behind her. He finished putting in a last shell, racked it, but then used the sling to throw the gun over his shoulder, and started running back up the line.

  Liam was left alone for the moment on the tail of the train. He could have started shooting, but held off. Instead, he screamed at them.

  “I'm right here, you stupid zombies! Molon labe!”

  “Come and take it,” the defiant words of the Spartans at Thermopylae; thanks for teaching me that one, Dad!

  He screamed and whistled and made as much noise as he could. It had the intended effect. Much of the pursuit moved in his direction, rather than try to follow Jones between the trains. Soon he was a pied piper with fifteen or twenty infected in the wake of the train. He turned around to watch the front of the flatcar.

  Victoria and Jones swapped positions so he could help Grandma walk along. Victoria ran ahead and climbed the moving ladder and sat on the edge of the car, facing Jones. The big man picked up tiny Grandma between both arms and fast-walked until he was a few paces ahead of Victoria.

  “Oh dear!” Grandma yelped.

  Jones planted his feet and started swinging her backward, then forward, backward again, and then he swung her forward with just enough force to gingerly pass her off onto Victoria's lap. It appeared to be as smooth a transfer as anyone could expect at 104—if they were inclined to hitch rides on random trains in the middle of the night.

  “No, I can't,” Grandma wailed, much too late. Victoria wrapped her arms around her.

  Jones was tall enough and strong enough to get her up on the flat car, but he had to make sure his feet weren't caught under the train. Once Grandma was safe, he jumped back.

  “Oh, mercy me,” Grandma continued to complain. Liam hoped she hadn't been hurt but was glad it wasn't him passing her up … he thought of the wheelchair far behind.