Zombie Road | Book 8 | Crossroads of Chaos

by Simpson, David A.

  The chairman had said some of the people in the Utopia collective were engineers and scientists from Silicon Valley who had been on a retreat when the apocalypse started. He refused to listen to any requests for his people to join with the Central States, they had been cut off and left to die he insisted. None would leave the perfect society they were building. Gunny thought it sounded like a pseudo religious cult with a chip on their shoulder but right now the half-starved soldiers were his priority.

  The Chairman sent Xavier with the train to ensure they carried out their end of the bargain.

  “I’ll radio the Admiral at San Clemente.” Gunny said. “Let them know we’re on the way. Meanwhile let’s get that rail back in place.”

  They wound down the mountain, hit the desert floor and picked up speed. Xavier was familiar with the tracks; he ran them frequently with his rail rider.

  “I’ve never been across the border, though.” He said. “The Mexican side was heavily populated. It still is, except they’re all dead now.”

  They passed the few scattered buildings and homes spread out in the barren land as they neared the border wall. It was tall, rusted and there were already crowds of the undead being drawn to it. They ran towards the sound of the locomotive, the clacking of steel wheels on steel rails. Gunny brought the train to a stop a hundred yards from the crossover, a tall metal gate blocked the way.

  They had their .22’s and were ready to pick off stragglers chasing them down the mountain but none came.

  “Chairman Simon tasked me to patrol.” Xavier said. “I travel far and eliminate the afflicted when I see them. There were a lot in the beginning but not so much anymore until you get close to the cities.”

  “They don’t wander out here on their own, they don’t follow the roads or something?” Bridget asked.

  “No, they tend to congregate, bunch up together and stay in the towns. We run silent with the Teslas and velocipedes but they’ll chase you if they see you. I still have to be careful but if they don’t have a reason to come out here, they usually don’t.”

  A pair of open topped electric cars slid silently out of the side roads and pulled up beside the rumbling train. A group of men and women climbed out and approached the front engine where the crew were on the deck. They were dressed like Xavier with loose flowing sand-colored clothes, exotic headsets and fancy wrist guards. None of them were armed.

  “Is it just me or does it feel like we’re on Tatooine?” Hollywood asked under his breath. “I swear, those cars look like land speeders and they all dress like sand people.”

  Gunny climbed down to greet them and go over the plan their guide had laid out. It was pretty simple. They would power up the building with generators, hit the switches to open the gates and the train would cross into Mexico, hopefully taking all the undead with them. They’d close the gates behind them and the whole thing would be over in a few minutes.

  “What about strays?” Gunny asked. “Thousands are going to pour through, some of them might not chase after us.”

  “No worries.” The tallest of the men said. “We’ll take care of them.”

  Gunny looked doubtful. He still hadn’t seen any weapons and the Tesla’s didn’t have machine guns mounted on them. He’d let them deal with it themselves if that’s what they wanted; he was pretty sure he’d have his hands full running the train.

  “Simon said you didn’t have maps of the Mexican rail lines.” One of the women said and handed him a roll of papers. “We made copies of what we have, I think they’re pretty accurate, they cover the whole Baja peninsula.”

  “Thanks.” Gunny said and made a twirling motion with his finger at his crew. “All right, let’s roll. Get buttoned up, make sure the deck gates are locked and your escape routes are clear.”

  They knew their positions and hurried to them. Griz was tail gunner. Hollywood operated the track switcher. Bridget was up front with the binoculars watching for rail splits and rooftops. Carl said the Mexican laws were a little different, houses and buildings might be only a few feet from the rails and zombies on rooftop patios might come raining down on them. Scratch and Stabby manned the .50’s to clear a path at intersections.

  The Tesla’s disappeared into a garage and a few minutes later they heard generators come to life then the big gates started to open. They saw the hands and arms reaching into the opening first then contorted faces as they tried to squeeze through. They heard the roar as thousands poured through the opening like muddy water. They screamed their dry throated screams and ran for the noisy diesel.

  “Pull back inside.” Gunny said over the loudspeaker and the crew didn’t have to be told twice. There were too many, they’d pile up and go right over the reinforced railings. Tommy had angled them outward like a prison fence but when the undead started stacking up a hundred deep they’d flow right over the top.

  When the border gates were three quarters open, Gunny blew the horn, released the brakes and got the train moving. The big diesel pushed them aside, too slow to do much damage and they grabbed for handholds. Hundreds slammed into the train, hungry for the fresh blood only a few yards away. Behind them thousands more came. A little slower, a little more damaged but they were running as fast as they could. Behind them a massive group of shamblers were pouring through the gates. Gunny slid the controls and picked up more speed. When he hit the second wave, bodies came tumbling over the railing, landed on the deck and started attacking the doors. Their withered brown faces had been out in the weather for months but some were still fast and vicious. Still hungry. Still deadly.

  Gunny blew the horn again as the rear engine passed through the gates and saw them start to close. The horde was following, stumbling over the broken crawlers tossed aside by the train and the locomotive was picking up speed. Bodies started to fly when he slammed them and the runners were falling behind, tripping over the uneven rail bed. More undead came screaming out of the side roads and alleys but at least he could see the tracks ahead of them now, he wasn’t driving blind into a swarm of writhing bodies.

  He set the controls for twenty miles an hour and yelled at the crew to clean off the deck. They needed to watch for upcoming spurs, cars across the tracks, other trains blocking the way or anything else that could derail them.

  Scratch and Stabby strapped on their claws and spikes with unhappy faces. They hated the smell of rotting zombie blood and they were about to get it splashed all over them again.

  “I didn’t miss this part of adventuring.” Stabby said glumly.

  “Yeah.” Scratch complained. “Think I’d rather be at the pub about now, sipping on a tall one.”

  “Why don’t you shoot them?” Xavier asked.

  “Ricochet.” Hollywood said. “Gotta be careful or you’ll shoot yourself. Safer to use blades when we can.”

  With one last check of their armor the boys shoved open the door and laid into the undead. Xavier watched through the glass and Gunny watched him. He didn’t particularly like having a spy in their midst. He didn’t have anything to hide but it was clear the kid was supposed to observe and report.

  When they’d taken care of the dozen or so undead that had tumbled over the railing, they started tossing them overboard as Gunny increased the throttle. Bridget locked the military grade, gyroscopically balanced binoculars to the mount on the front rail and started looking for trouble or rail crossings. They had a range of about two miles and as she called out the obstacles the train slowed or sped up to deal with them. For cars stalled at crossings, they slowed to bump them out of the way. For hordes running straight at them they picked up speed and sent them flying.

  “Intersection.” Bridget yelled. “About a half mile ahead.”

  “Hollywood, you’re up.” Gunny said but the former gangster, former soldier and former drug dealer was already at the controls of the remote track switcher Tommy had invented. He extended the repurposed loading arm from a telescopic forklift to its limit as the train slowed. It stretched out some forty feet as he
got it lined up to snap the point rails over to the right position. More undead poured out of the surrounding roads, drawn to the sound of the engines and the clank of the wheels on rails.

  Stabby and Scratch manned the .50’s, raked back and forth across the crowds and blew chunks of undead body parts for yards. The impact of the big bullets sent them flying away from the tracks and kept them clear so the track switcher could work.

  The rails slammed into position and Hollywood raised the arm then pulled the levers to collapse it.

  “We’re good to go.” He yelled over his shoulder to Gunny. “Give gas, get us out of here.”

  It was only about fifty miles to the ocean but the tracks dipped dozens of miles down into Mexico and once they neared Tijuana, they had to clear a lot of intersections. The undead followed and the undead poured out of the city. The tracks became very congested as they ran through narrow passages between the buildings they had to reverse frequently to pull the hordes away. The withered husks were never a threat to derail them but the wheels lost traction and spun on the spoiled blood and putrefying entrails. Sometimes it took both engines, one pushing and one pulling, to get them away from the press. Gunny and Griz would work the engines, force them through the thickly packed crowds and run them back out into the desert. They would come to a stop, wait for the horde to show then plow through them with both .50’s blasting away, the big bullets imploding bodies eight and ten deep. Bones broke, chests exploded, ropes of entrails and rotting organs were sucked through holes and followed the path of the bullets.

  Tijuana had a population of over two million before the fall. An eerie lull had fallen over the city, the only sounds an occasional flapping of something loose on the wind or coyotes yipping at the moon. Near the ocean gulls circled and called but the rest of the city was silent until the roar of the diesels and the thunder of the guns brought the milling undead out of their stupor. The train would plow through them for miles, back out, clear the tracks, build up speed and came back in. The dead were piled so deep they couldn’t see over the wall they formed on both sides of the tracks. The closer they got to the border the worse it became. In the narrows between the buildings, they had compacted them so much they had broken through the stucco walls of some of the houses. Somewhere ahead of them there was something blocking the tracks, most likely another train, but they never got close enough to see it before their locomotive ground to a halt. No matter how many they killed another ten thousand replaced them and ran screaming at the metal beast. Day became night and they kept at it. Running, gunning, crushing and killing. Back up ten or twelve miles then do it again. Night became day and they kept killing. The thunder of the guns was a constant. They couldn’t make it halfway through the city, the train was covered with the undead as they leaped from the teetering piles of cadavers. They left Lakota with a dozen pallets stacked with thousands of crates of ammo but after the second day they were down to the last pallet and no closer to breaking through than they’d been when they started.

  Gunny idled the train ten miles out of the city, past the mud buildings and scrap wood shacks of urban sprawl. The fuel tanks were down to below half, they’d killed a hundred thousand undead and the tracks were black with gore. Body parts festered in the sun, their spilled liquids reeking, the smell was bad enough the crew had started dabbing menthol under their noses and wearing masks.

  Gunny stood on top of the front engine, watched the horizon for the inevitable horde to show and slowly rolled a smoke. He was tired. They had been working nonstop driving in and out of the city, going farther into the desert each time to leave room for the bodies to fall.

  “This isn’t going to work.” He said as Griz joined him and squinted into the distance. “We haven’t gotten any closer the last four or five runs. They just keep pouring out of the suburbs and we’re barely putting a dent in the numbers. We’re going to run out of fuel or ammo or both before we get to the border.”

  “Yeah.” The big man said. “You got a plan B?”

  “Maybe.” Gunny said and unfolded one of the maps he’d marked up. “I’ve been studying this.”

  He pointed to the port of Ensenada less than a hundred miles away on the Pacific Ocean.

  “The rail lines go straight in, it has to be a shipping container port.”

  Griz rubbed his beard and pulled up memories from many years ago when he was a young Marine.

  “Yeah.” He nodded slowly. “I kind of remember that place. We used to run down there on long weekends when I was stationed at Miramar. Great fish tacos. It was a cruise line depot, too. You thinking we can steal a cruise ship?”

  Gunny laughed and folded the map away.

  “I’m thinking we tell the soldiers to meet us there. I’m going to call, let them know of the new plan. I hope they have enough fuel to get there because we’re never going to force our way through the hordes in Tijuana.”

  “Works for me.” Griz said.

  It was a simple plan and seemed so obvious but a few days ago, they didn’t have the rail maps of Mexico. A few days ago, no one had remembered the quiet little port in a tiny little city. He missed having an intelligence network where any information he needed could be accessed with a few keystrokes of the computer or a phone call to someone in the know. Now he was running a mission based on a computer train game, that didn’t have the Mexican rails expansion pack, if they even made one. All the data was still available somewhere on hard drives but they didn’t have a Central American asset, a CIA guy or FBI analyst that would have instantly known about the port and the rail access to it. All they had were a few overworked, stressed out people trying to do the best they could with what they had. Gunny tossed the cigarette and shook his head. This was no way to run an operation.

  16

  Ensenada

  They backtracked farther, found the right track and cut through the desert. The sailors liked the new plan, they wouldn’t have to hike the five miles through the sanctuary along the Tijuana River. The map showed the rail lines going all the way to the port, all they’d have to do is get off the boat and on the train. Gunny kept the locomotives moving at a slow and steady pace, tried to keep the engine noise to a minimum and shut it down a dozen miles out. They were hidden in the mountains and it was a good spot to rest up and wait for the sailors to get into position. They had crossed a few trestle bridges and the undead following them had a hard time negotiating them. Thousands wound up broken at the bottom of the canyons and the few that made it across were easily taken out. Griz inventoried their remaining rounds and had the crew set up the mortars on the roof. Plowing their way through like a bull in a china shop hadn’t worked so they were going to try a little subterfuge and stealth. They needed a little distraction to pull the hordes away from the train and a few rounds lobbed to the other side of the city should do the trick. The mortars had a range of four or five miles but they only needed one. A mile was close enough to lure the undead away but far enough to keep them busy while they got the soldiers loaded.

  Hollywood and Bridget whipped up dinner and the crew ate quietly in the dining car as they went over the plan one last time. They were looking forward to a real night’s sleep. It had been days since anyone had more than a catnap.

  “Stay off the .50’s unless it’s an emergency.” Gunny said. “It’s a small city, hopefully they’ll all be chasing after the explosions. We’ll start dropping rounds about four miles out to pull them away. Scratch, mix up high explosive, incendiary and smoke. With a little luck our path will be clear. Once we get close enough to the ocean the waves and wind might mask our noise.”

  “I can help.” Xavier said.

  “Appreciated.” Gunny said. “We’ve got plenty of silenced .22’s to go around. You have to aim for the head, though. It won’t do the damage the big guns will.”

  “I’ve got something better.” The kid said. “Simon said I shouldn’t use it unless I had to, like in an emergency or you know, something…”

  He didn’t finish his th
ought and looked embarrassed as they waited for him to continue.

  “Um, I wasn’t really supposed to show it to you.” He continued in a rush, his eyes on the table. “Simon said you can’t be trusted, he said you left us to die on purpose but I don’t believe that anymore.”

  “Whatcha got?” Scratch asked. “Some secret weapon in your backpack?”

  “Uh, no.” he said and held up his arm with the clunky electronic bracer. “This.”

  “And what’s that?” Hollywood asked “Looks like a fancy toothpick dispenser.”

  “Klystron microwave amplifier.” Xavier said. “It fries their brains, it’s quieter than guns and cleaner than blades.”

  “So that’s a laser gun?” Scratch asked. “Uses dilithium crystals or something?”

  “No.” Xavier said. “It shoots a microwave beam. It runs on batteries but it’ll drop the deaders instantly.”

  Gunny and Griz exchanged a look as the others gathered around and asked questions. So the Utopians weren’t so helpless after all. They didn’t have guns but at least they had something. It was obvious the Chairman had been spying on them, listening in on some of their communications. He knew about the rescue mission and when they were cutting through his territory.

  Mistrust causes misunderstandings.

  Misunderstandings can lead to conflict. Gunny didn’t want another war, another enemy to fight. The death toll from Casey’s Raiders, the radicals and the Anubis cult had been high. He wanted a hundred years of peace. He wanted to outlive the undead and spend his retirement years fishing and watching the world rebuild and repopulate. He wanted Jessie to find another girl and settle down so he could have grandchildren to spoil.

  The kid seemed nice enough. He pitched in to help where ever he could and had earned the crew’s respect over the past few days. Gunny was optimistically cautious about the Utopians. Simon was a smooth talker and had seemed reasonable but by the same token, he had subtlety threatened to send the train to the bottom of a canyon if they didn’t do what he wanted. He had the upper hand, he knew it and came at them from a position of dominance. It was a little unsettling that they could build a zombie killing bracelet out of old microwave ovens. He knew guns and was comfortable with them having all they wanted. He knew how to fight against them and win but how did you fight an enemy that could silently blind or kill with a push of a button?