by Jason Offutt
As the sound of the train grew louder, Doug knew this was Carter’s Phillips 66 all over again.
Jenna, Nikki and Andi sat on the camp chairs eating chili in silence; the men stood. Doug was too excited to sit, anyway. This was it. The way to civilization approached in the form of a steel arrow. He glanced over his shoulder; Donnie sat unmoving in the cab of his truck. If Doug didn’t know better he’d swear it was a mannequin behind the wheel of the Silverado. Did Donnie know about the train? Doug didn’t care.
“It’s probably a couple of miles away,” Doug said. “If it’s a freight train, those things go at a clip of about 60 miles an hour; if it’s a passenger train, about 80. Either way, it should be here in no time.”
“How do you know anything about trains?” Jenna asked. She reached out and touched his hand.
“I’ve loved trains since I was a kid.” He wrapped his thick, calloused hand around her slight, soft one. “I had an HO scale model train set. It’s still in my basement somewhere, in a box. Well, in several boxes.”
She squeezed the hand tightly. “Is that why you’re doing this? So you can play with your train set?”
A smile swept across his face. “Maybe.”
“I see it, boss.” Terry tossed his empty chili can into the tall weeds on the side of the road and leaned against the Prius. “You ready for this?” A black speck on the track grew larger.
Doug let Jenna’s hand slip from his grip and took two steps toward the street that separated their temporary home from the lines of railroad tracks. “Hell, yes.” The train. It was almost here. The rumble soon became a steady ratchet of click-clack, click-clack, as the diesel locomotive carrying whothehellknowswhat thundered toward them. Doug knew it wouldn’t stop for them because it couldn’t. Once an engineer hit the brakes, a freight train took at least a mile to go from What The Hell? to a full stop. Even if there was a cow, or a car, or a busload of orphans on the track, the engineer couldn’t do anything but close his eyes and plow through them. All this train could do was carry on, carry on to someplace with people. And all they had to do was follow the right track to civilization. Doug stood alone and watched Carter’s Phillips 66 come to him.
“What do we do when it gets here?” Terry asked.
Doug was suddenly five years old, waiting with Doug Sr. in his pickup at the railroad crossing on North Pearl Street in Paola as the orange Burlington Northern Santa Fe engines hauling coal cars thundered past. “Wave, Dougie,” Doug Sr. said, his voice low, a Marlboro between his lips, a breeze blowing the smoke out the open cab window. “Wave at the Cabooseman.” The Cabooseman always waved from his bright red car at the end of the train, but the railroads started phasing out the caboose by Doug’s seventh birthday; technology took the place of human eyes and arms. An EOT, End of Train device mounted on the last car could tell the engineer everything he needed to know. One day the Cabooseman was gone. There were plenty of caboose cars parked on the lawns of small town city parks across the Midwest, but they sat still and locked tight. The train came toward them, probably without a caboose, but somebody had to be in the engine cab running that thing.
“Smile and wave, Terry,” Doug said. “Just smile and wave.”
Tension engulfed the morning. Council Bluffs, once a city of nearly 63,000 people, now maybe just six, sat in anticipation, the click-clack still in the background. Somewhere to the west, a lion roared.
“Where do you think it’s going?” Nikki sat with a white plastic spoon sticking from the middle of the Armour chili can between her knees. Breakfast during the apocalypse had reverted to college.
“I know where it’s going,” Andi said. She leaned against the hood of the Prius next to Terry. “I wonder where it came from.”
I know where it’s going? “How do you know where it’s going?” Doug asked.
Andi stood straight and walked to the girls past the pile of solar generators couldn’t power Terry’s Xbox and pulled a beer out of an open case. She cracked it open with shaking hands. “I was stationed in Muskogee, Oklahoma,” Andi said. She took a drink of the warm beer, the beer tasting way too good so early in the morning. “The Fence is there, cutting across the country. Sergeant Cotton said the government was close to completing it. It was going across the freeze line of the United States to keep the infected people in.” She paused and looked at the faces around her. Good faces. Call ‘em like you see ‘em, Big Andy would say. Call ‘em like you see ‘em. “Zombies. They built it to keep the zombies out. They figured the fungus that caused this whole thing would die when it got past freezing.”
“Do you think that will work?” Doug asked.
Andi’s eyes met his. “I don’t think so. Fungi thrive everywhere.”
Terry laughed.
Doug turned toward him. “What’s so funny?”
“Fungi sounds like something weird you do with your dick.”
Nikki leaned over and picked a Pepsi out of a cooler with no ice; the crack loud in the morning. She stared at Andi. “What did you do at the Fence?” she asked.
The fence. The Polo Man. Andi pushed her bangs out of her eyes. Damn it. “I–”
“Train,” Terry said, pointing down the track. “Hot shit, a train. It’s pretty close.”
Andi and Doug turned toward the spider web of tracks coming from the north. The dark speck was now a red diesel engine, the mass of the train stretched behind it, the vanishing point perspective looked like the train would never end, except it did, under a growing black cloud. Doug forgot about Andi and the Fence, as he turned toward the track, just waiting for a train.
“Get ready to wave, boss.”
A black, undulating cloud followed the train. Doug shook his head. “This isn’t right.”
The red and black engines, the letters CN painted across the side in white, roared by, the sound of the metal against metal thundering drown out the day. Doug waved, but he couldn’t see the engineer to tell if he waved back.
“Dude,” Terry said, leaning close to Doug. “There’s somebody on top of the train.” There was; Doug almost missed it. A man crawled across the top of the third engine, his yellow shirt and black pants looked like a uniform. The engines flew by and Doug’s stomach felt like it dropped right out of his body.
“That’s no man,” he said.
Terry leaned in closer, his head almost touching Doug’s. “What?”
Doug looked at his friend. “That was a zombie,” he shouted.
“Oh, shit.”
Brown boxcars marked Canadian National followed the engines, black and silver passenger cars with no faces in the windows behind them. “I wonder where all the–” Doug started. Flatcars carrying Canadian military trucks, tanks, construction equipment and armored fighting vehicles answered his question. The people that should have been in the passenger cars, looking as the scenery clicked by, littered the flatcars. Soldiers in green camouflaged combat fatigues crouched in positions around the vehicles, as their C9A2 light machine gun fire tore into the bodies of hundreds of zombies that swarmed over the rear passenger cars like the ants that helped start this mess.
Terry slapped Doug’s arm. “Holy shit, dude. They’re everywhere.” Zombies, shredded by gunfire, flew off the cars as the train rumbled by. Some hit the ground and lay still; others tried to crawl back to the tracks on broken limbs, jagged tips of bone showing through their worn clothing. Jenna was up, her arm around Doug’s waist as the horror train drove past. Somewhere, Nikki screamed over the roar of the locomotive.
Then cloud was upon them.
The first zombie to reach the flatcars lunged at a soldier, machinegun fire ripped its legs from its body, blood and flesh painted the armored troop carrier beside it. The momentum from the lunge sent the creature into the soldier who’d fired the weapon and sent them both off the side of the flatcar. They landed in the tall grass. Andi shot across South Avenue in a full sprint before the synapsis in Doug’s head could tell his muscles to move. They all followed Andi. Then the train was gone, as
quickly as it came. The flashing red light on the EOT waved its own good bye. The cloud was closer, but still far away. Doug knew what it was: crows. Crows following their supper.
Andi pulled her sidearm from its holster and stopped five feet from the soldier. The man lay on his back in the grass, his neck and shirt slick with fresh blood. The torso of the zombie, the thing dressed like a lumberjack – it may have been a lumberjack – sat on the soldier’s chest, its bloody mouth chomping. “Push it off you,” Andi shouted, her sidearm raised.
The soldier held the zombie by the throat with his left hand and pulled up his sidearm with his right. “I got this,” he said through clenched teeth as he placed the barrel of his Browning 9mm pistol against the lumberjack’s head and fired one round. The monster grew slack; the soldier tossed him off with one arm and lay in the grass, his breath a wet wheeze.
Andi holstered the weapon and knelt next to the soldier. “You have friends here,” she screamed over the flapping birds. “You’re going to be okay.”
The soldier laughed, a splat of blood landed on his chin. “Like hell I am. I’m all busted up inside.” He paused to take a breath. “Then there’s this.” The soldier turned his head slowly and Andi saw where the fresh blood came from. The zombie’s teeth had torn open the left side of the soldier’s face, blood oozed freely from the wound. “I’m a goner. You can’t patch me up. That thing bit me. It fucking bit me.”
“Oh, my God,” Nikki said, choking back a scream. To the soldier, Nikki looked like she just appeared next to Andi; three girls sent from heaven to bring him home. “I’ve got to stop the bleeding. I’ll be back.” She turned to go back to camp for Andi’s first aid kit, but she grabbed her arm.
“Zombie bit him.”
Nikki stopped trying to pull away and turned back toward the soldier. “But the bite doesn’t cause a person to change into a zombie, does it? It’s the spores. This isn’t a horror movie,” she shouted.
The soldier shrugged slightly, the small movement sent tendrils of pain through him. “Shit happens,” he wheezed. “Like I said, my insides are scrambled. You can’t fix me.”
Nikki grabbed Terry and hugged him tightly.
“What’s your name, soldier?” Doug asked, leaning on his crutches.
The man weakly swallowed. “Master Corporal Oliver Tremblay.” Oliver waved at these new, strange people gathered around him, his Browning 9mm still clutched in his fist. “Would somebody please get me some water? I don’t want to go out with a taste like I just woke up from a bender.”
“Sure,” Nikki said and ran across South Avenue toward camp.
“Where were you headed?” Doug asked.
Oliver coughed, a fountain of blood spewed across his chest. “Dyersburg,” he said through a wet, bloody cough. “Dyersburg, Tennessee. The Fence–” Coughing aftershocks sent more blood up. He lay still and sucked in air. “The Fence has made it to Dyersburg. We’re supposed to see it built to Wilmington. Wilmington–” His voice trailed off.
“North Carolina?” Jenna asked.
Oliver nodded slowly. “Yes. Then we’ll be safe.”
Andi knelt close to Oliver. “Where’d the zombies on the train come from?”
Oliver lay quiet, pulling in breath slowly and unsteadily. “The passenger cars at the end,” he finally said. “We were in a rush and nobody checked the ones in the back. Once they figured out how to get outside, those bastards were everywhere.” Oliver winced as pain shot through his chest.
“What do you need us to do?” Andi asked; her voice wavered.
Oliver tried to grin, but the pain pulled his mouth into a grimace. “Just go away.” He sucked in a shallow breath and waved his Browning. “I need to take care of something.”
This isn’t going to be Carter’s Phillips 66, Doug thought. I’m going to save everybody. “We’re looking for civilization,” he said. “Is that where we find it?”
“Dyersburg,” Oliver said, the word gurgled in his throat. “People are gathering there.”
Everyone, except Oliver.
Andi rose and stood next to Doug. “Is there anything else you need to tell us?”
A smile broke on Oliver’s face. “Yeah, sure,” he said. “Americans think Canadians say ‘eh’ all the time, but we really don’t, eh?” He coughed again, the pain sent trickles of tears down his cheek. He pulled the Browning up to his mouth. “Now go.”
“But–” Jenna started, but Doug shook his head.
The Browning fired before they walked the fifteen feet to South Avenue.
***
Donnie stood watching as the Gunkies took down camp. The shower was the last thing they disassembled and stuffed into the back of Daddy’s Silverado. My Silverado. He’d heard the train coming in his sleep and sat up in the cab of the truck, his skin slick with sweat from the early-morning heat. He’d slept with the doors locked and the window’s shut. Oh, yes sir. He wasn’t going to become vulnerable to them. Let them find Mother’s kitchen knife and figure out he was going to kill them all. Their deaths were going to be a surprise. They had to be a surprise. Donnie liked surprises.
The Gunkies tore down camp by 8 a.m., the crippled man coaxing them to go faster, to get out of there before the cloud of birds came. Donnie watched it grow in the sky like a swelling water balloon as they worked. The murder would be here soon enough. Murder of crows. That sounded hilarious. Donnie stood in an open field drinking a Pepsi and watched Jenna, the ginger woman who looked like Vanessa Hagen. While the boys Tetrised their home of the last three days into the back of the pickup, she walked along the train track shooting the Good People who couldn’t walk anymore. Good for her, Donnie thought. Good for her.
“You still want to follow the train, dude?” the drunken redneck asked the crippled man.
The crippled man leaned against his crutches and slid PVC pipe into the bed. “You bet your ass,” he said. “I’m trying to do what’s best for us, Terry.” The crippled man looked at the redneck and frowned. Donnie loved to see people frown at each other. So much excitement. “You remember the Eagle Scout candidate’s trip to Cimarron National Grassland?”
The redneck looked away. “Yeah. I remember.”
“And you remember two days of eating berries and raw nuts before that helicopter found us? Those berries gave you the runs.”
The redneck nodded.
“And how far were we away from civilization when everybody decided to follow that fucking car salesman Mike Smeltzer?”
“Two miles,” the redneck said. “We were two miles away from that gas station, just like you said.”
The cripple reached out and grabbed the redneck by the shoulder. “I’m right now, too,” he said. “We’re going to be okay.”
Donnie walked out of the field and stood between Doug and Terry. “What are you guys talking about?” he asked, the smile on his face plastic.
The cripple turned toward him. “Our future, Donnie. We’re going to find civilization.”
Donnie’s grin never faded as he patted Doug on the back. “And I’m happy for all of us. When are we leaving?”
“As soon as we’re packed,” the cripple said.
“Great. Just great.” You’re all just like the Taylor boy and we’re going to have some fun. His grin grew bigger. “Hey,” he yelled toward the soldier, the brunette lady and ginger woman who looked like Vanessa Hagen. “Anybody want to ride with me?”
August 1: Mayday, Kentucky
Chapter 15
Lacy Tomlinson tasted like peaches; an empty fruit can and fork sat on Lacy’s bedside table, the remnant of a late-night snack. Walter Seidel liked that taste and he knew how much the preacher’s daughter liked peaches. He held Lacy tight, his hands down the back of her jean shorts, his fingers making dimples into her bottom. Lacy’s tongue became rigid as Walter pulled out of the kiss. Moonlight from the back door of her orderly bungalow that sat along the east wall of Mayday, fell across the young woman’s face; a pout on her full lips. Walter squeezed harder, gri
nding her thighs into his. “I gotta go, honey. My shift at the Gate starts in a half hour.”
She wrapped her fingers in the back of his hair and kissed him deeply. When she pulled away, she was grinning. “I know. I just don’t want you to go. Who’s going to hit my tickle spot?”
Lazarus. Every Thursday. Yeah, he knew Lazarus was banging the preacher’s daughter, too. But the man everyone thought was their leader didn’t know about Walter. Walter figured he’d just shoot the fat bastard another cow, maybe a pig or two. Sure, Lazarus survived Ophiocordon and looked like a total jackass on “Good Morning America,” but Walter bet he wouldn’t survive his cholesterol level for much longer. “You know I’ll be back.” He pulled his hands out of her pants and took the beautiful face in a gentle grasp. “I can’t get enough of you.” He kissed her softly. “I’ve got a surprise for you.”
She smiled; her teeth glowed in the moonlight. “What is it?” she asked, bouncing on her naked toes.
Damn. Walter wished he could see her deep brown eyes, but the irises were black in the gray haze. Her eyes were so pretty. “I was going to save it, but, well, I went hunting yesterday and I found a house off Route 12, on a long lane the other hunting parties hadn’t raided.”
“Did you kill any, you know? Any–”
“Zombies?” Walter nodded. Yep. A little girl, about twelve years old, maybe thirteen, locked in her room, her parents dead on the front lawn, their remains shredded by predators and scattered in the tall grass. She ran at me when I opened the door and I crushed her skull with a hammer. “An old man,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”