This Dark Earth

by John Hornor Jacobs

  It’s the sound of hooves on pavement that draws them.

  Dap curses, looking at Klein’s and my horses’ feet.

  “You gotta wrap them in cloth! Goddamn it! If you don’t, you’ve got a fucking procession.”

  He stops, wheels his horse around, cursing silently. His mount’s feet aren’t wrapped. I don’t understand why he’s yelling at us. Except maybe he looks like he’s in dire need of a smoke, and I don’t know why I think that but he’s got the rangy build and wiry arms and chiseled face that would only look complete with a cigarette.

  “Haul ass, boys!” Jesus, what a cowboy.

  He canters down the incline, clopping on asphalt, weaving in and out between cars. My horse clops after him.

  After a while, we break into a canter and pass beneath a canopy of dense, green trees. The branches hang low and whip past our heads. It smells good here, moist and leafy, fragrant with honeysuckle and the breathing of green things. When I was a boy, we’d walk past Gammee’s fence, into the buckbrush, bucket in hand, and pick blackberries until our hands were bloody and blue. Happy. It smells like blood and buckbrush here.

  Smells take you back.

  I see a sign on our right. It has a train puffing billows of cartoonish white smoke into the air and reads: “Ride the E.S. & N.A. line! Parents and children, take your family on a steam-powered adventure! One mile ahead on the right!”

  The locomotive on the sign looks like a simple boiler and turbine. Old school. Older school than I thought. Like this thing rode the rails in the Old West, or before. Shit. There are so many things that can go wrong here.

  And there’s the fact I’ve never driven a train.

  On the bright side, there’s only two ways it can go.

  Backward and forward.

  I can’t hear any moaning. Despite the fact that this was a tourist attraction, we are still talking rural Arkansas. With luck, we won’t have a throng of dead waiting for us or on our tails.

  Yeah. Right.

  Joblo and Gus rode bikes. Joblo did just fine on his, his long hair whipping around his head in a definite mad-scientist manner. Gus had a harder time of it, missing his hand. He held his stump in the center of the handlebars and his other one on the hand brake. He clenched his jaw as he rode. He didn’t look like a child anymore.

  Gus beckoned me away from the group. I pulled a shirt over my head, took one last sip of water from the ladle, and ambled over.

  “You can say no, Broadsword. That’s within your right.”

  That’s how they started.

  “Say no to what?”

  “The mission.”

  I could’ve kept asking the obvious questions. But I didn’t. I just waited for it.

  “It’s a train,” Joblo said, his eyes bright. “And they won’t let me go. So that leaves you and Richards and . . . well, that just leaves you, really.”

  “A train?”

  “Yeah, an old wood-driven steam locomotive, maybe a hundred miles from here, north, in Eureka Springs. It was a tourist destination before the Big Turnover. They’d make little one-, two-mile runs down a stretch of railroad track. Carry the kiddies, their parents. Hot dogs, cotton candy, all that shit.”

  “Richards isn’t up to it?”

  “It’s a steam train, Jim. Richards isn’t qualified.” Joblo grinned from ear to ear.

  “And I am?”

  “No,” he said. Honest to a fault, that Joblo. But he didn’t mean any harm in it. He was right. I’m not half the engineer he is. Which is why I break down houses and don’t work on the water distillery. “But Doc Ingersol won’t let me go. So that leaves you.” He hopped a little and continued. “A steam train! We’re gonna drive it right into the slaver camp!”

  Shit. A train. What’s this “we” stuff?

  “So . . .” I led. I wanted the full story.

  “Here’s the deal, Broadsword.” Gus looked as grave as his fifteen-year-old face would let him, which, actually, was pretty grave. His eyes are older than his body. And he’s got the same lack of tact that his mother has. When he looks at people, he always seems to be assessing, seeing how he can use them. The kid kinda creeps me out.

  It’s funny, but the older man acted like a kid and the kid acted like the elder statesman, now that I think of it. Fuckedup world, this.

  “It’s gonna be you, Dap, a couple of other men, to make a dash to Eureka Springs. Locate and restart the steam train, bring her south. We’ll have scouts looking for you. From there, we’ll get her as close to Bridge City as we can, load her up with men, put one of the Bradleys on her back, and get rid of this slaver camp once and for all.”

  I nodded my understanding. “Sounds pretty simple.”

  Maybe they heard something in my voice, I don’t know.

  “You don’t think it will work?”

  “I can think of a thousand reasons it’ll fail.” I began ticking off points. “First, the undead. Second, I’m unable to start the engine. Third, I start the engine and can’t get the train where we want it to go—downed trees across the tracks, torn-up track, collapsed bridges. It’s been three years now—almost four—with no maintenance, and I mean, I’m assuming you’re sure the tracks go from there to here to the slaver place already. Fourth—oh, fuck it.”

  Joblo smiled and stared hard at me while Gus gave me this kind of predatory, unblinking look.

  Finally, Gus said, “So you won’t do it?”

  “Of course I’ll do it.” I grinned. “It’s a fucking steam train.”

  The gates are closed, but Dap is prepared. He pulls a miniature pair of bolt cutters from his saddlebag, hoists them, and grins at me. “What, you think I go around barbed-wire fences?”

  He walks up and snips the padlocked chain and pushes open the gate. It clanks and creaks and swings wide. The moaning starts from inside the gate and on the road at our back. It seems we have a procession.

  “Quick! To the locomotive, boys!” Dap pulls his headknocker and spurs his horse forward, and Klein follows suit. I look around, spot a onesy coming from a portable toilet near the little station house and a damily of five shambling around the corner.

  Gimping along behind us are fifteen or twenty more stragglers.

  This is not good.

  I kick my horse into a gallop.

  Past the station house, the engine comes into view. You think of trains as black, puffing smoke, but this one looks red in the morning sun. It’s streaked with rust. God help us if it has rusted solid.

  We come around to the eastern side, in front of the engine, and Klein and I drop to the ground. I pull the saddlebags off my horse. They’re heavy as rocks with extra ammunition, a helmet, water, kerosene and matches, and a portable winch. Klein follows suit.

  Dap hops down, grabs our reins, and ties the horses together. Then he swings back into the saddle and thumbs the brim of his hat.

  “Nice knowing you boys. If you make it back, I’ll buy you a drink.”

  Klein starts cursing. Heavily.

  “You can’t just leave us here, Dap. We need your help.”

  “And you have it. I’m gonna try and lead these bastards away from here, give you a little time.”

  The look on his face tells me all I need to know. His concern is the horses. We’re expendable. They aren’t. Orders.

  I nod.

  “Thanks. Get back safe. And have that drink ready.”

  He chuckles. “Will do, pard.” He looks to his right and chucks his head at the damily coming at us. “I ain’t gonna be able to get rid of those, boys, so I suggest you put on your helmets and gloves and get busy.”

  When he rides off down the length of the train, past a dining car and a couple of cargo flats, I get this sinking sensation in my stomach. It’s desperate now, and there’s about to be bloodshed. Goo-shed, maybe.

  Klein grabs the cast-iron railing and pulls himself up, up the metal rungs, ten feet into the air, to the half-door of the engine. That’s a blessing. The locomotive is smaller than I imagined, b
ut the cab is ten, twelve feet from the ground and defensible should an extended damily come calling. But still, it’s an open cab.

  After a few moments of jerking around and making me even more nervous, Klein manages to open the door. He bangs his helmet on the roof, knocking off its visor, and falls inward.

  “Fuck! Broadsword, there a goddamned dead man in here.”

  I hoist myself up and peer in. It’s darker in the cab, despite the open-air windows. Sure enough, a dead guy is sitting in the engineer’s seat, slumped with a gun in hand and half his skull gone, yet somehow a hat remains perched on his desiccated head despite that loss of most of his left temple and a large amount of cranium. The hat is striped and spattered with blood, but it looks like an engineer’s cap.

  I glance down. The fastest of the damily has arrived, and it paws at my Kevlar leggings. I kick at its face, lose my balance, and almost fall, but Klein grabs the neck of my jacket-armor and pulls me backward, into the cab. The shambler grabbing my leg follows. It used to be a woman. Now it’s just an ooeygooey sac of stink climbing up my legs like a kitten on a tree.

  Klein plants a boot in its face and kicks out, hard, and the shambler falls back and lands on top of the other zombies milling about below the stairs.

  The cab is small. There’s a dead man in the chair. While I’m trying to get my wits about me, Klein grabs the corpse—who knew Klein was so steady in a pinch?—lifts it up like he’s dancing with it, and pitches the thing out the open door, after the one he kicked. Then he slams the door and flips the bolt.

  “All right, boss. It’s time to get busy.” He grabs my arm and lifts me from the iron floor of the cab. Ringing the space are wooden benches, maybe for tourist passengers to ride with the engineer.

  A bewildering mass of pipes and spigots and gauges decorate the curved ass-end of what looks like a boiler. Which is what it is.

  “Get wood,” I say. They’re moaning now, from below. I peek out the locomotive window and see the damily pawing at the rusty iron sides of the engine. They haven’t figured out how to climb it yet. I don’t know if they’ll be able to, but I imagine, luck being what it is, they will.

  From my bag I remove two squeeze bottles. One has oil, the other regular old charcoal lighter fluid. It’s important to get this party started quickly.

  Setting the bottles down, I move to what I assume is the firebox and tug at the iron latch. It doesn’t budge.

  Putting my foot on the door frame, I yank as hard as I can. The latch gives, sending me flying backward. My hand is on fire. I’ve scraped all four knuckles bloody.

  Klein begins chucking wood from the hopper into the firebox. Once there’s a goodly pile, I squirt the lighter fluid into the box, soaking the timber. The smell of the dead cinders and fluid reminds me of barbecues, back when all the world was young. But the moaning and stench of the dead pull me out of that daydream.

  “That wood is really dry. It’s been in the elements since the Turnover.”

  “Great, it’ll burn faster. And hotter. It’s gonna take a while to heat the boiler enough for us to move. How much wood is there?”

  “The hopper isn’t full, but I’m guessing we’ve got enough to stoke the fire for hours.”

  “Okay. Keep it coming.” I feel around on my jacket and pants. “Umm. Hey . . . you got a match? A lighter?”

  The look on his face crumples and then gets desperate.

  “No . . . don’t tell me you don’t have a—”

  I smile. “Just kidding.” I hold up the tinders for him to see.

  He stares at me for a long while, not smiling.

  “If we get out of this alive, I’m going to fucking kill you.”

  I laugh. It feels good to laugh. It’s been too long.

  “Yeah. Tell me about it. I hope you get the chance. What are our guests doing?”

  He goes to the window, peers out. “Looks like they’re at a concert.”

  I light the match and toss it into the firebox. There’s a whoosh and I can feel the heat of the flames, even through my armor.

  Not much to do now but wait.

  There are numerous valves and handles and cranks and gauges. We’re lucky that the gauges are marked with red paint at important demarcations. At some point, whoever ran the train tried to make it easier to understand.

  I know it won’t help anything, but I start tapping the gauges with my fingernail in the off chance they’re frozen up.

  Sprouting from the floor is a large handle with a release catch on the handgrip. I’m assuming this is the drive gear control. Forward and backward: the benefits of linear travel. But not until we’ve gotten a good head of steam. Looking at the blue gauge, which I’m guessing is our water reserves, I see we’re near full up. The big red gauge is starting to flutter a bit but isn’t rising. I have to assume this is steam pressure.

  I dearly hope that the wheels haven’t frozen solid. And that somewhere, deep in the workings of the engine, a valve hasn’t rusted shut, dooming us to sitting dead in the boneyard.

  Not something I want to think about, but it needs to be said.

  “Klein, if the train won’t move, we’ll have to climb the roof, run down the length, and try to jump off and get away on foot.”

  “Bullshit.” He shakes his head. “Bullshit. No fucking way, Broadsword. Don’t even fucking talk like that, man. This bastard is going to roll.” He slaps his hand against the cast-iron wall and glares at me. “Fucking roll.”

  “Right. But just so you know the contingency plan.”

  “I’m not listening to any more of that shit. Pay attention to what’s happening here.” He points at the cast iron at his feet.

  Part of living past the end of the world is taking back talk from junior engineers. It’s not like I can fire him.

  There’s not much for me to do but turn back to the steam pressure gauge. It’s marked from one to two hundred, base ten. There’s a red mark, woman’s fingernail polish maybe, on the metal of the gauge at the 120 tick. It’s been fifteen minutes now and the gauge is at ten.

  At this rate, we’re looking at three hours to get up to steam.

  I go to the window and look down at the shamblers. There’s about fifty of them now, pressing tight against the locomotive, and the ruckus coming from their dead gullets is enough to . . . well . . . wake the goddamned dead. The corpses in front, pawing at the sides of the engine, ripping off nails and breaking delicate phalanges, are beginning to rise from the pressure of the other undead behind them. They’re being squeezed upward like toothpaste from a tube. And what do you know, one semifresh corpse seems to have a single marble left in his noggin. He’s grasping at the rungs of the inset foot and handholds. I should shoot him now, but the sound would just triple their number.

  But the smartie needs to be put down.

  It’s a toss-up if the pressure behind the front row of shamblers will build faster than the steam pressure.

  Damn, I’m tired. Didn’t get much sleep last night in that tree.

  The gauge is at fifty after two hours, and there’s a mosh pit of revenants moaning right outside the cab window.

  We’ve got the headknockers at the ready when the first shambler manages to pull himself over the lip and his cranium comes into view.

  Crack. Headknocked.

  The blow sends percussive vibrations shooting up my arm. I should be used to this by now, all those hours spent on the Wall, in the murderhole. But the last few months clearing out Tulaville have left me out of shape. At least when it comes to headknocking zombies.

  It’s only a few minutes before another one is trying to pull itself over.

  Klein bashes its skull in. He’s very businesslike about it.

  The problem with zombies, other than the fact that they’re totally unnatural and want to eat you, is that they’re very, very messy. They don’t fall away from pain, or try to protect themselves, so when the mess comes, it’s usually all over your shoes.

  The one Klein just brained slumps on the e
dge of the window, the cast-iron casement digging into its stomach. Its body cavity—probably not too secure to begin with—ruptures, and liquefied guts dribble down the inner wall of the cab.

  Then one of its damily members grabs its legs, trying to pull itself up, and the leaker rises, tilts backward, and falls back on top of the rest.

  Unfortunately, not before its stomach contents release.

  “Damn. I was hoping to keep the killing floor somewhat clean.” Klein is surprisingly high-pitched for such a stout guy.

  “I do appreciate tidiness in slaughter, but . . . they’re zombies. And we’ve got a long way to go.”

  There’s a couple this time, staggered, so he takes out one and I the other. They fall heavily, and the moaning gets louder. I look out the window on the other side of the train. Thirty or forty more shamblers.

  On this side of the train, opposite where we entered, there are no steps or rungs or inset footholds for them to grab onto, and a large pipe running the length of the locomotive acts as a ledge they’d have to climb over if they were going to get in. They’d need hundreds of bodies to squeeze and lift themselves in here.

  When the moans get this loud, no moan any more distinct than another, the noises blend together in your mind, and your brain does the magic trick of disregarding that information. The sound goes away. Things get easier then.

  Like now.

  Klein cracks another zombie’s head, flipping it backward.

  “You think we should be headknocking?” he asks. “Maybe we should just push them back onto the others and not kill them.”

  “Huh? Why?”

  “They aren’t dragging their fallen away, that’s for sure.” He sets down his hammer, goes to the hopper, and gets an armful of logs and brings it near the furnace. It’s really getting hot in here, and I’ll need water soon before I pass out from dehydration. My back, ass crack, crotch, armpits, and chest are all sodden with sweat under my armor, which is about the same as wearing a bear suit, without the bear head, if not as bulky. I really should have on my helmet.

  I’m becoming inured to death. Even the possibility of my own.

  I peek again out the window at the ladder side. A shambler that had been working his way up senses me and reaches up a hand to grab my face. He falls back, on top of his compadres, and stays there. Other shamblers bat at him, and he floats off on a sea of arms until he hits a low-density area ten yards off and falls, finally, to the ground.