by B. M. Hodges
Abigail burst forward with all her might and lunged onto the back of the railcar. Scrambling up the side ledge, she seized the door handle. The door popped open and she jumped inside just as the infected students began swarming over the railcar. She flipped the lock and watched as hundreds of fists pounded at the windows.
But the glass held.
It didn’t take long for the pounding to cease.
They didn’t retreat, however.
The zombified students stood ten thick, blocking her path to safety.
It was as though they had decided to wait her out.
The railcar was designed to travel along the tracks, either forward or back without the need to turn around. Both ends had small scoops lowered near to the tracks to clear debris and multiple headlamps to brighten the tunnel during signal or rail repair. The cabin had controls facing both ways and the seat could turn one-hundred eighty degrees depending on which way the operator was traveling.
Abigail turned the seat and locked it so that it was facing outward towards the main tracks. Even with the slight curvature of the short maintenance tunnel, she could see beckoning blue light drifting off the platform and all the way up into the tunnel where she had come from.
From the look of the controls, it was evident that unlike the electrified underground trains, the railcar had its own power source. There was a big green button with a lightning bolt stamped on its face next to a lever with two arrows indicating forward and back. That was the extent of the controls. It was idiot proof.
Abigail smacked down hard on the green button, expecting the car to switch on, but got nothing but a red palm and silent zombie stares. Just my luck. There’s probably a slot for a key card or a palm reader somewhere outside the cabin that I’ve overlooked, she thought. She searched the cabin for an additional ignition device, but came up empty.
“Good job,” she said to the horde of students staring at her, sitting back in the chair in defeat. “You got me. I’m trapped. You’re smart to wait, though. I’ll probably get hungry and desperate and try to make a break for it at some point, then you can have your meal and I’ll get some needed rest.”
She found a wadded up receipt on the floor and a nub of a pencil and decided to write a farewell note to Jamie in the event the authorities got the outbreak under control. She figured she would leave it inside the railcar on the seat since it was unlikely there would be much of her remaining to be discovered after this gang was finished with her.
It was too dark inside the cabin to write the note so she flipped the visor back down. Reading the intensity of the blue light coming from the platform, and without the interference of untrained hands, the helmet’s processor switched from night vision to infrared to avoid blinding its user a second time. This didn’t help her write the note, and Abigail reached up and almost pulled it off her head when she noticed something odd in the tunnel beyond the students.
In the tunnel some distance beyond the platform, she could see two heat signatures that were distinctly different from the zombie students surrounding the railcar. They were less bright-hot orange, more of a cooler red color.
Abigail caught herself as she almost began to scream for help when she realized these were two uninfected men, one following the other and unaware they were approaching certain death in the darkness.
They’re going to die in less than a minute if I don’t do something. She hit at the green button again and again and jerked the lever repeatedly.
Nothing.
The first of the men came upon the platform and stood there staring up at the carnage of blood and guts that were the passengers she had mistakenly tried to rescue.
The helmet read where her eyes were focused and they zoomed in on this stranger’s face.
Tomas!
Abigail’s heart began to race.
The only thing she could think of was to open the door a crack and yell to him to take cover. It would expose her to the zombie students, but maybe she could warn him and close the door before they got their grimy little fingers inside.
She twisted the handle and, on cue, the zombie students surged forward and began climbing up onto the ledge surrounding the railcar.
“TOMAS!” she screamed, “STAY BACK!”
She slammed the door closed just as the bloody hands began to slide along the windows towards the open door.
Tomas heard someone scream his name in the darkness ahead. Was that Abigail?
To Abigail’s relief, Tomas jumped away from the light of the platform, back into the inky tunnel and crouched against the wall. She wasn’t sure what happened to the second person she had spotted in the tunnel. His heat signature had disappeared.
Using his rifle scope, Jayden had been scouting ahead of Tomas when he first noticed the blue light from the Newton platform up ahead. He had seen the zombie students surrounding the railcar and Abigail squinting through his helmet at the same time she noticed them. Jayden quickly pressed up against the opposite wall out of Abigail’s sight and was about to put his rifle butt to the back of Overstreet’s head to rescue him from being eaten yet again when she hollered.
This guy’s got nine lives, Jayden thought as he watched Tomas grab the lip of the platform and disappear into the station. He waited in the tunnel, figuring Overstreet was trying to find a way to rescue the damsel in distress.
The tunnel started to glow orange and he caught the pungent smell of plastic on fire.
Tomas had cut down four twelve-foot long plastic banners advertising a “Carnival and Meet Your MP Day” for the Newton district. He had rolled up the banners and stuffed them full of free newspapers and laid them on top of each other like logs. Then, using the matches he had taken from the lorry, he had set them ablaze.
Pretty smart, Jayden thought. Remembering the story of the Vitura San Diego Campus fire, he mumbled, “This guy likes to set fires.”
Like Tomas, Jayden knew that those infected with the original strain of zombie fever were attracted to the dancing flames. But he was taking a chance betting that zombies infected with the mutant strain would also be attracted to flame.
Tomas was correct and the zombie students turned away from Abigail when they noticed the orange glow of the burning banners on the platform. They began shuffling towards the platform, the taller ones climbing up and standing around the fire Kumbaya-style.
But the zombie students in the back of the crowd couldn’t see the dancing flames and when Tomas jumped back into the tunnel on the far side, at least twenty saw him and attacked.
Tomas began swinging his spear and stabbing the closest infected students. Again, they seemed to show a modicum of instinctual intelligence. After he stabbed a few, their bodies lying on the ground in front of him, the rest of his attackers held back, forming a semicircle around him like a pack of wolves cornering their prey.
More zombie students noticed the melee in the tunnel and broke from the main group to join. Jayden began picking those off one by one, figuring that he would control the size of the group attacking Tomas first. As soon as he started shooting the zombie students nearest Tomas, his position would be given away and he would have to find a way to capture Tomas and Abigail amid the chaos without getting them all killed. It wasn’t a prospect he was looking forward to.
Abigail was in a panic.
She sat back down in the operator’s chair, and in a preconditioned response, her hands grabbed the seat belt, pulled it across her torso and secured it in place.
When the seat belt clicked close, the lights of the cabin turned on.
Of course! Safety first is one of Singapore’s central tenets. In order to start the railcar, like any other passenger operated vehicle on the island, the seat belt had to be fastened.
Abigail slammed down on the green button and the railcar roared to life.
She jammed the lever forward and the electric engine went from zero to one-hundred percent acceleration in half a second, forcing her back into the seat.
The railcar shot
forward into the main tunnel, running over some, but shoving most of the zombie students aside with the scoop into messy piles of limbs and smears of green-tinted blood on both sides of the maintenance vehicle.
The infected students surrounding Tomas stared into the glaring headlamps of the approaching railcar, frozen like deer as she plowed into them. Tomas dropped his spear, pressed up against the wall and covered his face with his arms as sprays of green blood flew through the air.
Abigail yanked the lever back and the railcar stopped beside Tomas.
She opened the door and yelled, “Get your ass in here!”
Tomas leaped onto the ledge, tearing off the denim jacket now soaked in infection before clambering inside.
Abigail swiveled the seat around to face towards Sommerset station and pressed the lever forward.
It happened so fast that they almost got away from Jayden, who watched the whole heroic rescue of Overstreet in utter disbelief and with a newfound respect for Abigail. This girl is something else.
He sprinted up behind the railcar as it surged forward, grabbed hold of the top of the gore covered scoop with his gloved hands and pulled himself over, securing a seat on the attachment’s base below the line of sight of the operator’s cabin.
The railcar zipped along the tracks towards Sommerset station, hearts aflutter inside the cabin as Tomas and Abigail reunited and with Jayden hiding below, calculating his pay raise when he returned to the ship with Overstreet alive.
Chapter Thirteen
Sommerset Train Station
Orchard, Singapore
The railcar covered the distance between Newton and Sommerset stations in under three minutes. Up ahead, the glow of the station’s blue LED emergency lights gave Tomas and Abigail a much-needed morale boost. Abigail smiled at Tomas, who was now wearing the helmet, visor down, and scanning the tracks for trouble.
Tomas caught her smile out of the corner of his eye and smiled back.
Further up the line past the station, Tomas could see a train sitting dead on the tracks. He grabbed the lever and eased down the acceleration. The railcar slowed and he shut it down before emerging from the shadows of the tunnel.
“Well, here we are, downtown.” Tomas turned to Abigail and looked her straight in the eye, “You’re going to have to lead us to the hospital. I don’t have a clue about navigating the streets of Singapore. Do you know how to get there?”
“It’s easier than you think,” Abigail responded, easing open the door and peering out into the darkness, “There’s a tunnel exit that leads underneath Orchard Road and pops out directly in Gleneagles basement.” She smiled, “We Singaporeans are all about convenience. It’s one of the reasons I love my country, I can travel from my apartment all the way to downtown on public transport, window shop at the finest stores, eat a fine dinner overlooking the city, then return home and never have to set foot outside and get all sweaty in the wet jungle heat. We are the city of the future.”
Tomas nodded. No sense arguing. Wait until we get to Vancouver where you can see a modern city with the same conveniences but has that intangible quality of life that great Asian cities seem to lack, he thought.
They climbed onto the tracks and waited.
Silence blanketed the tunnel.
They crept to the platform doors and snuck glances into the station.
Empty.
Tomas took the flathead screwdriver out of his pocket, pried the glass doors open, and helped her onto the platform.
Against his better judgment, instead of waiting for him, she investigated the platform level, came back and reported, “Clear.”
Tomas was about to hoist himself over the lip of the platform when he noticed movement near the railcar. He turned and popped the visor down, but the infrared didn’t pick up any heat signatures other than the glowing bright-orange axles of the railcar.
Jayden had climbed down from the back of the railcar while the two of them focused their attention on the platform. He needed to gain control of them sooner than later. When he saw Abigail disappear on the platform above, he decided to make his move. But in the darkness, he didn’t realize his rifle strap was caught on the sharp edge of the scoop. When he lunged toward Tomas, the strap yanked him back and he almost fell. He knew Tomas had heard him, but he recovered quickly enough to hide behind the scoop. He held his breath. So long as Tomas doesn’t know how to work the helmet, all that the visor will give him is basic infrared or night vision preprogrammed on default. There was no way he’s discovered the backscatter or broad-spectrum scan that would surely expose my position.
He waited until he heard their voices trailing off on the platform and followed.
Tomas and Abigail snuck up the platform stairs to the main level of the station, ever mindful that they could be attacked at any time.
But the main level was as deserted as the platforms below. It was peaceful and serene under the blue light.
“The last report I’d received about the Singapore outbreak was that nearly the entire downtown was lost to the infection.” Tomas looked at his watch, “And that was over six hours ago. Where are all the zombies? Shouldn’t this station be overrun with raging lunatics?” They hopped over the fare gates and Tomas followed Abigail down a long corridor towards Exit F. At the midpoint, Abigail pointed ahead. “There’s your answer.”
The path ahead was blocked by security gates.
During the initial phase of the infection earlier in the evening, whoever was charge of the station - maybe a police officer and transit authority - must have intuitively realized that the trouble above ground should be contained and shut the station before it was overrun by zombies and the anarchists who had come out of the woodwork inciting riots and looting. It was the right move and whoever it was probably saved tens of thousands of suburbanites from being attacked by the infected.
Tomas tore off the helmet and banged on the gate with his fists in frustration, “Damn it!” He put his hand on her shoulder, “Abigail, I don’t know how to say this, but we may have to leave Jamie behind. It’s more important to get at least one of you to safety. It’s too great to risk trying to find an alternate route above ground to the hospital. We need to think about getting off the island before it’s completely overrun. You’re too important. Think about it.”
Abigail knew he was right. So much responsibility was now on her shoulders. She had the opportunity to stop a fever that could cause the mass extinction of humanity. She recalled what Supervisor Bertrand had told her and Jamie the day before when she had been administered the vaccine. Vitura planned to sell the virus to the elites who could afford it and infect the unwitting middle and lower classes to “thin the herd” on a global scale. She had the means to stop them running through her veins. Jamie would understand.
“Don’t worry, little darlin,” a voice said behind them, “we won’t leave your friend behind.” Jayden held the rifle on Tomas. “I’d appreciate it you’d kick that zombie poker over here and pick up my helmet. That’s a valuable piece of tech you’re throwing around.”
Outgunned, Tomas did as he was told. Ever since he had gotten involved with the whole zombie fever mess, people were pointing guns at him. But no matter how many times it happened, like any sane, rational human being, the unpredictable lack of control associated with having a gun pointing at him turned his legs to jelly. It irked him to no end that something so primitive could force a man to do just about anything.
“Good.” Jayden reached into his pack with his free hand and fished out a pair of restraints, tossing them on the floor in front of Tomas. “Hand the helmet to the girl and put those on, pretty boy.”
Again, Tomas did as he was told and secured the restraints on his wrists in front of him. Tomas recognized the soldier’s battle rifle. He knew a Vitura mercenary when he saw one. But he didn’t want to give him the satisfaction so he asked, “Who are you? What do you want?”