Bracco slipped and slid down ten feet, stopped himself, then after a moment began climbing once more. The deep snow forced the Rangers on the hillside to crawl upward at a forty-five degree angle, boots slipping with every other step.
“Miss Dennison,” Sallinger called when it was their turn. Skye followed him over the guardrail and down the berm. Even following the path of the other Rangers, Skye wallowed in the stuff, trying to keep her balance. A sharp burst of wind hit her from the side and threw her left, hurling her into the deepest of the snow. She floundered there, unable to see, arms flailing as she cursed. A hand gripped her pack straps and hauled her back to her feet.
“Come on, Miss Dennison,” Sallinger yelled, “the hillside’s right in front of you.”
Skye wiped at her face mask, then raised an arm to shield her eyes as another gust spun a dervish of crystals and powder around her. Her teeth were chattering, and she’d gotten snow down her back, up her sleeves and under the waistband of her pants. The snow dervish cleared, and she started up the hillside, wishing for the California sun, and not for the first time.
With her first step, her leg plunged into snow that came up to mid-thigh. She leaned forward, thrusting her arms in up to the elbows, gloved hands clutching at the long, dead grass hidden beneath. First one foot, then the other, rising and pushing off, hands grasping for another hold. She kept her head down, not wanting to look up, not wanting to see how far she had to go.
The weight of her slung rifle and bulging pack threatened to pull her over backward, and she leaned closer to the steep hillside, feeling as if she were hugging the snow. She pictured herself falling, tumbling end over end, snapping a bone at the bottom. Then she would be finished.
They did it. I can do it.
She gritted her teeth and kept climbing.
Skye didn’t know where Sallinger was, whether he had fallen or was already at the top. There was only the slope in front of her, and the burn in her thighs as she forced herself upward one foot at a time.
Another gust of wind blasted her from the side, blinding her once more, and she lost her grip on the weeds beneath the snow. For one second she was standing straight up, arms pin-wheeling, and then the weight of her pack was carrying her back, back…
Two hands locked on her combat harness and pulled her forward, lifting her out of the snow and standing her up on level ground. The powerful mass of Corporal Bracco was before her, and the man brushed snow off her shoulders before patting them.
“It would suck to make it all the way to the top only to fall back down,” he shouted from behind his ski mask. “Don’t want to do that.”
Skye shouted her thanks and moved close to the train, putting the SCAR to her shoulder and kneeling, aiming the muzzle into the shadows beneath the cars.
At the edge of the top of the hill, Captain Sallinger stood pointing his M4 into the obscuring white, watching as the faint shadow of Master Sergeant Cribbs started up the hillside. The officer looked out at the storm for a moment, knowing that if he saw anything coming for his friend he would have only a second to engage.
Come on, Oscar. Climb faster.
Thirty feet from the lone human struggling up the hill, Ghoul tensed and prepared to attack. The others were crouched in the snow around him, hunched low and covered with their own veils of white. Ghoul had only recently come out of his odd, day-dreaming state, and his body felt stronger, more capable. The smell of the nearby blood and warm flesh, carried on the frigid wind, had them all agitated. Ghoul ached to unleash his new-found strength.
Red thrust a hand into Ghoul’s long hair and jerked his head back. The male Hobgoblin turned and bared his teeth, snarling, and Red responded with her own warning growl, raising a hand with fingers hooked into claws and holding it before his eyes. Ghoul trembled, muscles still tensed but now preparing for a new attack. His teeth snapped and his eyes narrowed. Who was she to deny him this kill?
The Alpha’s eyes narrowed as well, and her lips skinned back from her teeth. In half a second she would rip out the male’s throat and crack his skull between her palms.
Abruptly, Ghoul seemed to deflate, and he sank back into the snow. Red stared him down him for a moment, then went back to watching as the prey steadily made its way to the top of the hill and into the safety of its own pack.
The train had been eastbound, so Sallinger led them down the right side, to the last passenger car in line. A single door with a window was set in the center of the very back, about five feet off the ground. A ladder step mounted above the hitch for another car would allow them to reach the door.
Skye watched as Sallinger and Cribbs moved to one side as the men assembled into a tight, single-file line facing the rear of the train, weapons to shoulders, PFC Rooker in front. The formation was called a stack, she recalled, and she’d seen it on TV and in the news, seen footage of SWAT officers lining up just like this before going into a house or a building. She’d never realized that this was a fundamental entry tactic for soldiers in urban combat zones around the world. Organized thus, a team could make a rapid entry and bring massive, concentrated firepower to bear while providing a narrow target profile for aggressors. The Rangers were silent, motionless, and Skye couldn’t help but be a little awed at their intensity and training. The wind and snow whipped through the short line, but not one of the men moved. It was almost as if time held its breath for a moment.
“Breach!” Sallinger called.
It happened in seconds. Rooker mounted the ladder step, worked the door handle and then slid the pocket-style door to the side, swinging his body the right and out of the way, hanging off the back of the train. A cylindrical grenade was thrown inside, and the Rangers all tucked their chins down as a moment later a BOOM and a brilliant white flash came from inside. A second later Burke was at the opening, the bipod of his SAW planted on the floor just inside the door, ready to fill the passenger car with an automatic spray of lead should something still be moving after the flash-bang went off. Corporal Bracco hauled himself up and through the doorway, followed immediately by Moore. As the two men disappeared into the charcoal gloom, Burke climbed in after them, and then Rooker swung back to the opening, following the gunner. Five seconds after breach, the stack had reassembled inside the passenger train.
“CQB!” called Bracco’s voice from within the darkness, barely heard above the wind.
Skye looked at the captain who yelled, “Close quarters battle. It’s tight in there.” He let his assault rifle hang on its sling against his chest and unholstered his sidearm. Master Sergeant Cribbs pulled his tomahawk and mounted the step, following his men.
“You’re on drag,” Sallinger said, pointing at her, then climbed in after the NCO.
Skye looked around at the white-out fast descending upon them, rapidly darkening skies cutting visibility to ten feet and wind lashing the train, stinging her skin through the coat and ski mask. She let the SCAR hang against her chest as the others had, pulled her tomahawk, and boarded the California Zephyr.
In January of 1952, the City of San Francisco, a passenger train out of Chicago and headed for Oakland, was stopped and became snowbound on these very rail lines when one hundred mile-per-hour winds bore down on it and encased it in twelve-foot drifts. For three days, the passengers and crew were trapped against a steep, snowy cliff face, rapidly depleting the stores from the dining car and forced to burn furniture and wood paneling to stay warm. Eventually, workers and volunteers arrived to plow and dig their way to the train, evacuating passengers and crew. It would be another three days before the train itself could be extricated. The event resulted in no fatalities, only cold, hungry people.
The Zephyr was different.
In mid-August of last year, the Amtrak train received a radio transmission from its dispatcher, telling the engineers that the government had ordered them to stop, hold position and await further instructions. Those instructions never came, and aboard the California Zephyr, things had gone terribly wrong. Now, five month
s later, it smelled and felt like what it was; a refrigerator full of dead things.
Corporal Bracco pulled up his ski mask and switched on a small flashlight, a nine-millimeter Beretta in his other hand. He tried to breathe through his mouth, narrowing his eyes at the cloying odor of spoiled meat that hung in the air.
A passage lined with frosted windows ran the length of the left side of the car, providing a dim light that seemed to drain away by the second, filling the corridor with shadow. Pocket doors spaced at intervals along the right side showed where sleeper compartments would be, most of the doors closed and only a few pulled open. The passenger car shuddered as the storm hammered against it. About ten feet in from their entry point were two pocket doors set close together, one marked LAVATORY and the other ATTENDANT. Bracco and Moore moved past them while Rooker and Burke cleared each compartment. The others waited at the back, and Skye closed the rear door, shutting out the fury of a mountain storm. Despite the tension of opening doors that would inevitably bring them into contact with the dead, being inside out of the wind and snow was a significant relief for all of them.
The attendant’s room was a simple, two-bunk sleeping compartment. Both it and the single-occupant lavatory were empty. Bracco and Moore kept moving forward as more small flashlights were switched on.
At the back, Skye saw her breath in the foul air, and as the daylight fled before the storm, she wished she had a flashlight as well. How had she not stuck one in her pack? Because she knew she’d be outdoors. Stupid, as if night would never come. She didn’t like this close space, how jammed on top of each other they were. It was even tighter than the passageways of Nimitz where she’d fought to clear the aircraft carrier of zombies. In here, there would be no room to maneuver when the dead came at them.
And that happened at the very next door PFC Rooker slid open.
It had been inside, silent and possibly dormant, perhaps listening as its prey came up the passage. The moment the door slid back it was lunging through the opening, a rotten, ten-year-old boy with snapping teeth and white marbles for eyes. A nauseating stench flowed out of the compartment behind it.
“Kill it!” Rooker screamed as it slammed into Burke even as he straight-armed it and swung his tomahawk. Swung wasn’t the right word, though. With the bulky SAW and its box of belted ammo hanging against his chest, combined with the tightness of the corridor and a low ceiling, the best he could make was a half-power chop. The gloom and the creature’s jerky movement fouled his aim, and the Ranger only succeeded in lopping off a chunk of the boy’s scalp and his left ear.
Burke’s palm slipped off its forehead and it came in biting, grappling for a hold on the Ranger’s combat webbing.
“Action forward!” Corporal Bracco shouted from the hallway, his nine-millimeter pistol going off with three sharp barks, muzzle flashes throwing back the gloom in brief bursts of light. Snarling shadows filled the corridor ahead of him.
The dead boy clutched at Burke’s arm and tried to pull it to its teeth, letting out a series of hungry croaks. The Ranger grunted and sank his tomahawk into the thing’s shoulder, then its neck. The dead boy responded to neither blow and hung onto the arm, biting into the crook of an elbow even as Burke staggered back and dragged it into the hall.
Specialist Burke screamed.
“Little fucker!” Rooker cried, grabbing the dead boy around the waist, tearing him off his friend and hurling the thing back into the compartment. Bracco’s pistol went off three more times at the head of the line, followed by the deafening rip of Moore’s M4 on full-auto. In the sleeping compartment, the dead boy scrambled back to his feet, white eyes with pinpoint blue pupils fixed on the men in the doorway.
“Eat this!” Rooker screamed, extending his own nine-millimeter and blowing the boy’s rotting brains out the back of his head.
The firing in the hall had stopped, and now flashlights probed the gloom to reveal four reeking corpses collapsed on the hallway floor. Specialist Burke was leaning against a wall, the hand holding the tomahawk shaking as he tried to see his arm where the boy had bitten. Cribbs was beside him in seconds, pointing a flashlight beam at the elbow.
“I’m bit,” the Ranger said, his voice wavering and brittle.
Cribbs gripped his shoulder. “It doesn’t look like the teeth got through the fabric of your jacket,” he said, pulling off the man’s combat webbing. “Strip it off.”
Burke did as he was told. “Ah fuck, Top…”
Cribbs made him roll up the sleeve of his uniform blouse, exposing the arm and putting the light on it. There was a red mark at the crook of the elbow caused by bite pressure.
“It didn’t break the skin,” Cribbs said. “Just a pinch.”
Burke looked at the wound. “You sure, Top? I’d rather get shot in the face than turn into one of those fucking-”
“You’re fine. Get back in the game.”
Burke gritted his teeth and nodded, shrugging back into his jacket and gear.
Captain Sallinger pushed past them to stand behind Bracco and Moore. “What’s our status?”
Bracco toed a corpse with the tip of his boot. “We’re clear.”
“Then move forward. I want to finish clearing this car.”
Skye moved up next to them then. “Let me go first,” she said. Sallinger immediately began shaking his head, but Skye took the small flashlight out of Bracco’s hand. “I can take a bite. I’m smaller than any of you, and can swing the tomahawk easier in here.” She hefted the long-handled, military hatchet. “I’ve done this before.”
The captain gave her a long look, then nodded at last. “Miss Dennison, you have the point.”
FIFTEEN
Captain Sallinger and Master Sergeant Cribbs stared at the young woman standing before them, both men more than a little unsettled at what they’d seen unfold over the last twenty minutes. The entire squad was on an upper level observation deck in the second car from the back of the train, a place lined with comfortable, swivel recliners running down both sides of a center aisle, curved, panoramic windows stretching its full length and arching overhead. Snow was piling up on the glass above and the windows were frosted, the blizzard battering at the car and making it shudder. As evening came on, the final remnants of daylight filtered through the snow and ice, casting the observation deck in grays and dark blues.
Skye stood in the center of the car, still holding the gore-slicked tomahawk, muscles taut and chest heaving, her skin and tank top covered in dark blood and ichor. It was spattered up to her shoulders, across her neck and cheeks, clotted against her bristly scalp. The girl spat crimson, her teeth red, and wiped a forearm across her face. It left a smear. Skye wore a madwoman’s grin, her good eye glaring with an adrenalin fury as she caught her breath.
Someone had found a diaper bag on one of the seats, and handed her a package of baby wipes. She began cleaning her face as Corporal Bracco moved forward to dress the bite on her left bicep. It wasn’t deep, had barely broken the skin, the result of a drifter that hadn’t gone down to her first swing and had gotten off a bite before the next swing took it out. Skye didn’t even react to the sting of antiseptic as Bracco treated the wound.
“That was fucking sick,” muttered Rooker, standing behind the master sergeant.
Bracco looked at the young woman and spoke softly. “Hardcore, Miss Dennison.” His face held an expression that was a mixture of both awe and discomfort. Skye said nothing.
Sallinger and Cribbs couldn’t stop staring at her. It had been savage.
As soon as the captain had told her to take the point, Skye handed her battle rifle and pack to one of the Rangers, then pulled off her combat harness and handgun, and finally stripped off her jackets, leaving her in just a tank top. With Bracco’s flashlight in one hand and the tomahawk in the other, she had started forward into the sleeper car.
One by one she threw open the compartment doors, going in swinging at the first sign of movement, grunting as she used the razor-sharp hatchet, splittin
g flesh and bone and brain, immediately moving to the next door. She worked her way down the passage in this manner, searching every room.
Skye growled as she hunted.
When she had cleared the car and reached the door at the far end that would access the next car in line, she pulled it open and went through, ignoring Sallinger’s command for her to “Stop!” The next car had a tight set of carpeted stairs at each end to access the observation deck above, but the main car was filled with rows of comfortable coach-class seats facing forward down both sides.
The dead were waiting, and they moved toward her at once with their awkward gait.
Skye waded into them.
Gore spilled onto the floor as bodies collapsed with a thump, wet stringers of red and black flinging off the tomahawk blade as it rose and fell, painting the windows and ceiling in grisly art deco. Men and women. Old and young. A conductor, a toddler, a teenager in a sports jersey. All went down to the thud of her axe as she moved forward, always forward.
Chop, chop, chop.
The growling in Skye’s throat turned to rising snarls as she reached the stairs at the far end of the car and started up without pause, boots pounding the risers. The Rangers followed silently, checking each corpse to see if it needed a killing blow. None did.
On the observation deck, more of the dead came at her, letting out a collective moan. The young woman was hunting back in the opposite direction now, killing them between the swivel chairs, cutting them down in the aisle, covering the walls and ceiling and herself with their gore. Bodies choked the floor, hung limp over seats or sagged against blood-splattered walls and windows.
And then it was over.
Sallinger cleared his throat. “I want security downstairs at the front and rear doors.” Rooker and Moore disappeared down the stairs. “Corporal,” Sallinger said, “start searching luggage in the overhead racks. See what food and water you can find.”
Omega Days (Book 5): The Feral Road Page 14