LZR-1143: Evolution

by Bryan James

  We made good progress for the first hour, and as we approached the platform of the first station, we took the precautions we had arranged before the trip. I handed George the night vision goggles and he cut the lights, moving the bus forward with no illumination in the hopes of cutting as low a profile as possible.

  In the pitch blackness, we could see nothing. It was an eerie feeling, descending further through the heart of the earth, underneath streets that we knew to be teeming with undead, in pitch blackness. Behind me, Ky’s small hand crept into mine and I heard Romeo snort, as if to signal his displeasure.

  George’s voice drifted back in a soft whisper.

  “Coast looks clear. None of those things in here. In fact, the station doesn’t look as if it’s been opened. Looks completely empty. No blood, no bodies; nothing.”

  I thought a moment and then reached into my pocket for the lighter, flipping the small light on and looking at the Metro map.

  Armory Station, where the blue and the orange lines met, close to RFK stadium. If the outbreak hit D.C. at night, or early in the morning, the station could have been closed. Or the station could have been closed after the fact. Either way, this was a good sign. One access point to the subways was closed off. One down, but far too many more to go.

  After we passed the platforms, George flicked the lights on again, and plugged forward, passing the goggles back.

  “Who are we looking for when we get to the Pentagon?” Ky asked suddenly, breaking me out of a trance as I stared into the unrelieved black of the tunnel ahead.

  “We’re looking for someone who can make a vaccine out of our blood,” I told her frankly, knowing that Kate had explained to her our unique physiology after my accident on the roof.

  “How do we know anyone will be left alive there?” she asked from the floor, where she was laying with Romeo. He was fast asleep, having long since become accustomed, in his doggy way, to the bumps of the train tracks.

  “We don’t,” said Kate, looking down at Ky. “But we heard on board the ship that the Pentagon was still standing, and that there might be scientists there from a military research institute. So we thought we’d give it a try.”

  Ky looked thoughtful for a minute, then nodded. “Okay.”

  Then she asked the question that we had been avoiding.

  “So how do you know that it will matter? I mean, aren’t all the zombies out there already? You can’t cure them, right? So it’s just ...” she struggled with the next thought.

  “It’s just for uninfected people.”

  She looked up at us and asked sadly. “How many of those do you think are left?”

  Suddenly, the bus jolted hard, waking even the slumbering Romeo, whose ears perked up as George muttered.

  “Shit, sorry. Didn’t see anything in front of us ...”

  It jolted again, and George slowed.

  “Christ,” I said, swallowing what I had been prepared to say in response. Ahead of us, bodies littered the tracks and the gravel along side. The markings on the side of the tunnel indicated an approaching station, and I quickly handed George the goggles.

  “Keep us in the loop,” I said to him as he cut the lights again. He nodded briefly, and the bright green glow from the specialized lenses disappeared as he slipped them over his head.

  “More bodies,” he whispered harshly, slowing the vehicle as we pulled near the platform. “They’re ...” another large thump, and I was jolted from the bench seat and onto the floor. Romeo squirmed as I moved my foot from his paw.

  “Sorry ... they’re on the tracks and spread out over the platform. They’re dead zombies and half eaten real folk. Smeared all over the damn platform,” he said, disgusted.

  “Signs of gunfire, automatic weapons, looks like. I see a couple dead folk in army uniforms, a couple police too. No signs of undead. No lights or movement.”

  We all held our breath as we moved slowly through. It felt like we were driving through a crypt, surrounded by bodies and a dull miasma of death and fear. I sighed in relief, and heard Kate do the same, as George whispered softly.

  “We’re out,” he said simply. He waited five minutes before doffing the goggles and bringing the lights up again. I looked at the map, although I had the station names memorized by this point.

  “Potomac Avenue,” I said to no one in particular, mentally marking our progress. It was a good time for a clearance stop.

  I turned to Kate. “I think we should our first hour off, stop here between stations and shut down for a little while.”

  She nodded, and spoke to George quietly. He agreed, slowing the bus to a stop and quickly switching the lights off. I waited for him to come back, and shut the curtains between the cabin and the cab, sheltering our small light from being seen outside the bus. I checked the gun ports and the hatch to make sure there wasn’t any leakage, and sat down heavily next to Kate, who was already curled up on the bench seat.

  “I’ll take first watch,” I said, not really intending to try to sleep.

  She nodded sleepily, as she dozed off. I knew she had stayed up with me after I was injured, and wanted to make sure she got her rest. The evening only promised to get more interesting with time.

  It was disquieting, to sit in the dark waiting to hear or see a herd of undead approach. Almost an hour later, I sat on the edge of the bench, still vibrating with nerves and anxiety, thinking about alternatives if the Pentagon theory didn’t pan out. There weren’t many.

  Ky had hit the nail on the head. If they weren’t there, we didn’t have a plan B and, even if they were there, we had no way to know if we were far too late to make any difference. The virus appeared to have spread fast from the initial outbreak and with growth like that, response times couldn’t possibly have been fast enough to segment a large portion of the population safely away.

  I stared in the darkness.

  Then I heard the first clatter of gravel against steel.

  I sat up straight, willing my ears to pick up more sound.

  Clatter.

  Dink.

  Shuffle.

  Shit.

  I stood quietly, making sure no lights were on inside. I rummaged slowly across the table, moving maps and pencils and power bar wrappers until my hand landed on the night vision goggles. I slowly slipped them over my face and switched them on, sliding to the front of the bus and the curtain between the cab and cabin.

  Ding.

  Crunch.

  Soft moan.

  I knew what I’d see.

  I drew the curtain back and stared.

  Thousands of eyes glowed bright green in the soft phosphorescence of the night vision goggles. They moved forward mindlessly, but in such tightly packed cohesion as to make me wonder how they walked without falling. There was no end to them within sight. Far into the tunnel that stretched forward before them, they moved.

  Toward us.

  Past us.

  Their bodies brushed against the steel sides of the bus, their shoes scuttled stones across the steel ties, and their moans, soft and almost sleepy, accompanied them as they flooded slowly through the tunnel.

  They couldn’t hear us.

  They couldn’t see us.

  They couldn’t smell us.

  To them, we were just another piece of cold, dark machinery. We were furniture.

  I hoped to God that I was right about that.

  I paused, realizing that I needed to tell people quickly and quietly. The first person I awoke was Romeo, my hand wrapped gently around his muzzle. His tail thumped once, until I pounced on the cropped devil like a hungry badger. I whispered softly to him, “Stay.”

  I knew he was looking for my eyes to tell me that I should rest assured of his full compliance.

  I softly spoke to Kate as I leaned over her sleeping body. She started at first, but quickly acknowledged what I said, albeit sleepily.

  She woke Ky gently, and I quietly nudged George, who simply turned his head and said “Okay,” without moving. I returne
d to my station in the front to watch the parade.

  There were easily thousands, and they moved past the bus with a deliberate, hungry purpose, eyes staring straight ahead, heads cocked slightly to the side. They were from all walks of life. Suits, shorts, skirts, jeans, uniforms, bathing suits. I even saw a naked man, towel still dangling from his closed fist, feet shredded by a slow shuffle along the broken stones of the gravel lining the tracks. I blinked at that, wondering how he had made his way to the subway.

  I began to have serious doubts about the situation further down the line. But now we were committed. Thousands of them were behind us, or were soon to be, and one of the stations behind us was locked—the other was covered in dead bodies, which might mean another pack of them close by. We needed to stay on course.

  I watched as a single creature strayed slightly from its course, rounded eyes beneath a balding head staring at the front of the bus. A leather satchel was clutched in one hand, but he held it oddly, as if it had been held in front of his body, defensively, and his hand had hardened around the leather. A large bite wound in his neck, and several more along the arm clutching the satchel, as well as his hand and one particularly nasty piece missing from his head, announced how he had been turned. Unbelievably, a headphone earpiece was still jammed into his right ear, the cord dangling low, having been ripped from the unit long before now. His suit jacket was covered in blood, and as he moved in front of the bus, I could see another dark stain on his pants, over the crotch.

  His eyes were staring forward, at a different target than the others. Over the hood and into the windshield.

  Through the windshield.

  At me.

  Crap. He must have somehow picked up the small glimmer of green light from the goggles.

  I stood stock still, hoping that if I was able to refrain from moving, he wouldn’t pick it up as anything abnormal or non-mechanized. I hoped.

  His eyes glowed green in the light, and I simply stared at him as he stared at me—unblinking, unknowing.

  His head canted to the side once, causing the earphone cord to swing. His arm lifted, satchel in hand, as he tried to walk forward, into the plow. He simply thumped into the thick metal and bounced off.

  I held my breath.

  His lips came back from his teeth in the crude mockery of a smile, and my heart rate increased, pulse throbbing in my veins.

  Then he stumbled to the side, and was gone, below the window, and past us. Gone, to seek food elsewhere.

  I backed up slowly, drawing the curtain and flipping the goggles off. Then we waited.

  Very, very quietly, we waited for the horde to pass.

  It took them seemingly endless hours to pass, and we calculated that there must have been roughly five thousand of them in the tunnel. As the last of them wandered past, I risked another glance through the front window. The darkness ahead was undisturbed, and the tracks faded off in a green glowing line into the black unknown.

  We looked behind, and they had drifted long past the field of vision of the goggles.

  We held a muted discussion on the floor of the bus, debating whether we could start the engine now. We decided to wait another half hour, given their rate of speed and the echoes in the tunnels. We had been idle on the tracks for roughly forty-five minutes before they appeared, and if they had heard our engine, they would have been more riled. The fact that they had passed so quietly indicated they hadn’t heard us. So we would wait until the same amount of time had passed to begin moving again.

  “How do we know there aren’t more up ahead,” Ky asked.

  Kate’s voice was soft and soothing, doing her best impersonation of a doctor soothing a patient. “Because they move in groups. If any of those things were close, they’d have been with the rest of their stinky friends.”

  Ky chucked softly at Kate’s adjective and sniffled once, holding back tears of fear.

  The digits ticked off George’s watch slowly, and I forcefully reminded myself not to tap my foot on the floor nervously as we waited for our departure time. Finally, the time elapsed, and George turned the engine over. By unanimous decision, he would drive by night vision alone. No more lights.

  We cringed each time the bus slammed down on the ties, making noise. We all imagined the sight of an approaching horde in front of the bus, and our imaginations were augmented by the terror of moving forward into the unknown in the pitch black, our fears limited only by the number of creatures we could imagine packing the dark tunnels ahead, hemming us in.

  In what seemed like hours, but was in reality likely only twenty minutes, George called back quietly.

  “Passing Eastern Market Metro Station,” his voice was hushed and slightly tight. “No movement, but lots of bodies. They’re everywhere, here. More than before.”

  I felt him give the bus a little more gas, likely in a rush to leave another crypt of mangled corpses. I sat down heavily in the small chair before the radio, and put my head in my hands, exhausted.

  I must have dozed off, as I jerked my head up quickly when Kate’s hushed but frustrated whisper broke through the monotony of the engine’s noise and the constant clatter of the bus moving over the railroad ties

  “Son of a bitch,” said Kate softly, staring ahead through the curtains.

  The bus came to a slow stop, and George cautiously killed the engine. In the sudden silence, I stood, looking through the windshield.

  It had been a good run, I thought. Now I guess we really earn our pay.

  Chapter 38

  The back of the train looked like a large, inverted U, and a bright orange band circled the machine midway between the top and the bottom. White lettering on a black background above the rear exit door read “Vienna,” indicating that this was an Eastbound train that had become stuck in the narrow tunnel. It was parked on the single set of tracks, with narrow maintenance walkways stretching out into the dark and past the sides of the train on either side.

  We turned on a small light, and began to prepare for a long hike. We were somewhere between the Capitol South and Eastern Market stations, maybe a mile and a half from where the large pack had passed us. It was far closer to where we began than I anticipated having to go on foot.

  I stuffed my pack with ammunition and some food, as well as a bottle of water. I went light purposefully, hoping to stay mobile, and knowing that we would either make it to our destination or die trying, but either way, it would happen within the next day. I carried the MP5 and the nine millimeter pistol from the roadblock. I took care to strap the long, almost antique bayonet to my left hip, while carrying the machete on my right. The MP5 hung across my chest loosely, allowing me to move both hands freely.

  Kate helped Ky load a small pack, and I offered space for Romeo’s food in my pack. George removed his collar, hoping to reduce the likelihood of him getting snagged by a creature’s wandering hand. Ky attached her small quiver to a belt and strung it around her waist and Kate strung a full bandolier of shotgun shells across her chest. She holstered a pistol after checking the magazine as George fiddled with his contraption in the back of the cabin. I helped him move it to the ladder and hoisted it to the roof, setting it aside carefully as we raised everyones’ packs.

  Kate and Ky climbed up, and I closed the hatch. The tunnel was pitch black outside the small ring of light created by our flashlights. The night vision goggles hung from George’s neck, and would provide our best warning of incoming creatures if we heard anything that made us turn our flashlights off.

  We descended to the rocky ground slowly, gathering at the rear of the bus.

  “We stay together on one side of the train, and move quickly. It’s tight on the sides, and watch for any openings, including the bottom of the train. You never know what’s down there, or stuck, or slithering around on its ass,” I said as we made a line for the right side of the train.

  The light of my flashlight tracked along the dark cement wall, and onto the back of the train. Our footsteps crunched loudly on the grave
l, and my eyes darted around, seeking movement or light in the oppressive darkness. Imagined sounds echoed from the cavernous ceiling, and the squeak of a rat in the far distance jerked my flashlight in surprise as I stepped forward gingerly. Oil gleamed wetly along the tracks and underneath the wheels, and a thick fog covered the windows of the train.

  Something about the fog on the windows jarred my memory.

  My ears perked as I imagined the sound of movement and the rustle of the undead.

  As I reached the corner of the train, I remembered where I had seen the fogged windows before.

  Shit.

  “Hold on ...” I began, just as a loud crash sounded from inside the train.

  A withered, rotten face pressed against the glass, tongue extending and streaking along the foggy pane. One eye stared out, locked on mine.

  Behind it, another appeared.

  Then another.

  I cursed as the windows filled with decaying bodies trapped inside the train, squirming against the walls and glass panes, bloody hands and disfigured faces mottled with effluent and gore. The muffled, wet sound of the bodies pressing against the windows cascaded down the car. I inched past the corner of the train and into the crevasse between the vehicle and the wall, trying desperately to ignore the eyes tracking me through the glass.

  “Shit,” said Kate as she followed me through, pressing her body back against the wall and shuffling behind me. Ky whimpered as Romeo ranged ahead, tail alert and up. George grunted once, and raised his shotgun reflexively.

  As we passed each window of each car, more bodies pressed against the walls, slamming hands against the barriers and groaning reflexively. The constant hammering of deadened flesh against the walls made us move quickly and, as we approached the front of the train, I glimpsed the promise of abandoned tracks ahead.