Gunny pulled the black flag of Mohammed down and dropped it to the ground, grinding it under his boot as he ran Old Glory back up the pole.
Griz, O’Neill, and Lars kept watch, but there was nothing left, either dead or alive, roaming in the town. They looked away from Bridget, letting her recover with some dignity. They all remembered their first time seeing such a thing. Their reactions had been similar.
The locals had done a pretty good job of cleaning the place up and were starting to rebuild. Griz pointed out the ham radio tower next to the warehouse. Gunny nodded. The townspeople were probably talking with Lakota, had told them where they were located. Had said the name of their town. The radicals overheard the conversation and got here before the train, or maybe Gunny was giving them too much credit. There was a bridge across the Mississippi nearby, maybe it was just the towns people’s bad luck they got noticed. They had been killed by the foot soldiers clearing the land of any infidels they could find, probably on their way to Lakota. It was easier to take out small enclaves than allow them to gather into a single, formidable, force.
Gunny needed to get back. Maybe the jihadis were on their way to Oklahoma and maybe they weren’t. Either way, he would feel a lot better if he were there to help defend it. To help set up defenses. He wondered if there was a date already picked for an all-out attack. Maybe there were hundreds of small cells, heavily armed and already making their way there. Maybe the closest groups were just biding their time, killing all the infidels they could until the appointed date. He had to let Cobb know and make sure it was broadcast on the radio station constantly, every hour. The people had to know kill teams were roaming around. The only way an attack like this could work was if the people were unaware and were taken by surprise. There was no way some good ol’ boys from Alabama, who had cleaned up their town, would go down without firing a shot. The jihadis were probably wearing American military uniforms. It only took one of them to speak English to lull the survivors out of their compound, thinking help had arrived.
“Check this out,” Griz said and pointed at a handful of the bodies that hadn’t been desecrated. They’d been shot, but not beheaded and when he rolled the decaying, headless corpses off of them, they were looking at a mystery. They were apparently Muslim, but not military. There were women in hijabs with bullet holes in the back of their heads. The men were dark-skinned and one of them was even clutching a Koran. Resettlement refugees, most likely.
“Why would they kill their own kind?” Bridget asked, forcing herself to look, forcing herself to man up and act like she had a pair.
“They were the wrong kind,” Griz said. “These were locals, see how they’re dressed. They ignored the pilgrimage call to Mecca. They weren’t devout enough for the hajis that came here to cleanse the land.”
“But they’re Muslim. I thought they were all in on it,” she said, her voice getting stronger, although she was still a few shades whiter than pale.
“No,” O’Neill said. “We fought alongside Muslims who hated the radicals more than we did. But it doesn’t take a whole lot of bad apples to lead a nation if they can get in power. Look at Hitler. You think all the Germans were Jew haters? Just a minority, really.”
“I read somewhere that only one percent of them are crazy enough to do something like this, but one percent of a billion people is enough,” Lars said and glanced around at the dead town before he added, “Obviously.”
“Yeah,” O’Neill agreed. “But they say nearly fifty percent of them want Sharia Law, so that’s another billion that will stand by and do nothing, let this happen, thinking it’s for the best.”
“Why didn’t somebody just stand up to them?” Bridget asked, impotent tears of rage still threatening to overfill her eyes when she looked at the pile of bodies.
“Who knows?” Griz said. “By the time most of them found out what was going on, it was already over.”
“But that’s just crazy,” she insisted, her mind trying to reject what she was seeing. “People aren’t that evil.”
Gunny scoffed, he knew better. He could give her a hundred examples of pure evil. Pol Pot killed people because they wore glasses. Stalin starved millions of Ukrainians to death. The Hutu chopped up a million Tutsi with machetes. The English let the Irish starve during the Potato Famine. The Americans killed the Indians. The Turks slaughtered the Armenians. Jim Jones gave poisoned Kool-aid to children, and Jeffery Dahmer ate people. There was plenty of pure evil in the world. This wasn’t the time or the place for a history lesson, though.
They could hear the train off in the distance, making its way back to them.
Gunny pulled his shemagh over his nose then toed one of the corpses, examined the crusty, dried blood. “They’ve been here for at least a day, probably two,” he said. “Rigor is already leaving the bodies, they’re getting pliable again. Bastille didn’t start broadcasting about flagging down the train with the sheets until yesterday.” He was still trying to fit all the pieces together in his head. Trying to determine exactly how it happened and why.
“So, you’re saying the Muslims hung the sheets?” Bridget asked. “After they killed these people? Why would they do that?”
“Just to let us know they were here. Hell, they ran their damn flag up the pole,” Gunny said.
“Arrogance,” Griz added. “They have killed nearly everybody in the world. They know we’re outnumbered, and they think we’re outgunned. They want us to know they’re coming.”
“Looks like they’re going to kill any survivors they come across,” Gunny said. “Even their own who aren’t in the same sect. They’re not taking prisoners or slaves.”
“What do you mean, same sect? What’s the difference?” Bridget asked. “They’re all Muslim, aren’t they?”
“Sunni and Shia,” Gunny answered with a sigh as he walked over to the struggling nuns hanging on the church doors. “Kind of like Catholics and Protestants. Same thing, only different. They’re fighting over who is the rightful successor of Mohammad and have been since he died. Sunni think the Shia are apostates and need to die so there can be a pure form of Islam. I’ve seen men killed because they held their hands differently during daily prayers.”
“They’re all crazy,” Griz spat with venom, joining Gunny in putting the Sisters out of their misery. “Most of them are inbred morons, they marry their cousins and have been for centuries. Gunny, you and Carson got a plan to kill ‘em all?”
“Got ships and subs blowing up their walls as soon as they can get there. The Russians and Chinese have cruise missiles they’re going to launch at the cities our ships can’t shell,” Gunny replied. “It’ll only kill a tiny percentage of them, but it’ll let them know the party is over. We’re going to take out all of their infrastructures, put them back in the stone age. They’re targeting power plants, dams, airports and military bases. It’ll destroy their chances of organizing something against the hordes until it’s too late, and cut off their ability to mass evacuate with airlifts. Carson said whoever the zombies don’t get will starve to death. The Russians have thousands of Cruise Missiles and they’re going to use them all. The Chinese have enough of their army left to keep them out of China. They’ll gun down any refugees trying to get out. The Germans have learned how to gather up huge hordes of zeds with their drones and they’re leading them to the borders.”
“We need to get on the Ham,” Griz said, anger still in his voice as he pried the spikes out of the door, laying the nuns on the ground with the headless children. “Bastille needs to let everybody know, give him something worth talking about instead doing those stupid “New Arrivals and their Stories” interviews.”
“Agreed,” Gunny said “We’ve got to head back, too. There’s another war coming and we need to be there. And I need some bacon.”
Lars and Bridget frowned in question at that, but Griz was wearing a grim smile. Shaytan was back.
22
Gunny
They met the train at the crossing near the s
heets hanging from the poles.
“Where is everybody?” Stabby asked as they climbed aboard.
“Dead,” was all Lars said and he didn’t press the issue.
“Mission is over, we’re heading home,” Gunny told him. “Let’s get this thing rolling back to Lakota.”
“Uh, Cobb called, mate. There are some survivors in Atlanta we’re supposed to pick up,” Stabby said.
“They’re on their own,” Gunny replied. “We need to get back. We can send a rescue crew out later.”
Stabby nodded, flipped the levers to switch directions and the train slowly started picking up speed, heading back west.
Gunny grabbed the mic and hailed Lakota, he needed them to start spreading the word about what had happened in Munson.
The rest of the crew went to the dining car and started stripping out of their gear, but within a few minutes, the train stopped and reversed itself, heading back toward Atlanta.
Gunny came in shortly and started pulling his gear off, too. Silence filled the car, all of them waiting for him to tell them why they had changed directions. Again.
He was annoyed, even though he knew Lakota was right, that they had spoken the truth. He finally turned to face them.
“Wire Bender made contact with a large group of people, a lot of them babies out of a daycare place, holed up at a college. They don’t have weapons. They’re surrounded and out of food. No water either. They won’t last another few days, let alone the week or so for us to get back and send out another train. Besides,” he added, trying to keep the aggravation out of his voice, “they don’t need our help building defenses in Lakota. Apparently, we’re just a bunch of dumbass grunts who wouldn’t know a hammer from a pipe wrench if it bit us on the ass.”
Griz burst out laughing. “You were talking to Cobb?” he asked.
“Actually, that part was from Martha,” Gunny said, smiling in spite of himself, then imitating her voice, “You betta bring back baby or I cut off you baby maker.”
“DAYUM!” Lars swore, protectively grabbing himself. “Chop, chop, Stabby! Let’s get this thing to Atlanta.”
Gunny looked at the map as Stabby took them through the Alabama woodlands toward Tuscaloosa. It was only a few hundred miles to the college. They’d load everyone up and hustle back to Lakota. The return trip would be fast, all the intersections were already switched in the right direction. He hoped the radicals were cocky enough to think they could just rush the town with overwhelming numbers and mop them up quickly. He hoped they weren’t methodically making plans and raiding military bases for heavy ordinance. In another few weeks, the town would be ready for anything. He knew Wilson was going to make a trek out to get some tanks as soon as they had the place armed with everything they could get from McAlester. They would be able to figure them out, they were just big guns, basically.
He doubted the Muslims would come in heavy, they thought they would be going there for the victory party. It was the only town of its kind, fully functioning with electricity and running water, so they wouldn’t want to tear it up too bad. Probably just small arms. That would work in their favor, because they were in a pretty good defensive position, and had some serious ordinance at their disposal. He needed to hurry this up, get the survivors and get back home. He told Stabby to bump the throttle up a few more notches.
Morning turned to afternoon and Griz whipped up another of his casseroles, with some peach pie for dessert. They were on the long East End District set of tracks that connected Birmingham to Atlanta. It wound up through the hills above Interstate 20 and no spurs were running off of it. The map indicated it was a high-speed line so when Gunny took over engineer duties, he had the loco cruising along at about 60 miles an hour. This was one of the quickest sections they had run, with only a few towns where they had to slow. They had one hell of a following trailing them, though. They needed to keep the speed up so they wouldn’t get buried when the runners caught up near Atlanta. They had to be far enough ahead to give them enough time to get everyone out of the dorms and onto the train. Cobb had told the survivors to coordinate directly with the train and when they were about an hour away, they finally established contact. The communication signal was weak, they said they were running on battery power, but Gunny knew exactly where they were, as he’d been by the campus dozens of times. It was a large group of students and teachers from Georgia Tech, on the main campus, and the map showed a rail line going right past them. They said they had picked up the broadcast Bastille was sending out and had managed to get to the Ham radios the Amateur Radio Club had. When they finally managed to speak to each other, they started formulating a plan to get them all out. Gunny was going to make one run past their building to pull away the undead surrounding them, then a fast stop on the way back, with machine guns keeping the path clear. Easy as pie.
“Y’all start getting ready,” he said. “You’ll see us soon.”
The rest of the crew had listened to the conversation and were amazed so many had survived so long. Especially with no weapons.
“Bunch of vegetarians in colleges. You know they didn’t eat any of the meats,” Griz had declared. “Don’t they have walls and fences around the campus? I’ve never been to one, but they always do in the movies.”
“They just got lucky,” Lars said. “Some folks had to be in the right place at the right time. They saved all those babies, too. They’ll be a good bunch to add to Lakota. Besides, I think there’s a chance I’ll find me a fine African Queen among them. A smart one, too, if she’s going to college. Maybe we’ll adopt us a couple of those kids.”
“Didn’t take you as the daddy type,” Evans said, grabbing a second helping of the casserole.
“Man, babies are the future,” Lars said. “They’re the reason to build a better world. Without them, we’re nothing.”
“You got that right,” Stabby said. “When I get a Mrs., we’ll ‘ave a house full of ‘em.”
“It’s all about the babies,” Lars continued. “Look at us, man. We’re out here fighting and killing and taking chances every day. How many of us sitting here do you think are gonna be alive next year? Hell, by Christmas? The babies, man. It’s all about the babies. They the only reason we’re trying to build a new world. They need to live, even if we gotta die to do it.”
“Well aren’t you a just a little ray of sunshine,” Evans grumbled. “Don’t you know it’s bad luck to talk about dying?”
They rolled on, far ahead of the followers stumbling in their path, running as fast as they could through the Georgia backcountry, and adding more to their numbers in every little town they went through.
After they finished eating, they started gearing up for Atlanta. Gunny hadn’t let up off the throttle and their little train was nearing the first of the half-dozen switches they would have to throw to get to the college. As they neared the big city, there were a lot of parallel tracks to park trains. They had to slow to a crawl at each one to ensure the switches were keeping them on the main line, not sending them flying off on a siding and plowing into the back of a bunch of containers or coal cars waiting to be unloaded.
Atlanta was crawling with zombies; the train was already under bombardment from the screaming undead as they neared the first switch. There were a lot of short side tracks in this area, in the industrial outskirts of the city. Spurs that branched off a mile or so to different factories. The line they wanted carried on across the Chattahoochee River, on an old steel deck truss bridge.
“It’s show time!” Gunny looked up from the rail map and yelled back at them through the open door. “The first turnout is coming up. Everybody man your machine guns, keep us a path clear. You know the drill.”
“Stabby, you’re up,” he said and vacated the engineer's seat. “Me and Griz will move the rails if they need it.”
Stabby sat down in the chair while the others climbed up to the roof and got in position. Lars and Bridget went to the guns mounted on the front deck and positioned their ammo cans, cha
rged the handles to make sure the M-2s had rounds chambered. Griz slung his carbine and grabbed the long pry-bar as they walked out the front door. Gunny double checked his magazines, making sure they were facing the way he liked them for combat reloads. If things went smoothly, they could be off the train, force the turnout over, if needed, and get back on in under a minute. It all depended on how close Stabby could get the train stopped without overshooting or making them run a hundred yards while he slowly got it rolling again.
“Get ready!” he yelled out to Gunny.
“Get ready!” Gunny yelled up to the men on the roof and everyone braced themselves. Stabby was getting pretty good at judging stopping distance and when he was a quarter mile away, he slammed the brakes to full stop. They held on as nearly a million pounds of steel suddenly tried to slow its forward momentum. The brakes were screeching, sparks flying from the steel on steel contact of the wheels on the tracks and the undead were stumbling beside them. They raged and attacked, many of them tripping over the cross-ties to be trampled by their own kind or dismembered by the wheels. The switch was coming up fast, but the empty train was slowing faster. The guns on the roof opened up, walking the tracers into the closest runners. Lars and Bridget spun the fifties around on the tripods and let loose on the zeds in front of the train, peppering them with heavy lead, sending gallons of blood and organs splashing out onto the gravel. Gunny and Griz slid aside the spiked gates Tommy had installed and both climbed down the ladders on either side of the cab. Younger and spryer men may have jumped off and gone into a full run alongside the train, but they both knew better. A twisted ankle now could be a death sentence. All it took was one runner to get past the wall of lead disintegrating their bodies to sink its teeth into a limping man. The runners behind them kept coming, kept attacking the train and more were making their way through the tangle of warehouses and fences. The train skidded to a halt only twenty yards from the switch and they could see it was turned to shunt them off onto the siding. The two men hopped down and were running toward it, Griz with his pry-bar Gunny with his M-4, and Stabby started inching the train forward so they wouldn’t have so far to run on the way back. Lars and Bridget kept walking bullets in on the runners, blowing away great chunks of them and sending bodies flying. The heavy, slow, thudding of the two .50s chewed up the undead, headshots weren’t needed. If the bullets hit center mass, they did enough damage to reduce them to mangled heaps, barely able to even crawl through the dirt. Gunny shouldered his M-4 as Griz stuck his bar in and forced the turnout away from the spur, and over to the main rail line. It slid easily as Gunny splattered a few that had managed to get past Lars and Bridget. The chatter of the 60s on the roof was constant and the horde was being whittled down quickly. Griz took off for the slow-moving train, with Gunny right behind him, when they heard Bridget scream and both .50s went silent.
Zombie Road III: Rage on the Rails Page 12