by Bryan James
My hand slipped under my jacket and over the peppered under-layer, passing the small holes and probing gently where the pellets had pierced the jacket’s thick lining between two plates. My fingers detected no wound, and my side didn’t ache. No soreness. No pain.
I sighed, zipping the jacket up against the cold, as the air washed past. Clean and cold, there was a purity to it that couldn’t be matched. Pushed down from the mountains and against the clear, rushing water of the river below, it moved through the ravine, oblivious of the death and destruction that affected mankind in the larger world. Oblivious of the warped creatures it blew past in its journey across the world.
It struck me then, that the new breed of humanity—this new evolution or termination or ultimate state of humankind—might just be us. It might just be what we were destined to be next. From Neanderthal to Mike McKnight, to flesh-eating zombie.
Why not?
Nothing but pure evolution dictated our progression. Nothing but the operation of science on mortal bodies. Why couldn’t this be what we were destined for?
Why couldn’t this be who we were supposed to be, in the end?
We plowed through the world, destroying these creatures, deriding and reviling them for everything they did, everything they wanted. We killed them as if they were nothing. We sought to annihilate them—indeed, precisely because they sought to annihilate us.
But they were us.
They were both who we were, and who we had become.
Maybe we were the ones who had been left behind.
We had a vaunted expectation of ourselves, mankind. We expected that our ultimate destination was greatness. That our ultimate right as human beings was perfection or some poetry of co-existence. But what made us so privileged? What gave us the right?
I stared at the rocky sides of the gorge as it passed by, the train grinding against the metal tracks, branches of nearby trees randomly brushing against the sides.
The rocks on the side of that river—rocks that we had blasted away in our search for progress as we built a road to take our scurrying forms back and forth to our important destinations—those rocks had more of a right to dominance of the planet, more of a right to be here. They had been here longer. They had proven they could survive. They were part of the earth.
We were not part of the earth.
We lived on it. And we survived by the grace of nature.
I watched, surprised as a single creature struggled weakly to emerge from a parked car on the shoulder of the interstate below.
We had no such right. We simply were.
And we lived at the pleasure of the earth.
I chuckled briefly, shaking my head. If I were listening to myself, I would zone out. If I were reading what I was thinking, I would skip ahead. It was all too morose. Too real.
It occurred to me that I was somehow processing my actions of the day. I was trying to rationalize my animal nature. My anger, and my terror.
But maybe I just needed to sit. Sometimes, a guy just needed to sit.
Seconds became minutes and minutes became an hour. My eyes were closed, and my mind was blank. In another circumstance, in another place, it might have been considered meditating.
In this time, on this day, it was sorting my shit straight.
It was a glorious reverie until my ear bud squealed loudly, and I plugged it in, eyes popping open.
“You coming to the dining car?” I checked my watch as Kate finished the sentence, cursing as I realized I was going to be late.
“Yeah, I’m coming,” I said quickly, crawling back toward the opening.
“Where are you?” she asked, voice confused as she heard the rushing of the wind in the microphone.
“Uh, the roof?” I said, suddenly ashamed.
“The r—… holy shit.”
Instinctively, I turned around, and looked past the edge of the car as the train slowed slightly, preparing for a slow movement through the herd.
The wide gorge through which we were moving opened up slightly at the next turn, and the interstate was a clear, wide strip of pavement here. The river churned slowly beyond, white caps on the choppy water. The tracks were slightly elevated, but only separated from the closest lane of the highway by a small rise and a thin strip of grass, and I watched as the front of the train wound slowly toward the massive herd like a snake winding through the grass.
I couldn’t count high enough to estimate their numbers. But for at least the entire length of distance that was visible into the night horizon, they were there.
Four lanes of concrete. Hundreds of feet of median and shoulder, and property on either side of the road before it dropped into the river or met the tracks. For miles.
Full of the dead.
They swarmed over the space, knocking against each other in a sickly, undulating rhythm, slowly moving forward. Westward.
I climbed slowly down the ladder, sealing the hatch behind me.
People were glued to the windows in the cabins, and I made my way slowly to the dining car. Over the intercom in the train, Gaffney’s voice came on in a crackling, calm announcement.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please don’t be alarmed. The train is slowing as we approach the herd, as we cannot risk high-speed collisions with large numbers like this. Rest assured that all mechanical systems are operating normally, and we will be clear of this group within thirty minutes. Please stay indoors, and keep all movements to a minimum. Thank you.”
“That’s right, folks, remember that they’re just as scared of you as you are of them…” I muttered, opening the door at the end of the hall. A small boy looked up at me as I passed.
“Just kidding, buddy,” I muttered, shutting the door and moving on.
TWENTY-SIX
The train shuddered periodically, and each small twinge left us all cringing with anticipation. The bodies tried to press against the armored sides. They tried to climb and to tear into the beastly metal creature that paraded so many meals past their hungry mouths. Tantalizingly close, like choice cuts of meat under glass, we must have looked the part, eyes wide, faces scared, dim backlighting from the interior of the train making our tasty humanity all too apparent as we rolled slowly through the most horrifying freak show imaginable.
I couldn’t count high enough to guess, and I couldn’t guess well enough to count. They were just there. Everywhere.
I stood behind Kate, who shadowed Ky, all of us pressed against the glass—glass that was nearly ten feet above the bodies below but that felt suddenly insufficient. The train moved confidently through the mass of bodies, and the occasional shudder as a single body somehow made it through the plating near the wheels, or as the hundreds in front were pushed to the sides like errant cows, shunted to either side of the tracks like livestock, was the only indicator that the train was meeting resistance. Thousands of tons of equipment and people and supplies lent strength to the massive diesel engines that powered the machine forward.
Gaffney had come through ten minutes prior, voice confident and eyes slightly wild. He had never seen a group so big. In comparison, the herd that destroyed the militia in Boise was a speck. An insignificant gang of misfits.
The tracks clicked by slowly, and not a voice rose up. Faces were pressed against glass as the train went around a slight bend in the ravine, bodies hitting the armored sides and spinning off, back into the crowd. A child on the opposite end of the car began to cry softly, whether in fright or as an indication of the tension in the small space, I didn’t know.
There were so many. So many dead and meaningless. So many people, now reduced to malevolent flesh and moving bone.
Kate drew in a breath as a murmur of hushed speech and whispers rippled through the assembled mix of military and civilians clustered together. On the highway only fifty feet from the train, a large tour bus moved slowly through the herd in the opposite direction, trying to push thousands of bodies away as it struggled forward. Headlights shot into the crowd of bodies, illumina
ting their agitation and motivation as they pushed and crawled toward the machine.
Whoever was in that bus had the wrong idea about staying inconspicuous.
We watched, helpless, as the train slowed even more to handle an abrupt curve, and the bus started to rock slightly from side to side. Then, it slowed.
Inside, the internal lights illuminated. Packed with nearly thirty people, all looking scared and confused in the fluorescent lights, all of them were looking and pointing at us.
I cursed.
I knew what was coming next.
The bus driver’s eyes were locked on the train. In the midst of despair and desperation, I knew what he would attempt. And I knew that he would fail.
“Major, we’re going to have a problem,” I said into my comms, watching as the bus rocked as thousands of bodies pressed against the sides. A window near the driver cracked, and I watched him jump, my acute vision picking out the stark, raving fear on his face.
“Say again,” said Gaffney, voice tense.
“We’re going to have a problem in about one minute if we can’t go a little faster.”
The bus was turning now.
“I’m sorry, you’re garbled. Say again all after ‘problem.’”
It was accelerating, now, moving perpendicular to the interstate on an intercept course.
“God damn it,” I heard him say before hitting ‘transmit’ on my own mic.
“Never mind,” I whispered softly, as the voices in the cabin rose from a slightly worried hum, to a severely concerned garble.
I grabbed Kate by the arm, and nodded toward the sleeping car. We needed to stop that bus.
We sprinted through the car, stopping only long enough to grab our weapons from our cabin. We rattled through the crowd that was now watching the bus push through the creatures along a side road approaching the train. The headlights shot through the forest of bodies, creating a flickering, disco-quality light show for the onlookers.
I slammed the code into the keypad and threw the hatch, listening as a small alarm sounded in the cabin and several men shouted in fear as the order to remain indoors was violated.
Kate followed to the roof, and in the distance, several cars up, we saw soldiers moving forward to man the gun emplacements.
Good. Gaffney was competent and he was paying attention.
As I moved forward, the smell hit me.
Then the sounds.
It was like wading through a charnel house, weeks after the climate control had failed in the midst of a mid-summer heat wave. The stench of rot and refuse was so thick, I could taste the fabric of the creatures’ clothing, drenched in blood and gore. I swallowed the vomit that rose in my throat, and pushed past, reaching the end of the car and using the two thick chains stretching between the two cars to pull myself forward.
Below, bodies threw themselves toward the train, spinning off or getting trampled from behind. Limbs spiraled into the crowd behind as the press of flesh forced awkward positions against the large, heavy machine.
The cacophony of more than a million bodies, moaning in hunger and frustration from the dried and disused windpipes, rose into the cold night.
Ahead, the bus had slowed, having reached an area where the bodies were packed too tightly to proceed. Only twenty feet separated the flat, glass front of the bus from the train tracks, and the lights inside the bus illuminated the frantic movement of the people trapped within. It pushed forward, intent on reaching the train.
Why did they have the lights on? The creatures were enraged with hunger and the possibility of a meal. They turned from the train, attracted to the stronger light and movement behind. The herd seemed entirely focused on this attraction, as the known quantity of the train rumbled past.
We were nearly even with the bus, and the troops that Gaffney had sent to the roof were paralyzed. I was sure they were given shoot on sight orders, if the bus was approaching the train, but it had slowed, bogged down in the masses of undead. Regardless, they were still a danger. If they reached the train, that bus could derail the entire machine.
They would keep coming. They had no choice.
I saw one of the gunners sight the minigun.
He was making the hard decision—the right decision.
There were thirty people on that bus, but there were thousands on this train.
The driver looked up. He saw the gunner on the train.
He said something, frantic, head turning to his passengers, as the bus shot forward, pushing over several writhing bodies as it searched for salvation.
The rain of tracer rounds fell into the front of the bus like a meteor shower, shearing the front window from its housing and shattering the frame closest to the front of the vehicle. The driver disappeared in a mist of red as the bus shuddered to a stop.
The people inside were screaming. I saw a flash of weapons rising up from the seats, and I watched as the creatures at the front of the bus pawed at the wide gap now left in the vehicle, as it was now open to the air and to the attackers outside.
The people in the bus were screaming as we drew even with it, moving past at a slow, stately pace.
It was like we were riders in the most horrific amusement park ride ever invented.
We turned, watching as the passengers flooded toward the small hatch on the top of the vehicle, as they pushed against one another in anger and fear. Panic overtook them all, and the front of the bus disappeared under a wave of zombies, pushing and tearing at the shattered glass and crawling, one on top of the other, scrambling on hands and knees and over heads and undulating hands and arms into the bus.
The gunshots started to ring out, only serving to excite the creatures more. Some fell, inside the bus. Others surged forward. Several people had made it to the roof, and clutched weapons and packs. They waved at the train, yelling and cursing over the sound of the herd below. One woman clutched a young child, and simply wept.
The train moved forward, inexorable.
In the bus below, they continued shooting. Several men, closest to the front, turned the guns inward, firing into their companions in panic, seeking to get closer to the hatch, closer to several more minutes of life. Their companions fired back. The bus exploded in blood, in screams of pain, and the creatures took them all.
On the roof of the bus, one man walked slowly toward the front of the machine, where several zeds had used the backs and heads of their surging companions below as steps to clamor for purchase on the roof. They were pulling themselves slowly up, and I watched, prepared to see the man fire toward the creatures.
Instead, he raised a single arm, extending a middle finger toward the train as if in salute.
I watched as he slowly pumped his weapon, and I was confused, seeing the outline of a carbine with a thicker stock.
Then, I screamed into my microphone as he leveled the weapon toward the last few cars of the train as they moved past in slow motion.
“Grenade!”
My voice was lost over the roaring thunder of a loud explosion in the rear of the train.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Kate and I flattened our bodies against the galvanized steel walkway, grabbing the chains on either side as the train shook slightly. Impossibly, it continued forward, slowed only slightly by the impact. We rose up and ran several cars back, trying to avoid looking at the remains of the bus, and the swarm of creatures pushing it over into the waiting arms of so many more.
The small grenade had struck the overlapping plates of steel armor between the last two cars, and the plates were gone. Smoke rose from the cabin of both cars, and screams were pouring out of the shattered windows closest to the blast. The windows were too far from the ground to afford the creatures below any entrance, but their grasping and clutching hands were catching on the now-exposed window sills, resulting in several being dragged along for a measure before getting ground against the rest, or having a limb ripped off.
Passengers were streaming out of the caboose into the next car, and I
squatted down over the blast area, watching as the coupling began to disintegrate from the impact. Pieces of shattered metal were starting to fall to the ground below, and the weight of the caboose was pulling the coupling apart at the joints.
“Move faster, people!” Kate shouted, and before I could grab her, jumped to the roof of the caboose and down to the smoldering floor of the car. I cursed, following her down, and dodging a family of four bolting into the safer car.
“I hear something!” she yelled, taking a breath and ducking into the now smoke-filled caboose. I started to follow, then glanced at the metal coupling between the cars. It was nearly gone, and the connection between the two cars relied on the chains between the cars intended for handholds and to support wiring and communication. I swore and followed her, knowing that if those connections failed, we were dead—stranded in a damaged car in the middle of a hungry pack of the undead.
The smoke burned my lungs, and my night vision failed in the bellowing darkness. I tripped on something, and hoped it wasn’t a body. Kate’s voice shot into my ear from my comms.
“Family here, I need help!”
I shot forward, yelling.
“Which room?”
Outside, I heard the unmistakable metallic clutter of the joiner between the cars failing and shattering to the ground. The car drifted back sickeningly, then snapped forward again abruptly. We were on the chains, now.
I flew into an open door, crouching down and finding Kate leaning over two small children. The father lay prone on the ground, and the mother was leaning against the wall.
“We have less than a minute before this thing is on its own. We have to leave, now!”
Kate grabbed both children, one in each arm, and herded the mother toward the door.
I shot past, picking up the father and carrying him into the hallway. We coughed through the billowing smoke, as the fire from below the car started to lick up the walls outside, and into the hallway. Reaching the gap between cars, I cursed loudly. Nearly six feet separated the two cars, and the armor plating that had been protecting the gap from zombies getting between the cars was gone.