LZR-1143: Redemption

by Bryan James

  The herd pressed in, bodies falling into the space with regularity, hands and arms grasping in air.

  “No time,” I yelled over the noise of the tracks, as several soldiers appeared at the doorway on the other car. “We’re going to have to throw them!”

  As I spoke, one of the chains connecting the cars at roof-level snapped loudly, and the car lurched. The chain spun into the air and slammed against the car as I ducked.

  Kate hunched over, dodging the pin wheeling arms of a corpse that flung itself through the gap, and was instantly pulverized by the heavy wheels. She grabbed the youngest child by the arms and pivoted on her left leg, heaving the child forward. The soldiers on the other side grabbed her from the air and pulled her in.

  I reached down and grabbed the next child, pulling her to me as two more zombies struck through the small railing next to me, hands grasping for flesh before getting pulled away.

  Her body was so light, I had to adjust at the last minute, fearing sending her to the roof. She sailed over the gap, and the soldiers put her quickly into the hallway behind them, hands reaching out to help her through.

  Kate and I each grasped an arm of the mother, whose eyes were wild with fear as she looked to either side of the gap. Creatures pushed into the space and were crushed, but they didn’t stop. The smell of their crushed, rotten bodies was heavy in the air.

  A second chain popped as the smoke from the car behind us increased, spilling into the night air.

  “Okay, no time,” I yelled, then we swung her out, throwing on the silent count of three. Her body was flung into the air, and started down. Suddenly, the train sped up and the angle of her descent changed. She screamed as the soldiers grabbed her arms but her body fell into the gap between the cars, legs dangling inches from the ground. The soldiers struggled against the momentum of the train to pull her up. An arm darted in from the herd outside, and grabbed her leg, pulling her further. Then another arm. The soldiers were bent double, their grips slipping away.

  “Fuck,” yelled Kate, and looked at me.

  “Go!” I said, picking the father up in a fireman’s carry and nodding toward the other car.

  She leapt over the woman’s form, landing and turning, arms shooting out to grab the flailing form of the helpless woman and pulling her to safety in one strong pull, even as the bodies of the creatures below were shaken off and pulled under the last car.

  I bent my legs, ready to jump forward with the weight of the father on my shoulders. As I pushed against the car, the last two chains popped and I flung myself into the air, feeling the whisper of air near my left cheek that was the remains of the chain on the left side flashing past.

  My feet hit the thin platform of the car, and arms snaked past pulling us into safety. As I unloaded my charge onto the floor, I turned, watching the caboose slip away slowly as the train increased speed, and the herd thinned slightly as we reached the edge of the mass of creatures.

  They swarmed over the smoking and flaming car like ants on honey, bodies flooding against the now small-appearing vehicle as we fled, leaving the shambling, rotting bodies behind us.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Seattle was dead.

  It sat, perched as a rotting sentinel over the bay, the lonely, untouched spire of the Space Needle a memory of times when such impressive architecture mattered. Tall buildings stretched into the sky, and the mountains watched from afar, as the remnants of a once proud symbol of American and human pride stood, lonely on the coast of a nearly forgotten shoreline.

  We approached the city from the east, and the skyline was clear as the sun rose from behind the mountain, flooding the space west of the large range with the early morning glow of daybreak. Those, like us, who sat silently in the dining car, sipping coffee or tea, awake with nervous energy, enjoyed the bleak view as the city unfurled before us, a sobering reminder that the wilderness was untouched by this devastation, but that the cities didn’t enjoy that same seeming immunity.

  “I was here recently,” I said softly to Kate, who held my hand in the seat next to me. We had our sunglasses, but were trying to hold out until the last possible second to have to don our other gear. The sun was not yet bright enough to cause severe discomfort.

  “Vacation?”

  “No, connection. I was coming back from,” I paused, intending to say Vancouver, but just filled it in with something else. “Portland. I stayed near the hotel, at a place with a horrible breakfast.”

  “You remember the breakfast?”

  “Of course. It’s how you judge a hotel.”

  “Not the beds?”

  “Beds? Who the hell cares about beds. I care who’s in the bed, but not whether it was comfortable. But food. That’s important.”

  “What made the breakfast so good?”

  “Cinnamon French Toast.”

  She was quiet for a minute.

  “What are you, ten?”

  I was offended. I had a childlike love for sweet breakfast treats. That didn’t make me childish. It made me lovable.

  I told her this.

  “Whatever. I think it makes you a child.”

  She smiled broadly.

  “But I love you anyway.”

  I felt as if I had missed something.

  “Did you leave the hotel?”

  “I had an overnight and felt motivated. I took one of those tours that the hotel advertises on the front desk.”

  “Didn’t your adoring public bother you when you ventured into the sunlight?”

  “I wore a hat.”

  She shot me a sideways look.

  “A hat? And they couldn’t tell it was you?”

  “I wore sunglasses too.”

  “Genius.”

  “Not my fault, nobody figured it out.”

  “Less a commentary on your disguise skills and more a commentary on their sentience, I think.”

  I shrugged.

  “Whatever, I still got to do the tourist thing.”

  “Downtown?”

  I smiled.

  “Sure, if you wanna have a go.”

  She groaned, pulling her hand back and rolling her eyes.

  “Did you go downtown? What did you do?”

  “Oh,” I said, feigning disappointment. “Kind of. I did one of those tours of underground Seattle.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Sure, why not?”

  “It’s just very… touristy.”

  “Oh,” I said, not really understanding. I guess she was one of those bed and breakfast, off the beaten track kind of travelers. Well, then this would impress her.

  “I also did the duck boat.”

  She laughed outright.

  “What?”

  I was offended now. Maybe she didn’t understand how cool the duck boat was.

  “It’s a boat with ducks painted on it. But it’s also a truck.” I was sure this would be impressive.

  She laughed harder.

  This was total bullshit.

  “It’s a world war two amphibious truck that they do tours of the lake in. It’s awesome.”

  “I’m sure,” she said, seeing that I was offended and swallowing her laughter. “Sounds fun.”

  This conversation was going nowhere. I exhaled and stared out the window.

  Ky’s voice was excited as she approached behind us, and Romeo’s nose was suddenly under my hand.

  “Did you see?” she said excitedly. “Look!”

  I followed her hand, and saw that she was pointing at the Space Needle. I smiled at the reaction, allowing myself to remember a time when seeing new sights and taking in new places was a novelty instead of a dangerous way to spend your time.

  “Never been here, I take it?”

  She shot me a look.

  “You kidding? My family never left Maryland, unless you count the beach. My dad hated airplanes, and my mom was just lazy.” Her voice was less excited in remembering her family, and I felt bad.

  “You wouldn’t believe the view from up ther
e. And did you know there’s an entire city buried beneath the streets of Seattle? A burned out relic of an old city from the 19th century?”

  Her voice rose again and I smiled triumphantly at Kate.

  “What? No way! Can we see it?”

  Kate rolled her eyes.

  “You bet. As soon as this is all settled, we’ll find a way.”

  “Awesome!”

  Kate groaned.

  “There’s also a truck that drives in the water. What do you think about that?”

  She hit me on the back of the head, hard.

  “Shut. Up.”

  Kate laughed. I cringed, unsure of what that meant.

  “Yes?”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yes?”

  “Awesome!”

  Kate shook her head.

  “So what you’ve proven is that you have the same taste as a prepubescent girl.”

  I smiled.

  “Fine by me. She and I will hang out, and you can be serious somewhere with the adults.”

  Kate stood up and turned around.

  “I’m going to go back to the room. You two have fun.”

  Ky flopped down in the chair.

  “You seen Major Gaffney?” I asked her, tossing her an energy bar.

  She made a face at the protein bar but opened it and tore off a bite anyway.

  “Nope. Why?”

  I shook my head, dismissing the question. I tossed Romeo a chunk of my own energy bar, frowning at the sawdust taste.

  “No reason.”

  I wasn’t sure why, but I had an uncomfortable feeling about the entry into the SeaTac fort. The way it was described—it seemed like a strategy designed for loading and unloading cargo. Not humans. The more they gathered together, the hungrier they seemed to be. After the herd we saw, and how close it was to Seattle, and another converging on the fort from the south, the city had less and less to recommend it.

  I reached into my cargo pocket and drew out the map that we had been given before we left the Pentagon. Laminated and folded neatly into quarters, it was a series of possible routes plotted by the folks in the intelligence sector in the Pentagon. Red, blue and yellow lines plotted out possible low-infestation pathways to the laboratory, and I had to chuckle when I saw the marks along the routes indicating possible hiding places.

  The intelligence guys appeared to think they could plan themselves out of getting bitten. An interesting thought.

  Stupid. But interesting.

  “McKnight, you want to join us in five?” my ever-present ear bud crackled.

  Speak of the devil, and he shall appear.

  I sighed, and stood up.

  “Where you going?” asked Ky, standing up as well. She had resented being left behind when we went into the town in Idaho, and I figured it couldn’t hurt to have her along now.

  “Come on, we’re going to go find out how well chain link fence holds up against a million zombies.”

  She smiled. Inappropriately, I thought.

  “Sweet.”

  Sweet, indeed.

  The train was moving through the suburbs as we made our way to Gaffney’s makeshift command center. The overgrown lawns and uniformly abandoned and shattered storefronts were interspersed with the now familiar abandoned cars. Society was now showing the effects of months of degradation and the lack of public works and management.

  With no one to feed them, household pets were dying on the streets, their carcasses left to rot unless a pack of zombies roamed by. With no one left to tend them, stray wires fell from electric and telephone poles, swinging in the breeze.

  Sewage and drainage lines backed up, and streets were randomly inundated with water and months old feces that had been trapped in the system by the unmanned release valves.

  Fires burned, as they slowly made their way from house to house.

  Deer roamed through the long grass of formerly manicured lawns.

  Birds’ nests sat forlornly perched in the exhaust pipes of large trucks. I even saw a small bear wander slowly past the open doors of a large bowling alley with a picture of a man on the sign holding the Space Needle, appropriately titled ‘Pins and Needle.’ I had to chuckle.

  Gaffney was talking on a radio, and he waved as we walked in. He put the unit down as we sat, and I squinted behind the sunglasses. My face was feeling warm from the sunlight now coming through the UV filtered windows, and he gestured to his men to pull the shades.

  “You’re getting special priority to go inside, of course,” he began, looking at his watch. “We’re about twenty minutes out. The way this works is that the train slows as it goes into the backstops. The teams outside clear the flanks, we shut the doors, they clear again, brush them back from the fence, lather, rinse, repeat. Standard stuff. Then, when we get to the station, you go through the last backstop, and you’re in. You’ll be the first to disembark, and you’ll exit from the lead car.”

  I nodded, but didn’t rise.

  “Major, just out of curiosity, have you ever tried to disembark this many people? I mean, it seems like the system is built for cargo, and I know that you’d normally have people out unloading the cargo, but hundreds or thousands of people milling around, kids talking and playing—seems like it’s just catnip for those things.”

  He leaned back, eyes hard, and I was surprised. He was adapting quickly to command, to treat a question with such stubbornness. Maybe he was officer material after all.

  “Our assessment of the situation is that it’s safe. We have extra machine gunners on the roof to cover the egress, and we estimate about six to seven minutes total time on the ground for civvies. Additionally, the two herds—the one we passed through and the one approaching from the south—are not expected in the city until tomorrow. Before that, we have only stragglers to deal with. We’ve never encountered any resistance in large numbers at the fence line. We should be fine.”

  I sighed.

  “Major, no offense, but that’s the kind of thinking that gets people killed out there. These things might be slow and stupid, but if we’re slow and stupid too, they win. One bite. They win.”

  I stood up.

  “You’ve done a good thing here, getting these people to safety. You’ve managed more than you had any right to expect, and you should be proud. But I’ve been out there for a while. This kid,” I gestured to Ky, whose arms were crossed over her chest. “She’s been out there a while. And if there’s one thing we know, it’s…”

  “Don’t be a dipshit,” Ky spat.

  I paused, turning and looking at her.

  She had ruined my diatribe.

  I turned back to him and smiled.

  “Just don’t be complacent, Major. Just because they haven’t done it before, doesn’t mean they won’t do it.”

  “I may not have survived in as harrowing circumstances as you, Mr. McKnight, but this isn’t my first rodeo. But I appreciate the advice.” He nodded once and turned away as we headed back down to gather our things.

  “Don’t be a dipshit?” I asked under my breath as we walked into the next car.

  “Where’d you learn that?”

  “Uh, television? Remember that, old man?”

  I did remember that. I used to watch a lot of A-Team.

  I missed that show.

  TWENTY-NINE

  The gravel crunched under my feet as I dropped to the ground, reflexively holding a hand up for Kate before realizing she could probably do a forward flip off the last step and land on her feet.

  But she smiled, and took my hand.

  “A lady always appreciates a gentleman’s offer,” she said, as if reading my mind.

  Nearly a hundred creatures lined the long expanse of fencing that enclosed the final backstop, and they moved slowly toward one another as if drawn together by an invisible cord. They didn’t look at each other, or show any other indication that the others existed. But they drifted closer along the fence line slowly.

  I hoped that Gaffney had his shit straigh
t, even as the others started to stream out of the train, moving quickly after us.

  Romeo was bolting ahead, rocks and dirt flying out from underneath his churning paws. Ky followed, eager to get inside the large fortress.

  It was a massive undertaking, made even more impressive by the fact that it had been constructed so well so fast. Stacked three containers high, the multi-colored walls of the massive base rose into the morning sky, the dark forms of patrols on the top visible against the sky.

  The varying lengths of the containers, 20 and 40 foot models, each with a different color, made the wall an almost comical reconstruction of a LEGO castle, complete with vertical tower components regularly set every hundred feet. Machine gun emplacements topped each tower, and improvised flamethrowers—fire hoses with modified attachments at each nozzle—were arrayed every fifty feet.

  The train sat perpendicular to the walls, where the track didn’t just end. Instead, it was turned up and to the side on a gentle angle, so that a runaway train wouldn’t punch into the wall, but would be diverted up and to the side. Several containers, all filled with cement and sand, were stacked up in front of the tracks for nearly a hundred yards, all designed with the same purpose in mind.

  I spared another glance behind us, and was surprised to see hundreds more creatures surging toward the fence line. Flamethrower teams were now walking the walls, inserting the flamethrower nozzles between the links of the fence and pushing them back with bursts of fire.

  The rapid popping of the machine guns began, wiping up after the fire teams. The civilians from the train moved quickly, pulling luggage and children behind them toward the ramp.

  The building we walked toward now was really just one more container. Inside, a man sat with a simple clipboard, taking down names. He had been alerted to our identities, so we simply walked past. Past the men with German Shepherds, and past the man standing idly next to a box full of ammunition, with a flamethrower on his back. We turned right, angling up a steep ramp—also made out of solid-sided twenty-foot containers on thick wooden pylons surrounded by more fencing and barbed wire—for more than a hundred yards. At the end of the ramp, a small six-inch gap, open to the air and the ground below, nearly three stories down, separated the backstop ramp from the entrance door, which was only seven feet tall and approximately eight feet wide. Large enough for pallets of supplies.