Escape From Dead City

by John McCuaig

  “Go back to sleep honey,” Pauline whispered to her still half awake young sibling. “Don’t you worry; you won’t miss it. I promise I’ll wake you up as soon as we get there.”

  After waiting for a few seconds until Margot had dropped off again, Pauline leaned forward. “Gordon, can you please go up to the front and see what going on now? I’ll stay here with Margot, she’s still not well enough to leave or take with us. Not until we have no choice.” As her boyfriend nodded and rose up she spoke, making him stop, “Hey, and don’t take no shit from anyone, do you hear me Doctor?”

  Gordon smiled and nodded again before heading off down the now still carriage. “No problem there darling, they don’t scare me,” he shouted back as he got to the door.

  They both knew that was nothing but a barefaced lie.

  Just like before, soldiers peered outside from almost every window as Gordon slowly made his way down the six carriages right to the front. As he suspected, it was once again a noisy hive of activity, but Mary was found to be up there as well. That sight immediately made him worry; he knew it must have been something pretty serious to get her to leave her luxurious carriage.

  Mary saw him turn up but immediately looked directly behind him.

  “Sorry to disappoint you, ma’am,” he said as he arrived beside her. “But it’s only me this time I’m afraid, Pauline has to look after her crying little sister. You know, the one who just lost her boyfriend.” He took his turn to wear, and act all-important. “So if you don’t mind, you can tell me what’s going on, I’ll report it back to my leader.”

  “This is not the time for any more of your childish jokes,” Mary snapped back. “We’ve got a big problem here. This may in fact be the end of our journey.”

  “Sorry,” Gordon stuttered, not even realizing there was no time to get embarrassed about his feeble attempt at humor. Not that anyone really cared about his feelings anyway. “Forgive me, but can you please tell me what is happening?”

  “Go and have a look for yourself,” she pointed way up to the front, seemingly more than a little bit fed up with his continuing line of stupid questions. “Go right up into the cab so you can get a good view.” She carried on talking to the two soldiers even before he had left.

  Gordon did not bother asking for any more information, he knew by her face that Mary would wait until he had seen the problem for himself before she would speak to him again. He went right to the end of the luggage van and on into the long, noisy engine compartment. The massive V 12 diesel engine was purring away just waiting for the request for more power, and only then would it completely roar into action. For some reason, Gordon knocked on the heavy cab door at the end before entering, but as soon as the door swung open he forgot all about his manners.

  “Fucking hell,” was all that he said.

  The town that appeared to be about two or three miles ahead of them was full of smoke, several great pillars of the stuff stretched high up into the air. This mayhem seemed to be caused by dozens of separate fires that were raging, and no doubt racing throughout the distant city. It was abundantly clear that in next to no time the whole town would be well ablaze.

  “Well, there you go sir, that’s the once great and historical city of Dover, our supposed final destination,” the driver said as he saw the shock grow in Gordon’s eyes. “It sure looks like we’ve gotten here a little too late. I’d guess that whatever we’ve been running from has got itself there before us.”

  “What the hell are we going to do now?” Gordon asked. “Is there anywhere else we can go?”

  “I’ve got no idea about that my friend,” he replied as he lit a hand rolled cigarette with a shaking hand. “I’m just waiting here for the big wigs to decide what we’re going to do next.”

  Gordon said his mumbled goodbyes before quickly heading back, not to the luggage car, but right past Mary and the soldiers and on to his Pauline.

  He knew that the first thing he had to do was let her know what was going on now.

  ***

  14:20 P.M

  Back in the carriage

  “What the hell did you say?” Pauline said to Gordon as she gently pushed Margot up from her lap and with a few little shakes, she woke her up. “Are you sure that it was Dover? And what are they going to do now?”

  “It was definitely Dover but I haven’t a clue what they’re planning to do next, darling. I thought I’d better come back and let you know first.” He felt a bit silly for not finding out some more before he came back.

  “Come on Margot,” she softly whispered to her still groggy sister. “We need to go up to the front again. I need you to come along with me, baby girl.”

  “Okay,” Margot said as she stretched her arms up high, as she came to her senses her tone changed. “But would you please stop calling me ‘girl’, it’s starting to wear a little bit thin, sis. I’m a bloody adult now in case you’ve forgot.” Pauline smiled as an attempt at an apology.

  On the walk back to the front, Pauline could not help but notice there was a lot less of the soldiers hanging around than normal, no gun fire could be heard either so she wondered where they could be. As she got near the front, she found Mary was still there, but with barely a handful of soldiers at her side.

  “What’s going on,” Pauline said without worrying about any small talk, as she marched up to the Professor. “Where is everyone?”

  “The Colonel has gone up ahead with a dozen of his men on foot,” Mary replied. “He wanted to see if it’s clear enough to get through the fires and onto the docks. I’m expecting him to return in the next few minutes.” As she spoke, she also kept a close eye on the younger sister Margot, as if she was still expecting an attack from her. “Once he’s back and safely inside, we’ll decide what we’re going to do next.”

  “Does it really matter what he finds, we must go on, and we must get to the boat.” Pauline said. “We have nowhere else to go anyway. If we can’t get into Dover, then where the hell else can we go?”

  “Well my dear, then you’d better hope that he does bring us back some good news,” she said. “After all, at the moment hope is about all we’ve got left.”

  ***

  14:55 P.M

  In the luggage car

  Half an hour slowly passed before the distant sounds of the soldiers return could be heard.

  It was a steady mixture of rapid gunfire and the deep groans of a large pack of the undead. And they were both getting closer, very much closer.

  “Can you see them yet,” Mary called out to the soldiers who were standing just outside the luggage van door. “Any sign of them?”

  “No ma’am,” the closest one replied as he peered through his binoculars. “The gunfire’s getting louder but we’ve no visual on them yet.”

  “Doyle to Page,” she shouted again and again into her little black radio. “Colonel, would you please just answer me.” Just as she was about to give up the radio crackled back into life.

  “Page receiving you,” his voice was barely audible. “Sorry for not replying earlier Professor but we’ve been a little bit busy.” Everyone in the luggage van could hear him struggling for his breath. “We’re on our way back home right now, ETA is about five minutes. Listen carefully Professor; we’re going to need some of my boys outside to provide us with cover fire. We’ve got some company with us.”

  “How clear is the route ahead, Colonel?” she said, not appearing to worry about the imminent danger he and his men were still in. “Can we make it through the town to the port? Will we be able to get to the boat?”

  “I’ll explain it all to you when we get back,” he said. There was no way he was giving her any more details while he was still stuck outside the train, surrounded by hundreds, if not thousands of the hungry undead. “However, it won’t be quite as we had planned it.”

  That was the last thing he said to her. The one thing he did not want to see was the train flying past him as Mary and the others made their own bid for freedom. He, of c
ourse, did not trust her one little bit. He had only known her for a week but that was more than enough to see just what she was capable of.

  “Okay Colonel, if that’s the way you want to play it, we’ll talk when you return,” she said, realizing that he was deliberately holding back the info she wanted. “I just need to know what I’ve got to do, what we’ve got to do, Harry.”

  “Well, well, it’s so nice to see you two getting on so well,” Pauline said to Mary as she watched her put away the radio into her trouser pocket. “We all know that the best relationships are built on trust and understanding.” She could not help herself as she got one back on the Professor.

  “Try as much as you like but you will not rile me, my dear,” Mary replied as she sat back down on a comfy chair that had been brought up to the carriage for her. “I have known for a long time what this plague will do to not only groups of survivors, but to every single individual as well. The fear of that horrible death and what follows afterwards will make people change. I quite clearly know that, and child, so should you.” She looked over at her, her sister and then at her boyfriend. “You will all change soon as well, my dear, you might not believe that just now but please trust me on this, you most certainly will.”

  “You know nothing,” Pauline snapped back. “You don’t know anything about us at all, what we have between us is still strong, it will survive everything, even this. I can promise you that.”

  “I don’t have the time nor the interest to stand here and argue with you young lady,” Mary said as she looked out of the open door at the soldiers getting ready. “You can believe what you wish, but I know what I know.”

  Before their argument could continue, the soldiers just a few feet away started to fire. “Here they come, ma’am,” one shouted out. “Shit…we’d better get the train ready to move.”

  Pauline darted over to the nearest window and managed to see them coming for herself. Her eyes however, were not drawn to the five rushing soldiers, but away past them and onto the wild army of the beasts that were coming right behind them.

  “Christ, where’s the rest of his men gone?” Gordon said as he saw there was less than half the soldiers that had left earlier. “I can’t see any more of them, where are they?” No one bothered to answer his stupid question; they all knew what their fate must have been.

  “They’re coming towards us beside the tracks,” Pauline shouted over to Mary. “If we go forward they can get on the train quicker. Professor, please call the driver. We need to get this damn thing moving.”

  Mary looked again at the Colonel in the distance, then immediately got on her radio. “Driver, driver, come in,” she shouted down the mike. As soon as he called back she continued. “You need to get moving towards Dover now but keep our speed down to five miles an hour, no faster than that you hear. We’re going to have to pick up our people on the way.”

  Almost immediately, the train set off at not much more than walking speed but it still only took less than a minute for them to meet in the middle. It was not a second too soon, the beasts were now rushing in from the left hand side as well, dozen’s more of the hungry zombies had heard the calls of the dead and were desperately trying not to miss out on all of the fun. Pauline was right, the Colonel and the remains of his men would never have made it back alive if the train had stayed still.

  “Give them some cover fire,” a soldier shouted as he leaned out from the doorway, pointing at the new threat. “Come on boys, let’s get to work.” His machine gun blasted away on full spread at the beasts rushing in from the left, he was soon joined by more and more of his comrades. Streams of hot lead cut through the flood of dead flesh.

  Smash!

  One of the large side windows was blasted by gunfire and the shattered remains of the glass kicked out. A quickly formed line of soldiers used the now wide, gaping hole to aid their comrade’s retreat. Pauline however just saw that one of the barriers against the undead horde had now been removed. She ushered Gordon and Margot all the way back down the coach so they were near the body end doors. If any of those undead managed to get in through the window, she still wanted a have at least one way out of the coach.

  For a split second, the soldiers seemed to stop firing, looking out, Gordon could see the reason why. One of the Colonel’s men had tripped and fallen over, and about a dozen of the beasts stopped their hungry pursuit and flopped right on top of the helpless young man. The only small mercy was that his high-pitched screams lasted for only a second or two before he was ripped apart and devoured.

  The Colonel must have surely heard those screams for help too but he did not attempt to look back, he was far too busy running for his life. He was no longer firing his gun behind him either, all of his energies were targeted in getting back to the train, back to the now slowly moving towards them train.

  The cover fire was certainly thinning out the beasts that were rushing in from the left, but even so, a couple of dozen of the monsters were still getting through. It was becoming all too clear to everyone that Colonel Page and his men were not going to make it.

  “Faster, we’ve got to go faster.” Mary shouted down the radio again to the driver. “We need to double our speed now or we’ll be too late. Get to the soldiers now!”

  Almost immediately, she could feel the train accelerate. Mary pushed some of the soldiers towards the open door, “Get ready to grab them,” she hollered. “They’ll be here in a few seconds.”

  Three of the men squeezed themselves into the small opening as they were held tightly from their belts by the others. Leaning slightly outwards, they got prepared to make a desperate grab for their comrades.

  “Here they come, get ready lads,” one of the soldiers shouted as he leaned from the smashed out window. He saw that the Colonel and the others were almost being caught by the pincer movement of the beasts. Barely a few feet now separated them from the deadly horde.

  The combined speed of the train and their run made the catch far too hard. With only three pairs of hands waiting, it meant that only three of them were grabbed, Page and two others. The other two soldiers slipped away, stumbled to the ground, and soon became some fresher, warm food for the hungry, chasing zombies.

  As Page was being pulled up inside, one of the beasts reached up and grabbed a good hold of his foot. As it tried to work its way up his leg, a swift boot to the face from the Colonels free leg sent the beast flying away and straight under the fast spinning wheels of the train. Pulling himself back up to his feet, he patted the shoulder of his closest fellow survivor. Any feeling of relief quickly disappeared as he saw the old Professor approach.

  “Thank God you’ve made it back to us,” Mary said as she watched him attempt to catch his breath. “So that I can leave you to be checked over in peace, can you please tell me what you found?”

  The chubby, longhaired tech was standing right behind her. He was silently and patiently waiting for the order to inspect Page and his two men for any signs of the infection once again.

  “Well, as we suspected, the city has gone to hell,” he said, as he glanced over at his men who were already stripping off their uniforms. “I’d hazard a guess and say every single person that lived in there has been turned already. And before you say it, yes, I’m afraid it does get a whole lot worse than that Professor. There’s no way we’ll be able to ride all the way into the train station. It’s packed to the rafters with hundreds of the undead just mulling around, waiting for someone to arrive. If we try and get off inside there, then I can assure you we’ll have no chance of surviving.”

  “But I take it that you’ve got another idea,” Mary said, her voice was rising up ever so slightly every time she spoke. “I mean that’s what it sounded like earlier when we talked on the radio.”

  “There is a chance,” his face seemed to light up as he watched her obvious discomfort. “It’ll be pretty tight, but I think we can just about do it.”

  “Well, come on then, what is it man. Stop fucking me about.” Ma
ry snapped back, she was rapidly losing her patience with him and no longer cared that anyone else would see it.

  “Well, the tracks loop around into the station,” he said as he too started to strip, by now he could not be bothered to wait any longer. It was also something else that might upset the Professor. “We need to stop just outside the station and then cut across to the piers by foot.”

  “How far is it and over what type of terrain?” Mary now needed to get all the information she could from the grumpy old soldier. “We’ve got a lot of equipment that we need, that we must take with us Colonel.”

  “It’s about eight hundred yards through a fairly small industrial estate,” he said, as he stood upright in all his glory as the chubby tech again carefully examined his body. “It’s just a few rows of small businesses, we couldn’t see any of the undead in there but I sure wouldn’t bet that it’s empty.” By this time he was ready to get dressed again, the bored looking tech had already nodded the all clear over to Mary.

  “As soon as we get through there we only need to cut through a chain link fence and we’ll be right at the docks. And the first bit of good news is that I’ve seen the boat berthed up, it’s still there.”

  “Okay, that sounds good enough to me Colonel,” she said as she stood up to leave. “Well done again. And sorry about the loss of your men, but it had to be done.”

  Page stopped dressing and watched her go.

  ***

  15:00 PM

  Inside the makeshift lab

  Calling together her fellow scientists, Mary told them to start packing up their equipment, and to be quick about it. She carefully explained they would have to carry it so they had to be careful what they selected, but to make damn sure they had everything they would need. Once done, she went back over to see the Colonel who was now standing just outside her doorway.

  “Harry, I have one more favor to ask of you,” she said. “It’s the boy, David. I don’t want to leave him here, tied up on the wall just to rot away and we obviously can’t take him with us. I’m sure you’ve already guessed what I’m asking. Can you…can you put him out of his misery, please?”