“Get up to the front of the train. It’ll be full dark soon. I don’t usually like to run at night, but it can’t be helped. I need you to watch for obstructions.”
“Right.” He started for the front.
She grabbed his arm tight, looked down at the flashlight. “I’m not even going to tell you what a flashlight and rechargeable batteries cost. You drop it over the side and—”
“I know, I know. You’ll toss me over and feed me to the cannibals and blah blah blah.”
“Just so you understand.”
He took his position up front. The sun finished its escape, and the night went dark and cold quickly. Mortimer flipped on the flashlight, and the beam stabbed out far and strong, lighting up the track a good fifty feet in front of the train.
Mortimer kept his eyes on the track but allowed himself a glance at the sky. The stars hung bright and vivid in the deep black of space. With the wind in his hair, the light out front, Mortimer almost felt like he was flying, the train gliding along smooth and straight.
The forest widened, the trees falling away on both sides. They were on a long bridge. Mortimer fished around with the flashlight. They were crossing over a river. It must have been one of the dozens of middling-sized rivers that fed the Chickamauga. It would be deep and cold with mountain runoff. Mortimer leaned over the edge, looked down, the flashlight beam playing over the running water. He estimated it maybe twenty-five feet down. His gaze came back up, away from the river.
A face, slack jawed, haunted eyes.
It startled him. Mortimer gasped. It had only been a second, a glimpse. But Mortimer was sure he’d seen a pale figure, greasy haired, standing on the bridge at the edge of the track. He leaned over the side, shined the light back the way they’d come.
Nothing. Had he imagined it?
He swung the light back forward again. A gap in the track, twenty feet away, the metal rails twisted and scorched as if from a blast. Mortimer’s eyes shot wide. He drew breath to scream a warning.
Too late.
The handcar dove into the gap, jammed and jerked to a halt, the flatcars piling up behind. The crash was a shattering mix of splintering wood and groaning, clanging metal. He heard a number of screams, the loudest his own as he flew headlong onto the railroad track ahead of the train. He landed hard, the wind knocking out of him. He rolled and tumbled.
Then he was flying, wind flapping his clothes. Stars flashed over him, then his breath was taken away by the freezing sting of impact. The river closed over him like a cold tomb. He bounced against a rock, kicked, paddled, surfaced. He had time for one ragged breath before the river took him down again.
Mortimer spun and tumbled in the dark water, the current sweeping him an unknown distance in time and space, the cold searing him to the bone with white-hot pain. His lungs burned. He broke the surface again, gasped and gulped breath, taking in water too. He coughed and picked a direction in the implacable night, kicked and stroked for the bank. The icy water had sapped him.
He was about to give up when he touched bottom, dragged himself onto the land and flopped on his back in the patchy snow and mud. He lay a moment, chest heaving as he sucked air. Every limb screamed murder.
The ripple of orange along the water made him sit up. He’d come down the river farther than he’d thought, the current so swift. In the distance, hellish light bathed the bridge. The Muscle Express burned, the flames reaching into the sky.
It must have been visible for miles and miles.
XV
Shivering, aching and cramped from the cold, his wet clothes clinging to him, it took Mortimer nearly an hour to pick his way along the steep bank until he stood almost directly below the blazing train. He stood in its heat, let the warmth spread through him.
Had Tyler been aboard? Bill? He shuddered to think of them burning alive.
But there had been no fuel. The train had been powered by muscle. What had caused the fire? Or who? The same people who’d sabotaged the track. An ambush. He jerked his head around, scanning the tree line. Nobody.
He had to get ankle-deep in the water again to make his way to the other side of the bridge. He found crates busted open. The train had been looted. His eyes raked the water and the far bank. No bodies. Where were the muscle guys? Had Mortimer been the only one thrown clear? The bodies had been taken.
Cannibals.
A shiver crawled up Mortimer’s spine that had nothing to do with the cold.
Turn around and walk the other way.
But he didn’t. At the very least he owed Bill. He had to know, had to see. He started walking upriver, keeping close to the bank, clueless where else to go.
Soon he’d have to stop and build a fire and damn if anyone saw. Hypothermia was fast becoming a bigger worry than cannibals. But Mortimer had no matches, and if he did, they’d be soaked. He could rub sticks together until doomsday and never get a fire. Everything near the river was snow-soaked and muddy.
Why had he come down from the mountain? There was no point in continuing. He’d lost the Uzi. The police special was at the bottom of the river. He couldn’t rescue Bill even if he was still alive. All of Mortimer’s possessions were lost, even the Armageddon dollars.
He’d have traded every last Armageddon dollar he had for dry clothes and matches.
A cup of hot coffee.
He marched on. Lie down and sleep. Go ahead, his body said. Slip into that final dream without thought or pain. The idea was so seductive. That he could give up, curl into a ball and simply drift off forever.
A hamburger would have been nice.
Through the dense trees up the bank, Mortimer glimpsed a flicker of orange. He jogged toward it, wove a crooked path among the trees. The fire was farther than it had seemed at first, and Mortimer soon slowed to a ragged walk, stumbling in the dark, tree branches scraping his face, roots catching his toe.
He tripped, fell face-first flat into cold leaves and mud.
Mortimer sighed, heaved himself up on his elbows and summoned the energy to get to his feet.
He heard the scream and went flat again.
The second scream was worse than the first, a panicked, terrified, agonized howl.
Mortimer could not make himself move forward. Petrified. The screams came again, a series of hopeless cries mixed with indistinguishable pleading and sobbing, each wail turning his spine into jelly.
Even worse than the screams was the chanting, low and guttural. Mortimer couldn’t quite make it out, but it seemed to be the same word over and over again. He had to know, had to find out. Even as he told himself Run, he found himself slinking forward, crawling on his belly like a lizard, slithering through the dead leaves and the sparse undergrowth.
It seemed to go on for hours, the hideous screaming and chanting, Mortimer’s edging closer an inch at a time. It must have only been twenty minutes.
A lifetime of pain and evil could be packed into twenty minutes.
Mortimer was close enough now to hear the many voices chanting.
“Meat. Meat. Meat.”
Turn around. Run, you dumb son of a bitch.
“Meat. Meat. MEAT!”
Another scream punctuated the chant. The crowd paused to raise an ugly, jeering cheer before resuming. “Meat. Meat. Meat.”
Mortimer flattened himself against a fallen tree. Raise your head and look. You wanted to see this. Look.
He raised his head but suddenly squeezed his eyes shut tight. He could feel the heat from the bonfire on his face. Open your eyes. Do it. Look now. Do it.
Mortimer opened his eyes.
It took him a long moment to completely realize the scope of the horror.
He looked into a large compound, a group of Appalachian savages swaying and pumping fists around a big bonfire. Meat meat meat. They all wore ragged denim, many in overalls. Beat-up hats pulled tight on greasy heads. Some macabre version of the Hat-fields and McCoys. Some held rifles, but many others clutched crude spears with heads of jagged metal.
Just to the left of the fire, several figures had been tied to poles stuck in the ground. Like a captured safari party in a bad Tarzan movie. He saw two of the musclemen and Tyler. Bill was there too. Even at this distance, Mortimer recognized their terror-stricken expressions. They waited to be eaten.
Much closer to the fire, a table made out of a large wooden door had been propped up at a forty-five-degree angle. One of the muscle guys had been tied spread-eagle on the table. A splash of red gore stained the table where his left leg used to be. He stared vacantly into the night sky. Catatonic.
Mortimer realized he was watching the whole scene through some sort of makeshift fence only three feet away. A closer examination turned his stomach. The fence had been constructed of old, bleached bones. Toothy skulls capped the posts. How many gruesome meals did those bones represent?
A loud voice snapped Mortimer’s attention back to the bonfire.
A tall figure, gaunt, hands raised like some savage priest’s. Dark paint around his eyes, making him look like a raccoon. “We have conquered the train that dares invade the clan’s territory!”
A cheer from the crowd.
Mortimer propped himself up on the fallen tree, craned his neck for a closer look.
The priest wore a large necklace of finger bones. A wide black belt from which hung a rusting cavalry saber. High black boots. A black cape, probably looted from some costume shop. He’d have looked almost comic if not for the glint of fire reflecting in his demon eyes.
The priest’s voice carried over all. “We are the clan, and we absorb the strength of our enemies through blood. Nothing is forbidden us!”
Another cheer.
“Bring forth the butcher! Take the other leg!”
Wild cheering, followed by the chant. Meat meat meat!
A hairy brute emerged from the crowd. A short man but wide, a bulging fireplug. He wore a stained leather apron, various knives and cleavers dangling from his belt. An orange Tennessee Volunteers cap. He clutched a gleaming hacksaw in his thick hand and approached the muscle guy strapped to the table.
Dear God…But Mortimer couldn’t turn away. He watched, transfixed.
The butcher bent over the muscle guy’s leg, prodded it with thick, stubby fingers, nodding to himself, egged on by the chanting crowd. The muscle guy still stared ahead at nothing, deep in his horror-induced trance. The butcher set the saw’s teeth against flesh, high up the thigh.
Meat meat meat!
The saw blade bit deep, the butcher leaning all of his weight into it. Bright blood fountained. The muscle guy was yanked back to reality, screamed and thrashed against his bonds, eyes bulging. The butcher was relentless, sawing back and forth with long, hard strokes. Blood sprayed his apron and face.
Mortimer turned away and vomited.
At last, the screams stopped. Perhaps the muscle guy had passed out, or maybe he’d simply died from shock and blood loss. Mortimer poked his head up again, fearing what he might see.
The legless muscleman twitched and drooled, eyes hollow, seeing nothing. The butcher carried the leg to a small group of cannibals who already had the other leg lashed to a spit attached to two long poles. Once they’d attached the other leg, the cannibals held the legs over the fire. The smell of roasting human almost made Mortimer throw up again.
“Break out the fermented blood,” the priest shouted. “Tonight we party!”
The most enthusiastic cheer yet. A group of cannibals produced instruments: mandolin, guitar, harmonica and bongo drum. They played—something between bluegrass and adult contemporary. Some danced around the fire. When the meat had cooked, portions of leg were sliced off and passed around. Lips smacked. The butcher brought the arms and torso to be cooked.
Mortimer went flat on his belly again. He couldn’t watch any longer. He crawled around the camp trying to edge closer to the prisoners. The thought he could free his friends was laughable. But he had to see, had to be able to tell himself in the deep dark of future restless nights that he’d tried.
The music, the hellish orange of the bonfire, the chanting and dancing and occasional scream all mixed to form a portrait of hell that would have made Dante piss his pants.
Mortimer belly-crawled until the cold and wet and the long night sapped all that was left of him. He curled against a stump, clapped his hands over his ears in a futile attempt to keep out the nauseating racket of the vile barbecue only a hundred feet away. He lay exhausted and defeated. Sorry, Bill.
Sleep took him finally, and he dreamed of unspeakable things.
XVI
Soft voices woke him. Mortimer’s eyes pried themselves open. Darkness. He blinked a few times, and shadows took shape. The bonfire had dwindled, but there was just enough light to see after his eyes had adjusted. His subconscious had mercifully padlocked the nightmares into an unused corner of his mind. Still, a vague dread weighed heavily on him.
He lay perfectly still, listened. The cannibals’ party had waned and finally petered out. But those voices, somewhere close in the night. He tilted his head only slightly. The voices were just around the other side of the stump, two women.
The first voice: “I’m so tired. Some party.”
The other: “Yes. Roger’s sleeping it off.”
“Isn’t it your anniversary? I thought Doris was on guard duty with me tonight.”
“She’s not feeling well, and Roger couldn’t get it up anyway. He had so much fermented blood.”
“I get a little tired of the fermented blood sometimes.”
A pause. “Really?”
“It seems so long since I had a nice glass of wine or a Dr. Pepper.”
“You really don’t like the fermented blood? Seriously?”
“Oh, I like it. Don’t get me wrong. The fermented blood is great. Love the fermented blood, but…”
“A little bit overkill with all the human flesh and everything?”
“Exactly. Sometimes I’d trade it all for a nice green salad and a glass of Shiraz.”
“I hear you. But you wouldn’t give it up. The blood and the human flesh and the whole lifestyle. You don’t mean that, do you?”
“No, of course not. All my friends are here.”
As the women spoke, Mortimer had stealthily slunk around the stump, froze when he saw a pair of slim legs wearing pink-and-black cowboy boots stretching away from the stump. The women appeared to be leaning against the stump, facing back toward the compound. They probably should have been facing out instead. A little luck at last. Now Mortimer could slink away without their seeing. He prepared to do just that, when one of the women stood and stretched.
“I’m going to take a wee-wee. Back soon.” She picked her way through the bushes and out of sight.
Mortimer changed his plan, hardly even thought about it.
He circled the stump and grabbed the remaining woman, pulled her toward him. She drew breath for a scream, but Mortimer quickly clapped a hand over her mouth. His other arm went around her throat. She struggled, kicked.
Her hands came up, tried to claw his eyes, but he pulled her down, squeezed. He wanted to end it quickly, crushed her windpipe with his forearm. She went stiff briefly, then limp in his arms. He put her back in front of the stump, arranged her to look as if she’d curled up asleep. A crude spear leaned against the trunk and he grabbed it, darted back to his hiding place on the other side of the stump.
His hands shook; his breathing was shallow, verging on hyperventilation. He’d never killed anyone with his bare hands before. Up close. A woman.
He held the spear, squatting and ready to spring.
A long way off an owl hooted.
The other woman returned.
“Jesus, Lydia, you’re not supposed to sleep on guard duty. What if…Lydia?”
Mortimer went for her, spear held out front. He saw this one’s face and almost balked. She looked young, dark hair in a ponytail, expression wide-eyed and innocent like the naïve daughter on a feminine hygiene commercial. Her mouth
fell open, and Mortimer struck.
The spearhead caught her square in the throat. Blood bubbled out of her mouth. He yanked out the spear, stabbed her again in the chest. She sank to her knees, coughed more blood and fell on top of her friend.
These hadn’t been the cannibals Mortimer had expected, not drooling savages with bones through the nose. They could have been members of the PTA. Soccer moms. God, forgive me.
Then he remembered the grotesque cookout only a few hours earlier.
He knelt next to the bodies, searched them. The one he’d speared had a good bowie knife with an eight-inch blade. He took it, strapped it to his belt. He coveted their dry clothing, but they were both too small. He checked their pockets, had hoped for the miracle of a book of matches. No luck.
Without thinking, Mortimer headed for the sleeping camp.
There was a gap in the bone fence wide enough for one person to walk through at a time. Mortimer went in, crouching low and grasping the spear with tight, nervous hands. The stench of scorched flesh mixed with campfire smoke still hung in the air.
In the dim, dirty orange light, Mortimer now saw a line of shabby huts on the other side of the compound, crude dwellings pieced together from mismatched scraps of wood. His eyes darted in all directions. Presumably, there were other guards. Mortimer kept to the shadows as he crept toward the poles where the limp bodies of his friends were still tied.
He went to Bill first, lifted his head, slapped his face lightly. Come on, man. Wake up.
Bill’s eyes creaked open slightly, regarded Mortimer at half-mast. When Bill saw who it was, his eyes shot open with surprise and hope. He opened his mouth to speak, and Mortimer put a hand over it, shook his head. Bill’s eyes slowly moved back and forth. He remembered where he was and nodded his head.
Mortimer sliced through the ropes with the bowie knife, and Bill collapsed to the ground. He silently began to rub the circulation back into his legs and wrists.
Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse: A Novel Page 7