by Spriggs, Kal
The words trailed off as he walked down the polished stone steps and into the lower level of the Church.
The aching cold struck him, still as shocking as ever compared to the hot and humid Missouri summer. Nadal took one of the gas lanterns from a hook and lit it with a match from his pocket. It was the only light down here in the quiet, holy darkness. His breath frosted the air as he walked forward and he heard the chatter of the prisoner's teeth as they walked through the dark chambers.
"Where..." the prisoner stuttered, "where are we going?"
"To meet the Hand of God," Nadal said. He didn't mind that the young man forgot to say 'Lord Regent' this time. Soon enough, the young man would know his place in the world.
They came to an ornate set of double doors, which swept open at his approach.
Seated upon what could easily be described as a throne, his master awaited.
Nadal dropped to his knees and then pressed his forehead against the icy-cold floor. Behind him, he heard Captain Hudson kick the feet out from under the prisoner.
"What have you learned, my child?" the rasping voice asked after a moment.
Nadal swallowed, even having been in the presence of the Hand of God many times, he felt his animal nature urging him to flee. Behind him, he heard the prisoner gasp and struggle against Captain Hudson's grip.
There was nothing outwardly wrong with the shape of the Hand of God. He looked like a tall man in a hooded cloak. Yet there was an oddness, an alienness that roiled Nadal's stomach. The aching cold of the chamber seemed to leach the warmth from Nadal's flesh. The Hand of God's eyes seemed to glow in the light of the lantern, catching that light in ways that normal eyes shouldn't.
It is his holiness, Nadal told himself, the foulness of my mortal form is repelled by it.
"There is a train, with hundreds of men, women, and children aboard it," Nadal said.
"A... train?" The Hand of God asked.
"Yes, master," Nadal said. "It is a construct, like the trucks and cars. Bigger, longer, designed to carry greater weight over longer distances."
"Interesting..." his master mused. "You humans are so ingenious. Tell me, will they come here?"
"They will have no choice, Master," Nadal hissed. "My men have destroyed almost every bridge for hundreds of miles to the north and south. This train requires a special type of bridge. There are only two left... and both of them are here."
"Excellent," the Hand of God said, his voice deep with confidence. "Take this 'train' and bring them into our fold. Meslamtaeda requires more servants."
Nadal shivered as the Hand of God spoke the name. He recognized the name of the Lord, the true God, a power that had reached out and healed Nadal, that had protected his people from the undead. Yet it was a name that still made his head ache and his bowels clench. It is because I am weak, Nadal told himself. "Of course, Master. I will bring them to you."
"Good," the Hand of God rasped. "This one, he is from this train?" The Hand of God said the word as if it were a foreign, alien thing.
"Yes, Master, a gift," Nadal said. Behind him, he could hear the panicked breathing of the prisoner.
"Leave us," the Hand of God whispered.
Nadal rose to his feet and backed away. Captain Hudson released the prisoner and did the same. As Nadal reached the doors, they swung shut again, the last thing Nadal saw of the prisoner was the man staring up at the Hand of God in terror.
As the doors closed, Nadal turned and walked quickly away. He had almost reached the stairs when he heard the screaming begin.
***
Chapter Three
The train slid to a final stop and even before it had fully ceased moving, dozens of men and women began to hop down from the sides. Jack gave a wave at the advance team, who were up on the roof of their truck with binoculars and scoped rifles.
He hopped down onto the deck for Engine Two. Two of the mechanics were already opening panels and going about the maintenance procedures. Paul Montandon, their expert on trains, directed them.
Paul was more than just a mechanic. He was also a trained armorer and gunsmith and his expertise made him invaluable. He had part of the armory car, where he helped to repair weapons and worked on "special" projects for Jack. He'd been the one to locate and retrofit the old train snowplow on the front of the train, the armored car had smashed through barricades and crushed hundreds of undead. On the other hand, some of his projects never panned out and some of his ideas actually backfired, like the flamethrowers they'd tried in Cincinnati. It turned out that flaming undead were a really bad thing.
And then there's the whole cancer thing... Jack thought, his eyes going to the massive scar on the side of Paul's head. Paul had terminal brain cancer. He'd been told he'd be lucky to live another year, and that was with extremely aggressive treatment. That sort of thing wasn't exactly readily available. Paul had been doing his best to teach people everything he knew, but his days were numbered. Maybe he's not all that different from the rest of us... Jack squashed that thought before he could finish it.
He saw Tim was already on the ground and directing the loading of supplies, and Jack climbed down and walked over to him. "Status?" Jack asked.
With the engines off and the train stopped, the silence was almost deafening. Jack felt as if he were missing something. The solid ground felt too stable and the quiet seemed almost ominous.
"The train's tanks are full," Tim pointed to the cargo train they'd begun to work on. This one had a lot of modular containers and salvage teams moved from one to the next, cutting locks and opening doors. While many of the cities had been picked clean in the first weeks of the collapse, isolated trains like this often had gone untouched. "We'll top off our storage. Think we can hook up another fuel car?"
Jack frowned and looked back at the train. At fifty cars long, they weren't anywhere near maximum capacity, not with three locomotives. The problem was, the more cars they added, the longer it would take to get up to speed from a stop or slow. Speed meant less time fending of zombies and less time for something to go wrong.
"Maybe," Jack chewed his lip in thought. "What about the engine, could we trade out engine three?"
Tim shook his head, "Nope, scouts reported both these engines are code-locked digital-start jobs. Without the right codes, they're dead weight."
Jack spat in irritation. The problem was, as a "security" feature many train companies had begun to shift their locomotives over to a digital security system. The reasoning was, they didn't want a terrorist or someone to steal one and then ram a freight train at high speed into a town or city. Jack's group of survivors didn't have anyone who could bypass that, not without basically ripping out all of the digital circuitry that made the rest the systems on one of the engines work. Paul had tried, but the circuits were tied into too many of the systems.
It was a "feature" of newer trains, which meant that Jack's band had to make do with older engines. Engines One and Two operated well enough, but Engine Three had problems. Paul didn't trust it to operate for long, which meant they kept it as a back-up.
"Alright," Jack said after a moment, "strip them for parts." He hated to do it, but many of the parts, from wiring to fuel filters, would be cross-compatible and would keep their engines going. The newer engines probably would have needed less maintenance overall, but that didn't matter if they couldn't get them running. "Let me know if you need anything--"
Both of them spun at the sharp crack of a gunshot. One of the lookouts looked up from her scope, "Zombie down," she called. "Sternum shot." A large caliber bullet to the sternum tended to mess up a zombie pretty well, especially if it went on to smash the spinal column. Even for the undead, it was hard to do much with a shattered sternum and spine; their entire torso often just turned to jello, which made it very effective in slowing down zombies.
Jack nodded. "Response team confirm it," he called out. A moment later he saw Hector Chavez and three of the assigned response team jog in that direction. They could have us
ed some of the motor bikes they had for the purpose, but Hector probably wanted to keep the noise down for now. A single gunshot might bring zombies, but the noise of motors definitely would.
"I'll get to it," Tim said and strode away.
Jack walked along the train, giving nods and smiles to various people and generally feeling like a liar. He hadn't wanted to be in charge of these people. It had just sort of happened. He'd had the idea and then it had all grown out of hand...
"Hey, Captain, how's it going?" Josh Wachope said as he fell in step next to Jack. The tall, dark haired special forces officer hadn't shaved in months. His black beard was impressive, but it made Jack's face itch just looking at it.
"Josh," Jack said, "you know you don't have to--"
"You're the boss," Josh grinned. With his thick black beard, he looked something like an evil pirate, "Which makes all of this, your headache, not mine."
"I might have date of rank on you, but you got selected for promotion..."
"Don't you put that evil on me," Josh smirked. "This was your idea. It's your problem. Besides, I'm just a dumb Special Forces grunt. I kill things and break stuff."
Jack shot his friend a glare, "You speak four languages fluently and you've got two college degrees, one of them in mechanical engineering." They'd worked together for three years as engineer lieutenants, through an entire deployment to the middle east, before Wachope had gone Special Forces.
"Me no understand big words," Josh said, adopting a deep voice. "Me confused by shiny things."
"I hate you," Jack growled, though without any venom. He paused as he came to the back of the train. Their one heavy weapon stood on the back platform of engine three. The M2 machine gun, the Ma Deuce, had a crew of two men and the platform had makeshift armor plate bolted around it, just as the forward platform did too. Of course, they didn't have a heavy machine gun for the front end. He'd love to get his hands on one, or even something bigger, but they'd had no luck in that regard so far. "Scouts report in?"
Josh nodded. "Team three will be here by dark. Team four thinks they'll be here by tomorrow morning. Team two should be here in an hour." He cocked his head, "We going to St Louis for certain?"
"Yeah, looks that way" Jack nodded.
"Going to use a lot of ammo, then," Josh said, looking up at their fifty caliber machine gun. "We might try to head to Fort Leonard Wood, after that. Maybe see if we can get any weapons or ammo."
"Assuming we can get across the river," Jack replied, "that's down south..."
"I went over the maps too," Josh Wachope nodded, "Hell, we were both stationed there for Engineer training. But the tracks turn due west down by Springfield, Missouri. We could avoid Kansas City entirely. Get out in the open..."
Jack nodded. In truth, he'd been thinking about that himself. Yet... taking the train south and west meant going into the Ozarks. They'd be in dense forests and steep hills, which would slow the train down and put them all at higher risk. Of course, lower population should mean fewer zombies...
"Who knows," Josh grinned, "they might have held out, we could always use more fighting men."
"Maybe someone of high enough rank to take over," Jack snorted. As supplies had dwindled, most military units had formed the kernels of survivor bands, protecting what civilians they could. Senior officers, though, hadn't seemed to survive very often. Some of that was mutiny, Jack knew. They'd encountered a couple bands of survivors who'd ran into raider bands made up of former military who'd mutinied. But often it was because the men in charge couldn't bear to see their men dying and so they took risks they shouldn't have.
The brigade they'd both been assigned to had gone down just like that. The Colonel and his staff had held a bridge while civilians evacuated, buying time for a few hundred survivors to escape. They should have assigned someone else, but Jack suspected that Colonel Sierra and the rest of his staff had simply been too tired of seeing their men and women die.
"Alright," Jack said, "I'm going to go check on the salvage operations. Let me know if anything comes up."
***
Sean McCune worked the bolt cutters and then slung them over his shoulder. Before he opened the container door, though, he pounded on the outside and waited a moment.
"Paranoid?" A woman asked from behind him. "Why would there be zombies in a container?"
Sean looked back at her and gave her a smile. She didn't look bad, blonde hair, pretty face. She looked good enough that he decided to explain while he waited, "You never know, sweetheart. A buddy and me, we were opening one of these up, looking for salvage and food. You know what we found?"
She shrugged, matching his smile, "I give up, what?"
"We found forty illegal immigrants had been left in the container during all the mess. Dunno if they ran out of food or water first, but they died in there. All of them were risen. There's me and my buddy, Tom Mays, standing there with a pair of bolt cutters and stupid looks on our faces. You have to deal with undead in hand to hand?"
The woman looked away and shuddered.
"Yeah, Tom didn't make it," Sean said with a grim smile. "So now I knock, because the undead are too stupid not to knock back."
He waited a moment longer and then worked the door open. He saw nothing but stacks of boxes, wrapped in packing wrap. He ripped the manifest off the door and read down it. "Hey, look, we got TV's and DVD players, desktop computers..." He sighed and threw the papers away. "Electronics. Again."
"There's always the next container, I guess," the girl gave him a smile.
"Nope," Sean grinned, "just because the manifest says electronics, doesn't mean there couldn't be an error. So we get to unload this container and make sure. Then we get to go on to the next container." His grin grew broad at the look of defeat on the girl's face. "Don't worry, there's plenty of work for the day."
He stepped in and pulled out the first box and tossed it back. She caught it, but Sean didn't slow, grabbing the next and tossing it at her, then the next. He felt tears fill his eyes as he remembered Tom's screams as the undead had ripped his arms and legs off. He paused to rub at his eyes, "Damn," he said, "I think there's some dust in here or something."
***
They were on the third freight car when Sean hefted a clinking container, "Woo-hoo!" He held it up, "Jackpot!"
The woman had long since given up and Sean's normal salvage partner, Larry Southard, was in the container with him. "You found the booze?"
"I found the booze!" Sean shouted. "Here, pass this back, will you? Looks like a whole pallet of Johnny Walker!" The two of them continued to shift boxes around until they had the pallet unloaded. This container was the kind where they most often had the best luck, a "mixed" box, which generally meant it held whatever random things people needed moved. The container manifest read "assorted cargo" which could mean anything from dry goods to reams of printer paper.
"Twelve boxes of Johnny Walker," Sean grinned at Larry. "Twelve! Ho-lee-shee-it, man, that's a good haul..." He shook his head and shone the light around. They'd had to shift boxes of useless junk out of the way to get deeper in the container, but he couldn't wait to see what else they found here. Alcohol was a precious trade commodity and it was just about their only anesthetic. Sean had seen their medics setting bones and amputating limbs without even that. He was damned glad to see something so useful. And tasty, he thought with a smile.
"What else do we have here," Sean moved his flashlight along until he saw the shape of a baby's face on a box. He pulled the box out and ripped open the top. Larry came up next to him, "Diapers?"
"Even better," Sean said and pulled out a carton, "baby formula. The women will be happy with us!" There were far more orphaned children than he wanted to think of. Car three was the orphanage and nursery for the youngest of them. Sean knew that the young women who cared for all those little kids would be very grateful for formula.
"Oh. My. God," Larry said, holding up his flashlight and shining it on another box. "Sean, is that..."
<
br /> Sean recognized the distinctive Greek helmet and his hands trembled a bit as he pulled the box down. He pulled open the lid and he felt his breath catch in his throat. "It is," Sean said softly. "Oh, god, Larry, I'm so happy." He held up the boxes of condoms, "We're going to get laid tonight, Larry!"
***
"Salvagers seem happy," Tim said as Jack watched the salvage crews move selected boxes onto the train.
"I hear they found condoms," Jack grinned. Most of the women on the train were smart enough to realize that they didn't want to give birth on the train and definitely without any real doctors. That meant a sort of enforced abstinence, even between husbands and wives.
"And booze," Tim nodded. He shook his head, "I marvel at our riches."
Jack just grimaced, he'd never had a taste for whiskey. "We'll keep most of it for medical purposes. Any other medical supplies?"
"A couple of first aid kits and a few boxes of ibuprofen," Tim shrugged. "None of the stuff we really need."
What they needed was a doctor and a full medical suite. But that wasn't going to happen, not short of a lot of luck. "How's Cat doing?" Jack asked.
Tim swallowed nervously, "Okay. This is all a little hard on her, you know?"
Jack just nodded. Tim's wife, Cat, was pregnant with their second child. Very pregnant. They really needed to find a doctor. Jack felt more than a little worried about them both. Tim Kennedy wasn't a small man, he was tall and broad of shoulder and his first son, Tyler, was a big kid. Cat, on the other hand, was tiny, petite... and Jack worried that without a doctor, she wouldn't survive the birth.
If she and the baby died, then they'd both rise as undead. Most times the survivors burned the corpses of their loved ones to prevent that, but with their proximity to St Louis, that might not be possible.
Jack didn't know if Tim could take that. Hell, Jack thought, I don't know if any of us could take that. Cat was smart and funny, with a sharp wit and quick smile. She managed the nursery and orphans and half the orphaned kids had taken to calling her 'mom.'