by Spriggs, Kal
The scouts had already moved out and they should be in position, ready to switch over tracks as needed prior to their entrance to town. Brian Gnad's scout team was ready to race across the bridge and get ahead of the train to switch over any tracks they needed on the far side, though, Jack expected that Malik would have taken care of that for them. After all, they both wanted this train to go to the same place.
“I'm going to check on the others,” Jack said. “Call me on the radio if you need anything, okay?” Paul just nodded and patted the radio next to his chair.
Jack stepped out onto the platform. At thirty miles an hour, there was a stiff enough wind to whistle through his hair and chill him a bit. Jack worked his way back to the next car and then carefully climbed across the gap, then climbed up to the narrow platform over the tanker car. They'd welded a larger platform there and heavy sandbags surrounded the position. Josh Wachope reached out a hand and helped Jack over the defenses.
“How's it look?” Josh asked with a shout.
“We should hit the outskirts of town in about an hour, right on time!” Jack shouted back.
He looked down the length of the train. Twenty cars, each with sandbagged positions on the tops. Men and women crouched at those positions, many of them trying to get what rest they could aboard the swaying train. It was going to be a long night. Many of them might die.
“Ever think that somewhere along the line, we made the wrong decisions?” Jack shouted to his friend.
“Yeah,” Josh nodded in reply. “But I can't think of anywhere I'd rather be.”
“Liar,” Jack grinned. But he was glad to have the man with him.
Jack closed his eyes and tried to rest... and his mind kept going back to the warm flesh of Katie Madison.
***
As the train reached the outskirts of Alton, Jack joined Paul back in the cab of Engine Three. The heavy steel plates that they'd welded over the windows didn't leave much visibility, not much more than a few narrow slits they'd cut in the plates. Combined with the bulk of the modified snow plow car on the front, it was hard to see where they were going. The small cab felt almost claustrophobic like that, but the protection would be necessary, Jack knew.
“I figure it's about time. Let's make sure they show up to the party,” Jack said.
Paul just grinned and flipped on the train's lights. They lit up the night ahead of them. The old man reached up to the pull cord and then held down the train horn for almost a full minute. “I love that,” Paul admitted.
“Me too,” Jack grinned. They didn't get to do it often, it drew zombies like mad, but right now, that was sort of the point.
They trundled through the train yard and then swayed onto the right set of tracks. The train swept past a parked truck and Jack caught a last glimpse of Scout Team Three before the train swept past. The team wouldn't be moving for a while, so Jack hoped they'd be okay where they were.
The train started onto the final set of tracks and then they started to rise, headed towards the Merchant's Bridge. “Here we go,” Jack said.
Paul didn't answer, he just laid onto the train's horn in a long, bellowing challenge.
The train rounded the curve and came onto the bridge. Ahead of them, Jack could see some boxes and barrels stacked on the tracks, but nothing that would even slow the train. Jack caught flashes of gunfire from ahead, but he didn't even hear the impacts, not over the sound of the train.
He did hear answering gunfire from outside and he looked out to see Josh Wachope firing from next to the left door. Jack patted Paul on the shoulder, “I'll be right outside.”
He stepped out in a crouch, staying low behind the welded steel plates around the platform. Jack picked out where some of the gunfire came from and he returned fire. As the train went past the stopped cars on the other set of tracks, though, he caught movement out of the corner of his eye.
“Contact left!” Jack shouted on his radio, even as he spun. Dozens of zombies had been lying flat on the cars there and they stood, then threw themselves across the gap. The majority lacked the coordination to cross that gap, most fell, falling beneath the train's wheels and vanishing soundlessly, being ground under the train's wheels.
At least a half dozen of them made it across though, and still more caught the sides of the train cars and started climbing aboard. One landed on the platform only a few feet away from Jack.
Jack kicked out and the zombie went over the side of the platform. He saw the undead's head smash open as it hit the steel bridge strut, and then the train caught it and dragged it under the wheels.
But another zombie crawled over the side right behind it. Jack reached back and drew his blade. He hacked down, severing the zombie's forearm and then kicked it in the face. The zombie fell back and Jack was close enough to hear the crunch as it went under the train's wheels.
He heard gunshots and he could see others struggling with zombies, but soon enough that fighting stilled. They swept through the makeshift barricade and boxes and barrels bounced out of the way. Someone fired at Jack from the darkness, bullets whining as they ricocheted off steel. Jack fired back and he though he heard a shout or scream, but he wasn't certain.
Then they were through, Engine Number Three rumbling along, the heavy train barreling into St Louis.
Jack caught a flash of white as Brian Gnad's customized truck raced past them, headed for the next set of train switches. Jack gave a silent prayer for the scout team. Hopefully, they'd get there and find they had no work to do. If they were unlucky, though, then Malik would have men waiting there to ambush them.
The train continued onwards and they smashed something out of the way, either an abandoned car or some makeshift barricade, and glass and bits of metal rained down from where the plow had flung them.
Jack moved back forward. Ahead of them, he saw a mass of zombies move into the path of the train. Whether they'd been sent there or wandered on their own, Jack didn't know. He crouched down, watching as they drew closer. There were hundreds, possibly thousands of them, packed densely and drawn to the bright lights of the train.
Jack tucked his head down just as the plow hit. Keeping a small gap between his helmet and the rim of the armor plate so he could watch.
The train lurched ever so slightly, but it didn't stop. The ram caught zombies and flung them thirty or forty feet in the air. The impact and mass was enough that it shattered bones and ruptured their bodies, flinging the undead in long arcs as they splattered to the ground on either side of the tracks. The zombies were so tightly packed that those to the sides were flung, sending them toppling like dominoes, shattering bones and dropping dozens of them like rag-dolls.
It was like watching a ship dive into a wave and it went on and on. Rotted flesh and blood rained down from above. Bits of zombie, smashed beyond recognition, pattered down like rain. It was amazing and glorious and it made Jack want to throw up.
Then they were through and the train continued onwards. Jack looked back and he could see hundreds of shattered bodies scattered around the tracks, the rear lights showed a mess of ooze from where zombies had been caught under the wheels.
“Search for clingers,” Jack snapped over his radio. He waited while each of the cars called out the affirmative. Through it all, Jack couldn't help but glance to the south. He really hoped he'd made the right decision.
***
Private Segura had always hated being a soldier. He'd hated it long before he'd been arrested for rape. He'd continued to hate it during his stay at Leavenworth. He hated it even now as he sat at the ragged watch post on the MacArthur Bridge.
Private Segura hated the long, boring hours. He hated having to follow orders. He hated that he didn't get a say in anything. Segura thought himself quite the intellect. After all, hadn't he got away with drugging women and raping them for years? He would never have been caught if not for the one bitch...
Still, if he hadn't been caught, he probably would be dead right now, like most of the rest of the mil
itary. Segura didn't want to be dead. He liked living. He liked his drugs and his booze and he liked that he could take whatever women he wanted.
That thought soured on him though as he thought about his assignment. He had to guard the bridge. Off to the north, he could see the train headed out. But did he get to go and be part of the fun? No, he and Maddox had to make sure that no one tried to slip through. As if someone would try to sneak a train full of people across a bridge.
Stupid, he thought to himself, the Lord Regent is stupid. I could run things better than he could. Just because he gets the zombies to dance to his tune...
Segura straightened and went to the edge of the bridge. He watched as the train disappeared into the city. New Paradise, as the Lord Regent called it. St Louis wasn't allowed. But Segura had grown up here. He couldn't think of it as anything else. He hated the place, but he knew it well. He knew that set of tracks would lead right to the Lord Regent's ambush point. The guards there would have the first pick of women, and Segura couldn't help but frown at that, “Lucky bastards.”
His head came around as he heard what sounded like a groan... or a snore. Segura turned, “Dammit, Maddox, are you sleeping again--”
He didn't get the chance to finish. Strong hands lifted his chin and then a blade drove up into his throat and then up into his brain. He was dead before he knew it. As his body started to twitch, before it could rise as an undead, strong swift blows took off his arms at the shoulder and separated his head from his torso.
A moment later, someone shoved his wriggling torso right over the side of the bridge and it fell to the dark water over a hundred feet below.
***
Engine Three trundled through the switch station and Jack gave Brian Gnad a wave as he swept past. Jack signaled Paul and the train's speed dropped from thirty down to something slower and safer. Jack looked back along the train and then, judging the timing, he gave the call. “All Reject elements, execute.”
Dark forms dropped from the sides and rear of the train. If all went well, no one would notice that. Jack stepped into the cab. Paul looked noticeably weaker. But he straightened as the door opened. “You should go,” Paul said.
“Are you sure about this?” Jack asked softly.
“A little late to change my mind now, isn't it?” Paul asked. He sounded remarkably lucid, it was more words than he'd been able to string together in days. “Go, I'm fine.”
Jack rested a hand on the old man's shoulder. He wanted to tell him something good, something that felt right, but in the end, he couldn't find the words. “Go with God,” Jack said and he turned away and stepped out of the cab.
He hurried back along to the next car and then climbed up. Josh Wachope was already gone, and Jack hurried along, pausing here and there to check things. He reached the back of the train just as Paul started to speed up again. Jack climbed down the ladder and then dropped off, stumbling and then rolling to absorb the impact with the ground.
The train continued onwards, empty but for Paul, headed right for Malik's ambush.
***
Captain Hudson grinned as he watched the train continue closer. It was too late for them now. He didn't understand why the Lord Regent wanted these people alive. They were dumb. They were weak.
Hudson didn't like weak people. He didn't consider himself particularly smart, but he was clever. He knew how to position his gun teams and he had a good crossfire set up. When that train arrived, he'd kill the defenders and then...
Hudson couldn't help but smile. He looked forward to what would happen after that.
And if they fought hard enough that his men couldn't defeat them, well then... Hudson looked over the edge of the building. The streets around the buildings were filled with the Lord Regent's undead host. Ten thousand strong, the zombies stood silent and waiting. All Hudson had to do was call back and the Lord Regent would send the host forward. The zombies would kill all the train's occupants.
He grinned as the train turned the last curve and started into the ambush area. Visible ahead of it was a twisted pile of wreckage. Hudson's people had ripped up the tracks and piled concrete rubble in a huge pile in front of it, too big and too heavy for the train to push out of the way and no tracks to keep it steady. The train's brakes screeched and sparks flew up as it tried to stop. Some part of Hudson wished that it wouldn't, that it would crash into the wreckage and that he could watch the whole mass of it go off and into the river.
But it didn't. The train groaned to a halt. A moment later, there was a clatter of gunfire from the platforms on the train. The light cracks almost sounded like fireworks. “Open fire,” Hudson grinned as his people obeyed.
Gunfire scythed through the fighting positions on the top of the cars. Some of those rounds no doubt penetrated the insides of those cars, too, but Hudson didn't care about that. He watched, gloating, as the forms on top of those cars were riddled with bullets. The crack of return fire ended as quickly as it had begun. Hudson let his people continue fire for a moment more before he snapped, “Cease fire.”
Their gunfire dropped off raggedly, but he didn't mind that, either. He waited, expecting to hear the moans and cries of wounded or to see the defenders he'd killed rise as zombies. He had expected screams from the women and children in the train, too. But instead, there was no motion. There was nothing.
“Dismount, approach the train,” Hudson snapped. Had he killed them all? The Lord Regent would be unhappy if that was the case. Hudson climbed down, pushing his way through his men and heading for the train. Something was wrong here. He had to find out what.
***
Chapter Seventeen
Jack listened with half an ear as the gunfire died off in the distance. The fireworks that had prompted it hadn't lasted long, but that hadn't been the point.
The point had been to get and keep Malik's men focused on the train. And it seemed like that had worked. Brian's and the other scouts' trucks drove through the town unopposed, headed for Malik's compound, careful to give the cursed cathedral a wide berth along the way.
Off to the east, just on the edge of hearing, Jack heard another train horn and he smiled.
***
Paul slumped over in the seat of the train, another seizure had hit him just as the strobing gunfire had erupted outside. Yet he was still conscious and while his right hand twitched and hung uselessly at his side, he held the electric switch in his left hand.
Just a little while longer now.
He felt pain shoot through his body. It traveled through his nerves, raw and electric and it left him gasping and trembling in pain. A moment later, he felt her there. The angel, the golden woman. He felt her hand on his shoulder and the pain eased somewhat. It didn't go away, but it eased enough that he could hold on.
He heard voices and footsteps outside, but he waited still longer. He wanted to see them, he wanted to know that he had made the right choice. Someone climbed onto the platform outside. The door opened. A tall, black man stood there, his eyes suspicious. The golden woman was gone, now it was only Paul and this man.
In an instant, Paul could see the man for what he was. A murderer. A rapist. An ungodly man in every way. In that instant, Paul knew he had made the right decision. He knew that he wasn't taking his own life, he wasn't committing murder: he was defending the lives of the people who had become a second family to him.
In that instant, he whispered a final farewell to the men and women he had traveled with, “Go with God.” Then he flipped the switch.
***
The electric current traveled back to the two cars behind the engine. Those two cars had been mostly spared by Hudson's men, since they looked like fuel and none of them had wanted to cause a fire or explosion.
They didn't contain fuel, though. They held eight thousand pounds of ammonium nitrate mixed with diesel fuel. The mix, commonly called ANFO, was a powerful bulk explosive. Professor Cedano had done his best with timed fuses rigged to detonators, but those fuses hadn't functioned, jus
t as he'd worried.
The electric current passed back to the detonators on four separate lines, two to each set of detonators in the tanks. One of those had been cut by a bullet, but the other three lines were intact. The detonators went off, triggering the booster explosives which then ignited the ammonium nitrate almost perfectly in the equivalent of six tons of TNT.
The blast vaporized the train, Paul Montandon, Captain Hudson and his men, and the majority of the zombies gathered nearby. It leveled the entire block of buildings and the shockwave blew out windows all over the city. The fireball lifted over three hundred feet into the sky, lighting up the entire city for a terrible, awful moment and making the ground and air tremble, as if the city had suffered a blow from an angry, smiting god.
***
Nidal Malik hissed in shock as the massive ball of fire rose up through the night and reflected from the underside of the clouds overhead. It made the holy night as bright as day for a terrible moment. No, how can this be... how could the Hand of God allow this...
He didn't understand it. Why would they have killed themselves to hurt him? It was so spiteful, so pointless that he had to clutch at his chest, feeling his heart ache. This was the end of him. The Hand of God would smite him for this, how could he not?
Even as he thought that, he heard an awful wail and for a moment, he thought it was the Hand of God here already. No, he realized in shock and horror, it isn't the Hand of God... it is their God-forsaken train...
The horn blew again and the sound came from the east... still across the river.
But that meant that they hadn't killed themselves... they had tricked him. They had killed Hudson and most of Nidal's men, but that damned Jack Zamora and his people were still alive. They were alive...
Nidal's eyes went wide as he realized what that meant.