The Dead Series (Book 3): Dead Line

by Millard, Adam

  'Lizzie says we're leaving on the boats tomorrow,' Gabriella said. 'Does that mean we're going to our new home?'

  Emma shot Dredd a glance, and he shrugged, which pretty much meant the show was all hers.

  'If Lizzie says so,' Emma said. She placed Gabriella down on the ground and began to wipe at her with the side of the tablecloth. 'I've told you not to listen to everything people tell you, darling, but this time your friend might be right.'

  'So do I need to start packing?'

  Gabriella could be a pain in the ass at times; but she could also be adorable, and this was one of the latter.

  'How much stuff do you have?' Dredd sniggered. It was true; their daughter had one bag, which she had been living out of since they arrived at the base. There should have been nothing to pack.

  'Daddy, a woman needs her luxuries,' Gabriella said, deadly serious. She turned to Emma, who was rubbing the one remaining corner of the tablecloth around Gabriella's forehead. 'Isn't that right, Mommy?'

  Emma laughed. 'Don't put me on the spot. Your daddy thinks this apocalypse is the best thing to ever happen. Stops me from going out shoe-shopping.'

  They all laughed; even Gabriella, though she had no idea why.

  She ran off wearing the tablecloth over her head, back to that little loudmouth friend of hers.

  'She doesn't need to know about the bombs,' Emma said, watching Gabriella race through the rain. 'It'll only frighten her, and I don't want her growing up with that fear.'

  Dredd leaned in and kissed Emma tenderly on the earlobe, pulling her towards him. 'Shall we finish this the way I've been dreaming all day long.'

  Emma laughed. She knew exactly what he meant, and she didn't want to tell him that she had been thinking it too, in case he began to take it for granted.

  They headed to their tent, satisfied on food and soon to be sated entirely.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  'Holy shit!' Marla said as they crossed the first row of tracks. 'Have you ever seen so much . . . so much rail?'

  She was right; it was spectacular. There were eight tracks in the first block, three of which were clear but the others had static trains sitting on them. This was marked as a receiving yard. Opposite, across a thin platform, were a further eight tracks. Two trains were parked up there, which led them to believe that the other six were still out there, perhaps halfway between destination and here, maybe stuck at the other end.

  'Says Departure Yard,' Shane said, pointing across to the battered sign on the cabin wall. 'I guess these two never made it.'

  Terry was examining the first train, whistling – which was something he hadn't done in a long time – as he dropped to his knees to check beneath.

  Abi and Lukas were sitting on the platform, smoking. Once again, Shane had a strange feeling that these newcomers were going to bring nothing but trouble, with the exception of the kid, Saul.

  'Any supplies?' Marla asked Terry as he straightened up and stretched his ageing back.

  'These could be full of stuff,' Terry said, pointing to the huge stack of multicoloured containers at the end of the track. 'I'd say they were meant to go somewhere and never made it out. Shit, we might have dropped lucky, here.'

  'We can't carry any more,' Shane reminded them. 'I'm struggling as it is.'

  'I didn't mean dropped lucky with the containers,' Terry said. 'I used to work for the rail company, back when I was a whipper-snapper. I never really grew out of it, either. This thing's like a big train-set to me.'

  Shane shrugged. 'I have no idea what you're trying to say.'

  Sighing, Terry jabbed a finger in the direction the two trains on the departure yard were pointed. 'We need to be going that way, huh?'

  Shane nodded.

  'If I can get one of these things running, we could make it to the coast in a couple of hours, provided the track's clear all the way through.'

  Shane heard the words; he just couldn't comprehend what Terry was saying. 'Couple of hours,' he mumbled, though not as a question or acknowledgement, but because it was the last thing he'd heard of any worth.

  'I ain't saying I can do it, mind,' Terry added, but Shane wasn't interested in the disclaimer.

  'Are you telling me that you might be able to get one of these things running?' Shane asked, still letting it soak in.

  'I'm sayin' I can try,' Terry said.

  Marla stepped in. 'Hang on a minute. Can I remind you that we've been without electricity since the prison. How in the hell—'

  'Diesel locomotives,' Terry interjected. He appeared to be pleased with himself, too. 'These two – or at least that one there,' he pointed at the second, larger engine, 'don't run off electric. They've got a driveshaft, just like a car. So long as there's a couple of thousand gallons of diesel in it, we may be able to get it running.'

  Shane placed both hands behind his head; this was the best goddamned news he'd had in weeks. 'What do you need to get started?'

  Terry huffed. To Marla he said, 'Well, I'm not counting on a nice massage from this here beauty, so I guess I just need some tools, an hour's rest and a lot of luck from the guy upstairs.'

  Shane didn't know about the last one, but he was pretty sure there would be tools; a place like this would have a maintenance departments, a stores where they kept spare parts and refurbished components.

  'You go take a nap,' Shane said, knowing that the old man would do nothing of the sort. A rest, to him, meant finding somewhere quiet to sit and read a few passages from his bible. 'When you're ready to take a look, I'll have found you some tools.'

  As Terry hobbled across to the separating platform, Marla edged a few steps closer to Shane.

  'You think he can do it?' she asked. The tone of her own voice implied that she wasn't sure.

  'We need to rest, anyway,' Shane said, rubbing at the soreness across his shoulders. The thought of being without the pack for a few hours was euphoric. 'If, when he takes a look, he can't, then at least we'll be ready for a few more hours on the road. No harm in trying.'

  Marla followed Shane along the track to a small industrial unit. A place that looked, to Shane, a dead-cert for maintenance implements.

  *

  Lukas watched the prick and his bitch walk towards the unit. His cigarette had burned so low that it singed his fingers. When the pain finally registered, he flicked the butt onto the track in front of them and sighed.

  'Did you hear the way that bitch talked to me?' he grunted. 'I swear, if she hadn't had her Imperial-fucking-guards standing beside her, I woulda slapped the shit outtta her.'

  Abi was miles away; Lukas waited for a response, but it never came.

  'Hey! Fuckface, I'm talking to you.'

  Her head snapped across. Upon her face was an expression of fear and annoyance, as if she couldn't decide whether to be angry with him, or apologetic.

  'Do you think she's pretty?' Abi asked.

  Lukas had been expecting an apology, an I'm sorry, I fucked up for not paying attention when I shoulda been, and so when the question fell from her mouth he was a little more than surprised.

  'Huh?' he just about managed.

  Unmoved, she repeated the question. 'Do you think she's pretty?' This time, though, she emphasised each word. Lukas could tell she was frightened; not of him and what he might do to her for running her mouth, but of his answer.

  'You talking about the bitch?' he asked, lighting up another cigarette. As he exhaled a bluish plume of smoke, he said, 'Hell, no! She's lucky I haven't shot her already. Fuck, baby-girl, you're the only one for me. You know that.'

  Abi, for a few seconds – seconds which Lukas filled with long, hard pulls on his cigarette and nervous glances into Abi's eyes – didn't speak, didn't move, didn't even look at him.

  When her eyes met his once again, she said, 'You love me?'

  Without pause, for that could have really fucked him up, he said, 'More than anything.'

  It seemed to be the right thing to say; she smiled, took the cigarette from him and c
asually smoked it. 'We ain't taking them with us, are we?'

  Lukas sniggered. 'Not a chance in hell, baby-girl. Fucked up old man wants to try and get that thing running, let him get it running. As soon as we get the chance, we toss their sorry asses off.'

  'Not the girl, though,' Abi hurriedly said.

  'Aww, you want to take the widdle girl wid us.'

  She playfully jabbed him in the arm, and he feigned pain. 'You don't want to take her with us?' she asked.

  Lukas, still rubbing at his arm, even though it didn't hurt in the slightest, smiled. 'Of course I do,' he said. 'She's pretty.' Noticing the look on Abi's face, he added, 'But not as pretty as you.'

  'That's better,' Abi smiled. 'Now, let's find us somewhere quiet so we can have some you-me time.'

  She stood, patted the gravel from her clothing, and helped Lukas to his feet. As they headed off in search of a more secluded area, neither of them felt two sets of eyes on them. Saul and River watched as they disappeared into the trees.

  Then Saul turned to River and shook his head; his eyes welled up – months of tears threatened to explode outward – and River pulled him towards her and hugged him as silent sobs racked his body.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  It was as Terry began work on the locomotive's radiator-fan, as Lukas and Abi returned from the woods all sweaty and flushed, as River and Saul were throwing tiny white rocks at a crushed coke-can, that the lurkers came. At first there were two of them, neither of which were a problem. River took the female creature down while Shane dropped the second with a two-by-four before stamping on the back of its head. Terry climbed up onto the roof of the train and scanned their surroundings from a decent height.

  It was then that he gasped; his jaw sagged as if it had come unhinged, and his eyes threatened to bulge so far from their sockets that they would roll down his shirt and dangle there like comedy eyeballs on springs. Boing! Boing!

  Shane was still trying to pull his foot free of the lurker's caved-in skull – which seemed to have swallowed his foot up and refused to let go – when he saw the terrified features of the man atop the locomotive. The way his mouth opened and shut told Shane everything he needed to know.

  'How many!' he yelled, finally managing to relieve himself of the lurker's squashed head. He dropped the two-by-four – which had only been utilised for stealth purposes, and was now completely obsolete – and yanked the pistol from the band of his jeans. 'TERRY!'

  'Eight . . . No, nine . . .' He was spinning on the top of the train like a man possessed. His beard was shaking in the breeze, though it might have been a result of his quivering lips.

  In truth, Terry couldn't count them all. They were coming from everywhere. The trees surrounding the track on either side was suddenly swarming with the undead. 'Shane, scratch that,' he yelled down from the locomotive roof. 'Just start shooting.'

  Lukas had rushed across to the cabin on the departure yard and was strategically moving crates. Abi, as quickly as she could, loaded his shotgun for him while he worked.

  The lurkers shambling along the departure platform had spotted the couple and made a beeline for them.

  'ABI!' Lukas yelled, although she was only a few feet behind him.

  'I'm almost done,' she said, loading the last shell into the barrel before snapping it shut. She tapped him on the shoulder and he practically snatched it from her.

  He dropped down low behind the crate and began firing. The first three creatures' faces exploded in a mist of blood and bone. Abi didn't have a weapon, but she stood behind Lukas with some temerity, knowing that these fuckers better be good to get by him and reach her. She was confident, and had every right to be.

  'Shane!' Marla cried from where she had clambered up onto a steel container. She stood atop it, glancing down at the ensuing mayhem; Shane didn't know if she was aware of the two lurkers trying to scale the right-hand side of the container, and didn't want to leave it too late to find out.

  'Get down!' he yelled, and with two true shots he hit the lurkers in the back of their heads. Slamming into the side of the container with a metallic thump, they looked like marionettes that had had their strings cut.

  The look on Marla's face as she realised just how close she had come suggested that she hadn't been aware of them, and she waved to Shane: thanks.

  Terry climbed down from the locomotive roof and began to slice his way through the lurkers as they besieged him. The sword that had once embedded itself in a lurker's neck showed no signs of repeating that unfortunate episode; it slashed through the creatures as if they were butter. Terry turned his head with each strike, being careful to evade the arterial spray that seemed to fill the air, a thick black goo that smelt as terrible as it looked.

  One creature – dressed in filthy blue coveralls and still wearing a cap on top of its desiccated face – lunged toward him and managed to grasp his wrist in mid-swing. 'Get the . . . get fucking off, you heathen prick!' He brought his free hand round and grabbed the lurker – whose name was Joe according to the embroidered patch on his breast-pocket – by the hair and yanked him back so hard that the snap was audible. Joe's eyes gaped open as his spine penetrated his throat and poked out into the mid-afternoon as if was afraid of missing something.

  The lurker – Joe – toppled backwards, and Terry wiped the darkness from his palm on his jeans. He didn't know whether it was residue from his work on the train, or viscera from the poor bastard at his feet, but he didn't want any of it getting in his mouth, either way.

  Shane raced across the tracks, three lurkers hot in his heels. He turned, shot the one in front between the eyes, turned and ran a few more feet. Terry was level with him, trying to catch his breath.

  This was ridiculous. Where had they all come from? What the hell were they doing out in the middle of nowhere?

  They're everywhere, Terry reminded himself. Everywhere they died, anywhere they remembered . . . and they could remember. They knew that, now.

  The second lurker in pursuit of Shane went down on the tracks as gunfire echoed around the yard. Shane turned just in time to witness the creature hit the rubble between the track, its face peeling back grotesquely as a result of the abrasive rocks. Marla had shot it from the container roof, but she had only wounded it, and it continued to drag itself forward, inexorably sliding towards Shane, who was levelling the pistol at the third lurker. One shot to the forehead painted a perfect black dot between the things raised eyebrows and it stumbled a few feet before its feet gave way and it sprawled across the track.

  Terry wasn't waiting for Shane or Marla to make their move. They could cover him while he went to work.

  He stepped down off the platform and raced as quickly as he could towards the incapacitated creature. Its face hung down, flapped slowly with each move it made, with each gust of wind. Terry couldn't tolerate it, and with one swift whoosh of the sword he lopped the grumbling thing's head off, sending it across onto the adjacent track.

  'Where are the kids!?' Shane bellowed. He hadn't seen them, hadn't had time to realise they were nowhere in sight. And now, he felt as if he'd let them down; the worst possible outcome was already playing on his mind, and he scoured the madness for just a glimpse of either River or Saul.

  Marla, from on top of the container, glanced around. She had the best possible view; if she couldn't see them, they were gone.

  'Perhaps they ran into—' Terry began, but didn't have time to finish as four more undead emerged from the trees behind them.

  Shane shot two of them, using three bullets as the second lurker staggered and stumbled at the last moment giving it an extra few seconds of undeath before its scalp exploded upwards; the force of the bullet squeezed the creature's right eye from its socket, and just before it fell Shane had time to ponder just how absurd it all was.

  On the departure yard, Lukas was firing at anything that moved. It was a good job that Abi was standing behind him, or she might have taken a bullet to the head just as quickly as the falling creatures.<
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  His gun clicked dry and he passed it back to Abi, who proceeded to load it as quickly as she could. Her hands were sweating, and it was almost impossible to hold onto the shells as she forced them into the gun. She dropped the first two and watched as they rolled over the edge of the platform.

  'Fuck, Abi!' Lukas gasped, jumping to his feet. The zombies – fucking lurkers, who came up with that fucking nonsense? – were almost level with the crates; time was running out, and the last thing Lukas wanted to see was wasted shells falling away from them.

  Abi managed to get the next six shells into the shotgun and snapped it shut. 'Lukas!' she gasped as one of the creatures crawled up beside them.

  He saw it a second later and brought his steel toe-capped boots down on the back of its head. There was a squelch – like meat being tossed down onto a butcher's counter – as his heel slammed through the front of the beast's face and hit the platform.

  He grabbed the shotgun from Abi as she gawked down at the still-flailing zombie. When Lukas pulled his foot out, it ceased moving almost immediately, only twitching once or twice before it died for the second time.

  Two more were staggering towards them, and Abi was shocked to discover that one of them was missing both arms. That was the one which frightened her the most, though. It should have been dead, not ploughing towards them.

  Lukas lifted the shotgun and rested it on the back of his left arm. The first shot took out the armless creature, and he was just about to blow the second one away when Abi screeched into his ear.

  Spinning on the spot, he found Abi pushed back against the cabin-door. A female zombie – she must have been seven-foot something, despite the fact she was leaning over his girlfriend so ominously – had both hands around Abi's throat and was snapping at the side of her face, trying to bite her ear off.

  'Hey, bitch!' Lukas forced the gun up beneath the lanky creature's jaw and waited for it to acknowledge him. When it did, Lukas was sure he saw something in those eyes; not regret, but something else. As if the thing had already resigned itself to what was about to happen.