'Don't panic,' Shane said. 'By the time they got over we'll be past them.'
Marla glowered out through the open side. Her jaw had dropped open into a terrified O, and she looked as if she might cry, though that could have been a result of the wind hitting her in the eyes. 'What about those?' she asked, pointing with one hand while holding onto the door with the other.
Shane leaned out.
When he saw what was up ahead, Shane called out to Terry. 'SPEED UP, TERRY!'
Terry's voice came back, loud and clear despite the racket of the engine.
'I WAS ALREADY GONNA!'
*
If Saul had been frightened before, he looked about ready to shit bricks, now. He was shaking his head from side to side; his mouth opened and closed but nothing came out, not that River expected it to.
She turned back to the door. The creatures were climbing, but they would never make it.
'We're okay,' she told Saul, but either he didn't hear her or didn't believe her. He was still panicking. There was nothing that River could do to appease him, so she concentrated on the door. If lurkers were going to try to get in, they would have to get past her first, and that just wasn't going to happen.
The machete in her hand said so.
Then, she heard Shane call out. It sounded like, “Speed up, Terry,” but that couldn't be right. These things didn't have a chance.
She glanced out through the side of the car, and immediately pulled herself back in.
Saul was quivering in the corner, his eyes wide open with fright.
She knew, by the way he was, that telling him about what was coming next would be a terrible idea, so instead she made her way unsteadily towards him, dropped to her knees and pulled him in for a hug.
She wouldn't let go until it was over.
The train picked up pace, just like Shane wanted it to.
*
'Holy shit!' Terry said, before immediately crossing himself. Blasphemy was still something to be wary of. Even more so if you took into account the undefined amount of time you had left.
But it was impossible not to swear looking ahead to the things on the tracks. Hundreds of them, some pulling themselves along the ground as others stumbled over them.
Terry, who had been driving the train with the door open, leaned across and pulled it shut.
This was going to get messy.
'Where the hell did you all come from?' he muttered, but it was quite clear by what they were wearing.
Military uniform. Camouflaged green trousers and tattered beige jumpers. There must be a barracks nearby, and these poor sonsofbitches were all that remained.
Terry pushed the train up to 50mph, knowing that the impact would splatter most of them. No matter how big the horde was; you couldn't fuck with the tonnage of a diesel loco.
'GET DOWN BACK THERE!' Terry managed a second before the train slammed into the lurkers. A black explosion – as if a balloon filled with ink had detonated – and then Terry could see nothing through the windshield.
But the sound, the terrible crunching of brittle bones as they slipped beneath the train, was audible.
Terry gagged at the thought. The endless noise of bodies thumping the exterior was enough to make the vomit rise in his throat, and it was all he could do to keep it down.
There came a screeching noise as lurkers scratched along the side of the train, their claws or the exposed bones of their fingers creating something of a sickening chorus. With the blackness of the initial impact rendering the windshield useless, Terry was driving blind, and he didn't like it one bit.
Thump, thump, thump, screeeeeeech . . .
It seemed to go on forever. If the train was moving at the speed the gauge said it was, these things must trail back to the next fucking city.
Terry looked once again for the wiper. 'Where are you?'
There was something, a lever that he had been afraid to try before in case it did something irreversible to the train. Now was the time to try it.
He reached down, gripped onto it with a sweaty palm, and pulled.
At first nothing happened.
Thump, thump, thump . . .
And then the front window slowly cleared from left to right. Terry could almost see through the glass once again; the inky viscera had moved, but it was still attached. Just below the wiper, a thick, dark mound of intestine flapped around. Terry tried not to look at it.
He was feeling queasy enough without making it worse.
The track out front was clear; Terry knew the one behind them was far from it.
As the wiper brushed away the detritus and blackened remains of an entire squadron, Terry slowed the train once again, not willing to take any chances. These things came from somewhere nearby, which meant army vehicles and fuck knows what else. It was one thing ploughing through a hundred or so soft and decayed bodies; it was something else entirely trying to shift an overturned tank.
His mouth was so dry, he could barely swallow.
Trees flanked the left-hand side of the train, and the right was an open field with a view of some sort of hulking statue made from scrap-iron.
To Terry, it looked like an effigy of Jesus Christ, and he was sticking with that.
If he'd taken a closer look, he would have seen it was nothing more spectacular than a stack of crushed cars.
The mind worked in mysterious ways . . .
Especially when it was still scared half to death.
*
'Are you okay?' Shane asked. She was; he could see that she was just a little shaken up by what had just happened.
'Where did they all come from?' she asked, stepping out of the corner and into the gloomy light of mid-morning. 'I swear to God, in all my days I never want to go through anything like that again.'
Shane smiled. 'Reminded me of those old car-washes. Remember them? They always freaked me out as a kid; thought I was gonna get trapped inside and the car would fill up with water.'
Marla shuddered, as if a goose had just walked across her grave. 'They were all army,' she said. 'Shit, Shane. What if they're what's left of the people we're trying to reach? What if the pilots of those jets were in amongst that lot? We've just squashed the fuck out of 'em.'
'They weren't the ones,' Shane assured her, though he had no reason to believe otherwise. 'I saw some of the faces as the flew by. Those things had been dead for weeks, probably since this whole thing started.'
Marla had seen some faces, too. One of them had clung onto the open side of the car, its face unflinching and indifferent as the rest of its body was severed off by the wheels beneath. All that had remained was a torso, an arm and a head, and a few seconds later – when Marla could bring herself to look again – it had gone completely.
'Shit, Shane . . . River!' Marla rushed to the aperture and began to call out to the car behind. She could make out black, slimy handprints on the steel from where the things had tried to hang on. Down at the front corner, a smashed skull clung to the car as if it still had a chance to clamber aboard.
'River!' Marla called again. Shane joined her, held onto her arms as she called out once again.
He could see – and hear – the panic rising in her, and when she suggested they get Terry to stop the train he knew she was losing it, big-time.
As Marla inhaled, about to yell to the driver to hit the brakes, River's head appeared.
'We're okay!' River yelled as loud as she could. 'That was some scary shit, though, huh?'
Marla laughed; her relief palpable.
Shane smiled, as if River's safety had never been in question.
'I know,' Marla said. 'Just panicked, that's all.'
Shane pulled her away from the edge and gestured for her to take a seat beside him.
She did, and they sat silently, praying that nothing like that happened again.
*
'See, I told you there was nothing to worry about,' River told Saul. The kid looked apt to start screaming at any second, which was the
last thing she needed. In such a cramped environment, a hysterical mute kid could cause quite a fuss.
They'd made it through, though. For a minute there, even she had felt a little unsure of how it was going to pan out.
There had been so many of them; a horde that size was capable of anything. Thank God Terry hadn't slowed, or even stopped.
Saul was slumped in the corner, his legs spread out in front of him. As River crouched next to him, she saw what he was doing.
He was using one finger to make letters on the steel floor of the car, trying to spell something out for her.
'Ess,' she said, watching rapt as he shifted his finger round in a serpentine shape. 'Cee.' She followed, hoping that it wasn't going to be a long message. Her legs were already beginning to numb beneath her from crouching in an unnatural position.
Saul – the boy who wanted desperately to be able to speak – continued to make large letters with his trembling finger, and when he was done River grabbed him by the shoulders so that he had no choice but to look deep into her eyes.
The word he had formed was SCARED.
'What did I tell you?' she said, wanting to shake him, make him realise that he was safe. 'I won't let anything happen to you.' She paused, thought for a second. 'Nothing bad will happen anymore. Those people, they're gone. Whatever they did to you, that's in the past, and it will never happen again.'
Saul allowed his solemn gaze to drop to the floor. River, in that moment, wanted to hug him so tightly that every bad memory, every single terrible thing that haunted him squeezed out.
She wanted to, but didn't.
When he finally looked up, a tear had escaped the corner of his eye, but he was smiling.
Finally, he gets it.
And then the smile was gone, and River realised that he was no longer looking at her.
He was looking across her shoulder.
She turned, saw the bloodied torso dragging itself through the side of the car, and gasped in terror.
The thing was barely recognisable. There was a head, but it was almost flat, as if a truck had gone over it. Eyes – if they could be called such things – squinted through the flapping flesh as it pulled itself forward with its one remaining arm. In lurker terms, it wasn't much of a threat, but she had to be quick in dealing with it.
Saul was losing his shit behind her, whimpering.
Just when I had him calm, River thought.
She stood, unsheathed the machete, and stepped over to where the pulped creature was sprawled.
A noise – a faint hissing that would have been a lot louder if not for the racket of the engine – emanated from the lurker's squashed face. The smell of putrefaction was tangible, and brought bile to River's throat, but she swallowed it back down.
Then she apologised. She told the creature sorry for what she was about to do.
The blade came down. River hoped she managed to catch the thing correctly; it was difficult to determine where its head ended and body began.
The hissing stopped the moment the steel sliced through the scabby flesh. A chunk of the creature hit the far side of the car.
Saul whimpered once again, pushed himself back against the car-wall. If he could, River thought, he would keep pushing until he was on the outside.
The severed portion slid slowly down the metal, leaving a bloody snail-trail behind it.
The stench was unbearable now, and River used the machete to force the torso over to the door. She pushed, and the thing dropped out, over the edge.
She stabbed the blade into the head on the other side of the car and tossed that out, too.
Then she sat next to Saul. She taught him how to play slaps, but he was either too slow or too polite to really try.
In the end, the gently swaying of the carriage lulled him to sleep, and she watched him dream.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
As the boat departed for Ship, with Gabriella's best friend on board, Emma stood next to her daughter. It had been tough on the girl, but she knew that it wasn't the last time she would see Lizzie. There would be plenty of opportunities to visit one another; both islands would need supplies, and a team of scavengers would return to the mainland every week or so to gather supplies. The team would also be providing a service back and forth between the islands every couple of days, so it really wasn't the end of her daughter's friendship with Lizzie. It was more of an inconvenience.
'How will we know that they get there safely?' Gabriella asked.
'The base is keeping tabs on them,' Emma said, squeezing Gabriella's shoulder, more for her own assurance than that of her daughter.
'We're next, aren't we?'
Emma smiled, or tried to. 'Yeah, looks that way,' she said. The thought of those bombs once again caused the hackles to rise on the nape of her neck. 'A few hours, so make sure you get everything together. This is it, soldier,' she said trying to lighten the mood. 'Ain't no coming back to this here country.'
Gabriella grimaced. 'You sound silly, Mom,' she said.
Emma feigned shock. 'I'll have you know that that's how all generals speak. Haven't you heard Pimlico.'
Gabriella nodded. 'Yeah, but he doesn't sound like that. He talks normally.'
'Normally! You can hardly understand a word that comes out of his mouth!'
''Cos he's always got a cigar wedged in it,' Gabriella said. 'You'd sound like that if you smoked cigars.'
'Well, that's not gonna happen, sweetie, because it's a disgusting habit and makes you smell funny.'
It was a nice exchange, something they hadn't had for a long time. The pressures of daily life had taken their toll, and Emma couldn't help feeling as though she and her daughter had drifted apart, somewhat.
Dredd, too.
Things would never be the same. Not for them, not for anybody. The only thing a person could do was evolve, make way for the new life they had.
'Go on,' Emma said, patting Gabriella on the head. 'Get started before it gets to raining again.'
'It's always raining,' Gabriella said, dejectedly. 'Hope we have some decent weather in the Summer, so me and Lizzie can play out like we used to.'
With that, she turned and started back to the tent.
Emma turned and glanced up at the sky. She wondered if the nukes would blot out the sun, the way they did in the movies. Dredd told her that these were different, that the yield was nowhere near the same range.
Then why did she keep picturing Hiroshima? Nagazaki? Those were nukes as she saw them; anything smaller should be called something else, something less terrifying, like mini-bombs, or baby-atoms.
'Emma!'
She turned to see Dredd rushing towards her through the campsite. In the first instant she panicked, but when she saw Dredd's calm expression she relaxed a little.
'I just sent Gabriella off to get ready,' she told him as he reached her and stopped.
'I know. I just passed her.'
He looked nervous now, as if there was something on the tip of his tongue that he couldn't bring himself to tell her.
'James,' she said. She never called him by his first name, not anymore, and the fact that she did so now seemed to startle him. Then she said, 'You're going back out there, aren't you?'
He hesitated, which answered the question for her.
Had she thought differently?
No.
'Look, Frank wants me to do one final sweep of the area before the jets leave. I figure it's the last time, so . . . '
'And what about us? What about if something goes wrong on this “last time”, and me and Gabriella have to board that fucking boat without you?'
'Nothing's gonna happen,' he said. 'Look, it's probably going to be a waste of time, and Al's coming with me so—'
'Oh, well that makes me feel better.' The sardonic tone was sharp enough to cut Dredd's face off, and he flinched as she spoke. 'A madman with a machine-gun flying side-saddle.'
She wasn't done yet; a thousand things ran through her mind, biting remarks that s
he could no longer control.
'And what if you find survivors? Huh? You pile them all into the back of the chopper and bring 'em back here? How many can you carry, Dredd? Ten, five?'
He shrugged. 'Maybe eight, maybe less.'
'So you're just going to go out there on the off-chance you might find a group of less than eight people? Is that what you're telling me? Putting your life on the line for that?'
Dredd hated that he had to justify his reasons for going back out, especially to Emma, who he thought would understand given her own fear of what was going to happen next.
'There might be more doctors out there,' he said, calmly. 'More people who we'll need once we get over to the island.' It was a thin excuse, but all he could think of. 'You won't even know I'm gone, Em. We leave in two hours, and that's not gonna change.'
She sighed. Once Dredd had something in his mind, there was no talking him out of it; a trait that she once found endearing, but not in this case.
'Just remember, once this is all over and we get to the island, no more errands for Pimlico. You're my husband, not his bitch.'
Dredd smiled. 'I'll train the pilots how to handle the Wave Hawk,' he said. 'I'll never have to leave the island again.'
What was meant as a comforting statement actually frightened him as it came out. Never. Leave. The. Island. Again.
Sounded so permanent.
'Fine,' she relented. 'But go say bye to Gabriella first. She'll wonder where you've got to.'
He leaned in to kiss her; her soft, delicious lips were almost enough to make him change his mind.
As he turned to leave, his wife grabbed his hand.
'Dredd!'
He swivelled, his eyes meeting hers. 'Yeah?'
She sighed, then said, 'We always know you're gone.'
With those words rattling around inside his head, he went in search of Gabriella.
The Dead Series (Book 3): Dead Line Page 17