Convulsive Box Set

by Marcus Martin

  Daylight shone in from above as the side windows now formed skylights. A second window was missing further ahead – Lucy made a mental note to expect more glass.

  Brushing one of the sinewy pine strands aside, she scanned the carnage for signs of Dan. Lucy edged forward, avoiding the broken glass, and hoping by some miracle that he wasn’t there, that somehow he’d managed to escape like she had. She called out his name as she moved forwards slowly, tentatively peering into each chaotic avenue.

  As her eyes crawled over the bodies inhabiting each fissure, a shoe sticking out of the row ahead caught her attention. She hurried over, ducking and dodging the stray limbs of other bodies until she reached it.

  It was him.

  Her Dan.

  She looked down at where he lay, perfectly still, his leg stuck up in the air, held there by the body of another man which lay slumped over his. With immense difficulty, she heaved the stranger’s corpse away to the side, denials falling from her lips as her eyes remained fixed on her partner.

  Panting from the effort, she knelt down as best she could and gently reached a hand out to Dan’s glistening cheek, hoping for a miracle, praying he would defy her eyes and break out into the trademark smile she loved him for. But as her hand met his damp, pallid skin she recoiled, shaking her head. Tiny beads of water clung to his pores; to his eyelids, his ear lobes, his lips.

  Lucy straightened up a little, not knowing if she wanted to be near his body or as far from it as possible. She closed her eyes, squeezing them shut and ejecting the well of tears that clung to them, opening them again with vigor as she attempted to wake from the nightmare.

  Dan’s passive grey eyes held her gaze; she couldn’t escape the pull of his unresponsive pupils. All the softness and subtlety of his face was gone, replaced by a waxwork, the shell of some new stranger.

  His head jutted out to the side of his broken neck as if trying to escape the fate of his body. Lucy broke down, collapsing onto him, weeping. Reaching down with trembling hands, she took up her beloved’s cold form in her arms. His head lolled freely in her embrace as she pulled him into her chest. Beads of moisture rubbed from his skin onto hers, mingling with the tears that poured from her sealed eyes. Lucy wailed as she clung to him, desperately. She slumped, and rocked from side to side, whimpering into his ear, kissing his cheeks, kissing his hair.

  She reopened her blurry eyes, which swept over his limp body as she rocked. Pausing, she squinted and stared; something had caught her gaze. There were puncture marks dotted over his body. One by his left collarbone, another on his wrist, another below his ear. She looked around but saw no sign of what might have caused the wounds. Each was circular and less than half an inch in diameter. Cautiously, she reached out towards Dan’s limp wrist, his head and torso still slumped into her bosom. The flesh inside the puncture mark was the same purple-grey she’d seen on the bearded man’s body. Gingerly, she put her fingers over the hole only to flinch in response; the apparent cavity was filled with a transparent, sticky liquid.

  Lucy carefully lifted his head from her bosom. With a scream, she leapt up and fell backwards. Dan’s cheek had stuck to her bare skin, peeling away from the rest of his head, which fell to the ground as she recoiled. Frantically, she clawed at her chest, her beloved’s flesh disintegrating into transparent flecks like gelatin as she fought to scrape it off. Moaning in horror, she looked back at his crumpled body. Water trickled out of the sunken, purple-grey cavity in his face. She scrambled backwards, screaming, brushing into other bodies as she went. More flesh began to cling to her as she tripped over the strangers’ macerated corpses. The transparent flecks turned to pulp beneath her scrambling hands while more water poured from the bodies.

  Lucy fled from the carriage as quickly as possible. Stumbling back out onto the grass plateau outside, she vomited, staggering forward in a bid to get away until finally collapsing to her knees. She screamed.

  ***

  An hour or so passed before Lucy felt composed enough to attempt to stand again. She knew she had to move on and seek refuge someplace, but her survival kit was inside the train. She had to go back in.

  This time she began on the lower deck, crossing over the lieutenant’s body at the mouth of the staircase. She wrestled off his flak jacket. The top layer of his flesh peeled away with it, leaving his eviscerated body quietly leaking onto the floor.

  Retching, Lucy brushed the transparent flecks away. The vest was torn across its front, the work of two claws by the look of it. She checked the pockets: a whistle, a utility knife, a flashlight. It was useful, but it hadn’t saved its last owner’s life.

  Holstered to the lieutenant’s sunken waist was a handgun, which Lucy removed and strapped around herself, tightening it considerably. She checked the magazine, then the barrel. Plenty of bullets left, and no bulges.

  Lucy braced herself and returned to the upper deck. She found herself mumbling as she went, doggedly repeating nonsensical words and phrases in a bid to distract her brain from the surroundings. Working as fast as she could, she searched for her belongings within the confines of the carriage entrance, strenuously avoiding allowing her eyes to wander to the far end again.

  “No, no, come on, come on now, yes, hurry, hurry, hurry, don’t dilly-dally,” she babbled, rummaging through the bodies and other detritus, moaning and grunting each time she fought to suppress the image of Dan’s mutilated body in her mind. Her hand moved and rested on the gun holster. “You mustn’t,” she wailed, “you mustn’t! Later, later, later, not now, not here,” she insisted.

  Finally she found her backpack. As she was about to leave the carriage, Lucy paused by a dead Asian-looking woman. She pulled off the bearded man’s boots, which were already beginning to rub, and held her foot out against the dead woman’s soles; they were a match. Undoing the laces, Lucy tugged the boots off, which tore the woman’s foot away too. Lucy shut her eyes and turned the boot upside down, shaking hard until all the waxy-liquid flesh had fallen out. She did the same with the other foot, then hopped to the edge of the carriage and hurled both boots and her backpack out onto the grass, before climbing out after them.

  Lucy immediately changed out of the wet underwear into dry clothes from her backpack, still trying desperately to wipe off the transparent flecks clinging to her damp skin.

  Fully clothed, mostly dry, and now wearing boots that fit, she moved onto the nearest of the destroyed A-list carriages in search of food.

  The vestibule linking it to carriage B had been severed in the crash, leaving the A-carriage’s rear doors accessible. Lucy climbed her way into the upper-deck compartment.

  The bodies there bore the same marks of attack, a combination of slashes and punctures. Each one was at a slightly different stage of decay. She recognized Jean’s body by her clothes; the kindly woman had died face down, unlike those around her.

  Forcing herself to ignore the sweating corpses, Lucy scavenged through the A-list luggage. They had some useful items – an occasional flashlight, another pocket knife, different foods – but most of the luggage was academic: books, diagrams, notes, laptops. She couldn’t take them all – she certainly wouldn’t understand it all – but these carefully selected items were supposed to be the blueprint for rebuilding America; they were important. The best she could hope for, she reasoned, would be to find help, and some day bring people back to this site to salvage the items.

  Something struck the adjacent deck. Lucy froze. Another bang, closer this time, followed by a scuffling sound. Crouching between two upturned rows of seats, Lucy trained her gun at the empty window frame that formed the new roof of the carriage.

  “Christ, don’t shoot!” proclaimed the startled woman above, disappearing from view again. “There’s another survivor! Guys! Over here!” she shouted.

  The woman reappeared and lowered herself down into the compartment. She had long, frizzy hair, and dark black skin. “Are you OK? I heard a scream earlier.”

  Lucy gawped, not moving.
/>   “I’d be grateful if you could stop pointing that thing at me,” added the woman, looking at Lucy’s gun uneasily.

  Coming to her senses, Lucy lowered the gun to her side and apologized.

  “You don’t look so good,” said the woman. “Want me to check you over? I’m a doctor. My name’s Kristen by the way.”

  “Lucy,” said Lucy, turning and clambering back towards the exit with an armful of provisions.

  “Sorry if we startled you,” Kristen continued. “We didn’t think anyone else had made it. Guys!” she called again, projecting her voice towards the broken overhead windows.

  As Lucy tumbled out of the rear door, three more survivors appeared outside the carriage: two men and a second woman, all wearing backpacks. The foremost man was in his early thirties, with short, soft-looking dark hair, white skin, and slightly crossed eyes. The second man hung back slightly. He was older, and shorter, with glasses, one of which was cracked. He had a thick head of dark brown hair that morphed seamlessly into an equally thick beard and moustache, which were infused with strands of ginger and grey. The woman, clutching a map, had blonde hair shaped in a bowl cut that curled just below her ears. Her thin cheeks sunk inward, accentuating the natural downturn of her lips.

  “This is Josh, Helena, and Toby,” said Kristen, panting slightly as she straightened up, having similarly tumbled out of the carriage.

  Lucy raised a hand meekly, not sure of the standard etiquette for post-disaster introductions. The severe-looking blonde, clearly Helena, raised a hand, but her expression didn’t change.

  “Josh,” said the younger man, as he waved.

  That left Toby, at the back, bespectacled and unresponsive, who stared downwards and avoided eye contact.

  “How d’you survive?” asked Helena.

  “I don’t know,” replied Lucy. “I think I got thrown from the train. I must’ve fallen in the river, because my clothes got soaked. I woke up a mile or so back there.”

  She turned and pointed to the wooded area down the track.

  “How about you guys?” Lucy asked, re-facing the group.

  “I jumped,” said Helena, bluntly.

  “I got out as soon as our carriage stopped rolling. Kicked open the door and ran straight for the woods, didn’t look back,” said Josh.

  Lucy nodded and looked to Toby, expectantly, but he remained silent.

  “We don’t know how he made it,” added Josh. “He hasn’t spoken yet.”

  “We’re gonna try and make it by foot to the nearest town, which should be about twenty miles from here according to the map,” said Helena. “We need to get there before nightfall – before those things come back. So if you’re gonna come with us, which I suggest you do, then I’d say be prepared to ship out by the time we’re done searching the last carriage.”

  “It’s the B-carriage,” said Kristen, dismissively.

  “Yeah, but it’s where the soldiers slept, isn’t it? So we should check it,” replied Helena. She turned back to Lucy. “Unless you checked all their compartments already?”

  “Um, no,” mumbled Lucy, flustered, astonished that none of them had mentioned the fact that all their friends and colleagues were dead and liquefying; none of them had even asked if she’d lost anyone.

  Kristen began climbing into the lower deck of carriage B. Toby followed her. The pair quickly began chucking useful items out onto the grass.

  Folding the map back into her utility belt, Helena started cherry-picking the dead soldiers’ paraphernalia.

  “Ready to go?” asked Josh, gesturing with his slightly crossed eyes to the loose pile of rations surrounding Lucy’s backpack.

  “Oh, um, no, I’ll do that now,” said Lucy, turning away from him and hastily stuffing items into the bag.

  “Be selective,” he said, from his position a few paces back. “We’re gonna be carrying these things quite a way.”

  Lucy nodded, leaning into the backpack and compressing it to pull the zip shut.

  “Have you checked her?” enquired Helena, addressing Kristen as she and Toby returned from carriage B.

  “She survived the night, Helena. She’s fine,” responded the doctor.

  “We don’t leave until she’s been checked,” asserted Helena, her thin lips flattening further.

  Kristen rolled her eyes and walked over to Lucy. “Come with me, sweetheart, this won’t take a minute,” she instructed, leading her away from the others, down the side of the carriage.

  “You can’t do that here?” called Helena. “We’re on a clock, people.”

  “Give the woman a bit of privacy, Helena, come on,” replied Kristen, as she led Lucy behind the train.

  “I need to check you’re not bleeding anywhere,” Kristen said, turning to Lucy once they were alone. “Just a precaution, but you can see why. I’m not a creep, by the way – I am an actual doctor,” she added, reading Lucy’s expression.

  “You said earlier. It’s fine,” replied Lucy, turning her back to Kristen and removing her clothes, just as she had done in San Francisco, only this time the backdrop was the twisted metal spinal column of their wrecked locomotive.

  Lucy flung the items down on the floor, realizing her resentment at the contingent nature of this group’s help.

  “Alright. Go,” she said, turning to face Kristen.

  “That is some nasty bruising, sweetie,” said the doctor, prodding Lucy’s broken ribs to gauge the extent of the damage, and making Lucy gasp with pain as she did so.

  “Alright, so we’ve got a couple of broken ribs,” muttered Kristen, circling her patient, and crouching to inspect Lucy’s skin at unannounced intervals.

  Lucy became aware of a nagging pain around her left hand. “I think I might’ve sprained my wrist. I fell back on it in the carriage earlier. Today, I mean, not last night,” she added.

  “OK, which one? Left?” said Kristen, guessing correctly as Lucy nursed the sore area. “Hold it out. Can you squeeze around my forearm?” She held out her own arm for Lucy to grip.

  Lucy squeezed briefly, wincing heavily.

  “And can you clench and unclench your left hand for me a few times?” continued the doctor. “Uh-huh. Now try your right? OK, and the left again?”

  Lucy sighed with exasperation. The woman took Lucy’s hand and manipulated it in all directions, to Lucy’s discomfort, comparing it again with her uninjured right.

  “Alright, good,” said Kristen, as if it was a routine check-up, relinquishing her grip. “Definitely something going on there. Good news is I don’t think it’s broken. Looks to me like a sprain, like you said. Best we strap that up. The important thing is you’re not cut anywhere.”

  “How’re we getting on back there?” called Helena, impatiently.

  “Nearly done!” shouted Kristen, as Lucy put her top layers back on.

  “Wow, you really did alright, didn’t you?” said the doctor, taking a second chance to examine Lucy’s legs before they were re-clothed. “Aside from the ribs and the wrist, you’re pretty much OK,” she said, standing up from her invasive crouch. “Though I suppose, in a way, that’s to be expected. Anything more serious and I doubt you’d have survived the night. Same goes for all of us. I guess we’re the lucky five.”

  Lucy flinched at the word “lucky”, but held her tongue. She’s just given you a green light, she counselled herself, controlling her anger. Stay with the other survivors. Kristen might have lost someone too.

  The two emerged from behind the shed and rejoined the others.

  “All clear,” called out Kristen as they approached. “Just need to do a quick wrist bandage, then we’re good to go. Toby, can you pass me the first aid kit?”

  The silent man with the artisan beard dutifully swung off his backpack and removed a medical kit, handing it over. Kristen took out a pair of scissors and some bandage, which she wrapped around Lucy’s hand, taping the end closed.

  “Ouch,” said Josh, eyeing up Lucy’s wrist sympathetically.

  “We g
ood now?” snapped Helena.

  “All good,” said Kristen, smiling, somehow able to retain her good cheer in the face of it all.

  “OK, let’s move out,” replied the blonde navigator, setting off at a pace.

  ***

  They didn’t stop at all for several hours, walking in a loose formation without conversation. Only when they finally broke for lunch did some conversation unfold.

  “We need to talk about what those things were,” began Kristen. “Did anyone see them properly?”

  Kristen looked around the group expectantly, but the others shook their heads. All apart from Toby.

  “I did,” he said, bringing four sets of astonished eyes directly upon him.

  He stared at Kristen intently for a moment, inscrutable behind the long brown beard. Eventually he spoke again, placing each word out carefully before his audience.

  “I only saw two clearly. Caught glimpses of others,” he said, as his eyes wandered to the horizon.

  “And?” urged Kristen.

  “It’s not something I want to see again, I can tell you that much,” he replied, quietly. He exhaled through the wiry beard and shifted his seated position on the ground.

  Everyone waited for Kristen to ask him for more details again while he compulsively pulled the grass out from the ground before him.

  For a minute no one spoke, not even Helena, as they waited anxiously for Toby to resume his eyewitness account.

  “Imagine,” he said, taking a long pause before selecting the right words, “a cross between a wolf and a bison. That’s pretty much what I saw. Definitely in terms of size, at least.” He shut his eyes and rubbed his temples. “They’ve got some pretty serious claws on them. I guess that’s obvious to everyone, given what we saw on the train. They have more teeth than I’ve seen in anything on land before. Maybe they appropriated some dragonfish DNA along the way.”

  He went quiet as he refocused on the grass-plucking.

  “The ribcages were pretty distinctive, too,” he continued. “There was a sort of mesh covering them. I only caught glimpses of this because they kept moving. It reminded me of the face masks people wear in fencing competitions. But it was translucent – you could see some of their internal organs behind it.