World of Ashes

by J. K. Robinson

  The trip back to the power plant didn’t take as long this time because Ethan decided to drive along the railroad tracks. The ride was bumpy and miserable, the M1114 built for taking IEDs, not for any measure of comfort. There were very few zombies on the back roads and none on the tracks, most roaming the open highways and traffic snarls or wherever people had been gathered. What was most disturbing was the ever decreasing signs of living people. Around a corner Keith almost plowed headlong into a freight train that was stopped and hidden behind a row of trees, effectively camouflaging it, but also blocking their path along the tracks. Unwilling to give the train’s location over the radio, lest someone overhear them, they marked it on a map and drove around it, almost becoming bogged down in a small creek and hedge row because Ethan wasn’t a spectacular driver.

  Who would be able to steal a freight train in a couple hours? Ethan laughed inside. The dead, their vacant and glossy eyes always watching, seemed too badly decomposed to steal a train. The thought of rotting corpses driving a train made Ethan giggle out loud, but the engine was too noisy for Keith or Allen to hear him. Those zombies who could still use their ears, if they hadn’t been eaten off or already rotted away, would turn toward the sound of the Humvee’s engine as they passed, but didn’t bother to change direction. The virus, though obviously unaware of itself as a microorganism, seemed to instinctually know it’s hosts were dying out. Perhaps that was one of the Envier Virus’ key features, that the hosts would only attack to spread the virus when it detected an available body. This would require some research.

  Only one Zim on the trip there had been fresh, and instead of making noise with a gun Keith had Ethan run the college age kid over with a thud noise they were no stranger to. The truck’s brush guard would be a real pain to wash off later, some rotted goo and teeth were plastered to it.

  Ethan looked over at Keith when he heard laughing over the radio. “WTF, Over?”

  Keith smiled and laughed harder, “Fuckin’ Emo kids man. You’d think I’d hate all zombies equally, but here I am, hunting effeminate dorks even after they’ve died.” He laughed some more.

  “You’re my kind of sick.” Ethan smiled a little too, wondering to himself where the kid had been hiding for so long, only to become infected now. The reigning theory for fresh zombies were people running out of supplies and being killed while scavenging. Not everyone was fit to survive in a world without their iCrap telling them what to do.

  The tracks led where they wanted to go, even though it was mid-afternoon before they arrived. Empty train cars littered unused tracks, some tipped over where bulldozers had shoved them off the tracks to make room for more train cars. The massive amount of cars blocked the best ways in, but provided almost complete defilade from the guard towers. They could see through their binoculars the dirt road they’d taken originally had been cleared of trees and brush, exposing the entire area to a machine gun nest on top of the power plant. It would be unwise to take that route again, who knew if the Texan’s actions were because they somehow knew they were being spied on from there or not. They’d probably planted more mines too.

  Dismounting the vehicle the three men waited until a train left the Sally Port, the locomotive providing noise cover, before leaving the overgrown area altogether. A yard-dog locomotive parked a train of fifteen or so empty cars on a line and stopped. A few railroad workers and a Marine, all with brightly colored Texas flags on their uniforms, got out to uncouple and check the empty coal cars before leaving. This was when the trio made their move. Allen pulled a gun on the workers while Keith put the Marine in a chokehold until he passed out, gently laying him on the gravel.

  Ethan slung his own rifle. “Lower your gun, Allen.” He turned to the terrified engineers. “We’re not gonna hurt you, we just wanted to avoid a confrontation we couldn’t control.” He gestured to the Marine, knowing the young man would have raised the alarm. “We just want some answers. Like why are you keeping the power on, and why are you wearing Texas flags and not U.S. flags?”

  “Because there is no more United States of America.” The lead engineer said, solemnly. He had faded Navy tattoos down both arms, indicating he’d been an American patriot all his life and missed his nation too. He had also once been fat, but no longer. He could probably fit a ripe watermelon or an infant in the slack in his overalls. Food rationing seemed to be everywhere. “Texas and Alaska are the only state governments still functioning last time we heard.” He added, trying to give the three the most pertinent information.

  “What about the rest of the world?” Keith asked, making sure the Marine would be comfortable when he woke up.

  “Sometimes we hear from England, Norway, Iceland and Greenland, but mainland Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa are all dark.”

  “‘Dark’?” Allen needed more.

  “Gone. No way to sugar coat it kid.”

  “We’re still here…”

  “So again, why keep the power on?” Ethan asked again.

  “Because this shit ain’t gonna last forever.” The other engineer shrugged, feeling comfortable enough to lower his arms. “The infected are rotting as fast a regular corpse. The vast majority will be rotted away by the end of next year, especially if next summer is like this last one was. After that, Texas and Alaska are gonna be the only powers left in North America. I guess it’s sort of a humanitarian quest, but President Paul refuses to abandon the Continued Energy Effort. As long as we can keep the lights on, that’s just that many people we can help stay alive.”

  “Are Texas and Alaska friends with one another?” Ethan asked the next logical question.

  “Kinda. We’re on the offensive against the undead, and they’re hunkering down, waiting for winter to freeze ‘em.”

  “Will that work?” Allen asked.

  “General'nyy Zimniye.” Ethan said in what would pass for a really shitty Russian accent. “General Winter. Russia has historically relied on its bitter cold winters to defeat invading armies while they marshal their forces. If the Zims are dead they’re no longer exothermic, which means kinda like a package of hamburger they’ll freeze when the ambient temperature is below freezing for any length of time.”

  Keith eyeballed Ethan, “Most days I’m certain you’re a burned out drunk with questionable access to guns and pharmaceuticals, and other days I’m pretty sure you’re a genius burnout drunk with questionable access to guns and pharmaceuticals.”

  Ethan looked back at Keith. “Thanks.” He smiled.

  The engineers were seeming quite relaxed as the Marine started to come around. He blinked several times and immediately looked for his M4. Keith had disassembled the weapon to its smallest components no tools were needed to take apart and laid it all neatly next to him on a towel from the Marine’s cleaning kit. It was a military faux-pas to toss another man’s gun in the dirt, but at least it would take the Marine long enough to reassemble the weapon for them to escape.

  “Lance Corporal Tuft, who’s your commanding officer?”

  “Lance Corporal John A. Tuft, service number-”

  “Dude, shut the fuck up. You’re not a prisoner, we’re all still Americans- we think. We’re from a local town you guys have sent a recon party to scout recently. We tried to contact you, but no one spoke to us.”

  The Marine remained silent and glared like he wanted to set them on fire.

  “For fuck sake, Dale, these boys ain’t the badguys. They’re the people we’re keeping the power on for.” The conductor said.

  “My unit is the 56th Texas Marine Division, Alpha Company, First Battalion, Fourth Combat Engineers. I’m not authorized to tell you more, so please don’t ask.”

  “That’s… Great…” Allen shrugged, obviously unimpressed. “How many more units are there?” The Marine said nothing.

  “It’s okay, Lance Criminal, you don’t have to tell us anything.” Ethan took a look around, fearing they’d lingered too long. “Just, if you could, tell your superiors we’re not hostile. I don’
t think it’ll be too hard to figure out where we’re from. We’re going to trust you, Lance Corporal Dale Tuft of the Texas Marine Corps, to tell the truth. We’re running low on ammunition to keep fighting the hordes coming from St. Louis and Columbia, so if it’s possible we’d appreciate some help. Tell your superiors the Sullivan checkpoint is still functioning under the flag of the United States of America, but we would like to have some allies.”

  They left after that. Lance Corporal Tuft didn’t try to put his weapon back together right away either, he seemed to be waiting for the engineers to back him up or tell him not to obey. Ethan had taken Tuft’s radio and tossed it into a coal car. It would delay the men even longer if they tried to find it.

  Ethan drove as fast as he could back to town where word spread about the train full of supplies faster than wildfire. In the morning over a hundred people were back for it, organized and protected by the Deputies. No one knew how to start a locomotive except a retired engineer who hadn’t been behind the controls of a train since 1980. There was a bit of a learning curve, but the train started moving before noon. Slowly, almost too slowly, the mile-long train headed down the tracks, armed men covering every car, a rail road equipped repair truck traveling ahead of the train to inspect the line and remove obstacles. There were no major delays, except removing a tractor trailer full of McDonalds toys the train had been pushed along the tracks for close to ten miles before the engineers could stop and abandon it.

  Keith was standing inside a box car that had mounds of mail in it with a dozen other people. It was the only train car at that end of the line with room to carry people as they rolled through the countryside at a painstaking ten miles per hour. No one bothered to shoot any zombies, hitting a moving target in the head was practically impossible anyhow. It took a minute or two, but eventually Keith realized one of the gunman was a girl in a desert cammo uniform that would have better fit him. He recognized her, even without the multitude of bruises, as one of the victimized girls at the hospital. It was Paula, the one who’d told them about the rapes and murders in the first place. She sat with her feet dangling over the edge of the train, watching the trees and enjoying the quiet between clacks of wheels on the tracks. He went and sat by her.

  “Hey.” He said, setting his rifle down and offering his hand to shake.

  “I recognize you,” She said sarcastically. “I heard from a girl who was there that night that it was like watching the wrath of God strike them all down.”

  Keith nodded at the macabre description. “I deplore killing, which is why I’m a medic, but I don’t regret what we did. I think my buddy Ethan would agree, some people just need killin’.”

  “We’re all fine now, thanks to you two.” She smiled, some of her teeth near the back of her jaw were still missing. Once upon a time she’d had a smile perfectly aligned by expensive braces. There weren’t a lot of dentists left anymore. “Some of the other girls are still in the hospital, they got beat up a lot worse than me…”

  “I wish there was more we could have done.”

  “Unless you could time travel or bring their dicks back in a bag as proof, I don’t think there would be much else you could do. I mean, the world fucking ended, man. And I’m still alive.” She shrugged and drank from her canteen. “...And I’m… still alive.”

  “Kinda wish I had thought of the dick bagging myself.” It was purely sarcasm, but then that was the basis of their conversation in the first place.

  Paula smiled a little. “The world is never gonna be the same, is it.” It wasn’t really a question. “I mean, two years ago I was in high school. I was going to go to Mizzou… right now actually. I was already enrolled for Security Protected Dorms… As if any of this could ever be contained… It was just a way for the college to scam more money from my parents. And now, well, now I’m literally robbing a train. Sometimes it feels so surreal. I almost expect to wake up at home to the smell of bacon and eggs, and my mom’s hairspray clouding the hallways. She always used too much. Stuck in the 80’s I guess. I really miss them.”

  Keith nodded explaining that most of his family was dead now too. Then Paula threw him a curveball. “So you and Deputy Cally… are you two, you know… ‘together’?” She did the quotation marks in the air with her fingers, a band aid on one hand and a Halloween pumpkin ring on another, something one of the children at the hospital had given her while she was recovering. Perhaps it was the spirit of the children that had brought her out of her depression more than any treatment or medication could have.

  Stunned for a moment, Keith struggled to respond without laughing, “No! Neither one of us are gay. Why? Do we come off as gay?”

  “No, but your face was priceless.”

  Keith narrowed his eyes. She’d gotten him good. “I guess I hang out with him because, as you pointed out, there’s no place left to go.” Keith gestured at the farmland, now growing wild like the untamed Missouri prairies of the last century. “I had never been to the Midwest before all this shit started. I’m from Maine originally, though I’ve lived everywhere but here it seems. I joined the Army in ‘09 when we were living in Florida. I think Ethan’s been in before. Probably got drafted back in when the shit hit the fan after D.C. became a Red Zone. He won’t really talk about it much. I just know he really, really, really doesn’t trust the Army.”

  “At least he’s back home. I’m from Rolla. My parents were trying to get to family in Kansas City when our car was clipped by an Army truck. The bastards didn’t even stop for us. We walked to Bourbon and then…” Paula didn’t finish her story, there wasn’t any need to. She’d lost her entire family, even her boyfriend, all murdered by the bikers.

  “We’re still kinda holding our breath that Ethan’s brother will show up. Before the phones and internet became unreliable his brother, Lee, called and said he was heading home.”

  “I wouldn’t want to be out there on my own.” Paula shivered at the thought.

  “We’re certainly not alone out here.” Keith said with regret. “I’m sure Mayor Kenly will make an announcement sooner or later, but eventually there’s going to be a war between the factions of the Living after the Undead have rotted away. People are going to fight over all of this.”

  “Why? Before we left the news said more than half the Earth’s population was infected. There’s going to be plenty of room for everyone if anyone makes it.”

  “It’s cute that you’re so naive. Texas and Alaska are going to divide everything real nice like. No other state really stands a chance. They’ve got the military reserves and the oil to fuel them.” Keith was only theorizing about a worse-case scenario.

  “I hope not. My dad said both states were conservative and really pro-American. Maybe they’ll just help us get back on our feet?” Paula was disgustingly hopeful for someone who’d witnessed hell, and who was all alone in the world.

  The train made it to Sullivan without a hitch, but this time there was no free-for- all with the supplies the way there was when the Army pulled out. Everything was inventoried, including anything useful that was in the mail cars. There would be enough dried goods to last the town through winter for sure now, and the task of locking these supplies safely away was given to someone besides Keith and Ethan for once. They were starting to wear their fatigue on their sleeves and anyone with half a brain could see it.

  Ethan, as usual, spent his free time at home waiting for an email or a phone to tell him something, staring in silence with a bottle of Southern Comfort in his hands. Most of the town was waiting for a response from the Texans as well. Keith took the opportunity afforded by the lull in activity to bring Paula to some semblance of a movie night. It had0 had been set up by a few people who had grown weary of life without the creature comforts of the 21st Century. The local theater had been shut down since the Army rolled into town, and it was still too far out of town to be protected anyhow. The high school gymnasium on the other hand, was in the center of town and had a projector where a few dozen people sat,
happily watching a Star Wars marathon. Keith wasn’t the biggest Star Wars fan, and neither was Paula, but at least it was something to do besides hear gunshots and smell the acrid scent of death that permeated daily life. The gym smelled of rubber and cleaning agents. A marvelous change of pace.

  “So what will Ethan do when his brother shows up?” Paula asked, sipping water from her canteen again. There was plenty of soda and beer still available, but she didn’t want any. She was never without her canteen. Something told Keith it was likely a safety blanket of sorts, as long as she had water she felt like it all was okay. He’d have to explore that with her one day, see if he could help, find out why she valued water so much. Before the first cases were reported Keith was studying psychology to learn more about battle fatigue, or PTSD. Everyone these days had some form of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or another, and treatment could be difficult without the proper training or drugs. That was all on hold now, though.

  “I have no idea.” Keith said as the credits rolled on Episode II. “I think he wants to go to Oklahoma and look for his family. They were taken there when the Army left.”

  Paula looked away. “He does know most of the refugee camps spawned the largest infected hordes, right?”

  “If you thought your parents were still alive in one of those camps, wouldn’t you go look for them?” Paula accepted the answer while a kid changed the DVD to Episode III. Most people got up to use the restroom and get food. Plenty of food was on a concession stand, and popcorn was a real treat. Keith traded a pack of AA’s for a large popcorn and two sodas.