The Renegade

by Daniel Evora

  Max went straight to the dashboard, and swiftly went through the train’s systems.

  “There should be one,” he explained, while waving his hands throughout the dashboard. “Found it!”

  The map was filled in with lines and curves and other shapes. They assumed that these were the tracks. On all four sides, on the face of it, it had the four directions. With the North staying on top of the map. Max spread out his arms in a diagonal pattern; causing the map to enlarge since the area it covered went across three different commonwealths.

  “Since, we’re moving eastbound, outside the Kalin commonwealth,” Max observed. He put his index finger on a track moving in a mostly straight line. “This should be our track. Track A-113. But, we’ll have to slow down for that sharp turn a couple ways out from our position.”

  “Sharp turn, huh? Where is the other train headed?” asked Chris.

  “Let’s see, it’s moving in the same direction to ours, so it should be Track A-23--”

  Everyone jumped as the train’s horn got louder signaling to all that it was getting much closer. Max approached the right side window and looked out towards the train and gave it a closer look. He gasped. As soon as he could get a closer look, Max instantly recognized the type of train that was slowly approaching them.

  “Tell everyone to get down!” Max yelled at a quick pace.

  “What?!” Chris questioned at the same volume.

  “It’s an armored train!”

  Chris looked at it again and noticed the heavy weapons slowly turning in their direction. Along with the train getting even closer. He barged to the outside of the front engine car in panic. Matthews and I turned to him with the same look on our faces of our impending doom.

  I dropped to the floor and shouted down the train at the top of my lungs.

  “Get down!”

  The rest of the group followed suit and each of them found a mostly comfortable spot to stay safe. The armored train had also now been at a comfortable range. Each barrel of each gun had pointed in our direction; all in synchronization. Then, there was a small moment of silence which was quickly broken by the faint shouting of another person on the armored train. I couldn’t quite make out what they said, but all of us knew that was the point of no return.

  The guns began to warm up with a whirring noise, some of them had spinning barrels and others stayed completely still to charge up. As soon as I heard the first projectile leave the barrel and make its way onto our train, I got both of my hands and placed the palms onto my ears to block out the extremely loud of a dozen heavy weapons firing all at the same time.

  Bullets were ricocheting along the walls of the train cars. It was just a constant rain of bullets. Matthews and I were mostly safe from bullet fire. I couldn’t risk looking down the cars to see if everyone else was fine like we were. It was just the both of us and a hell storm of blazing fast projectiles that forced us to glue our backs against the cover.

  Then, out of nowhere the firing stopped. Most likely due to the weapons needing to cool down for a few moments. For a second Matthews turned around towards the train and attempted to peek over and have his own look at the train once more.

  “Get back down,” I whispered loudly.

  He and I braced once more for the train firing again onto our position. Anticipating the storm and preparing for it. But, it didn’t happen. Instead, there was one loud thud coming from the roof of the car. Almost like something heavy and metal slamming or dropping on top. Following the thud, there came smaller and faster ones.

  I instantly loaded up my rifle’s magazine and pointed the tip of the barrel near the edge of the roof.

  “Heads up,” I mouthed to Matthews. He nodded and brought out his weapon, too.

  Matthews pulled out his weapon from his back and got behind me to shoot from the other side of the train car. The thumping footsteps came rapid and rapidly ended as a few troopers descended into the train car from above. As I kicked one off of the edge of the car and onto the desert, another troop grabbed my katana. Due to his lack of training, I allowed him to swing aimlessly on me. Lazily I dodged their attack as I got behind him and put him in a headlock. Then, I ripped the handle from his grasp and pushed him off of the same side of the train car.

  Matthews and I turned to each other in the silence as I noticed he had shot the troops dead as their corpses laid on the floor.

  “You could’ve just shot them,” suggested Matthews.

  “Only had three mags left,” I quickly explained. “Would’ve been a waste of bullets.”

  “Well, we’re not finished yet,” pointed Matthews. I followed his index finger up towards the other train.

  Near the rear end of the armored train. A trolley car deployed three ground vehicles. Their anchors snapped and the cars dropped to the surface and made their way around to our side. Even more troopers camped out onto the seats and quickly sped up to match us.

  “Thomas, you’ve got company,” I warned while looking down the train cars.

  Thomas responded, “Yeah, I see them.”

  “Alright, stay sharp,” Chris ordered as the vehicles approached the freight train.

  “You don’t have to tell me,” smiled Thomas. Still rocking in his now armored suit.

  Once the armored cars were in a reasonable range. They started firing their front turrets. Chris attempted to shoot back but the bullets deflected off of the area right in front of the driver's vehicle. Thomas, Chris, and Lily ducked immediately.

  “I knew it. They have win-shields,” boiled Chris. As the three of them rushed to another car to gain some distance.

  “This is the Silents we’re talking about. Why would you even check?” questioned Lily.

  “Well, we can’t penetrate it with anything ranged or high speed,” Thomas informed.

  “What do you suppose we do?” asked Chris, while he noticed the vehicles were gaining on them.

  Thomas shouted into his comms, “Nate. I need you and Matthews to create a diversion, so we can take care of these guys!”

  I looked over at Matthews as I heard Thomas’ voice come through the walkie talkie. Then, I took a peek over and saw the same three vehicles gaining onto their position on the rear end train cars.

  Suddenly, I could hear the clashing sound of the metal tubes sticking out of the armored train potining in our direction once more. We both ducked for cover again as Matt cursed in frustration. Based on the first time, I knew that the machineguns on the other train would heat up again as well.

  “Ready?” I asked Matthews, while he was reloading his weapon.

  Matthews glared and said, “You don’t have to tell me. Let’s just get this over with.”

  Matthews charged forwards first and shot a few rounds at each car. Which caught the attention of the top gunners as they redirected their barrels unto him. He rolled behind another cover while I followed his exact same tactic. The gunners attempted to empty their magazines, while we rapidly and randomly shot in each direction of the gunners.

  The machine guns refocused on us for the third time, and fired again, but faster this time which caused us to hide when the rest of the group needed us to act.

  Thomas, Chris, and Lily split up immediately and jumped onto each car while throwing off or shooting its occupants within the walls of the shields, while Matthews and I took the attention of the machineguns and fell back.

  “We gotta find a way to get rid of those guns!” I barked, glancing towards Matthews.

  “No shit,” Matthews shot back. “Just stay down for now.”

  Thomas threw the driver off the seat and watched as he rolled down the dirty sand. The gunner’s corpse was still hanging on to the top seat. But, Thomas looked at the dashboard on the vehicle and looked at the status of the shields. The screen read: Exceptional, 83% capacity. Relieved, Thomas lightly stepped on the brakes and maneuvered to the other side of the freight train where he caught up with Chris and Lily who also successfully took over their vehicles.

 
; Thomas then drove up right next to the edge of the train.

  “Get on!” shouted Thomas while waving his hand at them. Chris jumped into the passenger seat and Lily hopped up onto the top gunner’s position.

  Quickly, he swerved away from the train to allow the other two vehicles to tip over, flip topside, and crash by themselves.

  Thomas got on his comms again, while trying to match the speed of both trains. Which was going kinda fast as the car’s speedometer was showing that it was trailing at around seventy five to eighty miles per hour.

  “Nate, we’re gonna help you get on that train.”

  “What?” I was puzzled. “How?”

  “We’ll draw their fire on the other side.”

  “What are your shields at?”

  “I already checked. It’s at eighty-three percent.”

  “You won’t have long ‘till it gets to zero.”

  “I know, but it’s our only shot.”

  Thomas took his foot off the pedal and let the car cruise itself without having to use the brakes. Swiftly, he glanced over at Chris and Lily; who both nodded in acceptance to the new plan and once the car slowed enough to reach the end of the train again. Thomas turned the wheel all the way to the right, and then back straight as the train instantly noticed the vehicle gaining on their position. While trying to swerve and avoid as much damage as possible to the shields, Matthews and I peeked over at the guns on the train and noticed they heated up again which gave us a small window of opportunity before they realized we were on the top of their train.

  Dirt and sand rose up from the ground as all the bullets that missed would ricochet or slide off of the surface of the desert ground. Thomas made the car go in loose zig-zags, while Lily attempted firing some rounds onto the train, but the armor would turn out to be close to, if not matched, to the durability of the shields.

  I got up as fast as I could and the both of us made a break for the service ladder to get on top. I nearly slipped myself on one of the rail steps as I thrust myself onto the roof of the train car. That’s when I could really feel the instant rush of wind, cutting into it at nearly eighty miles per hour. My sticky hair flowing along with it and some going right into my face while we used the bridges that they put down to get to us in the first place.

  Matthews stepped onto the platform first and rushed across it like a cake walk. While at the same time, trying to use a light step once he got onto the roof of the armored train. He looked at me confused at first, then annoyed and irritated at the fact that I hesitated ever stepping onto a thin, shaky metal platform, between two trains, with the wind pushing me towards my right-hand side, and both moving at high speed.

  I was expecting Matthews to tell me at least a little something to help me get across, but of course he didn’t. So, I took a deep breath and stepped onto it like it was a balance beam. Before I knew it, I was standing there right next to Matthews.

  He didn’t even acknowledge it, or add anything to that moment and moved on like he never saw it happen.

  “You’re gonna want your rifle for this,” Matthews acknowledged as he noticed that I still carried my katana in my left hand.

  I started to get annoyed, but I caved and didn’t respond with some smart, witty remark to be passive aggressive or something. I put away the sharp blade onto my back, loaded my rifle, and set it to use semi-auto fire since I only had a few mags worth of shots.

  “Okay, on my count,” Matthews ordered, then counted with his fingers.

  I nodded as he started putting up fingers. I half-expected him to use the opportunity to flip me off by putting up his middle one first. But, I was most certainly overthinking it.

  The very moment his count went to three fingers. We dropped down into the middle of the connecting cars at the same time, and started firing back to back. The gunners were completely unaware of our presence on the train until we really started making some noise with our weapons.

  Then, we switched sides in the direction we were shooting. One by one they either went down from getting shot in the legs or just got an unfortunate fate.

  Once all the gunners were taken out from behind us. We got behind cover to push forward on the rest of the cars. But first, I reloaded and put in my second magazine out of the three.

  “Get to the front car as quickly as possible!” barked Matthews.

  “How do you suppose we do that?” I questioned, while I jumped from deflecting bullets coming from the enemy.

  “Observe.”

  Matthews set his weapon to semi-auto like I did, and rushed inside the train car taking down each Silent Death soldier. The wind blew onto his outfit, creating a sort of dramatic flow of air that blew back a little bit. Since he was in semi-auto mode, his shots were more direct as he shot them all roughly in the torso. Bullet shells flipped out creating that satisfying metal ding as they hit the floor at his same pace which was exceptionally quick. But, once his magazine emptied all the way. He pummelled another soldier and pushed them onto the floor while swiping his rifle away from his grasp and shot him with it as well.

  I shook my head and followed his lead as I was able to get a few shots in before catching up right next to him.

  Moving up from car to car, I never thought we could work together this well without getting into any verbal or physical fight. I could’ve sworn we were just being passive aggressive to each other just a minute ago.

  “Guys, anytime now!” Thomas barked into the comms. He continued to maneuver without completely tipping over at this speed. “The shields are almost down!”

  We both heard the transmission from Thomas and went from about jogging speed to sprinting all the way towards the front car. I reloaded to my last magazine--twenty rounds left to go through. I let Matthews take most of the shots from here on out to reserve them.

  Once we got to the second car, which had the most reinforcements we readied ourselves from behind cover.

  “Alright, I’m on my second to last one,” Matthews said, while looking down at his vest. “You?”

  “Ten rounds,” I paused for a second to think about it again and recount.

  “Better not waste ‘em,” he remarked, while charging up first at full auto again. Spreading his damage as much as he could while I followed him to the driver’s position.

  We barged up into the front car and shot the door open only to find that there was no driver, but a few engineers with handguns. Matthews tackled one of them and I took the other guy with my katana and hit the weapons out of his hand. I sliced his hand with a pretty deep cut. I was even surprised by how sharp the thing was. Mostly since it was the first time I had used it to neutralize a threat.

  The engineer grunted in pain as I twirled my katana and ended him quickly by forcing the blade through his chest. The blood still stayed on the blade. I was really disgusted at the sight of that much blood, as I tried to wipe it off without actually touching any of it.

  In the center, right below the front window, which has been boarded up with sheets of metal. I got out my walkie-talkie to contact Max.

  “Alright, Max, we’re at the front of the armored train. What now?”

  “Are there any throttle controls?”

  I checked around quickly and looked on the right side where one of the engineers

  stood. Only to find the throttle missing or perhaps locked down.

  “There is no throttle control,” I answered.

  “Dammit, what about the brakes? Are there any brakes on this thing?”

  I searched around for something that at least resembled a brake lever. Maybe a red colored one would do the trick, but all there was was a bunch of more button switches and the InterFace dashboard. It’s familiar light blue hue beamed onto my face as it turned itself on.

  “The whole thing’s controlled by Interim’s InterFace,”

  “Well, there should be a way to stop the train if you can get the dashboard to shut itself off,” Max explained as I browsed throughout the countless options. I kept searching fo
r something that resembled an off switch. But, there wasn’t any out in the open for me just to press and that’d be it. Most of the options present for me consisted of pressure valves and ammunition information that was completely useless for the situation. Down I went and then, I found a bar on the screen that showed me throttle control, and pressed it as fast as I could. The press registered, but the screen didn’t go to where I thought it would take me. It’s blue hue flashed red as the dashboard zapped my hand. It was a jolt of pain that made me step away from the dashboard.

  “What now?” Matthews complained, as he turned to me when I grunted in pain from the shock.

  “The engineers…” I replied, frustratingly, while grasping my palm for a bit. “Gimme a hand will ya.”

  Matthews and I approached one of the corpses and we both squatted down to pick up the engineer that looked the lightest to us. My hand was still killing me, so doing more heavy lifting with it wasn’t much better.

  As Matthews brought up the dashboard and ever so slightly lifted the dead engineer’s arm and pressed his palm onto the switch to unlock access to the panel. As the panel registered the touch, the screen flashed red again and I instantly let go of the hand in fear of being shocked again. That thing really hurt your hand. The dead corpse flopped back onto the floor and I ended up catching some of the blood on my clothes; trying to wipe off the stains from the clothing and my hand alike.

  “What happened? Did you guys get it?” Max questioned.

  “Why didn’t it work?!” shouted Matthews, kicking the engineer in the side. “How could they not have access?”

  Quietly, I looked down right next to the dashboard to find an extra something jammed into the dashboard. Caught it right in my peripheral vision, as it’s bright color lured me towards it once I noticed it was there. After some quick examination, I knew exactly what it’s function was.

  A lock. But, not like a regular physical padlock to prevent you from getting access to something. Well, maybe.

  “They locked the throttle controls,” I informed Max and Matthews. I spoke loud enough for him to hear me clearly.