by Kirk Allmond
Max's eyes lit up. "Yay! Train ride!"
"Max, do you know where your backpack is? The one you took last time? We're going to need to pack some clothes for you. Do you have any toys here you want to take?"
"Can I bring my doggy and Buzz Lightyear?" he said, holding up a small brown and black stuffed dog.
"Sure, buddy, anything you want as long as it fits in your backpack. Can you go pack it?"
"Yep!"
Victor finished packing his own gear, most of which he kept packed all the time these days. He managed to find clean socks in just a couple of minutes.
After checking through Max's backpack to make sure he had everything he needed, the father and son walked down the squeaky wooden steps to the first floor and around the corner into the kitchen. Sharon was there topping off the last brown cardboard box of food. There were three stacks piled almost all the way to the ceiling. Vic had no way of knowing what was in each, but they looked heavy. Where's Marshall when you need him? he thought.
Max shouted, "Hi, Gramma!" and ran to give her a big hug when they walked into the room.
"Now, Max, Ms. Frederickson has given you some school work to do while you're away. Can you practice your reading with your dad while you're gone? She wants you to know how to read twenty-five words by the time you get back, “said Victor’s mother.
"Awww, man. Twenty-five words!" complained Max.
"You can do it, Buddy,” Vic said reassuringly. "You're a great reader."
Mrs. Tookes turned towards her son. "Victor, all this stuff has to go in your truck. Marshall's got his truck full already," she said.
"Ugh. I better get to it then," he said, dreading loading and unloading all that food.
Max asked, "Can I help carry, Daddy?"
"Of course you can, Buddy. Put your backpack on. You can carry these two cans," he said, reaching into the top box and pulling out two cans of SPAM.
It was a long trip down six steps and up a hill to the parking lot from the kitchen. It took Max and Vic seven trips to haul all the food out to a blue Dodge Ram parked out in their lot. They were trying to stick to gasoline vehicles because gasoline wouldn't last as long as diesel. All the gasoline in the world would be worthless sometime in the next five months.
Vic was carrying the last box up the hill to the truck when Marshall pulled up in the white F-250 he was so fond of. Vic thought it was the only truck they had that he could comfortably fit in.
"It’s about time, now that I've hauled all this by myself!" Victor said when he got out of the truck. "You're the Chief of Asset Relocation, Marshall!"
"I'm glad you're done. It’s time to get moving. Leo, Renee, and Shelton are already at the train station. Reggie Walton was a train conductor for twenty-six years before he retired. He might be eighty years old, but he knows every rail line in the country. He went with them to show them how to work the track switches; I guess you can do it from inside the train somehow."
"Even without power?" Vic asked.
"He says the receivers are solar powered," Marshall replied. "He even showed us how to hook up power from the generator to the cars. Every car on the train has working heat, lights, and entertainment systems."
"Wow. Good stuff to know. Is he coming with us? And what do you think of Shelton? We just kind of dropped him off here before we left last time."
"Reggie is coming. Shelton is still a bit of a mystery. Keeps to himself mostly but always working. He got the windmill working on top of the barn and got a black cistern set up on the roof."
"Wow, we've been meaning to do that for months."
"Once a day, someone will have to pump for half an hour to fill it, but on sunny days, they'll have hot water for baths, and we'll eventually be able to put toilets up there. The structure on the roof will support two more cisterns if we can source them. When it’s complete, they'll have fifteen hundred gallons of water up there."
Marshall looked impressed as he was talking. "He's a smart guy, and he's a good soldier. I like him so far."
"Good to know. Something had me worried about him," Victor said.
"I think he's an asset," said Marshall. "I trust him. Now let’s get loaded up and get out of here."
"Max! Mount up, Buddy!" Victor said as he opened the door to the blue truck. Max climbed up inside and slid across the bench seat to the passenger side.
"Daddy, I can't reach my buckles," he said, struggling to pull the seat belt out of the holder.
Victor reached over and buckled him in, sliding the shoulder strap over the headrest. Kids lived riding in cars for a hundred years before the invention of booster seats, he reflected.
The work crews had made so many trips through Gordonsville, Virginia, that it was mostly cleared of undead. Tookes remembered John saying they'd moved all the corpses out to the field behind the Post Office trailer. The town was eerily empty feeling. Somehow, the movement of the undead through there had kept him from noticing it before, but the town was a wreck. There had been some heavy duty fighting here. Spent shell casings piled up around sandbag walls in all the alleys. Cars and light trucks, turned up on their sides, blocked off the side streets.
"Soldiers fought here," said Max quietly. "They didn't beat the bad guys; they didn't know what to do. I think the bad guys killed all the soldiers."
"Maybe. How does that make you feel, Max?" his father asked.
"Sad. And I think angry. I don't like the bad guys."
"I don't either," he said. "I want to get rid of all the bad guys, but I'm not sure I'm strong enough."
"You are strong, Daddy."
"Thanks, Max. I love you."
"I love you too. You're my best friend," said Max. "And Mister John is my best friend. And everybody. All the people are my best friends."
"You're a good boy," Vic said, reaching over and tousling his son's hair.
When they got to the train yard, it was buzzing with activity. People were yelling, laughing, and working. The train was idling on the track.
The machine they had created once again awed Victor. It barely looked like a train anymore. The entire thing, all seven cars, looked like a huge rattlesnake. It was covered in sideways-louvered armor like the rear window of an old Ford Mustang, designed to deflect bullets and debris away from the cars. The louvers resembled snake scales. The look was enhanced by the paint job, intended to blend in with the desert and the forest, just like the coloring of a rattler. The entire train was designed for one job: to kill with extreme prejudice without stopping.
The old saying, "Many hands make light work," proved itself that early morning. Both pickup trucks were unloaded quickly, the contents stowed in the appropriate places. There were twelve of them, including Reggie, who was wearing an old engineer's cap and seemed to be running the show.
"Good morning, Mister Tookes and young Master Tookes. Your stateroom is this way. Please follow me," Reggie said, walking quickly away.
Max and Victor quickly grabbed their backpacks and followed him up to one of the sleeper cars. He climbed up on a wooden step and then into the train. "Step right up, young Master Tookes, look lively," he said with a cheer in his voice.
Max scrambled up into the train and turned left into the sleeping compartment Reggie indicated was his and his father's. He pulled a grease pencil out of his overalls and wrote, “Tookes, party of 2,” on the white plate on the door. After a moment's hesitation, he wrote underneath, "Destination: Southern California," in bold strokes. "I'm not quite sure what to put, but every passenger has to have a destination."
"I'm sure that'll be fine, Mr. Walton," Victor said, stepping into the room.
"There are a couple of protocols you'll need to be aware of. We took the fire alarm system and reworked it. Mister Hazard calls it red alert. Should the train come under attack, the lights will light up and the siren will sound. You'll need to get young Master Tookes under the bed. Each bed has been lined with plate steel. Should there be an explosion or should the train take heavy fire, that will af
ford extra protection. Once he is safely stowed, you'll be needed in the locomotive. Mister Hazard said you were the best backhoe operator in the crew. You'll operate the forward .50-caliber cannon and the TCD."
"Mr. Walton, who is Mr. Hazard?"
"John Hazard? Australian fellow? Your best friend, to hear him tell it."
"Ohh. John," Victor said. "I'm not sure I ever knew his last name. I should have known it was him. Even his last name is bad ass."
Reggie looked at Victor disapprovingly before saying, "Is there anything else, sir?"
"Yes," he said. "What's a TCD?"
"Track clearing device. It’s that monstrosity they welded to the front of this beautiful engine."
"Thank you, Mr. Walton."
"One last thing, Mr. Tookes," said Reggie.
"Yes?" he asked.
"Please don't be late for meal time. Breakfast at 6 am, lunch at noon, and dinner at six o'clock in the evenings. No food or snacks are allowed in the train cars.”
True to Marshall's word, the sleeping compartment was warm and well lit. There was a twenty-six inch LCD TV mounted where the window had been and an X-Box on a shelf underneath the TV. On the floor under the table was a cardboard box full of games for the console. Oddly enough, before the end of the world, it seemed like every game was based on zombies. They must have had every non-zombie game made. There were five Lego games. Max and Victor got pretty good at Lego Batman on that trip.
"Max, can you stay in here? I need to go help Uncle Marshall get everything loaded, and I need to know that you're in here safe while I do it. Can you do that for me?"
"Sure, Daddy. I'm kind of tired; do you think I could take a nap?"
"That would be great, Buddy."
Victor left Max as he snuggled down into the covers of the sleeping compartment and tried to make himself as useful as he could. After half an hour of heavy lifting and hauling, he heard Reggie yell, "All aboard!" Tookes made his way to the doorway labeled “Tookes, party of 2” and entered. He fell asleep next to Max and didn't wake up for nearly three hours after they got moving.
He woke up to a red light flashing in the compartment and alarm bells ringing out in the hallway. It took a couple of seconds for that to register before he said, "Max, gotta wake up. Red Alert, I need you under the bed."
Max groaned in his sleep and said, "Is it morning?"
"It is. Can you bring some toys under the bed please? Stay there until someone comes to get you. Can I count on you?"
"Yes, Dad. I don't want to go under there though. It’s dark."
"Here, take my flashlight," he said, handing him the black mini MagLite off his belt.
"Okay. Come back soon," he said, giving him a hug and a kiss on the cheek as he twisted the flashlight on.
Victor ran down the hallway and slid the door between cars open. He was three cars from his position on the roof of the locomotive. The train was moving quickly; the gravel rail-bed flew past underneath him. The trees blurred by, almost close enough to touch, as the train rattled down the tracks.
He climbed up the steel ladder on the outside of the first sleeper car and ran along the catwalk they'd mounted to the roof. A short leap carried him to the tanker car, and one more hop put him on top of the locomotive. He climbed down that ladder and into the locomotive.
"Why are we at red alert?" Victor asked, out of breath.
"There's a super zombie keeping pace with us off to the left. There's a clearing up ahead. You'll probably spot him," Shelton said. "I've sped us up, but he's faster than we can go."
Victor clicked a mental switch and watched the color drain out of the world, like staring at a heavily de-saturated picture. The only colors that remained were the auras that surrounded every living person. Shelton's aura was deep purple, telling him he was ready to fight. Leo was up on the roof, also surrounded by deep purple. He could see Max in their car, his baby blue aura the only one Victor had ever seen that never changed color. Marshall and John were on the platform at the rear of the train, where Tookes knew the machine guns were mounted. Their auras stood out to him through the train, as if the train had disappeared or he could see straight through it. If he concentrated, he could see every living person for hundreds of yards in any direction. He turned forward and could see Renee and Kris on the front guns. Kris's aura was that same purple but had some dark yellow stripes swirling through it. Renee's was much purpler than Kris's, but it did have a few of those same gold swirls. He was still working on what everything meant when he was reading auras, but he was reasonably certain that yellow was some form self reflection, and the darkness of it represented doubt.
He turned to the left and said, "That's not a zombie tailing us." He could see a bright, multi-colored aura keeping pace with them the second they entered the clearing.
Chapter 21
Retribution
Victor pulled his fleece closed against the cold air in the engine compartment. The locomotive was loud even inside the cockpit. Two gigantic diesel motors were running at half-speed, generating electricity to power the train.
"That's the ginger we met last time we were heading through here," he yelled over the noise. "He took over leadership of the group that ambushed us after I killed Roger."
"Marshall said we might have some trouble in this area. Something about you cutting a guy's hand off," yelled Shelton.
"Technically, Leo cut his hand off. He attacked me. She intercepted him before I shot him."
"So now," yelled Shelton, stepping in close so he could continue in a more normal voice, “you think he's coming back for more?"
"I'm not sure. His group wanted the train or whatever we had on it. I tried everything I could do to talk them down. I even had Roger pinned to the ground with my boot on his neck. Even when I put a gun to his head, he still wouldn't call his men off."
Shelton paused for a minute, considering his response to the new information. "You can't beat yourself up about it, Tookes. You gave him every chance to deescalate the situation. One of the things I learned over in the sandbox was that some people won't ever give up, because their life has no meaning."
Vic looked at Shelton. He hadn't spent a lot of time with him, but he was glad for his input and experience. "I guess,” he said.
"One time, we had thirty guys pinning a haji down in a hole. He wouldn't surrender. Eventually he stood up with his rifle shouldered, and we were forced to fire. He knew there was no way out; he was just tired of living. Sounds like their leader was the same way."
"Like those guys that used to ‘suicide by cop.’ You know the type. They'd rob a place and make the police shoot them because they were too sorry to kill themselves," Tookes said.
"Yea, same thing."
"So," Tookes asked, "what do you think we should do about our tail?"
"He'd have to be monumentally stupid to attempt to come near this train," said Shelton. "I think we should just let him follow us. Maybe he's just making sure we don't stop anywhere in his territory."
Tookes nodded his agreement and sent to the crew, “It's that one-handed ginger from the ambush following us. I don't think he's going to try anything. Keep an eye on him just in case though. Renee and Kris, keep an eye forward for anything on the tracks, please.”
"I think we can kill the red-alert. I need to go back to Max and let him know we're fine."
Victor was about halfway back to his cabin when the alarm finally stopped its incessant buzzing.
He picked Max up from under the bed and held him on his lap. "Hey, buddy, that was just a false alarm."
"There is a guy out there who is thinking too many things," said Max.
Victor arched an eyebrow and asked, "Can you read his thoughts?"
"No, but his colors are all mixed up. It’s too much. My bugs say he's mentally un..." Max paused for a minute and cocked his head to the side. "Unstable," he said.
"I don't think he could hurt us," he said. "I think he and his friends use the train tracks for too much to destroy the tr
acks. Mr. Shelton and I think he's just going to follow us for a while and see what we do."
"I hope so, Daddy."
Victor leaned back, propped against the wall of the compartment, and held his little boy on his lap. Neither of them said anything. They just snuggled there, enjoying some quiet time. It was almost a full fifteen minutes before the alarm went off again, and the brakes slammed Max against his father.
"Sorry, Max. I gotta go check it out," he said.
Gunshots rang out from the forward of the train. Kris and Renee were firing the forward cannons, chewing through ammunition. Max crawled under the bed, and Victor sprinted forward.
The train was stopped when he reached his ladder. He climbed up until his head was just poking out over the train car to get a view of what was going on. To the left and a little in front of the train, there was a bulldozer. Someone had used the 'dozer to push a mountain of dirt over the train tracks, and the train was stopped about a hundred feet before the dirt pile. Thankfully, Shelton had been on the spot, paying attention.
Renee and Kris were firing into the woods. Shelton had even provided tracer rounds for the forward guns. Every fifth bullet was a magnesium tip, which left a bright streak through the air. It made it very easy to aim the machine guns. Squeeze the trigger and walk the tracer rounds to the target. Not very ammunition efficient though.
Victor made a quick count and estimated the number of auras he could read. “Looks like at least a hundred living targets out there. Let’s see if we can avoid killing them. Hold your fire, please.”
Kris and Renee stopped firing, and Victor yelled from between the cars, "We're human. We're just passing through here. We don't want any trouble."
From way off in the distance, well back from the line of fire, someone said, "This is our land. Anyone passing through is subject to search. Let us on the train to search for dangerous items, and we'll let you pass."
"What is it you consider dangerous items?" Vic asked. They had lots of dangerous items on the train, including John, Marshall, Renee, and Kris.
