by Gwynn White
Victoria jumped in, upset. “First of all,” she said, “I'm not in high school anymore. I doubt Liam will ever go back, either. Second of all, with all the zombies walking around and all the infected people, there is no way to prevent the disease from crossing a simple river. Even a couple of dumb kids knows that.”
“You're absolutely right. You share the opinion of most sane people at the CDC. But you do not share the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and with the president off doing god-knows-what, the military is pretty much in charge of managing the pieces of the nation that are still answering their phones.”
“But we saw the military killing zombies downtown. They were helping us escape.”
“Well, it may be true they were killing zombies. That's their job. But I was there. Did you see any evidence they were helping us escape?”
He thought back to the battle. Except for a few volunteers from the Army and Marines, there were no troops on the St. Louis side of the river during the battle. Only the Abrams tank seemed to help them directly, and that was only for a few minutes. Then the Air Force came in and started the shock and awe. The bombs did drop to the north at first, but later they dropped them further south, including right on top of Captain Osborne. Maybe that was just a mistake in the chaos of war?
“So it was just a coincidence the bombs, artillery, and tank fire helped us escape?”
“You always like to argue, don't you? Why do you think I was running so close to the lead guys trying to get out of there?”
Because you're a coward.
“Those bombs would have killed us just as sure as the sun rises. We're all collateral now to the primary mission—which is to prevent the spread of the plague.”
He reflected on that while Hayes stood back up and brushed himself off.
“Right now, our only avenue of escape is to the south. The Army told me they're patrolling the eastern shore of the river, but they have no presence anymore in the entire state of Missouri. We have to get that train moving and on down the line before the Army changes their mind about letting this unauthorized train continue.”
He started down the trail, leaving him and Victoria alone.
“Pretty amazing a truck driver can get a meeting with soldiers up on some random bridge, huh?”
Liam thought about that for a second before replying, “Yeah, whatever he does for the CDC, it isn't driving a truck.”
He and Victoria hung back on the way down, giving themselves some distance from Hayes so they could talk. This time, he was in front of her.
“Do you think we can trust him?” he asked, already knowing the answer.
“Absolutely not. We know he lied to us about what he does for the CDC. He stopped an escaping train—with a hundred living people on it—so he could talk to his friends on this bridge. At this point, the only thing we know for sure about him is that he has poor taste in clothing.”
That gave him a laugh. He hadn't dwelled on the man's fashion sense but had to agree it was pretty bad. “He told us to head south because the Army was on the Illinois side and wouldn't let us cross. We thought they wouldn't let him cross, but what if they ordered him to go south? Maybe the only reason he needs us is to help him complete his mission that way?”
“That doesn't make sense either. The Army could have tossed him a boat or something, and he could get downriver with no problem. Why would they force him back on this train?”
He considered her question for a few moments as they continued downhill. “You're going to think I'm wearing a tinfoil hat for saying this, but what if Hayes is a big shot at the CDC, trying to get out of town. Maybe he got left behind. Maybe his friends needed to talk to him in person, but they weren't willing to risk infecting themselves by letting him across the bridge? We don't know anything about the disease, the source of the infection, or how the government is responding to this emergency.”
Victoria seemed to thrive on the conspiracy. “Yes! That's why he told us the Joint Chiefs are in charge. If the president is AWOL, maybe he's dead? Maybe the CDC—and guys like Hayes—are as confused as the rest of us. He just can't tell us he's trapped because that would mean the government wasn't in control!”
This girl was someone after his own heart. He realized his father's penchant for conspiracy theories had a lot to do with that, but he wasn't going to nitpick.
“If you say anything about a 'shadow government,' I'm going to kiss you on the lips!”
Victoria chuckled behind him.
“Well, right now, I'm fairly certain there is a 'dark-shrouded government' out there. Maybe someday we'll discover the other.”
Liam walked in silence as they reached the bottom of the trail. He was unsure of what just transpired between them. Before he could follow up with her, she walked quickly toward the engine at the front.
“I'm going to get some answers from the engineer. At the very least, I want to know where this train is going,” she yelled back.
He ran to catch up, impressed at the forthrightness of his lovely partner.
Hayes climbed into the engine compartment, so they figured they'd follow him up the ladder and into the engineer's area as well. As he walked along the side of the engine, he noted it had a name. Valkyrie. It was stenciled in large black letters, which made it obvious on the orange paint of the engine. He rubbed his hand on the letters as he walked by.
Liam's imagination had drawn the man driving the train as a portly dude with a blue and white striped uniform and a funny little hat that said “engineer” on it. He'd spent too much of his youth watching a TV show about toy trains.
When he followed Victoria into the compartment, he was shocked to see the engineer was instead a woman. Her hair had a touch of gray—he had a hard time guessing the age of women—and she wore blue jeans with a filthy white t-shirt. She looked more like a mechanic than an engineer, woman or no.
“Who the hell are you two?” she said with a slightly exotic accent. He guessed she was from Eastern Europe if his dad's war movies were accurate.
“Oh, they're friends of mine. They helped me get out of the Arch,” Hayes replied helpfully.
“I see. Well, pardon me for not talking, but I need to get this train going again, and I don't exactly know what I'm doing.”
“You did great getting us here. Thank you sincerely from all of us in the back,” Victoria said.
She let her compliment soak in before continuing.
“We're just wondering where you're going? You know, since we're kind of a captive audience.”
“Listen. I'm getting this train as far away from those things as I'm able. Going south as far as she'll go. But I have one stop to make—besides this stop for your persuasive friend.” She gave a nod to Hayes. “I have to pick up my husband. He's the real engineer. Over the phone, he walked me through some of the basics of getting his engine started, and I was able to get the thing moving, though not very fast. His engine was linked to another that had some kind of issue with it, so we all get to watch the light show as we push the wretched thing.”
She was turning dials and pushing buttons as she spoke.
“Bottom line is I don't know where I'm going besides picking up my family. From there, the track points south. Now go. I'm getting ready to blow the horn so people know we're moving again.”
“Thank you, ma'am. I hope you find your family,” Victoria said softly while touching the woman's elbow.
The engineer stopped what she was doing. “Thank you.” Liam thought she looked even more tired and worn down than everyone else. She had the stress of saving everyone.
And I thought saving Grandma was stressful.
As he walked out the door, he saw something sitting in a nook where the engine crew kept their gear. He wasn't positive what he saw, but he kept it in mind for later reference. It might be the answer to someone's prayers...
One last look at Hayes—he was staying in the engine—and he and Victoria were out and climbing off the Valkyrie. As they did, the engine
er—they forgot to get her name—blew two long bursts on the horns to indicate the train was about to start moving.
Everywhere, people scrambled to get back on their respective freight cars. When he and Victoria finally reached the last car, they were shocked to see a lot more people on it. Many of them were utterly filthy with coal dust. Those folks had opted for the wide-open flatcar rather than the confining filth of the tenders.
He had a panicked moment when he thought they wouldn't even fit on the crowded car anymore, but he was relieved to see Jones by the ladder making space for them to climb aboard.
He gave them a friendly greeting.
“Smoking on the left, non- on the right. We have beverages in the front and VIP room in the back. Welcome to the High Rollers Club.”
They both laughed.
“And where's the women's powder room?”
“I'm sorry ma'am, but you just walked out of the restroom.”
She responded with a horrified “ugh,” but Liam found no humor in it. Not because it wasn't funny—he smiled to the big guy to show his appreciation—but because it was true. Nothing was ever going to be the same. Even the most basic things such as plumbing were going to be hard to find unless civilization was keeping hold somewhere else.
Right now the High Rollers Club was the best they had.
Liam was ready to let it roll until the end.
They moved with no time to spare. A crowd of zombies approached from the trackway behind them. The answer to an earlier thought of Liam's was that yes, the plague victims were going to follow the train regardless if they could see it or not. It seemed impossible, but zombies themselves were “impossible” a week ago, too. Who knew what they were capable of? Then again, maybe they just kept walking in the direction they were already pointed?
The train reached speed again. Now that he knew the engineer wasn't a professional, he understood why the train wasn't cruising along. With the crowd packed tightly on the flatcar, it was probably a good thing they weren't going too fast. Falling off the final car would be terminal.
He and Victoria squeezed through the crowd and made their way to where Grandma was still sitting next to the tires. They sat down next to her and told her all about what they saw up on the bridge. She took it in with her usual calm demeanor, which agitated him.
“Grandma, why aren't you more concerned about him?”
“Ah, Liam, when you get to be my age, it takes a lot to concern yourself with every detail of what's going on. It doesn't matter who he is to me, as long as this train keeps moving south and gets you and Victoria out of harm's way. That's where we'll find your house, your parents, and hopefully some breathing room from those poor souls behind us. You two should stay away from him, though. He sounds like he has some deadly friends.”
He couldn't disagree, but he was willing to forget it all once they crossed the river.
He immediately felt himself drifting off as the car began rattling along, but it wasn't sixty seconds before lots of gunfire from up in the front jerked him awake. People who were standing near the edges of the car began screaming—they could see what was happening up ahead. Almost as one, they recoiled from the edges. Several tried to wedge themselves under the big trailer into the space where Grandma was sitting, forcing him and Victoria to move Grandma almost directly underneath the axle of the big trailer. They then moved through the crowd so they could see what all the fuss was about.
Oh, crap.
The train was entering some kind of quarry complex. On their left, next to the muddy brown river, were huge elevators and machines that dumped the white rock onto barges and trucks. On the right was a maze of roadways where oversized dump trucks—had they been operating—would be hauling rocks from the deep tunnels of the mine.
He did see hundreds of civilian cars and trucks—all parked in a messy line—winding their way along the rock path around and down into the big hole in the ground, to some point below his field of vision. It seemed suicidal to drive a car into a hole in the earth with everything else going on. Sort of like driving into your own grave.
Then he saw the zombies, thousands of them up ahead, surrounding most of the top edge of the pit quarry. He noted this facility was next door to the bridge they were just on, and the mystery of the big blockade with no people was now solved. They had escaped en masse to this place—hoping for what?
“Why would they drive down into a quarry?” Victoria asked. “Couldn't they see the zombies were following them in?”
He could only imagine what drove them on. When zombies are crawling all over your car, and the interstate is permanently closed, maybe the quarry looked like somewhere they could hole up—literally—and defend themselves. The train continued ahead, running over some of the wandering zombies. People in the forward cars fired guns at the infected orienting on the train. Many of the zombies, at least on the topmost level, were willing to turn away from their quarry inside the quarry and focus on the much closer blood factories rolling up to them on the train.
As he got closer, he got a better impression of what was going on inside the pit. The cars were parked around a spiral road, which descended until it reached the bottom. He still couldn't see that bottom, but he could guess people were down there trying to hold off the zombies who were following the spiral behind them. The jam went back toward the highway. It seemed everyone mistook this for a road to safety. Once inside the gravity well of the pit, they had no choice but to continue down because the rim was already awash in zombies and there was no backing up. How far could they drive into the rocky tunnels?
So many mysteries here.
The second-level loop around the mine had a second access ramp that allowed some people to escape on foot back to ground level before they got too far down the hole. He saw people using that ramp, running out both directions around the rim of the mine. Some were coming toward the train. Others were heading into the woods or back toward the highway.
The largest group headed for the train—toward rescue. They were up against an area thick with zombies waiting on the edge. Some members of their group were using weapons to try to clear a path. He judged there was no way those people could get through so many undead without help from this side.
The engineer gave a long blast on the air horn. The train slowed down to an even slower crawl, but not a full stop.
“What the hell? Is she going to try to save those people?” Victoria wondered.
“It sure looks like it. But who is going to save us?”
As they watched, the right side of the train was engulfed front to back by plague victims, each trying to gain purchase on a car. He looked back—and wasn't surprised to see a large group of zombies coming from the direction of the train tracks behind them. The followers had never stopped following ...
They only had a few minutes before zombies would be surrounding them from almost every angle. There was essentially nothing he could do to change the outcome of this battle against so many attackers.
That didn't mean he wasn't going to try.
Liam looked at his options, briefly hoping someone else would suggest a plan.
“I think we should do something,” he told her. “No one else is helping.”
“If you've got a plan, let's hear it,” she countered.
He could try to organize some kind of rescue mission with police and gang members forging out into the crowd of zombies to try to meet up with the incoming group of people—but he was pretty sure that would fail based on the sheer size of the rising horde. And they'd waste a lot of ammo; ammo had to be running low for most of the police.
He looked over his shoulder to the river side of the complex. Several big dump trucks sat there. His first thought upon seeing them came from one of his zombie books. He couldn't remember the name, but in it, huge dump trucks were used by evil men to deposit large buckets of zombies on the good guys. He doubted that could happen here in real life. No evil men were lurking by the trucks.
“I think if w
e get into one of those dump trucks, we can use it to push through the thickest part of this crowd of zombies and help those people cross over to the train.”
She looked at where the trucks were parked, how fast the train was crawling along, and the status of the people in the group moving in their direction.
“It's going to be close.”
“Good enough for me.”
Though the quarry side was clogged with infected, the other side of the train was almost free of them. The massive crowd behind was uncomfortably close, but still a few minutes back. Once they caught up to the train, all sides would be consumed. There was little time.
He felt stupid saying it, but he yelled to Jones and Victoria as he went down the short ladder.
“Cover me!”
Jones said something he couldn't hear, but Victoria yelled, “Go for it!” as if he were part of a sporting event.
He dodged around a couple of walkers who happened to be in his way as he ran the fifty yards to the trucks. He had his pistol, but speed was more important than killing any one or two random z's.
It was large, but he was glad to see it wasn't the truly enormous dump truck he’d seen on National Geographic specials. It was just a normal-sized dump truck.
He had no trouble scaling the side but was stymied at the door. It was locked. He hadn't even considered what he'd do once he got into the cab. Now he wasn't even going to make it inside.
He took out his pistol and readied it to shoot out the glass. At the last second, he realized he was about to do something stupid. He engaged the safety and then used the gun as a hammer to break the window. In seconds he was inside. He found a lone key in the ignition. He figured these trucks never left the premises and thus never needed their keys removed. If someone got in at night they could joyride around the quarry—the teen boy in him imagined what a fun night that would be—, but the big gates in the front would keep anyone from leaving the property.
