A Shrouded World (Book 2): Atlantis

by Tufo, Mark

  “Now or never, Talbot,” I muttered, referring to getting down on the ground and making a run for it. I peeked down the line of cars on the right: there were some zombies, but they were from the original pack and were far enough away that they did not even notice me. The Trio were around somewhere, though. I started walking, sometimes stumbling a bit and falling against the train. If this were a sobriety test, I’d be spending the night in jail. I made it the length of one car without eating dirt, turning constantly to see if any zombies were coming.

  “Gotta pick it up, man.” I started a slow trot and immediately braced for impact as the ground came up to meet me.

  “This sucks,” I said, spitting dirt out of my mouth. I got up and started again. I teetered, I tottered, but it seemed I had gone into Weeble mode—I wasn’t going down. Although, I now had company. I had a four-car lead, so somewhere in the neighborhood of a football-field head start.

  “Move motherfucker, move.” I shifted up another gear, from stumbling idiot to power walk. It wasn’t going to cut it; I fished out my weapon and kept going. I’d gone two more cars and they’d halved the distance. My plan was one more car and then start firing. Have I ever told you how much my plans suck? Apparently I was being chased by an Olympian. I was five feet from my goal when I was impacted from the rear and my legs folded in on themselves. I dropped the gun as I once again tasted dirt.

  I spun, the zombie was reaching for my neck with her mouth. Long black lines of spittle hung from her cancerous-looking maw as she snapped wildly. I had one hand on her chest and the other wrapped around her neck. It was not lost on me that my fingers were sinking into the soft, rotten flesh around her esophagus. Any harder and I could punch holes in it. If her friends caught up, I was a goner. I pushed her away, not nearly as far as I’d hoped, and she sprang up impossibly quicker than I. She dove again; this time I narrowly missed the steel of the coupling as we once again went to ground.

  “You fucking bitch,” I grunted as she tore into the collar of my jacket. I wrapped both of my hands around her neck and lifted up while simultaneously pushing off with my legs. I was now under the heavy steel coupling, and her head was above it. I pulled in with all the strength I could muster, shattering her front teeth against the metal. Bits of blackened bone littered my face. I did it again and again, maggoty meat raining down into my eyes and mouth, until finally a black ooze intermingled with gray brain matter began to drop off the train and down toward me. My legs finally got the message that they should be onboard with the rest of my body, and they helped propel me out from under before I got too much zombie stew on me. Not all of it, mind you, and I might have started to shut down mentally in disgust if not for a couple of issues.

  The newly formed Deadly Duo were close, and so were the motorcycles. I ran, not even remembering that I was without a weapon. I wasn’t at a full-on sprint, but I was keeping pace with the zombies, maybe even making some gains. I considered hopping onto a car and taking care of them, and that was when I realized that my gun was lying in the dirt.

  “Oh, that’s just fucking perfect.” I may have said that, more likely thought it. I was pissed. My legs were beginning to protest the demands I was making of them, but they’d have to file a grievance later. I’d done close to a quarter mile when I finally saw the engine car—actually, engine cars. There was another loud bleat of the train whistle.

  “Come on Trip, what are you doing?”

  Got my answer soon enough, they’d done it. He was sending me a warning. At first the train wasn’t moving much more than a snail’s pace, maybe a turtle. By the time I’d ran the distance of four more cars, it had moved up to my original trot. I had to get back on; if I fell or waited until it really picked up speed, I could be left behind. There was a small scare as I ran to the nearest car and reached out for the rail attached to the side. I closed my hand and came up empty; the train was getting up to speed quickly—another burst from me, a near stumble, and success! My hand wrapped around the pipe and I pulled myself up and on. The clickety-clack of the moving train began to dominate my hearing. I’d stopped running, but the zombies had not; the closest one was within handshake distance as I stepped over to the coupling and grabbed the ladder to climb back up.

  “Sayonara, bitches!” I yelled once I got up on top and caught my breath. Note to self, apparently zombie women—women in general—don’t like to be called bitches. One of them took a cue from me and was climbing up. I saw the top of her head as she crested the train car. A fucking zombie was climbing a ladder—this was insane. It was entirely more than she should have been to able fathom. A zombie climbing a ladder was akin to a dog doing physics problems while washing the dishes. I stood up and took the steps needed to get over to the ladder. She was about head and shoulders above the top when I pulled my leg back and punted like I was going for a sixty-yard field goal. My boot struck her flush in the mouth and propelled her off the ladder and under the traveling train. I heard a satisfying squish as her body was reduced to pulp. I was eternally grateful I couldn’t see it happen. Watching a zombie burst was not on my bucket list.

  I still had a fair number of problems; I was ten cars removed from Jack and Trip. Behind me, I noted that apparently all the zombies had attended the same train-hopping class. The cars to my rear were swarming with them. And yeah, the motorcycles were coming by the hundreds. I couldn’t make the drivers out just yet, but I had a sneaking feeling they weren’t Shriners out on a joy ride.

  “I love this day.” There was a gentle swaying to the train as it moved—not much, but enough that I felt more like I was on the bow of a ship than any land transportation.

  “Onward Christian soldier,” I was spurring myself on. The next two cars were flatbeds, which would have been welcome if nothing was on them. These, unfortunately, were stacked with huge black metal pipes. The train seemed to be going somewhere in the 20 mile per hour range.

  “This keeps getting betterer and betterer”—my journal, I’ll use whatever words I choose. I could get down the side of the car I was on easily enough, but there were absolutely no handholds on the other side, except for the stacked pipes. Action stars always made this shit look so easy, but it ain’t. I was petrified. I had decent recuperative powers, but nothing was going to help me if I found myself under the clickety-clack noisemaker. I had one hand on the ladder, both feet on the coupling, and my other hand outstretched to the nearest pipe. Now I just had to find the gumption to let go and reach. Clickety-clack, clickety-clack; the railroad ties were a blur beneath me. This time there were no opportunities for oversight, as I was already on the outskirts of rational action. Clickety-clack, knick-knack paddy-whack get your brain smacked.

  I pushed off as the train lurched a bit to the right; I found myself stuck in the middle of no-man’s land for a brief second as I struggled to regain my footing. I pin-wheeled my arms as my momentum brought me toward the pipes. I grabbed one like I was in the sixth grade and I got ahold of my first tit. Lord knows Becky Johnson hadn’t enjoyed it nearly as much as I had. She probably still has some deep tissue bruising.

  “Wow, that sucked.”

  Now I had the daunting task of climbing up the pipe pyramid, and I would have too if I wasn’t interrupted by the shadow suddenly cast over me. There was a zombie above and behind me—I think it was one of the Dirty Duo, but I couldn’t be sure. Didn’t much matter. I could see it in her eyes: she was gauging the jump. Her plan, as ill thought-out as it was, would still get us both killed; she was going to try and jump on me and we would both find ourselves under the clickety-clack. Never dawned on me until I did it, but I climbed inside the tube directly in front of me. I had a good couple of inches or so of clearance on each shoulder. I could fit in and presumably be able to move. I hoped so, because one entry on my list of fears is claustrophobia. The idea of being lodged in this metal tomb—I mean tube—was terrifying. I elbowed my way in, maybe made it about ten feet before I got about as close to panic mode as I’d been since my legs had gone on v
acation. I was going to back out, no if ands or buts—there was no way I would be able to travel the length of the pipe, not without a brain aneurysm anyway.

  I backed up a few inches until another full-on welling of terror struck again. I was stuck, or so I thought—the problem ended up being worse. The zombie had decided to join me. Her outstretched arm had grabbed my calf. Backing up was off the table, and moving forward was not going to be easy with her trying to piggyback. Didn’t make me stop trying, though. I was smacking my knee hard as I thrust out, trying to lose my freeloading rider. She had a firm grip and was trying to pull up high enough to get her bite on. I had to pull myself through as fast as I could, not allowing her to do that. I guess the one good thing that came out of this was the threat of being bitten and potentially eaten kind of overshadowed the claustrophobia. My right leg was wagging back and forth as she bit into my heel and shook her head from side to side like a dog with a chew toy. I kept kicking with my left and nailed her a few times, even getting her to break a few teeth as her head was rocked back—but that grip, I just couldn’t lose it.

  So on we went as I dragged her with me. I really wasn’t sure what my next move was going to be as I approached the exit. I was headfirst and I had nothing to really hold onto. If I just fell out like a bit of toothpaste from a tube, I would end up on the coupling with my tagalong buddy landing on top of me; I had no desire to see how that would end up. Most likely we’d be crushed together, our DNA forever comingled, and that would just piss off my wife, Tracy, to no end. I twisted my body so I was facing upward, then I gripped the lip of the pipe and pulled myself and Parasite Patty with me. I was halfway out, reaching up two levels and holding on to that pipe. The zombie had bit into my boot-covered ankle; she must have been part pit bull because it hurt like hell. With my right arm fully immersed in a pipe, I pulled my body up, then thrust my left into the next layer up. I kept doing this until I was completely out of the pipe, the zombie actually serving as a stabilizing factor to keep me on the train.

  I grunted as I pulled further, her hands still around my calf as she tried to find a place to sink her teeth unimpeded into soft flesh. Her head was completely out and I took the opportunity to pull that leg as far up toward my chest as I could, so that I could put the heel of my other boot into her forehead. The sound was sickening as I repeatedly brought the boot down. The first impact sloughed the skin off her forehead, exposing the white of bone through the black viscous liquid they once called blood. The second hit shattered her nose, but it was the third that will stick with me, as it carried the sound of her neck snapping as I bent it back at an unnatural angle. The back of her head struck the pipe below as her head lolled about almost as if independent of the rest of her body.

  I’d shaken her free, but she wasn’t dead yet. She also gripped the lip of the pipe and began to pull her body out. I was horrified as I watched her emerge, her head bent all the way backwards.

  “Oh, there is no friggin’ way.” Bile was threatening its way up my throat.

  “Not only no, but fuck no.” I started crushing her hands under the tread of my boots, which produced a desirable effect as her body fell somewhat away along with bits of her fingers. I went from one disturbing image to another; her head was millimeters from the heavy wooden ties, occasionally we passed one that was raised just a bit higher than the others, or a knot in the wood poked up, just enough to catch the bottom of her dangling head and swing it around like a fucking lunatic pendulum. Her head would rattle from side to side, back and forth. When her face came into view, she was wearing that mask of hatred and hunger; finally, mercifully (for me), she slid the rest of the way out and down to the clickety-clack and was gone.

  “Yeah, there’s some high-powered nightmare fuel right there.” I cautiously climbed down the pipes onto my favorite train apparatus: the twelve-inch-wide coupler. With one hand gripping behind me, I tentatively reached for the one in front. Surprisingly, the most difficult crossing thus far went the smoothest, and it gave me the short-lived hope that the worst had passed, it really had just begun I suppose. I now had a firm grip on the pipe in front of me. This time, I opted to go up since I couldn’t face the idea of being lodged in a tube like a sardine—although those come in tins, so maybe like a salami? At any rate, it did not appeal to me. The pipes were stacked four across at the top of the structure, so it was wide enough, even if uneven—still, the preferable way to cross. I stood, one leg on one pipe, the other, well, on the other pipe. I was thinking about crawling, and I might have if I hadn’t turned around. Zombies had boarded the train en masse. How the idea of boarding spread among them was open to debate, and frankly I didn’t give a shit how or why. They were on, and that was all that mattered.

  That would have been bad enough without the whistlers I saw riding parallel to the train. Right now they were focused on the zombies, but eventually they would want to see who was steering the ship, so to speak. I was happy when I finally got off the top, first off because, well does it need explaining? Plus, I didn’t want to be so visible against the skyline. I’d made it to the first of the engines, and at least getting from car to car was a little easier. There was a small skirt that encircled the entire thing, with a railing no less. I got the idea that now might be a good time to get rid of some dead weight, in the form of a couple of hundred rail cars.

  “They make this look so easy,” I said, looking down at the coupling. Then I remembered how easy they also make going through the roof of an elevator seem. I can tell you from personal experience and a hundred and fifty dollar fine: it’s not that easy. I didn’t see any obvious way to make the trains split; I even got the idea to reach underneath and see if there was a button or lever down there. I might have spent more time messing with it, but that was not a commodity I could spare. I hopped onto the small platform of the next engine in line and walked around the side. I peered into the small port window on the door that led in, making sure my friends hadn’t set up camp in this particular one. I repeated these steps (except for the dangling down and reaching around part, struggling with the couplings) four more times.

  I was somehow and miraculously on the last car, halfway to the door that led in, when a dollop of fear seized my gut. What if they weren’t in there? What if I’d been coming up one side and they’d been going down the other? Or maybe even worse, that whatever force had “popped” us in here had “popped” them out. I could not handle being in this world alone, without a weapon, and piloting a bazillion-ton vehicle. No force in its right mind would ever let me do that. I took a deep breath as I got to the door. My fear was unfounded: Jack was studying some gauges, holding a huge manual in one hand. Trip was doing yoga, I’m almost ashamed to say I know what it was: downward dog into crocodile. He actually looked fairly graceful as he changed from one move to the next. I pulled the door open and watched as Jack froze and looked over to his weapon, which was inconveniently many feet away. Trip didn’t so much as blink.

  “Hey, Ponch!” he said as he transitioned to the modified crescent lunge. Please don’t ask me how I know my asanas.

  “Hey, Mike,” Jack said. “It’s good to see you up and about. However, you still look like shit.”

  “Zombies, whistlers on board, lose the rest of the train.” I didn’t quite realize just how exhausted I was until I spoke to them.

  “On it.” Trip said, coming up to full sun salutation.

  “Trip, I tried,” I told him. “There aren’t any switches or levers. Or even a pin to pull.”

  “Ponch, Ponch, Ponch.” He was shaking his head. “This isn’t 1876.” He paused. “Is it?” He looked over at me.

  I didn’t answer—in this world, it just might be. Shit, could be year one or year one million; how could we tell?

  “Trip, what are you doing?” Jack asked, placing his hand out in a useless gesture to get him to stop. “I just figured out how to get this thing running, so don’t even think about stopping it. Or touching anything, for that matter.”

  “C
an I grab your gun?” I asked Jack.

  He didn’t look too pleased. I got the sentiment, as I’d already lost two of my own.

  “What happened to yours?”

  “Had a fight with a zombie horde; things got complicated.” I couldn’t tell him a lone female zombie had wrestled it away from me; I still had my man-card to think of.

  If he hadn’t been halfway through that big book of instructions, trying to figure things out, I’m pretty sure he would have said no, but we had enemies at the gates and someone had to throw up a defense or at least the illusion of defense.

  “Trip, seriously, don’t start fucking with things again.”

  Jack looked at about his wits’ end. Trip could do that to you. I noticed him cross over to a large screen on the dashboard of the train. Console? No clue as to the nomenclature. He touched a few buttons like this was a practiced routine, and within a couple of seconds, there was a digital representation of the train on the screen. What kind of car, how much it weighed, what it was carrying. All manner of information.

  His finger hovered. “Let’s blow this popsicle stand!”

  “No!” Jack shouted, lunging toward Trip.

  Trip’s finger came down even as Jack and I rushed toward him. The train lurched and there was a loud whooshing sound like pulling a knife out of the sidewall of a tire. Umm, not that I’d know this firsthand—I’ve just heard such things from others.

  “What did you do, Trip?” I asked, now standing next to him.

  Jack was on his other side, I think getting ready to physically remove him from that spot should he reach for anything else. His look indicated that Trip might soon be flying out the door.