Dean jerked a thumb at the boat and spoke over his shoulder. “Not my ship, Ms Sherr.” He knew he was being an ass, but he was still irked by her stubbornness about protecting herself. Now she was talking prudence? Heck with her.
The team marched away and KK, the remaining soldier, set up a perimeter guard with Bill Wall and Tom Murphy. With little else to do, the rest settled in to wait.
The shore team followed the pipe system that led from the pumps, while their heads-up displays offered a map showing a short hike of about a mile along an icy trench. The trench led directly beneath Interstate 95 and like another snapshot of time, the major highway remained clogged with the relics of mass hysteria.
As the scout team left the road behind them, Dean was reminded of his younger days as a volunteer firefighter and shuddered at the memory of a rural honky-tonk where he had spent many a boozy night. A band without a permit for its pyrotechnics had accidentally set the building ablaze. In their panic, the patrons all rushed for the exits as one. Until Omega caused all such events to pale, Dean and the other firefighters witnessed one of the most surreal acts of mob mentality in American history. Perhaps 24 people had tried to run out of the club’s front door at once. They had instantly clogged the exit with too much massed flesh and had become wedged in a way that no one could move an inch forward. All they had to do was agree to step backward to untangle themselves, but in their terror to escape the flames not one could gather the sense to do so. As more people bunched up behind them, those wedged in front screamed and pleaded with the firefighters to pull them free. It was hopeless. No amount of tugging would dislodge them. Dean and his compatriots watched in horror as the flames took the people from behind, burning their legs and backsides while their arms, heads and chests remained in fresher air. Putting a hose on them only proved to prolong their agony, the water unable to reach the flames inside. This scenario took place in several of the building’s windows and also at the back door. Scores died horribly by only getting halfway to freedom. Such were the Interstates during Omega.
As they walked, a mountain of coal that had been dug out of the hills of West Virginia more than a decade before began to appear. This was the first time that the group had moved as a team outside of the sim and Hernandez was pleased with their pace. They had been trained after a fashion to be jumped at any moment (the sim had them fighting Fiends and their kids nearly the whole way). It was nerve racking and she checked in with each of them separately by using the com-link built into their helmets. So far everyone was holding up.
The weak summer sun fought through the clouds just enough to cast shadows behind four huge idle smoke stacks. A vast train yard held five parallel rows of tracks filled head to tail with empty coal cars. When they reached the main line, a long row of cars snaked for a quarter of a mile to where they remained hooked up to a rust covered engine. Jamesbonds climbed to the top of one and confirmed that eight cars beyond the Transfer station remained full. It was exactly what they had hoped for; more than enough to get them across the country. The diesel engine, on the other hand, was a wreck. The weather had not been kind these many harsh years and a fuel line had become detached allowing the diesel to flow out and seep into the ground. Even if they had the battery capacity to start the big machine, the empty fuel tank made it a heap of useless metal standing in their way.
“Piece of cake,” said Wen. “The thing is parked right next to this side line. We detach it, and back it out of the way with our steamer, hook up our coal and off we go.”
“I like your optimism, Marshal,” said MacAfee. “Let’s go get our steamer.”
“Even the weather is nice, sort of,” said Maggie Tender, which took Dean by surprise because the woman had never spoken out loud in front of him.
Thirty minutes later they were back aboard the cabin cruiser and heading up the James.
A ruined Richmond dredged up a cesspool of bad memories. Only a handful of hearty birds provided any relief from the mournful landscape. They tied up between the shore and one of the railroad trestles that spanned the tracks across from Old Town Manchester to the city center. The same scout team disembarked and followed the tracks past a large oil storage facility. They checked the tanks, found them to be empty, then stopped cold when they noticed that the rusted tracks nearby had a fresh sheen on them, the only explanation the passing wheels of a train. Someone had come down here and salvaged the oil. MacAfee felt certain that he’d know about any such mission. If it was the Delmarva raiders, they were set up better than they thought. Speculation was pointless, but they kept their guard up against more than just zombies. Wen said, “Shit. Pardon my French. You think they took the engine?”
They picked up their pace to a jog, running past a vast electricity substation. The route and the landscape deviated little from the sim, and, just as the dated satellite photo had shown, they came upon a rusted out commuter train with heaps of human skeletons both inside and out. The massacre was clearly the result of a Fiend attack, as most of the remains were separated from their clothes. A positively huge feeding had taken place. None of the sailors and soldiers who now observed it could escape his or her own flashback to the Exodus. Dean recalled scenes of horror playing out in shocking detail on TV, the anchor people hardly able to grasp what they were seeing. One woman anchor repeating: “This is really happening. This is really happening.”
The commuter train had derailed across from the Old Dominion Railway Museum, the main building of which was built from brick with a shallow asphalt roof and partially surrounded by cobblestone streets, giving the Nantucket explorers a quick taste of home. To their collective relief, the antique prize locomotive sat on its own set of tracks still inside a clashing modern enclosure. The huge windows, though covered in grime, showed the tank engine perfectly intact. A colossal pair of glass doors opened with ease as Wen pulled on them. The group entered with a small sense of awe, the massive machine towering above them. The glossy black paint still gleamed on the 1218. Strong smells of oiled steel and creosote filled the room. Like a kid with a new toy, Wen climbed into the engineer’s compartment and glanced around. “Definitely in good shape up here. You can tell it’s gotten some use but, shit, pardon my French, somebody liked to make sweet love to this baby.” He stuck his head back out at Kita, Tender and Lee. “Well, what you standing around for? Let’s get this baby up and running.” He turned to MacAfee, “Fuel. Just like the sim, we’ll need a crap load of wood to get us down to that coal. Oh, and water.”
MacAfee said, “We were all there for the sim, Wen.” He turned to the others. “Snap to!”
Dean headed off at a jog to collect the rest of the crew for wood detail. MacAfee watched the man disappear around a bend and his eyes fell on Hansel who was staring across the river. “Anything out there?” Hansel’s ears moved in the direction of MacAfee’s voice, but his eyes remained fixed on a window on a squat building that looked onto the 14th Street Bridge. MacAfee used his helmet to scan the building: no movement, no heat signatures. “What do you see?” He gently touched Hansel’s elbow to get the puck’s attention only to have the creature offer a hiss through his pointy teeth. “There is something,” said the puck. “I can’t say what it is.”
“You mean like other pucks?”
Hansel turned and let his enormous eyes settle on the colonel, then repeated the sentence. “I – can’t – say - what – it – is. Would you like to remove your helmet so I can say that to you without words?”
MacAfee offered a thin smile to the strange creature. “You will let me know if there’s anything we need to worry about.”
The puck responded with a quick insincere smile of his own and turned to stare back at the window.
MacAfee removed his helmet and tried reaching out to the puck. Don’t fuck with me. What are you sensing? He felt nothing in return. I know you can hear me. Suddenly, he felt utterly immobilized. His body wanted to collapse to the ground, but he found himself standing at rigid attention instea
d. His head swirled with the sounds of garbled whispers, howls and grunts. One thought broke through over and over. COME, COME, COME. He wanted to. He so very much wanted to find those voices and offer himself up to them. Then Hansel’s voice through the chatter - Satisfied, Dusty MacAfee? I cannot tell how close, but that window over there disturbs me. You need to put your helmet back on. Without it you will leave us. I can only tell you that they are.
They are what?
Are.
Can you be more specific?
Are! They are! What don’t you get?
They are?
Yes. Very much so.
Hansel didn’t release his mental grip on the Colonel until he made the man put his helmet back on. Several of the people working to get the train going noticed MacAfee suddenly sitting and holding his hands to his helmet. After a moment, MacAfee gathered himself and quietly said, “If you ever do that again, I will shoot you.”
Hansel laughed and kept watching the window.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Not Alone
The crew who weren’t on lookout or trying to get the locomotive up and running were out finding wood to throw into the boiler. Dean decided that he needed some time alone and assigned himself to wood collecting. The weather was definitely milder this far south and a light drizzle began to fall. He briefly thought about the first years of the nuclear winter and how any precipitation was felt with dread - the general perception being that the falling snow was full of radiation. Iodine drops to protect the thyroid had become black-market gold. It had been almost impossible to obtain it on Nantucket. Fortunately, a nearly full time diet of iodine rich fish had provided well enough. Theoretically, as the disaster waned and the planet began to warm up again, the bulk of the radiation that had filled the atmosphere had been coaxed out of it. Theoretically.
As he stepped into a glade, the ground became soft and he noted green shoots coming up from what was otherwise gray leafy soil and long dead grass. A few purple wild flowers showed themselves and he felt his heart gladden. So many years without a flower. He didn’t realize how much he missed them. What a remarkably resilient thing, nature. Then he saw the footprint. Rather, footprints. They were human(ish) and his mind’s eye instantly flashed on Hansel and Gretel’s bare feet, their odd goatish gate. Fear instantly gripped him and he quickly ducked down while un-strapping the helmet that dangled off his belt. He cursed himself a fool. Hansel had said he’d felt them. Just because he or his sister didn’t see them.... Only when he had it firmly on his head did he scan his surroundings, the device even enhancing his ability to focus his hearing. Just the soft sound of the drizzle and his rapid breathing could be detected. He forced his breath into a more easy rhythm and kept scanning. No movement. Not even one of the many birds that continued to surprise him. He followed the footprints until they became scrambled a few yards away. Flies flitted back and forth. Then he spied an unmistakable group of shapes in a low depression a little further on. Skeletons. Well, partially skeletal. The badly decomposing bodies were scattered into pieces. He crept forward, the damp earth sucking at his feet, and looked closer: Worms and maggots crawled among the sharp teeth in a skull that was human but not. Then a reverse hinged leg. Pucks. Maybe six or seven based on his skull count. He knew wounds. These creatures had literally been shot to pieces. Not unlike the way that Corporal Gomez and Kneedham had met their end aboard the Ginger Girl. The tree bark beyond was torn from explosive bullet hits. He looked at the trees behind him and saw heaps of spent shell casings on the ground. Precise looking holes in the tree trunks instantly brought to mind the marks that the spider-like drones had left in the hull of his ship. BRAAANGH! He was jolted nearly out of his clothes as a loud and deep train whistle sounded. He instinctively dove, finding himself belly down on the soft wet ground, one of the rotting skulls right in front of his face. Cursing as the whistle blew again, he got up and ran toward the museum, scanning as best he could, keying his mic, “Blakely! Blakely!”
He got to the museum at the same moment that the tail of the big black locomotive slipped out of its glass and steel building. Thick steam shot past its wheels and dense white smoke poured from the stack. Many of the crew were there and they hollered in delight as Wen Blakely waved from the engineering compartment, giving the whistle one more toot. With a mixture of awe, pleasure and deep frustration, Dean waved his arms frantically at Blakely, “Stop blowing that fucking whistle, you idiot!”. Wen saw him waving and let a frown cross his face, his hand dropping from the pull chain. A second later, MacAfee and Dez came running from the riverbank, MacAfee screaming, “Why? Why the fucking whistle?”
Wen, Naoto Kitta and Abner Lee brought the train to a halt, all three wearing sheepish grins. Wen said, “Easier than I would have ever thought. This beauty runs like a dream. Sorry about the noise, just excited is all.”
While pointing behind him, Dean addressed everyone at once. “Helmet up! We are not alone. There are dead pucks in the forest over there. Shot dead within the last couple of weeks. Certainly the same folks who were sailing the Eagle.”
Hansel and Gretel turned as one to stare at the forest, a mixture of curiosity and fear crossing their faces. Everyone became instantly alert. MacAfee barked, “Dez, back on perimeter, now!” He clicked his mic. “KK, Green, you see anything?” He waited for them to report seeing no movement and then flipped up his visor, staring at Hansel. Hansel shrugged, “I have already said they are.”
“Well, I don’t know what the fuck that means! How fucking close are they?” hissed MacAfee.
Both replied. “We told Dusty MacAfee. He told Stewart Dean. We said they are.”
“What does ‘they are’ mean?” Eliza asked with patience.
Hansel looked at Gretel and smiled mischievously. She smiled back, but then turned serious, saying, “We are not sure. We can just feel them.”
Eliza asked, “Why have you not just said that?”
Hansel looked around and said, “They are. It is everywhere. We can feel it.”
Dean said, “It doesn’t matter now. We either rang the fucking dinner bell, called in the bad guys or both. We need to load up and get out of here as fast as we can.”
Set up for pleasure excursion rides, the Norfolk & Western 1218 had a coal/water tender, but there was an extra canteen tender (for additional water), also on display in the museum. There were three luxury passenger cars and a dinning car with an observation deck. It all needed to be connected. Gear was still piled outside with Palmer overseeing where it should all go. Dean barked out to Palmer, “Just chuck that shit onboard!” He turned to Sanders and pointed to the still yet to be loaded pile of wood. “Up into the coal car. Quick about it.”
Forty minutes later Wen had the 1218 chugging south with Sergeant Green running and leaping to be the last onboard. Given that they had no way to know what lay ahead, Wen, Kitta and Lee took turns looking ahead while keeping the boiler hot with a steady stream of wood. The engine had an auto loader that shifted coal from the tender to the fire, but the assortment of wood was too odd shaped to work with it and the three men worked up a quick sweat feeding the beast. MacAfee set up his command in the observation deck of the dinning car where his team could keep a constant view of the surroundings. It became Dean’s job to navigate. Like dead reckoning with a chart on the water, he had to judge their speed and compare it on a map. They would come to several places where they would have to stop and manually switch the train to different tracks. It would be slow going. At their first stopping point they took the time to switch the track back. Chances were, if they were being followed, it wouldn’t matter. Anyone could see the freshly uncovered steel where the wheels had rubbed off the rust. A baby could follow their path – but at the least it would slow them down.
Despite the slow going it didn’t take them long to make the straight shot south to the Contex power plant. With the big auto feed tender, they would be able to bypass the whole idea of hauling the coal cars themselves. An additional
maneuver required that they unhitch the passenger cars and leave them on another spur so they could back the tender parallel to the coal cars and transfer the fuel. The whole process took six hours and by the time they were done it was getting dark. While some of the crew got to work transferring coal one shovel load at a time, MacAfee set up another perimeter insisting that everyone work with night vision only. The rest of the crew used the time to sort out the gear and decide where to bunk. There were no sleeper cars so they tore out the bulk of the seats to create more floor space. The tracks around them became littered with 20th century first class seating. Dean found himself seeking out the company of Eliza and making his bunk there. He told himself that it was because he wanted to be close to the pucks, pick up whatever they were feeling, keep a watch on them. It was partially true, but he knew he was kidding himself. Eliza was going to be a distraction and he couldn’t help himself. Years of discipline were seemingly overridden with…. Both pucks stared at him while he shifted his pack off his back. Gretel wore a broad sharp smile. What is it Gretel? he asked, using his mind rather than words.
“We are not to communicate that way, Stewart Dean,” she said aloud.
Hansel said, “Rules, Stewart Dean. Rules,” while glancing with a smirk at Eliza who was busy trying to pin up a blanket between the overhead luggage rack and the floor. Better to give her sleeping space some privacy.
Eliza paused and took them all in, noting Dean’s sleeping bag. Finally she said, “Captain, I imagined that you would be bunking with the Colonel and his team.”
Dean looked at his pack and then back to the group. “I am. But I want to also set up a space here so that I can get feedback from Gretel and Hansel.” He unrolled his sleeping bag in an unclaimed spot and began to take his toilet kit out of his pack. He felt like a fool but he was committed now. He looked at the dopp kit and stuffed it back. “I’ll be back later to sort it out.” With that, he left the room to return to the observation deck.
Children Of Fiends: Book 2 of the Of Sudden Origin saga Page 12
