by W. J. Lundy
Gus stopped and turned to face him. “Don’t go getting sentimental on me, old man. Where the hell are the cousins?”
Henry cupped his hand around the pipe, shielding the light from his match as he lit it. He puffed in and exhaled the gray smoke. “It’s already too late for that I’m afraid.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Sentimentality, that is. I didn’t come here to help you escape.”
Gus smiled and took a threatening step forward, squaring his broad shoulders toward the old man. “So, what? You going to kill me?” Gus said. “For what? Leaving these animals behind? For trying to clean up this country?”
Henry smiled, not intimidated. He drew in another breath of the tobacco then exhaled, blowing the smoke into Gus’s face. “No, I’m going to kill you for sending killers to my home.”
“You’re talking in riddles, old man. Now let’s get out of here before I flatten you.”
Henry let the pipe rest between his teeth. “The kid I mentioned—Ricky? I never met him on the road, never talked to him about you having work, never talked to him about bounties. Nope, I met Ricky when he and a couple of your boys went to the west slope, just like you told them to. Yeah, and they found my place. They found me.”
“And what? You killed them?”
“I did,” Henry said. “But not until Ricky told me all about you.”
“Why, you...” Gus stepped inside and swung up his right arm, but Henry anticipated the attack. His karambit un-sheathed, he ducked under Gus’s arm and slashed upward, the curved blade cutting deep into the big man’s flank. Henry yanked back, withdrawing the knife and slashing opening Gus’s side. The big man tried to grab him, but Henry was just as strong and flung the man back and down into the grass.
Gus twisted in agony and put a hand to his side, pulling back fingers coated in hot, sticky blood. He dug his heels into the ground and tried to push away from the old man standing over him with the now glistening blade. He coughed in pain, clenching his teeth. The old man looked down at him and shook his head. “The infected will come for you now,” he said just above a whisper. “Do you smell it? The coppery tang of your own blood?”
“Screw you,” Guns said. Pushing away with his heels and rolling to his belly, he crawled to the wall.
Henry walked and stood over him. “Why bother running? Even in death you’re a coward, Gus; even cut wide open and bleeding out, you won’t turn back to face what haunts you.”
Gus rolled to his back and clenched his fists. “Then just kill me.”
The old man shook his head in disgust, looking at the gaping wound in the man’s gut. He took the pipe from his mouth and knocked the spent ashes onto Gus’s quivering legs. Placing the pipe back into his shirt pocket, he turned and walked away. Looking over his shoulder, he said, “I won’t waste anymore sweat on you. You’re already dead.”
Chapter 26
Crabtree, West Virginia
Free Virginia Territories
“What do you mean she isn’t here?” Brad said, turning to face Ella.
“She’s up there,” Ella gasped. “The men took her... they made Chelsea go to the front.”
“No!” Brad yelled, looking back to the head of the car. Sean and Brooks were pushing the survivors past him to the rear of the train. “I have to go,” he said, turning to run to the front. He collided with the bolted door, then flung back the lock and let the door swing open. He found the platform deserted. Looking down at the coupler holding the cars together, he saw a small gray lump pressed against the mechanism and a long string of time fuse belching black smoke. He bent his knees and leapt the gap to the opposing platform, fractions of a second before the blast threw him against the wall and rattled the car.
The coupler broke free, releasing the back of the train. He lay on the platform of Carson’s passenger car watching the rest of the train fade out of sight. Fighters looked down at him from the roof, and he scrambled to avoid their gunshots that pinged off the deck. He’d dropped his rifle and now only had the suppressed M9 pistol to return fire. He huddled low and pressed against the steel walls of the platform. Behind, he watched Brooks and Sean stepping onto the fading boxcar’s deck. They fired precision shots into the men on the train’s roof as the separation increased. “We’ll find you,” Sean said over the static filled radio. “Stay alive and we’ll find you.”
Brad watched as his friends faded from sight. He shook his head and took off the headset, tossing it to the tracks speeding past below. With the enemies above him dead, the sounds of gunfire stopped. He moved to a squat and pressed his back against the bulkhead behind him. He listened intently, the noise from the diesel electric engine and the clacking of the tracks filling the air. He shimmied to the right of the door and cautiously stood up. This door, unlike the others, slid in and was slightly ajar. Brad switched the pistol to his left hand and cautiously slid the door completely open.
Edging around the corner, he looked down a long, narrow corridor with several evenly spaced doors on the left and right side of the passage. He stepped inside, letting the door slide shut behind him and silencing much of the noise. On the floor five feet to his front was a man gasping for air, a foaming gunshot wound at the center of his chest. Brad stepped into the passageway and stood over the man before pumping two suppressed rounds in the man’s skull. With a last gasp, the man’s head dropped to the floor.
Ahead in the long, narrow hallway, the lights flashed and flickered. He stopped and listened for noise from the compartments; he had no idea how many of Carson’s men remained. Brad stiffened and bent his elbows, letting the suppressed pistol lead the way. Slowly he crept forward, the clicking of the road wheels on the tracks filling the passageway. The light flickered overhead; he fired shots into the clear plastic cover, killing the distracting flicker and enclosing the car in darkness. The only light that remained came from under the doors leading to the private cabins.
He stopped at the first door on the left, hiding his head from the window. He pushed it in and moved around the corner, following his gun’s muzzle into the space. Seeing it was a private cabin filled with canned goods and boxes, he pulled back and spun into the hallway, repeating the same procedure in the cabin to his right. Moving back to the hallway, he stepped to the next door and again opened it and swept inside.
He heard a cracking of broken glass behind him and dove to the cabin’s floor. The window above his head exploded, furious cold air rushing into the confined space. Brad stretched to the side, extended the pistol into the void behind him, and began rapidly pulling the trigger, firing blind. As the last brass cartridge expelled from his pistol, the gunfire stopped. He rolled to his back, dropped the magazine, and racked the slide. He edged forward and looked into the dead eyes of a man holding a submachine gun. A red beret tipped from the side of the dead man’s head; expanding red stains blotched the chest of his tiger-striped camouflage. Stretching into the passageway, he snatched away the UMP .45-caliber submachine gun and removed spare magazines from the guard’s body, then ducked back into cover.
Reloading both weapons, he sat listening and waiting for another attack. He slid to the compartment door and peeked into the passageway, finding nothing but darkness. Quietly, he rose back to his feet and pivoted into the hall. He holstered the M9 and led the way with the muzzle of the UMP 45, swinging into the next cabin. Bringing up the muzzle, he found himself looking at a restrained woman, hands and feet tied and an orange sack over her head. Behind her was a large man. He had the woman’s head locked in a tight grip and a pistol to her temple.
Brad raised the submachine gun and aimed at the man’s face. “So, you must be Carson. I didn’t expect to find you hiding behind a woman.”
The big man shook his head. “No, no, no. That’s not what this is; I’m offering to make you a deal. You wouldn’t have come up here if she wasn’t important to you.”
Brad forced a laugh. “What’s important to me is that you die.”
&nbs
p; “Die? Die for what? What would that solve?”
Brad looked at him, his jaw quivering, not knowing how to respond.
Carson pressed the barrel closer to Chelsea’s head and smiled at Brad. “I’m just doing what others have been afraid to do. I’m trying to start something new again. I’m bringing us back. Hiding behind walls? Is that what the future of man is? I don’t think so.”
“You killed my people,” he said.
“Killed people? I’m saving people, and bringing everyone back. People have a future with me.”
Brad shook his head, “Doesn’t matter. I came here to stop you.”
“For who? Texas? You want to give them all the power?”
Brad exhaled and blinked his eyes. He kept the sights on Carson’s head as he rolled his neck. “I’m tired. If you want to talk about this then let her go, find some beers, and we can chat. Otherwise, I’m going to pump .45 slugs into your brain bucket.”
The man shook his head. “Now, back up, soldier boy. We both know that isn’t true.”
Brad held his position, looking the man in the face. He wanted nothing more than to pull the trigger and watch the rounds tear into the man’s forehead. It was the professional in him that prevented it; that and the fear that something would go wrong and Chelsea would be killed.
“I don’t think you’re half as tough as you’re pretending to be. If you were, I’d already be dead.” The big man grinned as he released the woman’s head just enough to remove the cover, revealing Chelsea’s fear-filled eyes. Her jaw trembled. As she looked at Brad, a tear formed and rolled to the corner of her lip.
“Aww, now look at that,” Carson said, seeing the expression on the soldier’s face change. “Looks like the soldier boy has a soft side after all.”
Brad’s hand squeezed the pistol grip. “Let her go,” he said.
“Uh—no, that’s not how this works,” Carson spat back. “If you want me to let her go, you’ll do exactly as I say.”
Brad gripped the submachine gun tight and pulled it into the pocket of his shoulder. If he was going to win this fight, he needed an edge. “Listen up, shithead. I have a gun pointed at your face. Let her go or I’ll bust your grape the way I did your son’s.”
The man’s face flushed. “What?” Carson said, the pitch in his voice changing. “What do you know about my son?”
“Does a skinny little punk by the name of Carl ring a bell? Ugly as fuck, carried a chrome shotgun?”
“Impossible.”
“He was a real asshole. Dead as shit now, though. I shot him in the face and barbecued his body for the infected to feast on.”
Carson mashed his teeth and shoved the woman away, bringing the pistol in Brad’s direction. The soldier’s finger already taking the slack from the trigger, the submachine gun spit rounds that tore through the man’s skull, snapping his head back into the shattered window behind him. Chelsea pulled away and, with a swift front kick, Brad launched the man’s body from the broken cabin window.
Chapter 27
He found the engine empty, the engineers either dead or had abandoned the train. Brad stopped the locomotive at a ghost town some hundred miles over the Ohio border. She was sitting in a sleeper car, two loaded packs at her feet, rifles strapped to the top of each. She smiled up at him and handed off a half-eaten can of fruit cocktail.
“Will this stop them?” Chelsea asked.
Brad took the can and stood in the doorway of the sleeper car. He shook his head and stepped toward her. “Someone else will take his place... someone always will.”
“And then what?”
Brad shrugged. “Texas can figure that out.” He looked down at the backpacks and held his gaze on them. “Are you sure about this?” he said, sitting on a bunk across from her. “I figured out how to stop this thing, I’m sure I could figure out how to take it back.”
“Would you stay with me?”
He turned toward her and smiled grimly. “I can’t stay there.”
“Then I won’t go back.”
“What about Ella and Shane?” Brad said, breaking eye contact and looking away.
“Shane wasn’t happy there either; he’s always wanted to take Ella to Texas. Without me holding him back, maybe he’ll finally do it.”
“They’ll worry about you.”
“I’ll leave a note for them, Shane will understand.”
“And Ella?”
“She needs a real home, someplace safe in the south. Shane can give that to her.”
Slowly, he shifted his weight from the bunk and rose up, pulling the pack to his shoulders. Chelsea did the same and followed him down the passageway of the train car. They were stopped over a northwest intersection, a blacktop road just on the outskirts of some no name town. Brad jumped to the ground and helped Chelsea down behind him. The air was cold, much colder than it had been back in West Virginia. There was no snow on the ground, and the blacktop was a sun-bleached charcoal. The sun cast a gray light through the heavy cloud cover.
It felt good having his boots back on the ground; he stepped away from the train and used his binoculars to search the terrain ahead. An empty street, vandalized and long ago looted buildings and homes. This was a dead land, dead to everything—including the Primals. He walked slower than usual, keeping to the center of the road with Chelsea just behind him. They passed by homes with broken windows and grass as high as the mailboxes.
They’d stopped to investigate several cars. Beyond repair, gas tanks punctured and drained, upholstery and wiring all cannibalized for other uses. At the edge of the town was a river and a two lane bridge. There had been a fire, the buildings scorched with nothing left but charred frames and ashes. On the far side of the river was a welcome sign and an ancient, defeated roadblock made of burned out police cars. The name of the town on the welcome sign had been painted over in bold red with Hell, population zero, stay away.
Brad walked slowly around the barrier, kneeling to lift pieces of spent brass in his cupped hand. He turned to Chelsea, showing them to her as he tossed them to the grass. “5.56 and .40 caliber,” he said holding one up. “Police and military.” He shook his head and let them fall back to the road where they clanged and rolled away.
“Why haven’t we seen any of the infected here?” she asked.
“Because they left, the same as the people. There’s no food here and Primals have to eat, the same as us.” Brad stood and turned to face the distant trees. “They’ll be in there, living off the land like the APEX predators they are now.”
The pair continued on. Leaving the town, the terrain became more flat and was surrounded by grasslands. Farmers’ fields reclaimed by nature were filled with small saplings and overgrown with weeds. Near the end of the day, Brad spotted a deer but let it go, not wanting to risk a gunshot so close to dark. They walked past a farm. The house’s windows and doors were broken, the barn reduced to ashes. Decomposed bodies hung from a tall oak tree in the front yard. They moved quickly past it, not speaking, but holding their rifles close.
A wooden billboard at the intersection of a country road advertised fresh produce. They took the turn, following the sign and staying north. At the top of a hill, they rested and surveyed the small town ahead. Like the one before, this place was mostly burned. Wind blew in Brad’s face and drops of icy snow pelted against his cheeks, reminding him to find shelter. He used his binoculars to search the small town. Cold and gray, there were no signs of life; no movement, no flickering lights, no smoke from a welcoming fire. The closest building was a small, white house set just off the road. Behind it was a steel, pole barn and a fenced-in yard filled with rusted tractors.
It was never safe to approach unknown terrain from the high ground and crossing in the open, so they went to the back of the hill and moved into the tall fields. The going was slower, but it allowed them to circumvent the hill and approach the pole barn unseen. The building was unlocked, a rusty hasp pulled back with a crow bar that still lay on the ground. The door was s
hut and Brad slid it open just enough so they could pass though.
The inside was dark and cold, the floor filled to shoulder height with tractor and automotive parts. Brad held a flashlight and inspected the space, ready to turn away and check the house when Chelsea pushed him inside and closed the door behind them. “No, this is good; nobody will come here,” she whispered.
Brad wended around the piles of scrap, finding a section of bare floor in the back corner near a drill press and workbench constructed of old lumber. They dropped their gear just as the wind outside picked up and sleet began to pelt the steel building. It was very cold, and the wind crept in through every crevice of the pole barn. He found an old paint can and used his tomahawk to break down the wooden bench. Using the scraps, he built a hot fire from the dry bits of wood. Sitting together, wrapped in a wool blanket, Brad drifted off to sleep watching a can of soup boil on the fire.
When he woke, the fire was out. His face was cold, but she was wrapped around him, and under the wool blankets he was warm. The wind rattled the steel sides of the building and he could hear their moans. The Primals were awake and on the hunt. Moving in from the surrounding forest and grasslands, they would search for food. He lay awake until dawn, listening to her breathe, flinching at the howl of every Primal, and trying to estimate their distance and numbers in his head. Silently, he was coordinating a plan if they managed to get inside.
When the first rays of morning shone through holes in the building, he carefully crawled from the blankets. Stirring the coals and adding more fuel, he lit another fire, making a light meal of boiled oats for their breakfast. Chelsea woke and sat up, watching him with the blankets still draped over her shoulders. He stirred the contents and handed her a half share in a plastic bowl.
Taking a bite with a brown plastic spoon, she looked up at him. “Why did you leave the camp?”
