Zombie Road III: Rage on the Rails

by David A. Simpson

  They looked up to see Lars tumbling over the side railing, an arc of blood spraying through the air, and Bridget spin wildly, flying backward and getting caught in the handrail. She was held suspended for a moment then he saw her leg snap before she joined Lars in a bone-breaking crunch beside the tracks. The 60s on the roof all fell silent, almost simultaneously, and they could see bodies draped over a few of them. They heard more gunfire coming from the trains parked on the siding then suddenly the tracks were thick with heavily armed men running toward the train, gunning down the screaming undead who turned to attack them. There were hundreds of them, pouring out of the warehouses and out of the parked boxcars.

  The train started forward with a shriek of the diesels being throttled wide open, but men were already swinging aboard the dining cars, forcing the doors open. Bullets were zinging by them and Gunny and Griz both dove for the gravel, their plastic armor taking the brunt of the impact. The men coming at them were trying to run and shoot at the same time, but quickly moved their guns over to the more immediate threat, the massive horde of zombies coming in from the rear. The small arms fire the jihadis were sending into the crowd didn’t have the stopping power the .50s did and rarely even knocked them down, let alone killed them. Dozens of men managed to get on the train and were running for the engine to get it shut down. Gunny and Griz both had their rifles up and were picking off targets, but there were too many. The ambush had been too well organized.

  If they jumped on board now as the train lumbered by them, quickly picking up speed, they might be able to take out the radicals, might be able to save the train. But if Lars and Bridget were still alive, they wouldn’t be for long. The undead were streaming in from every direction, there were hundreds of bearded men screaming Allahu Akbar and haphazardly shooting at everything as they ran for the train, and more were climbing on every second.

  Gunny leveled his M-4 from his position on the ground and emptied the magazine into the nearest group of running Muslims, giving the undead something to chew on that didn’t shoot back. Griz did the same and as the engine passed them, Gunny shouted up at Stabby.

  “Deadman it and jump! They’re coming through the cars!”

  He reloaded, sprang to his feet and fired from the hip at the dozens of men still running for the train. He wasn’t trying to kill, wounding was better. It gave the dead easy targets to attack and maybe if the guy had friends, they would try to help him instead of shooting back. The living and the dead were pouring onto the tracks, all of them running for the train.

  Gunny skidded to a stop by the crumpled heaps of Bridget and Lars. Blood was sheeting down the side of her head from a deep groove that used to have an ear, her hair already drenched at the gash. A leg was twisted at an unnatural angle, an arm dangled uselessly. Gunny could see the collarbone pushing up against her body armor at the wrong angle, broken in at least one place from the fall. She had tumbled head first from ten feet up onto cross-ties and gravel. She was busted up bad. The train was starting past them now, the engine picking up speed and blocking some of the incoming fire from the other side of the tracks.

  Bullets started peppering the ground around him, kicking up gravel. He brought his M-4 up but the heavy sound from one of the 60s on the roof started again and he saw fire from the tracers raking across a bunch of jihadis running for the train. They danced as the rounds tore through them, and the gunfire aimed at Gunny suddenly stopped. Evans had managed to pull himself back to his gun and was cutting them down. There was a sustained burst of fire from inside the dining car, aimed up through the roof, and he was blown off the top, a half magazine of AK rounds punching up through his body and out of his head and shoulders. He landed with a bone-snapping crunch in the gravel, his trailing intestines slopping down beside him.

  Stabby ran past Griz and drove his spikes into the face of one of the undead leaping for him. Griz had dropped to a knee and was still cutting down the hajis, keeping their return fire wild and unaimed. Those that hadn’t made it to the train were running back toward the warehouses, trying to get away from the growing number of undead steadily streaming in.

  “Get Bridget,” Gunny said as Stabby pulled his claws out of the zombie’s head, then knelt beside him. The tail end of the train was rolling past them now and he saw more of the Muslim forces on the other side of the tracks. They were battling hundreds of the undead followers that kept running in, chasing the sounds of the firefight. Gunny tossed Griz his rifle and slung Lars over his shoulder, running for all he was worth toward the bridge, and the Chattahoochee River. They ran, stumbling over the dead and undead bodies alike, the thunderous sounds of the AKs and the screaming of the corpses only yards away from them. Bullets spanged off the rails, gravel exploded at their feet and Griz held the M-4s like pistols in his ham-sized hands, keeping the radicals sprinting away from the horde, away from the zinging bullets and back toward the safety of the warehouse. Their return fire was just as chaotic as his, most of them firing blindly at the more immediate threat of hungry teeth snapping at them.

  Gunny barely slowed as he followed Stabby and Bridget over the edge and tumbled down the embankment toward the river. Griz followed in a backward slide, emptying the magazines into bearded, fleeing figures as he disappeared over the edge.

  They tumbled down to the muddy shores, stirring up clouds of no-see-ums and mosquitos. Griz dropped both mags and reloaded as Gunny laid Lars out in the mud and quickly assessed the damage. He was unconscious, but not dead. Pulse was still strong. He’d been hit with a bullet at an angle, it tore through his upper bicep and exited out of his back, near the spine. From the trajectory, it looked like it went right through his rotator cuff. He’d never be using that arm again. That is, if he survived the next few hours, Gunny thought. The gunfire was retreating, heading back to the industrial district and the keening and screaming of the horde sounded like it was growing by the minute. The train had disappeared over the bridge and it was still picking up speed, heading into Atlanta. It didn’t have any followers. They were too busy trying to get to the smorgasbord of flesh that was only yards away and running for the warehouses.

  Griz glanced over his shoulder at Gunny working on Lars.

  “We gotta move before that train comes back,” he said. “It’ll be leading a whole new pack of them right at us. I’ve only got four more mags.”

  Gunny nodded. “Two minutes,” he said. “They’ve got to be stabilized or we might as well leave them. Bouncing them around is doing more damage than the bullets.” None of the undead followed them over the embankment, they were too busy chasing down the easy meal.

  He loosened Lars’ plastic armored motorcycle jacket and tore open a quick clot gauze. He hurriedly packed the wounds, placed his damaged arm under the armor and tightened the adjustable straps as snug as he dared. He had a large bump on his head, but there was nothing Gunny could do about that. He had a concussion or he didn’t. He would wake up or he wouldn’t.

  Stabby had wrapped a pad around Bridget’s missing ear and the bleeding had already slowed. Gunny snapped off a good-sized stick and told Bridget to open wide.

  “Bite down,” he said quietly. “If you scream, if they hear you, you’ll die.”

  He didn’t wait for her to nod her understanding, but unbuckled her plastic armor and felt gingerly around the popped-up collarbone. There wasn’t a whole lot you could do with it, but he wanted to get it back in place the best he could before swelling set in and made it impossible.

  “Ready?” he asked, but didn’t wait for an answer. His fingers kneaded the bone back into position, pushing it back down level with the rest of her clavicle. Tears streamed down her face, her nostrils flared, and her eyes bugged wide but she hardly made a noise as her teeth sunk deep in the chunk of wood.

  Stabby had her head in his lap, doing what he could to soothe her and keep her still.

  “Jody,” Gunny said. “Go up there and see if you can work a piece of that driftwood loose.” He pointed upstream to the bridge pylon a
nd the small log jam against it. “We’ll need it to float these two down river.”

  “Next the leg,” he said to Bridget, no sympathy, no understanding smile, no “this is going to hurt a little.”

  She already knew it was going to hurt. A lot.

  Gunny sliced her pants off at the knee and looked at the break. It was clean, not poking out of her skin, yet, but if they kept bouncing it around, it would cut right through. He took hold of her calf and pulled as gently as he could, stretching the skin and muscles as he slid the bone back to where it belonged. He pushed it firmly into place when he felt the pieces seat themselves. He double checked, made sure it was straight and not at an angle or twisted then hopped up to snap off branches for a splint.

  “Griz, what about the boot?” Gunny asked, his combat medic classes hadn’t covered that part. Or if they did, he couldn’t remember what he was supposed to do.

  “It’s gotta come off,” he said in a low tone, still scanning the embankment above them and the river’s edge, hoping to see some more of the team still alive, somehow. “Swelling will cut off the blood flow, maybe even cause her to lose her foot.”

  The sound of gunfire above them had almost stopped. The jihadis had either been killed, or had made it back to the warehouses. Gunny had a thousand questions, and if he had a chance to capture one of the Muslims, he’d get his answers. Who was calling the shots? How did they know they would be at that intersection? How many of them were here in the States? When was the attack on Lakota?

  He sheathed the Gerber and dropped back down to Bridget’s leg, pulling the strings out of her boot and tying all four tightly around the branches, immobilizing them. He sliced her pants leg into strips and tied them around it also. He noticed a flattened chunk of lead in her body armor. AK round. Looks like she’d been body shot a second before the head shot hit her. Made the shooter nearly miss. It had been well coordinated. They took out everybody on the train in just a few seconds, all of them firing at the same time.

  Stabby was waist deep in the chilly water and sending a flurry of smaller sticks and twigs down river as he dug a large log out of the mess. Gunny had done all he could for Lars and Bridget and ran up to help him muscle it away from the muddy bank and out into the flow. They could hear the train coming back, the radicals had figured out how to stop and reverse it.

  They glanced up as it started across the bridge, dust and dirt falling down from the vibrations. They could hear the undead screaming and running behind it and the answering cries of those surrounding the warehouse running to meet it.

  “It’s gonna be raining men in a minute,” Griz said and kept shifting his gaze between the two banks of the river.

  The bridge rumbled from the weight over their heads as Gunny and Stabby finally got the log free and floating down river. Griz slid down the bank, waded out and helped them drag it over to shore, his eyes never stopped darting to see where the zombies would come from. They dragged Lars on first, Gunny dunking his head in the cold water, trying to revive him. He spluttered back to consciousness and before he could cry out in pain or surprise, Gunny was in his face with his finger to his lips.

  “Shhh,” he said. “If the zombies don’t get us, they’ll tear us apart with the .50 if they know we’re down here.”

  Lars nodded, his braids bouncing as he gritted his teeth and tried to use his one good arm to hold on, once they got him on top of the old, weathered log. Griz and Stabby lifted Bridget on next and they pushed off just as the first of the undead ran into the front of the train and were sent flying, smashed bodies plummeting into the river. The ones trailing were running across the tracks, but they didn’t make it far before legs slipped through the ties and they could see the bones snapping like kindling before they tumbled off. The .50s opened up and started decimating the undead again and again they didn’t care. They kept attacking, kept coming down the tracks and out of the surrounding areas. The Three Flags crew paddled silently out to the middle of the river where the current flowed the fastest and steered the ungainly boat downstream, putting the screams, the roars, the rest of the team, and the thundering of heavy machine guns behind them.

  23

  Gunny

  The water was chilly and within minutes, they were blue-lipped and losing body heat fast. Atlanta wasn’t exactly cold in October, but they were only a few miles from the dam on the reservoir. The water coming out was from the bottom of the lake, some forty feet deep, and it was downright frosty to them.

  Some of the zeds that bounced off the train or fell from the tracks had spotted them and stumbled their way to the water and splashed in, the current pulling them downstream. Stabby, Gunny, and Griz kicked and paddled, trying to keep the makeshift raft near the middle so it wouldn’t get tangled in overhanging branches or sandbars. They slowly put distance between them and the undead, who were trying to walk underwater and kept stumbling from the current or broken legs.

  They floated down river, around a few bends, and when they went under the 78 overpass, Griz recognized where they were.

  “Pull up to the right,” he said. “I know that place. It’s a crane outfit, I’ve hauled oversize out of there.”

  They were shivering from the chill as they pushed the log close to the muddy bank. As gently as possible, they got Bridget and Lars resting against trees and let the current pull their makeshift boat back out into the river.

  “Stabby, hang here for a minute. Poke anything that gets near, no guns unless we need ‘em.”

  He nodded and found a position where he could see upriver, see the undead as soon as they surfaced, if they did. Griz and Gunny jogged up the shallow embankment, both doing function checks on their carbines. They were looking for a cart or a dolly or something to carry the two injured warriors, but found something even better. The foreman’s electric golf cart was in one of the warehouses and it still had plenty of charge. The place was deserted, any early arriving employees that were here when the outbreak started had long since departed, either alive to go after their families, or undead and wandered off in search of fresh blood to infect.

  The cart was quick and silent and within minutes, they had them loaded and were whisking back toward the offices to make them as comfortable as they could. They had managed to get away from the river without drawing any attention to themselves, and the company was somewhat isolated in an industrial district. There were a few metal buildings, with the repair bays and offices surrounded by a vast gravel parking lot with dozens of cranes and other equipment parked in it. The chain link fence enclosing the lot was old and rusty, but it was tall and in good repair. They picked the largest office that could be easily barricaded and drug an extra couch into it from one of the others. Gunny went to the big mechanics locker room and grabbed a couple of towels and clean uniforms from one of the lockers.

  “See if you can get them out of their wet clothes,” Gunny said, handing the bundle to Stabby and looking at the two shivering on the couches. “We’re going to lock down this building, secure the perimeter, and make a supply run.”

  Stabby just nodded again as he took the bundle and started working on cutting Lars’ shirt off him. He was the worst of the two, he was breathing in short and pain-filled gasps.

  Gunny knelt in front of him and gripped his knee.

  “Hang on, Lars,” he said. “We’ll get you some painkillers, some antibiotics, and whatever else you need. You just hang on, keep still, and don’t bleed out on me. We’ll be back as fast as we can.”

  Lars still had a smile for him, even if it did look more like a grimace, through his clenched teeth.

  “I’ll be waitin’, Boss,” he breathed out between gasps.

  Gunny nodded at Bridget, and he and Griz left the office to lock down all of the doors in the warehouse.

  They closed the chain link gate behind them as they left. Any mildly curious zeds would keep on going if they happened along down the road. Gunny doubted any would, though. They seemed to congregate in groups around where they were l
ast called by the keening. Once whatever victims they found were conquered, they usually didn’t wander away, they stayed in the same area until something else called to them.

  “Any idea where the nearest pharmacy is?” Griz asked, “or a gun store?” Looking left and right down the street, only seeing the river and woods in one direction, and other metal warehouses in the other. “If I remember right, the Petro truck stop is up there.”