LZR-1143: Redemption

by Bryan James

  “Did she know him when she saw him?”

  “Oh yes, it got a big response. She hugged him for about ten minutes. He cried, she cried. The whole thing. Apparently, the dad was killed a week ago in a grocery store looking for food. They were on foot on one of those rural roads, going from house to house, when the bikers found them. That was about five days ago.”

  “Jesus. She was… for five days?”

  Kate nodded.

  “She said she tried to fight, but they threatened the boy. He escaped yesterday when they were passed out, but…” She just shook her head, wiping back a tear. Then her eyes found mine.

  “How are you? What happened in there?”

  “I’m okay. I told you everything.”

  I hadn’t.

  “I took them by surprise, and it was a pretty quick fight.”

  And satisfying.

  I didn’t tell her that, either.

  “I imagine it felt good to… to have them find justice.” Her voice was slightly vitriolic, as if she wished she could have been there.

  “It was just a fight, I guess.”

  But it did feel good.

  Too good.

  My tendencies toward violence were becoming too extreme. Too ready. I was ashamed of it.

  “Gaffney says we’re about six hours out,” I said to her, looking to change the subject. “I guess the mountain portion of the ride is a little slow-going, but we make up time on the straight-away. You seen Rhodes?”

  She noticed the change of subject, but went with it, squeezing behind me on the small bed and taking my shoulders in her hands.

  “Yeah, he’s ready to be up and out, but they’re watching his wound until we get to Seattle. Something about infection. How does this work, anyway? The train somehow has access to a secure camp? How do they keep the things out?”

  I leaned into her strong hands, thankful for the relaxation.

  “Gaffney gave me a quick brief when we loaded up. SeaTac is surrounded by forty-foot containers, stacked three high, one on top of another. The engineers have added extra security by drilling six-foot anchors into the bottom of each one, and every four or five container length, there’s another one stacked vertically for a watchtower. The train apparently accesses the camp through one of only two gates. The other gate is for vehicle and other traffic, and operates with a series of two separate airlock-type confinement areas—they call them backstops—each one of which is closed off as people come in. If any zeds get in the first backstop, they eliminate them after the gate closes, and the same for the next backstop. Finally, the main gate follows. Each large entrance—for the train and the vehicle traffic—is two containers welded and secured, one on top of another, and attached to a giant crane that can only move them up or down, along guideposts set in the ground. The smaller backstop gates are only one container high, and are reinforced steel plates on automated hinges. Only the base commander and two gate officers can order them opened.”

  She nodded appreciatively.

  “Different from the Pentagon, I guess. But better than having our asses hang in the breeze. What about the train entrance? Do they use these—backstops?”

  “Yeah, but they’re longer. The trick with the train is that it’s so damn long and noisy that it’s a massive target. So the primary backstop for the first stage of the train—when it first approaches the camp—is all chain link and barbed wire strung between the old factories and warehouses that line the tracks. They don’t make it airtight, they just make it difficult for the bastards to clump up. Then, when the train slows down, and gets within a mile of the base, they have constructed chain link and rebar fencing, and a thick automated gate on the end. Even if those things get in with the train, they can’t fit too many on either side. The last backstop before the station is half-containers, and half chain link. But they have flamethrower teams and machine gunners that keep the sides of the tracks clear. They don’t give them enough time to mass up, since the train unloads and leaves within hours of arriving.”

  “Does it go all the way into the base? Seems dicey,” she frowned, “given that they don’t have the solid steel the whole run.”

  “No, the second entrance doesn’t allow the train in. It’s not for vehicles, it’s only for foot and cargo traffic. When the train arrives, it pulls into its enclosure and it’s offloaded into a special entrance ramp, through a series of containers from the fortified station to the main camp. The ramp itself has two backstops, just like the front gate, but smaller. They use steel plating in rigid, fixed tracks, in six layers. Same rules as the front gate. If the zeds overrun the train enclosure, they’re still not going anywhere.”

  “How the hell did they have time to build this shit?” she asked, and I shrugged, serving the dual purpose of helping her push against the knots in my shoulders.

  “Hell if I know. Gaffney doesn’t know either, but he’s been in Idaho the whole time.”

  “Seems like it’s not a winning war out here if they had to bug out of Boise.”

  “He said it was a planned withdrawal that was intended to consolidate forces in Seattle for a big push. Apparently they have multiple herds in the area, and central command thinks they can pull together enough sonic buoys and firepower to take them out in Olympia and further east. Not sure why that’s running concurrently with our little op, but my guess is that we were intended to benefit from pulling them out of the city.”

  “What about the terminal?” she asked. “I mean at SeaTac. It’s an airport, right. Did they incorporate the terminal in their camp?”

  “Nope. Wrote it off. Built the walls right up to the jet ways, then burned the terminal to the ground. It doesn’t exist any more.”

  “I remember liking that airport,” she said wistfully. “They had a coffee bar in every other kiosk in there. And the smell of the unwashed just blanketed the place. We used to play punch-dreads when we walked through.” Her voice cracked.

  “Punch-dreads?” I asked, trying to keep her focused.

  She laughed, and hiccupped, taking her hands from my shoulders and to her face. I knew she was wiping tears from her eyes.

  “Every time we saw natty, unwashed dreads, we had to say the color and punch. Like punch-buggy, but… there were way more dreads out here than Volkswagens.”

  “I shot a movie out there, once.”

  “Yeah,” she said, sniffling. “Which high quality, Oscar-contender was that?”

  “Ouch. That hurts. You know, I was quite popular once.”

  “So were pet rocks, acid-washed jeans, and well-done meat. Things change.”

  I laughed despite myself.

  “Subterranean,” I said simply.

  “Sub-what? Like underground?”

  I sat up and turned away, laying down on the bed and closing my eyes, hoping that sleep would find me. We had been on the train for five hours since the stop, and the activities there had wiped me out, mentally and physically.

  “It was about a civilization of people that had been buried and forgotten in the old city under Seattle. You know, the Seattle underground. Old city that was just built over when a fire took out thirty blocks in the 1800’s. There’s a whole warren of tunnels and old buildings down there. Fascinating stuff.”

  “And your character was a smart, sophisticated fellow?”

  She laid down next to me, closing her eyes as well.

  “No, more of a pizza delivery man turned reluctant hero sort,” I said sleepily, letting my memories take me away from the place where I thought about what I had done this afternoon.

  About what I had become, and how little I seemed to care.

  “Sounds about right,” she said.

  Sleep came quickly.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The door opens slowly into a rancid room.

  The furniture is overturned, as if in a hasty fight. A table sits on its side, magazines scattered across the floor.

  The stuffing from an old leather couch lays across the area rug, dark stains leading aw
ay from the living room, toward the kitchen. Brown curtains stretch tightly across the windows, duct tape securing them to the walls so that no movement could be seen from outside the small apartment.

  Blood is smeared on the walls. Claw marks on the door.

  Food is rotting on the countertop.

  A small cat decays in the corner, a bloody mass of fur underneath a jeweled collar.

  I walk into the kitchen, following the blood. The smell is strong here.

  The door to the bedroom beyond moves slightly, the light flickering as if something has passed before the window.

  Still, I follow.

  The doorway is silent, the bed beyond filthy and unwashed. Scraps of food litter the hardwood floor. Ten parallel scrapes on the floor trace trails from underneath the bed, pink ruffles at the edges a stark difference from the severity of the room.

  The wood is splintered at the lock, and I run my hand over the damage. Handprints near the frame are crimson and congealed.

  She is in the corner.

  Just standing, still and silent.

  She faces the corner, hands at her sides, fingers curling and uncurling reflexively.

  I approach, because I know she can’t hurt me.

  I approach, because I need to.

  Her head moves slightly, cocking to the side. Blood mats her dirty nightgown, specks of gore interspersed with unicorns and fairies on a backdrop of pink cotton.

  I pass the pictures on the nightstand. Her and Kate at the mall. At the beach.

  In New York City.

  I pass the window, and note the billowing curtains.

  No need for secrecy here.

  Not any more.

  I reach out my hand, but she stays still.

  Her fingers curl and uncurl. Curl and uncurl.

  I touch her shoulder, pulling her around.

  Her eyes move, and her head turns.

  Everything goes black. Suddenly.

  Hopelessly.

  Thankfully.

  “It doesn’t need to be this way,” she says, and I know her from a different time.

  “How are you here?” I ask, knowing that she won’t answer.

  “I’ll always be here,” she says simply, and I know it to be true.

  “She’s just a girl.”

  “You can go to her. It can be different.”

  I want to ask how. I want to know why. I want… help.

  But she is gone. And I am gone.

  Back to darkness.

  We both awoke midway through the night, and dressed quietly. I remembered the dream, but I didn’t speak of it. Nothing would be gained from that.

  Gaffney was, of course, awake and speaking quietly with his officers. Rhodes had been allowed out of his confinement, and sat at the end of the command car, reading a magazine. He nodded once as we came in, then went back to his reading.

  True ebullience, from him. I wonder if he was feeling punchy.

  Gaffney dismissed a younger officer as we approached, and he stood up and nodded at Kate. I smiled.

  “True chivalry, Major.”

  He waved at the darkness that surrounded the cabin, clearly trying to refer to the larger world outside.

  “When the world is going to hell on the express train—no pun intended—I suspect that the only thing that separates us from the savages is our manners.”

  I grabbed one of the ever-present cookies from a bowl on the table.

  Where did he get these things?

  “Yeah, that and a few other things,” I said, turning to the dark windows, seeing the outline of several mountains in the near view, a thin river winding away into the darkness. The interstate paralleled the tracks here, and I marveled at it.

  It was empty.

  No cars.

  No bodies.

  No debris.

  “It’s a big country out west,” said Kate, staring out the window behind me, hand resting on my shoulder.

  “I guess so,” I said, staring at the highway.

  “That actually brings up an issue,” said Gaffney. “We weren’t going to bother you with it, but since you’re here…” He handed me a printout on photo paper, and I looked down at it.

  It looked like an aerial map of a mountain range, with thick lines following the topography—roads and train tracks, I surmised—complete with clouds in the foreground. I found the area he undoubtedly intended for me to see.

  “How is this possible?” I asked, looking up and handing the paper to Kate.

  “We’re not quite sure why they’re there,” he said. “But we’re not worried about the numbers. That’s why the train is such an asset. The sheer numbers can’t bog us down. We slow down, let the ram on the front and the plating on the sides keep them away from the wheels, and just grit our teeth and get through. It’s not pleasant, but it’s not a threat.”

  Kate stared and then looked up at me.

  Filling nearly a quarter of the visible map, where the interstate and the train tracks paralleled in a river valley on the western side of the mountain range, was another herd. A massive herd, nearly the size of the one besieging the Pentagon.

  “But Major, unless my geography is way off, and it isn’t, this herd is only thirty miles from the Seattle suburbs. What’s going on?”

  He shook his head and sat down heavily, filing the paper into a small manila file folder and sticking it into a nylon tactical bag.

  “We’re not sure. We’ve got intel on a herd coming north from Portland and another coming south—most likely from Canada and collecting bodies in the towns north of the city. You saw Boise. It was almost empty. You saw the last town. Only one or two. They have to be going somewhere. We can only theorize based on aerial recon, but they are definitely banding together. Fast.”

  I stared out the window again, marveling at the untouched beauty and the lonely highway.

  They weren’t getting smarter, that was clear.

  They weren’t getting faster. Or learning.

  They weren’t developing personalities, or exhibiting any basic functions.

  But they were clustering together. They were herding together over distances.

  Which meant that they somehow knew. They somehow felt or saw or communicated. They somehow had a basic knowledge of their common existence.

  We had seen this on smaller scales in Delaware and Washington. We had seen them move together and hunt and kill and flock together. We knew that they were herding.

  But this. To see it happen across such great spaces, and in such long distances.

  This was wrong.

  This was very, very dangerous.

  “Thanks for the heads up, Major. What’s the ETA on this herd?”

  “About an hour,” he said.

  “You gonna watch?” Rhodes’ voice was a gruff thunder from the booth, where he had discarded the magazine.

  “Watch?”

  “Some folks were gonna go up to the dining car. Watch the herd as we go through.”

  I glanced at Kate and she shrugged.

  “Sure,” I said, turning back to him. “We’ll see you there.”

  Ky was waiting outside our small cabin when we returned. Another small girl was with her, maybe ten years old. Romeo was getting his ears rubbed with a look of pure elation on his face.

  “This is Amanda,” she said, jerking a thumb at the girl.

  “Hi Amanda,” I said, nodding and smiling. She stared at me as if I had two heads.

  “She doesn’t talk. Her mom got eaten.” Ky’s voice was blasé and callous and I heard Kate’s voice catch in her throat.

  “Ky, that’s not nice,” Kate said, forcing the smile.

  “That’s okay,” she said, patting Romeo on the head as she squeezed into the cabin and plopped on the bed. “She knows she got eaten. She was standing there when it happened.”

  “Well, Jesus, kid. That doesn’t make it better,” I said, turning to the girl. Amanda shrugged and followed Ky, probably drawn to her confidence and attitude.

 
“Where are you from?” asked Kate, sitting down across from the girl. She simply stared at Kate, eyes large.

  “I’m going to head up to the dining car,” I said, watching the dynamic. I didn’t need to be part of this. I had done my community service for the week. For the year.

  For the damn decade.

  Kate nodded, and I closed the door. Outside the windows, the countryside flashed by in the moonlit darkness. The storms had passed, and the sky had taken on that special quality of clarity that only exists after the purifying effects of a rainstorm. I turned suddenly, changing course and finding the small retractable ladder that allowed access to the roof of the car. Each exterior access point had a small keypad next to it with the code written on the wall, intended to defeat only the slow, stupid and dead. Not the humans.

  I read the code: 111.

  Tricky.

  The hatch popped open, and the sudden roar of air blasted into the cabin. An older woman who was passing through the cabin shot me a look of distaste and fear as she walked below me.

  “Just checking the cable,” I said jauntily.

  She walked faster.

  “Humorless old goat,” I muttered, pulling myself up into the night air.

  The roof of the car was riveted steel, with a small walkway up the center, interrupted only by the gun turret, complete with galvanized steel, and one-foot high hand holds. Clearly added after the train was converted to zombie apocalypse duty, it was nice to have the help as I crawled forward and sat down, legs crossed and enjoying the cold air on my face.

  The river moved by on our left, and the empty highway still wound between the train and the water like a dark sentinel. The enhanced night vision was funny.

  It wasn’t like the night vision you got when you slapped on a pair of goggles, with the weird reds and shadows. It was like everything was lit by a very faint light behind you, and no matter how dark it was, you could always make out the details. I put my hand on my side, reminded of my new… qualities.