by James Harden
“Wow, this train is fast,” Maria said.
We were hurtling through the dark tunnel at well over a hundred miles per hour.
“This doesn’t feel safe,” I said.
“Does this thing have headlights?” Maria asked.
“Oh, yeah. Good idea.”
I scanned the control panel quickly. Found the headlights. Switched them on. This was a vast improvement. At least we could now see where we were going.
One hundred and twenty miles per hour.
“Is this thing supposed to be going so fast?” Maria asked.
“Yeah, I think so. Ben said it was a ‘bullet’ train. So I’m guessing it’s designed to go really fast.”
The tunnel dipped some more. We began descending. We were rocketing along. Burrowing deeper into the earth. The track turned slightly, the train rocked back and forth gently.
One hundred and fifty miles per hour.
The movement woke Ben. He grabbed my ankle. His nails dug into my skin. I looked down, and for a fleeting second I thought he was infected. But then I saw his eyes. They were wide open. Full of fear.
“Where are we?” he asked.
“Everything is going to be fine,” I said. “Are you feeling all right?”
“Where are we?” he repeated.
“We’re on the train. We’re going to...”
Wait. Where were we going? I wasn’t entirely sure, but I figured this track had to lead somewhere important.
“It’s not safe,” Ben whispered. “They shut down the track. The Code Black. The Lockdown.”
“What?” Maria asked. “What are you saying?”
“The Lockdown!”
He kept saying, Code Black. He kept saying, Lockdown. He still wasn’t completely with it. Suddenly we emerged from the tunnel into a huge, never ending cave. A huge cavern.
I couldn’t see where it ended. Couldn’t see the walls or the roof.
It just kept going.
“The Lockdown,” Ben whispered. “They blew the tracks.”
The train rocketed inside another tunnel.
One hundred and eighty miles per hour.
“The tracks have been destroyed,” Ben whispered, barely clinging to consciousness. “They blew the bridge. Severed the bridge. We need to stop the train. Stop the train. Get off. We have to walk in.”
“They blew the tracks?” Maria said. “Why would they do that? How do you know?”
“The Lockdown,” Ben said. “It’s the protocol. Sever the tracks. Blow the middle of the bridge. No one gets in.”
I grabbed the throttle. Pulled back. The handle didn’t budge.
It was jammed.
And I mean, it was jammed.
It was completely stuck.
Two hundred miles per hour.
Maria was shaking her head. “What do we do? What the hell do we do?”
We needed to get off this train. We needed to stop it. But we couldn’t. The throttle was jammed. It was stuck. We were stuck.
We were stuck on an unstoppable, runaway train.
The tracks had been blown.
We were travelling at two hundred miles per hour. We were speeding to our deaths.
Chapter 24
“It has to have an emergency brake system,” Maria said.
“Well, where the hell is it?” I asked.
We both looked at the control panel. Searching for an answer. Searching for a magical button that would make this train stop.
Nothing.
The control panel was big and bright with about a million buttons and controls and levers. The only thing I could determine was that the goddamn throttle had been jammed forward.
It was stuck.
“How long?” Maria asked. “How long do we have? Where did they blow the tracks?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. Ben said it would take about fifteen minutes to reach the residential area from the entry point. He also said that there was a lake down here. About ten minutes away.”
“What? A lake?”
“Yeah, there’s an underground lake. It’s up ahead. He said it would take about ten minutes to emerge from this tunnel. And then we should come out near, or over a lake. Apparently there’s a bridge, a massive long bridge that spans the lake to the other side.”
“Wait,” Maria said, thinking out loud. “If they blew the tracks, they would’ve done it over the lake. At the half way point.”
“How do you know that?
“Well, that’s what Ben just said. He said they blew the bridge. Severed the bridge. I’ll bet my life they would’ve blown the tracks over the lake to make sure no one on this side could get across. And they would’ve done it right in the middle of the bridge to make sure that if anyone did try and cross, they would be stranded over the water. They would be sitting ducks. Easier to shoot. Eliminate.”
She had a good point. A terrifying point.
“Just like the Sydney Harbor bridge,” she continued. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this. This whole place. If they ordered a Lockdown, if they blew the bridge. I mean, what if there was…” she trailed off.
But I knew what she was going to say.
What if there was a containment failure down here? What if they had lost control? What if the virus or the nano-swarms had taken over? What if there had been another massacre of innocent people?
“What the hell happened down here?” Maria asked. “This is supposed to be a Fortresss for crying out loud. It’s supposed to be a refuge.”
She was right. Ben had told me this place was designed to survive any and all extinction level threats.
What the hell had gone wrong?
“We can’t worry about that now,” I said. “We’ve got less than ten minutes before we run out of track. We need to stop this train.”
“What if we can’t?”
“If we can’t stop it, we’re screwed.”
“Could we jump?” she asked.
“It’s going way too fast. We’d be killed instantly.”
Even though the train was travelling at close to two hundred miles per hour, it was an unbelievably smooth ride. It lulled us into a false sense of security.
“If we slow it down,” I added, “Then maybe we could jump. But I’d still rather stop it altogether.”
I looked back at the control panel and realized there was a small button labeled ‘map’ that was next to the central display monitor. I pressed the button and a basic map of the track appeared on the monitor. It showed the layout of the Fortress. And the train’s current location.
This section of the train line led into the inner sanctum. There were three other long tunnels like this one. Each of the tunnels were about forty miles long.
It was thirty three miles from the vehicle storage hangar, where we had come in, to the lake.
The lake was circular in shape. Like a donut. Like a medieval moat. It surrounded and protected the inner-sanctum.
The whole facility looked like an intricate spider web or snowflake.
It was massive.
"There," I said pointing to the map, to the half way point. “We need to get off the train before we reach that point.”
According to the display we were almost there.
We were twenty miles out.
I couldn’t get over the size of this place.
“We don't have long,” Maria said. “If we’re travelling at two hundred miles per hour, we should reach that point in about six minutes.”
“Six minutes? We have to go. We have to get off this train. Or stop it completely.”
“OK,” Maria said, nodding, thinking. “Maybe there’s an emergency break or an emergency stop button back there, in the carriages.”
“Let’s check it out. Hurry.”
We moved into the carriage. We searched along the walls. The hand railings. Near the doors. Nothing.
“Next carriage,” I said.
We moved into the second carriage. The one full of dead soldiers. I had to put my hand over m
y nose. It was already starting to smell.
Again, there were no emergency stop buttons. There was nothing.
The two rear carriages were completely dark. They appeared to be locked up.
“What about back there?” Maria said.
“Forget it. If there are no emergency breaks in these carriages, there won’t be any back there.”
We returned to the driver’s cabin. We checked the control panel again. We were looking for answers but finding none.
I yanked on the throttle again, trying to pull it back into the ‘neutral’ position. But it wouldn’t budge.
I had a bad feeling that someone had purposely jammed this forward. Someone who knew what they were doing.
It had to be the man in the gas mask, I thought. It had to be.
I looked at the map on the display panel again. We were getting closer to the bridge.
We had about five minutes.
Sixteen miles.
Chapter 25
Maria had a go at trying to pull the throttle back. No luck.
I slowly came to the realization that we would have to jump. It sounded like a stupid, crazy idea. I mean, the absolute last thing that anyone in the world would want to do is jump from a speeding train. Jumping from a speeding train means certain death.
But we were out of options.
“We’re gonna have to jump,” I said.
Maria shook her head. “No way. We are not jumping. Like you said before, if we jump at this speed we will die on impact. We cannot jump.”
“Well then what the hell are we going to do? We can’t stop this train. We have to jump.”
Maria’s eyes suddenly lit up, like she had an idea. One that didn’t involve jumping to our deaths.
“Wait, we might not have to jump. This train has four carriages in total, right?
“Yeah.”
“Maybe the rear carriage has another driver’s cabin. Another control panel that isn’t busted.”
“You think?”
“I’m not sure. But isn’t that how trains work? They have a driver’s cabin at each end. So when they reach one destination they just change direction to do the return trip.”
“It’s worth a shot,” I said.
We ran back through the carriages, stepping over the dead soldiers. We arrived at the door to the third carriage. It was dark. The window on the door had been spray painted black.
I should’ve taken that as a warning sign.
We forced the door open.
The carriage was dark. Empty.
Blood stained the walls and the floor. Even the ceiling.
The seats had been ripped out to maximise standing room.
“What the hell happened back here?” Maria asked.
“Don’t know. There’s one more carriage. If there’s no driver’s cabin then we have to jump. Agree?”
“Yeah. Agree.”
We moved up to the connecting door. There was blood on the handle. The window had also been spray painted black.
We opened it together, using all our strength. My heart sunk.
There was no driver’s cabin.
None that we could see anyway.
We didn’t even get the chance to look for one.
The carriage was full of infected.
They were just standing there. In the carriage. Mindless. They were crammed in shoulder to shoulder, like a train in the middle of peak hour.
It’s like they were waiting for someone to set them free. Waiting for us.
They must’ve heard us as we struggled with the door. Because as soon as we opened the door they were ready to pounce. They reached out for us with single minded aggression.
Chapter 26
Maria and I said nothing between us. We knew we had to get the door closed again. We needed to do it immediately. But we didn’t have time. There wasn’t even time to scream.
We were too slow.
And the infected are just too damn fast. They reached the door and jammed their decomposing arms and bodies into the frame.
“Get back!” I said. “Shut the door!”
We tried multiple times to get the door closed. We pulled with all our might, but we couldn’t get it shut.
We couldn't close it. We just had to fall back. Run. Retreat.
“Run!” I shouted over the howling and the moaning of the infected. “Get back to the next carriage. I’ll hold them here.”
Maria ran back to the next door. When she had forced it open, I ran after her. As soon as I let go of the door, the infected barged through. They gave chase.
Luckily, we were able to shut the next door before the infected got to us. But they kept coming. They slammed into the door and pushed up against it, slamming their heads against the spray painted window. Fortunately they couldn’t figure out how to slide the door open. This bought us some time. But we both knew it wouldn’t be long before they broke through.
We were now in the carriage with the dead soldiers. The whole train now felt like a tomb.
“Quick,” Maria said. “We have to load these rifles.”
“We dont have time,” I said. “They'll break through.”
“Just do it. We have to be able to defend ourselves.”
She had a good point. I dropped to my knees and grabbed a handful of bullets, and began loading them one by one into an empty magazine.
I couldn’t get my hands to stop shaking. I must’ve dropped every second bullet I tried to load.
“Come on!” I said to myself, urging myself to work faster.
Maria was unusually calm. She had a look of intense concentration on her face as she loaded her magazine. “What the hell are they doing here?” she asked. “Why would they have a train full of infected?”
“Don’t know,” I answered as I tried to get my hands to stop shaking. “Experiments? Research? I don’t know.”
Not that the reason mattered anymore. The fact was they had been herding infected, bringing them back here. And now they were loose in this Fortress and on this train.
The window of the door was beginning to shatter. Spider web cracks spread across the panel. The door frame began to buckle.
The infected were almost through.
Maria had already loaded two magazines.
She had even found some shotgun shells.
I gathered up some more bullets.
“Quick,” Maria said. “We can load the rest of these bullets in the next carriage. There’s a whole pile of them in there.”
“OK,” I said. “No. Wait.”
I saw the parachutes that were still strapped to the dead soldiers.
“What?” Maria asked.
“The dead soldiers,” I said. “They were Special Forces soldiers. They were para-troopers.”
“So?”
“So we can use these parachutes. We can jump.”
“Jump? No. No way.”
“Come on. It’s the only way. We have to jump. If we jump with a parachute, we might have a chance.”
“Might?”
“We will have a chance. We will survive. You were right before, if we jump at this speed we won’t survive. We will die on impact. But if we jump with a parachute, deploy it immediately, we will survive. It’ll be like BASE jumping. The parachute will catch enough wind and create enough drag to slow us down. Trust me. We will survive. I’ve done this before. It’s the only way.”
“You’ve done this before?”
“Well, not exactly like this.”
We didn’t get a chance to discuss this dangerous plan any further. Just as I had finally loaded a full magazine, the infected broke through.
Maria and I both unloaded with machine gun fire. The narrow doorway of the train kept them all bunched together. As a result, we were able to keep them pinned back. It was like shooting zombies in a barrel. It was as close to target practice as we were ever going to get.
I’m not sure how many infected there were. A carriage full. Once again, there were probably more infected than we
had bullets.
The bottle-neck of the doorway bought us precious seconds.
“Stick to the right hand side!” I shouted to Maria over the roar of the gunfire. “Cover me!”
“What? Why!? What are you doing?”
“Parachutes!”
I moved further into the carriage, closer to the infected. As fate would have it, the para-troopers had been sitting at the rear of the carriage when they had been murdered. So unfortunately, I had to get closer to the doorway, closer to the infected than I would have liked. There was blood everywhere. Blood and bone and brain. The man in the gas mask had made double sure that none of these soldiers were alive. Or infected. And in the process he had made quite an unbelievable mess.
“Over there!” Maria shouted from behind, as she covered me. “The soldiers up the back!”
I was on my stomach in a sniper’s position. I managed to take out a few more infected before I slung my rifle and crawled over to the para-troopers. I wrestled with one of the bodies, trying to unclip the harness. I finally got it. It was weird taking the parachutes off the dead soldiers. I remembered back to when Kenji saved us, back in the interrogation room at the North Sydney police station. All those months ago. There was a dead soldier there. Kenji basically picked him clean. He checked all his pockets and took his ammo and his rifle. I had to tell myself then, and remind myself now, that it wasn’t disrespectful. It was about survival. It was necessary.
I turned and threw the parachute back to Maria.
“Take it!”
Maria was a picture of concentration. Her rifle was raised to her shoulder. Eyes down the sight and the barrel. She was doing an excellent job of keeping the infected back. Maybe those shooting sessions with Kenji and Daniel had finally paid off. Or maybe it was just easy to hit something in a confined area like a train carriage.
I reminded myself to stay low. Keep my head down. I didn’t want to get done by friendly fire.
Not now. I’d come too far for that.
I loaded my last remaining magazine into my rifle. Took down a few more infected. Luckily, the force of a rifle shot was enough to knock them backwards off their feet.
But to get the next parachute, I had to move even closer to the doorway and the infected.
I continued to crawl and climb over the dead soldiers.
