by Spriggs, Kal
“Well, I'd best head that way,” Jack said.
***
Jack arrived on the west side of the fence just as the three fire trucks rolled to a stop. Each of them parked backed right up against the fence as additional reinforcement. All three began extending their long ladders. A hundred and five feet of ladder and Jack hoped that would be enough.
For two of those trucks, it was. The ends of those ladders extended to the rooftops of the westernmost building and then dropped, creating bridges over a horde of ravenous undead. The third one came up short, and the driver and operator began to swear as they retracted the ladder. They'd have to reposition closer to the other two trucks.
“Upper extraction team,” Jack shouted to the six men selected for the task, “Move out.”
They advanced across the ladders. By the time they reached the far end, a crowd of survivors had formed. Within a few minutes, they'd started them across the ladder. Jack just hoped that nobody froze on that ladder. Otherwise, this would all go bad pretty quickly.
He turned away and headed back towards the crane, just in time to see the arm swing slowly around, a huge section of the box culvert held aloft. Paul was at the controls and Jack had to give it to the old man, he swung the big section of concrete culvert into place, only inches from the door to the southern building, and then settled it down, the open section astride the door.
He crushed ten or twelve zombies in the process, but that was just a bonus.
Jack had hoped they'd have enough culvert to get all the survivors out this way, but they didn't. They had just under fifty feet of the big, eight foot wide and eight foot tall sections, each one four feet long.
Paul swung the crane arm back around and the next section was ready, straps in place for movement. It wasn't a quick process, but Jack had planned for that. The survivors in the buildings would be getting ready to move, Chavez and his people would be preparing to secure the route...
Over at the ladders, Jack saw that the third truck was in place. The first escapees were coming down off the trucks, the security team ushering them away from the fence. A school bus rumbled up to the group. Paul had expressed doubt on getting more than one of the vehicles operational and they were already taxing their fuel expenditures hard as it was.
They were taxing everything hard. This was almost all of Jack's fighting men. Paul and all of his trained mechanics and equipment operators were here. If this went wrong, if the fence failed, they'd lose not just their capable fighters, they'd lose almost all the key people who they needed to keep the train running.
But weighed against saving a few hundred people, many of them children, Jack felt it was worth the risk.
***
“That's the last one!” Paul shouted over his CB radio.
The last section of box culvert had settled in front of the steel shed from which the survivors had tunneled out. The survivors in the southern building now had an escape route.
The effort of moving each of those culvert sections at maximum arm extension on the crane had been more than stressful. The attention to detail to get each one in place, with mere inches of clearance allowed, had made his head hurt. It had more than made his head hurt. His entire skull throbbed.
It wasn't just the effort, he knew. It was the cancer. They'd removed the tumor, back before the collapse, but it was back. He knew it, just as he knew that he couldn't let that stop him. He was dying, but it was at least a slow death, one where he could do some good before he was gone.
It'll be a better place, anyway, like Sarah and Josh went to, he told himself. He swayed a bit as he stood from the operator chair, catching himself on the door frame. He leaned out of the door, “How are we on fuel?” He shouted to the driver.
“Running on fumes!” the driver shouted back.
“Shut her down,” Paul shouted in reply. Before he'd even finished the words, the engine stuttered to a halt. They were trying to save every bit of fuel they could. Even as he watched, the driver hopped out and ran over to the fuel tank with a hose and bucket to siphon out the little bit left in it. This really was a shoestring operation. But I knew that when they had me pulling pieces off of three different train engines to make one operational one back on the East Coast.
Paul had worked on trains and heavy equipment at mining operations for over forty years. He'd been certified as a welder, electrician, diesel engine mechanic, air conditioning, the list went on... and he was trying to teach the young men and women in his maintenance crews everything he knew, before he died.
They were good kids. Some of them even had a passion for it, though few of them had the experience that he'd like. Even just getting the construction equipment and fire trucks operational they'd made mistakes, some of them costly. But they were learning, gaining experience. He thought it might be enough.
He just hoped, that when the time came, that after he died, he didn't rise and kill them.
***
“Captain,” Chavez growled over the radio, “we got a problem.”
“What's up?” Jack asked.
“Some of these idiots refuse to move. They say the tunnel is too risky,” Chavez snapped.
“Then leave them,” Jack said calmly.
“It's not that simple,” Chavez growled. “Back door of this building apparently took some damage, or else it wasn't in good shape to begin with. It's partially out of the frame already. Those zombies are going to knock it out, and then this whole place will be flooded with them. Any that stay are going to die.”
“They'd die anyway when they ran out of food or water,” Jack answered. The evacuation was taking too long already. The main horde of zombies was still contained, but his security team had been having to deal with onesies and twosies that had been drawn by the noise from around the town and countryside. The longer this went on, the more there was a risk that a bigger group would come.
“Get them moving if you can,” Jack said.
“Any chance we can get the fire trucks over here to get them out that way?” Chavez asked.
Jack looked over at the fire trucks. Two of the ladders were moving, but the third one they'd had issues with. They could only send people across two or three at a time due to the weight. The third ladder was at maximum extension and it bounced the most... and they'd already had two or three people freeze up, twenty feet above the clawing hands of the zombies.
Each time, that had meant sending someone out there to talk them onwards. It looked like they had another clinger, though. “Sergeant Pape,” Jack said over his radio, what's the hold up over there, we might need one of those trucks to move some people from this one.”
***
Sergeant Tyler Pape didn't swear as he heard Captain Zamora's words, but he thought about it. “Might not be the best plan, Captain,” he replied. They were running behind. The older man, frozen in the middle of ladder three, was only the latest. He'd managed to talk the other two down earlier, but this guy was frozen, his eyes locked on the zombies below him.
“I'll see what I can do, sir,” Tyler said. He shifted forward on the ladder, the entire thing bouncing far too much for Tyler's comfort. The old man didn't even seem to notice. “Look, what's your name?”
“Cathy...” the old man said, his voice barely audible over the rumble of the zombies.
“Your name is Cathy?” Tyler demanded.
“No...” the old man pointed down at one of the zombies, “my wife... Cathy... she...”
Shit, Tyler thought. It was bad when you recognized one of the undead, it tended to hit even the toughest of their people pretty hard. To have that impact while you were climbing across a thin metal bridge, that would be rough.
“That's not your wife, not anymore,” Tyler snapped to the old man. “It's just a zombie, and—”
“No!” The old man straightened. He glared at Tyler with wide eyes, “Don't you say that about my Cathy! She's alive, she needs help!”
Shit, shit, shit, Tyler thought. Suddenly it wasn't the old ma
n that was in trouble... it was him. The last place he wanted to be was in a pushing contest with an insane man on a wobbly ladder over a twenty foot fall to a mosh-pit from hell.
“Look, sir, your wife is dead. Anyone down there is just a zombie, you need to calm down and--”
“You're killing her!” The old man shouted and lunged at him. Tyler caught the other man's hands and they swayed back and forth. Normally Tyler could have overpowered the old man, but he didn't have any leverage and the entire ladder bounced what felt like three feet. Some part of his ages-old combative training kicked in and Tyler twisted slightly, sending the old man's weight to the side.
The man let out a shrill scream as he went over the side of the ladder. His screams didn't stop as he landed in the midst of the zombies. They were so maddened that they didn't even kill him, not quickly. Instead he was borne aloft on dozens of hands, the zombies packed too closely for him to fall. They tore at him, flaying him alive with thousands of clawing hands as he shrieked in terror and pain. The screams seemed to go on and on and somehow Tyler knew that even, long after this was done, he would still hear that screaming.
With shaking hands, Tyler crawled up the ladder to the rooftop, where two survivors watched on with wide, shocked eyes. “If you don't cross the ladder, that'll be you,” Tyler snapped.
He didn't think he'd ever seen anyone move that fast down a ladder before.
***
“We're out of time,” Martin said as he rushed up. “Back door is about to give way.”
Chavez glared at the huddled group. “You either get down that tunnel, or we're leaving you to die.”
They shied away from his glare. The three families that had refused to move thus far seemed to realize that they had run out of options. Men women and children rose and they headed for the south door. At the door, they hesitated though. Pawing hands poked through the narrow gaps in the culvert. Paul had done a fine job in setting those sections, most of the gaps were two or three inches at most, but that was still enough for a zombie to get a hand through. Chavez had gone through a few times, lopping off any hands or arms that came in too far, but there were always more zombies.
Shaw came up behind them, “That's the last of them.”
“Get them moving,” Chavez snapped. He turned, “Martin, check the back--”
There was a loud crash. A moment later there was a roar and the sound of running feet. “Go!” Chavez snapped.
He shoved the family ahead of him down the tunnel, Martin and Stein next to him. Now and then a grasping hand would clutch at them but Chavez lopped off anything in his way, the heavy chopping blade of his kukri going through fingers and wrists with ease. They reached the far end of the culvert and now they had to wait as people climbed down. “Go, damn you!” Chavez shouted. “Just throw the kids down and someone at the bottom catch them, move!”
“It stinks down there!” A woman protested.
Chavez grabbed her by the hair and shoved her face in a puddle of crushed zombie. “How's that for stink?! Move damn you!”
The zombies had reached the door at the far end. The shambling group was actually impeded by the grasping hands of the other undead, pawing and milling at one another as they came, but it wasn't going to be enough. They were being shoved ahead by the weight of bodies behind them, ripping off zombies hands and arms as they came, the pressure like a champagne bottle...and Chavez was about to be the cork.
“Move faster!” Chavez roared.
The last of the family had reached the bottom. Chavez turned and shoved Stein and then Martin, both of them dropped, and a chorus of shouts and screams heralded their arrival at the bottom. “Go!” Chavez shouted, glancing down. It looked like there was some room, so he jumped himself.
He bit out a scream of pain as he hit, feeling bones shatter in his ankle and leg. He looked down to see bone jutting through his pants leg. Shit.
Chavez knew what that meant even without thinking about it. It was a fifty foot crawl through narrow tunnel. The zombies were right behind them. Even if he survived this, infection from the sewer would probably kill him.
He shoved Martin and Stein towards the hole. “Captain Zamora, last of the survivors are in the tunnel headed your way,” Chavez growled over the radio. “Bunch of damned idiots.”
He backed into the tunnel as the first zombie fell into the hole from above. Before it could rise, another fell on top of it, shattering its spine and crushing its ribs, but that one lunged at him. Chavez kicked out with his good leg and knocked the zombie back, just as another one dropped from above, then two and three. There wasn't room for the zombies to move for a moment, they were all entangled. Chavez had time to reach into his grenade pouch as he crawled backwards. He pulled the pin but held the spoon tight in his left hand. With his right, he hacked at the nearest zombie, unable to get in a good swing, but still able to sever fingers.
He had to give the others time to get clear. As much time as he could manage.
One of the pawing zombies caught him by the foot and he hacked down, severing the hand, but then another pawed at him, this one grabbing him by his broken leg. Chavez bit back a scream of agony and he lost his machete as the pain drove straight into his head. As the zombies dragged him into them, Chavez clutched the grenade to his chest and let go of the spoon.
***
Chapter Six
The morning was hazy and gray. Jack sipped at the weak, watery tea that he'd picked up from their kitchen car. He would have preferred coffee, but he'd make do with what they had.
“We got the last of the evacuees unloaded,” Tim went on. “We're going through them now, seeing if they have any skills we can use.”
“Good,” Jack said. “Shaw's got a good head on his shoulders. I know he's volunteered to get in the kitchen, but that would be a waste.”
“Might improve the food,” Tim grumbled, poking at the small portion of baked beans on his metal plate.
“Couldn't hurt, I suppose,” Jack admitted. “Still, I'll need to talk it over with him.”
“Personnel are more your thing than mine,” Tim said. He frowned though, “We used up a lot of our spare parts with those vehicles. We got some stuff from the town in the process, any chance we could go back and strip the equipment for parts?”
“No,” Jack said flatly. They'd made it out of there, but they'd lost Chavez in the process. Martin and Stein were still shaken up. The explosion in the tunnel had hit both of them hard, as had the loss of the fireplug of an NCO. The fence had been in bad shape before, Jack didn't want to risk any more lives, not for mere equipment. We saved almost three hundred people, he told himself. Yet the loss of Chavez burned like acid. Jack felt like he'd lost his right arm.
“Well, we're on short rations until we find some additional food supplies...”
“Our scout teams got early this morning,” Jack interrupted. “You were over dealing with getting our new people settled in, so I didn't want to interrupt. They found some grain cars at the next stopping point, looks like some of the container cars might have canned food, too, so we shouldn't starve.”
"The scouts are back?" Tim asked. His eyes narrowed as he took in Jack's tone. “What's wrong?”
"I need to work on my poker face," Jack said. He cleared his throat and spoke in a low voice, "Look, don't spread this around, but Team Two insists they heard gunfire around when Team One gave their last transmission."
Tim shrugged, "So they tried to defend themselves..."
"Sustained gunfire," Jack said in a low voice. "Before and after the transmission. Like they came under fire."
"Shit," Tim said. "Raiders?" Plenty of folks were willing to live and let live... but there were others who seemed to view the apocalypse as a chance to do all the sick things they'd dreamed about.
Jack shrugged. "Maybe. Makes sense, but I don't know how any would operate in a place with so many undead, you know?"
Tim nodded. They'd come across the aftermath of raiders here and there and some of their p
assengers had encounters with them. Most raiders were nomadic, ranging across the countryside, looking for victims to loot and kill. They often rode motorcycles and used two or three trucks for carrying supplies. While most survivors took food and supplies where they could, most raiders took supplies off other survivors.
They were scum, in Jack's opinion. Rapists, murderers, and thugs. In a time where humanity as a whole might go extinct, raiders hastened that fall. The messes they left were far worse than the undead. Orphaned children, ruined defenses, and plenty of dead who'd rise soon enough.
The problem with raiders was that they wouldn't fight dumb like zombies and they wouldn't care about killing survivors or damaging the train. Jack knew that the train's very mass was an element of their vulnerability. Raiders could blow up the tracks and let the train derail.
That was one purpose of the advance guard, the two trucks with rail tires that ran ahead of them. Yet well-armed raiders might storm the train, kill any survivors who resisted and leave the rest to starve or be killed by the undead.
Jack wasn't afraid of what a dozen or so raiders might accomplish. An attack from a group like that could hurt, but it wouldn't stop the train, no matter who they managed to kill.
But a few hundred? Most of the passengers barely knew how to survive. Often they were just the lucky ones who'd climbed to upper floors of buildings or hidden in grain towers. They weren't fighters. Jack and about two dozen others were fighters.
Jack had fought in the Middle East. A foe not too different in mindset from the locust-like raiders. Hit and run, he thought, improvised explosives. "We're going to scout things out a bit more," Jack said. He cleared his throat, "I'll probably need to see things myself."
"You can't leave," Tim shook his head. "Are you kidding me? Half of this would fall apart without you..."
"Don't worry, I'll be careful," Jack grinned. "You'll also have Captain Wachope here to run defenses and keep the zombies off your backs. In the meantime, you're in charge of getting everything ready. When the time comes to roll through town, I want this train fully operational, I want everyone ready and I want every bit of supplies we can get. So you had better be at the top of your game, understand?"
