The Dead Won't Die

by Joe McKinney

  That, he couldn’t argue with. He and Kelly followed her through the doorways and found themselves on the top level of a train station. Signs in English, Spanish, and Chinese directed them down the stairs. They pushed their way through the crowds of uniformed workers, down a wide, curling staircase, and stepped off on what the signs called the Tube Level.

  “This is it,” Chelsea said. She turned and gave Jacob and Kelly an I told you so look. “There’s a map over there. It’ll tell us where to go.”

  Jacob looked around. The place was packed. He’d caught a few glimpses of El Paso as they’d left the freighter, and he’d seen a few big buildings in the distance, but it was hard to imagine that so many people could come from so few big buildings. But they were here. They were everywhere.

  As far as he could see, the floors, the walls, and the ceilings were done up in the same white, small square tile. There were support pillars at regular intervals up and down the station. They curved to meet the ceiling, like a tree trunk spreading out its branches. Metal benches circled the bases of the pillars. Everywhere he looked, up and down the platform, he saw people sleeping on those benches.

  It struck him then, the shock that those people had no homes.

  Looking at them, he realized he was seeing people who lived on the fringes, people who were desperately in need of help, of purpose, and yet got none.

  How could a civilization so advanced, so capable of digging wonders like this out of the earth, fail to care for the ones who couldn’t care for themselves? There were people like these back in Arbella, people with mental problems, people with substance abuse problems, people with too many problems to count; and yet, in Arbella, they were given jobs. Nobody rode for free. Nobody ate for free. Everybody worked. Everybody mattered.

  They weren’t allowed to go wasted and forgotten like this.

  Thinking about it made him homesick, which was funny.

  Ever since his teenage years, back when he was working with Arbella’s salvage teams, he’d believed with the conviction of the faithful that his community needed to expand beyond its walls if they were to survive. In the time since, he’d seen wonders few of his generation had been privileged to see, from giant aerofluyts that filled the sky to electric cars to buildings that could clean the air and make it feel like spring, even in the middle of summer. Twice he’d been brought back from the brink of death by medical knowledge unheard of in his home. He’d seen glimpses of the Old World, the time before the living dead consumed the planet, and yet, even with his boundaries opened and so many wonders spread out before him, he found himself wishing for the simpler life he’d known back in Arbella. He wanted to be back there, where the nights were lit only by candlelight, and where life wasn’t held so cheaply.

  He was still lost in his thoughts of home as he followed Chelsea and Kelly to a large electric map on a nearby wall. It showed all of underground El Paso, all of the main tunnels, all of the train routes, everything. He’d heard Chelsea’s remark that there were nine hundred miles of tunnels beneath El Paso, but looking at this map, he found it hard to believe it was only that. According to the map, not only did the tunnels extend under all of El Paso, but under the Rio Grande, as well. There were options to expand the map views into Juarez, and even beyond.

  “Nick would have loved this,” Jacob said.

  Kelly glanced at him over her shoulder. “What did you say?”

  “I was thinking of Nick.”

  She gave Chelsea a quick glance to make sure the girl hadn’t heard, then stepped closer. “Don’t beat yourself up about this morning. Dr. Brooks and the rest of the council had it in for you before you ever opened your mouth.”

  “Yeah, I know that’s true.”

  “But that’s not what’s bothering you, is it?”

  He smiled. “You know me pretty well, don’t you?”

  She shrugged and smiled back.

  “I was thinking of Jerry Greider. I executed an innocent man.”

  “Jacob, that wasn’t your—”

  “I know that. Hold on, let me finish. I guess what’s really bothering me is how I feel about it. Or how I don’t feel about it. I killed Jerry, and even though I know now that he was innocent, that doesn’t weigh on my conscience. I was doing what I was supposed to be doing. But what happened with Nick bothers me. I know he was guilty, and what I did was right, but it still hurts. It feels wrong, what I did to him.”

  “It doesn’t bother you that Jerry was innocent?”

  “Oh no, I didn’t mean it exactly like that. I mean, well, actually, kind of. With Jerry, I had made my peace beforehand. I was ready for it, you know? Even with Amanda screaming at me that I was putting the wrong man to death, I believed in what I was doing. With Nick, I just felt like . . . I don’t know, like it was personal somehow. That was what made it wrong, I guess. The feeling that it was personal.”

  He glanced over her shoulder at Chelsea. The girl was still studying the map, trying to figure out where they needed to go, oblivious to their conversation. That was good. If what Kelly said was true, Nick had meant a lot to her. She still couldn’t wrap her mind around why Nick had to die, and there were moments, when she caught Jacob’s eye, when he could see her confusion, and her hatred for him, and the bitterness burning inside her.

  “Jacob,” Kelly said, “I don’t know how to guide you in this. But we executed an innocent man. When we get back to Arbella, that has to come up. We have to acknowledge that in some way. To me, it’s a scary indictment on the Code itself. It makes me sick knowing what happened to him. It really doesn’t bother you?”

  “Of course it bothers me. I just meant . . . hell, I don’t know what I meant. I don’t know much about anything anymore. Not since we left home. That’s why I brought you along. You’re the smart one.”

  “God help us all if I’m the smart one.” She smiled again, but it looked forced. “But I’m serious, Jacob. We need to have this discussion. All of Arbella needs to have this discussion. Innocent men shouldn’t die in the name of justice.”

  Jacob didn’t really know how to respond to that. That was the thing about Kelly. She made his brain hurt. But Chelsea stepped between them the next instant, sparing him the embarrassment of saying something stupid.

  “Everything okay?” the younger girl asked, looking from Jacob to Kelly.

  “We’re fine,” Kelly said. “Just feeling like strangers in a strange land is all.”

  Chelsea nodded. “It is a lot to take in.”

  “I’ll say.” Jacob nodded toward the map. “I have to be honest, Chelsea. When you said there were nine hundred miles of tunnels under El Paso, I didn’t believe you. Even after being onboard that aerofluyt, and seeing Temple, I wouldn’t have believed all this. It’s incredible.”

  “Isn’t it?” she asked. “It’s just like I remember it, too.”

  “Did your people build all of this?”

  “Not all of it. A lot of it was here before the Outbreak. The way it was explained to me, these tunnels are a network of naturally occurring caves, primitive tunnels dug hundreds of years ago by the Native Americans, larger tunnels dug by Mexican revolutionaries, drug smugglers and human traffickers, and even larger tunnels made by the U.S. Army back in the late twentieth century. When my people came here, they just enlarged and stabilized those existing tunnels and turned them into a mass transit system. You should ask my aunt Miriam about it. She’s the real expert. It’s like her hobby.”

  Chelsea went back to the map and motioned for them to join her.

  “See this?” she said, pointing to the large dot that marked the southern end of a long red line. “This is where we are. We’re immediately below what used to be the El Paso International Airport. We need to take the Red Line Tube to here, beneath the old Biggs Army Airfield. That’s where my aunt Miriam’s shop is located.”

  “How do you know she’ll be there?” Kelly asked. “I mean, she doesn’t live in her shop, does she?”

  “No, of course not. But the c
ity is on lockdown. Knowing her, she’d rather be stuck at her shop than in her apartment. And if what we saw on the news is true about the Hawking’s failure to shepherd the herd with their morphic field generators, I can pretty much guarantee you that’s where she’ll be.”

  Kelly nodded.

  She glanced at Jacob and he nodded back. It was the closest they’d come to a commonsense plan all day, and for the first time, Jacob was feeling pretty good about their chances. “So how do we get to the Red Line?” he asked.

  Chelsea pointed at a sign over his shoulder that read RED LINE, LEVEL FOUR. “We go down those stairs there, I guess.”

  “Okay,” Jacob said. “Excellent.”

  At the bottom of the stairs they joined a small crowd. Most were trying to work their way onto a sleek white train with black windows. Nearly everyone on the platform was dressed in some type of work uniform, lots of blue and yellow dungarees and lots of hard hats. Kelly wore a white blouse and tan-colored slacks. Chelsea also had on a white blouse, but she wore it untucked over a knee-length green skirt. They both fit in well enough. Jacob, on the other hand, wore a red jacket over the white shirt and pants they’d given him at the hospital. He was the only splash of red on the whole platform, and between that and the bruises to his face, he drew more than a few stares.

  He just ducked his head and followed Chelsea through the crowd. The nearest open car door was directly ahead, and Jacob stood to one side to let the ladies get on first. Kelly and Chelsea found seats on the far side of the car. Kelly put herself on Chelsea’s right and patted the empty seat next to her for Jacob to take.

  “Jacob, what is it?”

  He motioned for her to be quiet. He was still standing on the platform. From where he stood, he could see down the length of the train. The platform extended almost two hundred meters in that direction. There was another stairwell at the far end of the platform, but the crowds there weren’t as heavy as where he was standing. It allowed him to see the pair of men hovering near the car doors nearest them. Both had the hard stare and chiseled toughness that he’d seen back on Galveston Island.

  And they were staring right at him.

  “Shit,” he muttered.

  “Jacob?” Kelly said. “What’s wrong?”

  He ignored her question and stepped onto the train. Then he craned his head forward so that he could see down the inside of the train.

  Four cars down, the two men stepped onto the train.

  Jacob stepped back off the train, his gaze still fixed down the length of the platform.

  The two men stepped back off the train.

  “Jacob, what are you doing?” Kelly asked.

  “Chelsea,” he said. “Let me have the notebooks.”

  “What? No.”

  “Chelsea, we don’t have time for games. Give me the notebooks.”

  “What are you going to do with them?”

  “Hopefully keep us from getting killed. Now come on, hand them over. We don’t have a lot of time.”

  Kelly nudged Chelsea in the ribs. “Better do it.”

  Chelsea clutched the notebooks to her chest like they were asking her to give up her newborn child.

  “Come on,” Jacob said. “We do this right now or we’re going to get killed. There are two more of those men down there.”

  “Where?” Chelsea said.

  She leaned forward, and when she did, Jacob grabbed the top of the notebooks.

  Chelsea wouldn’t let them go.

  “Chelsea, come on. You have to give them to me. They’re coming for us right now. Please. You have to trust me.”

  There was no trust in her eyes. Certainly no forgiveness. The look she gave him could have cut glass. But she let the journals go.

  Jacob took them. “Thanks,” he said. “I promise you’ll get them back.”

  “Where are you going?” Kelly asked.

  “I should be right back,” he said.

  He looked back down through the cars. The two men had reboarded the train, and they were watching him. Jacob held up the notebooks and used them to give them a mock salute.

  Then he ran from the train.

  When he glanced back over his shoulder, the two men were spilling out of the car, pushing their way through the crowd as they charged after him. Jacob quickly ran down his options. He still had both pistols. He could fight his way out of this. But even if he won the gunfight, doing it here, on this platform, in front of hundreds of people, was just as good as getting caught.

  So if he couldn’t fight, that left running.

  And there were two ways he could go.

  He could go back up the way they’d come and hope to get lost in the crowds. His chances of escaping were better that way, but he’d be lost trying to find Kelly and Chelsea again. Maps had never really been his thing, even back in his days with the salvage teams.

  His only option was finding a way back on the train and rejoining Kelly and Chelsea, so he needed another way out.

  He found it near the front of the platform. People in white and gray uniforms were filing down from the main level, packing themselves onto the train.

  A warning chime sounded over a PA system, followed by a woman’s voice. “One minute to departure,” she said. “All doors to the Red Line will be closing in one minute.”

  He glanced back to the rear of the platform and saw the men getting closer.

  Whatever he was going to do, he had to do it fast.

  He ran toward the front of the platform and turned up the tunnel he found there. It was packed with people, all of them in the white and gray uniforms of their company.

  Jacob moved quickly. He ran halfway up the length of the tunnel and stopped at a trash can. He pulled off his jacket and stuffed it into the can. Then he pressed the notebooks against his right thigh, merged in with the crowd moving toward the platform, and lowered his gaze.

  The two hired men rounded the corner a second later. They pushed workers out of the way and jumped up and down to try to catch a glimpse of Jacob. When that didn’t work, they ran up the tunnel.

  Jacob, his head down, using passersby to block him from view, glanced left just long enough to see the men run past. Once they were out of sight, he hustled forward and got back on the train.

  The doors closed right behind him.

  Kelly was at his side a moment later.

  “What in the world was that about?”

  “Look there,” he said, and nodded up the tunnel.

  The two men had stopped next to the trash can. One of them had fished Jacob’s jacket out of the trash and held it up for the other one to see. They gestured at each other, then ran toward the train.

  The train was already moving by the time the two men reached the platform. They tried to look through the windows, but couldn’t.

  Jacob held up one hand and gave them a wave as they slid by.

  “Jacob, don’t!” Kelly said, grabbing his hand.

  “They can’t see us. We got away.”

  “We got lucky.”

  It was Jacob’s turn to shrug. “Yeah, but we got away.”

  CHAPTER 9

  They were the only ones left on the train when it glided into Industrial Yards Station half an hour later.

  Glancing out the window, Jacob got the feeling not too many people made it this far down the line, even when the city wasn’t under lockdown. The Airport Station, where they’d boarded the train, was enormous. There’d been room on the platform for hundreds of people. And the place was clean and well-maintained, despite all the homeless people he’d seen there.

  Industrial Yards Station, by comparison, seemed like an afterthought. The platform was barely five meters wide, and at most forty meters long. Benches lined the back wall. There were trash cans in between the gaps in the benches with paper and cups spilling out of the top. The walls, the floor, the grout in the tile: Everything had a worn-down, grungy appearance.

  “This is where your aunt works?” Jacob asked, trying, unsuccessfully he thoug
ht, to keep the doubt out of his voice.

  “Near here, yeah,” Chelsea said. If she’d noticed his tone, she made no sign of it. “We have a little walking to do, I think.”

  “Okay,” Jacob said, glancing at Kelly. “I’m ready if you are.”

  Kelly nodded.

  But as soon as the doors opened, Jacob knew it wasn’t going to be easy. They were greeted by a blaring alarm, five long blasts of a high-pitched siren. As soon as the last one sounded, a woman’s voice came over the overhead speakers: “This area is under lockdown and has been restricted to authorized personnel only. All exits to the surface have been sealed. All surface travel has been suspended until further notice. If you notice any signs of incursion, report it immediately using the call boxes located throughout the station. Thank you.”

  The message repeated twice more, once in Spanish and again in Chinese.

  “Come on,” Chelsea said, stepping off the train.

  Jacob and Kelly glanced at one another, and he saw her swallow a lump in her throat. She was scared, and so was he. Everything about this felt wrong.

  But Kelly was the first to move. She stepped off the train and starting walking toward the nearest passageway off the platform.

  Jacob followed.

  Chelsea and Kelly rounded the corner and stopped. Kelly looked back at him and said, “Uh, Jacob. I think we have a problem.”

  He hurried around the corner and immediately saw the problem. A thick metal roll-down door covered the entrance.

  “Jacob, what do we do?” Kelly asked.

  “There’s another entrance farther down,” he said. “We’ll try that one.”

  He made his way down the platform to the other entrance. Like the first, a metal roll-down door blocked it. But it looked to be in bad repair. As Jacob studied it, the women came up behind him.

  “Jacob, are we stuck here?” Kelly asked. “I think the train is going to leave soon.”

  “I don’t think this is a problem,” he said.

  His earlier impression that the Industrial Yards Station was not much on anybody’s mind when it came to upkeep was true here, as well. The pull-down door was battered and bent, and it didn’t even latch securely to the floor. Against a small group of zombies, it would probably offer adequate protection. But to a living person, somebody with a desire to break through, the door was nothing.