The Zombie Road Omnibus

by David A. Simpson

  “Well aren’t you a just a little ray of sunshine,” Evans grumbled. “Don’t you know it’s bad luck to talk about dying?”

  They rolled on, far ahead of the followers stumbling in their path, running as fast as they could through the Georgia backcountry, and adding more to their numbers in every little town they went through.

  After they finished eating, they started gearing up for Atlanta. Gunny hadn’t let up off the throttle and their little train was nearing the first of the half-dozen switches they would have to throw to get to the college. As they neared the big city, there were a lot of parallel tracks to park trains. They had to slow to a crawl at each one to ensure the switches were keeping them on the main line, not sending them flying off on a siding and plowing into the back of a bunch of containers or coal cars waiting to be unloaded.

  Atlanta was crawling with zombies; the train was already under bombardment from the screaming undead as they neared the first switch. There were a lot of short side tracks in this area, in the industrial outskirts of the city. Spurs that branched off a mile or so to different factories. The line they wanted carried on across the Chattahoochee River, on an old steel deck truss bridge.

  “It’s show time!” Gunny looked up from the rail map and yelled back at them through the open door. “The first turnout is coming up. Everybody man your machine guns, keep us a path clear. You know the drill.”

  “Stabby, you’re up,” he said and vacated the engineer's seat. “Me and Griz will move the rails if they need it.”

  Stabby sat down in the chair while the others climbed up to the roof and got in position. Lars and Bridget went to the guns mounted on the front deck and positioned their ammo cans, charged the handles to make sure the M-2s had rounds chambered. Griz slung his carbine and grabbed the long pry-bar as they walked out the front door. Gunny double checked his magazines, making sure they were facing the way he liked them for combat reloads. If things went smoothly, they could be off the train, force the turnout over, if needed, and get back on in under a minute. It all depended on how close Stabby could get the train stopped without overshooting or making them run a hundred yards while he slowly got it rolling again.

  “Get ready!” he yelled out to Gunny.

  “Get ready!” Gunny yelled up to the men on the roof and everyone braced themselves. Stabby was getting pretty good at judging stopping distance and when he was a quarter mile away, he slammed the brakes to full stop. They held on as nearly a million pounds of steel suddenly tried to slow its forward momentum. The brakes were screeching, sparks flying from the steel on steel contact of the wheels on the tracks and the undead were stumbling beside them. They raged and attacked, many of them tripping over the cross-ties to be trampled by their own kind or dismembered by the wheels. The switch was coming up fast, but the empty train was slowing faster. The guns on the roof opened up, walking the tracers into the closest runners. Lars and Bridget spun the fifties around on the tripods and let loose on the zeds in front of the train, peppering them with heavy lead, sending gallons of blood and organs splashing out onto the gravel. Gunny and Griz slid aside the spiked gates Tommy had installed and both climbed down the ladders on either side of the cab. Younger and spryer men may have jumped off and gone into a full run alongside the train, but they both knew better. A twisted ankle now could be a death sentence. All it took was one runner to get past the wall of lead disintegrating their bodies to sink its teeth into a limping man. The runners behind them kept coming, kept attacking the train and more were making their way through the tangle of warehouses and fences. The train skidded to a halt only twenty yards from the switch and they could see it was turned to shunt them off onto the siding. The two men hopped down and were running toward it, Griz with his pry-bar Gunny with his M-4, and Stabby started inching the train forward so they wouldn’t have so far to run on the way back. Lars and Bridget kept walking bullets in on the runners, blowing away great chunks of them and sending bodies flying. The heavy, slow, thudding of the two .50s chewed up the undead, headshots weren’t needed. If the bullets hit center mass, they did enough damage to reduce them to mangled heaps, barely able to even crawl through the dirt. Gunny shouldered his M-4 as Griz stuck his bar in and forced the turnout away from the spur, and over to the main rail line. It slid easily as Gunny splattered a few that had managed to get past Lars and Bridget. The chatter of the 60s on the roof was constant and the horde was being whittled down quickly. Griz took off for the slow-moving train, with Gunny right behind him, when they heard Bridget scream and both .50s went silent.

  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 and 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.