Dead and Dead Again: Kansas City Quarantine (61 page)

Of course it is. That’s how the
government stops trains,
Trip didn’t say.

“Sure is, ma’am,” the sergeant
agreed, moving up to leer over her shoulder.

“Shit,” Calvin hissed, having no
doubt their assessment was correct.

“Now the military is trying to stop
us?” he asked in frustration. “What did you do?” he demanded of Batmouche’
angrily.

“I did nothing,” she replied
calmly.

Some shadow of honor in her eyes or
perhaps the self-assured tenseness in her shoulders or the confident set of her
jaw convinced him she was telling the truth. “Check it out,” he ordered.

The Captain nodded and marched to
the radio in the next car, the sergeant in tow. Two minutes later the livid
captain was shouting at some poor Lieutenant back at Ft. Riley. Not long after
this heated discussion, she was transferred to Whiteman Air Force base to
another captain. “What do you mean you were
ordered
to?” Batmouche’
shouted into the microphone. “I gave them the track coords, the times, hell, I
gave them two hours to make sure something like this
didn’t
happen! They
knew
we were coming!”

“It was a miscommunication,
Captain,” the other captain replied in a conciliatory manner, thankful he was
on the other side of the radio from this pissed bitch.

“Who the fuck made the
miscommunication and why?” she demanded.

“There was a train stolen from
downtown yard in KC a half-hour after your team pulled out, Captain Batman.
The—”

“—Batmouche’,” she interrupted.

“Yes, of course. My apologies,
Captain Batmouche’. The Warthogs were supposed to be taking out the track
after
your team went through.”

“Yeah? What happened to the
after
part of those orders?”

“There were conflicting orders,
Captain. It’s been sorted out.”

“No, it hasn’t been sorted out. If
it had been sorted out, there would still be a fucking bridge ahead of us
instead of a natural spring pouring from that hillside,” she spat into the mic.
“I’m staring at a gaping fucking hole where my safe route for the package used
to lay. Do you know how important this mission is, Captain?”

“Yes, ma’am. I do now. I’m sorry
about that,” the truly apologetic sounding Air Force Captain murmured quietly.
“But it’s not our fault here. Someone reported an escape attempt from inside
and before the spotters heard from up top that the shiny blue train was yours, you’d
been tagged as the breakout risk and the Warthogs had already been there and
gone. Look, it won’t happen again.”

“Well yippety fucking do!” the
Captain shrieked. “Who’s going to build me a new goddamn bridge?”

The sergeant harrumphed into her
ear. Eyes shooting lasers at first, quickly softened and she sighed and set the
noncom a nod.

“I’m sorry, Captain Pendleton,” she
quickly amended her speech. “Look, I’m sure this isn’t your fault. I’m just a
little pissed off here. I was almost home after a cluster-fuck of a mission. Now
I have to backtrack through unfamiliar territory without recon.”

“I’m glad they didn’t decide we
needed to be stopped permanently,” Trip commented over the mic with a grimace.

The captain looked at him and
nodded agreement, belatedly informing Trip that Calvin had given the soldiers earbuds
for their com system.

Thanks for the heads up, Buddy,
he thought sourly. His thoughts soured further when Calvin shot him an evil
grin and rubbed his hands together like he was Rumplestiltskin about to collect
on his bet. “By the way, everyone please welcome the military to our
communication channel.” He mumbled lightly into the mic on his cheek. He then
motioned the others to the corner of the meeting room away from the door through
which they had been listening. He motioned for Athena to keep listening to the
rest of the captain’s conversation while the others turned off their mics.

“What do we do, Hef?” he asked.

“The captain has it right. We have
to backtrack. There are too many hills out there to do anything else and this
track stays on the other side of the river from the highway for a very long
time. We have to go back,” he stated with a cold dread. No one wanted to go
back. Forward was freedom…or at the very least the illusion of freedom.

“Tsk. See, if we had a boat, we
could just take the river,” Lucy tsked at them from her shadow with a delayed
grin that glowed like the crescent moon in the laptop light.

Tripper laughed and Hef smiled.
Calvin, however, was weighing options…option. Not really much to weigh; they
only seemed to have one. “Let’s hope there’s still a track behind us,” he declared
what they were all undoubtedly thinking.

“It should be ok,” the Captain
informed them casually. “They have no problem with us using the rail if we’re
not trying to leave. But they have to keep the Quarantine.”

“If I remember correctly,”
Hephaestus mumbled, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “There is another switch a
few miles back. I am not sure how far south that track goes before we reach another
northern switch, though. But there is one that travels north to join this one
just before Manhattan. We can go south until we meet that one or a link to it.
It should not be too difficult to find on our map, but this will delay our
arrival for several more hours.”

“How long to turn this thing
around?” Calvin asked, knowing that just ‘turning it around’ wasn’t how it was
done.

“I need someone in the caboose
watching the rails,” Hef replied. “And Lucy, you should fly the drone back and
make sure the track is still intact and then follow the path along that
southern route.”

“Boomer, get to caboose and keep a
sharp eye out,” Calvin ordered.

“Sure thing, Chief,” Boomer replied.

“And everyone watch and listen for
that other train,” Calvin added.

“It is getting dark,” Hephaestus
muttered, looking at the heavy clouds beginning to blot out the sun. “There is
a handle that operates a light outside!” He called after Boomer. He turned to
the others. “You can view the track on the monitor. Just as on the front, there
is a camera outside so you do not have to look out a window. Nice, is it not?”

“But someone has to be out there to
shine the light…” Calvin pointed out. “Not good if we’re surrounded by
zombies.”

“That is not really a problem.” Hef
turned his mic back off again. “Eventually he will realize the light can only
be moved from inside.”

Several of the others laughed,
while Calvin simply shook his head in surrender.

“This is a brilliant design, Hef,”
Calvin admitted. “The depth of detail you go into for your contraptions borders
on the idyllic. But we already knew you were a genius.”

“This creation goes beyond genius,”
he crowed above the growing engine noise. “She’s pure inspiration. I would
break into song if this compartment were not already so noisy and were I not also
sure Tripper would brain me.”

No matter how hard he had tried, Hef
couldn’t keep the engine room from sounding like an engine room. In reverse, it
was worse for some unknown reason he promised himself to look into later. The
drone of the engines drowned out half of what everyone said. He shook his head
in slight disappointment. The electronic sound reducing layers he’d added to
the walls had helped a lot but in the end, it was still a train, and two fifteen-hundred horsepower engines sent out a bit of a rumble.

Backing all the way to the switch took
longer than anticipated. Lucy and Hef double-checked each other on mirrored
laptops and both had to sign off on a section of track or they each had to
inspect it again. The train sat stopped three times when both wanted to inspect
a section ahead…or behind as the case was.

“You’re being entirely too careful,
guys,” Tripper informed them casually. “I promise you, if the A-10s returned
all we would see is a gaping hole where the track and surrounding hillside used
to be.”

Hephaestus, however, seemed to be
looking for something other than damage. Every time Calvin was about to ask his
friend what he was looking for, Boomer, Hef or Lucy would shout something and
distract him. When the alarm went off to inform them that the location of the switch
track was coming up, Hef shook his head in disappointment.

“Ok. Do we have control of the
switch?” he looked to Sarah for a nod, which she gave. “Are we clear up front?”
he asked Athena, who sat at a duplicate monitor as the one he had before him.

“Clear,” she called back.

“Clear here,” he agreed.

“Boomer?”

“Clear,” Boomer responded over the
headset, not sounding too upset at having spent fifteen minutes trying to move
an immoveable light.

Hef nodded to Sarah and she flipped
the switch on the touch screen he had installed in the ‘dash’ of the big Engineer’s
room.

“Here we go,” he said simply, and
the train rolled easily onto the new track and slowly sped up to their new safe
cruising speed of fifteen mph.

“Switch it back and lock it,”
Calvin ordered. When Hef sent him a quizzical look he replied, “That other
train is still back there. We don’t need that following us and causing
problems. Though, it should have caught us as slow as we were moving.”

“Nothing on the screen or the drone
monitor, Scooter,” Lucy informed him.

“They must have stopped or turned
aside,” Calvin mused.

“Or the Warthogs finished their
mission,” Trip said with raised eyebrows.

“Let’s hope not. We might need to
come back through here some day.”

“What do we do if this happens
again?” the Captain asked Hephaestus.

“It had better not,” Calvin shot
her an angry glare.

“I will have whoever is on the maps
keeping track of alternate routes as we go,” Hephaestus suggested, with an eye
on Calvin, who nodded in return.

Hephaestus looked back to the
captain. “Relax, Captain. It is not your fault. We are still in the big game.
We have just had to change tactics after giving up a score.”

“Who’s driving?” Calvin asked.

“This is my bitch,” Lucy stated
confidently.

“Lucy is in the program,” Hef
nodded. “She has operated similar programs before. I think we should give her
first shift and she can show the others how it is done.”

Calvin nodded agreement. It made
sense. Lucy was the only one other than Hephaestus who had actually driven a
train. She had worked in the accounting office of one of the railroads and had
taken weekend shifts learning how to ‘yard dog’ and drive several different engines.
Leaning over her shoulder and pointing to various buttons and screens, it only
took Hef a few minutes to teach her the basics.
And
for his train,
that is all anyone needs to know for now
, he thought.

“Look in the console there, Lucy,”
Hef told her.

She reached in and her eyes lit up.
She pulled out a pink and blue striped, bedazzled Rail Conductor’s Cap.

“I had that made for your birthday
long ago, but you found a better job and quit the railways. Once I knew we
would be taking this out of here, I hid it there for you.”

“I would have loved it then, and
it’s awesome now,” her eyes beamed. She reached up and hugged his neck and he
took her in a great embrace and kissed her cheek. When he let her go, she
shuffled back over to her console to keep an eye on the train.

Calvin’s eyes were beginning to
droop.
Time for a nap
. “Gus, Scaggs, Joel, Felicia, you’re on first
watch since you’re already up there and had the last sleep cycle anyway. I need
a nap,” Calvin smiled up at his friends sitting on the catwalk above. With a
nod to Athena, he walked out of the engine room, followed by everyone except
for Hephaestus, who eyed the monitor, and Sarah, who was securing their locks
on the switches ahead.

Lucy drove the
Twilight Dragon
from her darkened corner, watching everything from an invisible distance, her
eyes always straying to rest fondly on Hephaestus, imagining his broad
shoulders under the heavy chainmail jacket, remembering how good his firm embrace
had felt, the intoxicating scent of his cologne. She couldn’t hear a thing from
the other side of the compartment, but a cold chill filled her gut as she
recognized a look on Hef’s face when he stared at the captain, and the way she
returned that look.

Captain Batmouche’ talked quietly
to her people and they eventually faded out of the compartment as well, but the
officer then sauntered over to where Hephaestus was locking covers over several
compartments of machinery he had been monitoring.

“There is something on your mind,
Captain Batmouche’?” he asked casually.

“You are always shaking your head
when you look at me,” she said boldly, demanding a response.

“Because you are always too intense;
you must learn to loosen up.”

“I have a job to do,” she explained
without apology.

“We all have a job to do now. That
job is to stay alive and hopefully return and try to save the rest of my city.”

“I…get that. I just want to get my
mission done and return to the wall.”

“You are getting the mission done
in the fastest manner and with the highest percentage of success. What you do
not like is that it happens to be civilians, a bunch of geeks no less, who are
succeeding where you were about to fail.”

“It is not that I don’t appreciate
what your group has done. On the contrary, it’s very impressive. And I know I
would still be back there as dinner for those things if not for your actions…”

“But?” Hephaestus asked.

“But I do
not
like so many
things being out of my control,” she admitted with a bit of girlish petulance.

“Some relationships are like that,
Captain,” he replied with a big smile.

She liked the way she felt when his
big bright teeth beckoned out of his dark face at her that way. “Wait. I’m
sorry, what?” she asked, finally hearing what he had said. “Relationship, what,
no I couldn’t. I’m, what?” she tittered.