Dead and Dead Again: Kansas City Quarantine (65 page)

“Make sure he’s dead,” Scaggs
mumbled through her sore jaw. “If not I’ve got something for that little bitch,”
she held up a bruised and bloody fist.

“Are the swords there?” Trip asked.

“Yup,” Boomer answered with a nod.

He could see the hilts of both
swords protruding out from under the biggest man to have hit Scaggs—the one who
had enjoyed it entirely too much. As Boomer leaned down, the big man opened his
eyes and screamed. Two massive arms reached out, clutching the young black man
by the throat and holding him in the air despite hundreds of nails protruding
from various parts of his body. The injured hick emitted a primal scream of
rage and pain. Boomer grasped both hands and tried to rip them from his neck,
but the nail-peppered psycho had the fingers of an iron vice and the jaws were
closing fast, like the pages on the book of his life.

“Boomer, roll over. I can’t get a
clean shot,” Sarah suggested.

Boomer did not have that option.
The man was far too strong and he could only gag and choke and paw at the death
hold around his throat. Suddenly the man turned Boomer to face the train,
trying to use him as a shield and his hold lessened slightly, just enough for
Boomer to get a ragged breath and some renewed energy. Realizing he could never
get the more powerful hands to break their hold, Boomer tried reaching the rebar
he had slung across his back. He needed both arms to release it, though,
because it always caught on the leather straps inside his poorly engineered
sheath.

I knew I should have had Hef
make me somethin’,
he lamented, fighting off dreamland as the world around
him morphed into a dark, spinning tunnel with occasional, flashing fire flies.

The big man had taken at least a
hundred nails to the face, chest and arms and now focused every particle of
energy from his crazed anger and pain into crushing the life from the one
person within his grasp. He was succeeding. With his last ounce of defiance, Boomer
twisted in the big man’s grasp enough to kick the behemoth in the groin once,
twice, and then one more time. The man loosed his grip the slightest fraction,
but that was enough for Boomer to get another breath.
I’ll do this one
breath at a time.
Drawing in a deep but ragged breath, he stretched his
arms up and grasped the end of the rebar and ripped the entire sheath from his
back, bringing the middle of the bar down on the giant man’s head once, twice,
then one more time and the man finally let go with another scream of rage,
dropping Boomer and stumbling backwards.

Boomer raised the rebar to shove it
into the man’s eye-socket, but the great behemoth reached out and grabbed both
arms and began slowly forcing him to the ground. With one powerful twist Boomer
was on his knees again with the man’s impossibly powerful arm around his neck
squeezing again with the strength of a python. The young man put every ounce of
energy into prying the arm from his throat while the man’s other hand held him
tightly against the ground.

Oh shit. Trip was right. I can’t
win,
Boomer finally admitted as his arms gave out and his face slammed
against the street. But when a man’s strength fails him is the time for those
who love him to carry him forward. And Boomer’s friends at least really liked
him. Musical tinkling and the hiss of compressed air sounded from close by and
the big man’s arm relented around Boomer’s throat. Although he lacked the
strength to even roll from under the man, as the big body crashed to the
ground, Boomer glanced up to see Gus holding Scaggs upright over him, the
silver wand of her air gun still pointing at the giant’s face. Refusing to cry,
he did, however, let out a relieved sigh that left his lungs sounding a lot more
like a sob than he liked.

With a grunt, Gus put all of his
weight into one leg and rolled the big man to the side, leaned over and spat, 
”Stinking Chickenhawk,” sending more blood spraying out than he’d intended, as
he had not intended to send any.

“Is he dead?” Scaggs asked.

Without hesitation, Boomer rolled
over and shoved the rebar into the man’s eye socket and through his brain,
leaving the rod pointing into the sky like a sundial.

“He is now. Stupid asshole.” He
spat. “We were trying to save you,” he added before reaching down to pick up
the dropped armor and swords. He left the rebar in man’s skull and the trio
wobbled back to the train. Seconds later all three were back onboard, a concerned
Athena pulling the heavy metal hatch shut and spinning the submarine-style
pressure lock into place behind a staggering Gus and Scaggs.

Hef revved the engine and everyone
on board eyed the wall of cars, benches, tables and various other junk and
equipment the people had stacked across the road to block the powerful train.

“You think we can break through
that?” Calvin asked.

“Not without backing up and coming
at it. And they would probably just switch the track on us again to keep us
from it. Also, I’m uncertain what they have placed on the track behind us.”

“We’ve got time. We can send up the
drone and pull out the vehicles and keep the intersection clear.”

“You sure they even have that much fight
left in them?” Hephaestus asked, seeing only a few heads timidly peering from
behind the cars and trees along the roadside.

“They’re still out there,
watching,” Gus coughed gruffly, looking sideways through his open, cross-shaped
gun-hatch with his least puffy eye.

“Yup,” Calvin mumbled, using a set
of what looked to be opera glasses.

“So, pull out the Hedgehog, clear
the tracks and keep the switch clear while we back up and bust through?” Gus
suggested feebly.

“We do not have to, Jackass,” Hef
huffed angrily and shoved Gus into a padded chair so the doctor could check him
out.

“What do you mean?” Scaggs asked weakly
from a chair in the corner where she was currently being examined and bandaged by
both the doctor and Athena. She winced with nearly every touch of the doctor’s
fingers on her chest.

“I
mean
, the reason I told
you to wake me if anything happens to slow or stop our journey is because I
have other methods of making things happen.”

“What, you’re a fracking magician?
Can you make us fly?” Scaggs slobbered through a gob of bloodied saliva.

“You needed sleep,” Gus wheezed.

“Not so much that I need to see two
of my friends
die
,” he hissed and his dark eyes watered, but were quickly
blinked clear.

“And why did you not at least send
Gimp Bait and GI Jane out there?” he pointed to the pair of military Privates. “That
is what they are here for, after all.”

Gus and the others looked around
with guilty expressions. The two privates, however, shrugged and nodded
confirmation that this was, in fact, their jobs.

“That actually never occurred to
me,” Gus admitted ruefully.

“Let the military do the dirty
work. It is what they are trained for. And although we support and respect our
military, remember that they are only along because Calvin said they could
come. Let them earn their place on my train.”

The captain appeared genuinely hurt
by his words.

“I simply mean that this is your
duty as well as the trade-off for our help,” he explained. “Everyone earns a
spot.”

“Right,” Gus hoarsely coughed,
while Joel and the girls nodded.

The captain nodded too, but she was
clearly re-evaluating some things.

“Why does no one ever listen to me?”
he continued angrily, working himself into a tirade. “I informed all of you
that this is not a train. It is the ultimate survival vehicle. Did I not tell
you that? It travels best on the rails, because that takes the least amount of
energy from the engines, but with a pull of a lever…” he pulled the big green
levers in the middle of the floor that he had been telling them all day not to
touch. He then revved up the motors and a deep rumbling vibration shuddered throughout
the entire train as the engine and four cars lifted several inches
simultaneously onto the custom-designed triangular treads he had spent so long
designing and assembling. With the accelerator moved forward, slowly the train
began to inch forward.

“…it becomes a street vehicle,” he
veered the massive machine north off the rails and then south onto the
cross-street.

The green and white street sign the
train rolled over read Lincoln Street. Hef laughed a deep, maniacal laugh and pulled
an up-til-now unnoticed string fastened to the bottom of the catwalk above as
he gunned the throttle. The string opened a valve from the compressors, sending
pressurized air thought the tube up through the roof into a dozen air-horns, which
blasted like the horns of hell, if there was such a thing. This thunderous
exclamation was the last straw for their attackers, sending the remnants of the
defeated mob screaming into the night. The combined thunder of dual diesels and
air horns echoed through the streets between the buildings and the massive
vehicle ripped through the ‘Caution, Train Coming’ gates and into the little
town just off the tracks.

Just before the first turn, Hef
braced himself by planting one foot firmly on either side of the levers sticking
up out of the floor and lowering his center of gravity by squatting slightly.

“Hold on,” he yelled, and pushed
one steering lever all the way, but pulled the other one back and they turned
onto the main thoroughfare, Highway 24—surprisingly smashing into only one
building and ripping three or four inches of concrete and plaster free as the
big engine took the turn too widely.

“Ooh, misjudged the turn radius a
bit. Will have to make a note of that,” he mumbled into his mic, singing a song
under his breath.

 “Wait!” Calvin yelled. “It’s a
train. It’s way too heavy to run on the streets. It’ll just break through the
concrete and sink into the dirt or clay, or whatever the hell they have out
here in BFE Kansas.”

Hephaestus simply smiled down at
his friend. Contrary to the supposed truth of his statement, they
were
moving, and speeding up to ten mph, and then fifteen. Trip and Sarah shared a
look and Athena laughed as they distinctly picked out the words of the song
coming from their friend.

“It’s phantasmagorical, a fuel
burning oracle…” Hef murmured.

“Are you singing the
Chitty
Chitty Bang Bang
song?” Athena asked.

Hephaestus just continued smiling
and humming.

“How?” Calvin asked eventually when
the train failed to sink into the roadway.

“I cut the overall weight by three
quarters and spread out the existing weight onto much wider inertial transference
points…basically we are now using a few dozen wider treads instead of only
three of the wheeled dollies that can only run on rails and place a very high amount
of weight on very little surface area. It is still almost twice the legal weight
limit of the roadways, but that mass is better distributed along the roadway on
so many wide treads, cutting down the weight per square foot by a factor of forty-ish.”

“It’s probably still tearing the
hell out of the streets,” Calvin noted remotely.

“Possibly. But do we really give a
damn about ruining the streets in this town after what they nearly did to
Scaggs?” the big inventor asked. “And look at Gus’ hand.” He indicated the four
fingers, bent like crazy straws sticking out of a shared malt shake. “He will
not be able to throw a twenty-sided die for months and you know he hates
letting the computer do it for him.”

“I can toss a die left-handed, dude,”
Gus muttered gruffly into his mic, too sore to speak loud enough to be heard in
the big engine room.

“About the town, though, Wamego out
there,” Sarah nodded out the window.

“Yes?” Hef asked.

“There are over four thousand
people in this town.”

“And?”

“Only about a hundred decided to
come out in force like this.”

“So?” Hef still didn’t understand.

“So maybe destroying their highway
because of a few assholes isn’t the right way to go about this?”

“Hey guys, we can take this highway
all the way to our destination,” Calvin interjected, looking up from the map. Clearly
he hadn’t been paying attention, but the nasty glares Sarah and Athena sent his
way told him he probably should have been.

“What?”

“You’re the one who noticed we’re
destroying the highway,” Athena insisted.

“That was before I realized we
could finish this mission without going back to the tracks. A little street
damage is a small price to pay to save the country, isn’t it?” he asked.
All
those years in debate might finally be paying off
, he thought.

“Let me suggest this,” Hef eyed the
two women. “When this is done, we will return here. If we like these people, I
will pay to rebuild whatever we break.”

“Deal,” Sarah said.

Athena nodded. “Fair enough.”

“And what if they still want to
kill us?” Tripper demanded.

Calvin laughed, his left hand
coming up to clutch his chest protectively before realizing there was only a
dull ache. The doctor had done his job well. Almost as if on queue, MacGreggor
marched back in and pointed at the heavily bandaged Gus and Scaggs, who were
both too stubborn to leave.

“Help me get these two to bed,” he
ordered angrily. “Move. Move. Move.” He ushered them along with a gentle hand
on one shoulder each.

“Oh yeah, I’ll help you get her to
bed,” Gus mumbled, trying to sound sexy.

“That’s just creepy, sweetie,”
Scaggs muttered through an already stiffening jaw.

“C’mon,” Athena grabbed Scaggs’ arm
and started helping her to the exit while Gus stumbled along behind them like a
drunken sailor looking for his ship at the end of shore leave.

“Everyone might as well stay up
until we’ve dropped Doc off. Stay where you are and keep your eyes open. This
might not be the last town looking to stop us.”