LZR-1143: Redemption (13 page)

EIGHTEEN

Kate and Rhodes weren’t responding to my radio calls, but I knew where they were heading, and I knew that we needed to be there soon. If it was on time, the train would be pulling out within twenty minutes. The gunfire ahead was like a beacon, and I moved quickly between parked cars and the wreckage of a small city brought to its early demise. Broken glass and debris littered the streets, and windows were in turn, either boarded up or shattered—either gaping holes into a dark unknown, or an awkward X facing the world outside.

A large explosion rocked the nearest buildings as I reached a cluttered corner. A burned out sedan was parked at an angle to the next street, and I saw the fires and the movement of the militia in front of me. Men and women ran from the sides of the street to ammunition dumps and resting places protected from the return fire of the Army by large brick buildings.

Above the chaos on the street, helicopters shot through the sky, moving quickly to avoid crossfire, and launching missiles to take out the last remnants of the militia’s dwindling motorized vehicles. I tried my comms again, expecting nothing.

Static whistled in my ear, and I grunted once.

Then, suddenly, “Mike, come in. We’re pinned down in a coffee place across from the station. We got around the militia but they spotted us, and we can’t signal to the Army guys on the other side of the barricade. It looks like they’re pulling back. Can you copy this?”

Kate’s voice was anxious and hurried. Her near whisper was punctuated by gunfire and raised voices that reached a crescendo as the comm signal went silent.

I yelled back into my own transmitter, but there was no response.

Searching the nearby structures, I couldn’t see the storefronts or names, and couldn’t make out where they might be hiding. Time was flying, and I had to do something.

So I just stood up and walked into the heart of the militia’s encampment.

The figures running back and forth in front of me barely glanced up, and I made it into the center of the street before a man in an old green army jacket with a red bandana around his mouth and nose stood up from where he squatted against a fire hydrant.

“Identify yourself,” he said curtly, rural accent thick through the red cloth.

“Jake Sumter,” I said quickly, remembering the name of my first high school football coach.

The guy was a true bastard, and I figured he might fit in here.

“Unit?” he asked, eyes narrowing behind the cover over his face.

I flicked my eyes down once, watching his hand tighten on his weapon as his eyes also took in my outfit, with its specially modified tactical additions.

“Well…” I began, but never finished.

It still surprised me how fast I could move.

My hand shot out and was around his windpipe before he could tighten his grip on his weapon or raise a call. His arm came up, but I batted it down easily as I took him back to the ground and hunched over him, like we were talking. I spared a glance around, looking for others. A group was approaching from the rear, all heavily armed.

His eyes were clouding, and I released the grip, letting him fall to the concrete, unconscious. My blood was boiling once again, and I fought the urge to finish him with my knife—an impulse that I put down quickly as unnecessary and blood thirsty, but one that I couldn’t extinguish completely.

I bolted forward, toward the front lines, and reached the barricade. Several men were perched at the top, scanning the distance with large automatic weapons. Looking left and right, I thought I saw where the others might be concealed.

The road I was on paralleled three to four other city streets that all dead-ended perpendicular to the access road for the train station. The main boulevard we had seen from the air was only one block over, to my right. Several small, one story commercial buildings lined the road, behind which was the large, historic station. Sandbags and cement embankments had been erected along that road, and the Army was making its stand there. Across the street from the commercial buildings was a large clothing store, and next to that, a small trendy coffee shop with large openings where the plate glass had been.

To reach the shop, I could try to go through a small alley across the street, and I started toward it, paralleling the barricade.

“Hey, get your ass up here and help out,” a loud voice spat from the top of the fortification of broken cars and office furniture. He looked down, trying to make out my form in the broken light of makeshift fires and torches. Then, he looked up, and a flash of horror shot through his features. His gun came up, but it wasn’t pointed at me.

I turned, and the popping of gunfire intensified. But it wasn’t directed at the Army.

Thousands of the living dead had found the battle.

And they were ready to party.

NINETEEN

Sprinting for the alleyway, I ignored the screams for ammunition and the yells of pain as the first of the creatures made their way into the camp. My friends from the mall had joined with our friends from the interstate, and they were really making themselves known.

I marveled at the stupidity of these men and women, to take on an Army for a train and leave their rear guarded by a skeleton crew. A helicopter roared overhead, missiles exhausted and turbines screaming in the night air. Another flew past, and another. I looked up, as they turned, banking hard and taking a wide circle back toward us.

They were herding them toward the militia.

That must mean the train was leaving.

Shit on a candy stick.

Ahead of me, the next cross street was in flames, and several shambling forms were backlit at the intersection, moving awkwardly toward the light. A red door marked ‘Beantown Service Entrance’ was visible on my left, and I slammed into it, cursing as it failed to open. My hand was at my mic as the forms heard my movement and turned toward me. Behind me, the screams were filling the night air, and the gunfire had nearly stopped.

“Kate, I’m at the door,” I yelled.

No response.

“Fuck,” I screamed at the door, and leveled my weapon at the lock. The powerful rounds tore into the thin aluminum and the door sprung open into the alley. The inside of the store was dark, and I could make out a counter, and several displays that had long since been relieved of their coffee. Beans and grounds littered the floor, and the remnants and shards of broken crockery and glass was everywhere.

“Kate, can you read me?” I yelled, slamming my finger into the transmitter. Static hissed for a split second, and my blood pounded in my ears.

“Mike? Jesus, Mike. We’re out of the shop. Get to the train!” Her voice was loud, and chaos ruled behind it.

Voices.

Shouted orders.

A train clattering against tracks.

They were safe.

“Are you on board?”

“Yes, but they’re leaving now! Hurry!”

I didn’t wait for more and my eyes drifted down to the floor as my foot slipped slightly. Expecting a pool of water, I frowned when the dim light reflected off of a syrupy mixture of blood and dirt behind the counter.

Gunfire erupted from the alleyway behind me as the choppers flew low and tight again, toward their own lines. I started for the front of the store, watching zombies stream into the street from either side of me, knowing I had only seconds to get over the large defensive perimeter in front of me.

If there was anyone still manning the lines, I’d be cut in half.

The door slammed open behind me, and a line of rotten corpses burst into the small space. Hunger was on every emaciated, torn face. My decision was made, and I bolted through the metal frame of the formerly plate glass door that hung crookedly from its hinges.

The creatures were everywhere, two large hordes converging in the street before me, all being driven toward the station. I could no longer hear gunfire behind me, in the encampment of the militia. The helicopters had moved off, and the lines in front of me were silent.

A large bus with plates of steel welded to the windows was the wall before me. I pushed my shotgun back until it hung behind me, and flashed an elbow around as a meandering creature lunged in front of me. The impact from the titanium plating took him in the jaw, sending teeth into the air and his body spinning to the street. More of them were coming, and were only seconds from cutting me off from the bus. I sped up and leapt, pushing back against the ground as hard as I could and springing into the air.

I expected to find my hands on the ledge of the bus.

Instead, I simply cleared it, flying over the barricade by feet.

Well, now. This was fun.

Behind me, the moans hit a fevered pitch as the bumbling creatures saw their dinner fly away. I hit the ground running, noting the abandoned embankments and the emptied supply depots. Blood and glass and spent ammunition littered the ground amongst overturned newspaper dispensers, recycling bins, and advertisements for local realtors.

Then I heard it.

The train was moving.

The helicopters were buzzing miles to the west now, and I could see their hovering forms, saw them spitting gunfire down near the tracks far away, clearing a path through any militia that would threaten the tracks or the train in a last minute fit of desperation.

The heavy sound of the large machine was thick in my ears as I hurdled discarded equipment and abandoned vehicles. The barricades behind me were falling, I could hear the toppling crates and the urgent moans as the dead made this place their own. The large double doors of the old station were cocked open, and I slammed through into a large lobby. On my right and left, old ticket booths with neatly drawn horizontal blinds and digital displays that sat dead and lifeless greeted me as I sprinted through a gap where turnstiles used to be.

Outside a large glass picture window, I watched the last of the train slip past the station, moving slowly but picking up speed. Crates and debris crashed to the ground in the courtyard, as the horde of creatures—now amplified in number by those that they had taken from the ranks of the militia—made their stately progress toward the station.

Toward the only living human now within their reach.

Me.

I didn’t pause. I sprinted after the lurching vehicle, decorative brick flooring disappearing under my churning legs. The lobby was behind me, and I was on the platform.

The train’s caboose housed a large 25mm gun behind a steel plated wall. A man in army fatigues was manning the gun, and he waved at me urgently as the train pulled away. I didn’t stop to think about why he didn’t shoot me. I leapt down from the platform, onto the tracks. My feet took each wooden tie with increasing urgency, and I knew this was it.

They were coming for me, and if I missed this train, I had nowhere to go.

Fifty feet.

The train was moving faster, picking up speed. A car engine roared somewhere in the distance, and gunfire rang out.

Thirty feet.

I pumped my legs, and they responded, moving faster and harder.

Chips of stone and splinters of wood flew up from beneath my feet as a spray of bullets hit the ground. Somewhere in my ears, the muffled buzzing of a minigun answered the volley.

Twenty feet.

I didn’t think I could keep up this pace. No man could have ever run this fast.

Ten feet.

It was impossible, but I could hear the soldier shouting encouragement. More gunfire tore into the ground near my feet, then dinged off the hardened steel plating of the train.

Five feet.

The train was accelerating. I couldn’t keep this up. I had to jump.

My feet left the ground, and I was in the air.

I drifted, sure that I would hit the ground again. That I would roll to a stop and watch the small rectangle of the train’s caboose leave me for dead.

My hands found the edge of the metal plating, and a large hand found my arm. I pulled myself up, and welcoming hands were lifting me forward, even as bullets pinged off the thick steel.

I fell to the dirty metal floor and gasped for air. My blood was fire and my chest was a pool of lava. A smiling round face appeared over my own, and said something. But I couldn’t hear anything over the sound of my own speeding pulse.

I looked up at the man—the kid, I realized—in the fatigues.

“If you ask me for my fucking ticket, I think I’ll have to kill you.”

TWENTY

The train moved through the night at a steady pace. Empty farmland and deserted suburban space flashed past the windows as the world seemed to disappear behind us.

I sat staring at the emptiness outside, holding Kate’s hand softly, neither of us speaking. Ky was snoring in a row of seats behind us, Romeo seated comically next to her, with his head lolling to one side.

“Rhodes doing okay?” I asked after a short silence, taking a sip from a bottle of water.

“Yeah, he’ll be fine. Bullet grazed his shoulder while we were hiding in the coffee shop. But he got us across that roadway just in time. They shot up that store pretty good right after we left.” She leaned back against the seat, her face worried.

“What happened in the mall? With Rhodes?”

I stared for several seconds at the darkened landscape outside, watching the moonlight filter through the groupings of trees and buildings that flashed by. The movement of something that could have been a person or a zombie was brief on a small dusty road in the middle of a field of soybeans.

“What happened? Life. Death. Family. He… had a memory.” I was guessing, but I knew I was right. When those teenagers in their trendy shirts broke through to the front, something triggered him. I knew the feeling.

She just nodded seriously, and tightened her grip on my hand.

“What about with you, after Rhodes got downstairs?”

“We couldn’t wait for you, obviously. So we hit the emergency exit, went down a floor, and found the street. We followed it through a couple intersections, and lucked out when we found one of their machine gun nests. The gunners were drinking beer on the other side and Rhodes… took care of them. After that, we were able to get within visual distance of the army’s position.”

“How’d you get so far into their controlled area?”

She shrugged, making a slightly confused face.

“I’m not sure. They were really disorganized, and no one was paying a lot of attention to the rear. I overheard a couple guys talking about taking out a big herd to the west, and feeling like they only had to worry about stragglers. I guess the army had done a lot of cleanup work in the area already, and was moving to consolidate their forces further west when the militia decided they wanted the train. But at the end of the day, we just lucked out. They were focused on the army, and they didn’t have the training or the organization to watch for us from behind.”

“They certainly had enough of both to shoot our plane out of the air, that’s something.” My voice was sarcastic, and I resented that good men like those pilots had to die at the hands of anarchic criminals.

The United States of America was not dead. It was not gone. It was fighting for its life, and I was going to take that fight to the enemy, or I was going to die trying.

She didn’t say any more, and we sat in peace, happy to just be safe and together.

Several more minutes went by, and my eyes started to grow heavy.

“You want to hit the sack?” she asked, reading my mind.

I smiled and nodded, rubbing my eyes and following her past the sleeping teenager and rubbing the dog’s head as he opened his large brown eyes briefly, then closed them again in contentment.

For our assistance, Gaffney was only too happy to cede us one of the only cabins on the train, located in a sleeper car four cars from the front. We made our way past the galley, and through several passenger cars, all crammed with civilian survivors. In the rear, the bulk of the troops were holed up in actual cattle cars and boxcars designed for freight. What vehicles they could bring were loaded on equipment cars close to the caboose.

It was an impressive construction, the train. Steel plates were attached to most windows, able to be opened and close with the turn of a simple crank. The front had been retrofitted with a special attachment to clear small debris—and human bodies—from interfering with the train’s progress, and each car had been outfitted with a top mounted minigun, complete with raised edge armored walls.

We moved through the rattling train to our cabin, and squeezed into the small space. Our packs lay on one of the bunks, and I was too tired to move them, choosing instead to lean against the wall closest to the door, my forehead pressed against the cheap imitation wood.

“Who would have thought that our nation might be saved by Amtrak?” I asked, amused as a piece of wallpaper came off in my hand. But as I looked over to Kate, my voice caught in my throat.

She had removed her thick, armored jacket, and was pulling her thermal layer off over her head. The soft skin of her back bunched slightly as she worked the shirt over her arms, and carefully folded it and placed it on the other bed. She leaned over slightly, working the fastenings at her waist, and allowing the tactical pants to slide to her feet, stepping out of them with a deep breath of relief.

Somewhere, she had found matching lace underwear.

Women.

“I’m sorry,” she said distractedly. “I didn’t catch that.” She was leaning forward against the glass, staring as the first small hints of daylight were starting to ignite the western sky.

“We’ll have to shut the blinds,” she said, still watching the sunlight.

Behind her, I was losing my own heavy clothing, struggling with the boots as she stretched, putting her lithely muscular arms above her head and exposing the rounded corners of her shoulders and the taut muscles in her lower back. She stepped up on her tiptoes and I watched her calf muscles tighten, then her hamstrings, and then finally, the muscles slightly higher.

I threw my boots to the ground, and she smiled as I put my arms around her waist, pressing my stomach against the soft, rounded curve of her lower back and pulling her close. Her skin was warm and smooth against my own.

“Did you hear me?” she asked softly, turning her head slightly to the side. Her breath was warm on my face.

“I heard you,” I said, moving my hands down along her stomach and across her smooth skin, searching. “We’re definitely going to have to close the blinds.”

The soft ring of her laugh was in my ears as I kissed her.