'Huh?' he just about managed.
Unmoved, she repeated the question. 'Do you think she's pretty?' This time, though, she emphasised each word. Lukas could tell she was frightened; not of him and what he might do to her for running her mouth, but of his answer.
'You talking about the
bitch
?' he asked, lighting up another cigarette. As he exhaled a bluish plume of smoke, he said, '
Hell
, no! She's lucky I haven't shot her already. Fuck, baby-girl, you're the only one for me. You know that.'
Abi, for a few seconds – seconds which Lukas filled with long, hard pulls on his cigarette and nervous glances into Abi's eyes – didn't speak, didn't move, didn't even look at him.
When her eyes met his once again, she said, 'You love me?'
Without pause, for that could have really fucked him up, he said, 'More than anything.'
It seemed to be the right thing to say; she smiled, took the cigarette from him and casually smoked it. 'We ain't taking them with us, are we?'
Lukas sniggered. 'Not a chance in hell, baby-girl. Fucked up old man wants to try and get that thing running, let him get it running. As soon as we get the chance, we toss their sorry asses off.'
'Not the girl, though,' Abi hurriedly said.
'Aww, you want to take the widdle girl wid us.'
She playfully jabbed him in the arm, and he feigned pain. 'You
don't
want to take her with us?' she asked.
Lukas, still rubbing at his arm, even though it didn't hurt in the slightest, smiled. 'Of
course
I do,' he said. 'She's pretty.' Noticing the look on Abi's face, he added, 'But not as pretty as you.'
'That's better,' Abi smiled. 'Now, let's find us somewhere quiet so we can have some you-me time.'
She stood, patted the gravel from her clothing, and helped Lukas to his feet. As they headed off in search of a more secluded area, neither of them felt two sets of eyes on them. Saul and River watched as they disappeared into the trees.
Then Saul turned to River and shook his head; his eyes welled up – months of tears threatened to explode outward – and River pulled him towards her and hugged him as silent sobs racked his body.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
It was as Terry began work on the locomotive's radiator-fan, as Lukas and Abi returned from the woods all sweaty and flushed, as River and Saul were throwing tiny white rocks at a crushed coke-can, that the lurkers came. At first there were two of them, neither of which were a problem. River took the female creature down while Shane dropped the second with a two-by-four before stamping on the back of its head. Terry climbed up onto the roof of the train and scanned their surroundings from a decent height.
It was then that he gasped; his jaw sagged as if it had come unhinged, and his eyes threatened to bulge so far from their sockets that they would roll down his shirt and dangle there like comedy eyeballs on springs.
Boing! Boing!
Shane was still trying to pull his foot free of the lurker's caved-in skull – which seemed to have swallowed his foot up and refused to let go – when he saw the terrified features of the man atop the locomotive. The way his mouth opened and shut told Shane everything he needed to know.
'How many!' he yelled, finally managing to relieve himself of the lurker's squashed head. He dropped the two-by-four – which had only been utilised for stealth purposes, and was now completely obsolete – and yanked the pistol from the band of his jeans. 'TERRY!'
'Eight . . . No,
nine
. . .' He was spinning on the top of the train like a man possessed. His beard was shaking in the breeze, though it might have been a result of his quivering lips.
In truth, Terry couldn't count them all. They were coming from everywhere. The trees surrounding the track on either side was suddenly swarming with the undead. 'Shane, scratch that,' he yelled down from the locomotive roof. 'Just start shooting.'
Lukas had rushed across to the cabin on the departure yard and was strategically moving crates. Abi, as quickly as she could, loaded his shotgun for him while he worked.
The lurkers shambling along the departure platform had spotted the couple and made a beeline for them.
'ABI!' Lukas yelled, although she was only a few feet behind him.
'I'm almost done,' she said, loading the last shell into the barrel before snapping it shut. She tapped him on the shoulder and he practically snatched it from her.
He dropped down low behind the crate and began firing. The first three creatures' faces exploded in a mist of blood and bone. Abi didn't have a weapon, but she stood behind Lukas with some temerity, knowing that these fuckers better be good to get by him and reach her. She was confident, and had every right to be.
'Shane!' Marla cried from where she had clambered up onto a steel container. She stood atop it, glancing down at the ensuing mayhem; Shane didn't know if she was aware of the two lurkers trying to scale the right-hand side of the container, and didn't want to leave it too late to find out.
'Get down!' he yelled, and with two true shots he hit the lurkers in the back of their heads. Slamming into the side of the container with a metallic thump, they looked like marionettes that had had their strings cut.
The look on Marla's face as she realised just how close she had come suggested that she hadn't been aware of them, and she waved to Shane:
thanks
.
Terry climbed down from the locomotive roof and began to slice his way through the lurkers as they besieged him. The sword that had once embedded itself in a lurker's neck showed no signs of repeating that unfortunate episode; it slashed through the creatures as if they were butter. Terry turned his head with each strike, being careful to evade the arterial spray that seemed to fill the air, a thick black goo that smelt as terrible as it looked.
One creature – dressed in filthy blue coveralls and still wearing a cap on top of its desiccated face – lunged toward him and managed to grasp his wrist in mid-swing. 'Get the . . . get fucking
off
, you heathen prick!' He brought his free hand round and grabbed the lurker – whose name was Joe according to the embroidered patch on his breast-pocket – by the hair and yanked him back so hard that the snap was audible. Joe's eyes gaped open as his spine penetrated his throat and poked out into the mid-afternoon as if was afraid of missing something.
The lurker –
Joe
– toppled backwards, and Terry wiped the darkness from his palm on his jeans. He didn't know whether it was residue from his work on the train, or viscera from the poor bastard at his feet, but he didn't want any of it getting in his mouth, either way.
Shane raced across the tracks, three lurkers hot in his heels. He turned, shot the one in front between the eyes, turned and ran a few more feet. Terry was level with him, trying to catch his breath.
This was ridiculous. Where had they all come from? What the hell were they doing out in the middle of nowhere?
They're everywhere
, Terry reminded himself. Everywhere they died, anywhere they remembered . . . and they
could
remember. They knew that, now.
The second lurker in pursuit of Shane went down on the tracks as gunfire echoed around the yard. Shane turned just in time to witness the creature hit the rubble between the track, its face peeling back grotesquely as a result of the abrasive rocks. Marla had shot it from the container roof, but she had only wounded it, and it continued to drag itself forward, inexorably sliding towards Shane, who was levelling the pistol at the third lurker. One shot to the forehead painted a perfect black dot between the things raised eyebrows and it stumbled a few feet before its feet gave way and it sprawled across the track.
Terry wasn't waiting for Shane or Marla to make their move. They could cover him while he went to work.
He stepped down off the platform and raced as quickly as he could towards the incapacitated creature. Its face hung down, flapped slowly with each move it made, with each gust of wind. Terry couldn't tolerate it, and with one swift whoosh of the sword he lopped the grumbling thing's head off, sending it across onto the adjacent track.
'Where are the kids!?' Shane bellowed. He hadn't seen them, hadn't had time to realise they were nowhere in sight. And now, he felt as if he'd let them down; the worst possible outcome was already playing on his mind, and he scoured the madness for just a glimpse of either River or Saul.
Marla, from on top of the container, glanced around. She had the best possible view; if she couldn't see them, they were gone.
'Perhaps they ran into—' Terry began, but didn't have time to finish as four more undead emerged from the trees behind them.
Shane shot two of them, using three bullets as the second lurker staggered and stumbled at the last moment giving it an extra few seconds of undeath before its scalp exploded upwards; the force of the bullet squeezed the creature's right eye from its socket, and just before it fell Shane had time to ponder just how absurd it all was.
On the departure yard, Lukas was firing at anything that moved. It was a good job that Abi was standing behind him, or she might have taken a bullet to the head just as quickly as the falling creatures.
His gun clicked dry and he passed it back to Abi, who proceeded to load it as quickly as she could. Her hands were sweating, and it was almost impossible to hold onto the shells as she forced them into the gun. She dropped the first two and watched as they rolled over the edge of the platform.
'Fuck,
Abi
!' Lukas gasped, jumping to his feet. The zombies – fucking
lurkers
, who came up with that fucking nonsense? – were almost level with the crates; time was running out, and the last thing Lukas wanted to see was wasted shells falling away from them.
Abi managed to get the next six shells into the shotgun and snapped it shut. 'Lukas!' she gasped as one of the creatures crawled up beside them.
He saw it a second later and brought his steel toe-capped boots down on the back of its head. There was a squelch – like meat being tossed down onto a butcher's counter – as his heel slammed through the front of the beast's face and hit the platform.
He grabbed the shotgun from Abi as she gawked down at the still-flailing zombie. When Lukas pulled his foot out, it ceased moving almost immediately, only twitching once or twice before it died for the second time.
Two more were staggering towards them, and Abi was shocked to discover that one of them was missing both arms. That was the one which frightened her the most, though. It should have been dead, not ploughing towards them.
Lukas lifted the shotgun and rested it on the back of his left arm. The first shot took out the armless creature, and he was just about to blow the second one away when Abi screeched into his ear.
Spinning on the spot, he found Abi pushed back against the cabin-door. A female zombie – she must have been seven-foot something, despite the fact she was leaning over his girlfriend so ominously – had both hands around Abi's throat and was snapping at the side of her face, trying to bite her ear off.
'Hey,
bitch
!' Lukas forced the gun up beneath the lanky creature's jaw and waited for it to acknowledge him. When it did, Lukas was sure he saw something in those eyes; not regret, but something else. As if the thing had already resigned itself to what was about to happen.
He pulled the trigger. The thing's brain shot up and out the top of its head. Blonde hair parted as scalp tore away, and the unnaturally tall creature toppled over backwards.
Abi screamed as the hands wrapped tautly around her throat refused to let go, and she followed the zombie down to the ground, her knee rubbing the concrete on the platform so harshly that she immediately felt the bloody stickiness around her shin.
Lukas, leaving Abi to struggle her way free of the dead undead, turned back and despatched the almost forgotten lurker loping towards him just beyond the crate. Its head flew back as the bullet impacted, and its momentum carried it over.
With their side of the platform clear, Lukas dropped down onto the tracks and began to pace across to the others.
'You guys struggling?' Lukas asked, his arrogance almost too much for Shane to take.
'We got it,' Terry said, slicing through two lurkers as if they were meaty mannequins. His first swoop disabled them, gashing through their bellies and spilling out their guts; without pause, he swung again, decapitating the first one easily. The second was barely able to stand when Marla shot it through the face from fifty feet away.
'
Whooo
!' Lukas yapped. 'Fucking
yeah
!'
The yard was clear. They must have fought off thirty creatures, maybe more. They would have plenty of time to count them later on, but for now all Shane could think about was the children.
'RIVER!' he called, slowly walking backwards along the track. 'RIVER!'
As if sensing he should be doing the same, Lukas began to call Saul's name, though he didn't really care if they ever saw the little dumb shit again. He was more trouble than he was worth; to be quite frank, he just wanted the girl now –
River
, or whatever she called herself. She looked game for anything.
'Marla, can you see anything from up there?' Terry asked.
Marla looked around. Trees, tracks, trees, containers, trees . . . 'Nothing,' she replied. '
Shit
, Terry, where did they get to?'
Terry didn't have time to reply, as Shane called from the receiving yard hut. 'Found them!'
Marla sighed; relief had never felt so good. Terry rushed across to where Shane had cornered the tracks and disappeared from view. When he arrived, he could hardly believe what he saw.
Piled up, three- maybe four-bodies high, a stack of lurkers, all headless, all deader than they'd expected to be when their attack was mounted.