The Dead Series (Book 3): Dead Line (22 page)

Lizzie was going to
Ship
.

Gabriella to
Cat
.

'I'll give them another hour,' Dredd said, blowing the steam from his cup. 'In the meantime, let's get this place bagged up.'

And they did.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

When the trees gave way to industry, Terry slowed the train right down. Factories passed languidly by, the bleakness of the scenery a massive contradiction to the woods from which they had only recently emerged.

This was Brookhaven, the place they would have arrived at if the car hadn't been totalled by an obviously drunken Lukas.

On the left they had dilapidated houses, gone to ruin long before the first person became infected; on the right, large corrugated units and steelyards, flanked by a canal where barges were half-sunk and some even mounted the bank, battered and torn from impact.

Just get through this as quickly as possible, Terry told himself. There was a limit on how fast he could go, though, which set him on edge. This was a place where people were, or had been, and the likelihood of mangled cars on the track was increased ten-fold.

For all they knew, there still were people here, holed up in their homes, awaiting rescue that would never come.

There was nothing they could do for these people except pray, and Terry was the only one likely to even bother.

Something up ahead caught Terry's attention, and he slowed the train even more; it wasn't safe travelling at such a relaxed pace – they were completely exposed, and the deep thrum of the engine would entice any lurkers towards them – but there was something just ahead, and until Terry was comfortable . . .

It was a horse; Terry heaved a sigh of relief as the beast whinnied and snorted at the air. Whoever had left it had done so in the correct way; by setting it free, giving it half a chance to survive among the dead.

And survive it had.

As the train slowly moved past the horse, Terry waved, though he wasn't sure why. Perhaps he was going a bit silly in his old age, or maybe it was because he hadn't seen a horse for so many years that the sudden appearance of one had overwhelmed him to the point of madness.

Needless to say, the horse didn't wave back. It simply bolted along the edge of the track, off to fight another day.

For seven minutes Brookhaven passed gently by. Morning was now in full-swing, and the rain – as if it had been informed of the hour – gently pattered at the windshield once again.

Like clockwork, Terry thought, smiling to himself. The horse had put him in a good mood.

The train crossed over a bridge, a short construction that made Terry's teeth rattle inside his skull.

It got him to thinking; just how long would these things last now that there was nobody to maintain them? How long would the Golden Gate Bridge remain international orange now that everyone who painted it was either dead, or undead?

Terry hadn't spent much time pondering the ins and outs of the post-apocalyptic world in which they now found themselves, but now that he'd started he realised how ultimately depressing it all was.

And then he went a step further and began to convince himself that he wasn't cut out for it. What did he have to offer, anyway? Nobody wanted some crusty old ex-con knocking around the place. He was ageing, desiccating at a rate only marginally slower than the things they were running away from. His back was fucked and the six teeth he had were loose and brittle.

He dry-swallowed and tried to think about happier things.

'The horse,' he muttered to himself. 'She was a beauty.'

And so he thought about the horse.

*

Three hours past without incident. There were lurkers out there, but only in small hordes and too far away to cause panic. The tracks had taken them through more countryside; the dead brown hues of fallen leaves painted the landscape, and it was as if they were floating along on a chocolate river in some places, such was the extent of the wintry decay.

The train carried them through a station, its weathered sign informing them they were now in Foxworth, wherever the hell that was.

The station got smaller behind them, and Terry picked the pace up once again. He'd had no choice but to slow upon their approach, but there was no point maintaining such a lacklustre speed now they were back in the open.

Once again, fields spread out on either side of them. Terry had marvelled, to begin with, at the sheer number of farmyards they were passing. He had no idea so many people had kept the land – their land no more – and the thought of all that acreage going to rack and ruin depressed him.

Now, as they entered Foxworth, there were not so many farms. People, rich investors, had purchased the land and converted it into an endless array of water-parks and country-clubs. A large billboard, visible from the train – of course, the marketers weren't completely stupid – told them about the spectacular new slides at Columbia Water Park. There was a picture of a boy halfway down a tube, water splashing out towards the camera. The boy seemed to be having a great time.

Though probably not anymore.

Terry sighed; the train trundled on.

The track opened out onto a recently-constructed area where bricks replaced grass and solid, brown walls stood instead of trees. Whatever it was, the architects had gone crazy with triangles. Everywhere Terry looked there were three-sided shapes; even the bricks had been formed with a triangle set into them. It was a little excessive, and in this new world a complete waste of time and space.

But that could be said for a lot of things, Terry reminded himself. What had been the point in space-travel, in surgical advancements, in all those years spent paying taxes and feeding a fucking cat who never offered anything in return?

It was all for nothing.

A waste of time, money and effort.

At the end of the day, or the end of time, as it turned out, none of it made the slightest bit of difference. Neil Armstrong got chewed up the same as every other poor soul; Bill Gates's money would have only helped if he had used it to create barricades with to keep the lurkers out, and that damned cat you spent all those years feeding was either dead, dying of hunger, or infected.

Why do I keep thinking like this?

Terry had remained positive for so long, through everything, and now he was being bombarded with detrimental thoughts and ideas. It wasn't like him, and he reached for the bible in his jacket-pocket.

“Thank God,” he sighed as he brushed against its hard leather.

He was still touching it when the train rounded a corner.

He didn't have time to pray.

*

'Where did they come from?!' Shane gasped, pulling Marla away from the open door.

She turned, gasped as she saw the piled-up bodies in the street. These weren't dead, though. The piles were wriggling, clambering to get over the fence holding them away. The way they were stacked up on top of each other – like pancakes with their own special syrup – meant they were a lot closer to clearing the fence and getting to the train and its tantalising contents.

'Don't panic,' Shane said. 'By the time they got over we'll be past them.'

Marla glowered out through the open side. Her jaw had dropped open into a terrified O, and she looked as if she might cry, though that could have been a result of the wind hitting her in the eyes. 'What about those?' she asked, pointing with one hand while holding onto the door with the other.

Shane leaned out.

When he saw what was up ahead, Shane called out to Terry. 'SPEED UP, TERRY!'

Terry's voice came back, loud and clear despite the racket of the engine.

'I WAS ALREADY GONNA!'

*

If Saul had been frightened before, he looked about ready to shit bricks, now. He was shaking his head from side to side; his mouth opened and closed but nothing came out, not that River expected it to.

She turned back to the door. The creatures were climbing, but they would never make it.

'We're okay,' she told Saul, but either he didn't hear her or didn't believe her. He was still panicking. There was nothing that River could do to appease him, so she concentrated on the door. If lurkers were going to try to get in, they would have to get past her first, and that just wasn't going to happen.

The machete in her hand said so.

Then, she heard Shane call out. It sounded like, “Speed up, Terry,” but that couldn't be right. These things didn't have a chance.

She glanced out through the side of the car, and immediately pulled herself back in.

Saul was quivering in the corner, his eyes wide open with fright.

She knew, by the way he was, that telling him about what was coming next would be a terrible idea, so instead she made her way unsteadily towards him, dropped to her knees and pulled him in for a hug.

She wouldn't let go until it was over.

The train picked up pace, just like Shane wanted it to.

*

'Holy shit!' Terry said, before immediately crossing himself. Blasphemy was still something to be wary of. Even more so if you took into account the undefined amount of time you had left.

But it was impossible not to swear looking ahead to the things on the tracks. Hundreds of them, some pulling themselves along the ground as others stumbled over them.

Terry, who had been driving the train with the door open, leaned across and pulled it shut.

This was going to get messy.

'Where the hell did you all come from?' he muttered, but it was quite clear by what they were wearing.

Military uniform. Camouflaged green trousers and tattered beige jumpers. There must be a barracks nearby, and these poor sonsofbitches were all that remained.

Terry pushed the train up to 50mph, knowing that the impact would splatter most of them. No matter how big the horde was; you couldn't fuck with the tonnage of a diesel loco.

'GET DOWN BACK THERE!' Terry managed a second before the train slammed into the lurkers. A black explosion – as if a balloon filled with ink had detonated – and then Terry could see nothing through the windshield.

But the sound, the terrible crunching of brittle bones as they slipped beneath the train, was audible.

Terry gagged at the thought. The endless noise of bodies thumping the exterior was enough to make the vomit rise in his throat, and it was all he could do to keep it down.

There came a screeching noise as lurkers scratched along the side of the train, their claws or the exposed bones of their fingers creating something of a sickening chorus. With the blackness of the initial impact rendering the windshield useless, Terry was driving blind, and he didn't like it one bit.

Thump, thump, thump, screeeeeeech . . .

It seemed to go on forever. If the train was moving at the speed the gauge said it was, these things must trail back to the next fucking city.

Terry looked once again for the wiper. 'Where are you?'

There was something, a lever that he had been afraid to try before in case it did something irreversible to the train. Now was the time to try it.

He reached down, gripped onto it with a sweaty palm, and pulled.

At first nothing happened.

Thump, thump, thump . . .

And then the front window slowly cleared from left to right. Terry could almost see through the glass once again; the inky viscera had moved, but it was still attached. Just below the wiper, a thick, dark mound of intestine flapped around. Terry tried not to look at it.

He was feeling queasy enough without making it worse.

The track out front was clear; Terry knew the one behind them was far from it.

As the wiper brushed away the detritus and blackened remains of an entire squadron, Terry slowed the train once again, not willing to take any chances. These things came from somewhere nearby, which meant army vehicles and fuck knows what else. It was one thing ploughing through a hundred or so soft and decayed bodies; it was something else entirely trying to shift an overturned tank.

His mouth was so dry, he could barely swallow.

Trees flanked the left-hand side of the train, and the right was an open field with a view of some sort of hulking statue made from scrap-iron.

To Terry, it looked like an effigy of Jesus Christ, and he was sticking with that.

If he'd taken a closer look, he would have seen it was nothing more spectacular than a stack of crushed cars.

The mind worked in mysterious ways . . .

Especially when it was still scared half to death.

*

'Are you okay?' Shane asked. She was; he could see that she was just a little shaken up by what had just happened.

'Where did they all come from?' she asked, stepping out of the corner and into the gloomy light of mid-morning. 'I swear to God, in all my days I never want to go through anything like that again.'

Shane smiled. 'Reminded me of those old car-washes. Remember them? They always freaked me out as a kid; thought I was gonna get trapped inside and the car would fill up with water.'

Marla shuddered, as if a goose had just walked across her grave. 'They were all army,' she said. 'Shit, Shane. What if they're what's left of the people we're trying to reach? What if the pilots of those jets were in amongst that lot? We've just squashed the fuck out of 'em.'

'They weren't the ones,' Shane assured her, though he had no reason to believe otherwise. 'I saw some of the faces as the flew by. Those things had been dead for weeks, probably since this whole thing started.'

Marla had seen some faces, too. One of them had clung onto the open side of the car, its face unflinching and indifferent as the rest of its body was severed off by the wheels beneath. All that had remained was a torso, an arm and a head, and a few seconds later – when Marla could bring herself to look again – it had gone completely.

'Shit, Shane . . . River!' Marla rushed to the aperture and began to call out to the car behind. She could make out black, slimy handprints on the steel from where the things had tried to hang on. Down at the front corner, a smashed skull clung to the car as if it still had a chance to clamber aboard.