Besides, the threat wasn’t explosion or irradiation. It was still what it had been from the beginning of this nightmare: the zombies.
Like the boxcars, many had been thrown from their perches and now lay along the tracks in broken piles.
Unlike the boxcars, many had managed to maintain their grips. Had held to cars that slid and slipped from tracks to terrain. And now they growled as one and leaped toward the front of the now-still train.
Even the zombies who lay in shattered heaps were moving. Ken knew what he’d see if he was closer: creatures walking on arms and legs that ended in stumps, pushing themselves forward in spite of bodies whose every bone had been shattered.
And in another moment, if they kept doing as they had –
(no guarantee of that they keep changing so who knows what’s next)
– a waxy yellow substance would start oozing out of their wounds, hardening around injured areas. It acted, so much as Ken could tell, as both cast and some kind of healing salve. Only one that put things to right in seconds instead of weeks or years. He hadn’t seen stumps grow new hands or feet, but he had seen shattered limbs straighten and regain strength in moments.
Some of the things could be seen vomiting on themselves and others: more of that yellow crap coming out of their mouths as though they were medics moving around the wounded on a battle field.
The zombies had mobilized.
And the train – the one thing that had kept the survivors ahead of death, if only for a few extra minutes – was stopped.
Ken turned around.
Please let it be like Hatfield.
37
The Hatfield rail crash had been a surprise for Ken. Not because of the severity of the crash; not because of the news coverage a British passenger train got in Boise, Idaho; not even because it turned out a Mormon missionary from Caldwell had been sitting in the front passenger car.
No, what surprised him most was watching the after-crash reports.
He had always heard things like “the train derailed” on news reports and assumed that meant the entire vehicle length left the tracks. Certainly most news anchors stood in front of smoking hulks of wreckage splayed brokenly to the left and right of tracks that stood mute and unused.
But with the Hatfield line, only about the last two-thirds of the train left the tracks. The front two passenger cars and the locomotive stayed on the rails.
More importantly, as soon as preliminary investigations were finished those cars were simply detached from the wreckage behind… and drove away.
Just from his quick view of the aft part of the train, Ken could tell that this was a much more severe crash. The Hatfield line had been a commuter rail, only a relatively few cars. Not a freight train with eighty or more cargo cars to weigh it down.
But still… the last cars on the line seemed to have spun away and more or less disintegrated. Ten cars later they were at all angles across the ground, torn and mangled.
Ten cars later, closer to the tracks.
And where Ken sat? He couldn’t tell. Thought it possible that this car might still be on the rails.
He jumped to his feet.
The three engines sat only ten cars ahead. One of them hissed as though angry to have been sidelined in such an ignominious manner. Motionless, but with a pent-up power that was still awesome and a bit dangerous.
And the front locomotive looked like it sat square on the rails.
Ken looked at Aaron. The old cowboy nodded at him, and he could tell that both were thinking the same thing.
“Think it’ll still run?” asked Ken.
Aaron glanced behind them. The zombies were still moving slowly. But their broken bodies straightened a bit more every second. Their motions smoothed out as they drew into tight knots, seeming as always to draw strength and agility from the simple fact of their siblings’ propinquity.
The train wasn’t moving. The things would be on them that much faster.
“It better,” said Aaron.
Neither man looked at the other. There were no questions about loyalty or about what was to happen next.
They simply ran.
38
When he jumped over the first space between boxcars, Ken saw that this boxcar, too, had derailed. Not as radically as the rear cars, obviously, but when he jumped he could easily see how the two boxcars were well off the centerline of the tracks. His heart sank.
This far forward? What if the engines are off the tracks, too?
What if we’re on foot from here?
He landed on the roof of the next car and ran. Ran fast as he could, not just to outrun the swarming creatures that hunted them, but to outrun the bleak thoughts that threatened to overtake him.