The Arklay Outbreak

Chapter Twenty-One

Rebecca started off at a brisk jog. It was totally dark and getting cold, so she moved quickly to keep warm and to calm her jittery nerves. So far, her first mission had not gone at all like she planned. Bravo team should have located the train right away and entered as a team, but instead they were scattered all over the woods and would get there one or two at a time. She expected Enrico and Richard to call any minute now and tell her that they had found it.

But instead, she found it. When she first noticed the large shape on the tracks fifty yards in front of her, she took off at a run.

And she immediately tripped over one of the railroad ties. She hit the ground with a groan, banging her hip against the track and scraping the palms of her hands on the gravel. She got to her hands and knees, cursing her clumsiness, and got to her feet. At least she hadn’t hurt herself.

She approached the train and heard nothing. The engine was off and the whole train exuded a cold sense of desertion and solitude. Rebecca held her pistol out in front of her and shined the flashlight in the windows of the rear car, the caboose of the train. She expected to see someone, to hear some sounds within, but she was alone and there was nothing but the steady, unnatural silence.

And then she heard a faint noise that chilled her blood and sent shivers down her back. A low, gurgling moan from inside the train, like nothing she had ever heard before. It froze her in place, terrified, and then she was scrambling for the walkie-talkie hanging from her belt.

“Enrico,” she whispered urgently. “Enrico, this is Rebecca. I found the train. I think there’s something inside, please get here as fast as you can.”

She waited a moment for a response, and when there wasn’t any, she tried again. “Enrico, this is Rebecca. Can you hear me?”

Nothing, not even static, came from the speaker. She shook the walkie-talkie and smacked the side of it, but still nothing. And then she noticed that the panel had come off the back and the battery was missing.

She looked back the way she had come. It must have broken off when she fell. She stepped back to where she had fallen, but there was no way she was going to find the battery. She swept her flashlight across the ground, but the battery was white and it blended in with all the white stones and gravel in between the railroad ties.

What could she do? Run back and get Enrico? Go inside the train first and see what was going on? She wanted to start screaming and hope Enrico could hear her, but she dared not do that either, not when someone or something dangerous might be in the train.

She heard that skin-crawling moan again, this time louder. It was a low, wet sound, like the last breath of a man drowning in his own blood.

She had no idea what was going on in the train, but she couldn’t waste time running all the way back to get Enrico. People might be dying in there, and she could be their only chance. She climbed up the ladder railing on the back of the caboose and quickly went to the rear sliding door, looking in through the smeared window. She could see nothing inside, but the light was dim and indistinct. She pushed open the door and stepped inside, gun drawn.

It was the baggage car. Stacks of suitcases and other assorted luggage were piled up around her like a mountain range, making her feel claustrophobic in the enclosed space. She walked slowly on the metal floor, hands trembling as she held out her pistol. Near the doorway to the next car, some of the suitcases were on the floor, opened up and their clothing scattered.

Rebecca clicked off the flashlight and stuck it in her pocket. Through the window in the door to the next car, she could see the glow of soft yellow light. She held the handle of the pistol tighter as she came to the door.

It slid open soundlessly, and she inched her way into the next car, which appeared to be the dining car. Tables were lined up on each side of the car, which was carpeted in magenta lined with gold trim. Some of the tables had candles in brass candlesticks and plates of half-eaten food. The chairs were pushed away or knocked over. The unsteady light from the bulbs in the ceiling and the flickering candle light made the whole dining car seem to shimmer with light, and the fancy brass railings and ornaments around the car reflected the light, as if glowing on their own. Rebecca had to squint to see clearly in so much glittering light. The room smelled warm and comfortable, but on top of it was an acrid, rotten stink, like a dead body sprayed with perfume. She wrinkled her nose at the strange odor and crept forward.

Immediately to her left was a circular stairway to the upper floor of the car. She ignored it for now, concentrating on the first floor. It was not until she was a few steps into the room that she first saw the bodies. They were crowded into corners, three of them, as if the people had crawled and backed themselves into walls right before they died. Rebecca rushed forward until she saw them clearly, and then stopped in her tracks. They were dead, obviously and irrevocably dead, all three of them. Two men and one woman, all dressed nicely in clothes that were now ruined, ripped in places and stained with thick blood, the men in conservative suits and the woman wearing an expensive pink evening gown.

Rebecca backed away and covered her mouth with her hand, horrified by the gruesome scene before her. All three bodies were hideously mutilated, their exposed faces and hands ripped to shreds and smeared with gore, bits of flesh hanging off their dead faces, blood splashed and splattered all over their clothes and the walls behind them. They looked butchered, or torn to pieces by some wild animal. But no animal that Rebecca had ever heard of could have done what she saw. What in God’s name had happened here?

She wanted to run back outside and get Enrico and the others. Something tragic had happened here, and she was not qualified to handle it on her own. She turned around and took a step toward the baggage car, and then she heard the noise again.

But closer this time. In the same room with her.

She turned around slowly, and the impossible was happening right before her eyes. One of the brutalized men was moving. The sound was coming from his gory throat as he clumsily tried to get to his feet. One eye was torn from the socket, but the other was pointed right at her. Slowly, incredibly, horribly, the man shambled to his feet and opened his mouth, letting blood drip down the front of his ruined brown suit.

“No,” Rebecca whispered, frozen in place. The man was dead, he had to be dead. There was no way he could be moving. And yet he did, taking one unsteady step forward. And another, moving toward her.

Rebecca’s arms swung up and the gun pointed at the man’s shredded face. “Get back,” she said, her voice as unsteady as the moving corpse’s footsteps. “Don’t come any closer, get back.”

But the man didn’t listen. If anything, the sound of her voice made him walk faster. He held out his arms and reached for her, moaning softly, head tilted to the side.

“Get back!” she screamed, and pulled the trigger.

In such a cramped space, the sound of the gunshot stung her ears. She was so scared that the recoil kicked her arms up. The bullet hit the man right in the center of his chest, directly at his sternum. It knocked him backward, onto his heels, but instead of falling down he staggered forward, coming right at her. There was blood in his eye.

Rebecca fired three more times, hitting him in the chest, neck, and then right in the face. The third impact knocked his head back, and more blood splattered up and stained the ceiling as the bullet entered through the empty eye socket and tore through the back of his soft skull. He groaned and tumbled backward, crashing onto one of the tables, knocking its contents to the floor.

Rebecca’s breath came panicked and ragged. She suddenly heard sounds behind her and spun around to see a woman stumbling down the circular staircase from the upper level. She wore a fancy black dress that was ripped away at one shoulder, exposing a gaping, bloody wound and bone underneath. Her long blonde hair was streaked with blood, and half of her face was a gory mess. Her eyes were all white, aiming nowhere. She came right at Rebecca immediately, drawn by the loud noises.

“Get away from me!” she screamed, tears of fright pouring down her face, blurring her vision. The woman ignored her and kept coming. Rebecca fired three times, striking the woman in the chest three times in a row. Small spurts of blood and gore erupted from the bullet holes, but the woman did not even seem to notice. Rebecca had to walk backward to avoid her, and fired once more, hitting the woman in the chin. The bullet shattered her jaw and ricocheted into her head. Her mouth sagged open, a river of blood pouring down the front of her dress, and she fell forward like a toppled mannequin. Two more people came down the stairs after her, their bodies a gory ruin.

Rebecca turned and bolted for the door. The other man in the room was twitching, trying to get his feet under him as she ran past him and through the door into the next car.

There were three of them in that car as well. A man wearing a train engineer’s uniform, navy blue with shining brass buttons. A woman in a casual blue sweater and blue jeans. A man in a black leather jacket. Both like the others, brutally mutilated and covered in blood.

The engineer walked toward her, arms outstretched. It was too narrow an area to try to dodge, so Rebecca did not even slow down, she just stuck her arms out and ran right into him, knocking him off his feet. He crashed backwards into the woman and the two of them tumbled to the floor like two drunks unable to stay on their feet. Some of the engineer’s blood got on her hands and she stared at in disgust, feeling like she was going to vomit. The third victim staggered toward her and she fired at him in a panic, striking him in the arm, the chest, and finally in the face. He hit the floor just as the engineer was trying to get back on his feet.

Rebecca jumped past them and ran through the next door, slamming it closed after her. She prayed the people – the things – in the other room could not open doors. If they could, then she was trapped.

She found herself in a regular passenger car, lined with two rows of cushioned seats. In several of the seats were dead bodies, butchered like the others, slumped over in their seats. None of them moved, to her infinite relief. Desperately trying to catch her breath, she stared through the small window in the door as the engineer and the woman gradually got to their feet.

Her mind raced and her hands shook. Those people were dead, there was no doubt about it. But they were up and moving, their dead eyes staring thoughtlessly at her, their bloody hands reaching out, fingers clenching and unclenching as they tried to grab her through the door. They crowded into the narrow doorway and pushed into the door, bumping into it like robots, smearing the window with their blood as they pressed their faces into it, trying in vain to reach her through the barrier.

They were zombies.

With so many behind her, she could only move forward through the train. Unlike old-fashioned trains, she could not get in-between cars and get off that way. Each car was connected by an enclosed walkway to the ones in front of and behind it. She hurried to one of the windows and looked for an emergency exit. She’d traveled by train before, and they usually had an emergency strip that would dislodge the window. This train, however, did not seem to have them. In frustration, she struck her pistol against the window pane, but it did not break, it did not even budge. The windows were probably shatterproof, a safety feature to keep someone from accidentally breaking them or falling through the window.

She picked up a laptop computer from one of the seats and hefted it over her head before slamming it down on the window. All it did was bounce off. She smashed the laptop against the window twice more before giving up. The panes were just too solid to be broken that way.

The two zombies in the other room were still stumbling around the doorway , trying to get through. Rebecca could not go back, and she had no desire to keep moving forward, so she had no choice but to get off the train now. She raised her gun and fired at the window. The bullet broke through it, leaving white cracks, but the window didn’t shatter.

At that moment, one of the bodies in the car with her began to move. A man, dressed in a white button-down shirt and gray slacks, now both stained red. He got up from his chair and began to shamble towards her, mouth open and moaning hungrily.

“Stop! Please!” Rebecca screamed, terror building up inside her. “Get away from me!” She raised her gun and pulled the trigger twice in quick succession, striking the man in the throat and then in the forehead.

The noise just attracted more of them. Two more zombies emerged from behind the train seats and stepped toward her. One of them was just a teenage kid, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. Tears streamed down Rebecca’s face as she shot him in the head.

The other zombie was an elderly man wearing a green sweater. His white hair was spotted with blood, and one of his eyes was missing, leaving a hideous hole in his face. Rebecca aimed her gun at him and pulled the trigger.

The gun clicked empty.

Rebecca shrieked in disbelief and stepped backwards as the zombie advanced on her. She slid out the empty clip and fumbled in her supply belt for another. She frantically pulled it out, trying to keep her eyes on the zombie, and it slipped out of her fingers. The zombie was ten feet away. She screamed in fear, stumbling backward, and tripped over the laptop she’d dropped, falling onto her back side. The clip was a mile away and the zombie was right on top of her. She scooted backward and found her back pressed against the door. She began to scream at the top of her lungs, paralyzed in fear, swinging her arms in front of her as if they could hold the zombie at bay. It stood right over her, blood from its mouth dripping onto her shoe, and reached for her. She screamed once more.

And a deafening gunshot rang out. Half of the zombie’s head disappeared in a blur of red, and it fell to the floor right in front of her. But she just kept screaming.

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