Dead and Dead Again: Kansas City Quarantine (64 page)

* * * * *

“Damnit,” Calvin hissed. “Captain?”
he asked.

“We’re ready,” she answered.

“I didn’t want to kill anyone, but
we can’t let this continue. Ready weapons.”

“We don’t really have a clean shot
on the ones around your friends as long as they’re all upright like that,”
Sergeant Doogard warned him. “It’s gonna get messy.”

“Now you
don’t
want to shoot
them? I wish you guys would make up your minds,” he hissed.

“I’m always against killing
civilians if possible, Mr. Hobbes,” Doogard informed him emphatically. “But I’m
ready to take these assholes out. I just need a clean shot.”

“There is a port window low in car
two from which one of you can snipe,” Hephaestus informed them.

“I’m on it,” called GI Jane,
already running through the engine.

“Ok, Wait til she’s in position. Just
get the outside ones. Let her take those closest to Gus and Scaggs. Hold until
I say fire,” muttered Calvin, squeezing the button for the PA system. “You’re
making a really big mistake, Mr. Smith. We are here to help. Please let our
friends go and clear the track. We are trying to save everyone…”

Calvin knew now that it didn’t
matter what he said. He just kept talking, trying to stall, hoping for Hef to
shout and tell him the nail guns were back online. He gave it ten more seconds,
eyeing a digital readout on the wall as he talked…

* * * * *

“You’re making a mistake…” Calvin
was saying.

Scaggs could hear his voice droning
on from the intercom, but the pain washed out most of the conversation. She
felt everything. Blow after blow. Fist, palm, knee, something metal slamming
her shoulder. Both eyes puffed up and then closed after the first few heavy
back-handed, iron-knuckled slaps had bounced each eye around the inside of her
skull a few times. One guy stepped back and planted a forward kick into the
middle of her chest. She felt bones pop, but wasn’t sure they’d broken. This
knowledge became useless as she tried to take a breath and failed.

Maybe that’s for the best,
part of her mind admitted as pain rocketed throughout her body. Her world
darkened, but try as she might, she was unable to successfully pull the blanket
of darkness over herself. All feeling in her legs faded away, but these cruel
men with iron grips that bruised her flesh held her up and continued to beat
her with an insatiable intensity borne of extreme fear and hate. For only the
second time in her life, she prayed to God:
Please, make it stop,
she
begged.
Make it stop or take me away
.
I’m sorry for everything bad
I’ve ever done. Please forgive me?

Gus watched his new girlfriend as
an impotent rage built within his soul. While three men beat on his face, two
with gnarly, scarred knuckles and one of brass, two more henchmen were breaking
the fingers on his left hand, one-by-one, knuckle-by-knuckle. Another two were
kicking his groin and legs and stomping on his toes as they laughed. But he
didn’t scream, instead yelling a steady stream of obscenities until a boot
slammed upside his favorite skull.

Apparently someone out there
knows an art form that’s martially,
his receding mind joked. Slowly fading away,
he could hear Calvin trying to reason with the men.

“Just go!” Gus shouted, now looking
the wrong way after the massive blow to his head—and consciousness—had knocked
him out of the grasp of all of the men. Finally free, but completely powerless,
he tumbled to his knees and repeated himself.

“Get out of here, Calvin!” he
screamed again, before one final blow to the back of the skull struck him dark.

* * * * *

“I’m warning you,” Calvin said one
last time. “I need you to let my people go and back away. We have some serious
firepower onboard and will use it if we have to.”

“It’s illegal for you to fire on
civilians,” the man crowed.

“Once again,” Calvin repeated. “We
do not work for the government. We are just people, like yourselves, and we
have the legal right to protect our own. So let my friends go or we will be
forced to kill you.”

“And I’ll tell you one more time.
We want that vehicle. Unload all of your people and let us aboard or we start
doing things your friends really won’t like.”

“I can’t do any of that. Please, if
you have any compassion or humanity left in you at all, return my friends and
let us go.

“Rape the girl,” the leader spat.

Though a few of the men seemed
uncertain and stepped back, the rest rushed in, leering with uncontrolled
passion, and quickly grabbed hold of Scaggs’ clothes and began trying to rip
pieces off. Scaggs screamed and fought with renewed vigor, but at least two men
held each limb, throwing her flat onto the ground as grasping, frantic fingers
attempted to shred her clothes. Luckily, she had taken to wearing some tough cotton
and leather materials under the armor to keep the chafing to a minimum so their
strong fingers failed to tear the fabric. Unfortunately this was a mob, and
someone in a mob always had a sharp tool. One man opened a box knife and started
cutting at the material, not caring if he happened to damage a little flesh as
he went. The grunting men smelled as bad as they looked. Several tried to lay
on top of her at once and began jockeying to be the first to take her. The
jockeying quickly changed to fisticuffs as the biggest man pushed his way into
position over her.

Suddenly she wasn’t worried
anymore. She knew this wouldn’t last. She didn’t know Calvin that well, yet,
but she knew him well enough. The same steel was in his voice as she’d heard
over her headphones from the shopping trip when he’d stood alone facing a dozen
rifles with only his axes. He was done talking. And from her new prone position
she could see that her friends had a much better firing line from the train.

Why aren’t you firing?
Her
mind screamed.

“Air is back on,” Hephaestus said
into Calvin’s ear.

“Turrets, open up and let them have
it. Not in the face, yet,” Calvin ordered, and thousands of tiny, silvery darts
flew into the massed people surrounding Gus and Scaggs.

Ha ha, finally!
Scaggs
screamed in her mind, watching the flickering orange light from the burning
barrels reflect from the shiny darts emanating from the top of the train, each
dart glowing like tracer rounds from a machine gun.

“Now you’re gonna get the point,”
she mumbled and everything turned all wonky and someone hit her in the face
with a mud puddle. Drooling blood into the mud and unable to move, she lay on
her side looking up at silvery-orange streams of light pouring out of all four
train cars into the mob of assholes. Silently cheering, allowing the tears to
fall uncontrolled.

It actually took the mob several
moments for the angry villagers to realize that they were being shot. Several of
the attackers were stuck from a dozen nails in various body parts before the
pain finally registered. Still unsure why, suddenly everyone began to jump around
and scream or simply fall to the ground crying in agony. The men around Scaggs
were targeted first and each man fell with at least fifty nails jammed deep
into tissue, nerves and bone. Within only a few seconds, two-dozen of the
kidnappers were screaming and begging for help. The leader, yelling for his
people to rush the train, fell in a hailstorm of nails from all four turrets,
his face peppered with nails, eyes obliterated and brain mashed as any good
zombie the group had fought this week.

In a microcosmic example of the
entire interaction someone galactically-stupid within the crowd—and by this
point the depth of idiocy required by this individual could not be measured on
any modern or historic scales—screamed: “Get ‘em!”

The incensed mass of inhabitants
charged, modern rifles as useless against the armored train as pitch forks against
castle walls. But soon they would be climbing onto the train, and pitchforks and
rifles could both fit into gun ports.

“Damnit! Everyone fire!” Calvin
shouted and everyone with a gun picked a target. “Do what you have to do. Get
them away from the
Dragon
!”

Damnit. I hope someone up there
forgives us,
Calvin prayed, aiming his own gun at a big farmer with no
teeth who had helped break Gus’ fingers. The slug slammed into the man’s massive
chest and carried him back three feet into the next person in line, knocking
that person to the ground, and likely saving her life, because Calvin kept
shooting and she just stayed down, hiding under the dead man for the rest of
the night until it was clear again and these angry people had left.

Calvin became a robot. He saw
someone charging; he put a bullet into them. And the others copied his thoughts
with equal actions, clearing a wide path around Gus and Scaggs. The mob fired
back, but the train’s outer shell reflected their bullets as if they were
pellets and the port holes Calvin and the others were firing from were too
small for the untrained masses to place a good shot into.

* * * * *

In the ensuing chaos, through
bleary, bloodied eyes and flickering torchlight Scaggs saw a shadowy figure
hovering over her. He grunted and wheezed and she knew she couldn’t stop this
one; she didn’t have the energy to defend herself. She raised a weak fist to
swing at the man, but there was no strength left in her tiny body. Then the shadow
sharpened and Gus’ bruised face was there, staring down with his soft, loving blood-filled
eyes and gently placing a jacket over her half-nakedness with his good hand,
grunting from cracked ribs and wheezing through a broken nose from which flowed
a waterfall of blood.

“Can you walk?” he wheezed.

“I thikickle rud.”

“In English?”

She grabbed her already swelling
jaw. “I think I can run,” she repeated in a daze. “If I can keep my balance…and
if I still have legs.” Of that she wasn’t so sure. Everything hurt, so it was
hard to tell what was still intact.

“I’ll keep your balance, babe,” Gus
grunted smoothly, smiling through bloody teeth and a split lip. “And your legs
look as perfect as ever.”

She put her hand fondly to his
cheek and as he helped her to her feet she instantly fell over to one side. His
quick arms would have held her up, but the broken fingers his left hand failed
to clasp, instead uselessly sliding up her arm. Gravity ripped her body from
his grasp and he screamed for the first time since they’d been taken prisoner
as he tumbled to the ground on top of her. Both grunted in pain and lay
writhing in agony for a few moments as they kept grabbing each other’s broken
parts to try and roll off or out from under the other. Eventually both simply began
laughing at their own misfortune.

With the mob members screaming and
dying all around them, working together the couple eventually managed to stand
and stagger towards the train. Both dripped blood from numerous wounds and
stumbled forward, hunched from strikingly similar injuries. It took an eternity
to stagger two normal paces, but they were alive and apparently invisible to the
lynch-mob.

“Athena, remember we have to check
them out when we get a chance. You know how Gus tends to ignore his health,”
Calvin ordered, watching his friends stumble in the general direction of the
train.

“Says the man who was shot twice in
the chest and an hour later wanted to go out on a zombie hunt.”

“It was really just a little sore,”
he informed her.

“Sure it was,” she replied
sarcastically. “That’s why you couldn’t perform on the night you proposed
marriage.”

“Ooh, performance issues?” Tripper
said as they all kept firing indiscriminately into the maddened crowd. “Have
you tried your little blue friend?”

“It wasn’t like that,” Athena
quickly shifted gears to defend her man. “He was too sore to be on top, so I
had to take over.”

“First, place and time. Second, I
have no problem with you doing that any time.” Calvin lowered his rifle as the
wave of angry citizens washed away into the night and targets became scarce.

“Hold your fire,” he said as the
last of the civilian army retreated.

“Cover me,” Boomer whispered,
opening the heavy door and slipping down the stairs like a shadow in the
deepening gloom. Helping Gus and Scaggs to the steps of the engine, where Sarah
and Athena waited with concerned looks. He then slinked over to hide behind a
barrel that had lost its flame, waiting, watching. For a few long seconds he
sat there, making sure it was truly clear.

“What the hell is he doing?” Calvin
demanded angrily.

“I’d say it looks like he’s trying
to get himself killed,” Tripper replied in a dry rasp, full of sarcasm. “But
maybe he calls it something else.”

“I’m getting our stuff back,”
Boomer replied, demonstrating that he was perfectly able to answer for himself.

“Dude, what are you thinking?”
Tripper asked. “You’re black, man. We’re almost at our destination. This is the
part where you get killed for no reason.”

“Shut up, jackass!” Boomer grunted.

“Get back here and let me do it,”
Tripper said, sounding genuinely worried.

“I got it,” Boomer insisted.

He ran out in a hunched jog and
kicked over the dead leader, ripping from his death grasp the armor belonging
to Scaggs and Gus and picking up the air gun backpack the men had dismissed as
a useless toy. He was unable to find their swords, however, even after rolling
over two of the other goons who had originally searched the couple.

“Look under the big guy, over
there,” Tripper suggested, pointing to the one who had likely broken Scaggs’
jaw. He was, however, over fifty feet away and inside the train, well out of
Boomer’s line of sight. Boomer managed to discern which body he was talking
about, though, simply by the shear bulk of the man in question.