World of Ashes II (11 page)

“We’re in Knoxville, kid. Best stay in the lighted areas where the sentries can see you. Knoxville’s being attacked on the outskirts of town as we speak. We’re not taking any chances.”

“Is there anywhere I can feed this one?” Daniel asked groggily, trying not to upset Kaylee when he woke her. He didn’t feel like being clawed again.

“Yeah, there’s a chow tent. I’d bring some stuff with you if you’re traveling with us any farther. I don’t think we’re stopping before we get to Florida.”

“Is it safe in Florida? Disney World is in Orlando, my Grandpa took me there.” Kaylee smiled up at the conductor. She smiled back, her eyes betraying the concern she was feeling for someone not presently with her. Daniel admired the notion of this woman’s bravery, to continue her job when surely all she wanted was to be with her children.

“Last I heard it was.” Daniel detected a lie, but didn’t say anything. He doubted anywhere was safe anymore, he just needed for Kaylee to stay positive.

They disembarked the train and went to find food. Kaylee found the desert table first, but didn’t complain when Daniel dragged her to the real food. Some of the local restaurants were dumping their stock since they’d had to close indefinitely. Free burgers and all sorts of other meals were being cooked by FEMA employees, free to anyone who didn’t try to eat other people first. Daniel couldn’t believe how few people there were, now. Free food should have drawn them in by the hundreds. He might have been able to count them all without trouble. Daniel could see a fire in the distance and made Kaylee eat a little faster. They were about to board the train again when one of the sentries in a tower opened fire with an M249 SAW. People screamed and shouted, bumrushing the doors of the train just as Kaylee was lifting her foot onto the first step. Daniel snatched her up and launched them both up in one great leap to avoid being trampled.

The crew didn’t waste time trying to seat everyone. The engine revved and, painfully, excruciatingly slowly the train started forward with people still jumping on board as it cleared the station. The FEMA workers they left behind were corralled into a safe zone as the first infected sprinted into sight. Men on the train with guns opened fire too, but who knew if they hit anything. The engine started blowing its horn and ringing bells, something was up ahead but they weren’t slowing down for it. Daniel got a look through a few buildings as the train rounded a gradual turn. Someone had parked a tractor trailer on the tracks ahead, burning tires piled on either side like a scene from the movie
Blackhawk Down.
Curiosity over the who and why was completely absent.

“Kaylee, get down.” Daniel pushed Kaylee as low in her seat as he could. The conductor shouted for everyone to brace themselves moments before the engine took the trailer broadside. The wood and aluminum trailer exploded, the rear wheels being dragged along among the twisted metal for a few hundred feet. Kaylee screamed when gunfire pinged off the solid metal train. Glass shattered in the rows behind them, people screaming too when glass ripped into their skin and others moved to bandage their friends.

Daniel racked a round into his M4 and aimed through a shattered window. He couldn’t see anything, just muzzle flashes and shadows running through the smoke. Whoever was shooting at the train had turned their attention elsewhere now, but people in the cars behind them were still shooting behind the train. Maybe they were enjoying playing out one last Wild West fantasy. Fuck, Daniel didn’t know what motivated people now. Rushing back to Kaylee he held her until the train was far from the city. With her little belly full and the monsters unable to penetrate this rolling fortress, she fell asleep in his lap like a sack of potatoes. The train reached an average cruising speed and didn’t slow down again for love nor money for the rest of the night.

The next stop was supposed to be outside Atlanta, but that was overrun and the engineers opted to switch lines to avoid the city entirely. It was only a matter of time before they came across an obstruction the engines couldn’t move or encountered damaged track. Derailing a train isn’t as hard as it seems, even minor damage to the width of the tracks and it’s all over. By late the next day the train took a good deal of time to carefully navigate down the length of the Smokey Mountains. The conductor was standing near them when her radio crackled with voices other than the engineers up front. It was an Army checkpoint five miles outside Fort Benning, Georgia.

The air was muggy and smelled of swamps and hearth. Fires were burning in the distance, but they were in open fields, burn pits for the infected corpses the Army had been piling up reached towered the sky. These men meant business, to carve out a safe area in their homeland free of walking cannibals.

The train came to a stop and allowed several uniformed men to board. They didn’t harass anyone, they were just riding as security to the search area. Like the checkpoints before them, these men weren’t interested in people’s ID’s or luggage. All the Soldiers of Fort Benning cared about was who was sick and who might be getting sicker. Daniel thought it was strange they would look for something like that, people in various states of illness. Wouldn’t it be pretty obvious if someone were carrying EV-1? They’d be trying to eat everyone by now, not cuddling up in a corner with the sniffles. Nobody on the train wanted to eat each other. Not yet anyway. It all begged the question, was there yet another way to become infected? If EV-1 had become airborne they were all well and truly fucked.

After an hour of inching along the local line they were allowed off the train in a secure area, this time for real. An entire battalion of Marines had marched from Paris Island to Ft. Benning, smiting the infection as they went despite them all being Recruit Training Battalions, thus the post was massively reinforced. The Soldiers manning Fort Benning didn’t seem inclined to force anyone to stay when the engineers decided to press on. Another herd was heading this way, Fort Benning was just preparing for the onslaught whether that meant standing their ground or running away. A lot of people got off the train, hoping this Army post was the promised land. Keeping a low profile, Daniel helped Kaylee get cleaned up and find more food. They were back on the train in minutes, pockets stuffed full of Keebler crackers and juice boxes. Most of the seats were empty again, but didn’t stay that way for long. Soon Green Tag wounded began boarding the train. Several people were Reservists and National Guardsmen traveling to get to their assigned posts too, something Daniel was glad to hear. That meant his unit might not have written him off just yet.

“Sawyer? Is that you?” A very familiar voiced asked from behind. Daniel turned around, fearing the worst, that it was an officer or NCO from his unit who thought he was a deserter. Instead Daniel was delighted to see one of his best friends from Basic Training, Jose Camilo.

“Hey man.” They bro-fisted across the aisle and did the no-homo half-hug. “I was afraid I’d never see a familiar face again.” Daniel said, almost relieved to tears.

“No shit. I’ve been stuck here for two fucking months. My Guard unit rotated to Annual Training the week I got there, so I wasn’t supposed to have to go because I just got out of Basic. But you know me, I like money, so I volunteered to play OpFor when a slot opened up.” Jose shrugged. “Most of the guys had their own cars, but I got stuck here doing bitch-work until I was all that was left. A bunch of assholes just gave up and started walking home. I knew I should have gone Active, this would never have happened on Active Duty.”

“Don’t be too sure.” Daniel reassured. “So where are you going now?”

“Back to Tampa. I’m fucking pissed, ya know?”

“I would be too. I’m taking
this
one to Florida too.” He mussed Kaylee’s hair. “She found me when we were stuck in the wilds of suburban Virginia. I thought I’d return the favor and get her safely home.”

“Aw, how sweet.” Jose smiled, elbowing Daniel. “
The Silent One
indeed has a heart.” True, during basic training Daniel rarely spoke and had gone unnoticed by his Drill Sergeant until only days before graduation. “I’m just teasing, bro. I wish I’d managed to do something good like that in the last few months. The closest thing I’ve done to actual Soldiering was driving a truck that carried some Democrat Party attention-whore’s luggage to an airport. They’ll evacuate the most useless people on Earth, but they don’t give a fuck about Joes like you and me.”

“I have it on good word that that’s how every army has ever operated.” Daniel shrugged. “After I drop Kaylee off with her grandparents I’m heading back to Wyoming, assuming I even can. Have you heard from any of your friends or family since this all started?”

“I called my mom and pop yesterday. They said my cousin Martin was killed in a riot in St. Louis. We haven’t heard anything about family South of the border, but the news reports from down there aren’t good either. But hey, this is America bro, we’re handling our shit. But everyone from Mexico to the tip of Chile is falling apart at the seams.” Jose leaned back in his seat, the ghostly orange fires of a town not far from the tracks silhouetted him in the windows. Daniel wished he had a camera, it would have been a moving image to capture. America had never burned like this before, no one in living memory had seen the state of Georgia on fire. Was this anything like what Georgians saw after the March of General Sherman? Perhaps on a much larger scale, the generational grievance Southerners feel toward Sherman might have been a good place to start if one were to try to define this to someone who didn’t know.

“We’re going to make it through this, man.” Jose didn’t even know if he believed what he was saying, but he was a patriot, his love for America born out of the strife his family had suffered getting to the real promise land. He was fourth generation American, but his great grandfather was still alive (c. recently) and the stories made up most of Jose’s childhood.

“I guess… but how bad are things going to be from now on, even if we stop this plague? We’re going to live in paranoia the rest of our lives.”

“Haven’t we been already?” Jose shrugged. “We grew up with it, but Pop says things didn’t used to be like this, checkpoints all over the place, security just to go into a building. We might defeat the undead, but maybe it’s the living we should be more worried about.”

Daniel and Jose chatted through the night, sometimes playing cards with the others on the train, but most games just petered out rather than having a definable winner. Everyone’s eyes were still watching the countryside as the train rolled through and no one could concentrate. Too bad money was worthless now. Every hour or so they’d hit something on the tracks, zombies, cars, cows, you name it, but no one else was shooting at the train. The final stop was a rail yard several miles outside Tallahassee, Florida. Everyone aboard could see the fires in the early morning light, pillars of death reaching for the heavens in every direction. When were they, if ever, going to get used to seeing this?

“Why do people set these fires? Does fire even stop them?” Jose asked no one in particular as the passengers were offloaded. This was the end of the line, there were no plans to move the train farther South, or in any other direction for that matter. The crew left their equipment and uniforms in a pile by the engine, took their guns and were gone before anyone realized it. Some people panicked, but the general consensus was to just eave too.

“I have no idea. I didn’t set any while I was in Virginia, but I’ll bet a lot of them were accidental. Hell, shit catches on fire from inattention, let alone acts of arson. I don’t know that fire would stop the dead anyhow, but I do know bullets don’t have a lot of effect unless you pop ‘em in the head.”

“And how exactly would you know that?” A voice they didn’t recognize asked from behind. Jose and Daniel turned to see who it was. To their horror it was a uniformed officer, Department of Homeland Security emblazoned in gold lettering on his black polo. Neither of the boys were law enforcement, but it was clear from the numbers of gadgets on his utility belt above a snappy pair of EMS shorts, he was a total tool.

“I’ve heard.” Daniel narrowed his eyes at the man. He’d seen what government agencies were apt to do in a crisis like this. He may as well be talking to one of Hitler’s Brown Shirts about the many wonders of the Jewish faith.

“
Sure you have
. Would you mind coming with me? I need to talk to you.” The man said, his hand inching toward his sidearm.

“I’m in the Army. I’m trying to get back to my unit, I didn’t do anything illegal.” Daniel was apprehensive, Jose too. The only difference was Jose didn’t have a gun, and Daniel’s M9 and M4 were either leaning against a fence post or tucked in his belt behind his back, since he hadn’t managed to scrounge up a holster yet. There would be no getting to either gun before this man drew his. Onlookers scattered, fearing for their own freedom and lives.

“I don’t want to go with you. I have other business to attend to. I didn’t hurt anyone, and I didn’t do anything illegal. Now let us go.” Daniel said again.

“So you’re saying you just ‘heard’ that it was okay to shoot Americans?”

“Your people would know.” Daniel’s eyes were widening, but not with surprise, rather the face of a man who intends to do harm if threatened. Hyper awareness and vigilance would make any move he made faster now. Would it be fast enough?

“C’mon. My patrol car is right there. I just want to get a-” Jose must have seen the bulge in Daniel’s shirt, because he grabbed the M9 without asking and leveled it at the DHS agent’s head. The agent reached for his gun, but Jose fired a round over his head. “What the fuck are you doing, Soldier!? Put the gun down, NOW!”