Apocalypticon (7 page)

“What the hell did you just do?” Ben asked, incredulous.

Patrick beamed as he ran. “I gave them every Gordon Gekko quote I could remember.”

“That was genius.”

“And we didn’t lose the coffee,” Patrick said, hefting the bag in his hand. “That’s why I’m in charge.”

3.

Horace toed at the gore stuck to the plow shield. Here and there, small clumps of hair matted together in dark red clots fell from the blade, exposing tiny white bone fragments that peppered the bloody spray. Jesus, those lumps of brain matter were really stuck on there.

“Christ. I hate when this happens.”

“When you hit someone with the train, or when they get stuck?”

Horace glanced sharply at his second-in-command, a grave young man with somber grey eyes, a gristly black beard, and a bald head under his Amtrak cap. He was an able conductor, but often spoke too freely for Horace’s taste. “Both,” the older man muttered. “Find someone to clean this up. I want it sparkling by the time we pull out.”

He turned and strode toward the station, noting with disgust the blood and grey matter that had exploded onto the engine windows. Christ, this was a messy route. You wouldn’t think it--most of the last 300 miles of rail ran through open space, what used to be farmland--but between the suicides, the goddamn loose cattle, and the occasional near-sighted refugee, the entire Lincoln Service was a bloodbath.

The Monkey piss didn’t help matters. Visibility in the fog was never any better than half a mile, and it wasn’t safe to blast the horn. It’d be like calling starving children to Thanksgiving. A train, even a train as stripped down as Bertha, would still be considered a cornucopia of resources for the average survivor. Horace’s men were capable of protecting the train to a point, but it’s not like they could beat a retreat if they were swarmed. Best not to draw any unwanted attention, which meant no horn. Oftentimes, between the fog and the silence, people just didn’t see the train coming, unlikely as it sounded. A lot of refugees followed the tracks when they had no compass. Maybe they didn’t figure the train was still running. But they didn’t know Horace Stilton.

He stopped halfway down the platform and pulled an antique gold watch from his pocket and examined the time. Most people weren’t concerned with time these days, but a railroad man knew better. There was always a schedule to keep, even if the world had given up its timetable. He watched the second hand make three complete rotations, and when it struck the 12 on the fourth time around, the time was precisely 3:00pm, Central Standard Time. He tugged on the chain around his neck and drew the long, thin whistle from inside his shirt. He blew four short, sharp blasts. “Departure in four hours!” he hollered.

Horace had been with Amtrak for almost thirty years. He had started as a lowly part-time ticket clerk at a time when low gas prices and a good economy meant the near death of the passenger train industry, and slowly moved up the ranks, to full-time clerk, then Service Assistant, then Lead Service Attendant. Then, around 2008, the economy tanked and things really picked up at the Blue Lady. Horace rocketed up to the coveted position of Assistant Passenger Conductor Trainee and completed the training program in record time. Somewhere in D.C. there was still a plaque with his name on it. But for all the promise he’d shown, Horace had stagnated in that position. He’d shown decades of dedication to the company, but when all was said and done, it was still an Old Boys’ Club, and Horace didn’t fit the profile. He wasn’t well connected. He wasn’t a blood relative of anyone on the Board of Directors, he hadn’t knocked up the company president’s daughter, and his father hadn’t gone to school with the VP of This or That. He was stonewalled at every Lead Conductor position that came available. He jumped service lines, from the Acela Express to the Texas Eagle to the Pacific Surfliner to the Illinois Zephyr to the Empire Builder back to the Texas Eagle, leaving his family, friends, and any semblance of a normal life behind in a desperate attempt to show his worth in the right place at the right time. But for every Lead Conductor opening, there were six less deserving “friends-of-a-friend” winking at each other in the bullpen. Horace lost traction, his resentment festering within his heart like an open sore.

Until M-Day, that is. The apocalypse marked a significant turning point in Horace’s life. The Flying Monkeys wiped out over 80% of Amtrak’s staff, including all but three commissioned Lead Conductors, all three of whom abandoned their posts after the Great Genocide. As far as Horace was concerned, that was just the latest proof that they had no right to be called conductors in the first place.

The day after the apocalypse, no one showed for work. No one except for Horace. He arrived at Los Angeles Union Station as if it were any other day. In truth, he hadn’t quite grasped the enormity of the attack. With no friends or close relatives to worry about his safety, his phone hadn’t rung once, and there wasn’t a single person he could think to call to get more information on the rumblings outside. He knew there had been a serious, multi-target attack on the United States, of course. It was on every channel. L.A. had even been one of the twenty-six targets, and he could see the yellow dust drifting by his window in thick clouds. It had scared him at first--it was early spring, the first truly hot Californian day, and he, like so many others across the country, had his windows open for the first time that year, giving the mysterious yellow plague easy entry into his apartment--but it hadn’t affected him, and though he heard screams and sirens out in the streets, he thought what most Los Angeles survivors thought at the time: another impotent terrorist threat. His apartment was located only a few blocks from the station, and, sure, there was chaos in the streets on his way to work the next morning, but, Christ, this was L.A. When
wasn’t
there chaos in the streets? To top things off, most of the news broadcasts had gone off the air sometime the night before. He thought the attack must be clouding the airwaves, obstructing the signals, something like that. How was he to know that 99% of the anchors, producers, writers, cameramen, make-up artists, and interns were lying dead with their bodies half melted in pools of their own excrement, pus, and blood, with that crazy, viscous yellow gel oozing out of their pores? 

Looking back on it, there were probably dead bodies littering the sidewalks, but how would a few dead bodies look any different from the litter of hobos he passed every day? It wasn’t until he’d reached Union Station that he realized something was seriously wrong. There was no mistaking the previous evening’s passengers rotting on the terminal floor.

Most people would have screamed and fled. But Horace saw an opportunity.

It didn’t take long to confirm that the conductors scheduled for the next Texas Eagle were either dead or no longer bothering with the 9-to-5. Amtrak needed a new conductor. Horace finally had his promotion; the murder of 95% of the U.S. population had made it so.

Now, more than three years later, he was thriving. An operational transportation service was incredibly lucrative in post-apocalyptic America. Refugees were willing to pay everything they had to escape the stench of death and the disappearing rations in their hometowns. Everyone thought somewhere else would be better. It was so stupid. Horace had directed his train all over the country. No city was any better off than any other.

After a time, the refugees became fewer and far between. It meant fewer fares, but that was okay, because Horace was nothing if not adaptable. Bertha’s main focus shifted from passengers to cargo. Survivors were willing to pay top dollar (figuratively speaking, now that the dollar was worthless) for cargo transport. Traders paid him to move large amounts of wares to some post or other a few hundred miles away. Railroad towns paid him to take loads of trash away from their newly erected city walls. Farmers paid to have food shipped to arid regions across the country. He’d hauled everything from carrots to corpses; anything people needed moved or removed.

The years had made him rich and powerful in the eyes of the weak and struggling. He had a legion of Red Caps, a full, capable train staff, an enterprising if not affable Assistant Conductor, complete reign of the entire Amtrak rail system, and a series of strategically placed food and supply depots situated across the country. And sweetest of all, he was acknowledged by everyone he met as Lead Conductor. These had been a good three years, and Horace wasn’t sure what he would do with himself if the well ever went dry.

He entered Chicago’s Union Station through the empty sliding glass door frames, sidestepping to avoid the pickets of glass stabbing out of the black metal. He flagged down one of the Red Caps, an earnest young man named Louis, who came hustling over. “Yes, sir?”

“Take Stevens and find our cargo. Two clients today; we got twenty-four full-size waste containers and a load of scrap metal coming in from that Loop woman’s people, and a pallet of books coming in from the library. Don’t know what the library man’ll look like, but shouldn’t be too hard to spot the cargo. Violet’s paying us in red, six cases, make sure it’s not schlock. As for the books, I want you to pay him from this.” He grabbed a small linen bag from his pocket and tossed it to Louis.

“What are they?” the young Red Cap asked, hefting the light pouch in his hand.

“Bone fragments, from saints. Taken out of church altars, apparently. Seems disrespectful to me, but I guess desperate times and all that. Elsewise, they’re extremely valuable. Rome’s not sending any more of ‘em stateside, so don’t give away more than you have to. Use your best judgment based on the number and quality of the books. Not looking for any specific titles, but you know what I mean. I’d say one fragment for thirty decent books sounds about right. Be fair with the price, but not generous. We only got those ten fragments, plus sixteen more. You got all that?”

Louis nodded. “Waste barrels and metal from the busboys, books from the library.”

“Good boy. Run along.” Louis turned and scampered off in search of Stevens. Horace checked his pocket watch. As always, he was right on schedule.

•

“Now, this bridge looks especially well guarded,” Patrick said, stroking his chin thoughtfully. “And everyone on it is wearing a red hat. I received no memo about a red hat.”

“Haven’t you ever taken the Amtrak?” Ben asked. “Those guys are Red Caps. They help old people with their luggage and stuff.”

“Ah, yes! Now I remember. They’re like big Boy Scouts.”

“Sort of. But they don’t sell cookies.”

“Cookies?” Patrick shook his head. “Oh, Ben, your formative years must have been such an incredible train wreck,” he said, patting him on the shoulder. “So! Do you think we just...
cross
...?”

Ben shrugged, looking at the legion of men and women in red caps swarming the walkway. There was a line of them spread out along the entrance to the bridge, with maybe three dozen more spaced out along the road behind them. Another twenty or so surrounded the Adams Street entrance to the Amtrak platforms. “Sure. There’s a lot of them, but they don’t seem particularly violent.” He approached the Adams Street Bridge and took a step toward a gap in the line of Red Caps. A heavily bearded guard one on his left drew back a fist and smashed him in the mouth with a right cross. Ben went toppling over backward, landing in a daze on his pack and looking more like a mutated turtle than ever. Patrick rushed up to him and helped him to his feet. “Nope. Nope,” he said, wiping blood from the corner of his mouth. “I was wrong. They are particularly violent.”

“Huh,” Patrick said. “That guy just punched you right in the face.” He gazed in awe at the Red Cap, who had resumed his formal posture and gazed into the distance, like a British Queen Guard. “That was really nice form,” he said admirably. Ben shoved him away.

“Thanks for the recap. I don’t think they’re going to let us through.”

“Sure, not if we try to just barrel on through. That was a stupid plan. A stupid plan, Ben. Sometimes all it takes it a little honey. Follow my lead.” He turned and approached the line of Red Caps. He picked out a woman who looked especially small and pleasant, and said, “Excuse me, but I was wondering if you would be so kind as to let us pass.” Or that’s what he would have said, if she hadn’t interrupted him by bringing her boot hard into his groin before he could finish the word “excuse.”

“Crip on a crutch!” he shouted, holding a hand to his throbbing genitals and stumbling away from the Red Cap Guard. “They can’t be reasoned with!”

“Seeing your pain actually lessens my pain,” Ben observed.

“Criminy Christmas,” Patrick swore. “I haven’t been kicked by a girl like that since grad school.”

“Probably deserved it then, too.”

“Oh, I definitely deserved it
then
. I did
not
deserve it just now.”

“Well,” Ben said, crossing his arms in frustration. “Now what?”

Patrick patted his testicles and made sure everything was in order before craning his neck to see Union Station on the other side of the river. So close, but so far. There didn’t seem to be any easy entrance points into the river, and even if there were, they’d just run up against more Red Caps on the other side. Besides, he knew they couldn’t swim loaded down with all their gear. And he doubted Ben could swim at all, with those stubby legs. He looked downriver and saw what looked like a bridge far in the distance. Roosevelt, he guessed, or maybe Harrison. Whichever street it was, it was located south of a massive wall, easily thirty feet tall, that seemed to stretch from the river across the Loop, probably to the lake. If the train ran true to form, they only had a few more hours to get to the station and talk their way on before it departed. There just wasn’t time to try to go around. “Okay, I have a plan,” he said finally. “But I have to warn you. It’s not a very good plan.”

“I hope it involves you going first.”

“Unfortunately, it does.” Patrick said, taking a deep breath. “Okay. Follow my lead. And watch out for fists.” He shook out his hands and cracked his neck. Then he turned back toward the bridge and approached once more. When he got close, about ten feet from the first guards, he pointed to a random Red Cap milling around just behind the line. “Hey!” he shouted, loud enough to get the attention of everyone in a thirty-foot radius. “It’s you!” He gave his best look of amazed bewilderment and jogged up closer to the line of guards, but out of arm’s reach. “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe it’s really you! It’s been ages, how are you?” The Red Cap stopped milling and stood rooted to the ground, absolutely dumbfounded by this apparent stranger who suddenly seemed to know him. He wasn’t quite sold, Patrick could tell by the way his eyebrows twitched uncertainly. He pressed on. “You look amazing! God, I never thought I’d see you again! I’m so glad you survived, I thought for sure the whole gang was dead. And here you are, of all places! If that isn’t the craziest--and you’re a Red Cap now!” He put both hands on his hips and gasped in wonder. “Good on you!”