James Axler (19 page)

One wall was lined with pressurized canisters standing upright in the confines of a metal unit, and these were painted the burnt-orange color of paprika and displayed the familiar hazmat symbol on their sides. The holding unit clunked and hummed to itself, its groans echoing through the chamber. To the right side of the car was a jumble of intricate pipework, running over and under a long desk that ran almost the car’s full length. It reminded Ryan of the moonshine stills he’d seen from time to time in villes throughout the .

The car featured large, rounded sides, bloating outward beyond the standard width of the train. This was one of the three fatter cars they had seen during their walk along its side beside Lake Sakakawea.

There was a definite clinical feel to the setup, and, as they walked slowly through the car, J.B. pointed out the pivoting spotlights that were arrayed above the desk on a long rail. A thick cable attached to the far end of the rail ran to a worn-looking gasoline generator, and a chimney hose ran from the genny to the ceiling, disgorging waste products as required. Currently the genny and the spotlights were switched off.

Automatically, J.B. checked the rad counter on his lapel. “Radiation’s at normal levels,” he told Ryan.

“Any idea what all this stuff is?” Ryan asked, peering around the unmanned car.

J.B. reached across and warily placed the back of his knuckles against one of the canisters lining the wall.

“Cold,” he stated.

Up close they could see that a sheen of water droplets had formed on the shelved canisters like morning dew, and the humming unit they sat within exuded cold air.

Ryan walked to the far end of the car and found a second generator hidden from view by the bulky cooling unit. The gasoline genny was jumping up and down in place, chugging away as it powered the refrigeration unit. A hose system took the waste products out through the ceiling, in the same way as the one that powered the desk spotlights. The car didn’t smell of gasoline, though there was the faint whiff of alcohol, implying that the ancient gennys had been converted to run on the more plentiful fuel source.

Ryan strode across to the door at the far end of the car. It was wider than any they had stepped through up to now, and featured a level board of metal that ran directly into the next car, thus forming a flat walkway between the two. A small, square window with reinforced glass, the familiar crisscross pattern of wirework within it, was in the center of the door, and Ryan peeked through. The next car was also empty, and featured a similar long desk with spotlights along one side of the room. The other side held five parked carts, and Ryan could see that the wall featured a large set of double doors that would open at the left-hand side of the train.

At the far end he could see light coming through another square window like the one he was looking through. A dark shape obscured the light in the far window for a moment as someone passed. “Next one’s empty,” Ryan called to J.B., “but I can see movement in the next but one.”

J.B. grunted in acknowledgment. He was busy checking the burnt-orange canisters, reading the details on the hazmat labels and examining the dark, cog like seals that were found near the top of each unit. The labels told him very little. They were standard instructions about storage and he couldn’t be certain that they even referred to the contents now in these canisters—after all, so much of the material in the had been acquired for new lives long after its original purpose was forgotten. A rough square of paint had been chipped away on each canister on the rounded top and an alphanumeric code had been written there in a clear, bold hand using a black marker. In earlier times this information might have been added using printed labels and barcodes, but such luxuries were rarely found in this new world. J.B. couldn’t attach any special significance to the numbers, but concluded that they were probably just a storage code rather than a clue to the contents.

He reached forward and carefully unscrewed one of the dark caps that sealed a canister, before propping his spectacles on his brow and putting his naked eye to the opening. He shifted his head this way and that as he tried to get some light on what he was looking at, but it was very difficult with only the under floor lighting of the car.

“What do you see?” Ryan asked, keeping his voice low.

“There’s some kind of liquid in there,” J.B. replied, “I can see the shimmer of reflections. Can’t tell what it is, though.” He sniffed at the contents, which gave off very little smell, just something faintly acidic. If J.B. recognized the odor, he certainly couldn’t place it.

“What’d it smell like?” Ryan asked as J.B. resealed the canister.

J.B. sighed, trying to gather his thoughts and overcome an uncomfortable nagging he had in the back of his mind. “Death,” he answered after a moment, “and I can’t place why.”

As the pair walked toward the door into the next car there was a loud explosion and the whole train shook.

Ryan staggered, reaching his hand out to the wall to steady himself as J.B. stumbled backward into one of the generators.

“Fireblast!” Ryan growled, looking around the car.

“Something hit us!”

MILDRED HEARD THE FIZZING noise coming from ahead of her as it passed from left to right, but she continued to watch the process at the tower through the powerful rifle scope. A second later the car above her shook, and a shower of dust fell over her bare arms and shoulders as the noise of an explosion filled her ears. Doc had disappeared just five seconds before, and she had heard the report of a blaster just prior to the explosion. She realized what it meant—the train was under attack. No wonder Doc had rushed off when he did. While she had been watching the work at the tower through her scope Doc had to have been scanning for hostiles in the area around them and spotted the attack a split second before the rocket was launched. He’d trusted Mildred would be safe beneath the train while he guarded her from attack.

Whatever had hit had done so farther along the train, somewhere much closer to the engine. Unless someone targeted her car, she should be safe for now; Doc would see to that.

She dragged Ryan’s longblaster across the ground, keeping her eye to the scope as she tried to locate their attackers. A squad of sec men charged from the train toward a clutch of trees on the horizon, and shots whizzed over their heads as the roof guards set up cover fire. The group at the tower had ducked, the dark, vested leader crouching in a classic protective stance as he reeled off a volley of shots from a heavy blaster into the nearby shrubbery. With naked eye, Mildred glanced back at the tower, leaving the scope focused on the action in the trees, and watched the three technicians hurry for the armored protection of the train.

Something crossed her field of vision as she watched, a thin object moving at high velocity, and there was a second explosion. A cloud of dust kicked up near the tower and the train rocked once more.

Mildred put her eye back to the scope on the SSG-70 and watched flashes of light in the trees as the sec men reeled off shot after shot from their blasters, trying to locate their hidden attackers.

SOME SIXTH SENSE had told Doc to look around the train a few seconds before the attack had begun. That was all he could attribute it to as he rushed along the starboard exterior of the vehicle, hugging the side and sticking to the shadows there. He had his LeMat blaster in his hand, loaded and ready, as he dashed toward the back of the train.

Above him, he could hear gunshots as the roof gunners took aim at their assailants. Beside him, the train shook as it took a rocket to its midsection, and Doc looked behind him and watched as the rocket exited on his side of the train, having blown a hole clean through one of the cars near the front of the long vehicle from port to starboard.

He looked to his left, his eyes roving the patchy forest for signs of more attackers, and suddenly he saw another rocket burn through the air out of the trees, heading straight toward him. Doc threw himself to the ground and the rocket zipped overhead before slamming into the train car just behind him.

The explosion rang in his ears, and he looked back to see the extent of the damage. A wide hole had been created in the side of the car to his right, barely ten feet behind him. The edges of the hole glowed hot, and flames could be seen bursting from the interior. Several dented sheets of metal tumbled through the hole where they had been freed from the shelves in the storage car.

He struggled back to his feet as multiple shots rang out.

The rooftop gunners had spotted the glint of metal in the trees and were peppering the area with a spray of bullets.

Doc stepped back into the shadows, dodging into the space between two storage cars near the rear of the monstrous train. He watched from his hiding place as sec men rushed past, calling to one another about the fire in the nearby car.

A series of shots rang out from the trees, chipping at the wet ground around the train as a team of sec men rushed into the woods, trying to get a bead on their attackers. Suddenly, Doc spotted the movement in the branches above them, and a skinny man in homemade camouflage clothing appeared with a blaster in each hand, firing at the train guards. Three sec men fell at his devastating attack, and Doc heard the whoosh of air as another rocket launched from somewhere in the same clutch of trees.

As the rocket blasted through the air, its tail aflame with propulsion, Doc swung the LeMat and reeled off a single, devastating shot. Three of the upper branches of the trees disintegrated as the large ball slammed into them, and the skinny man fell to the ground in a whirl of limbs. It was a curious position that he found himself in, Doc realized, defending the prison that held his colleague. But right now there was no other option if they were to have a chance of rescuing Jak.

Then the rocket hit, smashing into the sheet-metal wall of the last car, shaking the structure of the whole train. Doc blinked back the dust from his eyes, shook his head to try to clear the ringing noise that gripped his ears, and peeked out from his hiding place. The rocket had slapped into the wall of the final car, denting the side but not piercing the sturdy boxcar. As J.B. had surmised, the last unit of the train had been toughened to withstand attack, and its heavy contents added to its shielding.

Doc glanced around, realizing that no further noise was coming from the trees to his left. Four sec men were trudging back to the train, weariness replacing the adrenaline that had motivated them just moments before. Two of them carried one of their colleagues, bearing his weight on their shoulders. The man they held stumbled, hopping on one foot, afraid to put weight on the other leg. Blood poured from a wound in his left leg, glistening in the morning sun.

Men from the train rushed all around, sliding back the large side panels of several of the storage cars at the back of the vehicle and removing sheets of steel, rivets and welding equipment. They organized themselves quickly to make swift repairs where the train had been holed. Doc dropped farther back into the shadows between the cars, wondering what to do next.

JAK HAD BEEN examining the lock on the cage door when the train shook with the explosion. He spun automatically, looking toward the rear of the train as though he could peer through the wall and see where the explosion had come from.

The train rocked in place for a few seconds before settling once again. Some of the younger children began to wail then, and everyone voiced the same question: what was that?

“’Splosion,” Jak told them, urging everyone to be quiet as he walked across the small cage and put his ear against the back wall. He could hear lots of shouting and the crackling sound of flames. And there was screaming—the high voices of children, scared and hurt.

“Everybody on floor,” Jak instructed firmly, pointing to the wooden boards of the floor. “Lie down.”

The children looked at him quizzically, several of the younger ones like Francis-Frankie shrieking in terror, their faces red. Maddie reached out, gently touching the shoulders of several of the children as she repeated Jak’s instruction. “We all need to lie down, like we’re going to sleep. Come on, quietly, lie down.”

It took a few moments, and Maddie had to pull one of the younger children—a dark-haired five-year-old called Allison—gently to the floor, but eventually the children were lying down, leaving only Jak standing.

He heard the tinkling of a bell, two urgent rings, echoing along the train cars—some kind of alarm system, he guessed. He stepped away from the back wall, imagining he could feel the heat of flames but also certain that it had to be his imagination. The dull ache was still playing at his left arm, and he rubbed it through his jacket as he stepped across the car, looking all around.

With no warning, there was the sound of a second explosion, coming from the port side of the train, and Jak looked across at the wooden wall past the wire mesh of the cage wall. He heard something hit the side of the car there, a shower of rocks and dirt, he guessed.

The shells were getting closer.

His eyes swept around the little box of the room, his brain working urgently to try to find a way out. On the floor, some of the children had taken fetal positions, curling in on themselves as the car shook all around them. Others hugged each other, glistening tears streaming down their cheeks. Marc looked scared, his own cheeks damp with tears, but he held tight to two of the smaller children, promising them they would be safe.

Jak was conscious that three sets of eyes were watching him, including Maddie. When she caught his eyes she mouthed a question. “Are we going to be okay?”

Jak shrugged, his gaze sweeping across the roof, this way and that, as he heard the gunshots all around. Then he looked down at Maddie on the floor once more and he realized what he had to do. He crouched in front of her, knees bent, balancing on the toes of his worn boots.

“We be fine,” he told her firmly, locking his eyes on hers.

There was another explosion, far back in the train but still enough to shake their car, and Jak leaned down, resting his body beside Maddie and the other children.