This Dark Earth (33 page)

I wake, groggy
and not at all refreshed, with the smell of river in my nose. Klein peers out the window.

“Come look at this, willya?”

I join him. The river passes underneath us, and the train sways on the tracks. Judging from the terrain and buildings peeking out on the far horizon, we’re outside of Fort Smith, if my memory serves me, just this side of I-40. I must’ve slept for hours.

Our little steam train shadows the highway. Maybe a mile in front of us, the road levels and widens into four lanes. But there’s a strange debris field covering it, skirting across the shoulder, onto our tracks, and into the buildings that kiss the railway.

“Holy mother of God,” Klein says, and he cranks back on the gear, slowing us.

Zeds.

A damily so large that damily isn’t even the word for it anymore.

A city of the dead. Thousands upon thousands of shamblers, on the hoof.

“Don’t!” This whole mission can’t be for nothing. “Put it in gear and help me stoke the fire.”

He looks at me like I’m crazy.

“Klein, we’re in a goddamned train. Let’s just roll over the bastards. Stoke the fire, get up a full head of steam, and go right through them—”

“Like shit through a goose.”

Colorful. “Exactly.”

He nods and engages the gears.

“We’re running low on water now,” he says, tapping the blue gauge. “Don’t know how that’ll affect our speed, but our pressure is still good.”

“Won’t know until we’re hauling ass, will we?”

We move wood, chuck it into the firebox. The flames roar behind cast-iron grates. The train chugs and hisses and bellows.

“I think I can, I think I can—”

I grimace. “Stop. You’re pushing it.”

The locomotive shudders and squeals on the tracks and shifting wind blows the smoke of woodfire into our faces. I tear up and wipe my face. Watching the horde of dead approach is like watching a wave come into in the gulf—so slow until it’s truly upon you. My heart hitches and picks up its pace, as if it’s keeping time with the steam engine.

When there are that many dead, you can’t make out the faces. It’s like an amoeba, inhuman and one thing. Not a collective of individual bodies anymore.

When we hit the outer edge of dead, the moaning becomes audible over the sounds of the engine. No slowing. I can’t even feel it. Hitting a zed slows this train as much as a bug slows a speeding car.

The smell is horrible, though.

There are
way
too many shamblers.

“This is bad.”

“What do you mean? We’re doing fine.”

“Not that. This fucking super . . . mega . . . monstrous damily.”

He looks at me, cocks his head, glances out at the sea of reanimated corpses, then looks back at me. He blinks.

“If this . . . this . . . horde wanders over to Bridge City—”

“The chain-link will crumble, and they’ll come pouring in.”

“Right. I doubt they could break the new fortifications on the Wall, but the murderholes and men on the Wall will be going twenty-four-seven for months, and all travel will be by boat.”

He rubs his chin. “This isn’t good.”

I peek outside. The wheels, their gears and drive arms, are lubricated with black liquid, the putrefaction of hundreds of dead. We’re churning and cutting through the shamblers like a lawnmower over grass. The dead are beginning to get caught in the forward grille of the train and jammed in the gears, still waving arms. Still moaning.

It’s hideous, if you think about it, that these blades of grass were once human. Why do I feel so ecstatic at their death?

The train doesn’t slow, not one whit.

And it looks like the shamblers go on forever.

“You think we sound like a tornado to them?”

Klein throws back his head and laughs, a semimaniacal exultation brought on by exhaustion and stress. And, of course, the perverse joy in slaughtering the dead.

I’m watching his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat, like the pump action on a shotgun, when the train jars, shudders. I have no idea what we’ve hit, but we hit hard. Maybe it’s the wreckage of a car, a downed telephone pole. We’ll never know.

Klein flies into the boiler and gauges, and I’m thrown to the floor.

The train tilts horribly, and as the locomotive tips over, I see, through the window, upturned faces of the dead passing quickly by, then earth.

Darkness.

The burns cover
most of my body. I’m thirsty. Pain permeates my awareness.

I hear moaning.

It’s me.

Something is on top of my legs, crushing them. I can see a square of light above. A window of the cab is exposed to the air, and, right now, there are no zeds trying to climb in.

Another moan and I’m able to differentiate my moans from Klein’s. Mine are the moans of the still living.

His are the moans of the dead.

I don’t have much time.

But my pistol is still here, strapped to what’s left of my leg.

I won’t shamble. I won’t. I’ll take myself out before that can happen.

But first, I’ll give Klein the release he deserves.

He was a good engineer.

A burning light pierces the sky. It’s happened before, in the few drills Wallis allowed, but there’s nothing to compare it to now, with the slavers finally approaching.

Above the south ridge, in the dark of early morning, the signal flares arc hot phosphorescent blue, throwing multiple, long shadows from the men on the Wall.

Rector sounds the alarm, a steady series of bleats from a canned-air horn until the air gives out, like the end of some macabre football game, while Gus, with his one good hand, furiously yanks the cord to the alarm bell in the motor pool.

“To arms! To arms!” The call comes from many men and women along the length of the bridge.

They erupt from tents in the military quarter and farther away, from the inner span of Bridge City, all racing to preordained positions, slipping headknockers into belts and weapons into holsters. Many shrug on their motorcycle helmets and whatever piecemeal Kevlar they have left. The men from the G Unit clank and clatter in full battle rattle, Kevlar vests, M-16s, grenades, the full fucking monty.

Underneath the wavering light, the scouts, having discharged their flares, run through the open killing fields—the Dead Mile—toward the ramparts. Wallis stalks like a lion
from his tent, cursing and looking as though he wants to throttle someone, a not-so-rare sight since the loss of Broadsword and the train. Gus dashes down the battlement steps to meet him.

“This is it, Lieutenant.” Wallis doesn’t balk at Gus’s use of his former rank. “What we’ve been waiting for.”

Wallis squints at the young man. “We knew they were coming.” He turns and stomps up the steps to the battlements. “Howe, get those gates open and the Bradley into the open to maneuver. Take out the few zeds currently at the gate. What’s the status at the north watch?”

Howe, a slight, studious man with glasses, barks, “No signal. All’s well. A light crew accounted for.” He spits a string of orders at a boy. The child nods and races off.

“What about the children? The women?”

“We’re here!” This from Sarah. And at the edge of the Wall, Wendy waits, bristling with guns and headknockers.

“That information is coming, sir. They’ve drilled for this.”

Wallis snags Rector by the arm, tugs him around.

“Get the doctor and Knock-Out. Make sure they board a boat. This is your sole duty. Understood? At gunpoint if you have to.”

“Sir, yes, sir!” He salutes, even though he was never in the G Unit.

Gus stops him and says, quietly, “Make sure Barb is there too, will you, Rector?”

Rector nods once. Salutes.

When Gus turns around, Keb stands at his side, grinning.

“We here, then, Lil P? Huh?”

“Yeah.” Gus pokes at Keb with his stump. An awkward pat. “We’re here. Until it’s over.”

“It’s cool, man. We gonna take care of this.” Then, at the sky and clouds, he yelps, “Posted at the trap, motherfuckers!”

“Right,” Gus says. He turns away and yells, “You! Smetana! Get the other snipers on the Wall ready. They’ll be coming at first light.”

“Or sooner.” Keb looks up at the halogen lights, bright white and luminous, running from the ever-turning gennies below. “Sitting fucking ducks, P.”

“Once everyone is in position and under cover, make sure their juice is cut.”

Keb grins, his lip turning down in amusement. “Yassah, boss. I’s do ’zactly what you say.”

“
Jesus
, Keb. Do you have to pull that shit now?” Gus’s one hand clenches tight and presses into the Kevlar armor on his leg.

The other man blinks and shakes his head. “No. Guess not, man.”

Gus looks down at the space where his hand once was—a quizzical little pause, as if judging his body’s weakness or testing his resolve—then up at the lights and then the Wall. “This might be the end of all things. I don’t want to go out on a bad note with you.”

Keb considers Gus, his height, his broad shoulders, his raw adolescent wildness in contrast with his gray, old man’s face. He grabs Gus’s stump, pulls it up between them—a reminder, a promise. “Lil P, you ain’t going out here. My job is to keep you from shambling.”

“And me you, Keb. And me you.” Their eyes lock, man and half man, half boy, and in the moment each knows what the other is thinking. Then Keb releases the stump, smiles, and says, “I’ll take care of the lights, P. Sho’ ’nuff.”

Gus takes the steps up to the battlements by threes, past the new brick and cement work, past heaps of sandbags, until he’s at Wallis’s side.

Wallis, staring into the half-light of dawn, flexes and unflexes his hands, as if in preparation for a fistfight. His hair has grayed at his ears and around the back, so that his head is laureled with white. He’s dressed in fatigues and a green tee. Gus looks at him, and the way the men still look to him, and sees the rankless general before the battle.

“They’ll come to the ridge but no farther. They want us, our people. They’ll do what they can to convince us to surrender. Failing that, they’ll kill as many of us as they need to convince the rest to give in. They’ve got to have at least a mega-damily on their tail. An army that size on the move will draw a lot of dead.”

“We’ll make them wait as long as we can. They’ll be taking heat from the rear, most definitely.”

“Need time to get the families and children out, down to the docks.”

Gus nods, knowing all this, but it’s important it’s stated. There’s a nervous energy to the man, understandably, and rehashing plans and repeating orders has become the litany of Bridge City and the remains of the old army unit. To bolster their courage, to keep the men focused. He can see scared expressions on the citizens of Bridge City, wide eyed and white
knuckled, holding hunting rifles and shotguns, standing nervously. He looks over the fortified parapet, down to the cluster of zombies below at the gates, twenty or thirty strong.

“Yes. That’s what we’ll do. Keep them still, waiting at the gate.”

Wallis nods. They watch as the scouts and ridge watchmen race through the Dead Mile toward the Wall.

“Howe!” Wallis’s voice cuts through the clatter of weapons and armor. “Goddamn it, I said to take out the fucking zeds at the gate!”

Beneath them, a motor hums and the steel doors rattle back on greased rollers. The shamblers come through, into the murderhole, moaning. The waiting Bradley coughs and sputters and ratchets up to move after three years dormant with only maintenance checks every fortnight.

The gunfire, when it comes, sounds like rain on a galvanized barn roof, sporadic and tinny. The moaning stops, corpses drop, and the Bradley spews white smoke into the half-light, rolling over fallen shamblers into the Dead Mile. The smoke hugs the barren earth, floating east, downriver, and disappearing into the far trees.

“Wallis!” Rector trudges up the steps, breathing heavy. “They won’t go. Refused and laughed when I pulled my gun.”

Wallis curses under his breath.

Gus asks, “What about Ellie? The women? They at the docks?”

“Women’s quarter is empty, and the north Wall secure. Barb has Ellie with Joblo and the engineers at the dock, awaiting the order to scuttle. But Knock-Out and Doc
Ingersol aren’t leaving. They instructed me to alert you that they’ll be here shortly, before the sun.”

Gus jumps into the murderhole, among surprised men in Kevlar, and runs north.

Outside their tent,
he stops, controls his breathing. Looking back the length of the bridge, past the new growth in the Garden, Gus sees the twin stars of halogens over the motor pool and murderhole, new flares arcing over the Dead Mile, the sky lightening, roseate, like fingers stretching themselves against the vault of heaven.

He stops, listening.

“No, I can’t let you.” She’s crying, a sound so foreign to his ears that it takes him a while to identify it.

“I won’t run. And this is something I can give to Gus. To Ellie. Give to everyone in Bridge City who will follow him,” says Knock-Out. He coughs, and shadows shift in the small dome of tenting. “And they will follow him. This will
mean something
. For you. For Gus. It will make your position stronger.”

The sound of her voice pulls at Gus. He’s never heard her sound this way before, even after the Big Turnover.

“Will Wallis follow? If he . . . balks, no one else will. Does he know about this?”

“He knows. Or suspects.”

“No . . . it’s just a piece of metal. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“It
will
mean something. It already means something to the monster driving the slavers. But I will give it more meaning,
our meaning
, for
our
people. By what I do . . .”

She sobs. The tent rustles. “We can go downstream, baby, get more chemo and beat this. I can beat this.”

He imagines her thumping Knock-Out’s chest in desperation.

“It’s won, Luce. I died in the fire. The fire where we met. And I’ll never regret it.”

He’s kissing her now, Gus knows. There were years, years when he was ambivalent and even resentful of this brute, this bear that mated itself to his mother, supplanted his father. But now . . . now . . . his heart expands, like some unknown creature of the deep finally rising to the surface, expanding, growing warm, expanding.