Dead and Dead Again: Kansas City Quarantine (60 page)

Calvin hesitated. “Maybe not, but
we did everything we
can
do for now. Maybe we can come back some time
and clean it out, maybe help fix this city back up. Yeah, maybe we’ll even beat
this thing. But for now, we’re doing the only thing we can do.”

“Not really. We are going to Kansas. Our shelter is in southern Missouri.”

“Do you think it’s more vital to
get to safety or to get Doc to his labs?”

“The doctor’s business is likely
the most important mission,” Hef admitted easily. “But I am not arguing that.
All I said is that we do not
have
to do it. We are
choosing
to do
this. And that is the difference.”

“You think it’s a mistake?” Calvin
asked.

“Calvin. I have known you for a
very long time now. I have not known you to make many mistakes. The reason for
this is because you take longer to make decisions than others. Not because you
are stupid, but because you are more careful and patient.”

“That didn’t really answer the
question, Hef.”

“No, Calvin. I would rather be
heading to your uncle’s fortress. I would rather be swimming on a beach in the
Cocos (Keeling) Islands. I would love to be flying my new air car over the Grand Canyon or Machu Picchu. There are a thousand other things I would rather be doing
than what we are actually going to do. But this is the path you have chosen for
us and I trust your judgment.”

“You have an air car?” Tripper
interrupted.

“Is that an important issue right
now, Tripper?”

“It’s an air car, when is that not
worth talking about?”

“Yes, I have an air car. It is a box-like,
oval base chamber that has blimp-like bags underneath filled with inert gasses.
The seats are set down into the center of the oval to distribute the weight
under the lift point. The gas is heated by glow plugs. When the gas reaches the
right temperature, the car lifts into the air like a blimp. It gets additional
lift as it moves through small wings on the sides and its forward momentum and
steering are initiated by high-powered fans.”

 “I hope you patented that.” Calvin
said in wonder.

“Some parts I have, but most I have
not.”

“Why?”

“Some things should be done for the
good of all of Mankind. Unfortunately, I do not suppose it will matter much
now.”

“You never know, Hef. Things might
not be as bad as they seem.”

“I hope you are right, Calvin. I
truly do. Perhaps we will actually get your doctor to his lab and he will fix
this.”

“I’m hoping so, Buddy.”

“Then let us do this thing.”

“Right. We do his thing first and
then we head south to hide for a while. Maybe we can eventually find a way to
turn things around.”

“Ok, Calvin.”

“And then I get to fly that air
car,” Tripper added, a feverish gleam in his eyes.

The others ignored him.

With a flick of Hephaestus’ massive
fingers on the simple red toggle switch, the rumble of the double, fifteen-hundred
horse power diesel engines growled to life as only two rumbling locomotive
engines could. Felicia jumped up from her perch with a screech and stood
looking at the area in surprise with a rosy blush coming to each cheek.

“Yes, some of these covers and
flooring materials get up a good vibration when the engines begin turning. It
is a nice little surprise if you have the wrong body parts resting on them,”
Hephaestus commented with an evil grin.

Her blush increased and she nodded
enthusiastically. “I’d tell the others, but I want to see their faces when it
happens to them,” she added with a smirk.

“Hold on to something solid, my
friends!” Hephaestus shouted and revved up the twin engines, slowly releasing
the energy into the drive train through the custom Dragon-head throttle arm. “This
deafening noise should not last long! I have put powered sound neutralizing
technology inside the engine compartment!” he yelled over the mic. “In a few
seconds the controller will activate and we will be able to hear again! The
more power we pull from the engines, the harder the buffers should work!”

“Just remember I’m from Missouri!” Tripper complained.

“Why do you always doubt me?” Hef
asked feigning hurt.

“Because you always—oh,” Tripper
started to insult his friend, but then the sound-dampeners kicked in and the
roar of the engines morphed into a much quieter and gentler, yet deep and
persistent hum.

“Yeah. Um…good work,” Tripper
corrected himself.

Watching their progress in a
monitor in front of the control console, Hephaestus backed the train across the
turntable and through the section of the building he had previously kept them
from. Everyone pushed and shoved, trying to find a viewport from which to observe
his ‘shop’, which resembled nothing less than a full factory floor with dozens
of massive machines and conveyors for the manipulation and transport of metals.
Scattered throughout were dozers for rolling metal, torch tables for cutting
patterns, several overhead cranes, some with large chains wrapped around larger
parts, ready to be taken across the massive chamber to be bent, welded or
bolted to other parts. In the middle sat several very large robotic
manipulating machines whose purpose none of them could discern. Along the far
end of the massive chamber and halfway up the wall sat a glassed-in set of
offices where Hephaestus clearly did most of his official engineering work.
Computer screens and monitors flashed information at them from those offices,
but otherwise the rest of the equipment was turned off. The shop was closed.

Finally tired of the narrowed field
of view, Trip spun the lock on a navy-style hatch that opened onto a thin
walkway on the outside of the train, stepping out with the others in tow. Hef
punched an oversized, beige garage door opener and half of the fifty-foot end
of the building ahead rolled behind the offices.  Revving up the engines a
little more pushed the train slowly backwards out of the Dungeon and onto a
small turnaround track. There were no zombies anywhere to be seen, but the
sound must surely be attracting everything for miles.

Hef made Gus, Joel and Scaggs and
Felicia run out and manually switch the tracks while the others watched so that
some people would know how to do it in case the situation came up at some point
in the future. Everyone carried a weapon. Scaggs and Felicia each now had one
of the mobile air guns while Boomer and Trip climbed into the turrets on the
engine, and the rest carried M-16s. Hephaestus quickly punched the close button
on the gigantic sliding door and took one long, affectionate look at his
favorite home, a hint of sadness tugging at the corners of his dark eyes. As a
reward for taking the dangerous work switching the tracks, Calvin let Joel and
Gus take the first turn on the turrets with their new girlfriends.

“And for my next trick…” Hef said
with a flourish, waving one bronze muscular arm at a console with a touch
screen imbedded within. The blank screen flashed on and went from black to a
picture of the surrounding area, the view quickly switching from ground view to
an angle several hundred feet above. He had launched a cubed drone from a
protective compartment on top of one of the rail cars.

“With this we can scout the tracks
ahead,” he explained.

Trip studied the silver and black drone
floating above the train. Cube-shaped, shorter than it was wide, it flew by the
force of powerful fan motors mounted on each corner. The entire device was only
about as large as Quinn’s massive chest and had five extremely lightweight but
durable digital video cameras fixed within the cube, including two with
infrared capabilities.

“This should keep us out of
trouble,” he explained to the others.

Lucy immediately grabbed the laptop
with the video feed, tapping buttons.

“Careful,” Hef warned her. “It is
pre-programmed to follow this track. If you deviate too far from the programmed
route, it will return home for reprogramming.”

“I can fix that,” Lucy assured him
and set her fingers to tapping on the silent keyboard, entering new code into the
simple program. Within five minutes she had re-written the program. “There.
This should allow us to send a new search pattern without defaulting the core. I’ve
stacked the control GUI over the GPS map and linked them.”

“You can do all of that in a few
minutes?” asked Scaggs, brown eyes wide.

“It wasn’t really as hard as it
sounds. I only had to add a few dozen new parameters. The hardest part is
linking the touch points to both screens. See here, you just open the GUI over
the map, put check points on the train map, and it will automatically fly to
each one and return when finished if we don’t send more data. We can also
change the path in route, which for some reason you couldn’t do before.”

“Excellent,” Hef replied. “The
usual rate?” he asked.

“What? No. No charge. This one is
for everything isn’t it?”

“Good point.”

“But I get the copyright and
patents again,” she added stiffly. “Just in case…”

Lucy left unspoken the hope echoed within
every single person present as she faded into a dark corner of the engine room to
work. Trying to keep her mind busy, she studied the track ahead through the
drone video feeds as the light from the screen of her new laptop shrouded her
face in a glowing halo that seemed to make it float without a body in an inky
void.

The rest of the group, excepting
Hef, Lucy, Boomer and Trip, stayed out on the walkway watching the city roll
by. In the beginning Hef kept the train at ten mph so they could check out the
areas of the city as they passed through. But this quickly became decidedly
un-fun as all they seemed to see was the same sad desolation that was shown in
all of those crappy movies. The rail yards lay abandoned, the great engines
that had moved the country for so long sat immobile and driverless, already on
their way to becoming worthless, rusty hulks. Nothing moved in the backyards of
the dense housing projects or along the sidewalks of the city streets. Trails
of smoke rolled freely skyward from several of the two dozen buildings they
could see along the northern skyline.

Not one living person was spotted
for the entire journey to the outskirts of the Metropolitan area. After
clearing the major cities, Hef still kept the speed down under twenty miles per
hour to properly break the engines in and to ensure that the drone could give
them suitable warning of any dangers ahead.

“This is the maiden voyage. If
something goes wrong, I’d rather be going slow enough to stop in time,” he
explained.

Calvin felt it was just Hef being
the proper engineer and sticking to his specs. Somehow the group couldn’t build
up the enthusiasm one should feel knowing one was escaping a terrible fate. Most
felt they were letting their city down even though their mission would,
hopefully, save everyone. Still, after watching the empty hillsides, vacant
streets and lonely homes pass by for a half hour, one-by-one the group began
trickling back into the engine compartment and, after a pause at the heavy
hatch for one final look, shuffling aimlessly to their designated cabins for
some rest and introspection.

Three hours later, the train was
moving freely through the flatlands of Kansas. If they built rails in straight
lines, the train would have traveled more than fifty miles already, but they
didn’t and it hadn’t. The Quarantine Wall still lay about sixty miles to the
west, still nothing but a myth in their minds. Calvin and his friends sat in
discussion with the soldiers, half of the group in the engine room, the rest sitting
in the office just inside the second car, well within hearing range of the
compartment. “Better slow it down…” Lucy announced from the corner. “There’s
something up ahead.”

“What is it?” Calvin asked, from
the adjacent console where he was trying to learn the controls while Hephaestus
danced on the balls of his feet like a father teaching his son to drive the
family car, trying not to point out the obvious, silently hoping he didn’t scratch
the paint or kill them all.

“I don’t know. Something on the
tracks ahead,” she clarified, sort of.

Hef slowed to fifteen mph, and then
ten. The custom train slowed at a much faster rate than anyone thought
possible, but it was still a train, big and heavy, taking a quarter-mile to drop
to only a few mph so they could properly investigate the track ahead.

“What tracks ahead?” Tripper cried,
using one of the forward-looking cameras.

The rails were laid next to the
river with a hill on the north side, leaving no room on either side for road or
trail. It was the perfect spot to trap a train and keep it from moving
anywhere. At the floor of the valley before them should have been a bridge over
an offshoot creek, currently raging from several days of consecutive rain, so
much so that it could easily be called a river. Instead of a bridge, however, a
large round dent in the side of the hill seventy feet across gazed back at the
group, a raging river ran freely through its center. Though he didn’t want to
be the first to voice his suspicions, Trip believed the tracks ahead had been
destroyed.

“The tracks have been blown up,”
Gus explained needlessly.

I knew it!,
Trip’s mind
screamed
. It was the fucking government trying to stop us.

Gus sat on the top front turret with
the clearest view, but no one really needed a good view once Scaggs transferred
the drone feed onto the engine room monitors.

“Oh, that’s what I’m seeing,” Lucy
mused. “There isn’t something
on
the tracks, there was a little bridge
over a stream and it has been blown up. It looked different from a few thousand
feet up.”

Captain Batmouche’ stepped forward from
the second car to watch the monitor and spat out a curse. “Damnit! That’s a
missile strike,” she said confidently.