The Return Man: Civilisation’s Gone. He’s Stayed to Bury the Dead. (20 page)

The window wasn’t big, but it was big enough for an escape. With the crowbar he hurriedly crushed out the remaining glass and swept the shards from the sill.

The male corpse rounded the island, faster than the others. Marco lifted the Glock and fired, sending the rats into a fresh squealing panic as the corpse rocketed backwards, its face caved in, pieces of skull spinning across the island tabletop like broken eggshells. Black ooze spewed over the Arizona logo on its chest, soaked into the cotton.

The female stepped over the body. Corpses continued to march downstairs. The kitchen had filled–ten, fifteen, circling the long counter towards him.

Time to get the hell out.

‘
Wu!
’ he called one more time, hopeful. Nothing.

Dammit.
Marco hesitated, but there was really no choice. He grabbed the sides of the window and heaved his upper body through the opening, all the way to his waist…

… then screamed as rotten hands grabbed at his face. Corpses, outside, on the ground. He dangled halfway out of the window, terrified, certain his momentum would drop him into the crowd. Fifty or sixty dead passengers from the coach cars. They must’ve heard the Jeep, disembarked–he remembered the open exit at the rear sleeper–and mobbed here beside the diner, drawn by the commotion. The window was eight feet off the ground, thank Christ, or he would’ve been lunch. Gasping, he kicked his legs and squirmed back into the kitchen.

So much for an easy exit.

Ten bullets left in the Glock. Wouldn’t even make a dent in the crowd outside. Not much help here, either. Corpses packed the kitchen and, on the floor above, he heard more creaking footsteps, more raucous gargles and moans. His heartbeat ticked like a stopwatch.

Think fast.

The female in the sweatshirt touched his shoulder.

Faster!

He dropped and spun under the steel tabletop.
Shit
, he thought, immediately second-guessing himself.
Bad move, Henry.
The corpses had the island surrounded. Peering out from underneath, he saw dead spindly legs blockading him on all sides, like the bars of a cage.

The female corpse in the sweatshirt bent under the table, a ratty ponytail of hair dangling from its head. Marco shot it through the cheek. The ponytail snapped like a whip as the head tore backwards and the corpse crumpled.

Nine bullets left.

Need a new plan, let’s go, let’s go
… His hands vibrated with adrenalin. His mind raced through twenty bad ideas in a second, and then he had no more seconds left. The corpses had figured him out–poking their heads under the table, smacking their dry mouths.

They’d crawl under and drag him out screaming.

Grim-faced, he gathered his legs under him like a sprinter at a starting line, ready to dash out from the table, make a mad rush to the staircase. Knock through a few corpses, pop a few with the Glock, hope for the best upstairs. No other option.

He tensed, flexed and—

‘
Doctor!
’

Marco froze.

‘
Doctor! Can you hear me?
’

Wu. His voice distant, hollowed.

‘
Hey!
’ Marco yelled back, surprised at the relief in his
own voice. A dead hand touched his foot, and he yanked it away; the corpses were on all fours, under the table, coming for him.

In the kitchen, he heard a loud clattering, a banging of metal. Something falling.

‘
The dumbwaiter!
’ Wu’s voice shouted.

Marco puzzled, not understanding.

‘
The dumbwaiter!
’ Wu repeated. ‘
Look!
’

Gotcha.
Marco didn’t answer–didn’t have time. A thin, broken-nosed corpse wriggled towards him from the front. He shoved the Glock between its lips and pulled the trigger. Its brain exploded from the rear of its head, and before the body even hit the floor, Marco was scrambling over it, his fingers slipping through the chunks of wet grey matter.

Eight bullets now in the Glock. He prayed he wouldn’t need them.

Corpses closed in from the left and right; he felt a tug or two on his shirt, but none too firm, and he pulled free, skittering out from beneath the table. Standing, whirling, he frantically scanned the kitchen. The banging had come from…
there.
In the wall, a small closed door. To his left, another wave of the dead mobbed the stairs, a march that never seemed to end. He high-stepped over two corpses still halfway under the table, their legs kicking, and flung open the dumbwaiter.

Jackpot.

The AK-47 lay in the narrow chute. A gift from Wu up above.

The sight of the gun strengthened Marco at once, an instant detoxification of the fear in his bloodstream. He was clear again–back in command.

‘Thank you,’ he said and snatched up the automatic rifle.

He wheeled first to the corpses advancing from the stairs, unleashed a barrage of steel core bullets that tore through necks, popped heads like balloons. The gun kicked ass. He’d
never fired an AK before; his shoulder would be a giant purple bruise tomorrow, slammed again and again by the kickback after each shot, but he didn’t give a shit. It felt fucking
good.

The roar was ear-splitting, and all else was impossible to hear. His eyes told him everything he needed to know–corpses breaking apart, holes punching through walls, pots and pans flying off hooks, the kitchen floor sloshing with black blood and rat urine.

When the last corpse dropped, he released the trigger, dizzy, out of breath.

His eardrums throbbed, still echoing. He swung the gun around the room, body to body, on the lookout for movement. The slightest twitch, and he’d let rip again. Nothing. He checked under the island tabletop. Good there, too.

He limped to the open window, where the dead passengers outside were battling to climb into the kitchen. He wasn’t worried. Corpses couldn’t climb for shit. He paused there above the sea of discoloured waving arms, feeling like a rock star, like the goddamn Beatles pulling into Liverpool station to greet the fans.
They all want a piece of me
, he thought grimly.

He considered opening fire, but that would be senseless. He had no idea how much ammo an AK clip held, and these corpses weren’t an immediate threat. Not worth the bullets.

Better to go find Wu, get the hell back to the Jeep without being seen.

But first, rest. He sagged against the table; his body felt fifty pounds too heavy.

This day was catching up on him. Big time.

He let a minute pass before he ordered himself up.
All right, lungs. Back to work.
He was ready to backtrack upstairs, grab some canned fruit on the way out, when a massive jolt pitched him sideways–nearly threw him face first into the rat shit.

He dropped immediately to one knee and grabbed hold of the tabletop.

His entire body shook. The fruit cans rattled on the shelves.

At first he thought he was crazy. He had to be wrong.

But seconds later, he knew he was right.

The train was
moving.

In the corridor behind the locomotive cab, Wu threw the knife-switch–the large metal tong connecting the battery to the train’s starter circuit.

Would the power be drained? After all this time, would it be as dry as the desert…?

A soft crackle reassured him. His fingers danced over the circuit-breakers, flipping pegs as he went. He hadn’t operated a train in almost twenty years, and yet the movements were automatic and gratifying. His chest swelled, and briefly he felt himself transformed–a teenage soldier again in the People’s Liberation Army, manning the disaster-relief train through slashing rainfall and underwater fields, a national hero risking death to evacuate women and babies from the Yangtze River floods–and then he blinked, surprised. He missed that life. Back before he’d been chosen for MSS. Now, no more saving lives. Now he
killed
for the good of China.

He frowned and focused on his task.

He hit the switch labelled
Fuel Pump
, then scrambled to the engine room and primed the diesel’s fuel system; once the air was flushed, he cranked the lever, and the starter motor growled. Hurrying, without waiting for the system to pressurise, he released the handbrake and cranked furiously until he felt the train shudder and roll. Then he jogged to the cab–leaping over the two carcasses in the corridor, the mangled bodies of two engineers fused together into a single
slop of decomposition–and freed the set of double brakes on the control stand. All set. He pulled the throttle towards him, locking it into the first notch.

The entire train rumbled under his boots.

To his rear the main generator bit into the traction motors, and the locomotive lurched forward, slow, still picking up the weight of all the cars behind it. Four or five corpses blocked the track ahead, snarling at him through the window; their grey faces didn’t even register surprise as the train dragged them under, ground them like meat.

He inched the throttle another notch.

Crawling through the desert. Picking up speed.

Wu nodded, satisfied.

Ten minutes earlier, he’d been pinned beneath the conductor corpse in the dining car, struggling against death. Marco had plummeted downstairs to the kitchen, the female on his back.
He’ll die
, Wu had thought. The words bubbled in his mind, then burst and were gone.

Nothing he could do about that now. Nothing but fight to survive himself.

And so he’d rammed his knee up into the conductor’s groin, but the corpse didn’t flinch. Instead it raged and snarled and clawed atop him, crushing him into the floor of the dining car. The dried-out bodies of massacred passengers surrounded him; old bones splintered and broke beneath his back, stabbed at him through his shirt.

Close combat with the dead was difficult, Wu realised; blows that neutralised human enemies were useless on corpses that didn’t feel pain…

Frustrated, he hooked his hand under the conductor’s neck. The flesh was overripe, squishy like bad fruit, and his fingers sank in with ease, all the way to his knuckles. The corpse grunted, infuriated, unable to get its teeth down for a chunk of Wu’s face.

Wu twisted for a look up the aisle. More corpses coming.

From the kitchen below, a gunshot roared and glass shattered.

So Marco wasn’t dead yet.

Wu blinked, annoyed at the distraction.
Focus here
. He needed a weapon, something to beat back the attack, club the conductor–not kill it, of course, unless his own death was the only other option. The AK-47 on his back was tangled with his daypack, impossible to pull. With his free hand he yanked at his deer-horn knives, but they were lodged in his belt, pinned by his hips.

What else, then?

A metre from his right shoulder, the flashlight shone towards him on the floor. The beam spotlighted the conductor’s grim complexion–pickled skin, veins thick as liquorice bulging under the surface, a black spider web across its jaw and cheeks.

Wu grabbed at the flashlight. Missed it.

Another gunshot exploded in the kitchen.

Then Marco’s voice, faint but urgent. ‘
Wu!
’

Wu ignored him.
Focus.

His fingers closed on the flashlight.

From the conductor came a sound like an alley dog growling, its throat curdled with disease; it grabbed Wu’s wrist and yanked, breaking his chokehold under the chin. His eyes widened as the corpse lunged for the kill. For an instant the open jaws struck down at him, ropes of saliva stretched like brown taffy between the teeth, the tongue swollen and black…

He rammed the flashlight into the corpse’s mouth as hard as he could.

The metal barrel punched through the top row of decayed teeth, lodging deep into the throat. The corpse bellowed, a cry muffled by the thick flashlight. The bulb end protruded
from the dead man’s stretched lips. Wu squinted, half blinded by the bright beam, and pounded the end with his palm. The blow drove the flashlight another five centimetres deeper.

Yellow pus oozed around the barrel, dribbled down the corpse’s chin. It jerked away, surprised, fumbling for the light. Wu gasped as the heavy weight lifted from his chest; on the same outward breath he coiled both legs and planted his boots on the dead man’s chest, then shoved. The corpse flipped backwards, smashed into a booth as Wu leaped to his feet.

He swung the AK-47 from his back and held it sideways in front of him, one hand on the barrel, the other on the stock, then charged the corpses advancing single file up the aisle; the rifle caught the lead corpse–a young black male in a Hawaiian shirt–smack across the chest, and the corpse reeled back, toppling the others behind it.

A third gunshot screamed from the floor below.

Now
, Wu thought,
it’s time to help the American.

He glanced ahead. Corpses packed the narrow stairwell descending to the kitchen. He needed another way. Instantly he knew the answer.

The dumbwaiter.

Hollow moans sounded through the open metal shaft. Wu bent to the square hole and called. ‘
Doctor! Doctor, can you hear me?
’

For a moment, nothing. Then, ‘
Hey!
’

Wu fed the AK-47 through the opening and let it drop, heard it bang to the bottom. No other choice but to use the firearm, he reasoned. It was the American’s only hope. ‘
The dumbwaiter!
’ Wu yelled twice. ‘
Look!
’

And then he bolted. He didn’t know if the rifle would do any good–if the American could even reach it–but he had risked enough. The rest was up to Marco.

A strobe of light swept over his shoulder, danced on the
walls. The dead conductor was up again, the head of the flashlight a bright beacon in its mouth.

Wu pulled his deer-horns and hopped onto a tabletop in the nearest booth, then leaped to the next booth, the next table, safely passing the corpses in the aisle, heading towards the open door at the north end of the dining car. Towards the engine room.

His real reason for boarding the train. Not the lie he’d told the American.