The Return Man: Civilisation’s Gone. He’s Stayed to Bury the Dead. (21 page)

Wu wanted the locomotive.

At the dark doorway, he hesitated, peering into the next car. The lounge. Without the flashlight, his vision was weak, but he sensed no movement, no hungry shadows. He stepped over the mound of bodies and dashed straight through the lounge. The door at the opposite end was open, and streams of sunlight beckoned him into the next car. A coach, the windows smashed. Behind him, somewhere lower, he heard the pounding beat of gunfire.

The AK. Marco.

Wu sprinted through the coach car–then stopped halfway.

Out of the windows he saw a mass of corpses, rioting, swarming both walls of the train. Twenty metres back on the dune, corpses surrounded the Jeep–
invaded
it, crawling inside, tearing the seats–as if they’d detected a scent of life, some trace of Marco and Wu still present. And then, as Wu watched, the Jeep shifted on the unsteady sand, too many corpses climbing and pulling, and with a slow motion the entire vehicle flipped and rolled twice, a groaning orange ball of metal and broken, flopping limbs and crushed bodies, down to the bottom of the dune.

Wu remembered Marco’s warning.
Pissed-off hornets.
The American had been right–but that no longer mattered. Good riddance to the Jeep.

Without further hesitation he’d flown up the aisle and run
through the next coach car, to the final door. The engine room. The door was open half a metre; he’d wedged his shoulder into the gap and heaved it wider, then slipped through.

And brought the locomotive back to life.

Now Wu removed his daypack and dropped it to the floor. He felt suddenly buoyant, unburdened by the weight of all his gear. From a few cars behind, he heard the AK-47 rattle off another volley.
Marco.
The doctor was upstairs, alive. Wu’s shoulders relaxed. With some surprise, he admitted to himself that Marco’s survival was preferable, at least until the mission was complete. The doctor’s instincts did, indeed, seem useful.

And, of course, Beijing wanted Marco alive, too.

For a short while longer.

Outside the front window, sand dunes undulated on the horizon. A century and a half ago, poor Chinese labourers had laid the first cross-country railroad through these same Western deserts; they’d perished by the thousands at the behest of the American government, slaving for minuscule wages, only to be cast aside when the railroad was complete. Banned from white society, denied citizenship, scorned and branded with the hateful slur ‘coolies’. Wu stirred. He hoped the spirits of those Chinese were watching now; he hoped they felt honoured at last, witnessing their bloodstained tracks convey him on a mission to serve the homeland.

The Sunset Limited rolled half a mile from where Wu and Marco had boarded; in the rear mirrors Wu saw the rioting corpses fall farther behind, shrinking into the desert until they were just another texture like dirt or cactus or rocks. The overturned Jeep was a speck, too. Then gone.

Marco’s gear and supplies gone with it.

A smile hardened on Wu’s mouth. He glanced at his own
daypack resting against the console. Everything he needed was right here at his feet.

Kheng Wu was in control again. Not Henry Marco.

Bullets bursting from the AK-47, Marco advanced through the remaining coach cars, mowing down corpses. The train swayed from side to side, making it difficult to aim; he fell against seats, wasted bullets–too many misses between headshots. Just as the AK sputtered, the clip empty, a flashlight blinded him from ahead.

‘Wu, goddamn it,’ he began, but stopped.

The dead conductor charged down the aisle, its mouth stuffed with the burning head of the flashlight. Marco threw the AK down, came up firing with the Glock; his first shot missed, but the second bullet shattered the flashlight, exploding the batteries out the back of the conductor’s skull. The fat corpse stumbled two more strides then collapsed in a mound.

Waste of a flashlight
, Marco thought.
Way to go, Wu.

He retrieved the empty AK and shouldered it for later, assuming Wu had more clips, then pressed ahead with the Glock. He dropped five more corpses–five headshots, leaving a single round in the Glock–and arrived, ears throbbing painfully, at the locomotive.

Inside the door, two bodies blocked a narrow, blood-painted corridor–the train’s engineers. They’d fossilised in mid-struggle, one atop the other. One’s ribcage had been torn open, organs ripped loose; his hand gripped a screwdriver buried into the other’s skull. Marco imagined the scene–the first engineer resurrecting, assaulting the second.

Killing each other at the same moment.

Teamwork at its best
, Marco thought, stepping over the
bodies. Then again, who was he to judge?
My partner just left my Jeep in the fucking dust two miles back.

The car lurched beneath him as he stumbled up the corridor, past fat pipes and gauges and loud hulking engines the size of refrigerators. The corridor widened at the end; at the locomotive’s nose sat Wu at a tall stool behind a console of dials and levers, gazing out through the windshield, absorbed in his thoughts. His hand rested on the throttle.

‘What the hell are you
doing
?’ Marco demanded.

Perhaps Wu flinched; Marco wasn’t certain. The soldier swivelled halfway around on the stool. ‘Removing us from danger,’ he said, much too matter-of-factly.

Marco stared in disbelief. ‘Oh yeah? And what about the Jeep?’

‘Upside down, being torn to scrap metal, the last I saw. This was our only escape—’

‘Bullshit,’ Marco cut him off. ‘Stop the train. We’re going back.’

‘Impossible. Too many corpses.’

‘Jesus, Wu, use your head. All my shit was in the Jeep–my bag, and all my gear and supplies. Maps. My
guns.
’

‘You’re carrying two guns now, Doctor. How many do you need?’

‘More than two, asshole.’

Unperturbed, Wu swivelled back around. Through the windshield the scenery had begun to evolve as the train streaked towards Yuma. Paved roads cut lines in the desert, telephone poles appeared alongside brown cactus husks. The tracks passed a lonely liquor store with smashed windows. A begrimed red car sat outside, abandoned, doors rusted open.

‘I won’t need a gun,’ Wu said. He spoke without looking at Marco. ‘Only my knives. You have two guns. The rest of your belongings, however, are a loss. I’m sorry.’

Marco seethed.
You don’t sound sorry one goddamn bit.

‘Listen,’ he said, controlling himself. ‘I mean really listen. I warned you about boarding this train–you ignored me. Twice. Now you suddenly decide to play choo-choo on your own fucking whim? That was
my
Jeep. I
need
that Jeep.’

‘Your Uncle Osbourne will replace it. A gift from the United States government.’

‘You’re missing my point. Do
not
make any more decisions without me.’

A suburb of tan adobe houses had appeared out of the western window, and beyond that an old golf course, the once-green grass now a dead brown rug. To the east lay a small shopping centre. The parking lot was a wasteland of overturned shopping carts, interspersed with haphazard mounds of rags and bones–human remains, picked by vultures.

Wu clicked the throttle forward one notch, and the train slowed. ‘We’ll keep our speed low through town,’ he said. ‘There may be blockages on the tracks.’

‘
Wu—
’ Marco began.

‘Doctor,’ Wu interrupted. ‘I’ll ask you again to remember that this is a military operation. In which case, who makes the decisions? The uniform with the most stripes–and in that regard I outnumber you three to zero. Back there I observed through the window as fifty corpses overturned your Jeep. There was no time to ask your opinion. I made the decision.’

‘Great choice, Sarge. Should I salute you?’

Wu rose from the stool. ‘We’re both quick thinkers, Doctor. It’s our strength. But sometimes… sometimes, we do what the moment requires and accept the consequences later on. Like losing the Jeep. Or nearly being killed by a corpse you pulled from a burning truck.’

Marco’s forehead had been packed with pressure, like an overheated boiler. At the mention of the burning corpse–his
own fuck-up back in Maricopa–he imagined a pop, the steam leaking out, his anger retreating.

Shit. Score one point for Wu.

‘So,’ he said with an effort to stay pissed. ‘We all make mistakes, is that it?’

‘I didn’t make a mistake.’ Wu brushed past him down the corridor. Without missing a step he hopped over the dead engineers and dragged the rear door closed, securing the locomotive. ‘I assume you shot the corpses between here and the dining car?’

Marco sighed, exasperated. ‘Yes.’

‘Most of our passengers disembarked at the Jeep. But there may still be stragglers in the back coaches, so we’ll keep the locomotive locked for now. I can disable power to the other cars but keep it for ourselves here in the cab–this way we can run the A/C, work the lights at night. Later, if the train is quiet, we’ll make a supply run to the kitchen.’

Marco rubbed his eyes, barely listening.
Run to the kitchen. Sure. A little midnight snack.
He laughed humourlessly.

The tracks had entered the centre of Yuma. Outside Marco saw crumbling offices and apartment complexes. Forlorn gas stations. Silent hotels, and hollowed-out restaurants that seemed to echo with whispers. The train crossed beneath a highway overpass–packed with a ghost jam of cars, deadlocked bumper to bumper, left to rust in crooked lanes–and then rumbled into a concrete canyon running half a mile alongside two sets of parallel tracks. Ahead stood a shadowy parking garage beside a dull, sand-coloured building.

The train station.

‘Shit,’ Marco mumbled.

The platform was packed with corpses dressed in torn collared shirts and slacks, others in scummy baseball caps and shorts. Their eyes widened at the train’s approach–god knows how long they’d been waiting–and greedily they
pressed towards the edge of the platform. The entire first row of dead commuters toppled to the tracks. The hundred-ton locomotive roared through, crushing them to pulp; Marco didn’t even feel the impact.

‘We’re safer this way,’ Wu said, returning to the control stand. ‘You see now? The Jeep was vulnerable. We’d have never made it past that station, not with all those corpses. Instead we just roll along. For the next three hundred miles, we’re invincible.’

‘Yeah…’ Marco said, trailing off. Beside the main console was a second, smaller control stand; he sank onto the padded stool and set the AK down at his feet. The foam cushion felt…
great.
He swore he could take a nap right here, sitting up straight.

He pinched his earlobe, rubbed the notch of the old dog bite, reflecting. Wu was right about one thing. The train
was
invincible, an unstoppable force; as long as they kept moving, they were safe from attack. A hundred frenzied corpses? Didn’t matter. Bring ’em on.

He sighed and shut his eyes, closing his senses to everything but the rhythmic rocking of the train. Sure as hell smoother than the Jeep over desert rocks.

Within moments he felt his resolve soften. Succumbing to the momentum, to the forward motion–this non-negotiable, unswerving line, predetermined by the lay of the tracks. Hurtling him ahead to California, towards a past he doubted he was ready to face.

But that’s what this was about, wasn’t it? Face the past. Get it over with.

You’re avoiding.
Danielle’s voice echoed in his head, weeping. Twisting his heart.
You’re always avoiding, Henry. It’s not fair. It’s not fair to me…

He defended himself.
No, I’m not. Not this time. Full speed ahead.

Yes, he would allow this. Surrender control. Sit back and enjoy the ride. And anyway, he hadn’t been in control for years, had he?

Finish this and go home.

He repeated the thought, more slowly.
Finish and go home.

That’s all that mattered.
Who gives a fuck how you get there?

For the first time that day his neck muscles loosened. Maybe this idea was good. And anyway, it was nice–not worrying about getting eaten for once.

‘Okay,’ he said, opening his eyes. Finding them moist. ‘What the hell. Punch my ticket to LA. We can stop at the Jeep on the way home, right? By then the corpse party should have ended. I busted my ass to find all that gear. I’m not giving it up so easy.’

Wu shrugged. ‘We can try.’

‘Wow, thanks, Sergeant. I can tell you really care.’ Marco bent and unlaced his boots, eager to stretch his feet, feel some air on his toes. ‘But how about we take a lesson from our two funky-smelling friends in the hall–let’s try to get along, okay?’

Wu considered the dead engineers, each murdered by the other. Nodding, he glanced at Marco, then turned his attention back to the tracks.

‘Don’t worry, Doctor,’ he said evenly. ‘I’m not ready to kill you yet.’

The night sky in the desert never seemed quite real to Marco–not with the stars so exaggerated, so large and bright, and the blackness too low-hanging, as if a billion miles of space had somehow compressed against the horizon. Danielle had once asked him,
Can you feel that?
as they reclined on their balcony, savouring a summer night. Her voice was hushed, reverential, what he often jokingly called her ‘New Age wonder tone’.

The universe touching the Earth
, she’d said.

Marco hadn’t even teased her that night; he secretly
did
feel it himself, a screwed-up perception that the heavens were impossibly nearby. As though you could simply reach out and stir the stars with your finger, or walk to the desert’s edge and hop off into the cosmos with a kick of your feet. It was a sensation entirely different from LA, where the constant glow of city lights muted the stars and shunted the universe away.

Out here in the unpopulated desert, you lost the people and gained back the stars. Long ago, before the Resurrection, Marco had believed that was a good thing.

But now…