Torn Apart (12 page)

No response.

I was about to slap him in the face, but before
my palm connected with his cheek, he caught my wrist.

“
Please, don’t.”

“
Thank god, you’re
alive.”

He sat up awkwardly. He was still holding his
stomach. “Not for long. I’m bleeding out here.”

“
Don’t say that. You can make it.
You have to make it.”

“
Where is your friend?”

“
I’m right here,” Maria
answered.

“
Wow. There’s something you don’t
see every day.”

“
What’s that?”

“
A miracle,” he said. “Did I hear
gunshots?

It was taking him considerably effort to talk.
He began drifting in and out of consciousness.

“
Maria was in the train,” I said.
“She had been tied up by someone. He was about to kill her. He was
saying some pretty messed up things.”

“
Seems to be a lot of that going
around. Was it a soldier? Civilian?”

“
I don’t know. But I was able to
take him out,” I said. “Shot him point blank with a shotgun. I did
it just like you said. But I can’t tell if it’s a civilian or a
soldier. He’s wearing a gas mask. His face is hidden. I can’t get
it off. Not that I really want to. His body is all mutilated and
scarred.”

“
Scars?”

“
Yeah. Cuts and burns and grazes and
stuff. It’s pretty gross.”

Ben tried to sit up. “We need to take the mask
off,” he said. “Show me the body. I need to know who that
is.”

“
That might be a bit difficult. The
mask appears to be stitched into his scalp.”

“
I need to know,” he repeated. “We
need to take the mask off.”

“
OK, sure. Let’s get you to the
train. We can probably use it to move through the tunnel. We think
it’s still working. We can use it to travel the rest of the way.
Sure as hell beats walking, right? And there’s no way we can carry
you all the way.”

Ben’s eyes flickered. They were half open. “The
train? No.”

“
What?”

His head dropped forward.

“
Ben?”

“
Don’t,” he whispered. “Not the
train. Not safe.”

“
What’s not safe? Ben? It’s safe
now. I shot that guy. Maria is safe.”

He was out. He was dying. He was bleeding to
death. Right before our eyes. And there was nothing we could do to
stop that. Hopefully there was a doctor or surgeon or medical
facility down here at the other end of these tracks.

“
We can’t carry you the whole way,”
I said. “You’re too heavy. We have to take the train.”

I just hoped we could get it
working.

I shook Ben by the shoulders. But he was out.
He was unconscious again.

We would have to drag him back to the
train.

We began dragging him along the track. He weighed a ton. We had to
stop every twenty feet or so to rest. My hands were on fire. My
knuckles and my fingers, they had locked up with pain. We let go of
him to catch our breath and shake our fingers loose.

“
We can’t carry him the whole way,”
Maria said. “We’ll need to get that train moving.”

I nodded.

We resumed dragging him along. It was getting
harder and harder to get a good grip.

I looked back at the train. It was an island of
light in an otherwise dark tunnel. It was like a beacon.

Come on, Rebecca, I thought to myself. Just one
foot after the other. One step at a time. We need to get out of
here. We need to get far away from that airplane hangar.

Simple goals.

Get to the train.

Get out of here.

And then what?

I had no idea what came next.

Hopefully we would find someone in charge.
Someone who hadn’t lost their mind. Someone who didn’t want to
enforce the military’s containment protocol. Or the Lockdown
procedure.

Hopefully we would find Jack and
Kim.

And Kenji.

It was hard to think about Kenji.

So it was best not to think about
Kenji.

We kept dragging Ben towards the train. We
finally made it.

My hands ached and burned. They were
shaking.

“
OK, let’s lift him into the
carriage,” I said.

Maria nodded wearily.

I turned and looked through the door at the man
in the gas mask. He was lying where we had left him.

“
What do we do with him?” Maria
asked. “Should we throw him off the train?”

“
Yeah. But let’s get Ben inside
first.”

Together we lifted Ben into the
train.

“
Damn, he’s heavy,” Maria
said.

We dragged him into the driver’s
cabin.

Maria was worried. “Is Ben… is he
dead?”

“
I don’t know.” I leant forward,
checked his pulse. “No. He’s alive. Barely. But he needs medical
attention. He needs help.”

“
Maybe there’s like, a hospital down
here or something? Do you think?”

“
Yeah,” I answered confidently, even
though I wasn’t sure. “Of course there is. He’s gonna be
fine.”

Maria stood. “Do you know how to drive this
thing?”

I shook my head. “I have no idea,” I said as I
scanned the control panel. “Shouldn’t be too hard.”

There was a ‘start’ button for the engine. A
throttle. Forwards. Reverse. Brake.

“
Come on, we should be able to
figure this out,” I said.

“
Yeah,” Maria said. “But before we
go, we should get rid of that body. It’s giving me the
creeps.”

“
All right,” I agreed. “We’ll throw
him into the tunnel. Beats bringing him with us.”

We walked out of the driver’s cabin.

I stood in the center aisle and a surge of
adrenalin shot through my veins.

I felt light headed.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood
up.

The body was gone.

“Oh no,” Maria said. “No. No. No.”

“
Shh. Stay calm,” I whispered even
though I was freaking out.

“
I thought he was dead,” Maria said.
“You shot him. He was dead. What the hell?”

“
I don’t know,” I answered as I spun
around, looking. Searching. There was nothing. “Where the hell did
he go? Where’s the body?”

We stood in the aisle of the train carriage,
unable to move. Unable to act. We were paralyzed with fear. My
heart started to beat faster and harder.

“
This is bad,” Maria said. “We
should’ve shot him in the head. We should’ve stabbed him. We
should’ve cut his head off. We should’ve...”

“
What?” I snapped. “We should’ve
done what? We were out of ammo. He was dead. I shot him. He was
dead.”

He was dead, wasn’t he?

I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sure of anything
anymore.

“
Maybe he was infected?” Maria said.
“Maybe he died and then came back or whatever.”

“
No. If he was infected he would’ve
attacked us.”

“
Let’s get out of here,” Maria
whispered. “Right now. Let’s go.”

“
We need to find him,” I said as I
jumped out of the carriage.

“
Are you nuts?”

I checked under the train. It was dark. Pitch
black. I couldn’t see a damn thing. It was very possible he was
hiding under there.

“
Get back here,” Maria said. “We
need to go!”

I thought I saw something move. I thought I
heard something. A boot crunching on gravel.

I held my hand up. “Shh.”

“
What is it?”

Maria jumped down next to me. She had the
shotgun. She held onto it as tight as she could even though it was
out of ammo. Maybe it was a security thing. We should really load
up some of those guns before we go any further, I thought to
myself.

I continued to look underneath the carriage.
Nothing.

I looked back down the tunnel in the direction
we had come. Nothing.

An abyss.

I looked forward. The tracks descended gently
into darkness.

“
He’s gone right?” Maria asked with
fear in her voice.

“
Yeah,” I said. “He just... he just
disappeared.”

“
This is messed up.”

Maria was on the verge of breaking. Not that I
could blame her.

I was just about to tell her to keep herself
together, because as long as we stuck together, we could make it.
That we would find the others. That everything would be all
right.

But I never got the chance.

The train lurched forward. The wheels creaked
as they moved. The engine fired and the train began to pick up
speed.

“What the hell?” Maria shouted.

“
Come on, let’s
go!”

I grabbed Maria and we
jumped on the train before it got away from us.

“
What the hell?”
Maria said again. “Why did it start?”

“
Maybe Ben
turned it on?” I suggested.

“
Why would he do
that if he didn’t know we were on board?”

“
Don’t know.
Maybe he thought we were. He’s been drifting in and
out.”

We made our way to the
driver’s cabin. Ben was still unconscious. The ‘start’ button was
illuminated. The control panel was lit up.

The throttle.

The throttle was jammed all
the way forward.

“
Maybe it’s like
an autopilot system or something?” Maria offered.

“
Yeah,
maybe.”

The train continued to pick
up speed.

Next to the throttle was a
digital speedometer. Our speed was steadily increasing.

Sixty miles per
hour.

Eighty miles per
hour.

One hundred miles per
hour.

“
Wow, this train
is fast,” Maria said.

We were hurtling through
the dark tunnel at well over a hundred miles per hour.

“
This doesn’t
feel safe,” I said.

“
Does this thing
have headlights?” Maria asked.

“
Oh, yeah. Good
idea.”

I scanned the control panel
quickly. Found the headlights. Switched them on. This was a vast
improvement. At least we could now see where we were
going.

One hundred and twenty
miles per hour.

“
Is this thing
supposed to be going so fast?” Maria asked.

“
Yeah, I think
so. Ben said it was a ‘bullet’ train. So I’m guessing it’s designed
to go really fast.”

The tunnel dipped some
more. We began descending. We were rocketing along. Burrowing
deeper into the earth. The track turned slightly, the train rocked
back and forth gently.

One hundred and fifty miles
per hour.

The movement woke Ben. He
grabbed my ankle. His nails dug into my skin. I looked down, and
for a fleeting second I thought he was infected. But then I saw his
eyes. They were wide open. Full of fear.

“
Where are we?”
he asked.

“
Everything is
going to be fine,” I said. “Are you feeling all right?”

“
Where are we?”
he repeated.

“
We’re on the
train. We’re going to...”

Wait. Where were we going?
I wasn’t entirely sure, but I figured this track had to lead
somewhere important.

“
It’s not safe,”
Ben whispered. “They shut down the track. The Code Black. The
Lockdown.”

“
What?” Maria
asked. “What are you saying?”

“
The
Lockdown!”

He kept saying, Code Black.
He kept saying, Lockdown. He still wasn’t completely with it.
Suddenly we emerged from the tunnel into a huge, never ending cave.
A huge cavern.

I couldn’t see where it
ended. Couldn’t see the walls or the roof.

It just kept
going.

“
The Lockdown,”
Ben whispered. “They blew the tracks.”

The train rocketed inside
another tunnel.

One hundred and eighty
miles per hour.

“
The tracks have
been destroyed,” Ben whispered, barely clinging to consciousness.
“They blew the bridge. Severed the bridge. We need to stop the
train. Stop the train. Get off. We have to walk in.”

“
They blew the
tracks?” Maria said. “Why would they do that? How do you
know?”

“
The Lockdown,”
Ben said. “It’s the protocol. Sever the tracks. Blow the middle of
the bridge. No one gets in.”