Torn Apart (13 page)

I grabbed the throttle.
Pulled back. The handle didn’t budge.

It was jammed.

And I mean, it was
jammed.

It was completely
stuck.

Two hundred miles per
hour.

Maria was shaking her head.
“What do we do? What the hell do we do?”

We needed to get off this
train. We needed to stop it. But we couldn’t. The throttle was
jammed. It was stuck. We were stuck.

We were stuck on an
unstoppable, runaway train.

The tracks had been
blown.

We were travelling at two
hundred miles per hour. We were speeding to our deaths.

“It has to have an emergency brake system,” Maria said.

“
Well, where the
hell is it?” I asked.

We both looked at the
control panel. Searching for an answer. Searching for a magical
button that would make this train stop.

Nothing.

The control panel was big
and bright with about a million buttons and controls and levers.
The only thing I could determine was that the goddamn throttle had
been jammed forward.

It was stuck.

“
How long?”
Maria asked. “How long do we have? Where did they blow the
tracks?”

I shook my head. “I don’t
know. Ben said it would take about fifteen minutes to reach the
residential area from the entry point. He also said that there was
a lake down here. About ten minutes away.”

“
What? A
lake?”

“
Yeah, there’s
an underground lake. It’s up ahead. He said it would take about ten
minutes to emerge from this tunnel. And then we should come out
near, or over a lake. Apparently there’s a bridge, a massive long
bridge that spans the lake to the other side.”

“
Wait,” Maria
said, thinking out loud. “If they blew the tracks, they would’ve
done it over the lake. At the half way point.”

“
How do you know
that?

“
Well, that’s
what Ben just said. He said they blew the bridge. Severed the
bridge. I’ll bet my life they would’ve blown the tracks over the
lake to make sure no one on this side could get across. And they
would’ve done it right in the middle of the bridge to make sure
that if anyone did try and cross, they would be stranded over the
water. They would be sitting ducks. Easier to shoot.
Eliminate.”

She had a good point. A
terrifying point.

“
Just like the
Sydney Harbor bridge,” she continued. “I’ve got a bad feeling about
this. This whole place. If they ordered a Lockdown, if they blew
the bridge. I mean, what if there was…” she trailed off.

But I knew what she was
going to say.

What if there was a
containment failure down here? What if they had lost control? What
if the virus or the nano-swarms had taken over? What if there had
been another massacre of innocent people?

“
What the hell
happened down here?” Maria asked. “This is supposed to be a
Fortresss for crying out loud. It’s supposed to be a
refuge.”

She was right. Ben had told
me this place was designed to survive any and all extinction level
threats.

What the hell had gone
wrong?

“
We can’t worry
about that now,” I said. “We’ve got less than ten minutes before we
run out of track. We need to stop this train.”

“
What if we
can’t?”

“
If we can’t
stop it, we’re screwed.”

“
Could we jump?”
she asked.

“
It’s going way
too fast. We’d be killed instantly.”

Even though the train was
travelling at close to two hundred miles per hour, it was an
unbelievably smooth ride. It lulled us into a false sense of
security.

“
If we slow it
down,” I added, “Then maybe we could jump. But I’d still rather
stop it altogether.”

I looked back at the
control panel and realized there was a small button labeled ‘map’
that was next to the central display monitor. I pressed the button
and a basic map of the track appeared on the monitor. It showed the
layout of the Fortress. And the train’s current
location.

This section of the train
line led into the inner sanctum. There were three other long
tunnels like this one. Each of the tunnels were about forty miles
long.

It was thirty three miles
from the vehicle storage hangar, where we had come in, to the
lake.

The lake was circular in
shape. Like a donut. Like a medieval moat. It surrounded and
protected the inner-sanctum.

The whole facility looked
like an intricate spider web or snowflake.

It was massive.

"There," I said pointing to
the map, to the half way point. “We need to get off the train
before we reach that point.”

According to the display we
were almost there.

We were twenty miles
out.

I couldn’t get over the
size of this place.

“
We don't have
long,” Maria said. “If we’re travelling at two hundred miles per
hour, we should reach that point in about six minutes.”

“
Six minutes? We
have to go. We have to get off this train. Or stop it
completely.”

“
OK,” Maria
said, nodding, thinking. “Maybe there’s an emergency break or an
emergency stop button back there, in the carriages.”

“
Let’s check it
out. Hurry.”

We moved into the carriage.
We searched along the walls. The hand railings. Near the doors.
Nothing.

“
Next carriage,”
I said.

We moved into the second
carriage. The one full of dead soldiers. I had to put my hand over
my nose. It was already starting to smell.

Again, there were no
emergency stop buttons. There was nothing.

The two rear carriages were
completely dark. They appeared to be locked up.

“
What about back
there?” Maria said.

“
Forget it. If
there are no emergency breaks in these carriages, there won’t be
any back there.”

We returned to the driver’s
cabin. We checked the control panel again. We were looking for
answers but finding none.

I yanked on the throttle
again, trying to pull it back into the ‘neutral’ position. But it
wouldn’t budge.

I had a bad feeling that
someone had purposely jammed this forward. Someone who knew what
they were doing.

It had to be the man in the
gas mask, I thought. It had to be.

I looked at the map on the
display panel again. We were getting closer to the
bridge.

We had about five
minutes.

Sixteen miles.

Maria had a go at trying to pull the throttle back. No
luck.

I slowly came to the
realization that we would have to jump. It sounded like a stupid,
crazy idea. I mean, the absolute last thing that anyone in the
world would want to do is jump from a speeding train. Jumping from
a speeding train means certain death.

But we were out of
options.

“
We’re gonna
have to jump,” I said.

Maria shook her head. “No
way. We are not jumping. Like you said before, if we jump at this
speed we will die on impact. We cannot jump.”

“
Well then what
the hell are we going to do? We can’t stop this train. We have to
jump.”

Maria’s eyes suddenly lit
up, like she had an idea. One that didn’t involve jumping to our
deaths.

“
Wait, we might
not have to jump. This train has four carriages in total,
right?

“
Yeah.”

“
Maybe the rear
carriage has another driver’s cabin. Another control panel that
isn’t busted.”

“
You
think?”

“
I’m not sure.
But isn’t that how trains work? They have a driver’s cabin at each
end. So when they reach one destination they just change direction
to do the return trip.”

“
It’s worth a
shot,” I said.

We ran back through the
carriages, stepping over the dead soldiers. We arrived at the door
to the third carriage. It was dark. The window on the door had been
spray painted black.

I should’ve taken that as a
warning sign.

We forced the door
open.

The carriage was dark.
Empty.

Blood stained the walls and
the floor. Even the ceiling.

The seats had been ripped
out to maximise standing room.

“
What the hell
happened back here?” Maria asked.

“
Don’t know.
There’s one more carriage. If there’s no driver’s cabin then we
have to jump. Agree?”

“
Yeah.
Agree.”

We moved up to the
connecting door. There was blood on the handle. The window had also
been spray painted black.

We opened it together,
using all our strength. My heart sunk.

There was no driver’s
cabin.

None that we could see
anyway.

We didn’t even get the
chance to look for one.

The carriage was full of
infected.

They were just standing
there. In the carriage. Mindless. They were crammed in shoulder to
shoulder, like a train in the middle of peak hour.

It’s like they were waiting
for someone to set them free. Waiting for us.

They must’ve heard us as we
struggled with the door. Because as soon as we opened the door they
were ready to pounce. They reached out for us with single minded
aggression.

Maria and I said nothing between us. We knew we had to get the door
closed again. We needed to do it immediately. But we didn’t have
time. There wasn’t even time to scream.

We were too
slow.

And the infected are just
too damn fast. They reached the door and jammed their decomposing
arms and bodies into the frame.

“
Get back!” I
said. “Shut the door!”

We tried multiple times to
get the door closed. We pulled with all our might, but we couldn’t
get it shut.

We couldn't close it. We
just had to fall back. Run. Retreat.

“
Run!” I shouted
over the howling and the moaning of the infected. “Get back to the
next carriage. I’ll hold them here.”

Maria ran back to the next
door. When she had forced it open, I ran after her. As soon as I
let go of the door, the infected barged through. They gave
chase.

Luckily, we were able to
shut the next door before the infected got to us. But they kept
coming. They slammed into the door and pushed up against it,
slamming their heads against the spray painted window. Fortunately
they couldn’t figure out how to slide the door open. This bought us
some time. But we both knew it wouldn’t be long before they broke
through.

We were now in the carriage
with the dead soldiers. The whole train now felt like a
tomb.

“
Quick,” Maria
said. “We have to load these rifles.”

“
We dont have
time,” I said. “They'll break through.”

“
Just do it. We
have to be able to defend ourselves.”

She had a good point. I
dropped to my knees and grabbed a handful of bullets, and began
loading them one by one into an empty magazine.

I couldn’t get my hands to
stop shaking. I must’ve dropped every second bullet I tried to
load.

“
Come on!” I
said to myself, urging myself to work faster.

Maria was unusually calm.
She had a look of intense concentration on her face as she loaded
her magazine. “What the hell are they doing here?” she asked. “Why
would they have a train full of infected?”

“
Don’t know,” I
answered as I tried to get my hands to stop shaking. “Experiments?
Research? I don’t know.”

Not that the reason
mattered anymore. The fact was they had been herding infected,
bringing them back here. And now they were loose in this Fortress
and on this train.

The window of the door was
beginning to shatter. Spider web cracks spread across the panel.
The door frame began to buckle.

The infected were almost
through.

Maria had already loaded
two magazines.

She had even found some
shotgun shells.

I gathered up some more
bullets.

“
Quick,” Maria
said. “We can load the rest of these bullets in the next carriage.
There’s a whole pile of them in there.”

“
OK,” I said.
“No. Wait.”

I saw the parachutes that
were still strapped to the dead soldiers.

“
What?” Maria
asked.

“
The dead
soldiers,” I said. “They were Special Forces soldiers. They were
para-troopers.”