with what appeared to be hundreds of empty egg sacs, creating something like a spider's nest—only these sacs were black and wet, shining in the low light of a half-buried wall sconce. They swayed slightly as the train rocked back and forth on the track, making them appear almost alive.
At least they were empty. He hoped to God he wouldn't run into whatever had laid them.
He edged away from the webbed corner, stepping on strings of the glistening matter that spread across the hall's fine carpet, vaguely wondering if the jeep accident had been such a blessing, after all. He didn't want to die in any manner, but a nice, clean firing squad beat the shit out of being devoured by shape-changing leeches.
Knock it off, soldier. Be where you are.
Right. He walked the corridor, relaxing slightly once he realized it was empty. There were two closed cabin doors, one on each side of the narrow passage, each marked by a number. From that and the hall's luxurious decor, he guessed they were private cabins. It was a good guess. He pushed open the first door, 102, and found a small bedroom, well-appointed and thankfully free of blood and bodies. Unfortunately, there wasn't much else, either, though he did find a clutter of personal belongings in the tiny closet. There were papers, a clutch of photographs, a jewelry box. He opened the box, revealing a silver ring, unusual in design; it looked like a single part of one of those interlocking ring sets, notched and warped in a distinct pattern . . . And since he wasn't jewelry shopping, he put it back, heading out to the next cabin.
When he opened the door to 101, he felt a rush of hope. There, lying on the floor like a gift, was a shotgun. Billy scooped it up and cracked it, his hope turning to a guarded happiness. It was a Western, over-under, loaded with two twelve-gauge shells. Further searching turned up another handful of shells, though no key card.
Magnetic lock or no, this '11 probably open that door, he thought, comforted by the weight of the heavy weapon as he stuffed the shells into his front pocket. He was tempted to go find Rebecca immediately, but decided he might as well finish what he'd started. There was a door at the end of the hall, presumably leading to the next car's second floor, and it would lead him closer to the front of the
train, anyway—the sooner to reunite with the kid. He wasn't scared to be on his own, it wasn't that, and it wasn't even concern for Rebecca, though that was there, too—it was too many years spent in service. If he'd learned anything, it was that being alone in combat was the worst way to be.
The door was unlocked, and opened into an empty lounge car, an extremely snazzy one. There was a polished wooden bar to his right, well stocked, and small, elegant tables lined either wall, leaving the wide, expensively carpeted floor open beneath low-hanging chandeliers. Like the last car, no blood or bodies. Billy checked the counters behind the bar, then headed for the door at the far end, feeling strangely ill at ease crossing the open space. He clutched the heavy shotgun firmly.
When he was almost across the room, something crashed onto the roof.
The sound was thunderous, huge, the impact so strong that a chandelier back by the bar hit the floor, the glass globes shattering. The train car rocked on its rails, causing him to stumble, almost fall.
He kept his feet, turning to look. Where the chandelier had fallen, the roof was actually indented, the thick metal twisted out of shape—and as he watched, one, two giant things pierced through, about two meters apart, one after the other.
Billy stared, not sure what he was seeing. Big, pointed cylindrical, each piercing piece appeared to be bisected, split down the middle. They looked like ... claws?
His gut knotted. That was exactly what they were, like a giant crab's or scorpion's claws, and as he watched, they both opened, revealing thickly serrated edges. The huge pincers turned inward and up, began to actually saw through the steel roof, the sound of ripping metal like a high scream.
He'd seen enough. He turned and ran the last few meters to the door out, aware that he'd broken out in a cold sweat. Behind him, the scream of tortured metal went on and on, and he grabbed the handle, jerked—
—and it was locked. Of course.
He spun back just in time to see the owner of the massive pincers jump down through the jagged entrance it had made, blocking the only other means of escape.
Rebecca had just decided the last car was safe when the dog attacked.
After leaving Billy, she'd made her way through a kitchen area in the last car, one awash in blood and fallen cookware, but otherwise empty. She was starting to wonder if some of the passengers and crew might have gotten off, perhaps when the train had first been attacked. There was a lot of blood around for so few bodies. Considering the state of the few passengers she'd run into, maybe that was for the best.
Her feet skidded through a puddle of cooking oil as she surveyed the kitchen, but her search was otherwise uneventful. The door to the rest of the car— presumably a storage area of some kind—was locked, but there was a crawl space that ran beneath the floor, with a covering she managed to pry up without too much trouble. She wasn't happy about having to crawl into a dark hole, but it was a short tunnel, just a couple of meters. Besides, she'd told Billy she would start at the back of the train, and she meant to be thorough. Doing a decent job was something to hold on to in the midst of such madness. The virus victims were bad enough, and that man made out of leeches...
. . . Don't think about it. Find the keycard, stop the train, go get some real help. Someone
besides a convicted killer, thank you very much. Billy was her only port in the storm, so to speak, and he'd certainly saved her ass, but trusting him any further than she absolutely had to would be idiotic.
She'd been right about the next compartment. After a thankfully brief claustrophobic crawl, she stood up in a storage space, barely lit by a single hanging bulb. There were boxes and bins along the walls, mostly hidden in deep shadow. She swept the darkness with her weapon. Nothing moved but the train itself, rocking along the track.
At the back of the compartment was a door with a window in it. Rebecca stepped closer, nine-millimeter extended, saw darkness and movement on the other side, the sound of the train louder, and realized she was actually in the last car, looking out over the track. She felt a flutter of something like relief, just knowing that the world still existed out there— and that if worse came to worst, she could always jump. The train was going pretty fast, but it was an option.
Click.
She spun at the soft sound behind her, heart hammering, aiming at nothing. The train kept rolling along, the shadows pitching and swaying, the sound not repeated. After a tense moment, she took a deep breath, blew it out. Probably one of the boxes shifting. Like the rest of this car—well, the first floor, anyway—the storage compartment seemed to be safe. She doubted there'd be a keycard floating around, but at least she could say she'd looked—
—click. Click. Click-click-click.
Rebecca froze. The sound was right next to her, and she knew what it was, anyone who'd ever had a dog would know: the tick of toenails on a hard surface. She slowly turned her head to the right, to where she now saw there were a couple of dog carriers, both with their doors standing open. And emerging from the shadows behind the closest—
It all happened fast. With a vicious snarl, the dog leaped. She had time to register that it was like the others she'd seen—huge, infected, damaged—and then her right foot came up, the action reflexive. She kicked out, hard, and caught one side of the creature's barrel chest with her heel. With a horrible wet tearing sound, she heard as well as felt a sizable flap of the animal's chest slough away, the skin sliding off the graying muscle, the wet and matted fur sticking to the bottom of her oily shoe.
Incredibly, the dog ignored the wound and kept coming, its jaws wide and dripping. It would have her before she could get the gun up, she knew it, she could already feel the teeth clamping on her arm, and she also knew that a bite from this dog would kill her, would turn her into one of the walking near-dead—
—and before the teeth actually touched, her other foot, slick with oil, skidded out from beneath her. Rebecca hit the floor, banging her hip, and the dog flew overhead, a smell like rotten meat washing over her. It actually stepped on her, one back paw smearing dirt on her left shoulder as it bounded over, the momentum of its lunge carrying it past.
The wildly lucky fall had only bought her a second. She rolled onto her stomach, extended her arm and fired, catching the animal as it turned to lunge again. The first shot went high; the second found its mark, just below the poor beast's left eye.
The dog sagged to the floor, dead before it had stopped moving. Blood began to spread around the fallen dog, and Rebecca scrambled away, pushing herself to her feet. Beyond the very basics, virology wasn't her specialty, but she was willing to bet that the dog's blood was hot, highly infective, and she wasn't interested in
