A crash? No, there's no structural damage . . . but so much blood!
Rebecca closed the door behind her, shutting out the thickening curtain of rain, and stared at the chaos around her. The cabin had been a nice one, all dark wood and expensive carpeting, the light fixtures antique, the wallpaper flocked. Now there were newspapers, suitcases, coats, bags open and spilled across the floor—it looked like there'd been a crash, and the drips and smears of blood that liberally dappled the cabin's walls and seats backed up the scenario. Except where were the passengers?
She stepped further into the train car, aiming the handgun up and down the aisle. There were a few low lights on, enough to see, but the shadows were deep. Nothing moved.
The back of the seat to her left was stained with blood. She reached out and touched the large splotch, then wiped her hand on her pants, grimacing. It was wet.
Lights are on, blood's fresh. Whatever happened, it happened recently. Lieutenant Billy, maybe? He was wanted for murder . . . Unless he had a gang with him, though, it didn't seem likely; the destruction was too widespread, too extreme, more like a natural disaster than some kind of hostage situation.
Or more like the forest murders.
She nodded inwardly, taking a deep breath. The killers must have struck again. The bodies that had been recovered had been torn apart, mutilated, and the crime scenes had probably looked exactly like this blood- spattered train car. She should get off now, radio the captain, call in the rest of the team. She started to turn back to the door—and hesitated.
I could secure the train first.
Ridiculous. It would be crazy to stay here by herself, stupid and dangerous. No one would expect her to check out a murder scene alone—assuming any-one had been murdered. For all she knew, there'd been a shooting or something, and the train had been evacuated.
No, that's stupid. There'd be cops all over the place, EMTs, helicopters, reporters. Whatever happened here, I'm the first one on the scene... and securing the scene is the first priority.
She couldn't help wondering what the guys might say when they saw she'd handled things herself.
They'd stop calling her “kiddo,” for one thing. At the very least, her rookie status would be behind her that much quicker. She could take a quick look around, nothing major, and if things seemed even the slightest bit dangerous, she'd call in the team, pronto.
She nodded to herself. Right. She could handle a look-see, no problem. A deep breath, and she started for the front of the car, carefully stepping through the scattered luggage. When she reached the connecting door, she braced herself and quickly stepped through, opening the second door before she lost her nerve.
Oh, no.
The first car had been bad, but here, there were people. Three, four—five that she could see from where she stood, and all of them obviously dead, faces ravaged by unknown claws, bodies drenched in dark wetness. A few were slumped in seats, as if they'd been brutally murdered where they'd been sitting. The smell of death was a palpable thing, like copper and feces, like rotting fruit on a hot day.
The door automatically closed behind her and she started, her heart beating fast, faintly aware that she was way out of her league, she needed to call for help—and then she heard the whispering, and realized that she wasn't alone.
She aimed her weapon at the empty aisle ahead, not sure where it was coming from, her heartbeat going double-time.
“Identify yourself!” she said, her voice firmer and more authoritative than she expected. The whispering continued, choking and distant, strangely muted in the otherwise silent car, like she imagined a crazed killer might sound, sitting and whispering to himself after a murder spree.
She was about to repeat herself when she saw the source of the whispering, halfway up the aisle on the floor. It was a tiny transistor radio, apparently tuned to an AM news station. She walked toward it, dazed by a sudden rush of relief; she was alone, after all.
She stopped in front of the radio, lowering her semi-automatic. There was a body in the window seat to her left, and after an initial glance, she avoided looking at it; the man's throat had been slashed, and his eyes had rolled back into his head. His gray face and tattered clothes were shining with viscous-looking fluids, making him look like a zombie from a bad horror movie.
She bent and picked the radio up, smirking at herself in spite of the fear that still coursed through her. Her “crazed killef’ was a woman delivering a news report. The reception was bad, the tiny unit hissing static at every other sentence.
Okay, so she was an idiot. In any case, it was time to call Enrico, and Rebecca turned, thinking she'd get better reception if she stepped back outside, and the movement that came from the window seat was so slow and subtle that for a moment, she thought it was just the rain she was seeing. Then the movement groaned, a deep, low sound of misery, and she understood that it wasn't the rain at all.
The corpse had risen from his seat, and was moving toward her. His misshapen head lolled back and to the side, cruelly exposing the mauled flesh of his throat, and the moaning grew deeper, more yearning, as he stretched his arms in front of him, his ruined face dripping blood and slime.
She dropped the radio and took one stumbling step back, horrified. She'd been wrong, he wasn't dead, but he was obviously out of his mind with pain. She had to help him. Not much in the medkit, there's morphine, though, gotta get him to lay down, oh, God, what happened here—
The man shuffled closer, reaching for her, his eyesockets filled with white, black drool spilling from his torn mouth—and in spite of what she knew was her duty, to do something to relieve his suffering, she reflexively took another step back. Duty was one thing, her instincts were telling her to run, to get away, that he meant to do her harm.
She turned, not sure what to do—and there were two more people standing in the aisle behind her, both as slack-faced and damaged as the white-eyed man, both moving toward her with the steady, staggering movements of horror movie monsters. The man in front wore a uniform, he was some kind of train attendant, his face gaunt, skull-like, and gray. Behind him, a man whose face had been partly torn away, revealing too many teeth on the right side of his mouth.
Rebecca shook her head, raising her weapon. Some kind of disease, a chemical spill, or something. They were sick, they had to be sick—except she knew better even as the three men moved closer, raising bony gray fingers, moaning with hunger. Maybe they were sick, but they were also about to attack her. She knew it as surely as she knew her own name.
Shoot! Do it!
“Stop!” she shouted, turning back to the white-eyed man, he was closer, too close, and if he was aware that she was pointing a handgun at him, he gave no sign. “I'll shoot!”
“Aaaahh,” the monster rasped, grasping for her, baring dark teeth, and Rebecca fired.
Two, three shots, the rounds tearing into the discolored flesh, the first two hitting his chest, the third blowing a hole just above his right eye. With the third shot, the creature let out a mindless squeal, a sound of frustration rather than pain, and fell to the floor.
She spun again, praying that the sound of shots had stopped the other two, and saw that they were almost upon her, their eyes glazed, their moans eager. Her first shot hit the uniformed man in the throat, and as he reeled back, she aimed for the second man's leg. Maybe I can just wound him, get him down—
The uniformed man started forward again, his throat gurgling blood.
“God,” she said, her voice small with shock, but they were still coming, she didn't have time to wonder, to think. She raised her aim and fired two, three more times, all head shots. Blood and flesh sprayed, torn. The two men went down.
Sudden silence, stillness, and Rebecca's wide gaze searched the car, her body thrumming with adrenaline. There were two, three more “corpses,” but none of them moved.
What just happened? I thought they were dead.
They w'ere dead. They were zombies. No, there was no such thing. Rebecca checked to be sure there was another round in the chamber, doing it automatically as she struggled to understand. They weren't zombies, not like in the movies. If they'd truly been dead, the shots wouldn't have made them bleed like that; blood didn't pump if the heart wasn't beating.
But they only went down after the head shots. True. But that could still mean some sort of disease, maybe
