Tawny turned and vaulted over the counter. She ran towards Mercy. Three childlike figures burst through the hatch and collided with the counter. Tawny slipped, nearly losing her balance, she staggered, crashing into a table and chairs. Mercy took aim and fired her HK45 pistol through the gap at the closest undead child. Its head burst open like a rotten melon.
Mercy fired at the two other sprinting figures closing on Tawny. One of her rounds hit the second trope child in the knee, flooring it. Tawny picked up a chair and swung it wildly, hitting the third trope child in the chest, spinning it around. Tawny dropped the chair and charged at the gap in the conservatory door. More figures emerged from the serving hatch in a blur. Tawny pushed herself through the gap and fell to the conservatory floor gasping.
Mercy slid the door closed and engaged the lock. She stood over Tawny and pointed her pistol at the rapidly filling room on the other side of the glass door. Tawny grunted and stood up panting. The group of ragged trope children pressed up against the glass door, their eyes full of mindless hunger, their teeth snapping at the air.
“It’s OK Mercy, it’s OK. Thank Christ for toughened glass. It’ll hold—” Tawny said, pressing Mercy’s gun hand down. “You did good, that thing would’ve got me. I owe you—”
Mercy lowered her gun and stared at the frenzied trope children, slamming their undead bodies at the glass. “Trope kids, I get it… I get it. But there must be alphas among them, how else do you explain them attacking us?”
Tawny shook her head, “Yeah, it sucks. I guess it just takes one alpha to twig and it activates the rest of them. That explains the NSA’s plan for weaponizing the feral alphas. The alpha queens in particular… they can control the dumb ones, use them like a mindless army. They’ll smash through Constantine’s forces like a hot knife through butter—”
“Yeah… the alpha queen,” Mercy mused. “I wonder if they’re developing into a primitive matriarchal society. It’s like what we saw on Grand Cayman—”
There’s something about Rose. Maybe her biotech is sending out alpha queen signals—? What do these alphas want? Where are they going? What’s it all about?
Tawny pulled a face and lifted up her pack, “Woah there, Einstein… or is it Darwin? Society? That’s a strong word, a bit of a leap don’t you think? Let’s not credit them with that much intelligence—”
Mercy tore her eyes away from the hungry crowd of undead children on the other side of the glass. “Come on Tawny, let’s get away from here… while we can—”
“Shame, we won’t be able to get more of that food. It’s a busted flush now—” Tawny sighed.
They retraced their steps and made it back to the railroad. Mercy climbed the steep embankment and peered over the top towards the abandoned train in the siding.
Holy shit—
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me—” Mercy swore.
“What is it?” Tawny crawled up beside Mercy. “Oh, OK, I get it—”
“It’s a clusterfuck, that’s what it is—” Mercy said, she lowered her forehead to the ground.
A crowd of at least a hundred tropes had gathered around the front carriage. They were slapping their hands against the side of the train and trying to climb the entry steps. Somehow Flynn had managed to block the steps with a couple of food service carts.
“That barricade won’t last long, we need to get down there and help them. It’ll be Barnes’s scent, he’s sweating like a pig with his damned drug withdrawal. He puked up on the tracks too, that wouldn’t have helped. Shit, this is all we need,” Mercy shrugged off her heavy pack. “We’ll need to stash this food and get it later. I guess we’ll have to draw that lot away. We can get in position then grab their attention, risky but—”
Tawny tapped Mercy’s shoulder, “Can you remember if there was a skylight in the train carriage? I think there might have been one… covered in dirt—”
Mercy stopped talking and looked at Tawny, “Skylight? Yes, I think so… why? Wait, what are you cooking up Tawny?” Mercy looked out over the tracks at the abandoned train, she smiled. “OK, so… the footbridge, at the other end of the train. You reckon we could drop down onto the roof there, without them seeing us?”
Tawny nodded, “It’s possible, if we can get away without firing a shot we might be able leave the horde behind without them following us. It’d be dependent on Barnes being strong enough to move though—”
Mercy thought for a few seconds, “Right, let’s hide our packs and get to the footbridge, it’s worth a try. We’ll bring some water for Barnes, he was pretty dehydrated when we left him. Christ, it’s only been a few hours, it feels like days. For once it’d be nice to get a little down time. Come on, let’s go—”
They made their way along the overgrown embankment and stashed their packs in a bramble thicket. They drew even with the steel footbridge and climbed its rusting steps. A minute later they were looking down on the last few train carriages.
“It’s about a seven foot drop, if you hang from the bridge… not too bad,” Tawny said.
“Yeah, and look on the bright side; the train’s not moving,” Mercy replied.
They climbed over the bridge’s side panels and dropped down to an external ledge. The stench of corrupted flesh wafted to them from the undead horde sixty yards away.
Mercy glanced at Tawny, “You go first, I’ll be right behind you. Watch your landing, we don’t want a broken ankle… try and roll with the impact.”
Tawny lowered herself over the ledge and hung for a second before dropping to the train carriage below. She hit the roof and rolled onto her side.
Nicely done Tawny—
Mercy followed suit and landed beside Tawny.
“You OK?” Tawny asked.
Mercy grunted, “Fine, let’s get moving, keep low. Don’t let them see you—”
They crouched and made their
