Eaters (Book 2): The Resistance (23 page)

"It's not hauling coal."

Some of the cars rolling past had open tops, and one came into view with hands sticking up, flapping about like dirty rags in the wind. Their sooty color obviously didn't come from coal or ash. It was grey, dead skin, mottled, and flaking off. Some were nothing but boney fingers like skeletons waving in some macabre parade.

Diego crossed himself. "Santa Maria…"

But Zach's eyes lit up. "I want to know where it's going."

"Hmmm…" Edmond scoffed. "I don't think we can run fast enough to follow it. You know…Christmas before last, I got me one of them Magic Eight Ball things. Maybe we could—"

"I’m really tired of your mouth,
Milkman
."

Mark threw up his hands. "There's only one way we're going to find out where that thing is headed, and that's to follow it."

"I've got a better idea," Jake said. "It's heading north, and we want to head that way anyway. Why don't we hitch a ride?"

Jaws dropped.

"Are you serious?" Cheryl asked.

"Dead serious."

"Poor choice of words." Zach grumbled.

"Sorry."

"But, it's going too fast," Aidan said. "It'd be suicide to try to—"

"We'll have to wait until it slows down. In the meantime, let's get our butts in gear and move!"

The protests were numerous, but everyone leapt to their feet, grabbed their packs, and started jogging along behind the train. Jake and Jordan took the lead, maintaining a comfortable stride. They all kept pace for about a mile before some of them started dropping back from exhaustion.

"We can't keep this up," Cheryl said. "We're losing people."

Mark looked back and saw the stragglers then he summoned a burst of energy and caught up with Jake. He had to yell, so he could be heard over the noise of the train. "Hey…we can't keep up! We're going to have to stop!"

Jake kept going for a few more seconds before slowing his pace. "Damnit!" he said through heavy breath as he slowed to a walk.

Everyone behind him followed course. There were sighs of relief as some of them stopped altogether, doubling over and looking like they were either going to puke or pass out. The train sped on by and finally disappeared over a ridge.

Once they were all together again, Jake barked like a drill sergeant. "Okay people, we're going to keep following the tracks."

"I thought that's what we were doing," Edmond said, with a lilt of sarcasm.

"We are…" Jake shot back. "As long as they head north. I just wish we could have caught that train. It might have saved us a hell of a lot of walking."

Kai tried to offer them all some optimism. "Maybe there'll be another one, a slower one anyway."

"I'm not really sure hopping on that thing would have been a good idea," Cheryl said. "It was probably headed towards a O.N.E. camp. And I thought we were trying to avoid being seen."

Mark stopped and leaned down to pick some burrs off the cuffs of his pants. When he rose back up, he said, "Of course, if we'd have caught it, we'd have had to hop off before it reached its destination."

"That would be a gamble." Zach said.

Jake shook his head. "It might be more of a gamble to think we're going to safely walk all the way to Provo. Hitching a ride at least part of the way makes sense."

They walked another few miles, encountering several Eaters wandering alone. Cheryl wondered if they had escaped from the train. They didn't have black boxes on their heads, so there was no telling for sure. She was just glad they were able to knock them out before anyone got hurt.

Late in the day when the shadows were long and thin, and mentions of tired feet made some of them suggest making camp for the night, Edmond split off from the group to find a tree to sprinkle. A few seconds later, he came running back with his fly unzipped, pointing to the ridge where he'd just come from. "Check it out…check it out!"

They all came running, guns ready, shouting questions about what he had seen.

Edmond pointed over the edge, his face shining like a man who caught the prize-winning fish. "Shh…shh! Look down there! Right there!"

It was a rail yard, and sitting right below them was the train they had been chasing earlier—the same one for certain because of the yellow caboose with the red O.N.E. triangle painted on its side and the distinct swirls of graffiti.

"That's our chariot right there." Jake rubbed his hands together. "It's got empty cars. We just have to find one we can hop on without being seen, and we'll save ourselves miles of walking."

"I suppose you were a hobo in your first life and you've done this before?" Zach asked.

"Hopped a ride? No. But, it can't be rocket science when the thing's just sitting there."

"Well…" Aidan said. "If we're going to do this, let's get down there before it starts moving again."

They began to work their way down the ridge, keeping low and quiet, except for a couple of times when one of them accidently triggered a small rock slide. By the time they reached the edge of the rail yard, the sky had turned shades of purple and navy. There was movement between the tracks, individual workers and slower moving groups that looked like Eaters shuffling along behind someone leading them.

"All right…there might be a Bull patrolling. So, be careful. See that open box car?" Jake pointed to one with open doors near the rear of the train. "When it's clear that way, we make a run for it."

Less than two minutes later, they were sprinting across the tracks.

Jake made it first then paused by the car, urging the others to start hopping up as he kept a lookout for anyone that might have noticed them. "Hurry up. Go!"

After she hoisted herself up, Cheryl gave Edmond a hand. Then, she reached down to help Kai. As she pulled him up, she heard a moan behind her to the right.

The car wasn't empty.

She whipped around and strained to see what was moving in the darkness. It looked like there were eight or nine Eaters in the corner. Their legs were chained together at their ankles, and they were lunging towards her, but at least one of them was hooked to the wall, so they couldn't move very far. Their fetid breath and cumulative stink overwhelmed her to the point of nausea.

"Ummm…guys?...guys!"

No one could hear her over the roar of the train on the adjacent tracks that had just started moving.
Fine.
Then, no one will hear the gunfire either
.

She barked an order. "Get down!"

Everyone who had made it on board scrunched down near the closest wall, covering their head with their hands and burying their ears in their armpits. One by one, she put each Eater down with a bullet to the head, wincing every time she heard the CLINK of a shell hitting the metal car, because the acoustics amplified the sound of the gunfire, and because she was worried about the possibility of ricochet.

"You all right?" she asked them when it looked like she'd hit them all.

They nodded.

"Okay, help the others up."

Cheryl reached for Deanna's hand next, pulling her on board and getting a mumbled
thanks
in response.

Just a few seconds later, Zach was the last one up. "Whew!" he said, covering his nose. "This place reeks."

She pointed to the
garbage heap
in the back corner, and he gave a nod of understanding.

Aidan motioned for everyone to get back into the shadows. "Guards coming!"

They pressed themselves to the wall, trying to ignore the fact that it was sticky as a group of O.N.E. guards approached. The men were leading a chained group of Eaters down the track, luring them along with a big hunk of meat on a stick.

"We have to get off!" Edmond gasped. "They could be loading them in here!"

Zach craned his head towards the door, watching the approaching figures, and whispered, "I could take them."

"No," Jake told him. "Any commotion could just bring more."

Breathless, they waited, trigger fingers ready…and eventually they heard the snorting, moaning group stumble past their car. Then, they relaxed a little, except for Edmond, who had to poke his head out of the car to vomit.

After another half hour with no other immediate threats, they sat crouched on the floor, heads buried in hands and sleeves to filter out some of the foul smell. Then, a triangular beam of a flashlight wobbled into view on the tracks.

Diego whispered, "Somebody's coming!"

Jake waylaid them a raised hand. "Shhh…"

The flashlight shined inside the boxcar, panning from right to left. They were outside of its beam as it highlighted the blood stains and goo splattered all over the floor and walls, and panned across the heap of Eaters. If the guard noticed they were dead, he didn’t mention it when he spoke into a handheld radio. "Car UTLX3487 has space."

When he moved on Edmond whimpered again. "They're going to bring more. We'll be trapped!"

"We'll deal with it if it happens," Cheryl reassured him.

It was a great relief a few minutes later when the guard came back and slammed the sliding door shut without seeing them or loading more Eaters on board, but Cheryl felt a surge of panic like she'd just been entombed in a coffin. Seeming to sense her uneasiness, Mark clicked on a flashlight, cutting a swath of light through the void around them and shined it in the corner where the heap of dead Eaters lay. Then, he panned it around their faces. The fear in everyone's eyes was white hot.

Twenty minutes later, the train began to roll. Resigned to whatever fate had in store for them, they sat quietly, most of them too worried or nauseated to talk.

After Mark shut the flashlight off and they were once again in darkness, Aidan wondered out loud how far the train would take them north.

"Hopefully all the way to Provo," Cheryl said. "With any luck we—"

Her words were cut off by a scream.

"Deanna!"  Aidan shrieked.

Mark fumbled for his flashlight, but it fell and rolled across the floor. After a couple of seconds, he found it and clicked it on.

At the far end of the boxcar, one of the Eaters in the pile was apparently still alive. The ugly thing with a grotesque, decomposed face had grabbed Deanna's ankle and bitten down hard enough to break through the fabric of her jeans and tear the flesh. Blood seeped from her calf, pooling on the floor beside her.

"Oh, baby!" Aidan wailed with his arms wrapped around her. "
Oh no…
"

As she sobbed in his embrace, Zach put a bullet in her attacker's skull and kept it pointed at the heap in case any of the others moved.

After a few minutes, Deanna grew quieter.

"I could bandage her leg," Kai offered.

When Aidan didn't reply, Cheryl shook her head and whispered, "It's no use now."

It wasn't much longer before Deanna's head slumped down into her chest and her body became still.

Edmond stared at her body. "Now what?"

"I'll do it," Aidan said. He held his hand out and Jordan handed him his revolver, because it would be easier to use than his rifle in such close quarters.

When Deanna began to stir a few seconds later, he grabbed the back of her hair then leaned over and kissed the top of her head. When her brown eyes opened, dead and searching, and she snapped at him, he closed his eyes, put the gun to her temple and squeezed the trigger.

Her body fell away from him, and he lurched in the opposite direction then remained crumpled against the wall as his sobs came in choking heaves. Cheryl wanted to comfort him, but it didn't seem like the right thing to do at the moment, not with Mark there, not now…

The train kept rolling along, going at a good clip. After Mark's flashlight dimmed and went out, they sat in the darkness for some time before anyone spoke again.

Kai broke the silence. "We can't stay in here with all of these dead bodies. We'll die of suffocation."

"Can't we kick them overboard?" Jordan asked.

Diego snorted. "It's worth a try, amigo…before we choke to death on the fumes."

It took a serious effort, but he was eventually able to pick his way through the bodies and unhook the lot of dead Eaters from the wall. Then, Jake and Mark managed to pry the boxcar door open.

"Fresh air!" Edmond said, inhaling the warm breeze.

It took most of the group's combined strength to pull the mass towards the door. Once they had it near the edge, they shoved the lump of lifeless bodies, and they tumbled down the passing slope.

"That'll be a feast for the coyotes!" Zach said.

Edmond motioned towards Deanna's lifeless form. "What about…"

"Not her," Aidan said. "We'll take her off when we stop, so we can find a better resting place for her."

"It still reeks in here," Kai said. "But it's better."

It did smell better
, Cheryl thought. Although, they were still in a blood-splattered cage with bits of brain matter sticking to the walls.