Adam Baker - Juggernaut

Voss gagged. His head was wrenched back. Stink of advanced decomposition. He tried to squirm free and screamed as teeth sank into his calf.

He tore his head from grasping claws. Clumps of hair ripped out at the root. He looked down at the rotted revenant that gripped his leg. The creature drooled blood. It spat flesh. Voss fired the grenade launcher. The illume punched through the creature’s mouth and wedged in its throat. Voss rolled clear as the creature’s head exploded in a brilliant sunburst of red fire.

Lucy dragged Voss aboard the carriage and slammed the door. She swept empty mags from a chair. He sat, face white with shock.

Lucy unsheathed her knife. She sliced open his pant leg. She examined the wound. A deep bite mark.

She turned to Amanda.

‘Pass me Gaunt’s jacket.’

‘Why?’

‘We’re out of surgical dressing.’

‘Fuck him.’

‘Come on. Give me the fucking jacket.’

Amanda reluctantly lifted the jacket from the back of a chair and handed it to Lucy.

Lucy ripped out the nylon liner and cut it into strips. She pulled on latex gloves, took Raphael’s Zippo from her pocket and held her knife blade in the flame.

‘Bite your rifle strap.’

‘Didn’t do Huang any good. This shit is a death sentence.’

‘Do it anyway.’

Voss unclipped the rifle strap and bit down. Lucy propped his leg on a chair.

‘Hold him still.’

Amanda gripped his leg.

‘Hope this hurts, motherfucker,’ said Amanda.

Voss closed his eyes and balled his hands into fists.

Lucy sliced flesh with the hot knife. Voss screamed and arched his back. Amanda fought to keep hold of his leg.

Lucy carved out the bite mark. She grabbed the gobbet of flesh with a gloved hand and threw it out the window. It fell in the dirt. Infected soldiers crouched and fought over the scrap of muscle.

Lucy padded the wound with a couple of tampons and bound it with satin strips.

She took a morphine syrette from her pocket. She popped the cap, jabbed the needle in Voss’s thigh, and squeezed.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ protested Amanda. ‘Wasting our last fucking shots on this guy?’

‘Check the window. Keep us covered.’

‘Crappy day,’ panted Voss.

‘We acted quick,’ said Lucy. ‘Maybe we stopped the infection.’

Voss shook his head.

‘We both know the score.’

‘Well, as long as you can pull a trigger, I don’t give a shit.’

A cadaverous soldier began to climb through the window. Amanda raised her rifle and pulled the trigger. Dry click. She swung it like a club. The plastic stock cracked the creature’s skull.

She checked the magazine.

‘That’s it. I’m out.’

She threw the rifle aside. She grabbed the machete and hacked at the sill. Fingers flew.

‘Beaucoup hostiles. Time to unhitch and roll.’

Transmission crackle.

Lucy picked up the sat phone.

‘ Roger that, Carnival. Holding at fifteen thousand. Heading two-nine-five. Approximately twenty minutes from target …’

‘Let’s get the fuck out of here.’

Lucy opened the carriage door and was immediately beaten back. The malignant army massed at the doorway reached for her, tearing at her legs and ankles, trying to haul themselves into the carriage. A seething mass of rotted flesh. Awful stench.

‘Cover me,’ she shouted to Amanda. ‘I’ve got to shut off the fuel pump.’

Lucy fired into the crowd. Headshots. She jumped from the carriage and found herself surrounded by a jostling horde of grotesquely mutated soldiers. Metal dripped from suppurating wounds like they were bleeding chrome.

They lunged. A circle of grasping hands. She switched full auto. She opened fire, and swung her rifle in a sweeping arc at head height. The crowd scythed by bullets. A rolling wave of skull fragments and brain tissue.

She ran for the fuel truck. Her path blocked by a cadaverous soldier. She cracked his skull with the butt of her rifle. He fell. She stamped on his head.

She reached the ladder. She slung her rifle and started to climb. Skeletal hands seized her feet and dragged her down. She thrashed and fought as she was dragged beneath the truck. She lay beneath the chassis, kicking at snapping, snarling mouths. Two soldiers clawed at her legs. She couldn’t release her rifle strap. She drew her pistol and fired between her feet.

Lucy rolled clear of the truck. Emaciated figures stood over her. Blood-caked hands reached down.

Gunfire from the carriage. Headshots. Three mutations fell dead. They slumped across Lucy and pinned her to the ground.

She squirmed free of stinking bodies. She grabbed her rifle from the dirt and ran for the carriage. Amanda leaned from the coach and held out her hand. She hauled Lucy aboard and slammed the door.

Lucy checked herself over. She patted down, looked for blood and torn clothing.

‘Think I’m okay. Didn’t make it to the pump.’

She climbed to her feet. She slapped sand from her rifle.

Fists pounded the side of the carriage. A steady drumming like heavy rain. They heard fingernails gouge the lacquered livery.

‘We have to unhook that fuel line,’ said Amanda. ‘Someone has to get on top of that tanker and hit the Off button. If we pull away while the truck is hooked up and pumping gas we’ll be incinerated.’

‘Go ahead,’ said Lucy, pointing at the carriage door. ‘Be my guest.’

The barricade blocking the doorway to the adjoining carriage began to tremble under heavy blows. The shriek and rasp of shifting furniture. The desk obstructing the door began to slide.

‘Bunch of them in the next coach,’ said Voss. ‘Must have piled through the windows.’

Lucy got to her feet. Voss stood unsteadily by her side.

‘Got any shotgun shells?’

Voss slotted five shells into the receiver of his Ithaca pump.

‘Last few.’

‘Let’s put them to good use.’

Lucy unhooked a frag grenade from her webbing. She pulled the pin.

‘Okay. On my mark.’

She gave the nod.

Amanda and Voss put their shoulders to the upturned desk and bureau and shunted them aside.

Three soldiers stumbled through the doorway and fell to their knees. Voss stepped forward, racked his shotgun slide and blew their heads apart.

Lucy looked through the doorway. Soldiers massing in the dining car, squirming through broken windows.

She released the safety lever of the grenade and tossed it to the far end of the carriage. The grenade bounced beneath the banquette table and rolled between rotted, dirt-caked combat boots.

‘Down,’ shouted Lucy. They threw themselves away from the doorway and covered their heads.

A muffled boom. Dust and flame.

They got to their feet. Carnage glimpsed through blue smoke-haze. The banquette table and chair blasted to fragments and draped in viscera.

A soldier lay among smashed furniture, struggling to move.

‘Leave him,’ said Lucy. ‘We don’t have time for this shit.’

Amanda ignored her. She kicked through wreckage, swung her machete and split the creature’s head with a single hacking blow.

They rebuilt the barricade. They shunted furniture against the doorway. They threw headless bodies from the train.

Soldiers climbed through the windows. Amanda delivered precise headshots with her Glock.

Voss fired his shotgun dry. He threw it down and picked up his rifle.

Sound of splintering wood. Amanda pulled a rotted Persian rug aside. A fist punched upward through the centre of the floor, shattering hard-wood planks. Clawed hands tugged at broken floorboards to widen the hole. A snarling, skeletal thing began to squirm through the aperture. It saw Amanda and hissed. She decapitated the soldier with her machete. The severed head rolled across the floor. She grabbed its hair and threw it from the window.