Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse

XIV

“I’m sorry.” Mortimer blinked. “But did you just say cannibals, or have I gone crazy?”

“I’ll explain later. Right now the pumpers are overdosed and I have to bring them down before they all have heart attacks.” She dashed off in the direction of the handcar, her perfect balance a tribute to long experience on the rocking flatcars. Train legs instead of sea legs.

Bill flopped into one of the theater seats. “I’m out of shells for the rifle.”

“You okay?”

Bill nodded. “Guy jumped me before I could get the pistols out.”

“Stay here. I’ll see if she needs any help.”

Mortimer climbed forward after Tyler. He noticed the train had slowed again to the pace of a fast walk. He reached the handcar and found most of the musclemen slumped on the deck, eyes closed, massive chests rising and falling with shallow breaths. Greasy piles of meat. Only two of the big brutes remained to work the hand pump.

Mortimer watched Tyler put two fingers to a man’s throat, shake her head and roll him off the train.

“What happened?”

“His heart exploded,” Tyler said. “I couldn’t dose him in time. The two pumping are on a half-dose of downer juice. When they get tired, I’ll wake up two more to take over. Best we can do for now.”

“Can’t we just stop for a while?”

She shook her head, squinted up at the sun. “At this pace, we won’t reach our destination in daylight. It’s dangerous to run at night, but worse if we stop.”

Mortimer remembered she’d said something about cannibals. He gulped. “Right.”

“I need your help now,” she said. “Get to the back end of the train and keep watch. We don’t want anything crawling up our tailpipe while we’re going this slow.”

He flicked her a two-finger salute and headed back the way he’d come. He picked up the Uzi along the way and paused to tell Bill he’d be guarding the back of the train.

“I’ll keep my eyes peeled here,” Bill said.

Mortimer went into the gear and found a box of 9 mm ammunition, winked at Bill and headed back.

He sat with his feet dangling over the back of the last flatcar. The track dwindled behind. Forest had cropped up on either side, although he occasionally glimpsed a stretch of road or power lines, a small abandoned house. A barn. He thumbed new shells into the Uzi’s magazine, reloaded the police special. He wished he had cigarettes. Mortimer had never smoked, but lighting up a Lucky seemed like something soldiers on guard duty did in the movies.

Miles and hours crept away, never to be seen again.

In spite of the cold wind on his neck and ears, Mortimer started to drift, the rocking train easing his eyelids down. He slumped, the Uzi heavy in his lap. With the adrenaline rush from the attack fading, the aches and nausea of his hangover seeped back into his body. He’d pay a hundred Armageddon dollars for three hours back in the hotel bed.

Joey Armageddon’s, the hotel, the food, the drink, the lights. It had all fooled Mortimer, lulled him into forgetting the world was now a wild and broken place. Could Anne survive out here? This savage country where women were bought and sold like cattle. She seemed far away, and here was Mortimer inching along on a train powered by sweaty men. Mortimer had read those Conan the Barbarian novels as a teenager. It took a barbarian to live in such a world, someone brutal and ruthless with the survival instincts of an animal. Mortimer wasn’t a barbarian. He was an insurance salesman. He felt suddenly small and fragile. He needed Starbucks and Krispy Kreme and Jiffy Lube.

Mortimer dreamed of Anne in a metal bikini like the one Carrie Fisher wore in Return of the Jedi. But she wasn’t chained to Jabba the Hutt. She was chained to Arnold Schwarzenegger, but not the Conan Schwarzenegger. It was Arnold from The Terminator, the flesh peeled away from half his skull, revealing the metal underneath. One eye glowing red.

This is my woman now, said the Terminator.

No! That’s my wife.

Take him away, barked the Terminator.

Men grabbed him, took him to the Thunderdome, where Mad Max tried to kill him. No, not Mad Max. Mel Gibson handing him a big wooden cross. Carry this. He stuck a crown of thorns on Mortimer’s head. The thorns tore flesh, blood running into his eyes.

Mortimer looked at the blood in the palm of his hand. The blob of blood became a glowing light, blinking red. Michael York grabbed his arm. Run! Run!

Mortimer ran. He was in a bright city. They were chasing him. He ran and ran until the world was a blur, a forest, then a desert, then the ruined buildings of a deserted town. Anne! Anne! Where was she? And even if he found her, then what? How would they live? Where would they go? Mortimer thought he was rescuing her. He couldn’t even save himself.

He felt somebody grab him, looked up at Kurt Russell with long hair and an eye patch. Come on. We’ve got to escape from here.

Leave me alone. I’m too tired.

“I said wake up.” The voice had become feminine but with a hard edge.

Mortimer started, blinked. Kurt Russell’s face morphed into somebody else. Only the eye patch remained.

“You’d better not be falling asleep,” Tyler warned.

Mortimer dug the sleep out of his eyes with a thumb. “No, of course not.”

“Uh-huh.” Tyler looked doubtful. “It’s going to be dark soon, and I need you on your toes.”

“I hate to even ask this, but when you say cannibals, are you being figurative? I mean, is it a gang that calls themselves the Cannibals or something?”

Tyler leaned down, pinched the flesh of his cheek. “They’d fry you up and serve you with little red potatoes, man. Now stay awake.” She went forward again.

“They’d find me very chewy,” he shouted after her.

Great. I’m going to be an entrée.

The train crawled along like an anemic box turtle. The sun sank, and in the final orange fuzz of daylight, Bill came back to the end flatcar, sat next to Mortimer. He cradled the lever-action rifle, the last rays of the sun making his complexion ruddy and outdoorsy. He looked like the cover of a Louis L’Amour novel.

“She wants you up front,” Bill said.

What now?

He clapped the cowboy on the shoulder. “Stay awake.”

He made his way forward, moving more easily this time, getting used to the sway of the train. He found most of the sleeping meat snoring on the deck of the handcar, except for the two at the hand pump. Tyler waved him over, handed him a big, heavy flashlight.

“Get up to the front of the train. It’ll be full dark soon. I don’t usually like to run at night, but it can’t be helped. I need you to watch for obstructions.”

“Right.” He started for the front.

She grabbed his arm tight, looked down at the flashlight. “I’m not even going to tell you what a flashlight and rechargeable batteries cost. You drop it over the side and-”

“I know, I know. You’ll toss me over and feed me to the cannibals and blah blah blah.”

“Just so you understand.”

He took his position up front. The sun finished its escape, and the night went dark and cold quickly. Mortimer flipped on the flashlight, and the beam stabbed out far and strong, lighting up the track a good fifty feet in front of the train.

Mortimer kept his eyes on the track but allowed himself a glance at the sky. The stars hung bright and vivid in the deep black of space. With the wind in his hair, the light out front, Mortimer almost felt like he was flying, the train gliding along smooth and straight.

The forest widened, the trees falling away on both sides. They were on a long bridge. Mortimer fished around with the flashlight. They were crossing over a river. It must have been one of the dozens of middling-sized rivers that fed the Chickamauga. It would be deep and cold with mountain runoff. Mortimer leaned over the edge, looked down, the flashlight beam playing over the running water. He estimated it maybe twenty-five feet down. His gaze came back up, away from the river.

A face, slack jawed, haunted eyes.

It startled him. Mortimer gasped. It had only been a second, a glimpse. But Mortimer was sure he’d seen a pale figure, greasy haired, standing on the bridge at the edge of the track. He leaned over the side, shined the light back the way they’d come.

Nothing. Had he imagined it?

He swung the light back forward again. A gap in the track, twenty feet away, the metal rails twisted and scorched as if from a blast. Mortimer’s eyes shot wide. He drew breath to scream a warning.

Too late.

The handcar dove into the gap, jammed and jerked to a halt, the flatcars piling up behind. The crash was a shattering mix of splintering wood and groaning, clanging metal. He heard a number of screams, the loudest his own as he flew headlong onto the railroad track ahead of the train. He landed hard, the wind knocking out of him. He rolled and tumbled.

Then he was flying, wind flapping his clothes. Stars flashed over him, then his breath was taken away by the freezing sting of impact. The river closed over him like a cold tomb. He bounced against a rock, kicked, paddled, surfaced. He had time for one ragged breath before the river took him down again.

Mortimer spun and tumbled in the dark water, the current sweeping him an unknown distance in time and space, the cold searing him to the bone with white-hot pain. His lungs burned. He broke the surface again, gasped and gulped breath, taking in water too. He coughed and picked a direction in the implacable night, kicked and stroked for the bank. The icy water had sapped him.

He was about to give up when he touched bottom, dragged himself onto the land and flopped on his back in the patchy snow and mud. He lay a moment, chest heaving as he sucked air. Every limb screamed murder.

The ripple of orange along the water made him sit up. He’d come down the river farther than he’d thought, the current so swift. In the distance, hellish light bathed the bridge. The Muscle Express burned, the flames reaching into the sky.

It must have been visible for miles and miles.