In other words, a Chinese-made helicopter closing in on us could have meant any number of things. It could be the Pakistan Army, Hindu India, the New India Army, or Eugene & Krupps.
Looking closer, I could see what looked like machine guns attached to its sides.
“Calling Blue Boy, this is Jaeger One. There is an armed helicopter closing in from the rear of—”
I had already turned and started heading back into the carriage, but suddenly I was cut off by the fact that the front end of the car was speeding toward me. For some reason the whole carriage was drifting behind me. It took me a split second to realize that it had come to a sudden stop and its contents were being tossed around like clothes in a washing machine.
And then I realized that I had been out cold. For how long? A minute? An hour?
There was a high-pitched ringing in my ear, and I felt curiously dissociated from my surroundings. It reminded me of how I felt in the hospital that summer when I killed Mom. I felt a squirming sensation all over my body. No doubt it was my SmartSuit, diagnosing my injuries and adjusting accordingly to stem any open wounds and compensate for any bruising.
The passenger seats were to my right and the ceiling was to my left. I paused to consider which way gravity was.
I felt like I was trapped in a one-dimensional world, except instead of there being only one dimension, there was only one sense: sight. I could see, but I couldn’t work out my x and y axes. Most of the passengers were piled up on the side where the window was. Williams too. I could see a bloody arm protruding from the layer of people. I vaguely remembered seeing something like this in a movie once, but I couldn’t remember which one.
Presently, I could hear something that sounded like fireworks in the distance.
Ah, gunfire, I thought to myself, and tried to move my body. I’d been bruised all over, but fortunately nothing more serious than that. I knew that I’d been hurt, and I knew where I’d been hurt, but as I didn’t feel the pain I was able to move without trouble. I exited the carriage from the rear door.
The rail tracks seemed to have moved over to our right.
The carriages toward the front of the train didn’t seem to have shifted quite so much. We must have been thrown around by a centrifugal force. The coupling had broken off, and we had been slingshotted into the air. I couldn’t begin to imagine how far the people on the roof had been thrown. Our whole carriage was lying on its side. I ignored the buzzing in my ears to look over toward the train cars way in front: one was on fire. There was a black metallic vehicle skimming the ground, borne aloft by a rotary wing. And I could see figures in the distance, dancing the dance of Special Forces, moving in elegant formation.
A bullet flew in my direction and landed right in front of me.
That jerked me back to reality. I leapt for cover behind the overturned carriage. From this distance the figures up front were mere specters; I could barely even see them in their camouflage gear. I activated my ARs—any of the vanguard who had survived would be engaging with our ambushers now, so I called for a status update.
I didn’t have time to be looking at their names individually. Cardiac arrest. No response. Arm torn off. Broken legs. Having said that, my own entry showed multiple fractures and internal hemorrhaging, and I was still combat effective, so our SmartSuit injury sensors weren’t the be-all and end-all.
“Blue Boy! This is Jaeger One calling Blue Boy! Do you read me?”
No response.
Using the carriage for cover I moved toward the action as quickly as was prudent under the circumstances. The screams and groans of the passengers who were still conscious melded together to form an unearthly cacophony. This must have been what the Ligeti sounded like to the Eugene & Krupps sentinels. Some of the passengers were now crawling out through the door and stumbling away to freedom. The lucky ones were starting to recover.
And then one of the survivors who tried to run ahead of me had his face blown off. A bullet intended for me, no doubt.
I retreated back into the shadows and decided to try Leland’s team again.
“Blue Boy. Are you there, Blue Boy? Blue Boy?”
This time I was met by what seemed like an excessively cheerful reply.
“Blue Boy here! Is this Jaeger One? Over.”
Shit, I’d forgotten to state my name.
“Affirmative, this is Jaeger One. My position is currently four carriages back from yours. What’s your status there? Over.”
“The engine appears to have been blown up, sir.” Leland still sounded as cheerful as ever. “Immediately after the explosion we were attacked and surrounded by airborne assault troops. We’re currently exchanging fire with them. We’re all trapped inside the overturned carriage. They’re using their machine guns to open holes in the walls, sir! Over!”
Like a Clint Eastwood movie, I remembered. A movie where the side of a bus was opened up by machine-gun fire. Clint played a detective whose job it was to defend a woman who was a key witness in a case and was being targeted by crooked cops. And that made me think of the person we had been tasked to guard: John Paul.
“What about the prisoners? Over.”
“We can’t tell what’s happening in the next carriage, sir. We’re pinned down. I do know that the guys guarding the car aren’t responding. SmartSuits are reporting them dead. When I tried to leave this car to investigate my left arm was blown off my shoulder, sir! Over.”
Leland’s voice was as positive as ever as he rattled off the list of disasters. Damn him—it almost made me laugh. But I could tell he wasn’t joking. That was just the state we were in now, we who could perceive pain without feeling it. The Special Forces with our sensory masking. An arm ripped out of its socket? The SmartSuit would soon see to the blood, no worries. You could imagine the stories the guys would be telling down at the bar later. Hey guys, I was charging along without a care in the world and fuck me, I never noticed that my own head had been blown off! Whaddaya know!
“Are you hurt?” I vocalized almost unconsciously.
I suppose Leland was a bit taken aback to be asked such an irrelevant question under the circumstances. “Uh, yes, sir, I guess I am. I can tell I’ve been hurt, I mean. I can’t feel anything of course. No problem, sir. Pain’s not too much of a—motherfucker! Clavis, they got Nelson. Shit! Nelson’s down, sir! Fuck! Goddamn! Over!”
I gritted my teeth and started advancing again. The enemy had our train car surrounded in siege formation. I took a hand grenade out and threw it toward the car.
A rumble. I took advantage of the collapse in their formation caused by the explosion to move closer by another carriage. From my new cover I looked out to examine the situation.
I could just about make out some figures in camouflage gear. Many of them were streaked with scarlet. I realized that these were open wounds. Stumps, even. Two soldiers standing near the point where my grenade went off had lost arms and legs. They were now moving for cover, most of their bodies camouflaged except for their newly acquired stumps that were spurting crimson blood onto the terrain. Leland’s crew took full advantage of the lull to launch a counteroffensive, throwing a grenade at the enemies on the other side and following it with a fusillade. I used the opportunity to move closer by yet another carriage. Almost there. Almost ready to link up.
I performed another quick recon. We’d managed to kill a few of them in the short time since I launched my grenade.
But the walking wounded seemed impervious to their pain. There were men who had lost arms or legs or were bleeding out but still maintained battle formation and were firing away. Who were these assailants? How far did we have to grind them down before they would die? This was like a zombie film, I thought. And not the twentieth-century sort with the shambling walking dead—these were the lean, mean, fast zombies of the early twenty-first century.