They left the cab. They vaulted the rear knuckle coupling of the locomotive to the Pullman carriage behind.
The cobwebbed grandeur of Saddam’s salon. Their boots kicked up billowing clouds of dust from a Persian rug.
Voss emptied Lucy’s backpack on an antique desk, mahogany cracked and warped by dry desert air.
Grenades and magazines.
Gaunt slapped a fresh thirty-round clip into the receiver well of an assault rifle and stuffed mags in his jacket pockets.
Voss slotted shells into his shotgun and racked the slide. He looked out the window.
‘All right. Let’s go.’
Voss kicked open the carriage door. They jumped from the train and ran towards the convoy.
They jogged across open ground. They walked among wrecked vehicles, weapons raised, sweeping left and right.
‘Should be big,’ said Gaunt. ‘A ten wheeler.’
Voss checked his watch. He rubbed dust from the glass with a dirty thumb. Seven thirty. They had been in the desert less than twenty-four hours. It felt like a decade.
They picked their way through the avenue of burned-out vehicles. Crumpled sedans, trackless APCs, troop trucks burned down to a skeletal chassis.
Boots crunched on windshield glass. Blackened bones snapped like twigs.
Voss came to a sudden halt.
‘What the fuck is this shit?’
He backed away from a scorched bus. The bus lay bedded in sand. Arms clawed and clutched from beneath the vehicle. Hands scrabbled and slapped the bodywork. Soldiers must have crawled underneath the bus during the fire-fight and got crushed as tyres burst and the vehicle settled into the dust. They succumbed to infection as they lay pinned beneath the ten-ton hulk. Entombed, halfway between life and death.
He unhooked a grenade from his webbing.
‘Don’t,’ said Gaunt. ‘Leave them. We haven’t got time.’
They found the fuel truck between two shattered APCs. A heavy Russian Kraz in desert yellow. There was a boom arm at the top of the tank. A thick transfer hose terminated in a heavy coupling.
Voss checked the storage tank. Bullet holes high in the tank. Oil in the sand.
‘Lucky this thing didn’t blow sky-high. A single tracer hit would have been Game Over.’
He touched drip-streaks and sniffed his fingers. Diesel.
‘Sure this isn’t JP-8?’
Gaunt shook his head.
‘Locomotive grade. It took a tank of gas to get the locomotive to this valley. It will take another tank to get her home. That’s why they brought a reserve.’
Voss rapped the hull with his knuckles. A dull thud.
‘She’s three-quarters full. Intact below the bullet holes.’
Gaunt checked out the cab. It was burned out. Seats scorched down to springs. Dash-plastic hanging in petrified drips.
The hood had blown off. The engine was shot to hell.
‘It’s fucked,’ said Voss. ‘It’ll never move.’
‘Hold on. Let’s think this through.’
The quad raced down the narrow ravine. Lucy drove parallel with the track. The bike bucked over rough terrain. They drove through a haze of rock dust, slow-settling powder ejected by the collapsed mine tunnel.
Amanda slapped Lucy on the back. Lucy stopped the bike.
‘I got to patch my leg.’
Amanda lay on the ground. Lucy patched her leg with Kerlix dressing and gave her a shot of morphine.
‘Like it?’
‘Love it.’
‘We have to get out of this fucking valley,’ said Lucy. ‘We have to get deep in that rail tunnel. I mean real deep. Shelter from the blast wave and heat.’
‘How long do you think we have?’
‘Couple of hours, tops. We better burn rubber.’
‘I don’t think I can make it,’ said Amanda.
‘Don’t even start with that shit.’
‘What if my leg gives out? How am I going to make it across the fucking desert? Are you going to carry me on your back?’
‘If that’s what it takes. I’ll get you home, babe. I lost everything. Toon. Huang. Voss. I’m not losing you.
A Republican Guard stumbled along the track towards them, skin laced with metallic tendrils.
‘Give me the machete,’ said Lucy.
She approached the soldier.
An officer. Red beret and epaulettes. An AK strapped to his back. His flesh oozed metal.
He snarled. He reached for Lucy’s throat. She stood her ground as he stumbled towards her. She hacked off his arm. He fell to his knees. She lopped through his neck.
Lucy stood over the body.
‘I expected more of these fuckers. Guess they must have returned to the citadel. Hibernating, or something.’
She unhitched the rifle. A Tabuk, with a folding stock. The crude AK47 clone manufactured for the Iraqi army. She worked the bolt. A poor action, but the weapon would fire.
She took magazines from pouches strapped to the dead man’s chest.
‘Want to give me the pistol?’ asked Amanda.
‘Later,’ said Lucy. She worried Amanda might blow her brains out rather than become a fatal burden.
They climbed on the quad and set off. The four-stroke engine echoed round tight canyon walls.
They turned a bend in the ravine. Lucy brought the bike to a halt. The train was parked up ahead.
‘Why did they stop?’ asked Amanda. ‘Out of fuel already?’
They got off the bike. Lucy chambered the AK. They crept along the valley wall. Lucy kept her rifle trained on empty carriage windows.
‘Give me a fucking gun,’ said Amanda.
Lucy tossed the Makarov pistol.
They crept the length of the train. They reached the locomotive. Lucy climbed the ladder. She pulled Amanda up onto the walkway.
They flanked the cab door. Lucy pushed the slide door with her foot and ducked inside, rifle raised.
Empty.
‘They took the key. We can’t start her up.’
Lucy helped Amanda jump the coupling to the carriage.
Rifles, but no magazines.
Amanda kicked an empty backpack.
‘Looks like they took most of the ammo.’
She slumped in a chair and massaged her wounded leg.
‘How much morphine have we got?’
‘Couple more shots,’ said Lucy. ‘Better save them. If that wound gets infected, you’ll be hurting for real.’
‘I could use a fucking drink.’
Lucy offered her canteen.
‘A real drink. A beer. Can’t stop thinking about it. Ice cold. Condensation running down the glass.’
Amanda flicked open her lock-knife and cut the crusted dressing from her leg. She unzipped Huang’s trauma kit. She unrolled fresh gauze round her thigh, and lashed the dressing in place with a combat tourniquet.
‘How’s it looking?’ asked Lucy.
‘A little fresh blood. Not much. It’ll be okay, long as it doesn’t get infected.’
Amanda popped codeine from a blister strip and knocked them back with canteen water.
‘Take it easy with that shit, all right?
Lucy kicked open the missile case.
The Hellfire guidance cone. The solid-fuel rocket motor. A vacant scoop of foam where the virus cylinder used to sit.
‘Gaunt took the virus. He must be carrying it with him.’
She wiped grime from a window and focused binoculars.
‘What can you see?’ asked Amanda. She fanned her Stetson.
A couple of half-rotted soldiers stumbled and crawled from the ancient necropolis. They emerged from the great propylon gateway and dragged themselves across the valley floor towards the column of wrecked vehicles.
‘Two infected guys. They seem to be converging on the convoy.