A rotted figure squirmed through a broken window. He hauled himself over the sill, shredding clothes and flesh on jagged shards.
More soldiers crowding outside the coach. Hands slapped glass. Windows cracked and broke.
Amanda grabbed the SAW. She slung the strap over her shoulder and lifted the weapon. She stood in the doorway of the dining car.
The man-thing fell to the floor of the coach. He struggled to his feet. His right arm was a mess of metallic spines.
He saw Amanda and hissed.
She braced her legs and pulled the trigger. The heavy machine gun ejected a stream of links and smoking brass. The soldier burst apart. He was hurled backward. He hit wall panels and slid to the floor. Another burst from the gun obliterated his head.
Windows shattered. Three Republican Guard began to haul themselves into the carriage. Amanda opened fire. The creatures were pulverised and flung from the train.
The SAW ran dry. Amanda unhitched the strap and dropped the smoking weapon at her feet. She unholstered her Glock and backed out the carriage. The floor was carpeted with spent shell casings. Her boots kicked scorched brass.
‘Did you get them?’ shouted Lucy.
‘There will be more,’ said Amanda. ‘We can’t cover both carriages. We have to barricade the doorway.’
Amanda tipped the mahogany desk onto its side and pushed it to block the connecting door.
Lucy fired from the window. Soldiers approached across open ground from the east. Headshots. They fell dead.
She flexed cramp from her trigger hand. She slapped a fresh mag into her rifle.
‘Give me a hand,’ shouted Amanda. She pushed a heavy bureau towards the carriage doorway.
Lucy lay down her rifle, threw her bodyweight against the bureau and helped shunt it against the barricade.
Voss continued to frag the convoy. Trucks and jeeps blown apart. Flame and eruptions of dust. Scattered doors, trunk lids, seat springs and axles. Each detonation followed by the lazy thrum of whirling shrapnel.
Republican Guard converged from all sides. Voss oblivious as encroaching soldiers threatened to flank his position.
Lucy and Amanda gave cover fire. A succession of clean headshots.
Dead man’s click. The mag run dry. Lucy ejected the clip. Nothing in the ammo pouches strapped to her vest. She took a fresh magazine from the backpack.
She shouted into her radio.
‘Voss. Hey, Voss.’ No response. ‘Voss. Arsehole. Pull back. We’re running dry.’
His earpiece hung loose.
‘What’s he doing?’ said Amanda. ‘Fucking idiot. He’s going get ripped apart.’
‘Keep him covered,’ said Lucy. ‘Do the best you can.’
She slapped the mag into her rifle and cranked the charging handle. She took aim and fired.
Voss watched a group of Republican Guard push open the rear door of an APC and emerge from darkness. He took aim and fired a grenade into the interior of the vehicle. Flame jetted from every vent and hatchway. The soldiers were ejected from the APC, reduced to burning, scattered limbs.
He checked the bandolier slung over his shoulder. No more frag grenades. He retreated from the convoy, backed slowly towards the carriage. He loaded a red-tip flare into the grenade launcher.
Three skeletal figures heading his way. He aimed and fired. The middle soldier staggered like he took a gut punch, flare imbedded in his thorax. Ignition. A jet of red, magnesium fire. Ragged uniforms caught alight. All three soldiers burning like they had been doused in gasoline. They fell to their knees. Pillars of fire. They collapsed, flesh slow-cooking with a blue flame.
Voss slotted a fresh illume into the launcher. He snapped the receiver closed.
Two men weaved between convoy wreckage, fused like conjoined twins. They must have lain pinned beneath a truck, or curled in the trunk of a sedan, as the parasitic infection took hold. Metallic carcinomas erupted from flesh and melded the two Republican Guards together.
Voss took aim.
A hand grabbed his ankle. He looked down. A rotted figure slowly pulled itself from the dirt, streaming subsurface sand. A horrible, sightless thing, vomited half-dissolved from the ground. Flesh scoured by lime, skin sloughed in strips.
Voss stumbled backward and fell. He tried to jerk his leg free. The ghoul bared its teeth. Voss struggled to aim his rifle.
A second half-dissolved creature broke through the sand-crust behind Voss. A skeletal hand closed over his face.
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.’
Voss
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.