She turned, not sure what to do—and there were two more people standing in the aisle behind her, both as slack-faced and damaged as the white-eyed man, both moving toward her with the steady, staggering movements of horror movie monsters. The man in front wore a uniform, he was some kind of train attendant, his face gaunt, skull-like, and gray. Behind him, a man whose face had been partly torn away, revealing too many teeth on the right side of his mouth.
Rebecca shook her head, raising her weapon. Some kind of disease, a chemical spill, or something. They were sick, they had to be sick—except she knew better even as the three men moved closer, raising bony gray fingers, moaning with hunger. Maybe they were sick, but they were also about to attack her. She knew it as surely as she knew her own name.
Shoot! Do it!
“Stop!” she shouted, turning back to the white-eyed man, he was closer, too close, and if he was aware that she was pointing a handgun at him, he gave no sign. “I'll shoot!”
“Aaaahh,” the monster rasped, grasping for her, baring dark teeth, and Rebecca fired.
Two, three shots, the rounds tearing into the discolored flesh, the first two hitting his chest, the third blowing a hole just above his right eye. With the third shot, the creature let out a mindless squeal, a sound of frustration rather than pain, and fell to the floor.
She spun again, praying that the sound of shots had stopped the other two, and saw that they were almost upon her, their eyes glazed, their moans eager. Her first shot hit the uniformed man in the throat, and as he reeled back, she aimed for the second man's leg. Maybe I can just wound him, get him down—
The uniformed man started forward again, his throat gurgling blood.
“God,” she said, her voice small with shock, but they were still coming, she didn't have time to wonder, to think. She raised her aim and fired two, three more times, all head shots. Blood and flesh sprayed, torn. The two men went down.
Sudden silence, stillness, and Rebecca's wide gaze searched the car, her body thrumming with adrenaline. There were two, three more “corpses,” but none of them moved.
What just happened? I thought they were dead.
They w'ere dead. They were zombies. No, there was no such thing. Rebecca checked to be sure there was another round in the chamber, doing it automatically as she struggled to understand. They weren't zombies, not like in the movies. If they'd truly been dead, the shots wouldn't have made them bleed like that; blood didn't pump if the heart wasn't beating.
But they only went down after the head shots. True. But that could still mean some sort of disease, maybe something that blocked pain receptors ...
The forest murders. Rebecca felt her eyes widen even more, putting the pieces together. If there had been some kind of chemical spill or sickness, it might have affected any number of people up here in the woods, making them attack others. There'd been recent reports of wild, feral dogs, too—was it
possible that the sickness was trans-species? Some of the victims had been partially eaten, bites made by human and animal jaws on at least two of the bodies.
She heard a soft movement, and stopped breathing. Back by the door she'd come through, a seated corpse seemed to slump lower in its seat. She watched it for what seemed an eternity, but it didn't move again, the only sound that of the rain outside. Corpse, or victim of some tragic circumstance? She didn't want to find out.
Rebecca backed away, stepping over the man with white eyes, now very much dead, deciding she'd try the door at the front of the car. She had to get off the train, tell the others what she'd found. Her head spun with what needed to happen next—the community would have to be alerted, a quarantine set up, right away. The federal government should get involved, too, the CDC or USAMRID or maybe the EPA, an agency with the power to close everything down, figure out what had happened. It would be a huge undertaking, but she could really contribute, really make a—
The corpse at the back of the car shifted again, its head settling against its chest, and all thoughts of saving Raccoon fled from her shocked mind. Rebecca turned and ran to the connecting door, sick with fear. All she wanted was out.
It didn't take too long to find a weapon, and as luck would have it, Billy was intimately familiar with the standard-issue MP handgun he found in a duffel bag stuffed under a seat. It was the same kind that his escort had carried. There was a spare clip and a half box of 9x19mm parabellum rounds, too, as well as a flip-top lighter, another handy device to have around; one never knew when fire might be necessary.
He loaded up, stuffing the clip into his belt and the extra rounds into his front pockets, wishing he had his fatigues on instead of civvies. Blue jeans weren't the best for carrying shit around. He started to look for a jacket, then decided against it; even with the rain it was a warm night, and slogging around in wet denim would be bad enough. The small pockets would have to do.
He stood at the door that led back into the woods, weapon in hand, telling himself that he needed to get gone—and yet not leaving. He hadn't heard anything from the S.T.A.R.S. kid since those seven shots. Only a few minutes had passed; if the kid was in trouble, it wasn't too late for him to step in and—
Are you crazy? his brain shouted at him. Go! Run, you idiot!
Right, of course. He had to leave. But he couldn't get the ring of those shots out of his head, and he'd spent too long as one of the good guys to turn his back on one of them, if they needed help.
Besides, if the kid was dead, that would mean an extra weapon.
“Yeah, that's it,” he mumbled, perfectly aware that he was searching for a more criminal-minded reason to justify his decision. There was no help for it; he had to go look.
With an internal groan, Billy turned away from the door, from freedom, moving instead to the front of the car. He stepped through the first door, hesitating a beat in the connecting joint before grasping the handle to the second, into the next car. The only sound was the rain outside, working its way into a real storm. As quietly as he could, he slid the second door open and stepped through.
The unmistakable smell hit him first. His jaw tightened as he surveyed the car, counting heads.
Three in the aisle. Two up ahead on the right, and one directly to his left, slumped down in a seat. All of them dead.
Billy frowned, realizing that any one of the corpses around him could have passed for the dork who'd stepped in front of the jeep, causing the crash. He'd only caught a glimpse of the guy, but remembered thinking that he'd looked sick. Maybe one of these people—but no, they'd been dead for days.
So what was the kid shooting at?
Billy moved closer to the nearest corpse, squatting next to it, taking in the wounds with a trained eye as he breathed shallowly through his mouth. The guy had been dead for awhile; part of his right cheek was missing, making him appear to grin widely up at Billy, and the edges of the torn tissue were rotting, black with decay. And yet there were one, two bullet holes in his brow, and a pool of very fresh blood surrounded his head and upper body like a red shadow. Billy touched the pool with the side of his hand, his frown deepening. It was warm. The next closest body, a train attendant, looked pretty much the same, only one of the wounds was in his throat. He was no Einstein, but he wasn't entirely incapable of logic, either. The fresh blood could only mean that these people just looked dead. And the fact that they were now full of holes suggested that they'd tried to attack the lone S.T.A.R.S. member.