Hell on Earth (21 page)

He tried again: “Couple of cars!” he hollered.
“Couple—car!”

Couple of car. Cars? No, car . . . couple-car.

I smacked my forehead. Decouple the car. Which must
activate,
not aggravate, the emergency brake. Jesus and Mary! What a nightmare; a loud one!

That seemed like a plenty good plan to Yours Truly.

Hauling the mummy up to the semiprotected roof, we staggered overhead toward the last car; that's the one we would decouple. The train was going as fast as before, but we humped a lot faster along the roof this time. Killing the spidermind and steam-demon worked wonders for our self-confidence. Jill's attitude
was so changed that I could probably dangle her over the edge, holding onto her ankles, without her showing a quiver, though I was glad we didn't require such a demonstration.

There were three cattle cars, which we had to pass by creeping along the sides, centimeters away from staring zombies. I thought sure they'd start shooting at us—what a time to die! At least the demons wouldn't keep their mummy.

But the reworked humans merely stared with malignant stupidity. They'd been given no orders, you see . . . just like bureaucrats at the Pentagod.

When we reached the last car, an enclosed cargo car, I looked down through the slatted roof to see that the interior was stuffed with zombies. As expected. Albert slid down between the cars in search of the emergency decoupler. After checking it, he climbed back up and shouted, “When?”

Another good question. We didn't want to be stuck in the middle of the desert. If we hung until the suburbs of L.A., we should be able to hold our own combatwise and be close enough to supplies, shelter, and other transportation.

I tried to remember the L.A. geography. “Riverside!” I shouted. That is, assuming the train passed through Riverside. If not, any eastern bedroom community would do.

Seeing was considerably easier in the daylight, even in the pale green light. For the moment, I didn't even mind the greenish hue of an alien sky. Get rid of these damned invaders, and we could look up at the natural color of blue minus the gray haze for which L.A. was famous. It would take a lot of work increasing the population to get everything back to normal, but it would be a satisfying challenge.

“Single!” hollered Albert. Why was he telling me
that? “Single in couple!” Whoops—
signal
when he should
decouple
the car. He climbed back down.

Arlene tossed me a faint nod and half smile, then gingerly slithered down the ladder and joined him.

F
ly was too good a friend for me not to be honest with him. But I was so surprised how fast things were going that there wasn't anything for me to say. Who could talk in this breeze, anyway?

Fly, like most guys, made certain assumptions about women. When we decided just to be friends, I expected a certain strain. But we were pals, buddies, comrades. I liked it that way.

But bring another man into the picture, and there are consequences. Fly was a big brother. He never did take to Willie; and I don't think he ever thought there'd be the slightest chance I'd ever fall for a religious dude—especially a Mormon!

“Fall” was a bad image. I squeezed down between the surging cars, watching the river of brown streaks racing below us as the ground sped past. Albert stood on the metal tongue-thing that held the cars together; he kept switching his grip back and forth as the cars shimmied. I never realized they moved that much.

I was
falling
for Albert. Crazy, buggin', retarded.
Nothing short of the end of the world could have brought this about.

One “end-of-the-world,” order up! Maybe we could reverse what had happened and give the human race a reason to go on living. Survivors. Those who refused to go down until the fat monster sang.

On Phobos, I thought I might be the only human being left alive in the universe. Then on Deimos, I thought Fly and I might be the only
two
human beings.

However few there were on Earth to stand against the invader, all that mattered was that Fly and I were no longer alone. And looking down on the wide shoulders of my new friend, I hoped I'd be “un-alone” in other ways too.

Drawing near, I saw his lips moving, reciting words that could have been from the Bible for all I knew. Some kind of prayer, I reckoned; it seemed to calm him, give him courage. Guess there's some good in religion after all, if you knew where to look.

I wondered if he had the entire Book of Mormon memorized, or just the “good parts,” the passages that suited his prejudice? I knew, somehow, that Albert wasn't like that—maybe the first guy I ever met who guided his lifestyle by his faith, instead of the other way around.

He stopped, looked up at me and smiled. With an opening like that, he could hardly blame me for taking the next step farther down the ladder.

“Albert!” I shrieked. He said something, but I couldn't hear him. I was probably embarrassing him. That was nothing new for me when it came to interpersonal relationships. “I find you really attractive!” I bellowed romantically, secure in the knowledge that he couldn't hear a damned word. Then I shut up and listened to the train wheels.

“Something mumble something,” he said. Damn,
he
was
embarrassed. But he pressed on, as brave with me as he'd been with the monsters. Now why did I make such a comparison? Typical, Arlene, I said to myself; always your own worst critic.

I don't mean to make you uncomfortable,
I silently mouthed into the maelstrom.

He shook his head and shrugged, which might have meant,
I don't have the faintest idea what you're saying
 . . . but I preferred to interpret it as
Nonsense, darling; my religion is really important to me, but so are you—and I know how you feel about it.

He had me there. I didn't want to say anything right then. Physical combat can be so much easier than the other kind! I listened to the steady rhythm of the train wheels pounding in my skull like a .50 caliber machine gun, drowning out even the 300 kph typhoon we rolled through. The irregular rattling sound of the coupler, waiting for Albert's hands to reach down and seize it, sounded like ground-to-air artillery.

I looked at the ground unfurling beneath us like a giant banner; then I looked up at blurs that might be trees or telephone poles, shading a dawn green as a lime before it rotted and became zombie lotion.

“I can't give you what you want,” I said at normal speaking volume. Even
I
couldn't hear me.

He said nothing, but looked up shyly at me.

I liked him calling me beautiful. With his eyes, at least. I liked it a lot. Being honest came more easily now that we were both admitting our mutual attraction. Well, you know what I mean—this wasn't exactly the best spot for a romantic conversation; but I knew what he would be admitting if I could hear him.

It wasn't only that I had problems with his religion; I didn't like
any
of them. I don't like turning over moral authority to a bearded ghost that you can't find when everything blows up.

Besides, we might not be compatible in other ways. Hah, how pure Arlene that was! Telling the man I wanted all the reasons why it would never work. I was grateful that it was so noisy down here that Fly couldn't hear a word. Time to shift from negatives to positives.

“But Albert, we could give it a try,” I said, not caring that I was basically talking to the wind and the wheels. He wasn't even looking at me at the moment, concentrating on keeping his balance and not losing a finger in the metal clacking thing.

“We could, like, date. You know, spend a few nights together, if we live through this. Who knows? Something might happen.”

Again he left me to contemplation of the train and the terrain. He was obviously struggling over what I'd said. It was pretty obvious that four forces were fighting in him at this moment: morality, manners,
moi,
and volume-comma-lack of.

Finally he worked up his nerve, craned his neck again where he could look me in the eye and said, “Something rumble something question mark?”

Now that was a conversation stopper. But I only let it stop us for a moment. “You mean, you're a virgin?” I asked, incredulous.

He tilted his head to the side; was that a yes?

“But you're a Marine!” I howled in amazement.

I burst out laughing at my own outburst. The Church of the Marine loomed larger in my mind than any competing firm.

Of course, there are Marines who remain loyal to their wives or abstain from sex for religious reasons. Hey, fornication is not part of the job description!

Amazing, but true. Still, the odds were against the clean-living Marine. “You ever heard the phrase, ‘There are no virgins in foxholes'?” I asked.

He watched my animated, one-sided dialogue—it wasn't really a monologue—in puzzlement, tortured soul that he was. I couldn't give up that easily. What about the various ports and landing zones he must have visited on his sea tour? Bombay, Madrid, Manila, Hong Kong, Calcutta, Kuwait City!

Albert smiled at me again. Progress! I had an admission. I knew how I would conduct the cross-examination: “So tell me, Mr. Marine Corps sniper, did you never visit any of the local sex scenes? The cages of Bombay that hang over the street, where you have sex with a pross in full view? The port-pros in Manila? The Hong Kong sex tours, where a soldier with a few bucks in his pocket can visit a dozen knocking shops in a day and a half? Kefiri City, with more glory holes than any other . . . ?

You don't know? Uh, you place your you-know-what through a hole in a wall and somebody on the other side does, you know.

Yeah, maybe it was morals. Maybe he just didn't want his gun to turn green and fall off.

The angle was probably tough on his neck, but he swiveled his body a little so he could almost face me. “Something jumble something interrogative?”

Me?
Well no, not exactly. He stared at me awhile longer. No, those places tend to be attractions for a male Marine. What would I do with a glory hole, for Pete's sake?

Heh, I could work the other side, theoretically. All right; he might have been naive in some ways, but he was a man of the world in others. The contradictions in this big man appealed to me. He contained multitudes.

I reached out and touched his cheek, glad he didn't pull away. I was afraid he might have been ready to write me off as a Marine slut. No dice; I was a
responsible girl . . . responsible behavior in today's world meant carry extra loads and sleep with both eyes open. To quote everybody's third-favorite weird German philosopher, Oswald Spengler:

Life, if it would be great, is hard; it demands a choice only between victory and ruin, not between war and peace. And to the victors belong the sacrifices of victory. For that which shuffles querulously and jealously by the side of the events is only literature.

Hey, that could be our first date! We hurl quotations at each other from thirty paces!

R
iverside was coming up fast, so I took another look down at Arlene and Albert. They seemed to be carrying on a deeply meaningful conversation, though the Blessed Virgin only knew how they could possibly hear each other over that racket. It seemed impolite to stare, so I focused my attention on the horizon. There was a war to fight, a war to fight.

“Albert! Now!” I boomed at peak volume as the town raced up to greet us. Albert and Arlene started yanking on a lever atop the coupler. They heaved
again and again, until I thought we'd be cruising into Grand Central before they got the bloody thing unhooked. Then it cracked open and the cars separated with an explosive bang.

The pneumatic brakes activated automatically, slowing the loose car we were on while the rest of the train sped on, oblivious, impervious. I wondered if the aliens would even notice that a car was missing. We destroyed the spidermind; did they have enough initiative even to count?

We braked toward a stop, more or less terrifyingly. The rails screamed, the car rocked and rolled. Jill held on for dear life, looking as green as the sky. Arlene and Albert kicked back, cool to the max. I was too busy watching everybody else to notice whether I was cool or freaked: I didn't want one of my crew to fall under the wheels and be crushed to death without me being instantly aware of it.

I couldn't bring myself to abandon the car without expressing an opinion on the zombies sardine-canned below. I positioned myself and fired a bunch of rounds through the roof slats. This riled them up, and they behaved in the approved manner. They attacked each other with mindless ferocity.

As the car came to a complete stop, Albert and I managed the cybermummy between us quite easily. We hopped down and bolted for cover in an alley.

The streets of Riverside were like the valleys of a lost civilization or the canyons of a mysterious planet. We beat cleats up and down to throw off any alien patrols.

Although deep in the heart of enemy territory, surrounded by more monsters than at any other time since returning to Earth, it was a relief to be off the train. I didn't know about the others, but I was grateful for solid ground underfoot again.

There was no way to tell what were the mummy's requirements for life support. Perhaps with an IV he could survive indefinitely in his present condition; but there was no way for us to be certain without direct communication.

Meanwhile, Arlene and Jill took point and tail, respectively. We were at the part of the mission where we were truly interchangeable, except for the necessity of keeping Jill alive until she could do her computer trick. Nowhere was safer than anywhere else.

We whisked through street and alley, avoiding patrols of roving monsters. We ran, carrying the mummy like old bedclothes between us. Putting the mummy down for a moment, Albert pointedly asked of Jill, “Are there any safe houses around here?”