Juggernaut

Tomasz buckled and took the joystick. He checked airspeed and altitude. He pulled back the collective. He reduced thrust. The plane began a steady deceleration, a steady descent.

A woman’s voice from the sat com. She sounded tired and desperate.

‘Angel Flight, do you copy, over? Angel Flight, do you read?…’

Tomasz took the handset from its charge shoe. He hit the off switch and threw it behind him. The unit clattered on the deck.

‘Okay. Here we go. Descending to five thousand. Eighty knots. Love from above, baby. This is going to be a big one. This is going to light up the fucking sky.’

Countdown

‘We’ve got to get to the engine,’ said Lucy.’ This is turning into the fucking Alamo.’

They unchained the door at the head of the carriage. Amanda pulled the door wide. Two Republican Guard tumbled into the coach. Lucy shouldered her rifle and fired. Neat drill holes between the eyes. The back of their heads blew apart. She kicked the bodies aside.

Lucy jumped the knuckle-coupling and landed on the rear platform of the locomotive. Soldiers jostled, reached up for her.

A rotted infantryman gripped the guard rail and began to haul himself up onto the platform. Lucy delivered a vicious kick to his head. He toppled from the train.

More soldiers crowded round the coupling. Lucy delivered headshots.

‘Jump,’ she shouted.

Amanda jumped. She landed, screamed, and clutched her injured leg. Lucy helped Amanda limp along the narrow walkway.

Lucy knelt and capped the fuel tank.

A skeletal revenant sat on the locomotive roof above the slide door, crouched like a vulture. He leaned down. He leered and hissed. Lucy shot him through the mouth. A streak of red tracer. His jaw flew off. The back of his skull blew out in a shower of sparks. He hung dead.

Lucy grabbed the lifeless man by the collar and threw him from the train.

The cab slide door was open. A rotted infantryman inside, lurking in shadow. Amanda split his head with the machete. They dragged him from the cab and toppled him over the walkway guard rail.

Soldiers climbed up onto the walkway. Lucy delivered swift headshots. The rifle clicked dry.

‘I’m out.’

She tossed the weapon.

They sealed themselves inside the cab. More soldiers on the walkway. Lucy struggled to hold the slide door closed. Bloody hands slapped and pawed glass.

Lucy squinted through the blood-spattered window. Black smoke rose from the mangled, smoking chassis of the fuel truck. A distant dot approaching from the south, cresting the valley ridge. Something big. Something silver. An incoming plane. A heavy twin-prop cargo lifter.

She was overcome by a strength-sapping wave of failure. She led her guys into the desert. Promised them gold. They died, one by one, in this god-forsaken shithole. Couldn’t even get her boys home alive.

‘We’re fucked.’

Amanda stood at the engine’s console.

A cadaverous figure crouched on the hood of the locomotive. He stared through the windshield, spat and snarled. He punched plate glass until his hand was a bloody pulp.

Amanda tried to put the sound from her mind. The thump and smear of knuckles mashed against the windshield. The muffled mewing of Republican Guards out on the walkway, clawing at windows, hungry for flesh.

She struggled to clear her head and concentrate on the control panel in front of her. She tried to decipher the ignition sequence.

She checked the breaker panel. Every circuit switch set to On. Rows of green lights.

You’re going to die, said an insidious voice in her head. You are about to be consumed by searing fire. These are your last moments. Watching your hands flick switches and turn dials.

Fuck that shit, said a counter-voice. Don’t give into bullshit fatalism. Fight to live.

She felt drunk with exhaustion. She rubbed her eyes. She checked controls.

Brake released.

Reverser to Forward.

Throttle from Idle to Run 1.

Roar of turbocharged motive power. A jolt. The locomotive began to inch forward.

Throttle to Run 2.

Amp needles jumped. The engine began to accelerate. Gathering speed.

Amanda sagged and fell. She examined her leg. Fresh blood bubbled through the surgical dressing. She dug in her chest pouch for the last morphine syrette.

Lucy struggled to keep the cab door closed. Monstrously malformed soldiers massed on the walkway outside. She kicked open a tool box and used a wrench to jam the latch.

She looked out the window. She craned to see the sky.

She took the sat phone from her pocket.

‘Angel Flight. Incoming plane, do you copy? There are people on the ground. Do not drop the bomb. Please, do not drop the bomb. There are British and American personnel in need of rescue, do you copy, over?’