Juggernaut

‘I’ve got a few boxes of .308,’ said Amanda. ‘A good stack of mags for the rifles, a few for the Glocks. But sooner or later we would shoot dry and get overrun.’

‘What about the locomotive?’ asked Voss. ‘What’s the deal? Can it roll or what?’

‘Yeah,’ said Lucy. ‘Given time, I reckon she’ll move.’

‘We need to set a deadline. If you can’t get it running in the next couple of hours, we walk out of here.’

‘All right.’

‘That guy has a pistol,’ said Amanda.

She refocused her night scope. The reticules of her optics zeroed on the dead guy two hundred yards distant. An officer sprawled across the track, right quadrant of his head blown open. Amanda focused on the leather holster strapped to his hip. An automatic pistol.

‘He’s got mag pouches clipped to his belt.’

‘Want to go get them?’ asked Lucy. ‘We could seriously use the ammo.’

‘Let’s do it quick.’

The night scope flashed a battery warning. Amanda unclipped it from her rifle and threw it in the quad trailer.

She handed the rifle to Voss.

‘Get going,’ he told her. ‘Get out there, before any more of those fucks show up. I’ll keep you covered.’

They climbed over the beams and drums that blocked the track.

Lucy looked up. Stars fading into a pale blue sky.

‘Come on. Let’s get this done.’

They ran along the railroad track. They crouched and checked the body.

The corpse bristled with strange malignancies. Face gone, frontal lobes blasted away. Misfiring synapses deep within his shattered cerebral cortex set his foot twitching like he was grooving to a tune only he could hear. Whatever residual spark of life remained with his shattered head would quickly be extinguished when the sun reached its zenith and exposed brain tissue shrivelled dry.

A Russian Makarov pistol. Amanda tried to pull back the slide. The weapon was corroded solid.

‘Fucked up. This baby need a bucket of solvent and a couple of days’ work.’

‘Keep the ammo. We might find a good one.’

Lucy stuffed magazines into her pocket. Old Soviet calibre. Incompatible with Glocks.

‘This guy has a full canteen,’ said Amanda.

‘No good. He might have drunk from it.’

Lucy patted pockets.

‘Prayer beads and a hipflask. A man of contradictions.’

‘I don’t get why they haven’t hit us yet,’ said Amanda, looking towards the canyon entrance. ‘I thought they would be all over us by now.’

Voss spat tobacco. He crouched by the quad, rifle laid across crooked planks.

Amanda’s M40. He adjusted his grip, his hand and shoulder too big for her custom-moulded McMillan stock.

He squinted through the sniper scope and watched the distant figures of Lucy and Amanda search and strip the body.

He sat back and rubbed his eyes.

He looked at the quad trailer next to him. The missile case.

He glanced back down the mine tunnel. The massive locomotive beneath a string of arc lights. Ore wagons and flatbed railcars. Train tracks receding to a distant cavern.

No sign of Jabril.

Voss flipped latches and lifted the lid. He gazed down at the virus cylinder, mesmerised by the ethereal blue glow.