Chapter 30
Leon and Claire walked over the sets of railroad tracks, looking around. There were at least ten different parallel rows of tracks, all interconnected by manual switch points. Shipping containers and tankers sat unused on some of the tracks, but there were no locomotives that they could see. There were a few lonely lamp posts, but most of the yard was obscured in darkness.
“What is this place?” Claire asked.
Leon, carrying Sherry in his arms, looked up and down the tracks. “It’s where railroad shipments get delivered,” he guessed. “The trains come in here, get unloaded, and then they use all these tracks to switch the trains around. There’s probably one of those huge rotating machines down there that they use to turn the trains around in the other direction.”
“Do you think it’s safe here?”
“No. But if we can find a vehicle, we can drive it along the tracks. It will take us right out of the city.”
“I guess it’s just the three of us again,” Claire commented, looking back behind them. “Looks like Ada ran off, just like I thought she would.”
“Can you really blame her?” Leon asked.
“What do you mean?”
Leon sighed tiredly and set Sherry down. She stood on weak legs and looked around with a dazed expression on her face. Grease from inside the industrial press was smeared across her legs and on her checkered school skirt, but she didn’t seem to notice.
“It’s not easy to risk your life to save someone you barely know,” Leon said, not really knowing why he was bothering to justify Ada’s actions. “Most people are too afraid, or just too cowardly. They might put themselves in danger to save their own family, but most people wouldn’t risk their lives to save a complete stranger.”
“You did,” Claire said. “You could have run off when me and Sherry were trapped back there.” She stepped forward and looked up into Leon’s eyes. “But you didn’t run away. You risked your life to save us.”
“Yeah, well maybe I’m an exception.”
They walked along the tracks to the giant building near the front of the rail yard. It was an enormous wooden structure as large as an airplane hangar, over two stories tall, with sides that sloped up to meet at the top of the slanted roof. Both the front and rear of the building were wide open with no doors at all, and long rows of fluorescent lights hanging from the high ceiling. Three parallel lines of railroad tracks went down one side of the hangar, one of which was occupied with a row of train cars, several of them large tanker cars. The other side was a long platform with rows of small, cramped offices at the end. A metal staircase went above the offices to more rooms on the second floor. The ceiling, high above them, was a maze of long wooden beams to support the arched roof.
They walked through the hangar, passing by piles of wooden pallets, crates, and wooden skids. There were two more forklifts here as well for unloading the trains, but the keys were not in the ignition this time. The train tracks that led into the hangar continued on for a hundred yards beyond the building and were loaded with various empty train cars.
“We need a vehicle. A truck, a car, anything,” Leon muttered. “Hell, I’ll take a bicycle at this point.”
“If we can take the train tracks out of the city, maybe we should just start walking,” Claire suggested.
At this point, Sherry spoke up. “I don’t want to walk anymore,” she said.
“We’re all too tired to keep walking,” Leon agreed. “Besides, if that thing chases after us again, we’ll never outrun it. We need wheels.”
There was a small parking lot to the side of the hangar, with a few vehicles. There were no zombies at all, which at the moment, was not even good news. Leon hoped to find cars in the parking lot and then track down their owners, like he did earlier that day at the gas station, to get the keys. But whoever owned the cars parked out front were long gone.
“Can you hotwire a car?” Claire asked with a shrug.
“I had a friend in high school that knew how,” Leon said. “But it’s a lot harder than it looks in the movies. If I tried, I’d probably just electrocute myself.”
“Maybe we’ll find keys in one of the offices.”
“It’s worth a look.”
Just as they turned to walk back into the hangar, they heard the monster again, its hungry roar breaking the stillness. Claire moaned in despair and Sherry fearfully clutched her, while Leon drew his pistol with a sense of finality. He knew he only had a handful of bullets left, and they were about as effective on the monster as flicking rubber bands at it.
Down the avenue, the monster came running, its warped body lurching back and forth on its small legs. It was brutally impaled by a forklift just minutes ago, but the wounds seemed to have healed immediately. It galloped down the street and leaped into the parking lot, smashing down on one of the cars, crushing it flat.
“Come on,” Leon said, leading Claire and Sherry into the hangar. They were too tired to keep running, too tired to fight, too tired for anything. They made it this far, but Leon felt that they would go no farther.
They hurried down the long platform as fast as they could. The monster bounded across the parking lot, growling loudly, as if it knew that its prey was almost within reach. It entered the hangar and came at them, then seemed to slow down and stop. The two tiny human eyes compressed into the small head shined with life, the final spark of humanity in a monster that had lost all traces of its original human form.
What had Sherry’s father done? Leon wondered. Annette said that he infected himself with a virus of some kind, but what could force anyone to do something like that? What dire circumstances could force a person to deliberately let themselves mutate into a hideous creature like this? Did Sherry’s father have any memories, any lingering trace of conscience?
Sherry could not go any farther. She lost her footing and fell to the ground, crying in pain. She rolled onto her side and Claire stopped to come back for her. Leon backed up warily, his gun in his hand, standing guard in between the monster and Sherry.
The creature that was once Sherry’s father stepped forward menacingly, eyes staring down the platform at Sherry’s helpless form. Leon realized at that moment that deep down inside, the creature did have some leftover sense of memory. That was why it pursued them so fiercely.
It remembered Sherry.
There was nowhere left for them to run. The creature must have sensed it, smelled their fear and understood. The other end of the hangar was a hundred feet away but it might as well have been a hundred miles. The monster could catch them in seconds if they ran for it. Leon braced himself and raised his gun. Claire was sobbing in despair behind him.
This is the end, he thought.