Gravewalkers: City of Woe

By Richard T. Schrader

The story begins three hundred years after an unfortunate archeological discovery has unleashed a rage-virus plague outbreak that transformed the population of the Earth into infectious ghouls. These zombie-minded 'infected' hunt and kill natural humans on sight. In this future, the last remnants of mankind survive in orbital space aboard their ultra-secure technological habitats. Even with their superior science and hard won experience, mysterious accidents and inexplicable disasters continue to thwart humanity’s attempts to restore a permanent foothold on their now hopelessly conquered and quarantined murder plague planet.

The main character, Captain Critias of the Marshal Service’s Virgil Ludus, and his combat android Carmen, they adventure on the front lines of this conflict. Critias discovers a closely-guarded secret, that among the feral-brained filthy ghouls are intelligent asymptomatic carriers known as Watchers. These cunning immortals have been the source of many unsolved calamities. They do whatever is necessary to ensure that men never retake their conquered planet. Hidden in the impenetrable reforested wilds of Earth’s ruins are thousands of these ancient immortal ghouls that still retain their former human intelligence. They jealously defend their world against humans that have become unwelcome interlopers.

Mankind only narrowly dodged extinction because of the fabled leadership of their legendary King Louie, the man that first united the last tribal holdouts of human survivors during the first few years after the outbreak began.

Critias and Carmen, monster fighting super cops from the future, encounter a prodigy physicist that opens a quantum teleportation portal into the King Louie past. They travel back nearly 300 years to experience the Dying Time era, about forty months after first infection. Critias and Carmen join the great King Louie and his huge world of heroic characters. In the past, they will find the answer that ends the ghouls and allows mankind to finally reclaim the Earth. Along the way, both discover the real wealth in humanity that makes it worth saving, Critias from the perspective of the system regimented man, and Carmen from the vain ambitions of science becoming a rival to god.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Richard T. Schrader
• Release date: Jul 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463480502

Richard T. Schrader

Suicide Squad 2 and Peacemaker are adaptions of characters from Gravewalkers.The helmets from before are stolen from here. If you liked the show you will love this.Audiobook versions with subtitles are available on Youtube. I will eventually have all 12.For those of you who felt something for my characters, especially my beloved and misunderstood autistic sidekick, that means a lot to me. I wish I could have gotten out of this permanent shadowban through some way other than plagiarism.It's ok that you were only curious. This is a video world now.@RichardTSchrad1 Twitter

Book preview

Gravewalkers

Book Twelve

City of Woe

Richard T. Schrader

Copyright © 2019 Richard T. Schrader

Copyright © 2022 Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved.

Contents

Greatest Show on Earth

Ozymandias

Ghost Dance

Blood and Clown Paint

Houses of the Blind

Grim Worm

Valley of Pale Horses

Notre Dame

Rebound

Dark Theater

Operation Hummingbird

Vae Victis

Monsters From the Id

Mou-baligh

Hiatus

Chapter 1: Greatest Show on Earth

Promising thus far described that late summer morning. Colonel Jam-up Samantha Flash expected the perfect weather to last all day. A meteorological satellite report that came from Kevin’s control room back east at King’s Tower in Jim’s city had only confirmed it.

The air felt a little damp as though from a fog that she couldn’t see and it was cool enough for comfort for those wearing full outdoor protection gear. The day would be plenty hot once it had matured; until then it was ideally pleasant.

At the moment, Jam surveyed the terrain ahead of her locomotive through huge naval binoculars equipped with the finest optics. She mentally counted off both ghouls and seconds. Her final tally calculated an impressive gobbler population that was no worse than she had expected to find upon their arrival.

It was a deadly megacity after all. She had to thwart the entrenched landlords of that track if they wanted to continue westward to Denver and then beyond to Colonel Davis’ new acquisitions. The way that urban fortress just passively squatted there invitingly subdued, didn’t fool Jam; once fully riled, it would prove to be a beast with a belly full of teeth.

In a real way, the absurdly massive number of murderous infected living in that metropolis was like the flesh, blood, and homicidal spirit that animated a reinforced concrete skeleton. All combined, they formed a single carnivorous creature.

The city waited patiently and when Jam did wake it, she was sure it was going to get nasty. It really was just as Carmen had once said in another time; calling it a city was a curt euphemism, especially for such a howling miasmatic nightmare that asserted itself at only one speed, that of fully unbridled vomitorium bath-salt victory riot.

Marshal Juke was safely off in command of his own train. He had two engines now and needed those to drag his three-mile-long chain of valuable railcars, hundreds of them packed with premium forage.

No offense to Foragers, but the Freemen harvested resources on a scale that made King Louie’s people seem like raw amateurs. Freemen knew their worth and they were rightly proud of it.

Juke was on his way back to King Louie’s city to drop off some of his railcars in their new storage yard that they had cleared and made operational just south of the Castle station.

Jim would stay busy just trying to find places to store all his new equipment, goods, and provisions.

Fuel container cars would be fine sitting outside on storage shunts. Many more railcars would continue on to end up in the subterranean mine tunnels beneath Commodore Tinny’s new capital city of Camelot.

Jam’s target city excelled in three areas: its numbers of ghouls, the amount of fresh water, and the abundance of heavyrail track.

Heavy gauge rail positively stitched the place together, usually running doubled up in parallel, with numerous huge storage yards, and dozens of major factory railhead shunts.

There was even an epically scaled fully-enclosed locomotive repair facility. The city had more than one actually. The best one was eight times superior to the shop currently in use by Ray Brakeman, which was out west at Boulder Dam.

In all honesty, Jam didn’t think she would ever get the chance to loot the city. She was just trying to get from one side to the other and that would be hard enough. Jam rightly feared the risk of trying to set up camp in the area to go shopping.

If they ever did break down Kansas City like a boiled crab, something like Hiram had done in Vegas, there would be a wonderland of looting for them to take.

The city was in the middle of the continent and that had mattered during the Outbreak. The mass exodus of official military and refugee traffic from the west had poured through for some time before it too fell like the cities before it.

Gory splatter of undead battle blood had eventually contaminated everything beyond any hope of remediation. That mess inevitably congealed into its final form of a permanent ghoul occupation.

Government officials at the time had cleared the commercial heavyrail traffic out of the city in advance of its eventual collapse. All that railcar constipation had gone eastward, since those crews were fleeing for their lives just like everyone else. That rail migration from the city had become the heavy blockage that had obstructed Juke’s mission for so long.

Looking through her binoculars again, Jam saw that Juke’s difficulties had actually been a miracle in disguise. If she had to strip out miles of additional railcars from inside the city core, it would have been tantamount to suicide.

All of that work so far and Juke’s huge trainload heading back to King Louie and their new Freemen base of Camelot only accounted for their final approach.

The stage was set for breaking through the only real impediment in their path to a Denver connection. After that, it would be smooth sailing for rail traffic back and forth.

The challenge ahead of Jam was not the removal of railcars, but the switching of the point blade turnouts. She had to unlock the right railway switches to navigate the maze of winding overlapping railway. Her train had to come out in the right place on the other side.

Flipping turnouts was the same job Alice had done in the storage yard back at Foragers’ Castle. In Jam’s case, she would have to switch one turnout after another, do it ahead of her train while it waited, painstakingly, until they had crossed right through the center of the city.

As they went, the entire local population of ghouls would attack Jam’s train, which she had sample estimated at around four-hundred thousand.

Obviously, only ghouls that got close enough could attack the train. The getting to them part was actually most of the issue, since that only took time for ghouls to run from one place to another. Time was something they would have aplenty because Jam would be the one serving it up to them.

At each turnout interval, Jam had to bring the train to a complete stop. Someone would have to go out there in front of the locomotive and then flip the turnout manually just as Alice had done.

The longer it took to make the switch on the turnout, the more ghouls that would arrive to siege them. The person flipping the turnout had to avoid dying while doing it multiple times.

For anyone less capable and experienced than Jam-up Sam Flash, the mission to cross Kansas City would have been impossible.

Pike came out onto the Greatest Show on Earth to speak with Jam. That was what everyone called the new foremost railcar on Jam’s train. It pushed out front like a patio deck that was directly before her primo locomotive.

The Greatest Show on Earth got its name from having that written on the sides. It was a former circus train railcar. That one had served the specific purpose of transporting ground vehicles.

It was a twin-deck affair with a tall bottom deck for trucks to park inside. The shorter upper deck transported automobiles that were not as tall. The railcar itself was exceptionally long with room for many vehicles.

The train rolled along slowly as they made final preparations for the crossing. One of the rivers that cut through the city was just off to their right past a screen of trees. They had more trees along their left, making it a quiet stretch of track. It was their proverbial calm before the storm.

While they idled along at jogging speed, a few dozen infected chased and hooted at the train. For the moment, it was a mechanical target rather than an overtly human one. That restricted their hateful shrieking down to the level of only a moderate enthusiasm.

Pike walked the length of the upper car deck. There were mounted engines in their protective cages and other heavy mission equipment for him to get around on his way.

Jam handed him her binoculars when he arrived at the front end of the railcar. Her summation he would fully understand amounted to the words, No worse than expected.

The same chest-high metal wall enclosed all around the railcar’s upper deck perimeter, leaving it otherwise completely open to the sky. If they had ever wanted to actually load cars onto that upper deck, sections of its floor hydraulically folded down into ramps that they could then drive up from inside the lower truck parking level.

Just say the word, Pike replied sounding confident. It was his final assurance to her that he and the crew were in ready position and fully focused for what came next.

The task ahead of them was dangerous even without any unexpected problems that might occur along the way. A major equipment failure or derailment could easily leave them all dead.

Pike read Jam’s calm demeanor to be a genuine one. When working the iron, her better self rose to the occasion. Pike believed in her and her plan.

A nod came from Jam. Such a simple gesture had started wars. Hers just did.

Pike turned and then started walking back. He twirled a raised finger for the lookouts to see immediately while he also radioed for everyone else to begin, It’s show time.

One Freemen engineer in a disposable hazmat suit got into the small but amply protected cab that was part of the four-jointed boom crane.

Commodore Tinny had installed it on the upper deck when he repurposed the Greatest Show on Earth. The crane itself was especially nice, but still just a super heavy-duty truck mounted model. It was not nearly as mighty as a train-lifting wrecker. This one was just large enough to move around the equipment that Jam would use on their mission.

Launch the Pig, Pike ordered over the radio.

The crane’s hook-hand picked up a rail-riding camera drone that looked like a sort of turtle or a huge upside-down cooking wok. Its heavy weight, low center of gravity, and smooth surface made it immune to any ghouls that might mess with it.

The crane operator was that crude fellow they called Rump. What he lacked in manners, he made up for as an artist when piloting that extraordinarily articulated machine. Rump deftly snatched up the Pig and then put it down onto the heavyrail track out front.

The Pig machine raced away ahead of them as soon as he let it go.

It did not take long for the Pig to prove its worth. As it went off ahead, its cameras showed the lovely scenery.

The land was so lush, forested, and exceptionally well watered. Not only did two major rivers pass through the downtown area, there were also numerous creeks and marshy flood areas abundant besides. It was ghoul heaven and Jam was about to poop in their punchbowl.

So massive was the railway investment in the city that much of their way had been on three parallel lanes. Up ahead, all those rails made turnouts into one another. Two rails headed off one way and two more went in a different direction.

Long before Jam’s train got there, the Pig went through to discover that it headed the wrong way because the point blades of the turnout were in the diverting position. Jam would have to stop the train and then use the point machine to shift the blades back the other way.

Colonel Flash was already suited up in her strapped leather road gear. Rump the crane operator lifted the shark cage off the deck, which allowed Jam to climb inside it from the open bottom.

They only called it the shark cage because of what it did. In appearance it was a giant section of iron pipe about as big around as a hot tub’s interior and it was tall enough for a person to comfortably hide up inside. The top had a strong iron lid and a carrying loop. The bottom had nothing but a view. Jam rode inside on a sort of dancer’s pole that hung down in the middle with a metal disk at the bottom for standing on.

Jam’s adopted daughter Pipkin had remote control of the Pig using a redundant pair of laptop computers, all from a café booth inside a comfortable passenger car.

She brought the Pig back from its wrong course to then stop and park it next to the point machine gear that her mother would have to switch.

Another Freemen engineer worked as Jam’s driver. He used the position of the Pig to know exactly where to stop and he did it with expert brevity due to the maximum haste he had in mind. Jam’s train only pulled her personal working cars, which made the load short and light, easy to stop, and then to start moving again.

Even more ghouls came around of course, attracted by the infected screams, mechanical noise, and engine smells of the train.

Their numbers were light so far and all the train cars had defensive skirts that were effectively unclimbable without tribe level numbers to boost them up. That meant they were safe until the train came to a complete stop and then all the pursuing ghouls could catch up to gather in one place.

Rump as crane operator didn’t hesitate to play rough with both the infected and Jam while she clung onto her perilous little perch inside that gobbler diving bell.

He lifted the shark cage tube out over the side of the railcar and then swept it along the ground like a wrecking ball. The cage smashed into numerous infected and knocked them out of the way. Rump carefully timed his movements so that as the train came to a complete stop and he set Jam’s bell down on the ground, he wouldn’t trap any ghouls underneath it.

The only things Jam wanted in there with her was all her tools that hung on hooks with dummy cords and the point machine turnout control box that remained fixed to the ground beside the tracks.

The point machine was a long rectangular dirty gray plastic shell with electric motors and control rods that would push the point blades into possible positions.

Jam was a seasoned expert and had dropped down to the ground as soon as she landed. Her light came from a lamp on her helmet. Little if any sunlight came in around the base of the bell because it was so heavy that it sank into the gravel. Jam heard the ghouls beating on the iron shell, but nothing short of high-end rifle fire could even harm it, and it literally weighed tons.

She used the manly-sized firefighter’s bolt cutters to snip off a padlock from the backside of the point machine. So liberated, Jam jerked the selector lever into position and then threw the much larger hand throw lever. Mechanical advantage was on her side and the point blades obediently moved to the other track.

Jam hung up her bolt cutters, climbed back onto her safety perch, and then radioed for Rump to take her away.

The train was already moving from the moment the point blades slipped over to the other side.

Pipkin had been watching too and didn’t waste a second to get the Pig on the move again. She led their way as before so that Pipkin could seek the next faulty turnout. Kevin’s control room had supplied excellent maps. She knew the way.

They only had nineteen more miles to go.

One mile down, the next turnout was going the wrong direction. The point machine was not quite underneath where a rail overpass crossed their line. It was the branch they had turned away from at the last switch.

With only a mile to travel, the train never made enough speed to escape the pursuing ghouls, far from it. Not only did the screaming infected keep pace with them, but also their numbers had quadrupled over that short distance.

This time, the gobbler bell slammed into a heavy crowd of the creatures and several had limbs trapped under the edge of the shark cage when it hit the ground. None of the ghouls was in a position to stop Jam from doing her work and she had a pistol to shoot any that might become an issue later.

The Pig could not move off on its own while completely surrounded by agitated ghouls. Many of them climbed all over it and blocked the rails too.

Pipkin’s remote control allowed her to trigger the four flamethrower nozzles that spit flaming kerosene from holes in the wok armor. That loosened the ghouls up enough that the Pig headed forward on the correct track.

The boom crane brought up the wet flaming bell just enough to skim safely over the ground. The dangling cage knocked away infected until it was clear of attack and the overpass trestle, and then Rump lifted it back aboard.

The next mile and a half was still deceptively rural terrain with overgrown forest pressing the railway from either side.

They swiftly passed under a double highway overpass without catching any jumpers. Jam and Pike used their rifles to shoot down the small throng of infected that gathered at the elevated guardrail to watch their approach. With them out of the way, none of the others up there ever got into position before it was already too late for them to try.

Their track elevated onto a trestle for a distance. The transition worked wonderfully to slow down the ghoul tribe that was in hot pursuit. Since those runners could not easily follow along the unpaved trestle, they lost pace, clogged up, and generally impeded themselves while finding their way around that obstacle, which they did.

After the trestle, when they were back on the ground with the ghouls, they saw the city’s industrial district begin to fill in their view off to the north on their right. At the same time, the premium ghoul habitat suburban sprawl began to fill in their view to the south on their left.

The ghouls sprinted after their train at about twenty-five miles per hour. If they took the train up to twice that speed, it didn’t really make any difference over the course of only a few miles. It stretched the ghouls out behind them, but they still came on hard and ready to overtake the train in an instant.

Beyond that unfaltering pursuit, even more infected continuously arrived to join their ever expanding tribe, with new members popping up in front of the train too. The screaming of the ghouls that chased after Jam’s train called in more infected by the thousands. It got louder, scarier, and more dangerous, exponentially multiplying by the mile.

Presumably, their train was going to have to stop again and flip more turnouts. When that happened, it was likely that the infected would be numerous enough to impede the effort.

Despite what should have been an unnerving backdrop of Hell on steroids, Jam took a calm moment to admire the industrial district’s railway storage yard. Her train passed it just then along its southern edge. The railyard was a quarter-mile across and two and a half miles long, all harp stringed railcar storage shunts.

It was such a treasure to behold that Jam sighed, Now, if only we had a way of stealing all that from the gobblers.

When Commodore Tinny referred to their work as train robbery, he wasn’t kidding. That was just one yard, with boxcars still on the rail trucks. There were more yards just like it, and whole other yards where they stacked only the containers after a crane had lifted them away.

Even more yards after that had tractor-trailers by the hundreds. It was a looter’s paradise, if not for the infected who were in invincible numbers with ideal cover for getting in danger close before combat.

Pipkin understood that the Pig had satellite uplink for its controls, which meant that range was not really an issue.

Many a speculative engineering genius of the Council of Governors had contributed to making the clever railway battle bot. With its powerful motorcycle engine armored up inside that wok shell, it was plenty fast too.

Pipkin ran it up to high speed so that they would know their next problem as soon as possible. If anyone wondered what would happen when she rammed a ghoul at such velocity, it went cartwheeling through the sky and the Pig didn’t mind a bit.

As the Pig got even further ahead of the train without incident, Jam’s engineer driver put on more speed. He continuously calculated according to the Pig just how much space he would need for coming to a stop again.

Driving at even triple the running speed of ghouls accomplished nothing astounding, and how they screamed. Kansas City had not seen human activity in ages and they were hotly sensitive to the incursion.

Jam wasn’t sure how many were on them then, but it was well into the tens of thousands, and that was so loud that the whole city was awake at that point. It was boiling over mad and not even close to rock bottom.

Miles ticked past on the Pig.

Pipkin finally radioed a warning to her mother, You need to get buttoned up. There are three major highway overpasses coming. They are huge and covered in mad gobblers.

Jam understood from having studied the mission maps. Their rail had mostly followed the major river all the way from Jim’s city where it merged with his mighty waterway up north near Fort Blood. When they moved away from the water, it wasn’t that far.

At the moment, their track was getting closer again, and when they entered the core of the city, the old city West Bottoms, the train would be running one-hundred feet from the water. The overpasses all led up to the major bridges that went over the river, which explained why transient infected so heavily populated them.

The screaming was that loud; whole other boroughs of the city were on the attack and they had to cross the highway bridges to come over the river. Putting it all in context was the remaining fact that Jam was still going over the side to throw the next point machine.

As far as getting under cover, for Jam that meant getting back in her shark cage. While the gobbler bell was down on the deck, she would be totally safe from any infected who managed to jump aboard off the overpasses, and certainly some would, perhaps many.

The Pig finally found its next faulty points and then followed them off in a wrong direction again. Pipkin called it out even as she was stopping to back the machine up into position beside the point machine switch. The location was just over seven miles from the last one.

Jam’s train had put a good lead on most of the pursuing infected, but so many came in from other directions and ahead of them that it was swarming, no other way to put it.

Once Rump’s crane boom had Jam safe inside her cage, she radioed to her crew, This is exactly what we came here for and we rehearsed it to perfection.

Now I need you to give me all you’ve got. You are already the best. Open up the big top so we can welcome in all the boys and girls. It’s time for the Greatest Show on Earth!

Tony Banjo was down on the lower truck deck, all the way in the back where he had a sort of combat control room. The wall in front of him was thick plastic artificial glass inside steel frame supports. It was totally bullet resistant and safe like from the booth of an urban gas station or bank window.

The engineers had rubbed it down with rain be gone chemical so that it had blood shedding hydrophobic properties. Blood would bead up and roll right down rather than stick and smear, which would have confounded his vision. Fingernails could not scratch it and ghouls did not have metal weapons that could, making it all copasetic.

The Greatest Show on Earth had gotten its complete refit care of Commodore Tinny wielding the full resources of Reclamation General. All the mechanics, speculative engineers, and experts had gotten their chance to contribute their bit of skill and genius.

The lower truck deck was simply empty other than Tony’s little walled off compartment in the far back.

They normally kept the front of the railcar closed, but Tony opened it with one of his control levers.

A powerful motor used a slow gear-ratio drive to open vertical louvers. When they turned ninety degrees out, ghouls could easily get between them to charge inside. The advantage was that it simply did not matter what any ghouls did when the louvers closed again. They were heavy steel and could inexorably twist shut regardless of what got in their way.

The sides of the lower deck were formerly open to the air with giant rectangular windows. The Commodore’s welders had put in prison bars, leaving the spaces free to the breeze, but not to the passage of ghouls, in or out.

Once infected entered past the open front louvers, the ghouls would only be able to charge forward deeper into the long car. Since they would be able to see Tony down there behind his transparent bait wall, they would have good reason to proceed.

The last windows on each side at the back of the lower deck, near Tony’s shelter, instead of having the same prison bars, they had two horizontal rollers made from consecutive Oreo-racked truck tires all riding together on a common through them all axle. The powerful diesel engines up on the upper deck with their protective cages were what powered the tire rolling pins to make them spin.

A pair of spinning tire rollers worked together one above the other in the way that an antique clothes washing machine had a rolling squishing wringer. Anything fed into the spinning rollers on one side ended up flattened and then spat out the other. Since they were closely set knobby truck tires, for a person to bump into them while they were in operation would be an unpleasant experience to be sure.

Just as Pipkin had warned, their train reached a massive highway overpass. Hundreds of ghouls spilled off it to attack the train, starting from before it arrived and continuing until after it went away.

Since the train was moving fast by then, up near triple ghoul speed, punishing impacts were the only kind possible. All the infected hitting her regular cars, they bounced off to end up on the ground somewhere.

The Greatest Show on Earth was the only real victim in this airborne assault. With its open top and perimeter wall, twenty infected ended up on the deck. Not a one of them avoided breaking bone and they had blood everywhere, but beyond that they were still active and furious to kill something.

The only available target they could see was Rump the crane boom operator, which gave them reason to go after him in his protected cab.

For his part, Rump on the crane just ignored them. Their arrival did not surprise him and he didn’t see them as any sort of threat. There was nothing around that the ghouls could damage and his compartment was impervious to them as well. That is not to say that there wasn’t a contingency for their arrival. Rump radioed for Tony Banjo to lower the cleaning ramps.

Tony had a control lever for the hydraulic rams that moved the upper-level access ramps. He lowered both of them about fifteen degrees, plenty of space for the ghouls to climb down if they wished it.

After the first of them saw Tony and then attacked him, all the feeder screaming called down the rest. Tony just let them beat on his transparent wall while he smoked a joint. Having them in such a fuss was actually useful for the moment.

Two more overpasses came and went. Each time, even more infected boarded the Greatest Show on Earth, heard the ruckus down on the lower truck deck, and then went down themselves to investigate.

By then, Tony had quite a load, but he still let them bustle and fret unharmed. Once clear of overpasses, Tony closed up the ramps and then Rump got Jam lifted in her gobbler bell for final insertion.

Under the circumstances, it was only the bursting flamethrower on the Pig that allowed anyone to see where it was at all. That many infected were already in front of the train.

The leading edge of the Greatest Show on Earth had a convenient boarding ramp that served double duty as a protective scoop. It kept the rammed infected from getting in under the railcar and then twisting their meat up into the spinning trucks.

Part of their ghoul-crowding problem was also a benefit in that there was a nine-foot-tall retaining wall right there beside the track. It blocked off the riverbank edge from the city proper.

Thousands of ghouls were on the other side of the wall too, where they were at least not getting in the way. The ghouls on the train’s side of the wall sort of got concentrated because of it too.

Constant hosing with flaming petroleum product finally cleared a circle of space around the Pig that included the exposed but now somewhat burning point machine. The flame lasted for only the seconds it needed to consume all the available liquid fuel.

The train screeched to a stunning halt despite the lubrication on the track that was all the fresh blood of the rammed. The iron stopped so abruptly that the gobbler bell swung ahead on its momentum.

Rump the boom operator sped up the swing even more until the bell plowed into the ghouls with an audible dong that scattered them like bowling pins.

He was precise like playing a demented carnival game to throw a ball into the mouth of a milk can. Rump risked it all as he dropped the shark cage into the flailing chaos. The bell landed hard onto its point machine target. His aim had been perfect.

Nine infected thrashed while partly trapped under the edge of the shark cage’s tonnage. Like a giant mousetrap board game, it had captured them like that when it hit the ground. Two of the gobblers had their faces inside so that they could scream and bite at Jam. Having the bell smashed down across their broken backs did ensure that they didn’t carry out the threat.

Jam promptly silenced both angry faces with low caliber pistol shots and then she used an iron spear tool to spike down one clawing arm that searched about wildly.

Thusly safe, Jam got to work shifting the points. Her only real worry was that with so many ghouls, some of them would actually stand in the gap between the point and the rail, get their ankle trapped in there, and then clog up the works.

The genius of Tony keeping all those ghouls in his railcar proved itself at that moment. None of the ghouls outside could see Jam, Pike, or any of the engineers. The ones inside could see Tony and they were really shrieking about it. That was all the reason every ghoul in the city needed to want to go in through those louvers and then kill the humans inside the mobile train bunker.

With the game on, Tony started pressing the ignition buttons on the upper deck engines that powered his truck tire wringers. Once all four of them were in the green, he pulled down Victorian levers that engaged the exterior mounted chain drive clutches.

The powerful engines had their throttles linked into the compression of heavy shock springs that positioned the spacing of the tire axles. While at idle, the tires just spun peacefully, with a scary lot of mass to them because of all those big truck wheels combined. If something solid tried to force the rollers apart, the engines throttled up apace to meet the challenge.

The ghoul army surged in through the open louvers and then continued down to Tony’s back end of that long railcar, packing themselves into an ever more crowded fury.

Tony’s tire wringers had a narrow intake gap between them, a spinning maw only about one hand apart at roughly bellybutton height.

With so many infected all trying to force their way to the front at the same time in that already crowded space, those ghouls unlucky enough to be on the outermost sides could not avoid getting shoved into the tire traps. Even as the horizontal gap was treacherous, the narrow vertical spaces between the individual tires were also excellent for taking hold of an arm and then sucking in its owner entirely.

The inflated tires showed no mercy to meat and bone. When a ghoul went in, it vanished with the speed of a snapped towel. All its major bones broke as the meat squished through the flat mail-slot ejection path. Often enough there was a bursting of intestines that just as soon vanished within. The wringers spat the bodies out the other side at a launching speed, firing a jelly limp body from the railcar to land ten paces away.

There was plenty of space in the middle of the railcar interior for a ghoul just to scream at the transparent safety wall and attract more of his pals so that they could end up as the roadkill instead.

An ever-increasing army of ghouls dashed in through the front louver doors. They riot shoved the gobblers ahead of them to pack in even more of their filthy bodies. The outflow for all those stinking lunatics was invariably into the spinning wringer tires that inhaled them sometimes five at once.

As their mangled bodies actually forced the tires wider apart, it throttled up the engines so that the torque could more than handle their numbers. A moment later, two solid streams of broken boned bodies spewed out from both sides of the railcar.

It was an especially graphic sight on the northern side because that high river retaining wall was right there. The launched bloody meat slammed straight into the cement and then piled up rapidly at its base.

Perhaps the only downside to their culling method was all the blood. One specific and major issue was that the tire wringers did a fine job of removing just their skins. It frequently sucked their whole arm clean as if it removed a long-sleeved glove.

The skin ripping undoubtedly fueled the spin flung blood. A slip and slide water park came off those murder tires. It was as if golf course lawn sprinklers just elephant house hosed the place down with infectious gore.

Ultimately, all that slippery mess, falling, and shoving maintained a perfect balance of excited feeder screaming, which attracted even more ghouls. All the while, the roller wringers conveniently scraunched all the extraneous infected that filled in along both sides.

Jam got the points moved and as soon as she did, her driver got them rolling forward.

They were in no hurry just yet. Rump as the crane boom operator just dragged her bell skimming over the ground.

While so many infected were excited and anxious to see the Greatest Show on Earth, Jam didn’t want to deprive them of the opportunity to purchase their ticket. Her train was like a giant lawn mower and that ghoul army out front was her overgrown yard.

The system worked flawlessly, aside from the macabrely hilarious amounts of blood in the kill room. Few ghoul screams sounded out a warning of pain and distress. The tire wringer towers dispatched their prey too quickly. All the vocalizations were positive for the attack, so the infected just kept rushing on in.

The sight of Tony did not disappoint them either. Ghouls headed on down to meet the gluttonous wheels of punishment. If it wasn’t the greatest show they would ever see, it would certainly be their last.

For Tony, sitting back in his elevated command chair, having a cigarette smoke to top off his buzz, it was a good show, all their red faces, hands pawing at the transparent barrier, just the ludicrous bloodbath of it all.

Jam’s train was in the West Bottoms then, almost a peninsula with the three water-enclosed sides projecting all those bridges. That was where the entire infected population attacked their train with its final bum rushing implosion.

For Jam hanging inside her gobbler bell as it plowed through contested ground, it was a singular experience. She had never actually done anything so outrageous before. Her close second had never got any worse than her first touchdown of this operation.

She radioed her driver, having to shout so that he would hear her over the bell-muffled ghoul screaming.

Just creep us along steady, Mac, Jam instructed. We let the kill car eat her fill. The gobblers will either wise up to this being a trap or they can all have a trip through the wringers.

Any agonized screaming from their wounded cohorts could serve as a repellant for ghoul tribe activity, just as their feeding shrieks could lure them together. The Greatest Show on Earth operated wounded victim free.

Once caught by the roller wringers, the tires squished the unlucky ghoul and then it was gone in under a second. Even if the ghouls did figure out some way of avoiding the kill car, Jam intended to push forward. She was committed to reaching the other side.

Their rail track also had a bridge for crossing a river. They would go over the Kansas right where it poured into the larger Missouri. There was an open trestle with terrible footing for running infected. The pursuit over the river would be minimal at best.

Another benefit was that the gobbler population on the other side had already relocated via the well known to them road bridges, thus having evacuated much of it.

The only major handicap Jam foresaw was that they had to pass under more overpass roadways with loads of jumpers. The train would have to suffer that bombardment boarding again. They would weather it the same way as before.

Rump didn’t bring Jam back aboard. His elite model of boom crane had four twisting jointed elbows that allowed it to bend and reach around into the most compactly convenient of shapes.

This was important for it to not be up too high or out too far to the side where it might collide with an overpass or bridge support column. Rump kept Jam hanging out beside the train where her shark cage wouldn’t crash into anything that wasn’t berserking meat.

Upon their final approach onto the river trestle, he lifted the bell aboard for the trip across. By then, Tony had already lured the newest overpass jumpers down into the lower deck for destruction in the insatiable tire wringers.

Due to their ease of success thus far, Jam concluded what she planned to do next. She radioed for her whole crew, We are going for the secondary target. Everyone in your ready position. Take the Pig to find our way inside to the treasure. We are going for the heist.

Up ahead on their right was the mid-national grain depository for the continent. It was at the meeting of two major rivers for barge traffic and had its own heavyrail yards, shunts, and mainline access. The storage silos were epically huge and provided excellent visual cover for hiding whatever waited between their rows.

Jam in her bell thumped down on a point machine and then promptly flipped it. She could not really see anything and only imagined where they were from memory.

They moved on again for a good clip before Rump dropped her onto another point machine. This time he disconnected from her shark cage entirely and just left Jam there. Because the train would have to use the shunt in reverse, the crane would no longer be in range to hold onto her gobbler bell.

Jam waited for them to be clear, shifted the points, and then just listened as her train backed into the shunt she opened, leaving her behind.

This was a critical moment in Jam’s plan because neither she nor the Pig was going with the train. Since it was rolling backwards, there was no one to shift any more points. The train backed into a substantial storage yard with many independent lanes. Jam gambled that the points would still be in their last position, which would be in favor of the only twelve railcars currently in that yard at all.

True to her informed guess, the points were favorable and Ray’s caboose coupled with that string of railcars on impact.

It being Ray’s caboose, his car had extended flanges that made shields for an engineer to open a dedicated hatch and then clip together the airbrake pressure lines.

Wolf had come along on the train as Tony’s gunner. He was on hand then to clear a few infected with his suppressed Thompson. The whole city was so enraged that even the safest places had a few ghouls. Bad places had tens of thousands. They pushed over box trucks with the tidal pressure of their mad pursuit.

Jam’s reasoning with the brakes was simple too. Her train was more than powerful enough to drag one of those cars with its brakes locked on. They had just moved hundreds of cars. Only a few were ever broken, so there was no reason for Jam to be always assuming it.

Once again, she was right; the railcars in question were expensive climate insulated industry premium machines that still worked perfectly.

The driver Mac got the train back out onto the main rail, waited for Jam to switch the points back to their original position, and then he collected her as well.

A respectable army of ghouls had assembled by then, but they were not strong enough to stop the train. The hard cold iron of Freemen machinery was impervious to their attacks. Even worse for them, the most enterprising ghouls were always welcome to see the Greatest Show on Earth; thousands did.

Pipkin had to use the Pig to scout them their new secondary path. The diversion to the granary required them to detour slightly for getting back on their original course. Two more point machines remedied their navigation. After that, it was smooth and easy rail riding, far enough from the tribes and urban chokepoints to make the train safe from interference.

Tony Banjo closed up his louvers and shut down the engines. He pistol shot the remaining ghouls through a gun port and then ran the clean water sprayers until the blood washed down the drains. Only after that did he unlock his door and then go out to pitch the last bodies down a disposal side-slot slide.

While some of her crew hosed off the upper deck of the kill car, Jam had time to go to the back of her train and check out the twelve railcars they had just stolen from the ghouls.

She sounded quite pleased with their day when she informed Tony by radio, We got them good this time.

He wasn’t even sure what it was they had, Is it that primo?

Jam did the train freight calculations in her head then informed him, We are now the proud owners of over two-million pounds of hard red winter wheat.

When we show up back home with this, your Emperor Nick is going to name his kids after us. He is going to get a lot of fancy baking done with all this flour.

Pike called out for the train to stop after he shot a large buck that calmly stood beside the rails watching them curiously. Collecting the meat was one more polished procedure for Jam’s Freemen crew.

Mac brought up the new aptly named Picnic Basket railcar and then stopped it beside the blood trail from the stricken deer. A chain drive lowered the door that was also the ramp so that Wilma the bear could enthusiastically run out to fetch them their dinner.

It was no problem for Wilma to run a hundred yards into the woods, grab the dead deer where it finally fell, and then haul it back to his train car. Wilma’s reward would be a sack of kid’s cereal, dried fruit snacks, and other sugary deliciousness that made it well worth his trouble.

While that was going on, Jam ordered for Pipkin and Rump to bring back the Pig for refueling. They were not quite six-hundred miles from Denver and Jam was of a mind to make the connection in record time.

She would send the Council of Governors live video of her looking at the place, and they would know she and Tony had their game together and the partying under control.

Jam wasn’t going to tell anyone about her wheat just yet. She would save that for a surprise. Besides, there would be more goodies to find along the way. There were more cities to pass through and more forage for the taking.

Nothing to come was remotely as large and dangerous as Kansas City. Everything ahead of them would be like stealing candy from infected babies.

Chapter 2: Ozymandias

On the same morning that Jam crossed her city of sorrows, Critias took a moment to gaze eastward and appreciate his excellent view of Doctor Obrero’s Miskatonic Hospital.