Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse: A Novel Read online

  Mortimer shook his head. “Whoa. Wait. You mean guys are going to hand-pump that thing and pull three flatcars and all that cargo? It’ll take a hundred years to get to Chattanooga.”

  “Getting started is the hard part. Once they get into a rhythm, you’d be surprised. Here come the pumpers now.”

  Now Mortimer saw why they called it the Muscle Express. The eight men designated to operate the specially modified handcar were brutes, hulking, shirtless men with rippling muscles. The smallest was just over six feet tall, three hundred and fifty pounds.

  “Four rest while four pump,” Coffey explained. “Doc!”

  “I’m here.” A frumpy man with disheveled gray hair waddled forward, clutching a black doctor’s bag dangling from a gnarled hand. He fished an inoculation gun out of the bag and zapped each muscleman in the arm.

  “Speed boost,” Coffey said.

  The musclemen flexed, their faces turning red, grunting and posing, a light sheen of sweat on their muscles. It looked like a really angry Chippendales show.

  “They’ll be ready to go now. Better climb on,” Coffey said. “Once those guys get going, they don’t let up.”

  Buffalo Bill had already tossed the gear onto the nearest flatcar. He jumped up and held out a hand for Mortimer. “Let’s get a move on, partner.”

  Mortimer took the cowboy’s hand and let himself be heaved onto the flatcar. He broke out in a sweat from the minor exertion, the wind sending a chill to the marrow of his bones. He sat on the flatcar, looked back at Coffey, who stood waving. The train was inching forward, almost imperceptibly slow at first. The pumpers heaved and grunted and leaned into the hand pump, their muscles bulging, faces turning red.

  Belatedly, Mortimer returned the wave, the Spring City train station shrinking behind them. The grunts and groans from the hand pumpers finding a rhythm, the meaty machine, a new-world locomotive narcotic-fueled and lubricated with sweat.

  THE MUSCLE EXPRESS

  XIII

  Mortimer noticed the cars straight off, half-buried in snow, the old metal husks like beer cans of the gods, crushed and tossed without heed along the roadside, the debris of some cosmic tailgate party. Others seemed obscenely new, bright fiberglass bodies sitting on the rotted remains of tires. The old junkers had been cleared out of Spring City, but now, as the Muscle Express glided the rails parallel to Highway 27 south, Mortimer remembered how it had been, the millions of automobiles plying America’s roadways. Where did you want to go today? The store for milk, Sunday church, take the kids to Disney World? It had all been so close, so possible.

  An hour and a half’s drive to Chattanooga would now be a three-day walk. The world had grown smaller and smaller until it exploded into bigness again, distances stretching, horizons meaning something.

  But Mortimer and Bill weren’t walking. The Muscle Express had picked up speed, the cold wind stinging his eyes.

  “How fast, you think?” asked Mortimer.

  Bill squinted, tried to judge. “Maybe thirty miles per hour. Not more than that. Pretty good though. Better than hoofing it.”

  Mortimer leaned out, looked ahead to the handcar. Four brutes pumping, four others resting. No more unleaded for cars, no more diesel for locomotives. He wondered how many Armageddon dollars it would be worth if he salvaged a steam engine.

  Somebody had bolted four movie theater seats at the back of the middle flatcar. Bill and Mortimer occupied two of them, Mortimer slouched low, trying to ignore his stomach. The cowboy thumbed shells into the lever-action rifle.

  A slender figure appeared atop the crates in front of them, looked down on the two passengers in the theater seats. The newcomer’s face wasn’t clear at first, a dark silhouette against the morning sun. Mortimer held up a hand, shaded his eyes to get a look. A woman.

  “Don’t puke on my train,” she said.

  Mortimer looked down, closed his eyes. It took too much energy to hold his head up. “Your train?”

  “I’m Tyler Kane. I’m the train captain.”

  She hopped down from the crates, and Mortimer got a better look at her. Athletically thin, hard body like a track star. She wore black leather pants and a matching leather jacket too light for the cold, a white turtleneck underneath. A nickel-plated revolver sprung from her waistband. Her hair was a burgundy red, cut close on the sides and spiked on top. A black patch covered her left eye, and a thin white scar leaked from under the patch and ran straight down to the edge of her angular jawline. Her one eye was bright and blue as an arctic lake. She had the palest skin Mortimer had ever seen on someone still alive.

  “You’re paying passengers, so you don’t have to do anything except stay out of the way,” Tyler said. “If we’re attacked, be prepared to help repel boarders. If you vomit, stick your head over the side. Any questions?”

  “When does the stewardess come around to take my drink order?”

  Tyler’s upper lip curled into a half-smile, half-sneer. “You make me laugh. I’ll make sure you land on something soft if I have to toss you over the side.”

  She leapt past them onto the third flatcar.

  “Nice,” Bill said. “I think she likes you.”

  Mortimer only grunted, sank lower in his seat. It was too fucking cold. He climbed down to the backpacks, went through the gear until he found the down-filled sleeping bag. He curled up on the floor of the flatcar, the clattering ride rocking him to sleep.

  In the dream, the man’s scream was a shrill steam whistle, and the train traveled over water instead of land. Somehow the train floated. Pirates rowed toward them in Viking longships, oars dipping into water, prows beating against the wake left by the train. They fired a cannon. The train shuddered, waves coming over the side.

  Mortimer’s body shook and shook.

  “God damn it! I said get your ass up right fucking now!”

  Mortimer’s eyes flashed open, panic shooting up his spine.

  Tyler Kane had a tight grip on his jacket, jerking him away. Mortimer sat up, found he was clutching the Uzi to his chest. Gunshots. Screams.

  “What is it?”

  “Can you use that thing?” She nodded at the Uzi.

  “Yes.” He had only fired it once to test it. But it was a simple weapon.

  “Then come on!” She dragged him up, and they climbed onto the cargo crates. “We’ve got to get forward.”

  Mortimer saw Bill crouched behind the theater seats. He worked the lever action, fired into the buildings along the railroad tracks. It looked like Evansville. Men on the roof and at windows fired at the train. Mortimer caught a glimpse of a red armband.

  They were going too slow. Targets like the sharpshooter game at a carnival.

  They stood, jogged at a crouch along the flatcar’s cargo crates. A bullet whizzed past Mortimer’s ear like a subsonic hornet.

  Tyler grabbed Mortimer’s elbow and jumped, pulling Mortimer down with her. They landed between two crates, crouched behind the cargo while she took something from her jacket pocket.

  Bullets ricocheted. Mortimer’s heart thumped up into his throat.

  “Why are we going so slow?”

  “We were coming into the station,” Tyler said. “Evansville is a scheduled stop. The Red Stripes jumped us, but the pumpers are exhausted.”

  Mortimer saw what she’d taken from her pocket, the inoculation gun the doctor had used to juice the muscle guys back in Spring City.

  “You’ve got to cover me,” she said. “I need time to power up the guys again. Man, you’ve got to shoot that thing and keep those fuckers off me. You get it?”

  Mortimer tried to speak but found his mouth too cottony. He nodded.

  She slapped him on the shoulder. “Let’s go!”

  They climbed up again, made their way forward to the end of the flatcar. He cocked the little machine gun, thumbed off the safety. One of the train guards hung limp and dead between the flatcar and the handcar, the back of his head wet and bloody from a large-caliber slug. They leapt over him and lande
d with a thud on the big handcar.

  The stink of sweat slapped Mortimer in the face. The muscle guys pumped, hot, wet skin steaming in the freezing air. A shot caught one of them in the head, brain and skull and blood exploding red and gunky. He toppled over, hit the deck of the handcar with a meaty thump and rolled off.

  Tyler punched Mortimer in the shoulder. “Shoot!”

  He brought the Uzi up and sprayed the buildings along the track, shattering windows, gouging holes in brick. Wherever he saw a Red Stripe pop his head up, Mortimer squeezed off a burst and sent him back into hiding. He ejected the spent magazine, slapped in a new one. The muzzle smoked. His palms and fingers tingled from gripping the gun so tight, the pinkie stump throbbing.

  He glanced over his shoulder and saw Tyler placing the inoculation gun against thick shoulders, injecting the narcotic boost. It took only a few seconds. Veins pulsed along necks. Eyes bulged. Faces clenched. They pumped harder.

  They picked up speed.

  “Up there!” Tyler pointed ahead of the train.

  A narrow pedestrian bridge crossed low over the railroad tracks. At least a dozen Red Stripes jogged across the bridge to take up positions. Mortimer edged around the pumping musclemen, ran to the front of the handcar and knelt at the very edge of the train. Cold wind stung his eyes. He brought up the Uzi. The men on the bridge leveled their rifles.

  The Uzi bucked in Mortimer’s hands.

  Red Stripes along the bridge clutched themselves, toppling over, their death screams filling the air. Mortimer looked back as the handcar and the first flatcar passed under the bridge. A handful of surviving Red Stripes leapt from the bridge onto the middle flatcar.

  Tyler had finished drugging the pumpers and motioned to Mortimer. “Come on. Let’s get them.”

  Get them? Fuck you. But he followed her.

  The half-dozen Red Stripes were locked in hand-to-hand combat with the surviving few train guards. Mortimer climbed atop the cargo crates, leveled the Uzi but couldn’t get a shot. It was an erratic weapon, and he was as likely to hit the guards as the Red Stripes.

  He saw Bill jump up from the theater seats and swing his rifle butt at the head of a Red Stripe, who ducked underneath and tackled the cowboy. They both hit the deck. Mortimer dropped the Uzi and drew the police special.

  They were out of the town now, the train rolling along much faster. Tyler and Mortimer ran along the top of the crates, the rocking train threatening to toss them over the side. They hit the melee just as one of the guards took a knife in the stomach and dropped off the speeding train.

  Tyler put her revolver against the back of a Red Stripe’s head, pulled the trigger. Half the Red Stripe’s head flew away into the wind, the body falling.

  Mortimer went for the Red Stripe on top of Bill, but another stepped in swinging a club. It caught Mortimer in the gut. He whuffed air, tumbled over and hit the crates hard. He turned, fired his police special vaguely in the direction of his attacker.

  The blast shattered the Red Stripe’s ankle. He yelled hoarse and agonized from the throat, hopped on his good leg for a moment before the train lurched and tossed him over the side, trailing blood.

  Mortimer climbed to his knees, sucking breath and gagging. He probed his side with tentative fingers but found nothing broken.

  He looked around. All of the train guards and Red Stripes were dead. Bill stood over his bloody opponent, Bill’s right eye swelling where he’d taken a punch.

  Tyler stuck the revolver back in her waistband. “I think we’re past the Red Stripes for now.” She wiped sweat from her face. “If we can just get through the cannibals, I think we’ll make it.”

  XIV

  “I’m sorry.” Mortimer blinked. “But did you just say cannibals, or have I gone crazy?”

  “I’ll explain later. Right now the pumpers are overdosed and I have to bring them down before they all have heart attacks.” She dashed off in the direction of the handcar, her perfect balance a tribute to long experience on the rocking flatcars. Train legs instead of sea legs.

  Bill flopped into one of the theater seats. “I’m out of shells for the rifle.”

  “You okay?”

  Bill nodded. “Guy jumped me before I could get the pistols out.”

  “Stay here. I’ll see if she needs any help.”

  Mortimer climbed forward after Tyler. He noticed the train had slowed again to the pace of a fast walk. He reached the handcar and found most of the musclemen slumped on the deck, eyes closed, massive chests rising and falling with shallow breaths. Greasy piles of meat. Only two of the big brutes remained to work the hand pump.

  Mortimer watched Tyler put two fingers to a man’s throat, shake her head and roll him off the train.

  “What happened?”

  “His heart exploded,” Tyler said. “I couldn’t dose him in time. The two pumping are on a half-dose of downer juice. When they get tired, I’ll wake up two more to take over. Best we can do for now.”

  “Can’t we just stop for a while?”

  She shook her head, squinted up at the sun. “At this pace, we won’t reach our destination in daylight. It’s dangerous to run at night, but worse if we stop.”

  Mortimer remembered she’d said something about cannibals. He gulped. “Right.”

  “I need your help now,” she said. “Get to the back end of the train and keep watch. We don’t want anything crawling up our tailpipe while we’re going this slow.”

  He flicked her a two-finger salute and headed back the way he’d come. He picked up the Uzi along the way and paused to tell Bill he’d be guarding the back of the train.

  “I’ll keep my eyes peeled here,” Bill said.

  Mortimer went into the gear and found a box of 9 mm ammunition, winked at Bill and headed back.

  He sat with his feet dangling over the back of the last flatcar. The track dwindled behind. Forest had cropped up on either side, although he occasionally glimpsed a stretch of road or power lines, a small abandoned house. A barn. He thumbed new shells into the Uzi’s magazine, reloaded the police special. He wished he had cigarettes. Mortimer had never smoked, but lighting up a Lucky seemed like something soldiers on guard duty did in the movies.

  Miles and hours crept away, never to be seen again.

  In spite of the cold wind on his neck and ears, Mortimer started to drift, the rocking train easing his eyelids down. He slumped, the Uzi heavy in his lap. With the adrenaline rush from the attack fading, the aches and nausea of his hangover seeped back into his body. He’d pay a hundred Armageddon dollars for three hours back in the hotel bed.

  Joey Armageddon’s, the hotel, the food, the drink, the lights. It had all fooled Mortimer, lulled him into forgetting the world was now a wild and broken place. Could Anne survive out here? This savage country where women were bought and sold like cattle. She seemed far away, and here was Mortimer inching along on a train powered by sweaty men. Mortimer had read those Conan the Barbarian novels as a teenager. It took a barbarian to live in such a world, someone brutal and ruthless with the survival instincts of an animal. Mortimer wasn’t a barbarian. He was an insurance salesman. He felt suddenly small and fragile. He needed Starbucks and Krispy Kreme and Jiffy Lube.

  Mortimer dreamed of Anne in a metal bikini like the one Carrie Fisher wore in Return of the Jedi. But she wasn’t chained to Jabba the Hutt. She was chained to Arnold Schwarzenegger, but not the Conan Schwarzenegger. It was Arnold from The Terminator, the flesh peeled away from half his skull, revealing the metal underneath. One eye glowing red.

  This is my woman now, said the Terminator.

  No! That’s my wife.

  Take him away, barked the Terminator.

  Men grabbed him, took him to the Thunderdome, where Mad Max tried to kill him. No, not Mad Max. Mel Gibson handing him a big wooden cross. Carry this. He stuck a crown of thorns on Mortimer’s head. The thorns tore flesh, blood running into his eyes.

  Mortimer looked at the blood in the palm of his hand. The blob of bloo
d became a glowing light, blinking red. Michael York grabbed his arm. Run! Run!

  Mortimer ran. He was in a bright city. They were chasing him. He ran and ran until the world was a blur, a forest, then a desert, then the ruined buildings of a deserted town. Anne! Anne! Where was she? And even if he found her, then what? How would they live? Where would they go? Mortimer thought he was rescuing her. He couldn’t even save himself.

  He felt somebody grab him, looked up at Kurt Russell with long hair and an eye patch. Come on. We’ve got to escape from here.

  Leave me alone. I’m too tired.

  “I said wake up.” The voice had become feminine but with a hard edge.

  Mortimer started, blinked. Kurt Russell’s face morphed into somebody else. Only the eye patch remained.

  “You’d better not be falling asleep,” Tyler warned.

  Mortimer dug the sleep out of his eyes with a thumb. “No, of course not.”

  “Uh-huh.” Tyler looked doubtful. “It’s going to be dark soon, and I need you on your toes.”

  “I hate to even ask this, but when you say cannibals, are you being figurative? I mean, is it a gang that calls themselves the Cannibals or something?”

  Tyler leaned down, pinched the flesh of his cheek. “They’d fry you up and serve you with little red potatoes, man. Now stay awake.” She went forward again.

  “They’d find me very chewy,” he shouted after her.

  Great. I’m going to be an entrée.

  The train crawled along like an anemic box turtle. The sun sank, and in the final orange fuzz of daylight, Bill came back to the end flatcar, sat next to Mortimer. He cradled the lever-action rifle, the last rays of the sun making his complexion ruddy and outdoorsy. He looked like the cover of a Louis L’Amour novel.

  “She wants you up front,” Bill said.

  What now?

  He clapped the cowboy on the shoulder. “Stay awake.”

  He made his way forward, moving more easily this time, getting used to the sway of the train. He found most of the sleeping meat snoring on the deck of the handcar, except for the two at the hand pump. Tyler waved him over, handed him a big, heavy flashlight.