Bab 43: Derailed
March 23, 2015, 10:15am- Creekwood Station, Alaska
Ada, Derek, Jacob, and Page all take their seats in the train car, an elegant carpet with intricate golden designs along the sides covering the floor. The train car is empty except for the four of them as they place their suitcases down by their seats. Ada's in a heavy red sweater with black snow pants and black snow boots. Derek sits behind Page in a thick black coat and dark brown snow pants, with black snow boots. Jacob sits away from the other three on the left side towards the middle of the car, in a dark grey snow jacket black snow pants and black snow boots. Page sits in front of Derek and two seats away from Ada, in a dense brown coat and black snow pants, with dark brown snow boots. The windows on the sides of the car are frosted around the edges, the surrounding train station covered in snow, which workers use salt and shovels to get rid of.
The train, which had only a hand full of people besides them enter, soon departs as it heads north, further into Alaska. The station slowly disappears out of view, and soon nothing but snow packed forests can be seen out the windows. If it weren't for their dense clothing providing immense heat, they'd be shaking from the cold.
The front door to the train car opens up and a women in uniform comes in pushing a snack cart filled with snacks and various wines.
"Would you like anything sir?" She asks Jacob as he stares out the window.
"No," Jacob replies, merely glancing at her with an unwelcoming look before turning back to the window.
Slightly annoyed by his rude response, the women continues down the car, reaching the other three.
"Would you like anything?" She asks.
"No thank you," They respond, and she continues through the car, leaving through the door in the back. The car is once more quiet, except the sound of the wheels running along the rails in a consistent pattern.
The woman reaches the last car of the train where ten people wait, a few buying some snacks and beverages. She finishes her duties, and is about to head back to towards the front of the train when someone says something.
"Um, excuse me, I keep hearing something in the car behind us moving,"
"It's probably just some lose cargo, I'll go check," The woman says, hiding her annoyance behind a smile. Every time, there's always someone who says that, and most of the time it's actually someone near them just opening and closing their chair's recliner.
She leaves the snack cart in the passenger car as she enters the storage car. She rubs her arms as the colder air attaches to her. Looking around the room at all the various container, some metal, others wooden, she doesn't see anything out of the ordinary. She goes to turn around, but stops when she hears something moving inside a massive metal container.
…
"They're going to reach this place in an hour!" Norton exclaims angrily as they watch the red dot on the radar scanner slowly move toward the center of the screen.
"Relax Norton, everything is going to work out perfectly fine," Luther replies, glancing over at a glowing red button before looking at a nearby monitor, showing the feed of a camera on the large container in the train.
"That's what you said back on the island,"
"Well we're not on an island anymore, now are we?" He asks as he turns in his chair to Norton, "They'll all be dead within the hour," Luther sees a woman, a worker on the train walk up to the container, "So just sit back and watch the show," With those words Luther presses the button.
…
There's a small beep from the container as a red light suddenly turns on. The container door retracts, the woman stepping back in horror to see a large creature made out of some weird, pulsating, grey material emerge standing inside. Before the woman can scream, the creature thrusts a hand at her, the arm stretching as bones thrust out from the skin. The bones stab into the woman, her corpse falling to the floor in a puddle of blood.
Derek stares out the window at his side, staring at Page's reflection in the glass, troubled by the hint of worry in her eyes. He wants to ask her if she's alright, but he already knows the answer, and asking her won't help, not if he's the one to ask it. He glances over at Jacob, only able to see his back, envious of the bond the two have.
Ever since we left the island he's distanced himself from me and Ada, which I can understand, but Page too? What would make him not want to talk or even be near someone as kind as her, even more so, someone you've worked with for so long?
As Page looks out her window she wonders just how they were able to get help from someone in the US government so easily. She had asked her on the plane and all she said in response was, "Personal reasons,".
Jacob opens up one of his jacket pockets, pulling out a bag of beef jerky. He grabs a piece and sucks on it like a lollipop rather than chewing it. They all sit quietly for some time, until they hear screaming coming from the car behind them. All of them look to the door leading to the car before looking to each other. Jacob's the first to reach into his luggage, pulling out a handgun, the others quickly doing the same.
Getting up out of their seats, Derek takes the lead, with Jacob in the back as they cautiously head to the door. More screaming and the sound of glass breaking can be heard coming from the other side. Before Derek can open the door, someone comes bursting through it, running past them as they scream in pain.
"Help! Oh god, help! Get them off!" The man screams as they try to shake off large grey globs of what looks like slime. One of the slimes suddenly moves to his neck and the man's screams start to get go away as he falls to his knees, then onto the floor.
"Lock the door!" Ada suddenly shouts at Derek. Derek quickly slams the door shut, and locks it. He turns at the sound of gunshots, seeing Jacob shooting at the blobs sitting on the man. They let out high-pitched screeches as they fall off the man's corpse and die, some rolling over to reveal large leech-like mouths filled with several rows of tiny, sharp teeth.
"What the hell are these things?!" Ada asks as they group around the the body and dead blobs.
"...Leeches," Jacob states before stepping on one of them, which shows its almost as big as his boot, and crushing it, "I remember seeing things like these back at his lab in Terrasave headquarters, though they look to be different from those ones," Ada grabs her phone and starts looking through the copied files. She finds one talking about them, and reads it aloud.
"Leeches, the vials of the original T-Virus, though not much of a threat alone, they can be catastrophic in large groups. Extreme caution is required if one is to be moved or interacted with in anyway as merely touching one can lead to infection, though its not guaranteed to happen. Extremely vulnerable to fire and have a hive-mind,"
Ada closes the file and is about to put her phone away when she sees one labeled, "Ooze Leech,". She opens it up and also reads it.
"Injecting T-Abyss into leeches has given interesting results. They are the same size as the original specimens, however they are more grey than black and are more solid than liquid. This has prevented them from easily squeezing through small gaps but has given them more resistance to their predesecor's biggest weakness of fire. Sadly, they can no longer infect people that only come into contact with their outer skin and must bite into the host to cause infection. They are still relatively weak creatures that can be taken out with the weakest of firearms, unless they are in a large enough group to form a more larger organism that's somehow able to create bones. Whether they can change their shape is unknown,"
They all turn to the door behind them as they hear something bang on it.
"Help! Open this door-!" A woman's voice shouts before it suddenly gets cut-off. The door starts to shake violently as something starts ramming into it.
"Ada, how much longer till we reach our destination?" Page asks as they all start to back away from the door, grabbing their luggage. Ada quickly grabs her phone and checks her gps.
"Half an hour give or take," She replies. The door stops shaking and soon starts to creak and bend as something heavy presses up against it. They're now in the middle of the train car, the door's bolts starting to fly off as the door gives in. It comes slamming down as a large mass of grey slime crashes down on top of the broken door. It starts to shake violently as its body turns into individual leeches that start to crawl towards the group.
"Run!" Jacob exclaims before he starts backing up, bringing his bag to his front.
Jacob reaches into his bag and pulls out a grenade, taking out the pin and chucking it at the splitting blob. He follows the others towards the front of the car and the grenade goes off, killing quite a few leeches, but barely makes a dent in the massive pile sitting at the back of the car. A hole has formed in the floor, snow rushing inside the car. As they run into the room, Jacob sees the leeches quickly disperse as the frigid snow starts to pile onto the main group.
The people inside the car they enter are all looking at them wide-eyed and scared since they heard the explosion.
"Everyone move to the front, it's not safe!" Page exclaims as she hurries down the middle aisle. Everyone starts getting up, grabbing their stuff and running down the aisle.
"How the hell are we going to stop this thing?" Derek asks, "We can't detach the cars and we can't just keep chucking grenades till the whole damn train is destroyed.
"The windows, it doesn't like the cold," Jacob states as he points to them, "Probably can't live if it's all dried up,"
He walks over to a nearby window and shoots it, the glass shattering and howling winds eagerly entering the car. The civilians all scream at the sounds of gunshots and glass breaking , they hurry into the next car only to be attacked by leeches and zombies.
Soon the door to the previous car breaks down as the mass of leeches comes oozing in. It quickly starts to let out several screeches as the chilling winds rush in from the broken windows and attack the creature. Ada, Derek, Jacob, and Page all turn around when they hear a door break open from behind, another leech blob making its way into the train car. They all start shooting windows toward the other end, causing more wind and snow to get inside. The winds already feel much stronger than they were a second ago, the group realizing, that the train is speeding up.
The two large blobs blocking both paths are kept at a standstill from the chilling winds, neither of them able to get closer to the four survivors.
"Are we just going to stand here until this train reaches a turn and derails?" Derek asks as he glances at the others.
"We can't exactly just walk to the conductor's car now can we?" Jacob asks sarcastically as he turns to the blob blocking their path forward. Page looks at the windows, realizing that they're rather large, just large enough for her or Ada to fit through. She sees a ladder on the far back of the train car.
"I have an idea," Page states as she puts her handgun in a holster hidden under her coat.
"What?" Derek and Jacob ask.
"I'll climb out through a window, make my way over to the ladder and make my way over the train to the conductor's car,"
"What?! That's suicide!" Derek exclaims.
"What other choice do we have?"
"She's right," Ada comments as she puts her gun in her holster, "I'll go with her, don't kill each other while we're gone," She states as her and Page hurry over to a nearby open window. Page heads out the window first, putting her feet on the tiny railing lining the bottom side of the passenger car, the high-speeds trying to pull her off as snow starts attacking her face. She is just barely able to reach the other window, grabbing onto it before slowly making her way in front of it, her thick gloves preventing her hands from being stabbed with broken glass.
Ada steps out onto the side of the car, the two of them slowly making their way to the ladder. As they near the end, Page nearly falls off the side as the blob of leeches tries to grab at her, the sheer cold causing it to quickly retract its loosely made limb. As she leans towards the forest and ground, she sees just how fast they're going, trees blazing by in a blur, the ground below them going a million miles an hour. Using all her strength, she manages to grab back onto the window seal.
"You son of a, bitch!" Derek shouts angrily as he starts shooting at the thing, killing some of the leeches sitting on the top layer of it.
"Save your ammo!" Jacob states as he lowers Derek's gun.
Page makes it to the ladder, and as she starts climbing Ada reaches it too. She climbs onto the frosted roof of the train, feeling the slight shaking of the cars as she stands up slightly. Her and Ada start making their way forward, toward the front of the train which is two cars away. Way off in the distance they can barely make out a turn in the tracks. They don't have much time to slow the train down.
Making their way down the car they reach a slight split in between the cars. Page backs up a bit before running and jumping, making it a couple feet onto the next car, Ada jumping to the other side shortly after. Making their way across the car they can see the turn coming closer. They spot a ladder at the side of the conductor's car. They jump onto the front of the train, and as they make their way to the ladder, there's a slight bump in the rails, causing them to fall over and roll slightly. They cling onto the slippery metal roof of the train and manage to stop themselves from rolling off.
Making their way down the ladder they step down onto a walkway around the front of the train, a door to their right leading inside.
"It's locked!" Page shouts over the roaring winds as she struggles to open it.
"Give me a sec!" Ada replies, Page stepping to the side as Ada pulls out a lockpick. She starts fidgeting with the lock, and soon it clicks open. They open the door, seeing the conductor's body sitting on top of the controls, an arm holding the lever for speed forward all the way. They'll soon reach the turn.
They hurry over to the control panel, pushing the conductor's body over and pulling the emergency brake lever sitting to the right of the conductor's chair. Sparks erupt from the wheels as the breaks engage, everything inside being shoved forward slightly from the sudden force. The brakes let out high-pitched shrieks as they as their might to stop the train which refuses to give in. The train soon starts to lose steam however, and as they reach the turn, they're just slow enough to make the turn safely and come to another long straight-track that goes as far as they can see. However, as the train loses speed the wind starts to die down.
Two train cars down, Jacob and Derek stand in the middle, feeling the winds starting to go away as the train slows down. The leeches realize this, and start to slowly crawl towards them. Jacob reaches into his bag, grabbing a radio.
"Page, Ada, do either of you hear me?" Jacob asks into the radio. Ada and Page hear his muffled voice coming from their bags. They quickly pull out their radios, Ada's getting her's out first.
"Jacob, Derek?" Ada asks into her radio.
"We need you to speed the train back up the winds are the only things keeping the leeches at bay,"
"On it, just hang on," Ada replies before putting her radio down, her and Page turning to the front and seeing the conductor, now a zombie, getting up. They quickly pull out their guns and unload on the zombie, which falls to the floor and starts melting bit, a puddle of blood and ooze forming around it. They turn off the emergency break, but it only slows down how fast they're losing speed. Page grabs the lever the conductor's corpse was on and pushes it slightly forward, the train starting to pick up speed now.
With only two yards of space left, Derek and Jacob are pinned between the two blobs, until the train starts picking up speed again, the winds coming back with a vengeance as they surround the blobs that are now surround by open windows. The leeches forming the blobs all screech as they separate and try to escape, but don't make it far before they die to the cold's vicious claws. Jacob shoots at the blob in front of them, seeing if its actually dead or not before making his way towards it.
Jacob and Derek climb over the seats to the sides of the aisle and around the dead mass of flesh and head open the door to the next car, where the other passengers, all now zombies, are waiting for them. They make quick work of them and head into the conductor's car, meeting up with Ada and Page.
…
"The train hasn't detailed yet Luther!" Norton shouts angrily, "They'll reach the lab in a matter of minutes-" Norton is cutoff when Luther stabs a needle into Norton's neck, injecting a virus.
"I was planning on them making it here," Luther says with a devilish smirk as Norton falls to his knees, starting to throw up blood and convulse as the virus in him starts to mutate his body, "Otherwise I'd have no one to test Descendant's strength on. Have fun," Luther says mockingly as Norton tries to reach for him, his vision becoming blurry as he watches Luther leave the room.
PERTIMBANGAN PENCIPTA 
TIWHimitsu
TIWHimitsu At least they had a peaceful twenty hour flight before the train ride, and got to do some shopping for new, warmer, clothes, and weapons. Luther's plans seem to be coming along nicely, though he's the only one who knows that. Will they be bale to stop his nefarious plans and him once and for all, or will they meet their untimely demise at the hands of whatever Norton becomes? Hope you weren't too chilled by the cold winds as you read this and let me know what you think. :)
Status Power Mingguan
-- Peringkat
Power 
-- Power
stone