Republic of the Living (Novella): Vengeance by Taz Gallaher

end
of the train.
    Staggering down the track, she lurched into the
gap between the last two train cars.   His heavy boots stamped back
and forth and the flashlight beam danced along the tracks next to her.
 Another gunshot boomed down the tunnel and a window shattered somewhere
along the train the tunnel.
    “ I’m going to fucking kill
you,” he shrieked.  “Murder you.”
    Uneven footfalls echoed toward her.  She
glanced up.  There was only one way to go.  She stood and spread her
good arm like a wing across the lip of the car platform.  She jumped and
her feet drummed at the car’s undercarriage.  Her toes found purchase and
she dragged herself onto the platform.  Digging her fingers into a recess,
she threw her weight against the door.  It moved an inch.  She heaved
again and it moved open another inch.  Jamming her fingers into the gap,
she leaned all her weight against the door and metal screeched against metal.
 
    She slipped through the gap and a window to her
right exploded into fragments.  The crack of the pistol shivered down the
tunnel.  She ran forward, her good arm extended in front of her, her other
arm dangling at her side.  Behind her, the man grunted as he pulled
himself into the train car.  She leaped across the gap into the next car
and reeled forward through an open door.  
    His boots pounded at her back.  He paused at
the gap and the beam of the flashlight jerked down the aisle in front of her.
  Two more gunshots roared into the empty car.  A wasp stung her
right ear and a gush of heat spread down her neck.  
    The car evaporated into darkness and she flexed
her legs to leap into a rectangle of darkness ahead of her.  A cloud of
sharp, sweet odor flooded across her mouth and nose and she stopped, teetering
over the space between the cars.  A rustling sound, like the scrape of
feet through leaves or sheets of dry paper unfolding, swelled in the black
space of the doorway.  She sagged to the right and fell onto the tunnel
floor, rolling and looking up to see the man’s heavy body flash across the
space above her.
    He screamed and booming starbursts of light
erupted inside the train car.  Pearly screamed again and she heard his
body thump against the floor.  The flashlight clicked on and off and then
on again.  Beneath a nimbus of pale light, the fingers of one hand appeared
over the edge of the platform.  A face materialized above the fingers and
turned toward her, its mouth gaping open silently.  He looked at her but
his eyes were blank.  A withered, almost translucent hand plunged into his
long hair and something cracked through the air.
    She scurried backward, away from the train.
 The rustling sound had been replaced by wet, sucking noises.  Mai
twisted onto her belly and crawled on her hands and knees toward the tiny arch
of daylight at the end of the tunnel.  At the rear of the train, she
tripped across Chewy’s legs.  He was sitting against the wall of the
tunnel and she pulled herself up alongside him.
    She pressed her ear to his chest.  He was
still breathing.
    “ Yeah,” he croaked.
 “I’m alive.  Not so sure about my leg though.”
    She sank her torso against his chest and patted
his shoulder.  His hand brushed her ear and he jerked it away.
    “ Oh shit,” he wheezed.
 “You’re bleeding.”
    “ Yeah,” she answered.
 “But I’m alive too.   I think.”
    His chest shuddered with silent laughter.
    “ Come on, little sister,” he
gasped as he nudged her aside and struggled to push himself to his feet.
 “Time to get your hustle on.”
    She grinned and grabbed his arm, pulling herself
upward.  They tottered against each other until he dropped his arm across
her shoulder and she clutched his jacket in her fingers.  They stumbled
toward the daylight.
    “ Too bad about the tunnel,”
Chewy said as they stepped into the warm sun.  He blinked and tipped his
chin upward.  “Guess we’ll have to climb this pinche mountain