22
“For a while, the horde of ghouls seemed to be stopped at station 75,” Hekla said as we watched Katia form in front of the subway car. I nervously kept an eye on the third rail, just nine inches from the lower left of her plow shape. She’d consulted with me and one of the daughters, an architect, on the design. I’d had her place her new rubber layer between herself and the front of the train, along with a coating all along the left and bottom side of the scoop. That way if she did touch the rail, she wouldn’t—in theory—complete the circuit. But the last thing we wanted was to test it.
“But they just kept coming and coming,” Hekla continued, “and they broke through whatever barrier there is, and now they’re moving quickly up the track. There are hundreds of corpses on the tracks already. They mostly avoid the electrified line, but there are so many of them. Every once in a while one of them hits it, and the ghoul kills all the ones around him. There are just piles of dead bodies up there.”
The engine car of the Vermillion line was like most of the subway cars. It had a flat, window-covered front section. The controls were simple, especially compared to the Nightmare. It was a lone throttle switch and an emergency brake, along with a few lights indicating electrical connection status and an indicator telling the driver that all the cars were still attached. I briefly inspected the second engine car, attached backward at the end of the train. It had a slave mode where it added power to the train, even though it was facing the wrong direction. It would be more efficient if it was right behind the first engine, but this worked, too.
As long as we didn’t get into an accident.
The stock “cowcatcher” attached to the front of the subway car was just a metal shield welded underneath the front, designed to push debris away. It looked like a forward-facing trailer hitch. It’d work fine for a few bodies here and there, but it was clear we needed something much more robust.
After some discussion, we decided a traditional, wedge cowcatcher design wouldn’t be enough. Katia had to make something that combined the low, forward comb with a bulldozer-like scoop.
“A plow is an easy design,” I said. “The problem is the train fits so tightly in the tunnel that there’s nowhere for the debris to go. It’s not like the Nightmare line where there’s a thin channel between the train and the ceiling and the sidewalls. These trains are packed in tight, otherwise we’d go with a wedge design. Even with just the scoop, the tunnel will get clogged like a drain.”
“That is a concern,” Hekla said.
“That’s why we came up with the kebab plan.”
“Katia,” I said as I watched her form. I couldn’t even see where her head was. “Extend the lower scoop a little further. Yeah. Damn, I wish I’d had time to make train wheels to stabilize it. You’ll need to be careful not to clip the ground. If you do, don’t let it pull you off the train. They’re going to be heavy.”
Katia: I know, Carl. I’m anchored to the top.
We’d broken out the windows in the engine car so Katia could reach inside. This is where most of her biological flesh would remain, though I worried that this was the wrong design. Nobody in the group was an engineer, and that was a problem. She’d built herself almost like a toggle bolt, affixing herself to the flat front of the subway car, reaching in through the window and then making a small, vertical hunk of Katia that was bigger than the window hole and pulled flush against the wall. It’d work well, I hoped, but if she gathered too much weight onto her scoop, I feared she’d rip the front of the train off. I cushioned the top and bottom of the metal parts where she attached with a pair of yoga mats to make it more comfortable and to help with insulation—both for herself and those of us in the cab. None of that would matter if she gathered too much weight. If the bolt pulled free, she’d get dragged down, hit the track, be ripped off the front of the train, and then run over. She’d be splattered all over the tunnel along with everyone in the engine car.
After the scoop was formed came the spikes. Multiple, thick, sharp, and metal spikes protruded out from the scoop, like a sea anemone, or one of the street urchin mobs from the third floor. We kept these mostly at about chest level and above. This was a gamble. We expected the spikes to break if they hit armor or ghoul mobs with tough skin. But the faster we went, the higher Katia’s constitution, so it was crucial if we wanted to maintain speed. The moment a mob was impaled on the spike, or caught in the scoop, Katia would start the process of sticking the body into her inventory. That would only work if the monster was truly dead, however, so Donut and Hekla would stand at the windows and would—carefully—shoot anything caught in the spikes or scoop.
With the spikes, we hoped they’d die more quickly, especially if the train moved as fast as Eva said it could go.
Katia finally finished forming. I marveled at how much area her body took. But that also worried me, as I knew the larger she was, the thinner the metal, the weaker the joints. She was literally stretched thin. A pair of eyes and mouth sat in a little divot, looking out near the top of the scoop. I’d wanted her to face inside the cab, but she still didn’t trust her ability to grow new eyes.
“Last chance to back out,” I called as we climbed onto the train.
She didn’t answer.
The engine car was much roomier than the Nightmare engine. This was an entire train car with an apartment attached to it. It was meant to house a mantaur engineer. Eva stood on the right side at the controls. Hekla stood next to her, crossbow ready to fire through the missing windshield. Donut and I stood on the port side. Katia’s body snaked in through both of the two windows, and she’d formed a thick, metal plate there, bolting herself to the front of the cab. If it wasn’t flesh colored, she’d look like a feature of the train. I put my hand against it before I realized what I was doing, and I could feel her heartbeat, fast as a jackrabbit. Until that moment I hadn’t realized she even had a heart. I quickly pulled my hand away.
Katia: That tickled.
One more of the daughters rode up front with us. A level-25 Wisteria Fairy named Silfa. She was a “Holistic Healer.” I hoped her healing abilities were more effective here in the dungeon than the holistic, snake-oil stuff from the real world. The plump woman appeared to be about fifty years old and was half the size of Donut. She quietly hung back.
“Speeding up,” Eva said, pushing the throttle.
This was the first time I’d heard the cobra-headed woman speak. I was a little taken aback at how normal she sounded. A little tongue flicked out.
“I wish you’d let me take Mongo out,” Donut said. “He’d love this.”
“It’s too dangerous for him right now,” I said. “I’m pretty sure we’ll need him soon. Besides, he’d eat that fairy lady right out of the air.”
“That’s not true, Carl. It only takes him a minute to get used to people. And then he’ll love them for life.”
That was the problem. I wanted to keep Mongo away from them as much as possible in case something happened. If we had to fight, I didn’t want Mongo stopping to roll over for a belly rub from Hekla.
I eyed Silfa the healer nervously. Since I’d never fought with her before, I didn’t trust her. I had eight scrolls of healing ready to go, and Donut had another six.
My stomach dropped as the train picked up speed, barreling down the tunnel. The sickly headlamp wasn’t nearly as bright as the light on the Nightmare.
“Donut.”
“On it,” she said, reading my mind. She cast Torch, setting it to travel ahead of us. It lit the tunnel brightly, revealing the uneven, rocky walls.