Chicago Skirmish Wargames

Excerpt from the diary of an Unlikely Survivor

Harviston End (Of biters and brakemen)

We emerged, molelike and blinking into dawn's milky light. Fog blankets the ground making it impossible to see where the next attack is coming from. As much as I feel the pull to make myself known to this band of unlikely survivors, I decide to dog their steps and let them take the lead. Cynical? Definitely. They're now a lure for anything that's of a mind to eat us or take a bite out of us.

We stumble over cables, barrels, pallets, and finally railroad tracks. The wind picks up and I catch a glimpse of a swathe of trees with a few cars on the other side and in front of me a train on a track. Hallelujah. They huddle and I can't hear what they said but they took off through the trees toward the cars obviously looking for anything worth having.

I clamber silently on top of the train, laying low, just watching out for anything.

I can't see the woods for the trees, the fog, and as it turns out, the sheer number of biters ambling among the tree-trunks. Time for a macabre thought, if anyone dies out there, horribly, and there's no one around to hear it, do they make a noise as they are being torn limb-from-limb? With a scrum of biters face-first in their steaming guts? They do. They do indeed. Just in case you were wondering.I heard two distinct cries and screams coming from that wood. It was horrible. They were both callin' for their mothers before the end.

I think I heard a third, I'm not sure, it was about now that things got interesting. They made it back to the trainyard and then I saw a red lamp bobbing toward us through the gloom. It was a conductor and she was asking the survivors to help her get the train going. I lost sight of what everyone was doing but soon enough there was a tremendous noise as the engines fired and spluttered to life, summoning every biter within a ten-mile radius. They came through the trees en-masse stopping short at the fence. The train roared again and as I was thinking we had made it the engine cut, the fence collapsed,  and we were surrounded, instantly, by a horde of un-dead commuters wanting to board the train and tear us apart.

The survivors fought them off bravely, hacking, and kicking, and prying cold hands from colder steel as they attempted to climb aboard. Then, a shudder and a roar and we were off up the tracks leaving the throng behind. I am reminded of a poem I learned a lifetime ago as I watched the mayhem pass us by.

"I looked out of the train,

And I suddenly saw the empty station

As we hurtled through, with a hollow roar . . .

'Harviston End' . . . It was dark and dead"

It looks like our fortunes may be turning at last. I sing a little song under my breath I feel is appropriate to our ongoing situation.

I wish I was the brakeman
On a hurtlin fevered train

Crashin head long into the heartland
Like a cannon in the rain

With the feelin of the sleepers
And the burnin of the coal

Countin the towns flashin by
And a night that's full of soul

With light in my head
With you in my arms

I'll write more when I can. Right now I need to sleep. The click-clack of the track will do that to you.