Black Coin

Chapter 21: Connecting Electric Locomotives

Chapter 21: Connecting Electric Locomotives

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Seven killed the alarm on his wristwatch. Two straight nights without sleep. His thoughts were moving through sludge, slow and thick.

The world outside the watchtower was a symphony of wrong sounds. A low, wet groaning. The skitter-scratch of something hard on concrete. Under it all, the sweet, cloying rot seeping from the busted freezer doors.

He’d made it. 16:00. Next day.

Light bled through the high warehouse windows. Dust motes danced in the angry orange beams. Afternoon. He had two hours and forty-five minutes before the dark swallowed everything again.

He moved to the slit in the watchtower wall. Peered down.

The warehouse floor was a butcher’s shop.

Freezer No. 1’s door wasn’t just open. It was peeled back, stainless steel and composite material twisted into a scream. Blood painted the concrete in wide, careless strokes. Chunks of meat—some recognizably human, some not—dangled from door hinges, smeared across the floor.

Three zombies shuffled through the gore. One was on its knees, worrying at a corpse. Seven’s eyes traced the half-eaten torso. A familiar dragon tattoo coiled around a bicep. The middle-aged man from yesterday. The one who’d tried to run the fishing game.

A cold, quiet satisfaction settled in Seven’s gut. No family wipeout, but close enough. In this world, playing predator was a good way to become prey.

His voice was a dry rasp in the quiet. He keyed the walkie-talkie. “Chen. Status.”

Static crackle. Then, a breathless reply. “Seven? I’m… I’m here. I’m okay. You?”

“Alive.” Seven’s eyes kept scanning, probing the deep shadows between containers. No sign of the big thing from last night. The thing that made the sounds. “Moving now. Stick to the plan. Electric locomotive on Track 4. Be ready to coordinate.”

“Understood.”

---

CLANG.

The heavy cold-storage door swung open a foot. Just enough.

Seven leveled the Wind Gun through the gap. Sighted the thick metal chain holding the door to the adjacent railing.

FWOOSH-POP!

The chain shattered. Links clattered like broken teeth.

The zombies heard it. Their groans hitched, then sharpened into hungry shrieks. Five of them lurched toward the sound, arms outstretched, mouths gaping.

Seven was already moving. He slid out the door, a long combat knife appearing in his left hand. The Wind Gun coughed in his right.

FWOOSH. A zombie’s head snapped back, caved in.

FWOOSH. Another was lifted off its feet, slammed into a steel pillar.

Two more were on him. Rotten hands clawing. He ducked a swipe, came up inside the first one’s guard. The knife went in under the jaw, point-first, and he twisted. Wrenched it free. Kicked the collapsing body into the second. Finished it with a point-blank shot to the temple.

Silence, except for the wet drip from his blade.

But there were more. Dozens more, drawn by last night’s chaos, milling on the platform further down. Too many to fight head-on. Not without wasting time and energy he didn’t have.

Seven’s mind worked, cold and clear. He ghosted back into the warehouse, sprinted for the empty building materials shed next to Freezer No. 1. Inside, he aimed the Wind Gun at a stack of hollow metal pipes.

FWOOSH-POP! CLANG-CLANG-CLANG!

The noise was incredible, a metallic avalanche.

As expected, the shamblers on the platform turned as one. A chorus of rasps echoed. They started moving toward the shed, a slow, shambling tide.

Bait taken.

Seven was gone before the first of them reached the door. He dropped off the platform side, boots hitting the gravel with a crunch, and ran. His target: the Huanxing 7F electric locomotive sitting silent on Track 4.

It was a beast. Sleek where the Whale 03E was brutal. A long-nosed bullet of grey and blue metal, built for speed and kinetic energy recovery. A power bank on wheels.

He reached the cabin door. Placed a hand on the cold hull.

[ Mechanical Heart - Active. ]

A hum, deep in the metal. A series of heavy thunks and clicks echoed through the frame. The cabin door hissed open.

He was in. The controls were a forest of levers and screens, dormant. Another focused pulse from his ability. The boards lit up. Soft, green light filled the cabin.

VRUUUUUMMMM…

A low, electric purr vibrated the floor. The giant was waking up.

Seven worked the controls. Disengaged the coupler at the front with a solid CLUNK. Released the carriage bridge at the rear. The locomotive was free.

He pushed the throttle forward. Not much. Just enough to get it rolling.

The Huanxing 7F began to glide, silent as a ghost, away from the platform. It was eerie. No roar of diesel, just the whine of servos and the whisper of wheels on track.

Next part. He guided the electric locomotive to a siding, then jogged back to the Infinity. To the Whale 03E at its head. He disconnected Carriage No. 1 from the beast’s rear coupling.

“Chen, now,” he spoke into the walkie. “Switch 4-B to align.”

“Switching… now.”

Ahead, a set of points clattered over. Seven backed the Huanxing 7F up. Slowly. Carefully.

CLANG-SHUNK.

The connection was solid. A perfect mate. He engaged the carriage bridge. A pressurized hiss, and the passageway between the Whale’s armored rear and the Huanxing’s front cabin was sealed and secure.

He stepped through. From the brutalist, utilitarian cockpit of the Whale, into the clean, tech-filled bridge of the Huanxing. They were connected. A two-headed monster.

The Infinity was now five carriages long. Whale 03E heavy gas turbine at the front. Huanxing 7F electric locomotive behind it, a massive battery and secondary engine. Then the three living and utility cars.

No time to armor the new addition. The light was bleeding away, second by second.

“All aboard,” Seven said into the comms. “We’re leaving. Now.”

---

CLANG. CLANG-CLANG.

The train, heavier now, began to move. Wheels bit into steel. Momentum gathered, slow and inexorable.

Seven sat in the Whale’s driver seat, hands on the controls. Chen Sixuan was in the co-pilot’s chair, a paper map open on her knees, a logbook in her hand.

He pushed the speed. 80 KM/H. The world outside began to blur. Fields. Shattered farmhouses. Abandoned cars on a parallel road.

The strain was immediate. A deep, draining pull in his core. More mass. More resistance. His ability, the Mechanical Heart, was working overtime to sync the two very different locomotives, to keep the power flow optimal.

“No tunnels before North Bay Station,” Chen said, her voice tight. She was marking their progress. “Terrain is flat. Primary hazard is potential rockfall from the cuttings. Or… obstructions on the line.”

Seven just nodded, eyes locked on the ribbon of steel stretching into the distance. “We stop for anything. Anything at all.”

“What about… the people from the warehouse?”

“Dead.” He didn’t look at her. “The whole family. Zombies got them last night.”

He saw her flinch in his periphery. The grip on her pencil tightened. She came from a world of books and theories, of civilized rules. This was different. This was the raw calculus of survival, and the answer was often written in blood. It was a hard lesson. He hoped she learned it fast.

The radio crackled to life, a babble of desperate voices cutting through the static.

“—[Oasis] convoy, final broadcast! Supplies, weapons, special abilities—trade for a spot! We stick together or we die alone—”

“—Highway 312 is a graveyard of cars! Only route east is the Forest Road, repeat, Forest Road! And don’t shoot in the Eastern District, you’ll bring a horde—”

“—[Jiang City Fortress] is secure! Bunker complex, over 300 souls. We have power, order. We can weather the Long Dark. Supernaturals and… attractive females given priority shelter—”

“—Last day! Mingwang Complex, Block A, 1304. I have food, water, security. Offering refuge to women, 16 to 30 years old. Two spaces left. Don’t miss your chance—”

Then a clearer signal, sharper. A voice trying for official.

“—Yu Bei Patrol Camp to all survivors. Confirmed: Yan City and Feng City have fallen to the polar night. Dark Tide ‘Star Abyss’ is expanding eastward along the Lin Mountain Range. Anomalous lifeforms and high-level radiation detected in the corridor between Jiang City and Luolin, extending toward Minjiang. If you can move 200 to 300 kilometers east, you may regain approximately one hour of daylight. I repeat, the night is moving. It is consuming—”

The signal dissolved into a hiss.

Chen looked up from her notes, her face pale. “If that’s true… if we make it past Yushan to North Bay… we should see light around 16:30 tomorrow.”

“We won’t make it that far today,” Seven said flatly. His knuckles were white on the throttle. “Dark comes, we stop. Driving blind is suicide. No radar. No drones. Could be a washed-out bridge around the next bend. Could be a rockslide. Could be a train full of infected sitting dead on the rails.”

The thought crystallized. He needed eyes. Electronic eyes. Radar, lidar, drones—something to see the threats before the train’s headlights painted them. Right now, he was driving on faith and fading light.

And underneath the rumble of the engines, underneath Chen’s nervous breathing and the crackle of the radio, he felt it.

A subtle wrongness in the vibration of the train.

Not a mechanical fault. Something else. Something his new, weirdly attuned senses were picking up. A pressure. A watchful, hungry presence, keeping pace with them, just out of sight in the gathering dusk.