2026-02-17 06:33:29Chapter 22: The Roadblock
The world outside the driver’s cabin was a smear of gray and green. Clack-clack. Clack-clack. The rhythm of the rails was the only steady thing left. Seven kept his hands on the controls, but his mind was elsewhere. Cataloguing. The silent, corpse-strewn city was behind them. Now it was just overgrown fields and broken hills. Too quiet. In his experience, quiet was just the pause before the screaming started. His eyes—Lin Xian’s eyes, he kept having to remind himself—flicked upward. The sky over the dead city was still visible in the distance, dominated by that impossible, immovable cloud layer. It didn’t look like weather. It looked like a lid. Or a shell. Something’s in there, he thought, his new instincts humming. Something that makes zombies look like playground bullies. The old him, the one who’d just woken up in this meat-sack, might have felt awe. The him that was Seven just felt a cold, professional curiosity. Priority: Avoid. “It’s… almost peaceful out here.” The voice came from his right. Chen Sixuan. She was leaning against the console, watching the landscape blur past. There was a hopeful note in her words, fragile as glass. Seven grunted. He didn’t do reassurance. “Peace is a statistical anomaly.” Before she could reply, movement. On a dirt road running parallel to the tracks, a convoy of vehicles kicked up a dust trail. Jeeps. A few beaten sedans, overloaded. Survivors. Not the cowering kind. The kind with guns and a destination. Scavengers. Or predators. Usually both. One of the Jeeps swerved closer. A sunroof slid open. Click-clack. A head and shoulders popped out. Young guy. Buzz cut. Cradling an AK. Seven’s grip on the control lever tightened a fraction. His pupils contracted. Target acquisition was automatic. The guy didn’t aim at the train. He pointed the rifle at the sky and let loose. BRRAP! The gunfire was a violent rip in the pastoral silence. Birds that didn’t exist anymore burst from imaginary trees. “HEY!” the gunman bellowed, his voice tinny over the distance and the wind. “THE TRAIN! YOU GOT SUPPLIES?!” Seven didn’t blink. His expression stayed flat, a mask of worn leather. He increased the throttle a notch. The electric motors responded with a deeper, rising hum. Vrrrrrrrm— “WANNA JOIN OUR CONVOY? OASIS! WE GOT WATER!” Oasis. Seven’s internal voice was a dry scoff. In a desert, the first thing to kill you is usually another thirsty man. The train pulled ahead, leaving the shouting behind. The gunman, seeing no reaction, gave a furious, visible curse and dropped back into his vehicle. Chen Sixuan had flinched at the gunshots. Now she hugged herself. “The Oasis convoy… I picked up chatter on the shortwave. Their leader. He’s a Parameter-user.” Parameter-user. That was this world’s term for it. Superpower. Awakening. Seven filed the info. A potential high-threat target. He kept his voice level. “They’re on the road. We’re on the rails. Different paths.” He said it, but he didn’t believe it. Paths had a way of crossing when resources were involved. And a working, moving train wasn’t just a resource. It was a beacon. “We… we should find more people,” Chen Sixuan said softly, almost to herself. “Allies. It’s dangerous to be so… visible.” Seven glanced at her. She was smart. Scared, but smart. She’d seen the core problem already. “Allies are a liability multiplier,” he stated. “Unless they bring more value than trouble.” He turned his gaze back to the tracks stretching into the horizon. “I’m not running a charity shuttle. I’m piloting a lifeboat. You don’t let everyone on. You choose who’s useful.” He felt her stare. When he looked back, her cheeks were flushed. She misunderstood. Thought he meant her. Thought it was personal. Idiot, he thought, but not with malice. Survival made you paranoid, but it also made you stupid about simple things. “Useful means skills. Sanity. Not getting everyone killed in a panic.” He clarified, turning a dial. “Looks are irrelevant on a sinking ship.” Her blush deepened. She muttered something and busied herself with a logbook, hiding her face. Clack-clack. Clack-clack. The rhythm was steady. Hypnotic. Seven’s enhanced sight—another perk of this new body—caught the anomaly a kilometer out. Yushan Station. A small, dilapidated platform. And on the tracks, just past it, a wreck. A sedan. Twisted. But its placement wasn’t random. It was angled perfectly across both rails. A deliberate barricade. Ambush. Adrenaline, cold and clean, flooded his system. The calm that followed was absolute. “Get to the back car,” he said. His voice didn’t rise. It got quieter. Deadlier. “What—” “Now. Hold onto something solid. And keep the kid down.” He didn’t wait to see her obey. His mind was already calculating. Speed. Mass. Distance. The train was a beast of metal, weighing hundreds of tons. The car was a tin can. The math was beautiful. He slammed the throttle to its limit. VRUUUUUUUMMMM! The train surged forward, the whine of the motors climbing to a scream. The cabin vibrated. At the station, figures emerged from behind pillars and ticket booths. Six, seven, eight of them. Armed with a mishmash of rifles and shotguns. Leading them was a square-faced man with a cruel mouth. He saw the train not slowing, but accelerating. Rage twisted his features. He yelled, swinging his arm down. BANG! A shot sparked off the reinforced glass of the cabin’s window. A spider-web crack appeared. BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG! Then the full volley hit. A hailstorm of lead hammered the front of the locomotive. Ping! Thwack! Zzz-ing! The noise was deafening. Slugs flattened against steel. Glass crazed further. Seven didn’t duck. He leaned into it. His knuckles were white on the controls. His jaw was set. You think a few bullets can stop this? His internal monologue was a razor. You think your little roadblock matters? This was the calculus of the new world. You either moved, or you got moved. You built walls, or you became the battering ram. The square-faced leader, Liu Wei, was screaming, his face purple. “STOP IT! STOP THE TRAIN!” BOOM! A shotgun blast peppered the front grill. Seven’s lips peeled back from his teeth. It wasn’t a smile. It was a predator’s grimace. The wrecked sedan filled the view. Fifty meters. Twenty. He braced. CRUUUUUNCH—SCREEEEEEEEE— The impact wasn’t a crash. It was an erasure. The train didn’t shudder. It plowed through the car like a fist through rotten wood. Torn metal shrieked. The sedan disintegrated—hood flying off in a spinning arc, doors shearing away, the chassis compressing into a ragged metal pancake before being flung aside like garbage. KLA-KLUNK! KLA-KLUNK! The wheels bumped over the debris without breaking rhythm. In the rearview camera display, Seven saw the Oasis men staring, stunned, their guns lowered. Liu Wei was shaking his fist, his shouts lost in the wind and the receding clack-clack of the rails. Silence reclaimed the cabin, broken only by the motor’s hum and the sound of Seven’s own steady breathing. He reduced the throttle back to cruising speed. Chen Sixuan stumbled back into the cabin, pale, clutching the doorframe. “Is… is it over?” “For now,” Seven said, his eyes already scanning ahead for the next threat. The next bend. The next trap. “They wanted fuel. They got a demonstration instead.” He looked at her. “They’ll remember the train. Next time, they’ll bring more. Or something worse.” She nodded, swallowing hard, the illusion of peace thoroughly shattered. Seven turned his attention forward. The adrenaline bled away, leaving a familiar, hollow alertness. The landscape rolled on. Mountains in the distance. The sky, clear here, still taunted by that monstrous cloudbank far behind them. His stomach growled, a blunt, human reminder. Food. Shelter. Security. The primal checklist. He left the cabin, walking back through the quiet passenger car. The girl, Xiaoyu, was still curled asleep. He moved past her, into the small galley kitchen at the rear of the car. He needed to eat. To think. To plan the next leg. He pulled a can from a shelf, the metal cool in his hand. As he worked the manual can opener, his senses, heightened and still tingling from the confrontation, stretched out. He listened to the train’s heartbeat—the motors, the wheels. He listened to the empty world outside. And beneath it all, on the very edge of perception, he felt it. Something vast. Something old. Not in the sky behind them anymore. Ahead. In the mountains. It was sleeping. And their train was a needle, rolling gently towards its skin. He stopped, the half-open can forgotten in his hand. His gaze lifted, looking through the grimy window toward the darkening peaks.
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Chapter 22: The Roadblock
Chapter 22: The Roadblock The world outside the driver’s cabin was a smear of gray and green. Clack-clack. Clack-clack. The rhythm of the rails was the only steady thing left. Seven kept his hands on the controls, but his mind was elsewhere. Cataloguing. The silent, corpse-strewn city was behind them. Now it was just overgrown fields and broken hills. Too quiet. In his experience, quiet was just the pause before the screaming started. His eyes—Lin Xian’s eyes, he kept having to remind himself—flicked upward. The sky over the dead city was still visible in the distance, dominated by that impossible, immovable cloud layer. It didn’t look like weather. It looked like a lid. Or a shell. Something’s in there, he thought, his new instincts humming. Something that makes zombies look like playground bullies. The old him, the one who’d just woken up in this meat-sack, might have felt awe.
Chapter 21: Connecting Electric Locomotives
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