Chapter 23: Full Steam Ahead
Once everyone got back into the RV, Bucky quickly drove away from Valerie's dead body, leaving her at the side of the road. As they drove away, Danny quickly tied Vicky's hands tightly behind her back and tossed her gun on the table in front of SpongeBob, who was sat across from her with Tootie, Mr. Dinkleberg, Dash, and Kwan. Danny gave SpongeBob a stern look, indicating that he should keep an eye on her and shoot her if she tries anything.
The blonde man fearfully took the pistol and pointed it at Vicky.
"Danny, a word?" Bucky called coldly from the driver's seat. The black and white-haired teen took a deep breath before he went to the front of the RV. He saw Bucky glaring at the road and Chester was still curled up in the seat next to his father.
"What's up? Is Chester feeling alright?" He asked when he saw how much paler the boy was. Bucky sighed as he reached a handover and lifted up Chester's shirt to reveal a bite on his stomach.
"What the fuck..." Danny gasped.
"Happened during the raid," Bucky replied.
"What's the plan? We've never had a bite victim in the group before." The teen asked sadly.
"I'm going to keep an eye on him and see what I can do, but we keep the same plan unless something changes; east." The father glared.
"Bucky..."
"What else is there to do?!" He snapped, before sighing. "I thought you should know; not that you've ever afforded us that type o' luxury." He glared and Danny just stayed quiet. "Anyway, if you could tell the kids, I would appreciate it." He said. Danny nodded before stepping away. He took a seat in between Jimmy and Timmy and put his arms around them. The two boys didn't say anything as they snuggled into their guardian's embraced.
"Chester is bitten." He quietly said to the boys so no one would hear.
"Huh?" Jimmy muttered in shock and sadness.
"He got bit by an infected trying to escape the motel." He explained.
"I don't feel good." Timmy whimpered, close to tears at the thought of losing so many friends in such a short amount of time. "What about Valerie?"
"There's nothing to say." Danny sighed. "It's horrible."
"I'm sorry." The pink hatted boy said.
"No." Danny quickly stopped him. "You don't apologize; you had nothing to do with it, squirt." He smiled, reassuring the boys. "I'm glad I have you both."
"Me, too." Jimmy smiled.
"I heard you outside my treehouse that day and thought about dropping a hammer on your head." Timmy suddenly said, catching Danny off guard and causing Jimmy to roll his eyes.
"What? Why?" Danny asked.
"In case you were up to no good." The bucktoothed boy shrugged.
"Before you, there was this other guy," Jimmy added. "He was yelling and trying to get into the house, I think he wanted to take the TV or something and tried to break the glass door with a rock, then some walkers came and scared him away."
"Well, the door wasn't locked when I got there."
"He was dumb." Timmy chuckled weakly, before sighing. Within a few moments, both boys had fallen asleep against the teen's skinny shoulders. Danny smiled before leaning his head back and letting his mind wander for a bit. After several moments of silence, Jimmy and Timmy both started groaning and Danny looked at them, thinking they were having a nightmare. They looked up at him, but the teen was given a horrifying shock to see that they were both infected.
They both suddenly attacked Danny and he tried to push them away.
"What happened?! HOLY SHIT! GET OFF OF ME!" He cried out desperately, only for the boys to overpower him and both took a bite out of the sides on his neck...
Danny suddenly woke up with a start and saw Jimmy and Timmy next to him, still asleep and very much alive and un-infected. He quickly realized that it was all a terrifying nightmare. As he took several breaths to slow his racing heart, he saw the dim morning sun shining through the trees and wondered how long he'd been asleep.
The RV was still moving so he assumed Bucky hadn't slept, as he was still driving.
He saw Tootie asleep in a sleeping bag on the floor, SpongeBob, Dash, and Kwan had also fallen asleep in the back seat. Mr. Dinkleberg had taken over guarding Vicky, both looking like they hadn't gotten any sleep.
"We got something up ahead." Bucky suddenly called to them, waking everyone up but the kids. Danny carefully got up and leaned Timmy and Jimmy against each other as they slept before going up to the front of the RV.
"Damn it! The road's blocked, now we gotta deal with this." Bucky growled as he stopped the RV in front of a railroad crossing with a train stopped in the middle of the tracks. The train and one of the cars were still on the tracks but the rest of the cars behind it were badly rerailed. Danny, Bucky, and Kwan got out of the RV and approached it.
"Is there any way to get around it," Kwan asked.
"Doesn't look like it." Bucky shrugged. "On foot, maybe, can't really afford to do that now."
"This seems like a safe area," Danny said as he looked around. "All this brush will stop anything from creeping up on us."
"I'd like everyone out of the RV except her," Bucky said, frowning at the thought of Vicky. "I don't want folks trapped in there with her." He added and the three men went to get everybody out. Jimmy and Timmy stepped out of the RV, wearing their backpacks, as Mr. Dinkleberg, SpongeBob and Dash carried the rest of their supplies out, not wanting to leave their weapons, or anything else alone with Vicky.
Tootie gave her sister a sad look before she left, but she refused to look up from her own shoes.
Bucky held Chester's hand as they both climb out of the RV as well.
"Why don't you and I go look around?" SpongeBob suggested to Danny.
"Yeah, everyone else try to relax," Danny said and turned to the boys. "Stay close to Bucky and Chester, okay?
"Be careful in there," Bucky said as he gave Chester some water from his bag.
"What, you think there might be something dangerous inside of an abandoned locomotive? Hadn't crossed my mind." He replied sarcastically before he and SpongeBob headed off to inspect the train cars. Tootie, Mr. Dinkleberg, Kwan, Dash, and Bucky, cradling Chester in his arms, sat down on some logs nearby the train as Jimmy and Timmy set their backpacks down next to them.
As Danny and SpongeBob checked the main train, Danny found four-engine compartments.
He opened up the first engine compartment and found a switch inside. He used the switch but sighed when nothing happened. He opened the second and found a spike remover, a spanner, and a wrench. Making a note of this, he closed it back up and checked the other two, only to find nothing inside. He looked inside the train and saw a man sat slumped over in the conductor seat.
The front window was badly cracked and caked in blood.
Danny motioned to SpongeBob and pointed out the man. From where they were standing, they couldn't tell if the man was dead or if he was infected. Deciding it was better to be safe than sorry, Danny carefully pulled out his sword before opening the door and stepping inside. Without hesitation, he plunged the blade into the man's chest, destroying his heart.
The man, however, didn't even twitch or dissolve into goo.
His brain or heart must have been destroyed before he became infected. Danny carefully lifted the man out of the chair and paused when he saw half the man's skull was flattened. His head must have slammed against the windshield when the train derailed. Noticing a blinking button on the controls, Danny cautiously pressed it and the train suddenly squealed, startling everyone outside.
It must have been the control for the brakes.
"This fucker works?" Bucky asked with a smiled as he entered the train car.
"Seems like it." Danny smiled as Bucky sat in the front seat.
"I'll be damned." He laughed. "How the hell do we get it movin'?"
"I don't know, any ideas SpongeBob?"
"No clue." SpongeBob gagged as he dragged the body away.
"Well, let's look around, maybe it goes somewhere we'd like to be," Bucky instructed as SpongeBob returned after disposing of the corpse. "SpongeBob, if you could keep an eye on the others, I'd appreciate it, I'm going to make sense of these controls." He said as he turned back to the controls and SpongeBob left. "Man, this could be exactly what we need."
As Bucky examined the controls, Danny began looking around for an instruction book of some kind.
He found a photograph of the engineer with supposedly his wife, and two children and a map bin with a bunch of maps about the nearby cities but nothing about the train. Danny turned his attention to the console but couldn't make sense of the dozens of buttons, switches, and dials attached to it. Thinking maybe there was something in the other cars, Danny left the front train car.
He looked at the RV and thought about Vicky.
Even though she killed Valerie, she was still a human being and deserved the same rights as anyone else. Deciding to check on her, Danny entered the RV and found the red-haired teenage girl in the same spot they had left her in. As soon as she saw him, however, she scowled and looked away, almost as if in disgust. Danny simply sighed and stepped closer.
"Come to gloat?" She snarled. "I'm sitting here, tied up like an animal, while you guys decide what to do with me."
"It's not like that." He tried to say.
"Then what's it like?" She huffed, but he didn't know the words.
"I just came here to see if you needed anything." He sighed in defeat.
"Some water would be nice." She jeered and he nodded. He quickly ran out to grab a bottle of water before rushing back into the RV. When Danny returned, however, he was shocked to see that Vicky had freed herself.
"What're you doing?" He asked, stunned.
"I'm leaving." She snarled before her expression softened slightly. "Come with me, you, me, Tootie, and the twerps, we could take the RV right now, that dumbass Bucky left the keys in it." She explained.
"No way." He glared; he would never betray his friends like that and besides if there was no way to move the train he wasn't about to leave the others out in the woods with no reliable vehicle.
"Didn't think you would say yes." She shrugged.
"I can't let you take the RV, don't be crazy."
"You're not 'letting' me take it. She laughed before suddenly pushing him out of the RV. Before he could get to his feet, she was already behind the wheel and quickly drove off, abandoning the group and her own sister. Tootie watched in shock as Danny and the others tried to chase after her but it was hopeless as she disappeared into the distance.
Hearing the commotion, Bucky ran outside and was stunned to see the RV gone.
"Come back here, you crazy bitch! FUCK! STOP!" He bellowed, even though it was impossible for her to hear him.
"Let's focus on the train," Danny growled in the direction she escaped from.
"Well, we're fucked if we don't figure out how this thing works!" Bucky shouted. "We can't spend the night out here, Chester's still sick, you know; we need to get to Bikini Bottom, to the coast."
"I'm sorry about the RV," Danny replied. "Keeping her was my call, this one's on me."
"The radiator is fucking hosed in that thing, so she won't make it thirty miles, we've also got all the weapons and supplies, she's as good as dead out there." Bucky glared. "We figure this train out, maybe it turns out she did us a favor." He sighed before going back into the front of the to work on the controls again. Wasting no time, Danny went to inspect the boxcar and was shocked to find a mattress, a lawn chair, and other miscellaneous items scattered about.
Somebody had been living in here.
It appeared that they were gone though as Danny saw a pool of blood next to the mattress. After a moment of silence, Danny began to look around and found a clipboard on the ground with a map on it. Danny picked up the map and saw that it was a map of where the train goes. These tracks might lead to the coast. He examined the map and saw Route 27, Bikini Bottom.
That's where Bucky was taking them.
Danny smiled and quickly ran to the front of the train where he found Bucky still trying to figure out how to start the train.
"I found this in the boxcar back here." He said as he gave Bucky the map.
"Whoa, is this what it looks like?" He smiled gleefully and Danny nodded with a smile of his own. "This hoss will take us right to Bikini Bottom! A hundred tons of steel; put a thousand walkers between us and the ocean and we don't have to give a shit! I can't believe it!"
"We just have to figure out how to get it started."
"I'm sure we can figure it out, how tough could it be?" Bucky shrugged.
"No idea, but we'll find out."
"That's the spirit." He smirked.
"What about Chester?" Danny asked nervously.
"What about him?" Bucky asked firmly, almost threateningly.
"We can't act like nothing's happened to him."
"We can't act like he's dead, either." He glared. "Try to get this thing started, there's gotta be some sort of...manual or somethin'." He growled. Danny decided it was probably best not to say anything else and he began to look around for some kind of instructions to the train engine. Just then, he noticed a clipboard on the ground where SpongeBob had dragged the dead man away.
He must have had it on him.
Danny picked it up and nearly jumped for joy when he saw it was a heck list for starting up the engine. Quickly, he headed back over to the console full of buttons, switches, and dials and followed the list's instructions to the letter. Suddenly everything instantly lit up and there was dull rumbling, signaling that the engine was running.
Bucky smiled and tried to make the train move now that the engine was running.
The train crept forward a few centimeters before it suddenly jolted to a halt.
"Shit! We still got the rest of the train attached to us back there." Bucky growled as Danny ran out to see if there anything he could do to get them unstuck from the derailed train cars. Remembering the tools he had found in the engine compartments, he went over to them and grabbed the wrench. He went around to the back of the train car still on the tracks and saw they were still attached to derailed ones thanks to the rusting coupler pin.
That wasn't going to be easy to remove.
Never the less, Danny took a deep breath to prepare himself for the struggle before he tried to pry the coupler pin free with the wrench; shocked and slightly amazed when he detached it. Hearing the loud clanking of the pin dropping, Bucky ran out to check on the teen, fearing the worst had happened.
"Hey, Bucky, we're loose!" He called as he panted from the effort. Bucky smiled and went over to the group.
"Gather what you have and let's go." He ordered and everyone gathered up all their supplies and walked over to the train. Noticing Chester was struggling to get up, Mr. Dinkleberg carefully picked the boy up, almost cradling him. He examined the small blonde boy, only to take a step back after noticing how pale and sickly he had become in just a few hours.
He turned to Chester's father, but he gave the man a stern look.
Not sure what to say, Mr. Dinkleberg said nothing and went to hop into the boxcar. Tootie, however, wasn't so considerate.
"Chester's sick." She quietly said to Bucky.
"Get on the train, Tootie." The father glared and she quickly obeyed and joined the others on the train.
"He is getting sicker," Danny said once he and Bucky were alone, but the man stayed silent. "We can't ignore this, look at the kid, Bucky, this is happening."
"Ain't shit happening and if it were, what can we do here? We get on the train and we find something better; THAT is the plan!"
"I just want to talk it through.
"It's TALKED THROUGH!" Bucky shouted. "Get on, I'll be upfront and I don't want to hear any nonsense until we get where we're goin'" He growled and stormed off to the front of the train. Danny sighed and entered the train cab with the others. Once everyone was on board, Bucky used the throttle and the train moved forward along, to parts unknown...
