Free Torn Apart by James Harden Page A

But I wasn’t going to let Ben stop me. He could
either shut up or come with.
    “ Let go!”
    I slipped out of his grip and pushed him with
all my strength. He fell backwards. Sprawled across the tracks. Now
he really did look dead.
    I was just about to storm off. Maybe I
should’ve checked his pulse. But then he coughed so I knew he was
alive. At least for the time being.
    “ I’m sorry,” I said.
    “ Stick to the shadows,” he
whispered. “When you strike; strike hard. Strike fast. You will
only get one chance.”
     

Chapter 18
    I ran up to the rear of the train, hunched over, keeping low. Ben
was right. The train appeared to be a ‘bullet’ train. The front
carriage and the rear carriage both had an aerodynamic and
futuristic design. It gave the impression that it was built for
speed. The two rear carriages were boarded
up. The windows were spray painted black. They were completely
dark.
    I moved towards the front. The lights inside the carriages were so bright,
they hurt my eyes. The passenger doors located on the side were
both open.
    I moved up to the second carriage and peered
through the side door.
    The carriage was empty. Sort of.
    Empty of living people. No Maria.
    But it was full of dead bodies.
    Dead soldiers.
    They lay slumped in the seats of the train.
Some lay in the aisle.
    Blood covered their bodies and their armor and
helmets, and the inside of the carriage. Bullet casings covered the
floor.
    I had no idea what had happened
here.
    Did someone shoot all these
soldiers?
    How?
    They would’ve had to have taken them by
surprise. Unloaded with a machine gun when they weren’t prepared,
weren’t ready.
    Maybe they had been asleep. Maybe they were
about to go out on a mission. Or maybe they were just coming
back.
    I climbed up into the train and crouched inside
the carriage of death. I was surrounded by dead
soldiers.
    They looked like Special Forces
soldiers.
    According to the patches on their uniforms some
of them were Para-troopers. Airborne.
    These guys were the elite. They were the best
of the best. And they had been executed. I had to take several deep
breaths to calm myself down. Each of the Para-troopers was wearing
a parachute harness. As I moved through the carriage, I could see
that they had all been shot multiple times.
    There was blood everywhere. And bullet casings.
They were concentrated at the doorway that connected the second
carriage to the front carriage, like someone had stood there and
unloaded magazine after magazine at the soldiers, while they were
sitting down.
    L oaded
bullets littered the floor as well. They were piled up in
heaps.
    Again, I had to take deep breaths. I had to
breathe through my mouth and concentrate and focus so I didn’t
throw up. I had to distance myself and think about something else,
so it didn’t feel like I was crawling over a pile of dead
soldiers.
    I moved slowly through the train. I moved up to
the door that connected the carriages. I peered through the
window.
    I was not prepared for what I saw.
    I immediately ducked back down so that I was
hidden. I put my hand over my mouth so that I didn’t
scream.
    This is what I saw.
    I saw Maria.
    Her hands were tied to the hand railing at the
far end of the front carriage, near the driver’s cabin. Her face
was streaked with tears.
    Standing menacingly at the other end of the
carriage, right near where I was crouched, was a man. He was
shirtless, wearing military style cargo pants. He was wearing a gas
mask. The goggles of the mask were tinted black. I couldn’t see his
face.
    The mask gave him the impression that he was an
alien. Or a monster. Something inhuman. His entire upper body was
covered in scars. Cuts. Burn marks. I couldn’t tell if they were
self inflicted or if someone had done that to him.
    He had a number of rifles lined up in the aisle
and he was standing over a pile of bullets. He was taking them out
of the rifle’s magazines.
    One by one.
    Maria screamed again and I actually jumped.