Mia stared out through the train window, her eyes fixated on the crystallized remains of Phillip. They'd known each other most of their lives, and now he had become nothing more than a memory, forever preserved within the green rocks.
It had been a day since the train broke down, but despite the time that had passed, there wasn't any noticeable change in daylight. The sky hung above us, blue and bright, though no sun existed to let us know whether we were still on Earth, instead the light seemed evenly distributed across the sky with no visible source.
I tried my best to comfort Mia, though nothing I could say would ease the loss and trauma we'd all just experienced. Our best bet would be to simply keep everyone alive through the next part of our horrific nightmare.
Though the crystals had slowed down once we retreated, they kept reaching out for the train, and had already covered two of the cars in the back, slowly inching their way ahead during the day we'd been stuck. They seemed to react to touch, spreading faster with any interaction between us and the environment outside the train.
While trapped in the morbidly beautiful landscape, John had taken it upon himself to find a way into the locomotive. The entrance had been sealed by a heavy metal wall, and it seemed that even from the outside, there wasn't any windows nor feasible way of entering. It was simply a block of iron that had effortlessly dragged us through two dimensions, broken down only to cause us pain.
John, as fit as he was, had turned into a spitting image of death itself, both from exhaustion and the infection spreading through his wounded leg. Pearls of sweat formed on his forehead as he looked for different tools to smash his way through the wall, a noble, but futile effort.
“John, you need to get some rest,” I demanded carefully as I noticed him on the brink of collapse. I didn't dare say too much against him, both from fear of pissing him off, and because he stood our best chance of escape.
“No, I'm fine,” he shouted back as he popped a couple of pills, a mixture between antibiotics and painkillers.
He leaned against the wall, looking out through the window at the ever-growing crystals outside. “There's no time to stop, if we don't do anything, we'll be dead in a matter of days.”
“I know, John, but we can work without you for a couple of hours, you have to take care of yourself.”
“Just leave me alone, I need to think, there has to be a way inside, I know it!” he said as he shoved his way past me, off to search for more tools.
The train had turned quiet, illuminated by bright light from the sunless sky above. The air felt heavy, and was filled with the stench of dead Surveyors, but it was still preferable to the threat of Sentinels, and in addition it was now an easy task to search for both supplies, and any equipment we could use to aid us in our escape attempts.
Another day passed in the fields of crystals, and Mia still hadn't spoken a word, apart from checking on John's bandaged wound and instructing him to keep taking the antibiotics. Of course, despite the inflamed and painful cut in his leg, he refused any rest.
Frank and I eventually decided that we'd force him to take a break, even if it meant physically restraining him. After a short talk with Mia to make sure she agreed, we set out to force John into temporary retirement.
He had turned oddly quiet, and we had to search every car to finally find him collapsed on the ground with the bandage ripped off, and black liquid oozing out from the wound. Before we could even call Mia in to help, the train jolted to movement, quickly coming to a stop as the back cars had fused together with the crystals.
“The train, it's working again!” Frank yelled excitedly, before realizing we weren't actually moving.
We looked at each other in sudden realization and shouted simultaneously “The cars!”
“We have to disconnect them,” Frank suggested.
“You do that, I'm going to stay with John, tell Mia we need her quickly,” I said as Frank started running to the back of the train.
I sat down and shook John in an attempt at waking him, and while he didn't respond, at least he was breathing. I glanced at the black liquid trickling down his leg, forming a puddle on the floor, not daring to touch it. Whatever it was, it didn't look anything like the yellow puss I'd expected from an infection.
Mia came running to my aid, quickly checking his pulse and breathing.
“He's burning up,” Mia said.
Suddenly the train broke loose, and we started moving away from the green fields of infectious crystals. Frank joined us with as many supplies as he could carry from the back cars, trying not to leave food or medication behind.
“I can't believe we're moving again,” Frank said gleefully as he returned to us, showing little concern for John's deteriorating state.
Near the front of the train there was a sleeping car, which we cleaned out and put John to rest. Moving the mountain of a main was a tough challenge on its own, but it was nothing next to the challenge of keeping him alive through sepsis, as the infection spread into his bloodstream.
Mia took on the task of watching John, making sure he drank and fed him his antibiotics while the train moved closer to Gehenna. It would only be a matter of hours until we reached our final destination, and I had yet to tell the others what the place truly was.
While Frank was busy trying to contact the outside world, using one of the few battery packs still working, I approached Mia to tell her the pitiful truth about our journey.
I sat down, and glimpsed out the window, watching the landscape change as we quickly passed by. The infinite green fields that had taken Phillip started to give way to solid rock, gray and continuous, with scanty cracks breaking its perfect surface.
Tall structures extended from some of the cracks, looking like red tree-stems covered in veins and arteries, pulsating and twitching in response to our passing. At the top they broke up into bubbles filled with swishing, black goo, similar to what had oozed from John's wound.
Red forests reeking of rotten flesh, growing in density as we kept moving closer to a literal hell.
Every now and then, creatures would emerge from the densest parts of the structures. Bizarre beings vaguely resembling horses, with long bodies and impossibly thin legs stretching at least fifteen feet away, and eyes that were pitch black, sunken things, far too large for their heads.
About a dozen of them had gotten an inkling to our presence, and galloped elegantly along our moving train, keeping up the pace.
“Mia, I have to tell you something,” I said carefully.
She didn't respond, she just kept staring at the creatures that were following us. They never got too close, probably only curious as to what and who we were.
“We're not going to make it, are we?” she said without a hint of emotion in her voice.
“What do you mean?”
“Gehenna, I know the name, it means Hell,” she continued.
The red forest outside kept getting denser, forcing the creatures to break off, and as the trees grew taller, the sky darkened.
“I'm sorry, I should have told you earlier, I didn't want us to give up,” she said.
I kept my mouth shut, she'd been struggling with the same information as me, yet she kept helping us. It wouldn't make sense for me to confess that I already knew as well.
“I'm sorry about Phillip,” I said after a minute of silence.
“Thanks, he would've wanted us to keep fighting.”
I checked the watch, only to notice the seconds tick slower than normal. According to the time, we were only an hour away from Gehenna, but with every watch having slowed down, there was no way of telling how far away we really were.
“So, what do we do?” I asked.
“When we get there?”
I nodded.
“I don't know, but right now we have to-”
She was cut off by John starting to shake violently, screaming in agony without fully regaining consciousness. At first, it looked like a seizure, but once we saw his leg we realized it wasn't anything that could possibly be explained by modern medicine.
His leg had torn open completely, and black tendrils stretched out, wriggling around in the air as if searching for something. The obsidian black appendages looked exactly like the flesh of the Sentinels, and it immediately dawned on both of us that the Sentinel had deliberately let John live after spreading itself within him.
We both screamed in shock, unable to decide whether to leave John behind and flee, or to stay and try to save him. Frank came rushing in just in time to see one of the tendrils shoot out from the leg and try to grab me, but I ducked beneath it just in time.
“What the-”
“We have to cut off his leg!” Mia yelled in panic. “Frank, get the knife and something hard!”
“H-how are we going to- to-” I tried to ask with a trembling voice.
“We'll cut through the flesh with the knife, and try to break the bone, but I-I-”
Before we could even start to plan out the amputation, John shot to his legs, partially waking up from the pain, realizing what was going on.
“Get- get away from me,” he groaned as one of the tendrils shot out at us, ripping flesh away as it extended from his wound.
I pulled Mia with me out from the compartment, and we fled forward into the next car, just as Frank came running back with an ax he'd found.
“Where's John?” he asked.
We didn't need to answer the question, because John quickly followed us, walking with his mangled, Sentinel infested leg. One of the tendrils had grown out from the wound, forming an amorphous black blob on the floor, still attached to John, feeding off his body.
His leg had completely shattered and split open, but the infection had spread even further, reaching his abdomen, covered in tiny holes occupied by more dark appendages. Amputation was no longer a viable option, so we kept backing away as John screamed in agony, visibly trying to fight against the Sentinel's movement inside him.
As we got to the space between cars, John unwillingly grabbed onto Mia with his arms. She fought back, but even without the tendrils, John was far stronger than all of us.
“I- can't, stop it,” he forced out, “please, use the ax.”
Frank got ready to hit John, but one of the tendrils swung at it, snatching it away.
John kept fighting, turning his head to one of the exits, reaching out for it with all of his remaining willpower.
“Don't- fucking die- on me,” he said before pulling the handle. The door opened, and John let himself fall off the train into the thick mess of red trees and darkness.
I held onto Mia as she collapsed to the floor from exhaustion, carefully checking if she'd been wounded from John's grip.
Frank closed the door John had fallen out through, and we all stared at each other in silence. John had died to protect us from himself, and with that, an immense feeling of loneliness overwhelmed me. Our best chance of survival was gone...
...and our next stop will be Hell itself.
---
Credits
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