The Thousand-Year Nightmare

Chapter One

The old man snarled and lifted the young man by his musty white shirt, covered in stain and blood, slamming him against the wall so hard dust fell from the ceiling. The young man took in a sharp breath as his back hit the wall and he struggled with his hands over the old mans, trying to pull them off of his shirt.

"Where did they go?" He snarled

"The train! The train! They took them to the train. There was nothing I could do." The young man yelled, tears welling in his eyes as the sudden feeling of helplessness sank in. "Those creatures, I never saw nothing like them, I swear."

"SHUT UP!" The old man bellowed. "They aint got on no train!"

"Sir-" A young girl, maybe the age of nine, whispered behind him. She dropped the body she drug but kept her gun aimed at its head like she didnt believe it to really be dead.

"What in hells name is that?" The old man asked, dropping the young man and walking closer to the creature. Its eyes were glazed over and black, it didnt quite look like a Zombie, almost more like an old Cure-Raider. But that was impossible, they couldnt get infected. Taking the girls gun and pushing her behind him, he pushed the barrel of the gun against the creatures mouth. A split tongue fell out, with green pores on along its buds. Not pores... spores. He thought to himself. It was unnatural, it had to have been done on purpose.

The young man didnt move from where he was dropped against the wall until he saw the face of the creature, his sister, Lianna dropped. His arms folded around himself tightly like a hug, as his legs scrambled. His legs moved as if they were trying to push him further away from the creature, but he just kept slamming his back into the wall, shaking and crying. All he could say was "No, no, no... No, no, no..." His eyes, no matter which way he tossed his head, would not move from the face of the creature.

Lianna's heart bled for him but she knew the old man was justified in his anger. Her brother, Rexus was on watch that night and they found him unconcious or asleep while over half of their little village was either slaughtered or missing, no one else on watch was found. Just him.

"This is that creature you saw then, boy? Where did they take them? Where are the children? Wheres your watch-partner, Elane? Where are they!?" He asked, each question, he walked closer to Rexus, raising his voice before he crouched and violently shook Rexus' shoulders to get his attention. Still not looking away from the body, Rexus whispered,

"The train... They took 'em to the train."

"They aint on no train, boy! The TRAIN DONT STOP!" The old man screamed beside himself as he smacked the boy and stood up, walking away clearly to prevent himself from harming him. Rexus, however, did not respond to the smack, he had yet to blink since seeing the body on the ground. All he did was part his lips and dryly whisper;

"... The train didn't stop."

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The little girl giggled as Rose tossed her onto the cot. Then turning, she fluffed her little pillow and sprawled across it like a starfish.

"Grandpa said he heard a Thousand-Year train this 'mornin." The little girl said curiously, still giggling a little. "How could he know how old that train is?"

Rose rolled her eyes and shook her head, sitting on the edge of the cot next to the little girl. She knew that the 'grandpa' the little girl referred to, was the village old man, Carl. Just like Rose knew that the little girl often called her a sister. It wasnt unusual of the children in the village to start naming the adults as family. Most of them were survivors from the Zombies, either coming across the village by happenstance or rescued when the village hunters went on searches through other abandoned villages the scouts found. The watchers and elders, such as Rose and Carl would then check the children for bites and teach them how to defend themselves and what to look for to survive.

Normally, none of the children had bites. None of the ones that made it back to the village anyway. The hunters or scouts normally got the unpleasant job of discovering a child were infected on the way back. Rose was glad she was just a Watcher. She couldnt imagine seeing a child turn in front of her and needing to end it. Not when she knew what they likely went through, not after seeing their hope when they realized they were being rescued...

"Oh, Elane... you know the old man is spittin fantasy again." She said softly, "The Thousand-Year train... It's just a bedtime story, it's not real. It's said that there was once two of the thousand-year trains, they are called that because they can carry one thousand people and are self-sufficient enough that they can move for one thousand years without ever breaking down or needing a refuel. It was the ultimate experiment. As the story goes, they were built to preserve humanity."

"How would a train help us?"

"Those zombies outside? They weren't always there. The train was designed after the Zombie Virus E.N.D (Emergent Neurological Disease) was created... or developed from mutation. No-one admited to creating it and too many people died too quickly to find out who did. The point of the train was to move faster than anything, in order to not only outrun any Zombie, but also to bulldoze through any mob on the tracks. Its longevity was designed to keep generations of time in mind, to prevent the train from ever needing to stop and thereby become infected. The time was needed so that a cure could be developed."

"How could a cure be found on a train? You cant find anything new inside a box... Right?"

"Back in the old days, these people called scientists did all the time, and their boxes didnt move. They called them labs. In labs, they have supplies that allow them to run experiments, which is an idea put into action, something they often referred to as practice when explaining an experiment. The train was filled in many box carts with the supplies those scientists used long ago."

"What about the Cure-Raiders? Weren't they supposed to be our cure?"

"The Cure-Raiders... Like the train, they were supposed to be a salvation for humanity but that experiment went... terribly wrong. The Cure-Raiders arent human, they're..."

"Robots?"

"Yeah... yeah, you could say that. They're like scary robots that cant tell the difference between the living and dead. The Cure-Raiders had a strange ability to release a light in the air, like a black light and it was meant to find the virus E.N.D, and cure it. The light hovered in the air like this purple and black magic orb and it glowed and eminated a light that could show the virus in water, air, and even zombies to the human eye and to the scanner of the Cure-Raiders. That way they could evaluate and cure the virus E.N.D. Since E.N.D was responsible for creating the zombies-"

"If the light could find E.N.D in the Zombies, they could be saved? They would be human again?"

"Ha... yes, you are very smart. They could have been. Instead, the part of the light that heals E.N.D actually copied and mutated it."

"What's that do? The mutation?"

"I don't know... no one does. Whatever takes that mutation, dies before you see any extreme change physically or behaviorally. They look sort of strange, almost like they're more dead than before and awake at the same time. Some scream, some dont, they start to sieze and then they fall and never move again."

"What about the trains?"

"Ah, yes! The trains. One was said to be destroyed long before I was ever born. The Cure-Raiders got onto the train and destroyed everything and everyone. The other train, is rumored to still run to this day. It protects its passangers from the Zombies and it never stops, so it can never be caught. But like I said earlier, its just a bedtime story to comfort us. That somewhere out there, theres a train to give us salvation from this nightmare."

"But there is no train, right?"

"No, there is no train. I'm afraid there is no salvation, not in this life."

"Maybe it was just never seen or caught because it never stops."

"Ha-yeah? Maybe. Get some sleep, I need to swap with lookout."

"Rose, wait!"

"Yes, Elane?"

"Why do you think Grandpa sees the train, if its not real?"

"Hmm... Sometimes you have to see hope to keep going, even if its not real."

Elane gasped as she woke up and instantly grimaced at the resistance of the chains around her wrists. Growling sounded from the hall just outside the slider door she was trapped behind. A dog? or a Zombie? She didn't know and she didn't care, all it took was that one growl to tell her that she was not alone and that she needed to be quiet if she wanted to live. Of all the dreams she could have had though, why was it that memory? Why did her mind go back to her childhood like that? And where was she? Why would anyone living capture another living person? Her mind swam with questions while her eyes wondered the little box she was trapped in. There were benches, but she was chained to the middle of the floor to what looked like used to be a table. But all that remained was the pole to hold the chains.

The windows had duct tape all across them, warn with dust and mold. Was the tape there to hide where they were or to hide who was inside? She felt the box lurch and she held back a groan. Elane had the worst motion sickness possible and immediately realized they had to be actively moving, which explained why she felt so nauseated. A chain moved and it wasn't hers. Flinching, she squinted at the darkness and faintly saw hair underneath the seat across from her.

"Who's there?" Elane whispered, her voice so soft and low as she shifted in her cargo pants uncomfortably. They felt so baggy and awkward without her usual weapons tucked in the pockets. She kept her hair cut short to lower the chances of harboring the virus, E.N.D and she wore a tank-top with a torn sweater to keep bugs from biting at her.

"Shh... You're brave being in plain sight like that, get under the seat." A rougher voice hissed back.

"Why?" Elane asked, but her body moved under the seat faster than she could process anything and her own hands covered her mouth to hide her breathing as the sliding door rattled. A twisted and broken face pressed against the glass. Its eyes oozing a black liquid, its nose broken and hanging by a string of skin. Blisters covered its complexion like acne and a black split tongue with green spores fell from what could only be loosely defined as a mouth. It growled again and seemingly deciding there was nothing in the box, moved on. She closed her eyes and slowly let out the breath she was holding, under her hand. Her heart pounding so loud she was almost afraid the creature would hear and come back.

What was that thing? From what was left of its face, it looked like an almost synthetic being, like the Cure-Raiders. But the Cure-Raiders couldnt be infected with anything, right? They werent made with real flesh, she didnt think- though as she contininued to think about it, she quickly realized, she had no idea what the Cure-Raiders were made out of. To her, they always existed and they had always been malfunctioned, making the Virus E.N.D worse. There was nothing else that she needed to know. There was no way they could be made with real flesh...

She tried not to gag at the unpleasant idea of someone piecing together flesh with mechanics to make a Cure-Raider- her mind quickly trying to guess if this was living flesh, dead, living-dead? Where would they get the flesh? How? She didnt want to think that it could be the old corpses of old living or living-dead that could be found anywhere. She always just imagined that those corpses disapeared with time because the Zombies finished them off and animals took the bones. Whatever animals could anyway- not many of those were left either and in any case, nobody could eat the animals that did survive. They were too infected, even if the virus didnt seem to reach their minds like it did the minds of people.

"...Penelope." The soft rugged voice soon broke the silence between them, when the dragging of the creatures feet against the floor could no longer be heard, nor its ragged breaths or growls in the still, dead air. Elane looked toward the darkness under the seat across from her, where she saw hair earlier and heard the warning to hide. Penelope was a girls name, but her voice sounded so rough and warn like the voices of the children back at the village after they refused to speak for too long or the sound of the adults voice after hours of screaming, when Zombies left them half alive and half eaten. What made Penelope's voice sound that way?

"Penelope... My name is Elane. I'm from the village of Windhelm. Do you know where we are...? Or... why we're here?" Elane asked softly.

"You arent from a village anymore. You dont exist anymore. This is the Thousand-Year train. There's no getting off. There's no getting out. The train doesnt stop. Even if you jumped off, you'll die. Moves too fast... They say they want us for a cure, but they really just want to feed us to those things out there."

"The Thousand-Year..." Elane couldnt believe it. Was it really real? Where did it go? Carl always only saw it once a year and with how fast its said to move... Elane couldnt imagine how far it could go. "It has to stop," she said, still in a whisper, but more to assure herself than to tell Penelope. "How else would anything get us on board?"

"Same way they grab you without anyone seeing. They move too fast. Faster than the train. Thats what those monsters made them to be. The ones in the black coats, they messed with the Zombies too much and now they're like that thing you saw in the hallway. They stop to kill or snatch, thats it. They have no mercy but they do follow orders from the black coats. Somehow..." Penelope whispered, her voice fading even more as she seemed to be unsure what else to say.

"Monsters? There are more monsters? Faster than the train, but... Nothing is supposed to be faster than this train..." Elane said in disbelief.

"They are monsters for what they have done. They are people. Like you and me, human." Penelope whispered back with a hint of attitude in her tone, like that should have been obvious. Then whispering back in a more growled undertone, she corrected; "Once the train was the fastest thing in this world. Now it is not. Things change... just like people." She muttered.

Elane didnt say anything now, she just listened as Penelope's words repeated in her head. 'Things change... just like people.'

What happened to her? Elane didnt have the stomach to ask at that moment, she just stared at the dirty metal floor of the train compartment. "Why are we chained here...?" Elane eventually asked. But a sudden, piercing, bloodcurdling scream sounded from the compartment next to them.

"Please no, just let me go, let me off! I cant do it, so let me off!" A man screamed, his voice cracking from fear. Another voice sighed and spoke in an almost bored tone; "I told you already, I cant have my subjects dying, they need to be well fed to keep the experiment going."

"Please, I have a family!" The man pleaded but the voice dismissively responded;

"They have already considered you lost, I am sure they have mourned." But the man was already whispering "No," repetitively as if he were in denial. Elane could feel his fear through the walls and although she had never see the man, she almost had an image far too clear in her mind of how this scene might look. A man, as Penelope discribed before in a black coat, probably with a pad and a pen while another was probably facing certain death, cowering and begging for his life. Was that man abducted like she was? The train screeched a horrid and ungodly sound, drowning out the scared mans mutters.

"More tar?" A new voice inquired, the newer voice was unnaturally happy for the situation and very feminine.

"Probably", the indifferent one from earlier agreed. "Some of the villagers have been smearing tar on the tracks in attempt to slow the train down. Trying to save the experiments they know."

"Frugal attempts made in vein." The new womans voice responded.

"Indeed. Call in the Subject to finish the man, make sure he is chained up- I dont want him opening the other compartments and accidentally feeding our subject the other experiments early." The indifferent voice muttered as the screeching of the train died down. "I need to finish dialing in our new experiments to the system." He continued as the trains screeching stopped.

Indeed, the train did not slow or stop, which made Elane's stomach twist into knotts. It screeched for so long, there must have been so much tar and it still had no effect... Elane didnt ever hear the womans response. She just heard the door about half the hall away from her. It sounded like, the door slid closed and locked, probably the indifferent man leaving. Then, she heard the chains in the compartment next to her move and click as the man screamed and Elane could only assume began to fight back.

There were thuds on the walls and the floors as his arms and legs flailed about. The woman must have been successful because the screaming faded to quiet sobs and her footsteps began to retreat, the last thing she said to him was;

"You failed to be a cure, so now you must be food instead. The foodchain is the hardest chain to break free of." She giggled, a sick and twisted giggle. "Have to keep our subjects alive to save humanity. You're a hero, even if you werent the cure."