Final Dawn: Season 3 (The Thrilling Post-Apocalyptic Series) Read Online Free PDF Page A

Flashlight in hand, he scanned the interior of the train cars, the doors of which were still rolled open from when the creatures inside had been trying to attack them.
     
    Most of the contents of the boxcars were unrecognizable to Marcus, except for the few cars directly behind the locomotives. In addition to holding Bertha, the front few boxcars also held a variety of workman’s tools, thick metal rails, wooden ties, spikes and—in the fourth car—a large amount of gravel for smoothing out uneven surfaces. While Marcus had seen the contents of a few of the boxcars previously, he had been under enormous stress while doing so, and this was his first chance to check them out in a relatively calm environment. Clenching his teeth, he pulled himself into the second boxcar, trying to keep his shoulder as still as possible.
     
    Marcus played the flashlight over the interior of the darkened boxcar as Sam sniffed around his feet, growling at two dead creatures that were hanging out of the open door on the opposite side. Thunder rumbled in the distance, causing a shiver to run down Marcus’s spine as the eerie atmosphere of the train began to affect him. Shaking the feeling off, he continued looking through the supplies, nurturing the seed of a plan that he had been forming since shortly after he had shot Mr. Doe in the back. Moving on to the next train car, he found that it was filled with more rails and ties, and between all of the supplies he had seen, there looked to be enough to lay down a half mile or more of track with little or no difficulty. From Marcus’s estimation, the amount of track that had been destroyed in front of them by the missile was no more than thirty feet in length.
     
    It ’ll never work , he thought, but stranger things than this have succeeded so far.
     
    Walking back to the locomotive with Sam behind him, Marcus heard Rachel and David’s voice before he saw them. As he rounded the corner to the front of the train, he saw the two of them standing near the destroyed section of rail, gesturing between it and the train behind them.
     
    “Oh come on, David. It can’t be that hard.”
     
    “Are you serious? One of those ties is several hundred pounds on its own. And none of us are in the best of shape, either.”
     
    The pair turned and looked at Marcus upon hearing the sound of gravel crunching underfoot. Smiling, he nodded toward the damaged track and spoke to Rachel. “So you had the same idea, eh?”
     
    David threw his hands into the air and walked back toward the train in frustration. “You’re both insane!”
     
    Marcus watched David walk back to the locomotive and climb back inside before turning back to Rachel. “What do you figure our chances here are?”
     
    “Based on our track record, I’d say we’ve got a pretty good shot. It’s not like we have any other choice, though. Going on foot is a no-go, and finding a vehicle that’s still operational that could hold Bertha is a fool’s errand.”
     
    “So is trying to lay down thirty feet of railroad track when none of us have any idea how to do it.”
     
    Rachel gave Marcus a half-smile and walked a few feet forward, to the edge of where the track had been damaged. She wobbled slightly as she walked, and Marcus could see that she was still fighting through a large amount of pain. The shallow crater in front of her was several inches deep, down to the bottom layer of gravel that the railroad ties rested in. The major damage hadn’t been to the ground, though, but to the ties and rails themselves. Pieces of the wooden ties were scattered around and in the crater, and several short sections of rail were missing as well. At both ends of the crater, where the rails were intact, there were a few feet of mangled, twisted steel loosely joined to the intact sections of rail by screw spikes.
     
    “Come on now, it won’t be that bad.” Rachel patted Marcus’s shoulder as she circled around him, walking the perimeter of the