Drowning Utopia

Chapter 35: Backwater Loyalists

"Hey! Wake up, soldier, no sleeping on the job." Captain Brine shook a body on the ground, further down the train car.

Vain gasped, sitting upright. "Ahh! God! It hurts!" Her arm and side were peppered with wood and glass fragments protruding like porcupine quills. She looked around dazed. "What happened?" Glancing up at Captain Brine, she asked, "What were those things? with the Oni?"

The Loyalist grimaced, "How the hell am I supposed to know?"

"Well, you know what? I am getting tired of all of these surprises," Tessa said, still giggling to herself but coming off the rush from the fight.

Miss Briggs and Lonny sat her upright, but Tessa gasped as a sharp pain shot through her torso. "It's hard to breathe," she complained as she held her side.

Miss Briggs lightly felt along her ribs. Tessa shied away from the briefest of touch.

"It looks like you may have a few fractured ribs." The formal woman sighed.

"Oh, is that all?" Tessa gave a wry smile, trying to hide the sting from her injury.

After pulling out several pieces of the shrapnel, Vain began bandaging her arm where splinters had lodged. She spat another large fragment from her mouth that she pulled from her wrist before wrapping it.

After some time, as the city and its streets gave way to the swamp, Tessa noted that they were slowing down. "Why are we stopping?"

"I'll go check," Donny said, after pulling another poor man from under several planks of shattered wood. They rattled to a stop on the rail line under an old water tower. "Engine is shot. Gray is out but still alive. Looks like he took a nasty bump to the head. The other poor sod is dead. A mortar hit the cab and destroyed the boiler controls." He set down Gray's unconscious form on the floor next to Tessa. Donny had tried to patch his head with a makeshift bandage, but it was doing little good to stop the trickle of blood down his face. A wave of pity washed over Tessa, but it was dampened by her own pain.

Looking at the others, Donny asked, "So, now what?"

Peering in the direction they had come from, Captain Brine asked, "Do we still go on, even with those things after us?"

"We lost them for now. That's what counts," Vain said, still working on her arm.

"Oh, right," the Southern Royalist man said, setting down his gun. "And how exactly does that benefit us?"

Tessa laid her head back on one of the few benches not riddled with holes, feeling outright pitiful. It helped a little, but not enough to completely ignore the pain.

Miss Briggs stood next to Tessa, watching their surroundings with a hawk-like gaze.

Tessa asked, "Miss Briggs, what do you put our chances at now that we know they have those things helping them?"

"Do you really want to know my analysis of the situation, Miss Copperfield?" she asked, raising her brow.

"I just want to know if there is even any point in continuing. Or whether we should try and run for it."

Miss Briggs looked troubled. "I must admit that things are looking bleak. If they are gathering all the Boomers for an assault, I can only guess that their target is the manor, at which point, they will have achieved their primary objective of taking the city. As for what their follow-up goals are, I can only assume, but seeing as they are working in tandem with both sky pirates, as well as whatever monstrosities those things were back there, they know that we are here, what our objective is, and if I am not mistaken, those monsters can track us by our scent, at which point it is only a matter of time before they catch up and finish us off. Never mind that our only mode of transportation is out, we have far too many dead and wounded to take the dam by force, and we are not exactly in a position to fend off any attackers."