《Cries from the Dust (Working title)》Chapter 13

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Dixon felt the train slowing down. Brooke was no longer gloating in the loud speaker. But the officers pressed on. Red laser sights waved back and forth showing the smoke in the darkness.

Dixon saw a crowd of ghosts to the side of the train as it passed another platform with momentum. He figured Brooke wouldn't have poisoned one of those people since it wasn't part of the plan to have them board, so soul jumping them should be safe. He was right. A woman at the platform accepted his ghost and went to check out what was happening outside.

One officer let fire. Clarity yelled and Dixon leapt up behind the officer. He threw a quick jab to the throat. The officer didn't back down, but smashed him in the chest with the butt of the rifle.

Dixon grabbed the riffle on the way down and pulled the officer with him. Under the soul jump, the officer didn't react to the pain of the throat strike. Dixon was impressed with the discipline of Brooke, or whoever was soul jumping the officer. They could block out pain of their subjects because it was not their pain.

But he figured he had one skill they did not. Soul jumping the dead. Without hesitation, Dixon reached into the holster of the officer and pulled out a hand gun.

The officer tried to stand back up, but it was too late. Dixon shot him in the head. The other red lights drifted towards the sound of the gunshot.

Dixon soul jumped the recently deceased officer and it worked. Brooke was out. With tears burning in his eyes, he tried to aim the handgun at the red laser sights to the right. He guessed where the heads would be based on the red lights and their ghosts. The officer he had a soul jump on did the same thing with officers to the left. One by one they were taken out.

Dixon fell to the ground coughing, and held his head in his hands. He soul jumped all of the dead officers and used them to carry him and his friends and the few other passengers to the next car back.

His lungs burned, but fresh air felt great. The passengers in this car stepped back as smoke spilled between the two cars. More officers were coming from the other cars. Dixon sent his soul jumped officers after them to form a perimeter. With every dead officer, his army grew larger. Soon, he had them all under his command.

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Somewhere, a flashlight turned on. Dixon still couldn't see, but there was an audible gasp.

"I'm a nurse." Someone said as she moved to Clarity.

"Those rozzers are dead." A man exclaimed. "How are they walking around with holes in their heads?"

Dixon pinched his eyes shut and kept to the shadows. Meanwhile, the woman from the platform was trying to call her husband, who was staying late at work tonight. Dixon let the woman have control of her life. He was simply observing.

"Bloody mobile." The woman looked at it. Lifeless. "It was over 30 percent charge ten minutes ago!"

By now she was out of the station and at the surface. The whole of London looked dark. Not a single light on. Cars lay motionless in the street. Some of them were abandoned.

The woman walked quickly in the direction of her husband's work. It was closer than home, and he would have to go by the tube as well. If he left work, they would run into each other. Still, it was several city blocks. Dixon kept the soul in her, but brought his focus back to the train.

With a slight strain to his eyes, he opened them. Everything was blurry, but the pain was lessened. He got up and moved towards Clarity. She was putting her hands on Scott's head while the nurse was trying to get her to stop.

"Let her do it." Dixon told the nurse.

The nurse pulled a flashlight out of her mouth. "If she doesn't hold still, her wounds will split and she'll lose blood."

Dixon kneeled next to her. "But if she doesn't do that, my other friend here is going to suffer a much worse fate."

"Which is?"

"I'm not sure, but it doesn't look good." Dixon looked deep into Scott's troubled eyes. "And she says she can stop it."

"Praying isn't going to stop that shaking."

Just as she said that, Scott stopped shaking. He was already passed out, and Dixon went to move him to a more comfortable position.

The nurse re-tended to Clarity's wounds and walked over to him. "So, who are you?"

"Dixon. And you are?"

"Amy."

"Thanks for helping, Amy. How's Clarity?" Dixon asked, nodding to Clarity.

"Fine." Amy nodded. "The bullets didn't go deep, one was the shoulder, the other her leg. I got both out, disinfected and stitched the wounds. She'll limp for a while, have some scars, but she'll be just fine."

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Dixon nodded and watched Amy move the flashlight through the rest of the cab.

"So, do you know what's going on?" Amy asked.

"I was going to ask you the same thing." Dixon sat down next to Scott.

"No, why would I?"

"Because, we're on a train, near the middle of the night, and you just happen to have a med kit with enough supplies to properly clean two gunshot wounds and stitch the patient up."

"I'm a nurse, it's kind of what I do."

"Maybe. Doesn't explain how London is without power in any form right now. How the gun sights on the officers don't work, how cars are just dead, we're stuck in the dark. And yet, your flashlight works fine."

"My med kit is a Faraday cage. London must have been hit with an EMP." She pointed the light on her kit. "Anything in there will be protected. But how do you know all of London is without power? How do you know cars are left for dead?"

"I have eyes on the surface."

"Because you knew there would be an electrical attack?"

"No, because I have eyes. Did you buy that bag because you knew this would happen?"

Amy paused for a moment. "What about these dead policemen everywhere? Do you know what's going on with them? One minute they're shooting at you, and the next they're shooting at each other, and now, they're just standing there, dead but very animated."

"You're guess is as good as mine." Dixon looked at them. "Let's focus on getting out of here."

Back in the eyes of the woman from the platform, he saw a faint glow in the distance. It was like an enormous black light was turned on and set in the middle of the street. The woman wasn't curious enough to investigate. Here, Dixon took control and forced her to have a closer look.

"Okay, say you're right." Amy tapped him on the shoulder. "Say London is without power, what good is getting out of the tube going to do?"

"We're trapped down here." Dixon pointed around them. "Trapped and isolated. We need to get out so we can escape whatever is coming next."

"What do you think is coming next?"

Dixon shook his head. "Nothing good."

"Aren't you the optimistic one?" She said sarcastically.

"I am optimistic." Dixon stood up and opened the door. Several dead officers brought passengers with them, into the car. "Optimistic that we're all getting out of here."

"How did you know they were coming back in?" Amy asked.

"I told you. I have eyes," Dixon said, checking in on the woman from the platform.

She was at the source of the glowing. A huge black sphere, with bolts of red striking through. A red silhouette of a man trying to get out. Piles of ashes lay at the ground in front of the sphere. He made the woman throw her dead phone into the sphere. It disintegrated. He could feel the woman's fear welling up in her. Her usefulness was at an end anyway. Most of London was without power, and there wasn't much more he could learn from the situation. So he let go of the soul jump, and that part of his soul shot into the sphere.

It burned. It was searing hot in a way that severe cold burns. He could feel the ghost splitting, tearing, writhing. It tried to jump back out, but the red silhouette lashed into it and grabbed it.

He screamed out. His other ghosts returned to him, and the officers all dropped to the ground at once. A hand reached out to touch him. He wanted to swat it away, but he had no control.

The hand was warm, and then bright. A thousand rats squeaked in his head. And then the pain was gone.

"You're lucky it only got one." Clarity said with a raspy voice. "That thing, that man in the sphere you saw, eats souls. We had to cut that soul from you. It's alright, you have many spares. If we didn't, you would have lost your soul jumping powers, and your sanity."

"You were controlling the police." Amy half whispered.

Dixon didn't deny it. There was no point.

"You're Peter Dixon. Come to restore balance to our world."

"Come again?" Dixon asked.

"It has to be you." Amy pointed excitedly at the bodies around them. "'And he shall save the people with their dead.'"

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