The Shovel System

Boom!

The massive blow slams into the locomotive carriage door, denting the steel door in half. A final impact rattles the entire carriage and blows the door into the carriage.

The door zooms past Jackie's face and demolishes the wall. It blows clean through and out into the night.

A cold wind blows through the new gaping hole next to Jackie and wh.i.p.s his white hair around his old face. The old man's irises narrow into pinpoints as his booty clenches.

Jackie sucks in a shuddering breath of cold air while his heart rate spikes.

He sees two massive slender hands that are as tall as the missing door grip both sides of the damaged doorway at the front of the carriage. The two hands f.o.r.c.i.b.l.y rip the carriage doorway wider.

Metal screeches and reddens from the compressive might of the hands as they warp and bend the steel carriage door frame.

Jackie puts his weight on his shovel and rises to his trembling feet. His wide eyes dart around the carriage, and his heart freezes for an instant.

'I could have sworn there were seven other passengers!' He mutters.

Jackie's gaze darts to all the windows and see many more of the ghoulish faces with black holes for their eyes and mouths swarming around to the damaged wall next to him.

Jackie feels the wind stop.

He looks at the hole and gulps. A wall of the frightening faces stares back at him through the hole.

'Why aren't they entering?' His mind sluggishly questions, before stepping back against the rear wall of the carriage to keep the damaged wall and the expanding doorway in his field of view.

The air by the front of the carriage ripples with heat as the massive hands continue to pry at the front passenger door. The wall buckles while the constant thrumb of the steel wheels on the tracks fills the air with sound.

The steel doorway is wrenched wide open. The resulting metallic screech causes Jackie to go deaf.

Jackie staggers in place, rubbing his ears in the barely sufficient light. His hearing comes back, bringing hundreds of strange whispers that drill into his mind and start making his vision blacken around the edges.

The old man refocuses at the front of the carriage.

A huge warped head with two terrifying gaping black eye holes and an endless abyssal mouth is facing him, laying on its side through the broken doorway.

Jackie involuntarily stumbles towards it, dragging his feet step after step, unable to stop himself.

His frozen heart thumps in his c.h.e.s.t again, pounding harder and harder. The blackness in his vision crawls back towards the edge of his field of view while the whispers quieten. His fear grows and leaps, terror churning his fight or flight response into high gear. Adrenaline surges throughout Jackie's body.

His flesh bulges with veins, and his muscles swell, steam sizzling from his body as he fights against the compulsion to fling himself willingly into that horrible monster's gaping mouth.

Clang.

His shovel sparks against the steel paneling on the carriage floor. Jackie slows his approach towards the massive head.

Clang.

He struggles against taking another step closer, his body turning red hot. The air stirs in the carriage.

Clang!

The carriage shakes with every thundering pulse of his heart.

The head's mouth expands wider and wider until it's entire face is just an endless swirling black hole.

Jackie's eyes twitch, growing heavier as his heart slows down again. His willpower and strength evaporate, he grows exhausted. The old man crumples to his knees. Then he topples forward as his vision falls into endless black.

He smacks face first onto the ground and sits up to rub his nose. The freezing wind screams by, whipping his hair behind him. He looks up and realizes that he is kneeling on the roof of the train carriage.

The black lands fly past as the train charges forward faster and faster.

Jackie sees the huge twisted body of the ghoulish abomination contorted over the front end of the train carriage. Its neck is stretched out by dozens of meters to its head planted inside the dark interior of the train.

The hundreds of ghoulish creatures stir on the side of the train, moving erratically. Their jerking movements reveal their true forms to Jackie.

The creatures have skinny, emaciated bodies with necks that stand three meters long. Their arms reach down to their feet, and their long, slender fingers drag out five meters behind them. They have many more joints than a human.

They creep towards Jackie while snapping their heads from one side to the other. Loud popping cracks out from their many joints with each movement.

He glances around and sees nowhere to run. The old man gets the feeling that leaving the train is suicide. He glances into the far distance and sees silhouettes of incomprehensible size moving beyond the horizon.

He looks back at the weird monsters jerking closer to him. The memories of those unclear entities from beyond vanish from his mind.

Jackie tries to move into one of his shovel stances, but his body moves in slow motion. So terribly slow.

The creatures rush at Jackie, swiping their hands at him, filling the air with hundreds of fleshy wh.i.p.s.

The old man wills his body to move faster with every fiber of his being, but to no avail.

The slender fingers slash through his arms and legs, ripping his body apart in an instant.

He crumples to the ground while his legs, lower torso, and left arm are torn away.

The old man heaves several breaths, his sluggish mind speeding up. 'That..that didn't hurt? Haha! That didn't hurt!'

Jackie looks down at the remains of his body, and then at the monsters further ripping and tearing his missing meat and bones into chunks, splattering themselves with his blood.

His heart pounds again, pumping his thinning blood through the remains of his flesh, adrenaline keeping him alive.

The old man heaves a few breaths, frustration building in his c.h.e.s.t and then turning into anger. His eyebrows furrow as his thoughts accelerate. Jackie's dull eyes lighten and then sparkle as consciousness fills them.

He grinds his teeth as he notices more of the abominations ascending from the side of the carriage. They immediately whip their destructive slender fingers at him.

The lightning-fast fingers bolt through the air, but Jackie is ready.

He spins his body and flings himself flipping through the air with his shovel. He uses it to weave his way through the sky-covering assault of thousands of deadly fingers.

Golden sparks erupt across the steel roof as the fingers whip and deform the places Jackie was moments before.

Jackie spins and summersaults through another barrage of fingers, his vision growing dimmer as his blood nears dangerously low levels. He flings himself at a group of the abominations, torquing his broken body into a beheading swing, severing dozens of heads in a blinding flash.

He avoids another barrage of fingers and slams his shovel down onto another abomination, punching its head down into its body and embedding the body into the cratered roof of the carriage.

The entire carriage rocks and jumps from the blow while Jackie uses the momentum from the strike to throw himself over the frighteningly massive body of the titanic abomination that has its huge head stuck in the side of the train carriage.

Jackie's dimming eyes see a bright light through the door's window.