He felt a grimace pucker his face as he slid his right foot farther out on the track, and then moved his left foot over to join it. Unsure if the grimace was one of disgust at the inner voice that sometimes seemed as determined an enemy as the zombies that had taken over the world, or one of terror at the fact that his heels were now suspended over nothing but air.
He reached with his right hand, feeling for the handle in the middle of the door. Couldn’t reach it. Not without letting go of the outer lip of the door with his left. And that meant he’d be clinging to the metal like a fly, no handholds whatever. Not long, probably, but when you were hanging to the side of a moving train with nothing to anchor you but hope and whatever prayers you could toss up to Heaven, any time was too long.
The train bucked again. Harder this time, and his right foot slid off the track, kicking back like he was executing a particularly strange dance move. He felt himself slide backward for a terrible moment, his left arm trying desperately to yank his center of gravity back over the track.
He grunted. Threw his right hand forward. It slapped the metal door so hard there was a clang and his wrist – already punished and bruised from his escape from the cuffs – shouted a rebuke.
But he swung back over the track. Pushed himself so hard against the metal that he felt like he might have the waves and troughs of the steel etched permanently in his face.
He had to move. Didn’t know when the next hit – whatever it was – would come. When the next bounce might just toss him off the side of the boxcar.
He looked at the handle. Still out of reach.
He let go of the door with his left hand. Holding onto nothing now. Just balanced on the track, both hands stretched wide along the outside of the door like he was trying to give the boxcar some strange bear hug.
He inched over. His lead foot kicked something. He faltered. Almost lost balance. Glanced down.
One of the wheel mechanisms.
He had to step over and around it. Lifting his foot and swinging it around the rods and pins that went into the steel wheel that sat in the track. They weren’t something he could grab onto, either: the entire apparatus was anchored about a foot above the track, so all it provided was a stumbling block.
He lifted his right foot. Now balanced on a single foot – his left foot, his left leg, the one that had hurt the most since he twisted his back – and kicked over the wheel mechanism. Slammed his foot back down on the track.
The return to the track almost did him in. He was too hurried, too scared. The motion was harder than it should have been, and he almost kicked right past the track, almost kicked himself right down the side of the train.
He caught himself with his lead foot a full six inches below the track. Frozen for a long moment. Then he raised it – more slowly, more controlled this time – and put it back on the track.
Another two slides.
And he reached the handle.
He lifted his left leg over the wheel mechanism. This time it was easier, since he had both hands wrapped in death-grips around the horizontal steel loop riveted to the side of the door.
He was at the center.
Halfway left to go.
Only there was no handle to reach for at the end of the second half. Just empty space.
17
Ken’s hands were bunched together on the handle of the sliding door. The handle – a steel loop about six or seven inches long – was not really designed for hanging off of. But to Ken it felt more comfortable than an easy chair. Convincing himself to let go was tougher than he would have thought it could be. Sweat slicked his fingers, but peeling them off the metal seemed to cause friction burns.
Just let go, Ken. Just –
GIVE UP.
GIVE IN.
He jerked. The sound wasn’t just in his mind this time. It was in the air around him, in his ears. The growl.
They were here.
The sound hadn’t been overwhelming. But the urge to let go, to drop below the train and let the wheels chew him up, was suddenly nearly overwhelming. Ken shut his eyes and leaned into the door of the train, whispering to himself. He didn’t even know what he was whispering until the moment passed, until the growl receded and with it the strength of the mandate to subsume himself in the will of the horde. Then he heard himself.
“Hope. Maggie. Liz. Hope. Maggie. Liz.”
The names of his children. His wife. The family that remained. They were the prayer he uttered, the only prayer that mattered. And Ken hoped that any God still looking down from the Heavens would hear those names and understand the world of hope and fear and pleading that each one implied.
The growl faded to nothing. Replaced by the ongoing tok-tok of the train’s passage over the rails. By Ken’s panting. The thunder of his pulse in his ears.
“Hope. Maggie. Liz.”
He didn’t know why Hope came first in the litany. Other than, perhaps, because her name was synonymous with the only weapon that truly remained to humanity in this time when the world had crumbled. All that was known had passed to nothing. There was nothing certain. Only hope remained.
Ken would find them.