He let go of the handle.
His right hand stretched along the side of the door. The ripples in the steel were deep – maybe two full inches. But the curvature of the metal was so smooth that there was nothing to grab in the winding troughs, no edge to hang onto on the sleek waves. They just created an irregular surface even more difficult to navigate than a flat siding would have been.
Ken slid his way out. Extending his right arm ahead and barely able to see it because his face was pressed so hard against the door.
His foot bumped the second wheel assembly. Ready for it this time but it still startled him. He lifted his foot off the track, over the mechanism. This time he managed to set it down more carefully and didn’t quite kick himself off the side of the train.
Now he was straddling the wheel apparatus. Right hand extended but not quite touching the end of the door, left hand still holding firm to the handle that felt like his only life-line in a very hostile world.
The life-line he now had to abandon.
He had gone as far as he could. He had to let go to get to the end of the door. To get to –
(Hope)
– where he needed to be.
His fingers uncurled. If the train rattled or lurched, he would fall. Nothing to hold onto. No anchor. Just him and the air.
He slid forward. His left foot hit the wheel mechanism. He slid it carefully – carefully – up and over the apparatus. Put it down on the track. Heels hanging over nothing. Ankles burning, calves on fire as lactic acid built up in them.
His legs started to shake. The urge to just move, just leap, was nearly overwhelming. His body wasn’t used to this kind of exercise, his muscles not prepared for this particular exertion.
He forced himself to continue slowly. Haste would mean a mistake. A mistake would mean death.
Inch by inch. Centimeter by centimeter.
The tip of his right forefinger touched the leading edge of the door.
His hand curled around it.
Safe.
And Ken finally allowed himself to look ahead. Anchored, comparatively secure, he permitted a glance at the next step.
The hardest was yet to come.
18
The rungs were right there. A track of steel leading from the bottom of the boxcar’s frame to the top, curving up over the roof. It looked solid enough to bear the weight of an elephant, let alone a medium-sized history teacher.
The only problem was distance.
Ken had guessed it was maybe five feet between the end of the track and the ladder. Not an impossible distance if you were talking about a standing long jump on a grassy field. Considerably more forbidding when the jump was over gravel and dirt and – oh, yes – several thousand tons of metal ready to grind you to pulp.
And he had to add to the difficulty the undeniable fact that it was well over five feet between his perch on the edge of the door track and those rungs that led to – whatever they led to. Maybe eight feet. No way he could jump that at the best times, in the best circumstances.
He looked around, seeking for a handhold, some spot he had missed. Anything that he could use to climb over or around this blank spot that represented the difference between going on and –
Give up.
He clutched the edge of the door and concentrated on not swaying as the growl floated over the top of the train like a noxious cloud. Still getting louder. He couldn’t tell how many of the zombies were making the noise. It was the living ones – the undead ones were silent, terribly silent – but he couldn’t discern if it was ten or fifty or five thousand. All he knew was that here, standing over a precipice as dangerous in its own way as any he had yet experienced, the call to lay down and surrender was much harder to resist.
Action was key, he realized. He abruptly remembered the people he had seen on their phones, falling prey to some insidious sound that had beckoned them to a despair so deep that they had no choice but to lay down and just… die. Hearts stopping in chests, minds blanking as they succumbed to the call to oblivion.
Ken himself had come within seconds of that fate. Maybe less.
Just like now. Only seconds before he became too paralyzed with fear to move. Seconds before the growl and its psychic attack added to the terror he was already feeling and his immobility and locked him forever in place. He would become a statue. Like Lot’s wife, who had become a pillar of salt when she looked upon the wicked city of Sodom. Only Ken was staring at his own fear, his own inability.
He couldn’t remain here. He had to move. Action was key. To live was to move, and motion was hope.
He turned to the rungs. Still too far to reach by jumping.
So he didn’t jump.
He just let himself fall.
19
Ken knew that anyone looking would have seen someone determined to die. A suicidal man bent on leaving a world that had become too hostile, too alien, to bear living in any longer.