Ken pulled himself up the last rung. He belly-crawled over the metal, his stomach twinging as the steel bit into it. But he didn’t pay it any mind, just kept wiggling forward.
The metal roof was hot under his belly. Not as hot as it could have been – he probably had those gray clouds that hung in the sky like badly-sewn patches on a sheet of blue cloth to thank for that – but still warmer than was comfortable.
There was a long strip of metal laying across the center of the boxcar’s roof. What was clearly meant as a walkway of sorts, though why anyone would want to be walking around up here under normal circumstances Ken couldn’t even begin to guess. That it was a design feature placed there in case of zombie apocalypse and the need to escape from homicidal ex-friends seemed unlikely.
At the center of the walkway was an outcropping, a bit of metal that served some arcane purpose for which Ken had no words. Tied to it was a coiled rope. No doubt the way Aaron had left. No suicidal jumps for him, just a simple climb. Or perhaps – given his bad hand – a more dangerous swing to the rungs. Still eminently doable for a man who seemed able to do anything life threw at him.
Ken wriggled to the walkway, then got his hands and knees solidly on it. Pointed toward the front of the train.
In movies people – heroes and villains alike – just stood and ran across train tops like it was nothing more than a jogging trail in the park. Ken didn’t see how that was possible – the boxcar seemed to sway enormously under him. He had no desire to stand. No desire to let go of the metal, or even to move.
But he couldn’t see the front of the train. Just the car ahead of him, which looked more or less the same as the one on which he now hunched. He had to see where he was going; how far until he could reach his friends and family.
Before, when dropping for the rungs, he had existed only for that moment. Now he had to look to the future. And just hope it wasn’t too daunting.
He stood. Slowly, carefully. The train rocked under him, but he found he could stand – though his legs remained in a half-crouch and wouldn’t straighten any further no matter how much he screamed at them to do so in his mind.
The train stretched away in front of him. A gentle curve swept it to the left. A half-dozen boxcars, then a few flatcars. Another dozen boxcars with a few dead spots interspersed that he assumed were more flatcars.
Then the locomotives. The three engines that provided the pushing power for a massive string of freight cars that might weigh ten thousand tons.
Ken had seen a configuration like that before; had even taken the kids to the Boise Train Station when one was on display there.
There were places the kids and Maggie could be, places friends and enemies could hide, in all three units.
For that matter, the kids could be in any of the boxcars. Could be impossible to find.
He threw that thought away. It wasn’t helpful, and it made what he had to do next impossible. Sometimes faith wasn’t a hope for something true, but rather a hope that what you feared wasn’t true.
Ken figured that Elijah had to be in the front engine. He had said – or implied – that he was the only one who could drive the train, so the front was the logical place for him.
Theresa, whose red hair and chubby face seemed deliberately at odds with the full-body riot gear she wore and the twin machetes she had once strapped across her back, could be anywhere. Ditto Aaron, who Ken suspected was more dangerous than either of them, even unarmed and hobbled by the injury to his left hand.
Ken wondered suddenly where Sally was. The snow leopard – a male, inexplicably named by his older daughter – had appeared out of nowhere with two others to save the group at a moment when every path appeared to end in doom. The other two predators had been lost, but Sally had stayed with them and more or less adopted Ken’s girls, especially little Lizzy. And not only did the big cat show no inclination to harm any of the group, but the girls seemed more –
(human)
– normal when Sally was close. More able to resist whatever invisible influence was working on them. Changing them to something different and frightening that seemed to align with the zombies at times more than with the surviving humans.
Where’s Sally?
Ken doubted that the big cat would have let anything happen to the girls – or by extension to Maggie. So Sally was probably dead.
Another loss.
He gauged how long it would take him to get to the locomotive unit.
No idea.
The same held true of how he was going to sneak up on a trio of armed and dangerous people, rescue his family, and get off the train.
The train shifted below his feet.
Ken had been unconsciously avoiding what was behind. He had to focus on what lay ahead; that almost seemed like enough and more than enough. As though if the universe were at all fair he should only have to focus on the objectives and obstacles he had already identified.
But the universe wasn’t fair.
He turned around.