Oh, hell no.
But he didn’t have a choice. Ken had the luxury of moving carefully before, but not now.
It wasn’t a question of pride. He was utterly out of that. Pride was something from the old days, something important when what you had to worry about was whether your clothes or your car measured up to what everyone else had. Keeping up with the Joneses was less important when all the Joneses – and Smiths and Browns and just about everyone else – was either dead or running around trying to make everyone dead.
So no, not pride. But he didn’t trust Aaron out of his sight. What if Aaron got ahead of him and then decided his plans would go easier without Ken and detached the part of the train Ken was still on?
So when he got to the end of the boxcar, he jumped as well. He hit the flatcar – another long, wood-covered surface that looked solid but rolled and bounced like it sat on a bed of hyperactive springs – and rolled. A pair of hands grabbed him before he finished the roll and hauled him to his feet.
“Nice,” grunted Aaron, and then he was off again.
They hopped across two more gaps, traversed two more flatcars. Then they hit a boxcar that had no rungs, no way to climb up. Nor were there visible handholds or even a lip around the side. No way past it.
Aaron didn’t look nonplused. Just turned to Ken and said, “This is going to take a bit of care.” His tone of voice was as even as ever.
“What is?”
Aaron moved his hands.
Ken gawked. “You’re not serious.”
32
Aaron nodded, but Ken still had trouble believing it. Not until Aaron’s jaw clenched and he said, “Move, dammit!” did it really penetrate that the other man was serious.
Ken looked at the cowboy’s cupped hands. At the top of the boxcar a good ten feet away. Back at the hands.
“You want me to jump?” Ken said it more to himself than anything. An affirmation of the ridiculousness of the moment.
Aaron answered anyway. “Unless you want to be the tosser and I’ll jump. But you didn’t trust me to go first before, so I figured you’d prefer it this way.”
“Isn’t –“
“No, there ain’t. And we don’t have a lot of time for jawing.”
Ken knew he was right. He knew the other man was insane for even having this idea. He knew he was insane for backing up a few steps. Pitching himself forward as fast as he could.
He raced at Aaron. Pushed off. The older man grunted as Ken’s foot fell into the stirrup Aaron had created of his hands. It had to have hurt the cowboy terribly, the fingers had been broken and the thumb dislocated only a few days before. Ken had no doubt he would have been screaming if the tables had turned.
Aaron: just a grunt. So low it was almost inaudible. A reminder that this was a man you definitely did not want to meet in a dark alley. Or even a bright one. Anywhere at all, in fact, where the guy might want to pound you.
And Ken was going to have to get the drop on him, sooner or later. Because the man who had been – and, he sensed, in many ways still was – his friend now wanted to kill his children.
Then he was airborne as Aaron flung him up and forward. Ken lurched sideways as he made his short flight, and in the moment he took trying to right himself he almost forgot to grab the top of the boxcar.
What if there’s nothing to grab?
Maybe that’s why Aaron really sent you first.
But there was something. A rail around the top of the boxcar that Ken’s hands slapped against and gripped reflexively.
He pulled himself up. Looked down.
Aaron was already halfway across the coupler between the trains. Standing on the knuckle that joined the two cars. Staring upward, good right hand reaching up.
“Come on,” he said. His hand waved back and forth, motioning for Ken to hurry. “Let’s go.”
And Ken just looked at him.
33
Ken didn’t turn away. Not because he didn’t want to – he did – but because he didn’t have the luxury of anger. Rage and revenge were things that stood in the way of life; of the struggle to survive.
He made a choice. Not based on his gut, but his mind.
Aaron wanted to hurt his kids. But he knew where they were. And Ken needed that knowledge. Besides, he hadn’t said he was going to kill them, had he? Only that he “might have to” kill them.
What did that mean?
Ken didn’t want to know. But he had to find out.
Because his girls were changing. And what if –
(what if they’re the enemy what if they’re the monsters what if they’re the disease we’re carrying with us now?) – Aaron knew something that would help him stop it? Help him turn back the clock on whatever was going on with Lizzy and Hope?
The easy way would be to just let Aaron die. But it wouldn’t be the good way, or even the right way.