He dropped to his stomach. Hung out over the edge of the boxcar. Put his good hand down. Grabbed Aaron’s. But before he pulled the cowboy up he said, “Remember this.”
He didn’t know exactly what he meant by that. Remember that I had you in my power, perhaps. Remember that I was merciful when you were not.
Remember that we, together, are human. Are all that remains of the Once that Once Was.
Ken pulled, Aaron pulled, and then the cowboy was up on the roof with him in an instant.
Ken looked ahead. They had run a surprising distance. Only maybe ten cars left to the rear locomotive.
He looked behind.
Fifty cars covered with writhing bodies. A seething mass of darkness, night falling one car at a time.
More and more of the zombies dropped off the sides, more and more of them vomited acid on rails and then died of the wounds the secretions caused.
In his headlong flight with Aaron, Ken hadn’t noticed the increased bouncing, but now he did. Standing still he felt the vibrations of the train as more and more of it passed over rails eaten away by acid, stripped of their strength by the destructive power of the things’ excretions.
The wobbling seemed to ripple back, getting worse the farther back it went. The first cars the things were on had just a bit of bounce to them, then more and more. The last train cars seemed to be rocking to some unheard music. A terrible tune thought up by an insane composer who only wished his audience to feel the same madness he suffered.
It couldn’t be much longer before those last cars fell. Derailed. And brought down the rest of the train with them.
The boxcar Ken stood on jittered beneath him. A noise like gears grinding a mixture of glass and bent steel screeched out.
Ken looked at Aaron. The cowboy’s face was impassive, but there was a hard edge to his jaw, a subtle clench visible under his gray-flecked beard.
They gazed at one another for an instant. Not even a second, but it seemed long, Ken felt like he was looking at Aaron because he wanted to memorize the last face he would ever see. He wondered if Aaron was feeling the same thing. Brotherhood imposed by circumstance, if not by choice.
Then they looked back. Both their heads moving as one, a coordinated movement that could have been rehearsed.
The back of the train.
It was far behind them, but still visible as a black line in the distance. A line that suddenly twitched. Whipped to one side, then the other.
The last cars tipped.
Fell off the rails.
34
“Down!” Ken screamed. He pushed Aaron to the roof, both of them going down in a tangle. He barely had time to grab the rail he had used to pull himself up before a vibration rolled through the boxcar. He felt it pummel his chest and legs. The hand gripping the bar felt hot. Fevered, if it was possible to have a single body part be fevered.
Why not? All bets on the impossible are off, Kenny.
Aaron started to slide away. Ken grabbed his arm. Aaron’s good hand gripped him at the same time, arresting his sideways fall. They hung to one another, Ken bearing the full weight of Aaron’s body for a moment. Then the cowboy wedged a boot against a rail and his slide stopped. Now he was supporting Ken as much as Ken was supporting him. Tangled in a strange embrace where Ken was unsure who was helping whom, just as he was unsure whether they were friends or enemies.
Maybe something else. Something new in a new world.
The train bucked again. Not the boxcar below them, but he felt the back cars flinging sideways like the tracks had been a prison and they were at last free to run wild.
Ken heard three words in his mind. Over and over, and he clung to them tighter than he clung to Aaron and Aaron clung to him.
Hatfield rail crash. Hatfield rail crash. Hatfield rail crash.
Aaron grunted. Ken couldn’t tell if it was pain or effort. He felt like patting the older man on the shoulder. Letting him know they had a chance.
No, no chance. The train’s derailing.
You know there’s a chance.
The vibrations worsened. Ken’s teeth rattled together. The back of his head – which had already been concussed, lacerated, burned – now bounced off the boxcar roof.
He felt himself slip into semi-darkness. Pulled himself back to full consciousness, using those same three words as a rope.
Hatfield rail crash.
Hatfield rail crash.
Hatfield rail –
The sound of the train derailing in sections behind them got so loud that Ken could no longer hear himself think. There was only an aural cliff that he had been pitched over the side of. And now he was falling past a sheer wall of sound that just grew louder and louder. Metal designed to stand up to millions of pounds of pressure shrieking as it was torn like tissue. Wheels of heavy steel separating from axles and then shattering into shrapnel.
Hatf –
The sound grew. Grew. Closer.
Ken held to the three words.
Even though he couldn’t hear them, even in his mind, he held to them. They were hope.
Hope was silent. But even silent, that did not always mean it was gone.
He screamed as loud as he could, this time saying the words aloud.