He ran so fast he forgot to notice the difficulty of jumping from car to car, the fear of leaping from boxcar to flat. It might have been simply that the train was stopped, but Ken suspected that he would have run this nimbly if he had been racing over a hypersonic bullet train. He was too afraid of too many things to worry about the vague threat of lost footing.
Aaron was behind him now, and Ken didn’t think the cowboy was just letting him have the lead. Ken was in front because he had earned this position. He had somehow become different in the last few hours, the last few minutes.
He had to react. There was too much going on to let him sit still and come up with master plans. But his reactions could be careful, and calm, and cunning.
He dropped to a flatcar. Rolled. Came up in a full-tilt sprint.
Three more cars to back the engine.
He jumped up the back of the boxcar ahead of him. Clambered up as quickly as the zombies might have done.
Looked back.
The things were within thirty cars. A mass of arms and legs and open mouths waiting for flesh. The growl almost painfully loud now that the sounds of the train had been silenced. The things swarmed so close to one another that Ken couldn’t tell where one ended and the next began. A leg might belong to this creature, or to thing beside it. An arm could be the possession of this man, or the woman tangled up in him as they crawled together over the remains of the train.
And, really, did it matter whose arms or legs they were? Weren’t they all, at some fundamental level, just a single creature that wanted only one thing: to destroy all humanity?
Ken ran again.
He launched himself over the divide between this boxcar and the penultimate one. Felt a hand on his shoulder. Aaron.
“They’re in there,” said the cowboy. Panting a bit. That made Ken glad for some reason. Nice to be reminded that the guy was at least somewhat human.
Aaron pointed down. The car at their feet.
Ken went totally still.
Waiting.
Only four people dead in that massive Hatfield crash.
But what if some of the dead here were his?
He listened. Not long – they didn’t have long – but he stood silent for an instant.
Long enough to hear….
Nothing.
No calls, no cries. No whimpers or screams.
The car below sounded empty.
Or lifeless.
39
Ken couldn’t do what he wanted to. Couldn’t just throw himself over the side of the boxcar; jump over and fling himself to the door and open it to see what had happened to his wife and children, not to mention Christopher and Buck. It wouldn’t be the same as hitting the bed of a flatcar: loose gravel, rock, and sand lay on either side of the train in a gentle slope that led to a sort of dry wash on either side of the tracks. Pitching himself over the side of the train would have been a sure way to break an ankle, a leg – a neck.
He cast about for a ladder, for a rail to grab.
Aaron was well ahead of him. The cowboy apparently heard the same lack of motion – lack of everything – that Ken did. A spasm of terror jammed its way into his expression, and Ken was glad to see it. He didn’t think the other man’s fear was anything strange, either. Despite his surprise attack and his talk of death, Ken was starting to feel more and more as if the other man still… what? Cared? Worried?
Ken didn’t know what the right word was. How could you define someone who talked casually about the murder of two children in one instance, then a few minutes later had the aspect of a man whose own kin were at risk?
Once again, Ken struggled to understand the rapid shifts in the world around him. Once again he failed. He would have to content himself with survival. Hopefully with protecting his own.
Perhaps, if he lived long enough, understanding would eventually come.
Regardless, Aaron didn’t suffer the constraints of gravity or physics that hampered lesser mortals. He ran to the right edge of the train, then jumped. In midair he spun around, catching a rail on the top of the car with his good hand. He disappeared from view, only his clenched knuckles visible. Then they opened and his grip released.
Ken ran to the side of the train in time to see Aaron land perfectly on a set of rungs beside a latch that obviously held shut the sliding door on the side of the boxcar.
Aaron flipped back the latch as Ken started to lower himself over the side. Much slower than the older man had done.
The door slid open as Ken’s feet cleared the top of the car, and he swung himself into the doorway. It was a smoothly coordinated pair of movements, and he suspected that an onlooker would have assumed he and Aaron had practiced this open-and-enter routine often. For what purpose, who could know.
Ken’s feet fell inward and down as he released his grip on the roof rail. He was calling out before he hit the wood flooring that lined the inside of the boxcar.
“Maggie! Girls!”
There was no answer.
But there was light enough to see the still forms that lay in a jumble all around the car.
40
Vomit rose in Ken’s throat.
The lumps that lay all around were not moving, not breathing.
There was no life in here. No life any of the five… six… eight….
He blinked.
Too many.