Ken also knew that there was a small door in the front of the cab that led to a basic toilet. That had surprised him for some reason, the first time he saw it on a trip to the Boise Depot on a date with Maggie and they had a freight locomotive on display. It was a cheap date for a couple who had no money and didn’t particularly need any to enjoy themselves. The background activity wasn’t the important thing, it was the company that mattered.
Why the toilet had seemed strange to him then, and why he suddenly remembered it now, were mysteries to him. The mind flits back and forth between memory and reality, between Then and Now, at its own whim. Sometimes this is blessing, sometimes curse. Sometimes simply strange.
In the next moment he didn’t wonder, he didn’t care. Because he saw something. A face. Not human, but nor was it alien to him. It was something familiar, and something that gave him hope.
The snow leopard was leaning out over the top of the center engine. Peering at him with a look that seemed almost human. Maybe Ken was anthropomorphizing – surely he was – but the animal seemed to be staring at him with a mix of irritation and contentment. As though to say, “It’s you. Finally.”
Ken breathed the snow leopard’s name. A name both ridiculous for its mistaken gender and wonderful for its source. “Sally,” he said.
The leopard chuffed.
And another voice answered. Quavering. “Ken?” said the voice. “Is that you?”
Maggie.
45
Aaron and Elijah ran on.
Ken did not.
He swerved sideways. Ran to the middle of the engine and leaped straight up. A jump that should have brought him crashing into the side of the train, but again his muscles were fueled by something more than himself, something outside of his pain.
Maggie.
The voice had come from above. From the top. Maybe from the other side.
He grabbed the walkway and clambered up the rail. His pulse beat in his ears, drowning out the shrieks and growls that were close, close, closer.
He didn’t have long.
“I’m coming, Maggie!”
Why isn’t she coming to me?
A moment later he had his answer.
“Kenny, what’s happening?”
The words came to him as he made it over the rail. Stood on the steel walkway behind it. He peered over the top of the low box that was the center of the car.
Maggie. Buck. Christopher.
The girls.
They were all there.
All of them were tied to various metal outcroppings. The three adults had blindfolds on, and Buck and Christopher were gagged. Maggie and the kids weren’t – apparently the kidnappers weren’t unchivalrous.
Ken’s blood pressure spiked. He heard thuds and knew it was Aaron and Elijah climbing into the front cab. Had to restrain himself from turning to run after them.
What would he do? Attack them? Die in a hopeless fight?
Then he noticed – really noticed – the girls. Hope and Lizzy. He had thought they were tied together, they lay so close. But then he saw that they were merely laying on top of one another.
Maggie was curled in a tight ball, her head down as though the seven-year-old was trying to burrow into the train’s hood.
Lizzy had her little head on her sister’s legs. Her tiny body splayed out beyond. Right hand tied to something below her body. Eyes wide open.
Staring at the sky.
Both utterly motionless.
He had seen this before. Every time the monsters came, every time the zombies closed, the girls changed. They – along with their mother and Buck - had been captured by the zombies. But they hadn’t been killed, hadn’t been bitten.
They had been taken. Dragged to the top of a building, swaddled in some kind of strange cocoon.
And what had happened there?
No one knew. None of them could remember.
The adults hadn’t shown any effects. But the girls kept shifting between what Ken thought of as normal and this strange “other” state. Sometimes they almost seemed to hope for the Change, to wish to be taken. Sometimes they even seemed to help the zombies.
And when Lizzy had spoken….
Ken shuddered. Thinking of her little voice, speaking not toddler words but saying clearly, “You are not family. You are renegades.”
Sally seemed to mitigate the effect. The snow leopard stood near them now, but even he couldn’t stop it from happening completely, it seemed.
Ken’s heart dropped out of him. Fell right to the center of the earth. His girls….
Maggie’s voice snapped him back to the world.
“Ken? You there? Ken, dammit.”
A measure of her fear that she had cursed.
He moved toward her. Grabbed her wrists. “I’m here,” he said.
Maggie sobbed. “Oh, thank you,” she said. “Thank you, God.”