Buck and Christopher writhed. Ken couldn’t be sure if they were congratulating him, cursing him for taking so long, or simply moving for movement’s sake. Regardless, both looked terrible. Buck’s hair and scalp hung to his skull in loose, oozing strips where zombies had tried to yank him and Hope bodily out of a bus window by his hair alone – only Buck’s incredible will to protect Ken’s daughter had saved them. Ken thought he still saw yellow bone peeking through in a few spare spots above the big man’s eyebrows. And Christopher looked little better, with a busted-up nose and a severe laceration on his cheek, arms raked from wrists to shoulders.
But all those were old wounds. Ken had already seen them. Now, bound to the top of the train, both looked even more battered and bruised: apparently they hadn’t come up here without some struggle.
The temperature of Ken’s blood rose a bit higher.
Back to his wife. She was tied with the same plastic cuffs that had bound him. And while he had managed to loose himself by pounding the things to pieces, he didn’t think he could pull the same trick without breaking her wrists as well.
He pulled off her blindfold. She blinked against the sudden flood of light.
“I’ll be back,” he said.
He kissed her. It was sweet. He hoped it wasn’t their last.
The train lurched under them.
“You better,” she said as they separated.
He looked up.
The train engines were growing louder.
But the zombies had almost reached the final locomotive engine.
Please, God, make them slow up. Somehow, slow them down.
He shifted his thoughts to the things themselves.
Give us a BREAK, dammit!
The train engines grew louder.
But it didn’t matter. They hadn’t moved fast enough to outpace the zombies before. And he knew they wouldn’t move fast enough to get away now.
46
Ken ran over the flat top of the engine toward the front of the train. Leaped over his daughters. Jumped to the ridge of metal that partially hid the front engine from view.
The rear of the lead engine had two doors leading into what he supposed was the cockpit – or driving area, or whatever they called it. He didn’t care. All that mattered was that the doors were open. One was on either side of the train, with a set of stairs leading downward so that the engineer and other crew could get into the cab.
Ken could see Elijah. The big man was seated at the right side of the small room, his hands resting on a pair of levers, moving every so often.
He also saw Theresa.
Like Elijah, Theresa had appeared – seemingly out of nowhere – to rescue Ken and his friends. Like Elijah, she had turned on them. Had turned on his children. Had, with Aaron’s help, taken them hostage for some still-unknown reason that might well involve his girls’ death.
She also was dressed in “Boise Police” body armor, a gas mask dangling from her neck. She had red hair and a few extra pounds that rounded out her body. She would have been plumply attractive were it not for the fact that she was a killer-in-waiting. That and, perhaps, the thick scar that curled its way around her neck and made her voice sound only a little less gruff than the growl that followed the survivors everywhere.
Theresa was on the left of the train. Standing with arms crossed. Gun clearly riding on her hip. Elijah also had a sidearm, though Ken couldn’t see his.
He also couldn’t see Aaron. He guessed the cowboy was in there, riding out of sight behind the bulkhead.
That would make what came next harder.
But Ken had no doubt he would do it. Everyone – all his friends, his family – depended on him. Doubt would only get them killed.
He jumped.
He landed with the solid thud he had come to expect in traveling across car after car. His feet hit the second-to-top tread on the stairs to the cab. His hands came down firmly on the safety rails on either side.
Elijah glanced back. His face tautened. “He’s here.”
Aaron slid into the doorway. “Ken, we don’t have time for this.”
“No, we don’t.” Ken jerked a chin behind him. “They’re going to get on the train. I need the others loose.”
Theresa stepped into the doorway behind Aaron. “Are you nuts? No way.”
Aaron looked at Ken. Impassive.
“Now, Aaron. Or we all die.”
Ken turned to Theresa and took a knife from her belt. It was six inches long. The edge glittered: a razor that sliced the light in the cab.
Ken tensed.
Aaron tossed the knife to him. Ken snatched it out of the air.
“What are you doing?” Theresa screamed.
Aaron reached behind the bulkhead and came back with a tool. A heavy wrench.
“Let’s go get ‘em,” he said to Ken.
47
When Aaron said that, Ken was reminded for a moment of Dorcas. The farm woman who had come along on an insane trip to save a bunch of strangers. Who had saved him time and again. And why? When asked, she merely said, “Because it’s the right thing to do.”
She had died for them. For all of them.
No. Not died. Worse. Changed. One of them now.
And now Aaron was helping again. Why?
Ken didn’t understand. Didn’t know what was happening – not only in the greater world outside the train, the world that had turned inside out and seemed hell-bent on imploding, but in the much smaller world of the people he knew and thought he knew. What was Aaron’s endgame? What were Elijah and Theresa trying to do?
No time to figure it out now.
Ken began to turn back to the cab doors.
“I can’t let you.” Theresa slid her gun from its holster. Aimed it at Ken.