Because the knuckles under his feet shifted.
There was slack. For just an instant perhaps.
He grabbed the draw bar again. Braced on the half of the connecter closest to the front engine. Pulled up.
Something shifted under Ken’s feet.
More explosions above. Too many to be from one gun. Elijah must be shooting as well. The guns that had pointed at Ken’s children now covering the family’s escape.
The knuckle under his feet split in two.
The front locomotive pulled away from the two engines behind it.
The growls continued. But they quickly grew fainter. Drowned by the sound of gunfire, then the sound of the engine. Then the rain alone was enough to silence them.
And then the rain was all there was.
Ken shimmied to the right until he could put a hand on the guard rail beside the short row of steps that led up to the cab door on that side. He got himself centered on the steps, taking his time. It would be only too perfect to survive everything that had just happened, only to slip on a wet tread and fall off the train.
Once he was sure of his footing, he walked up.
Only a step, though. That was all he went.
Theresa was waiting in the doorway. Her gun smoking, the rain puffing into steam where it touched the hot barrel.
The bore looked enormous. Big enough to fall into. And he could see all of it, pointed as it was directly between his eyes.
Beyond Theresa, he could make out Elijah. The big man had one hand on the train controls. But he was swiveled in his seat, pointing his gun as well. Ken couldn’t see what he was aiming at, but he suspected it was his family.
“Now,” said Theresa, “we’re going to figure a few things out.”
54
“Theresa, now’s not the time,” said Aaron. He was still perched outside the cab, on the other stairs directly across from Ken.
“Now’s the perfect time.”
“We don’t –“
Theresa looked like she was going to cut Aaron off, but Ken beat her to the punch. “No, Aaron.” He stared evenly at Theresa. “Explain things to me, Theresa. Explain why you would go to the trouble of saving us, only to kill us. Why you would drive right into danger for us, then tie us up.” He paused. Then added, brutally, “Why your brother thought it was worth dying for us, if you were just going to kill us.”
Theresa’s face drained of blood, and for a moment Ken worried he might have gone too far. Her gun stayed on him, and whether he saw her knuckle whiten against the trigger or whether it was just a trick of the light, he couldn’t say.
She stood like that, motionless, a statue of grief just out of the reach of the rain that stitched silver threads through the rapidly-graying day. Then she moved, almost jerking to action. Her gun stayed on Ken, but she reached behind her and pulled something from the back of her belt.
Ken had seen it before. It was a box that she had had with her when she first appeared, blasting onto the scene in a school bus like the weirdest avenging angel who ever existed. She had been holding it when Derek –
(No. Don’t think of him that way. Derek’s dead, it was just something that looked like him. Not your boy. Just a thing.)
– appeared. When he screamed. And when he screamed, so did the box, emitting a high electronic peal.
“What is that?” said Ken.
“This?” she smiled. And gave the only answer Ken couldn’t have foreseen; the only answer that made no sense whatsoever.
“I’m not really sure.”
55
The rain saturated Ken’s hair. It coursed over his forehead and into his eyes. But he blinked not because of that, but because he couldn’t really understand what Theresa had just said.
“You don’t… you don’t know?” He blinked again, like if he blinked enough he would magically open his eyes one of these times and the world he had known – the world that actually made sense – would magically reappear. “Then what’s the point of –“
Theresa flicked a button on the side of the box. The same grinding, electronic scream he had heard before came again. Quieter – much quieter – but it was there. It created a grating and somehow eerie background to the words Theresa spoke. A reminder that even now, even “safe” for the moment, they couldn’t escape the strangeness that had enveloped the world.
“Me and my brother made it through the first few days. Met up with Elijah. Just us, hunkered down and trying to ride out what was happening.” She shuddered, memories skipping wraithlike across her features. “Then we met a guy. Said he was from the government. Some special forces guy who’d been sent from an army base.” She shook the box in her hand. “He had this. Said all this,” and she nodded, taking in the world, everything around them, “had happened so fast it had to be the result of some kind of broadcast. A signal.”
Ken nodded. This was what Aaron had already told him. And it made sense. But still….
“So what? Why lock me up? Why come after me and my kids?”