'Rubbing the grease off. You'd better do it, too, when I'm done.'
For the rest of the day the two boys sat in the open cab of the train, sweating, trying not to take into account the wailing trees, the corrupt stink of the passing landscape, their hunger. Jack noticed that a little garden of open sores had bloomed around Richard's mouth. Finally Jack took Richard's Uzi from his hand, wiped it free of grease, and pushed in the clip. Sweat burned saltily in cracks on his lips.
Jack closed his eyes. Maybe he had not seen those heads peering over the rim of the valley; maybe they were not being followed after all. He heard the batteries sizzle and send off a big snapping spark, and felt Richard jump at it. An instant later he was asleep, dreaming of food.
10
When Richard shook Jack's shoulder, bringing him up out of a world in which he had been eating a pizza the size of a truck tire, the shadows were just beginning to spread across the valley, softening the agony of the wailing trees. Even they, bending low and spreading their hands across their faces, seemed beautiful in the low, receding light. The deep red dust shimmered and glowed. The shadows printed themselves out along it, almost perceptibly lengthening. The terrible yellow grass was melting toward an almost mellow orange. Fading red sunlight painted itself slantingly along the rocks at the valley's rim. 'I just thought you might want to see this,' Richard said. A few more small sores seemed to have appeared about his mouth. Richard grinned weakly. 'It seemed sort of special - the spectrum, I mean.'
Jack feared that Richard was going to launch into a scientific explanation of the color shift at sunset, but his friend was too tired or sick for physics. In silence the two boys watched the twilight deepen all the colors about them, turning the western sky into purple glory.
'You know what else you're carrying on this thing?' Richard asked.
'What else?' Jack asked. In truth, he hardly cared. It could be nothing good. He hoped he might live to see another sunset as rich as this one, as large with feeling.
'Plastic explosive. All wrapped up in two-pound packages - I think two pounds, anyhow. You've got enough to blow up a whole city. If one of these guns goes off accidentally, or if someone else puts a bullet into those bags, this train is going to be nothing but a hole in the ground.'
'I won't if you won't,' Jack said. And let himself be taken by the sunset - it seemed oddly premonitory, a dream of accomplishment, and led him into memories of all he had undergone since leaving the Alhambra Inn and Gardens. He saw his mother drinking tea in the little shop, suddenly a tired old woman; Speedy Parker sitting at the base of a tree; Wolf tending his herd; Smokey and Lori from Oatley's horrible Tap; all the hated faces from the Sunlight Home: Heck Bast, Sonny Singer, and the others. He missed Wolf with a particular and sharp poignancy, for the unfolding and deepening sunset summoned him up wholly, though Jack could not have explained why. He wished he could take Richard's hand. Then he thought, Well, why not? and moved his hand along the bench until he encountered his friend's rather grubby, clammy paw. He closed his fingers around it.
'I feel so sick,' Richard said. 'This isn't like - before. My stomach feels terrible, and my whole face is tingling.'
'I think you'll get better once we finally get out of this place,' Jack said. But what proof do you have of that, doctor? he wondered. What proof do you have that you're not just poisoning him? He had none. He consoled himself with his newly invented (newly discovered?) idea that Richard was an essential part of whatever was going to happen at the black hotel. He was going to need Richard Sloat, and not just because Richard Sloat could tell plastic explosive from bags of fertilizer.
Had Richard ever been to the black hotel before? Had he actually been in the Talisman's vicinity? He glanced over at his friend, who was breathing shallowly and laboriously. Richard's hand lay in his own like a cold waxen sculpture.
'I don't want this gun anymore,' Richard said, pushing it off his lap. 'The smell is making me sick.'
'Okay,' Jack said, taking it onto his own lap with his free hand. One of the trees crept into his peripheral vision and howled soundlessly in torment. Soon the mutant dogs would begin foraging. Jack glanced up toward the hills to his left - Richard's side - and saw a manlike figure slipping through the rocks.
11
'Hey,' he said, almost not believing. Indifferent to his shock, the lurid sunset continued to beautify the unbeautifiable. 'Hey, Richard.'
'What? You sick, too?'
'I think I saw somebody up there. On your side.' He peered up at the tall rocks again, but saw no movement.
'I don't care,' Richard said.
'You'd better care. See how they're timing it? They want to get to us just when it's too dark for us to see them.'