'I know.'
A hundred yards. The batteries hummed. A blue spark jumped, sizzling. Bare earth flowed past them on either side. No grain here, Jack thought. If No?l Coward had written a play about Morgan Sloat, I guess he would have called it Blight Spirit.
'Jack, what if this creepy little train jumps its tracks?'
'Well, it might, I guess,' Jack said.
'Or what if it breaks through the gate and the tracks just end?'
'That'd be one on us, wouldn't it?'
Fifty yards.
'Jack, you really have lost your mind, haven't you?'
'I guess so. Take your gun off safety, Richard.'
Richard flicked the safety.
Thuds . . . grunts . . . marching men . . . the creak of leather . . . yells . . . an inhuman, laughing shriek that made Richard cringe. And yet Jack saw a clear resolution in Richard's face that made Jack grin with pride. He means to stick by me - old Rational Richard or not, he really means to stick by me.
Twenty-five yards.
Shrieks . . . squeals . . . shouted commands . . . and a thick, reptilian cry - Groooo-OOOO! - that made the hair stand up on the back of Jack's neck.
'If we get out of this,' Jack said, 'I'll buy you a chili-dog at Dairy Queen.'
'Barf me out!' Richard yelled, and, incredibly, he began to laugh. In that instant the unhealthy yellow seemed to fade a bit from his face.
Five yards - and the peeled posts which made up the gate looked solid, yes, very solid, and Jack just had time to wonder if he hadn't made a great big fat mistake.
'Get down, chum!'
'Don't call m - '
The train hit the stockade gate, throwing them both forward.
7
The gate was really quite strong, and in addition it was double-barred across the inside with two large logs. Morgan's train was not terribly big, and the batteries were nearly flat after its long run across the Blasted Lands. The collision surely would have derailed it, and both boys might well have been killed in the wreck, but the gate had an Achilles' heel. New hinges, forged according to modern American processes, were on order. They had not yet arrived, however, and the old iron hinges snapped when the engine hit the gate.
The train came rolling into the stockade at twenty-five miles an hour, pushing the amputated gate in front of it. An obstacle course had been built around the stockade's perimeter, and the gate, acting like a snowplow, began shoving makeshift wooden hurdles in front of it, turning them, rolling them, snapping them into splinters.
It also struck a Wolf who had been doing punishment laps. His feet disappeared under the bottom of the moving gate and were chewed off, customized boots and all. Shrieking and growling, his Change beginning, the Wolf began to claw-climb his way up the gate with fingernails which were growing rapidly to the length and sharpness of a telephone-lineman's spikes. The gate was now forty feet inside the stockade. Amazingly, he got almost to the top before Jack dropped the gear-lever into neutral. The train stopped. The gate fell over, puffing up big dust and crushing the unfortunate Wolf beneath it. Underneath the last car of the train, the Wolf's severed feet continued to grow hair, and would for several more minutes.
The situation inside the camp was better than Jack had dared hope. The place apparently woke up early, as military installations have a way of doing, and most of the troops seemed to be out, going through a bizarre menu of drills and body-building exercises.
'On the right!' he shouted at Richard.
'Do what?' Richard shouted back.
Jack opened his mouth and cried out: for Uncle Tommy Woodbine, run down in the street; for an unknown carter, whipped to death in a muddy courtyard; for Ferd Janklow; for Wolf, dead in Sunlight Gardener's filthy office; for his mother; but most of all, he discovered, for Queen Laura DeLoessian, who was also his mother, and for the crime that was being carried out on the body of the Territories. He cried out as Jason, and his voice was thunder.
'TEAR THEM UP!' Jack Sawyer/Jason DeLoessian bellowed, and opened fire on the left.
8