'This looks like an old survivalist camp,' he said.
'You mean the kind of place where soldier-of-fortune types get ready for World War Three?'
'Yes, sort of. There are quite a few places like that in northern California . . . they spring up and thrive for a while, and then the people lose interest when World War Three doesn't start right away, or they get busted for illegal guns or dope, or something. My . . . my father told me that.'
Jack said nothing.
'What are you going to do with the gun, Jack?'
'I'm going to try and get rid of that train. Any objections?'
Richard shuddered; his mouth pulled down in a grimace of distaste. 'None whatever.'
'Will the Uzi do it, do you think? If I shoot into that plastic junk?'
'One bullet wouldn't. A whole clip might.'
'Let's see.' Jack pushed off the safety.
Richard grabbed his arm. 'It might be wise to remove ourselves to the fence before making the experiment,' he said.
'Okay.'
At the ivy-covered fence, Jack trained the Uzi on the flat and squashy packages of plastique. He pulled the trigger, and the Uzi bellowed the silence into rags. Fire hung mystically from the end of the barrel for a moment. The gunfire was shockingly loud in the chapellike silence of the deserted camp. Birds squawked in surprised fear and headed out for quieter parts of the forest. Richard winced and pressed his palms against his ears. The tarpaulin flirted and danced. Then, although he was still pulling the trigger, the gun stopped firing. The clip was exhausted, and the train just sat there on the track.
'Well,' Jack said, 'that was great. Have you got any other i - '
The flatcar erupted in a sheet of blue fire and a bellowing roar. Jack saw the flatcar actually starting to rise from the track, as if it were taking off. He grabbed Richard around the neck, shoved him down.
The explosions went on for a long time. Metal whistled and flew overhead. It made a steady metallic rain-shower on the roof of the Quonset hut. Occasionally a larger piece made a sound like a Chinese gong, or a crunch as something really big just punched on through. Then something slammed through the fence just above Jack's head, leaving a hole bigger than both of his fists laced together, and Jack decided it was time to cut out. He grabbed Richard and started pulling him toward the gates.
'No!' Richard shouted. 'The tracks!'
'What?'
'The tr - '
Something whickered over them and both boys ducked. Their heads knocked together.
'The tracks!' Richard shouted, rubbing his skull with one pale hand. 'Not the road! Go for the tracks!'
'Gotcha!' Jack was mystified but unquestioning. They had to go somewhere.
The two boys began to crawl along the rusting chain-link fence like soldiers crossing no-man's-land. Richard was slightly ahead, leading them toward the hole in the fence where the tracks exited the far side of the compound.
Jack looked back over his shoulder as they went - he could see as much as he needed to, or wanted to, through the partially open gates. Most of the train seemed to have been simply vaporized. Twisted chunks of metal, some recognizable, most not, lay in a wide circle around the place where it had come back to America, where it had been built, bought, and paid for. That they had not been killed by flying shrapnel was amazing; that they had not been even so much as scratched seemed well-nigh impossible.
The worst was over now. They were outside the gate, standing up (but ready to duck and run if there were residual explosions).
'My father's not going to like it that you blew up his train, Jack,' Richard said.
His voice was perfectly calm, but when Jack looked at him, he saw that Richard was weeping.
'Richard - '
'No, he won't like it at all,' Richard said, as if answering himself.
3
A thick and luxuriant stripe of weeds, knee-high, grew up the center of the railroad tracks leading away from the camp, leading away in a direction Jack believed to be roughly south. The tracks themselves were rusty and long unused; in places they had twisted strangely - rippled.