by Noah Mann
“I feel something,” she said.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Genesee said, scanning the same directions that Schiavo had. “A train? Are you serious?”
I looked to the rails, noticing something that should have been apparent as we walked along them.
“These rails are shiny,” I said.
Martin, too, was making the same judgment that I was.
“They should be rusted,” he said. “Completely rusted. The only thing that would keep that from happening is...”
Schiavo took a few steps to the east down the tracks and pointed.
“Train wheels,” she said, smiling.
Maybe a half mile away and drawing closer at slow speed was the unmistakable blunt front end of a locomotive, its single headlight blazing through the daylight, a shroud of heat shimmer hovering over its throbbing diesels.
“Everyone off the tracks,” Schiavo said.
Carter was first to follow her orders, taking a position on the north side of the tracks. Genesee joined him, while Martin and I climbed down the berm to set ourselves on the south side. Schiavo, though, didn’t move. She took her M4 in hand and held it low and ready as she faced the oncoming train.
“Angela, what are you doing?” Martin asked.
“Making sure whoever’s driving can’t miss us,” she said.
The sound of the locomotive rose now, and as it passed a slight bend in the tracks we were able to see that it was pulling three cars behind it, two of which were bulbous tank cars.
“Those could be filled with anything,” I told Martin, recalling what Major Layton had planned to do with strategically placed tank cars brimming with flammable liquid.
“You think shooting might not be wise?” Martin asked.
“No one’s shooting,” Schiavo said from atop the berm. “Unless I do.”
The train drew nearer, the sound of its engines changing, growling low now, whoever was at the controls throttling down. Its shape and structure also became more defined, and it resembled no ordinary locomotive. Steel plates had been welded around its cab area, with only small slits where wider windshields should be. The front door to the cab, reached by steps that split to both the left and right, was covered by a large slab of rusted steel, with crude hinges attached to one side.
Someone had taken the time to turn the beast into a rolling bunker.
Atop the berm, Schiavo raised her rifle in one hand, holding it over her head, signaling her presence and that she was a friendly. Whether those aboard the train were was an unknow.
“Be ready,” Schiavo said. “But keep your weapons down.”
She was taking a chance. A big one. And so were we all by heeding her orders. But I suspected that all she was thinking of at that moment was what the train could provide—a way to travel further west. How far we had no idea. But, if things worked as she was planning, we would know soon enough.
The locomotive groaned to a stop, its brakes squealing slightly, the cars in tow stacking up, the couplings between each sounding a racket they came together. The car immediately behind the engine was some sort of modified flat car, I could see now, the business end of a John Deere backhoe fixed to its structure, menacing jaws mounted where a bucket would usually be.
“Hello!” Schiavo shouted.
There was no reply, and it wasn’t even certain that anyone within the barricaded cab could have heard her over the idling diesels. But from the side of the tracks where Martin and I stood, I saw movement, and so did my friend. Just a shifting of light and shadow through a vision slit in the makeshift armor on our side.
“Fletch,” Martin said.
“Got it,” I acknowledged, my finger sliding from just above the trigger to rest upon it, my AR’s selector already set to burst. “Be ready to—”
My directive to move right was never fully delivered as a heavy steel plate which covered the locomotive’s side window dropped suddenly, folding down on a hinge with a loud CLANG as it slapped against the welded armor below. Behind it, where there should have been glass, there was none, just a bearded face peering out at us.
“What the hell are you’s all doing out here?!”
The challenge was directed at Martin and me first, then at Schiavo as the man’s head poked fully out the hole where the cab’s side window was missing. The surprise of seeing him, of seeing a seemingly whole human being, stuttered any reply we might offer for a moment.
“Are you’s all deaf?!” the man asked, chewing on something beyond the hole through his beard. “I ain’t got all day!”
“I’m Colonel Angela Schiavo, United States Army. We’re low on supplies. Especially water.”
The man eyed us for a few seconds, still chewing behind the bush of knotted brown and gray facial hair.
“I’s got some water,” he finally said. “You’s all can have some.”
“Good,” Schiavo said, then walked straight to the front of the locomotive and climbed the steps, winding past the front armor and along the side until she was standing on the narrow catwalk next to the man. “I’d also like to talk to you.”
The man considered this, his attention shifting to the rifle Schiavo held low and casual, in the least threatening manner she could while still being ready. Because the improbable appearance of a working train on the Kansas prairie necessitated at least that modicum of readiness until we were satisfied that the stranger at the controls was no threat to us.
“Talk?”
Schiavo nodded and peered past him into the dim cab.
“Are you alone?”
“I am,” the man answered through more chewing.
“Are you armed?”
“I sure as hell am,” he told her, and all of us, his response loud and proud.
Schiavo smiled at his expression of bravado and independence.
“And do you have a name?”
“I do,” the man said.
Thirty
His name was Ivan Heckerford. He told us this, and his life story, while filling our canteens and water bottles from a tank mounted just inside the cramped cab. Schiavo and I remained inside with him while Martin, Genesee, and Carter took positions outside, relaxing on or near the tracks.
“Railroad was a good job, I tell ya,” Heckerford said, shifting past Schiavo and me to reach a cabinet high on the cab’s back wall. “Layin’ rail in the middle of God’s country, a man couldn’t ask for more than that.”
He opened the cabinet and retrieved a clear bottle, some smoky liquid swishing within.
“Good pay,” he said, twisting the cap off, the glass spout disappearing through his beard as he took a fast swig. “Good people.”
He offered us a drink from the bottle. Both Schiavo and I declined. Heckerford laughed at our hesitance.
“I felt the same when the Salinites offered me some in trade a few months back. But I took a chance and, boy, am I glad I did.”
“Salinites?” I asked.
“Salina, Kansas,” Heckerford said. “That’s what this clan of scavengers there call themselves. Sounds almost biblical, don’t it? Salinites.”
He smiled and capped the bottle, returning it to its cabinet.
“Said they make it from old dead wood and bone and who knows what else. It sure do hit the spot.”
Heckerford plopped himself down in the engineer’s seat and swiveled it to face us. As he did I could see behind it, a trio of weapons there—an AR like mine, a Remington pump shotgun, and a compact anti-tank weapon, its tube collapsed but ready for fire in seconds.
“Yeah, I tolds you I was armed,” Heckerford said, noticing the attention I was paying to his small arsenal. “You look under this armor you’s goona see plenty of scars, I tell ya.”
He pointed to the wall of the cab, and to the roof, clear penetrations apparent.
“’Course, that was a while back now,” he said. “Ain’t many left who try to take what ain’t theirs. Ain’t many, but there’s a few. So I’s ready.”
He grabbed the s
hotgun and held it before him like a knight might wield a shield.
“I’s ready.”
Schiavo nodded at the man and waited while he put the weapon down and faced us again.
“You’s all wanted to talk,” he said, fixing on Schiavo.
“I do,” she said, leaning her M4 against the control panel. “We’re traveling to Oregon.”
Heckerford burst out laughing, slapping his knees, just a glimpse of yellowed teeth flashing through the mouth hole in his beard.
“There ain’t nothin’ out there,” he said. “That’s UG territory.”
“You know about the Unified Government,” Schiavo said.
“Ah,” Heckerford reacted, swatting the air before him dismissively. “The UGs tried to come through the backside here, but they got swatted good by the Salinites. Poisoned them with bad swill. Can you beat that? Ha!”
It was hard to tell if the man was describing an actual move by the Unified Government to bypass any Marine force which might remain in Colby, or if he was recalling some small unit skirmish. In either case, he seemed to have knowledge of both the area, and of its happenings.
“What about the Marines?” I asked.
Heckerford quieted and sat back in his chair, swinging it slowly left and right for a moment.
“You’s all know about them?” he asked.
“They’re in Colby,” I said. “Second MEF.”
The man was genuinely surprised that we knew about the military presence in Kansas.
“How do you’s all know about them?”
“How far are they from here?” Schiavo asked, cutting off Heckerford’s curiosity.
“Not too far,” he said, brightening a few seconds later. “I’s got an arrangement with them, you know. You see, they all needs gas for their birds.”
“They have aircraft?” Schiavo asked.
“Oh, yeah, those big weird looking ones with the propellers that go all which ways. Takes off like a helicopter and flies like a plane.”
“Ospreys,” I said.
The tilt-rotor aircraft was a primary transport for the Marines. We’d seen them in Skagway, when they’d been tasked with transporting the Edmonton survivors back home. I wondered, as Schiavo did, I was certain, if the Marines in Colby might be accommodating and get us back to Bandon.
“I brings them in the raw crude from some abandoned tanks out by Fort Riley, and they process it right where they’s at into whatever those weird whirlybirds fly on.”
At home we’d learned to make our own diesel from what a few inland wells produced. Making jet fuel, which is what I assumed the Ospreys ran on, was a whole different animal. But they’d found a way, just as we had. All survivors were part Marine, I thought. Adapting, improvising, and overcoming.
“And they keep you stocked up with MREs,” I said, eyeing the collection of empty pouches scattered about the engine’s cab.
“Bartering,” Heckerford said, beaming through the hole in his salt and pepper beard. “Ain’t it a wonderful world?”
Schiavo glanced outside to Martin and Genesee, sitting next to each other on the gravel slope next to the tracks. A few yards away, Carter stood on the tracks just ahead of the train, his M4 held low and ready as he scanned the landscape, his vigilance inspiring.
“You can get us to Colby, then?”
Heckerford shook his head.
“Tracks to Colby are shot. Haven’t been able to repair those yet. Been too busy keeping the rails open between Fort Riley and Oakley. The Marines offload what I’s carrying into some tanker trucks they have and haul it all up to their base.”
Schiavo looked to me.
“If we can get to Oakley,” I said.
“They have to take us the rest of the way,” she suggested.
“They have to take you,” I corrected her.
“They won’t know squat about me or...anything, Fletch.”
She was right about that. What the president had told her, and given her, could not have been shared with any far-flung outposts. Not in our world. Nor would there be any reason for a unit of Marines in western Kansas to need that information.
“We’ll all be going to Colby,” Schiavo said, her willingness to suffer through any hesitance at a minimum. “Mr. Heckerford, you’ll take us to the fuel convoy at Oakley.”
The man ran a hand over his beard where it lay against the front of his shirt, thinking.
“This isn’t really a request,” Schiavo added when Heckerford didn’t immediately respond.
“I’s got a good thing going with the Marines,” he said.
“And you still will,” Schiavo assured him. “I’ll let them know I ordered you to take us along.”
Heckerford thought for a moment, then smiled through the hole in his beard, a mouthful of stained, broken teeth showing.
“Mission of mercy!” he shouted giddily. “Mission of mercy! That’s what it is. That’s what I’ll tell ‘em. I’s had to pick you up. Couldn’t leave you all to die out here. That’s my story.”
Schiavo nodded, allowing a smile at the man’s exuberance.
* * *
We were underway five minutes later, moving along the tracks at what felt like a snail’s pace.
“Gotta keep it under twenty,” Heckerford said, scanning the way ahead through the narrow slit in the armor that covered the windshield. “I’s gotta be able to stop this baby if the track looks bad.”
The side armor had been folded up again, sealing Heckerford and me in the cab as the others rode on the catwalks outside, taking in the sights of the grey prairie like hobos traveling through some apocalyptic landscape. Which, I supposed, we all were to some extent.
“I’s got spare rails on my fixer car between us all and the tank cars.”
“I saw the crane you rigged up,” I told him.
“Snagged that all from a farm back Fort Riley way. Makes gettin’ the rails off the fixer pretty easy, but I’s still gotta manhandle them into place.”
The man flexed his left arm for me, pumping his bicep to an impressive fullness. He was hardened by the landscape and the life, to be sure, and I couldn’t truly tell if he was forty or sixty years old. What mattered was that he’d not only survived, but that he’d found a way to be useful.
“Were you an engineer for a long time before the blight?”
Heckerford shook his head as we rolled past a dead town, its flattened and charred buildings barely visible through the vision slit on the side armor.
“I didn’t start running this beauty until after it all,” he told me. “Just kept the rails up before that. Laid ‘em, fixed ‘em. But this...”
He reached out and placed his palm gently on the control panel.
“This is in my blood.”
We cleared the abandoned town and passed a siding switch that Heckerford warned could be sketchy.
“Fixed that one last week,” he said. “But I’s gotta fee-ness it a bit still, ya know?”
“Are you from Kansas originally?” I asked.
“No, no, not even close,” Heckerford answered. “Up Maine way. That’s where I’s was born and growed up. My daddy was lobster man. And a mean man, ya know? When I’s was fifteen I ran my bee-hind outta there and down to Alabama. That’s where I’s got started workin’ on the railroad. Long time ago. I’s just headed out Kansas way when things turned all crazy like after the bug hit.”
The blight was that, I knew. A bug, albeit a manmade one.
“Folks here needed movin’, so I’s moved em. Fired up every engine I came across and drove it until it wouldn’t run no more. Then...then I found this beauty right near Fort Riley. That was right abouts the time a Marine patrol came through there lookin’ for fuel. A few negotiations, a handshake, and I had’s myself a job.”
I wondered if Ivan Heckerford realized that he was little different than a pioneer wagon driver, steering a train of mules and supplies across the prairie to far flung outposts. If nothing else, he was an entrepreneur. The world needed more like h
im.
“You might wanna tell your lady commander that we’s fixin’ to pull into Oakley just up a piece.”
I looked through the slit on my side of the front window and could just make out shapes in the distance. Vehicles and people.
“Will do,” I said.
Thirty One
Schiavo was standing at the front of the engine, outside the cab, as we pulled up to the end of the line in Oakley, the rest of us on the catwalks outside the cab. A half dozen Marines were waiting, M-16s up and ready, all aimed directly at her as the short train hissed to a full stop.
“Keep your hands away from your weapon!”
The command came from a lieutenant, shouting past his rifle. Behind him and his men were a trio of tanker trucks, civilian versions that had once delivered fuel to gas stations. Each had been painted a tawny brown, a coating which might have been perfect had the world not up and turned grey. There was no recovery yet in this area. No replanting. Green fields which once had turned brown in winter were little more than endless stretches of dirt that had recently been dusted with a sprinkling of black.
“I’m Colonel Angela Schiavo. I have more people on the train.”
As she finished speaking, Heckerford dropped the side armor and stuck his head out.
“Lieutenant Mason! Don’t shoot ‘em! It’s a mission of mercy!”
The lieutenant considered the explanation, then lowered his rifle. His men did not, keeping their weapons zeroed in on Schiavo and the rest of us.
“They’s friendly, lieutenant! They’s good people! They’re not UGs!”
“That’s enough, Ivan,” the lieutenant said, silencing Heckerford.
“All of what he said is true,” Schiavo reiterated. “You’re Second MEF?”
The lieutenant nodded, looking past Schiavo, down both sides of the engine, taking stock of the rest of us. He had us outnumbered, almost two to one if the crew of the tanker trucks were taken into account. Those Marines stood nearer those beefy vehicles, sidearms their only weapons, though I suspected each would have rifles in the cabs of their trucks. In any case, we weren’t about to start a fight with the very people who could be instrumental in getting us home.