by Tufo, Mark
“I certainly hope not,” Jack answered as Trip frowned.
I reluctantly straddled my bike and started it up. Jack turned his around with ease and then patiently waited while I did the same, with difficulty.
Jack came to a stop about a mile away from the trestle, looked left and right, and then I guess asked Trip which way to go. Trip pointed straight up, which didn’t look like such a good idea. I could see Jack’s head shaking back and forth as I pulled alongside.
“Trip apparently wants to take the Hogwarts Express,” Jack said.
I took a second. “There was no flying train—there was a flying car, though.”
“Mike!”
“Sorry.”
“Left or right?”
It was clear that the tracks to our left led into the city, and headed away to the right. My decision was based on a small trail that looked just about wide enough for a single goat. At least there was one.
“Left.”
“Left it is.”
He didn’t hesitate or ask me why I’d chosen that path, just guided the bike to the edge of the road and onto the goat trail. I said a quick “Our Father” as my wheel left the relative safety of the pavement and transitioned to dirt. Jack was going somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty miles an hour; I was going at a mind-blistering pace of around seven. I don’t know for sure, the speedometer really didn’t account for anything below ten. Every bump I hit tried to wrench the handlebars from my grasp. I figured I could survive a sub-ten-mile-an-hour spill without too many problems, provided the bike didn’t land on me. Jack was a good half-mile ahead, by the time I hit his wake most of the dust had already settled down. He got to the top of a small hill and stopped. Trip turned and waved for me to follow.
“Where the fuck do you think I’m going, Trip?” I asked through gritted teeth.
Jack turned as well, but didn’t make the useless gesture. He probably didn’t want me to lose sight of him before he descended the other side. I pulled up behind him a couple of minutes later.
“He rides just like Evel Knievel!” Trip blurted out. “Hey man, his words not mine.” Trip was pointing to Jack’s back. “More likely to crash than have a successful run. He said that, too,” Trip stage-whispered.
“You guys are hilarious; been working on this routine?”
“Well, we had enough time,” Jack said dryly.
“Well, we can get going now. You’ve laughed at my expense long enough.”
“Before we do, take a look,” Jack said, pointing off into the distance.
It was a train, and a big one. Not for commuters, but a transport. My OCD wanted to count the cars, but we didn’t have the time—still, had to be over a hundred, easy. They stretched into the distance and out of sight.
“We’ll be able to hole up in that just fine.”
Jack seemed relieved. I know I was. One problem solved, six thousand two hundred and twelve to go. I allowed my speedometer to crawl up to fifteen as the sun began to set. The trail, if it even was one, was getting more difficult to see and I think I was honestly in danger of having the muscles in my back seize up around my injury. I’d been in less pain when I’d been shot. Right now, I had great aching tendrils radiating up and down both of my legs.
You never really appreciate how big trains are until you’re standing next to them. The roof of the boxcar we were thinking about getting into had to be a dozen feet high and maybe fifty feet long. There were flat cars and rounded steel liquid transport cars, most of them hazardous and from what I could see none of them beer. The sun was setting and the night was cloudy; it was getting dark fast. I would have loved to explore further, if only to find some food—but the gnawing hole in my stomach would have to wait.
“Mike, I’m thinking that we should bring the motorcycles into the car with us,” Jack said.
I was looking from the ground to the inside of the car, had to be a three foot difference.
“You planning on lifting this thing?” I asked, patting my seat. “This thing has to be close to 500 pounds.”
“You Marines are always thinking about lifting heavy things. In the Air Force, we did things a little differently. And by that, I mean smarter.”
Jack reached into the boxcar and pulled out a ramp much like those on rental moving trucks.
“Kiss my ass,” I mumbled.
Even with the ramp, it took the both of us to push his bike up the severe incline. If I had been a little quicker on my feet, I could have mentioned that if he was so Air Force smart we could have started the engine, unfortunately that never dawned on me. The thing was steep enough that hamsters, if they were so inclined, could have used it for a ski jump. No, I don’t know where the random thoughts come from. I was hungry, tired, thirsty, and in a fair amount of pain. When we got back down, I looked over to my bike and considered the effort we were going to expel getting it in the train.
“Why, Jack?”
“Well, my thinking is that those whistlers we took on might be missed by now if there are others. If they investigate and find the bodies, they might also come to the realization that two bikes are missing. If they go looking for their comrades and see two bikes…”
“I get it.”
“Plus, if any night runners make it out this far, they may drop by for a closer look too. I’d like to avoid either scenario if possible.”
That was all the convincing I needed.
“Do you think they could break in here?” I asked as I lightly pounded on the steel wall.
“No, but I’m not interested in finding out, either. I’ve had enough surprises for one day. Actually, I’ve had enough for the rest of my life. This door only locks from the outside, so we’re going to need to put something up against it.” Jack was referring to the large sliding door, which was easily over ten feet wide.
“And, that doesn’t lock at all.” Jack pointed up to a hatch I had not noticed before. Our impregnable fortress now did not feel quite as invulnerable.
By the time we hoisted my bike aboard, sweat was dripping into my eyes, my lower back was on fire, and my legs were threatening to give out.
“Jack, I’m not one for histrionics.”
“That’s an awfully big word for a Marine,” Jack said, chuckling.
“Humor me, man.” I grimaced. He stopped joking when he realized I was in distress. “I feel like I’m losing the ability to use my legs. Like the connection is slowly being severed.”
“Sit.” Even in the burgeoning darkness, I could see the concern on his face. He helped me over to the corner. “Shit, where’s Trip?”
I thought about standing, but even the thought of it sent electric jolts of torture rocketing up my spinal column.
“Are you going to be all right for a minute? I apparently have to go round up the old coot.”
“Coot? What, are you from 1920? Yeah, yeah, I’ll be fine. I don’t want the coot out there by himself, either.”
“Fuck you, Mike,” Jack said, humor edging into his words as he jumped down off the car.
If I wasn’t so damn scared, I would have told him to “fuck off” right back, but, as it was, I could no longer feel my legs. A man with no legs in a world where running was your best defense would be severely screwed. I was going to die in this lost land. Jack would drag my ass around for a while, but at some point he was going to have to make a break for it, and I’d tell him to leave the 185-pound backpack behind. Oh, he’d decline at first, and I’d either have to pull a gun on him or myself saying I’d shoot if he didn’t leave, then he’d tell me that he’d find a way to tell my wife what happened. And we’d both know the lie for what it was. He’d tell me it was an honor to have known me, and I’d nod and tell him to get the fuck out of there. Trip would wave and quote a Dead song, and I would keep a stiff upper lip as I emptied my magazines into whatever came for me. It would be heroic, and then I would detonate my improvised explosive device as the enemy encroached. A couple of hundred yards away, Jack and Trip would stop upon hearing the explosion, bow their
heads for a fraction of a second, and then be gone. I had it all figured out. Shit, I’d seen it often enough in the movies to realize this was how it was going to end.
I was wondering what the soundtrack would be as the explosion ripped me apart—maybe a classic from Black Sabbath. “Heaven and Hell” might work, because I’d be trapped in between. I was resigning myself to my fate when I heard footsteps approaching. It was Trip grumbling about not having enough time to look through the cars.
“It’s too late—we’ll try tomorrow,” Jack was admonishing him.
“Fascist! Hell no, we won’t go!” Trip apparently thought this was 1965.
“Trip, what the hell are you doing?” I called out, unable to see them from my angle.
“Ponch? Ponch, man! They got you too?”
“Got me for what, Trip?”
“We’ve been drafted to fight their war, man.”
You know, at first I thought Trip was being absolutely nuts, as he is most of the time. We weren’t in the 60s and we weren’t being sent to Vietnam, especially in a railcar—though it was a favorite method for transporting troops en masse during wartime. Then, like a two-by-four to the side of the head, the idea thunked into my head. Maybe we had been drafted. We’d been taken against our will, thrust into a foreign place, and were fighting an enemy, all the while not knowing why we were doing so, other than to survive. That neatly summed up the definition of wartime conscription. Inadvertently or not, Trip had nailed it, and that’s exactly what I told Jack.
“How does he do it?” Jack said, looking over to Trip, who had pulled up a corner of the train car and was fast asleep.
“No idea.”
“How are you doing? I’ve noticed that you haven’t moved so much as an inch in the few minutes since we’ve been back. Does it hurt that much?”
“I don’t know. It might.”
“What?”
“I can’t feel my legs, Jack.”
He pulled in a sharp intake of air, almost enough to make a whistling sound through his teeth. “Do you think it’s temporary?”
“Marine, remember? I shoot things for a living. You’re the intelligent one in the group.”
“Actually, oddly enough, the more I’m around Trip, the more I think that descriptor falls to him.”
We both chuffed a small laugh. A fair chance that no truer words had ever been spoken. Jack took a minute to take a good long look around the landscape. I don’t know if he could see anything. If he had, he didn’t say, then he closed the door. Pretty sure a crypt would have more light than the inside of that box. At least, until Jack lit up the small but powerful flashlight on his rifle. He made sure the latch on the door was in place and then he rolled his bike in front of it.
“Well, if they manage to figure out the latch, the bike is only going to stop them for a little bit.”
“More time to say a prayer I guess,” I said, more morosely than I’d meant to.
We were already in a dire situation—calling it “shitty” was giving that word a bad rap—and now I was severely handicapped. Jack sat down next to me. I was thankful he left the light on, even if he did mute the brightness with a piece of cloth. Darkness was already approaching my heart, it would be nice to at least hold this part of it at bay. He pulled out a half-eaten protein bar from the top pocket of his shirt.
“Want some?”
“No.” I held my hand out. He broke it in two and placed a small piece in my palm. “What about Trip?” I asked before eating my small portion.
“I had to give him half to entice him back here.”
I ate my piece with a smile on my face. “He’s worse than a puppy.”
“How do you want to handle this?” Jack asked after a few minutes of peaceful silence.
I’d been thinking about it. Jack was a fit man, but he couldn’t hike me out of here. And to what purpose? We couldn’t ride triple, and even if we figured that out, I wouldn’t be able to control my legs. Odds were I’d get one or both caught up in the rear wheel and seriously injure us all.
“In the morning, if you could, maybe spend a few minutes and see if there’s any water or food… or at least something I can lie on comfortably in one of these train cars. I will consider that enough.”
“I’ll bring back help if I can.”
“I appreciate that.”
“Get some sleep,” Jack said as he stood.
He shined his light up to the ceiling and the small hatch, and I caught a concerned look on his face right before he shut the light off. I heard him move over to the door. He rustled around, probably looking for some semblance of comfort before trying to fall asleep.
I was coping with—or resigning myself to—my fate much better than I would have figured. Don’t get me wrong: I didn’t want to die, not by a long shot. I just couldn’t figure out how I could possibly prevent it. For the first time in ages, I had no choices to make, no weighty battles between the merits of one plan over another. My actions or inactions were not going to potentially get anyone killed. There was a solace—peace, even—in that notion. Certainly less stress. I just had to exist. I could live with that, even if it meant I was going to die.
Jack would certainly try to get some help, but the odds of that working out for me were not very high. As far as I knew, the only other two regular people left on this planet had died the night Trip and I showed up. The luck I was having right now convinced me that one or both of them had been world-class surgeons. The long sleep was coming at me, much like this train, and for that reason I forewent sleep to think on those I loved and the fun times I’d had during my life—of which there were many. I could not help but think my dreams would cycle down into the abyss anyway—better to stay awake and direct my psyche while I could. I did my best to avoid the thought of where my wayward soul might end up. It worked, mostly. But like a persistent case of herpes, it would flare up from time to time in angry, red, glistening pustules.
I was still awake hours later when I heard Jack stir, and then I heard what stirred him. There were footfalls approaching outside. Men or zombies: I had not heard the telltale screeching of the night runners. At least we had that going for us.
“Mike?”
“Yeah, I hear it,” I told him.
“What about Trip?”
I knew what he was asking, if we should rouse him before the man was startled awake and started loudly asking questions. Jack would have to turn on his light to let Trip know it was him, and would Trip even recognize him through the fog of sleep? There was a chance we hadn’t been discovered, but if even a sliver of Jack’s flashlight bled through a crack, it would look like the Star of Bethlehem in the dark desert-scape.
“Let him be. Good chance he’ll sleep through it anyway.”
“Sleep through what?” Trip was less than an inch from my face. I could only hope I hadn’t shit myself in fear—I couldn’t tell. Guess I could add “ninja” to Trip’s resume.
“Someone’s outside,” Jack filled in.
I still hadn’t found my voice and I didn’t want to say anything anyway, because I was afraid it might have a quiver to its timbre. It didn’t take long to figure out who was out there—metal box or no, it could not even begin to shield us from the stench of death.
“Zombies,” I hissed.
“How is that even possible?” Jack scooted closer to us.
“I don’t think we were followed, if that’s what you’re asking. Probably just a hunting horde. They saw the train and were drawn to it. Maybe a primal or vestigial instinct.”
“Fantastic,” Jack said.
“That sarcasm?”
“We would have been better parking the bikes somewhere out there,” he said.
“And what if we were in their path as we walked here?”
“Yeah, there’s that, I guess. Any change in your legs?”
I shook my head. I immediately realized how useless that gesture was in the dark, but Jack answered with a “Shit.” I was going to ask him how he’d seen me w
hen we heard the banging of hands on one of the train cars down the line.
“It looks like they’re ringing doorbells to see if anyone’s home,” Jack said.
“Trip, when they get here, we are most certainly not home—and no, you don’t need to tell them that. Got it?” I asked.
“What I wouldn’t do for some baklava!” was his response.
Strange request, sure—but hell, I could go for some right now, too.
We sat there in the dark for a while, hoping the zombies would just walk on by to find another food source. I wasn’t optimistic. There wasn’t a bunch of noise out there, but it didn’t go away either. Early morning light was beginning to seep in around the door. Trip had long ago fallen back to sleep. His head rested on my shoulder, a large puddle of drool soaking through my shirt.
“Come on, man.” I shook him awake.
“Did you know werewolves have names?”
How do you respond to that? Do you even bother? I let the question drift off.
“I’m going to go up and see how many there are.”
Jack rose and rolled my bike over to the center of the car, then stood atop it, his fingers just brushing the bottom of the hatch.
“Trip, can you make sure the bike doesn’t fall over when I jump?”
“Sure.” Trip didn’t move.
“He means by holding it in place, not just watching,” I clarified.
“Well, why didn’t he just say that?”
“It was implied, man.”
“Implications are like armpits: everyone has two.” He stood.
“I don’t think that’s how the saying goes, but whatever, man. Just help him.”
“Was that contrived, too?”
Jack went over to the bike.
“Don’t give me a headache, Trip.”
Jack was shaking his head in a “Can we get on with this?” motion.
“I’ve got something for that,” Trip said, and started back toward me.
“Maybe later.” I waved him off.
The fluidity and grace with which Jack jumped up and through that hatch told me more than he ever had with words. He had a secret he wasn’t telling me. I was expecting him to hit the door and potentially fall back down noisily. Then there was the chance the hatch door would slam loudly against the roof outside, the noise echoing in the car like a speaker box alerting the zombies to some tasty morsels inside a tin can. Then he would wildly grab the lip of the opening, hooking first one shoulder over the opening and then the other as his legs danced about seeking purchase, all the while grunting as he hefted himself up and through the opening.