by Judy Clemens
She was re-entering the passenger car to sit in her assigned seat when Death stopped her. “You’re not going to like it.”
“What?”
The woman with the bright blond hair glanced up at her, and Casey forced a smile so the woman wouldn’t think she was crazy. The woman’s eyes widened, and she shifted in her seat to show Casey her back.
Death aimed a long finger toward Casey’s previous seat, now occupied by another young mother with a baby. Only this time it wasn’t a light-haired little girl. This time the child, a boy, bore the dark hair and eyes of Casey’s son, Omar, dead now for over two years. The mother of the blond girl playfully pinched the boy’s fat legs, and his gurgled laugh sent an arrow through Casey’s heart.
“How close are we to the next stop?”
The woman at Casey’s hip glanced over her shoulder. “Are you asking me? Because I don’t know.”
Death sighed. “Alas, I don’t either.”
“Never mind.” Casey pushed through the door to find a conductor.
She had no luck in the next car, or the one after that, and didn’t bother trying to find a different seat because it seemed the children were multiplying. Everywhere she looked, babies, toddlers, children the age Omar would have been in a year, two years, five…
Finally, she came across a conductor who assured her a stop was coming up in less than twenty minutes, if she really wanted to get off. Casey made her way to the caboose, where she clung to a rail and stared at the track as miles clacked away. Death sat on top of the railing, leaning against the caboose with feet propped on the iron, oblivious to the dangers that applied to an actual person. The black evening gown flapped in the wind.
“Why are there so many children on this train?” Casey said. “And so many mothers?”
“I’m sorry, but you know what Tiffany said.”
Casey huffed. “I have no idea what Tiffany said. And I really don’t care.”
“She said,” Death continued, “‘No matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself.’”
“Oh, shut up.” Casey shoved her earbuds into her ears.
Chapter Three
As soon as the train stopped, Casey got off. The tiny station—Merrimore—was only a pause along the way to somewhere else, a desolate track on the crest of a weed-strewn hill.
The conductor hovered in the train car door, halting Casey halfway across the warped wooden platform. “You sure you want to get off here?”
“No. But this is where it has to be.” Casey couldn’t take any more of the Children’s Express. Not when her own child lay moldering in a grave on a Colorado mountainside.
The conductor checked up and down the empty deck, gave her one last inquiring glance, and shook his head. “All aboard,” he cried flatly, to no one. He stepped back into the stairwell of the train car, the door slapped shut, and the locomotive ground away.
Casey didn’t stay to watch.
The road at the bottom of the hill lay littered with old buildings. A gas station long since boarded up, a grocery store with graffiti-covered windows and CAUTION signs, and what had probably been a video store, back when those existed.
Not much civilization to hang out with.
Casey pulled out her phone and brought up a map of the area. The road she stood on led north and south, meeting up with a bigger perpendicular road eventually, but not for miles. She had landed herself in the middle of nowhere—no doubt causing the conductor’s confusion. So what was she going to do?
She smiled.
She would start walking.
The air was chilly, so she dug her sweatshirt out of her bag and headed north. She breathed in the freshness, happy to be off the train, pleased to be on the move, away from home, away from people, away from everything.
The past two months had been…fun? Interesting? Suffocating? She was glad to spend time with her mom and her brother, Ricky, but seeing her mother in her aging condition was difficult, and Ricky had just been through the death of a close friend and wasn’t himself. Casey was glad to support them, but she needed space. Time to herself. For a little while.
And then there was Eric…
The train tracks ran parallel to Casey for a few miles before curving across the road and heading west. Casey played with the idea of following them, but kept with her original plan, remaining northern bound. She passed fields of knee-high plants, nothing that looked familiar from her recent travels. Onions and red beets, she thought, as well as what looked—and smelled—like mint. Farmhouses and barns punctuated the landscape, and mountains lay in the distance like bookends to either side. Casey didn’t know exactly which mountains they were, but they were beautiful and reminded her of home, which wasn’t altogether welcome.
Home meant thoughts of Reuben and Omar, her family killed in the car accident two years previously. Perhaps she had made her way toward peace. Maybe the first glimmers of joy. Her travels in the past year—even the past several months—had taken her through Ohio. Kansas. Florida. Texas. In each place she learned something new about herself. At each place she met people who changed her and helped her see that life could go on. Must go on.
At least she no longer wanted to die.
But returning home wasn’t what she thought it would be. She had gone back to help Ricky, not meaning to stay. Not planning to rediscover the roots she’d planted there when she was a child, roots that deepened after she met Reuben and gave birth to Omar. But Eric, with his kindness, his intelligence, his persistence, found her and joined her there, threatening to expand those roots—to help her branch off in new directions. She thought she was ready. She thought she could love him. Death had even disappeared, at least she had thought so, and while she felt empty with her sidekick absent, she also welcomed a new lease on life.
But being back there, in the home she shared with her family, chipped away at her readiness. It turned out Death remained there all along, lurking in the shadows. Calling to her. Until she had to get away.
The road she traveled now wasn’t desolate, but nearly. She counted four trucks, a tractor, and one packed minivan as they passed. The trucks slowed as they approached, but she waved them on. The van didn’t stop, or even slow down much, but Casey saw faces at every window, so she didn’t blame the driver for passing her by.
Death left her alone, proclaiming her “too boring to live.” Casey was glad for the time to herself. The emptiness of the fields and road allowed her to relax her senses. Anything coming would be seen long before it arrived.
As evening fell she reached the outskirts of a small town whose faded and chipped sign proclaimed its name as BELTMORE. She passed several run-down house trailers, tiny single-family homes, and a school which had not been built during the present generation. Or even the one before that. Finally, she reached a park she could barely see in the dusk. Two light poles held broken fixtures, leaving the playground nearly invisible. After listening for any human sounds and hearing only cicadas and crickets, she took out her phone and shone the flashlight, risking the neighbors seeing her. But she wouldn’t stay somewhere she hadn’t vetted.
She walked the area, memorizing the layout. Rusting slides and jungle gym, an overflowing trash can, one scraggly tree, and a pavilion with several splintering picnic tables. The park, like the town surrounding it, was a place that time—and Idaho—had forgotten. A notice declared it open dawn to dusk, but she saw no sign of security cameras, or any life in the closest houses. She should be safe to spend the night.
The pavilion was too exposed for her liking, but a stone fireplace sat at the far end, which would protect her back. She covered up with a weightless blanket she had crumpled in her bag, and, after a few minutes of deep breathing, she fell asleep, the night sounds washing over her.
A different sound woke her a few hours later. Senses tingling, Casey sat up.
Death, dressed all in black,
leaned close and whispered, “Someone’s coming.”
Chapter Four
Headlights swept across the playground, briefly illuminating Casey on her stone ledge. Had someone called the cops? But no, the lights were too high for a police car, even a government SUV, and the rumble of the exhaust sounded louder than any law enforcement vehicle she’d ever come across. Families wouldn’t be bringing children at that time of night, although it could be a couple looking for a place to park.
“Ew.” Death’s nose wrinkled. “Don’t even think that. Although that would be more interesting than a lone woman walking desolate country roads for an entire day.”
The headlights flicked off, along with the engine, and Casey blinked away the images left in her eyes, hindering her night vision. The darkness returned, as did the silence, even quieter than before, since the loud truck had scared the late hour’s insect chorus. Casey slid her legs free of her blanket, watching and waiting. Should she make a run for it? Definitely preferable to a confrontation. But her bag and blanket lay ready to betray her, and any movement was bound to give her away. Besides, without her phone’s flashlight she could trip over a piece of a broken swing set, or twist her ankle in a hole. Staying put was the best option for the moment, especially since she didn’t know if the truck’s passengers were even a threat.
As her vision cleared she could make out the shape of a four-door pick up truck, its tires larger than standard, the chassis lifted so high a good bit of the undercarriage was exposed.
“Rednecks,” Death muttered.
Casey shook her head at Death’s name-calling.
“What? There’s a confederate flag in the window. We’re in Idaho. Even if there were any legitimacy to the whole ‘Heritage not Hate’ posse, tell me how these guys could possibly be part of it. We’re two thousand miles from the South side of the Civil War.”
Casey took a deep, steadying breath to keep her heart rate down, trying to ignore Death and consider her options. She hadn’t seen the occupants of the truck, but Death’s assessment of the owner’s flag wasn’t reassuring. She hoped it really was a couple looking for a make-out spot. Their sex life wouldn’t cause her injury. Unless she thought about it too much.
One truck door opened, then another, illuminating two men as they climbed down from the cab. Boots hit the ground.
“Get your ass out of my truck.” The driver leaned back into the cab. “I swear, Crash, if you barf in there I will kill you dead.”
“As if there’s any other way,” Death growled.
Another door opened and a large figure spilled out of the backseat. “I’m not gonna barf.”
So. Not a couple searching for Lover’s Lane. Casey was not relieved.
The three doors slammed shut. Casey heard the clink of bottles in the returning darkness, and could see the shapes of the men as they moved. If she hadn’t known they were there, it would have been hard to make them out, so she hoped her presence remained a mystery. Without any illumination from the busted light poles, she sat in complete shadow. Unless they came too close, she would be okay.
The front seat passenger set an opened case of beer on the first picnic table and dropped onto the bench. “So Marly’s not answering her phone?” He swigged the last drops of his bottle before flinging it into the darkness, where it hit the ground with a thunk.
“Nice,” Death growled.
“I don’t know what her problem is,” the driver said. “I texted her like five times in the last hour and she won’t text me back. I don’t even know where she is.”
“Sleeping?” the passenger said.
“Better be. Better not be with that asshole she was talking up at the races last weekend.”
The guy from the backseat—Crash, the driver had called him—wandered toward the next table, too close for Casey’s liking. Slowly, silently, she stood, shifting balance between her feet. Focusing. She berated herself. She should have snuck away when she had the chance. Although at the time she didn’t think running was a viable option, or even necessary.
The shotgun passenger unscrewed the top of another beer and flicked the cap into the grass. “Don’t you have that thing on your phone? The one where you can see where she is?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Let me see.”
The driver tossed his phone to him and grabbed a bottle, obviously not his first, the way his hand overshot the case. He’d been behind the wheel moments before.
“These are the people who keep me up at night,” Death grumbled. “Literally.”
Casey kept her eyes on Crash, who continued making his unsteady way toward the fire pit.
“See,” the passenger said, “there she is. She’s…where is that?”
The driver’s face glowed blue as he leaned over the phone. “Hell, I don’t know. Not her house. Not her mom’s.”
“Guess that answers it.”
The driver slammed his hand on the table. “She’s mine, dammit. She should know that.”
Crash bumped a picnic table and staggered toward Casey’s hiding place.
“Here he comes,” Death said, and then the man was standing over Casey. Close up, he was even bigger than Casey had calculated. Easily over six feet, with enough extra weight on him to be both clumsy and strong.
Death gestured toward the playground. “Maybe you could still go and he wouldn’t remember.”
Crash frowned. “Guys?”
“Too late.”
Casey swiveled so she wasn’t trapped with the fireplace ledge behind her, and gauged the distance to the road. She could beat three drunk guys in a foot race, right?
“Guys!” Crash said again. “There’s a girl over here.”
“Well,” Death muttered, “‘girl’ is pushing it a little, don’t you think?”
Casey turned to run, but Crash shot out a meaty hand and grabbed her arm. “Don’t go away.”
The driver and the other guy shambled over and took their turns staring. Alcohol fumes, now tripled, floated through the air. Casey thought maybe they were strong enough she could be affected just by breathing them in.
“What are you doing here?” the passenger said.
Death indicated Casey’s makeshift bed. “Not too bright, are they?”
“Told you it was a girl.” Crash’s expression was one of toddler pride, like he wanted a pat on the head. Or a cookie.
Casey surveyed her options. Crash’s hand completely encircled her arm. No way would she be able to pry it off. She was outnumbered three to one. Crash’s size alone was enough to give him the advantage in a fight, and he had backup. But she had one huge plus over each of these three idiots.
She was sober.
Crash used his free hand to poke Casey’s shoulder, as if testing to make sure she was actually there.
The passenger laughed. “She’s real, Crash.”
“Real pretty.” The driver leered and took a step closer. “I think we got handed a present tonight, boys.”
Death hissed.
Crash smiled, making Casey’s insides turn. What had she gotten herself into this time?
“She is real pretty,” Crash said. “I like pretty girls. I think she’ll like me, too.”
“She’ll like all of us.” The driver took another step toward Casey, and her nerves went on high alert.
“Calm,” Death said.
Casey took a deep breath and let her arm go slack, loosening Crash’s fingers just enough she could take half a step back. She peered up at the driver. “What about Marly? If she’s yours, doesn’t that mean you’re hers, too?”
He blinked. “Huh?”
The passenger narrowed his eyes. “You eavesdropping? Or bein’ a smart ass?”
Casey smiled. “Both.” She swiveled on her heel and kicked Crash in the balls.
He released her arm with a howl. Casey
dodged around him as he clutched his groin. He stumbled and banged into Casey, knocking her onto all fours.
“Up!” Death shouted.
Casey jumped forward, spinning to face the drunks, whose reaction time was delayed enough they didn’t get her while she was down. But a picnic table was at her back, and the driver was running toward her. The passenger headed around the far side so she couldn’t escape.
Casey hopped onto the table. As the driver approached she steadied herself on her left foot and lashed out with her right, smashing him in the face. His head jerked, tipping him backward. He screamed, hands covering his nose.
The passenger grabbed Casey’s left ankle from behind and pulled. She fell forward, bashing her ribs on the edge of the table. Her face slammed into the bench, and she rolled, landing on top of the driver. No time to catch her breath, or feel for the blood on her face. The passenger was still coming. She closed her eyes briefly, focusing, then clawed her way off the driver. She swept her right foot at the passenger’s ankles, getting him the way he’d gotten her. He keeled over sideways and Casey shoved him onto his back with her foot.
She got up to run, but the passenger recovered and tackled her from behind. She toppled forward, breaking her fall with her hands, protecting her head. He had her around the knees, and even in his inebriated state, his grip was strong. Casey couldn’t break free. She felt around the dirty concrete and her hand landed on a bottle one of them had dropped, wet and sticky, lying in a puddle of beer. She grabbed the neck and used the passenger’s own weight to leverage a swing. The glass cracked him on the head and he reared back, letting go of her knees.
She jumped to her feet, using her momentum to swing around and chop his neck with the side of her hand. She followed up her slice with a forward kick to his chin. His head whipped sideways, and he fell against a picnic table. He groaned, but struggled to his knees, swaying. “Bitch.”
“Get him,” Death said.
Casey glanced to check on Crash, but he was gone, staggering toward the truck, still holding his balls.