by Noah Mann
“Ivan Heckerford,” he said. “Craziest train engineer this side of anywhere.”
The oddball train operator had picked us up after the downing of Air Force One and had transported us to the Marine contingent at Colby, Kansas. On the brief trip he’d regaled us with his unique manner of...everything.
“You made it all the way here,” I said. “On a train. That’s...”
“Incredible,” Mason said. “I know. We’ve got a flatbed and crane with rails and supplies to repair track. Another flatbed where we’d transport the plane after breaking it down. We started with three fuel tankers and just shed the second one past the Nevada border. And all the creature comforts of a few boxcars for food and tired Marines. And my Navy doc.”
I took that all in. All that was left of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force was this young officer and his eight men. The civilian, Heckerford, had hauled them and their supplies halfway across the country to reach the place I’d sought out when it was cryptically known as Eagle One. The fact that the town had decided to spread itself out into ten enclaves was not something I needed to share. Not right then. Because Lt. Mason, his men, and even Heckerford, weren’t actually seeking a place.
They were seeking a future.
“Heckerford says we can move a bit south from here and then cut west to link up with a main line heading north,” Lt. Mason shared. “We’ll probably have to fix track and bridges along the way, but he thinks we can be within fifty miles of Bandon in a week or so.”
“They probably think I’m dead by now,” I said.
To that, the Marine officer shook his head.
“Not until they see your body, they won’t,” he said. “Considering how they jawed with my guys back in Colby, I’d say your people are a lot like my Marines. The missing are still fighting for their country, and for the Corps, until we find them doing that or with a cold steel bayonet in their dead hands and the enemy’s blood dripping from it.”
It wasn’t quite the talk a recruiter would give a prospective Marine, but it was certainly persuasive. It was also right.
“They’ll be looking,” I said, accepting his observation.
“They’ll have a big ass moving train to see,” Mason said. “We can put a message on top for them.”
I nodded. Off to my right, Gunny Pompana was returning, following the shore with a trio of other Marines, one supported between the others, his left leg heavily bandaged. Mason took a moment to make introductions. Sergeant Pedro Esteves and Private Evan O’Halloran were the ones who’d assisted Private Ian White to our position. He’d been piloting the aircraft and had taken a round through the thigh after it had penetrated the thin metal fuselage.
“Doc, how’s Private White?” Mason asked.
The corpsman had obviously bandaged the Marine up after he was pulled from the burning plane and before he was summoned to our position.
“Patched up,” Lockton reported. “I wish I was a cutter. There are some fragments deep in there.”
“We have a doctor,” I told them. “Former Navy. He can help him.”
“Former Navy’s all right by me,” Lockton said.
I looked to Private White, M-16 still in his grip.
“Flying and shooting?” I asked.
The young Marine smiled and pointed his rifle off to the side, holding it one handed.
“Just stuck it out the passenger window and br-rrr-rrr-rr,” White said, smiling and wincing simultaneously as Lockton adjusted his bandage.
“Fletch,” Mason said, leaning a bit toward me. “It is Fletch, right?”
I nodded. He glanced toward Neil’s body.
“I’m going to have my guys police up the enemy bodies and just lay them out in the woods,” he explained. “But we have a fifteen-mile hike out of here and at least a week on a train. No refrigeration. No way to...”
He didn’t need to explain any further.
“We’ll bury him here,” I said.
“Was he former military?” Gunny Pompana asked.
“CIA,” I told them.
Mason nodded, thinking.
“We’ll do it right,” he said.
Thirty
While Mason set a detail to prepare a grave for Neil, I accompanied Gunny Pompana, Lance Corporal Stans, and Private O’Halloran on a search through the southern woods for the family. After an hour searching for signs of them, as well as tracks left by Willow, it was if they’d disappeared into the ether.
“They don’t seem to want to be found,” Pompana said.
A half mile south of the lake we stopped and I looked out through the stands of dead trees, scanning the emptiness.
“If you’re out there Steven and Marcia, it’s all right!” I shouted. “I’m with some Marines! The enemy is finished!”
We listened. Then listened some more. But there was nothing to hear.
“They might have been overrun,” Stans suggested.
Pompana shot him a look, some silent caution against defeatist conjecture.
“We’re going back to the town I told you about! You can come with us! We’re fully supplied!” I waited for a moment, almost praying for a response. “It’s safe! I promise you!”
We spent another hour searching, even circling back toward the rubbled cabin, but found no sign of Steven, or Marcia, or Timothy, or Penny. Or Willow.
“I think maybe you’re right, Gunny,” I said. “They just want to stay.”
The family had helped Neil and me. Their dog had saved me. But there was nothing more I could do for them.
“Okay,” I said. “We tried.”
* * *
Two hours later, as the afternoon crept toward evening, I stood with the Marines and their Navy corpsman on a plateau just above the lake. A pile of dirt sat next to a rectangular hole dug and cut through the rocky volcanic soil, my friend resting four feet down, a Marine poncho covering him. I’d spent ten minutes carving his name and the particulars of his life into a section of old plank scavenged from the sides of one of the abandoned flatbed trucks smoldering along the road. The marker would in no way tell the full measure of who Neil Moore was, or who he was to me.
Mason said a few words, but I declined to do so. I’d said my misplaced goodbyes to him once before, when he was actually still alive. I didn’t need to do so again.
The simple service complete, Private O’Halloran and Lance Corporal Kiplinger began shoveling dirt into the hole. In five minutes they had my friend covered, the earth above him compacted.
“You all right?” Mason asked me.
The others filtered away, heading down the trail from the plateau. Their gear was stowed in the woods a mile from the lake, and another fourteen from that point was where our ride was waiting. It was time to get moving, but the lieutenant sensed I was not yet ready.
“No,” I said. “I’m not.”
He quieted for a moment. I thought he was waiting for me to speak, but, in reality, he was crafting a response too wise for someone his age.
“I’ve never lost a man,” Mason told me. “Not one. Had a couple go AWOL from Colby before we set out, but I left that hellhole with seven Marines and my Navy guy, and they’re all still breathing cussing killers who I’d lay my life down for. You know what else, though?”
“What?”
“Every single one of us knows death,” he said. “Death we feel every day. The death of everyone we knew. Our families, our friends. We exist in a world of ghosts, Fletch. My guys still wake up from nightmares drenched in sweat because their mothers, or their children, are crying out to them from some dark place. They force those moments down, but I see it. I see it in their eyes in quiet moments when they can’t help but think, and remember. I even think a couple of my guys probably consider your friend down there to be the lucky one. That’s a hard motivation to counter, but I have to.”
He shook his head, as if trying to process it all. Everything. From the blight’s arrival until now.
“Nothing in this world makes sense, Fletch,
except your next breath. And the next one. And the next one. If I get my guys to Bandon and they’re still taking that next breath, my mission will be a success. I’m not sure the ghosts at the Pentagon would agree, but, honestly, I don’t give a damn.”
What he’d said didn’t just apply to the fighting men under him. Nor just to me. That simple ethos, taking the next breath, was what had kept Neil Moore alive through the horrors he suffered. He had no more breaths to take, but enough of us did that every sacrifice mattered. Every drop of blood shed was an ocean too much, but still it had been shed for a purpose.
“The next breath,” I said.
“And the next one,” Mason added.
It was time to go home, and to bring the brave men who’d come to our rescue to that place, so they could take their next breaths in peace.
Thirty One
We left my friend’s grave and Medicine Lake at dusk and hiked south, leaving the mountain behind as night settled upon the Northern California landscape. By midnight we were back in the flatlands of once fertile farms fields. Near three in the morning, moving in a tactical column, with his fellow Marines having taken turns carrying Private White piggyback style throughout the trek, a long shadow began to resolve along a low berm in the distance.
We’d reached our ride home.
“I’ll’s be a son of a banshee,” Heckerford said as he climbed down from the cab of his armored locomotive, recognizing me in a wash of dim light from a lantern he’d lit upon our arrival. “You’s one of those folks from that town we’s makin’ our way to.”
“I am, Mr. Heckerford,” I said.
“Let’s keep lights to a minimum,” Mason directed. “Gunny, put a watch up and see that everybody gets some rack time. We’re moving out at dawn.”
“Aye, sir,” Gunny Pompana acknowledged and set about carrying out the orders.
Heckerford shook my hand, eyeing me sideways for a moment.
“I’s knows your name, but I don’t remembers it,” he said, grinning at me through the bushy hole in his grey beard.
“Just call me Fletch,” I said.
“Eric Fletcher!” Heckerford shouted, slapping his thigh with force as he recalled fully his first meeting with me. “You’s was with some other folks back between Salina and Colby. Is they’s okay?”
I nodded. Schiavo, Martin, Genesee, and Carter Laws were all still alive and doing well.
Alive...
That was a privilege in this world, and it was not always afforded in perpetuity.
“The lieutenant said the enemy was talking abouts two of you’s they was chasin’.”
Mason, standing close enough to catch this part of the conversation, gave an upward nod to Heckerford.
“Not right now, Ivan,” the Marine officer said.
Heckerford looked to Mason, then back to me, his expression going slack, the smile mostly hidden behind the mass of hair on his face.
“I’s sorry,” Heckerford said to me, sincere regret in his eyes. “I’s didn’t know.”
“It’s all right,” I told the man.
“Ivan,” Mason said.
“Yes, lieutenant?”
“The plane’s gone,” Mason explained. “If you want we can ditch that flat car.”
The engineer thought for a moment, then nodded.
“First siding we’s come by I’ll’s back in and rejigger what we’s pulling,” Heckerford said, waving the lantern he held toward the back of the train. “I’m gonna go box the tie down chains.”
Mason approved with a nod, and Heckerford flashed me a more subdued smile before making his way toward the rear of the train.
“We’ve got MREs if you’re hungry,” Mason said. “Half a boxcar full of those nasty things.”
“Yeah,” I said, allowing a small chuckle. “I’m just about hungry enough to eat a couple.”
Mason led me toward the boxcar. Just ahead of it was the flat car which had transported the scout plane. Discarding it would require uncoupling those behind it and pushing it off into a siding, as Heckerford described.
“It’s fairly amazing that you were able to haul all this from Kansas,” I said.
“Ivan doesn’t understand the word impossible,” Mason said. “If we came to a bad section of track, a stretch that was washed out, he’d show us how to lay new rails. We came to this one bridge in New Mexico that had to be reinforced, so we did that, but he said it still wouldn’t support the entire train. What did good old Ivan do? Went across with the engine and had us unspool a hundred yards of steel cable so he could tow the rest of the cars across one by one.”
“Only the weight of a single car on the bridge at a time,” I said.
“He may be simple,” Mason said. “But he’s not dumb.”
We reached the box car and the lieutenant retrieved a pair of MRE pouches for me.
“Thanks,” I said.
He studied me for a moment in the near darkness. Behind him, Lance Corporal Stans was climbing the exterior ladder to the top of the box car, rifle slung and binoculars around his neck. He would be on first watch, I could see, and he immediately began scanning the surrounding terrain as he stood atop the train car.
“With Private White down, I’m going to need to count on your help,” Mason said. “I know you’re still hurting, but...”
“I’m going to do whatever it takes to get us to Bandon,” I assured him.
“Glad to hear it, Fletch,” Mason said, turning to leave me before returning for one last thing. “And I’m Nathaniel, by the way.”
“It’s good to know you, Nathaniel,” I said.
The lieutenant left me. I took a few steps away from the train and sat down on the low side of the berm that supported the rails upon which it rode. Behind me the fighting men were quieting, settling in for an abbreviated night of shuteye. I suspected that I would eat, and then I would sleep. I would likely even dream. If I did, I hoped it would be of my friend, as he was in our youth, when we were young and dumb and invincible. Before life became real, and long before the world was torn apart. I just wanted to forget the here and the now and drift off into memories of times that were good. If only for one short night.
Reality could have me back tomorrow.
Thirty Two
We worked our way south, Heckerford’s diesel locomotive hauling the mishmash of train cars along the rails at painfully slow speeds.
“We runs a bad rail at ten miles an hour we gonna be fine,” he’d explained to me. “We runs it at fifteen we gonna be walkin’ the rest of the way.”
By ‘the rest of the way’, he meant to Bandon.
“Sure could be usin’ that plane nows,” he said.
The scout plane they’d carried with them on a flatbed where half of the Marine contingent now sunned themselves had been tasked with seeking out viable rail routes before it became engaged in tracking Perkins’ large force. Without it, the feisty engineer was forced to rely upon old rail maps to plot a viable path to follow, using his knowledge of the rails to decide which routes were likely impassable due to years of neglect and weather.
“Better out west heres,” he commented. “Ups in New England, WHEW, we’d be findin’ ten miles of bad track for every good one. The rails don’t likes goin’ from ice to hot and back and forth.”
I smiled at the man. Riding in the cab with him, the armored window covers folded down, was an oddly pleasing experience. Most of the next six days I spent with him scanning the tracks ahead for bad spots.
On the seventh day we heard the plane.
* * *
We had just emerged from a series of short tunnels and were rolling slowly along a stretch of track near Bailey Cove on Shasta Lake, Heckerford’s plan to stop soon to refuel, a process that involved the Marines dragging hoses from the last tanker car being dragged along and hand cranking a pump until the locomotive’s tanks were full. That, though, was going to have to wait.
“I hear it,” Mason said as he hurried into the cab.
I’d been
walking along the engine’s exterior side walkway, passing Sgt. Estevez when the distinctive sound pierced the thrumming drone of the big diesel powerplants just feet from us. The sergeant had charged back to alert his commander as I hurried to the cab.
“Shoulds we stop, lieutenant?” Heckerford asked.
Mason looked to me.
“I can’t think of anyone else who’d have a plane flying low,” I told him. “We’re only two-hundred miles from Bandon.”
His concern, I knew, was the unknown. A stopped train was a sitting duck. A moving train was not, and could creep into another tunnel for cover.
But a train under cover could not be spotted, and, at the end of the day, with the likelihood that we were hearing a search plane from Bandon, we wanted to be seen.
“Bring it to a stop,” Mason ordered.
He and I left the cab and crossed two cars behind the locomotive, passing his Marines and Doc Lockton.
“Is it a friendly, sir?” Private Buller asked, the bandage gone from his graze wound, just a reddish scar showing as he stood in shorts on the flat car.
“We’re hoping,” Mason said.
He reached the box car just as the train stopped and climbed the ladder to its roof. I followed, standing with him on the rusty surface which had largely been covered by white lines, crudely brushed on using grease from buckets used to lubricate the train’s axles.
“You see it?” Mason asked.
I shook my head. In the mountainous terrain surrounding the meandering shore of Shasta Lake, sounds could be reflected and heard miles from their source. The aircraft could be on the far side of the bay we’d stopped along and it would never see us.
Or we it.
“There!”
The report came from the flat car just forward of the box car we stood upon. Private White, sitting on a storage box with his wounded leg propped on another, was pointing almost due north, to a spot near a ridgeline.
“I see it,” I said, pointing as well.
Mason nodded. Down on the flat car, Heckerford had joined his passengers, most of whom were eagerly watching the slender white plane in the distance while holding their weapons at the ready—just in case.