Off Track

by Neil Bullock

  “I met Leanna while I was assistant manager. She was a cashier and we hit it off immediately. She had her own problems and knew the same poverty as I had growing up. I didn’t know how deep her problems ran back then. It was a couple of years later when she got pregnant. I was still assistant manager, and she was still a cashier and I wasn’t sure how we’d make it work, but I was still over the moon. I thought maybe I could try for another job somewhere else. I had experience now, and that seemed like it was valuable. We had a tiny apartment in a shitty part of town, and I hoped maybe we could move into something better, you know? Well, I got that better job, and we got a better apartment. It had a room for the baby, and I put money aside every paycheck for things to put in there. When the baby - Jade - finally came, I reckoned I must be about as happy as anyone has ever been.

  “Leanna was different, though. My new job had longer hours and I wasn’t around as much. I never knew if she resented me or not because she wouldn’t talk to me. Finally, when Jade was in kindergarten, Leanna was able to get part time work. We relaxed into a routine.

  “I should have known something was wrong the first time I found bruises on Jade.”

  Lara’s sharp intake of breath next to me pulls me out of Kyle’s story, but he starts talking again quickly.

  “I asked Lee about it, but she said it must have happened at kindergarten, and I believed her. I didn’t even consider that she might have been lying. It happened a few more times over the next year and I started to notice Jade becoming more and more withdrawn, especially around her mother. I still didn’t put two and two together. Jade kept asking to spend more time with me, but I had work.”

  Lara shuffles closer to me and grips my right arm as she listens. I figure we both know that a story that ends in death row means that one or both people in it are going to wind up dead. The fizzing in my stomach is almost too much to bear.

  “Our new apartment wasn’t in a much better neighborhood than our first. I still had a gun for self-defense, and I had a baseball bat I kept behind the door to the place. I came home one time, six months later, and found Jade motionless on the floor of her room, surrounded by blood, the baseball bat lying six feet from her. I ran to her. Tried to pick her up, to revive her. Then I noticed Leanna standing in the corner with my gun held up under her chin. I shouted, pleaded with her not to do anything stupid. She didn’t offer any last words or any explanation. I think she… she just wanted me to watch.”

  Lara moves even closer to me. I put my arm around her. Tears streak down Kyle’s face as he continues to speak.

  “Of course, they pinned it on me. I didn’t know at the time, but she’d been talking at work about the bruises Jade kept getting and wondering aloud if I might be hurting her. When the cops interviewed Leanna’s friends, they were all convinced I did it and they’d never even met me. I swear to you both that I didn’t do it. I’m telling the truth. I can’t imagine how any mother could do what Leanna did. I can’t imagine how any father could do what yours did to you and your sisters, Lara. I just—”

  He stops and starts to sob.

  “You okay, kiddo?” I whisper to Lara.

  She nods and I extricate myself from her and go to Kyle, kneeling before him. “I believe you,” I say. “I’m so unbelievably sorry for your loss, but I believe you.” I wonder if it’s a coincidence that everyone on this train has such sad stories. I feel like I’ve been commiserating with people almost non-stop since I got on.

  “Me too,” Lara calls from her bed.

  I stand and walk to the side of the room, stopping next to a Rainbow Brite poster. It seems like an appropriate counterpoint to what I’m about to say.

  “I suppose this is as good a time as any to tell Lara about the end of the world.” I recap that particular nightmare for Lara.

  “So, my daddy’s dead,” Lara says, breaking the silence that has descended. She doesn’t look particularly broken up about this possibility.

  I tip my head to the side. “It’s difficult to say for sure. I’m confident Kyle wasn’t on the train when I got on, which means he came from some place the world hadn’t ended. I’ve been starting to wonder just how localized it was. We all know time doesn’t work on board, but we can puzzle certain things out. That Care Bears poster is from the original television series. That was over before I was born, but I watched it obsessively on VHS. I also know there were a lot of reboots after the original series. I think they did a reboot of Rainbow Brite, too, but it didn’t go so well.”

  “What’s a reboot?” Lara asks, which lends further credence to my time travel theory.

  “It’s where they take something that was perfect the first time and they make it worse.”

  Kyle is surprised into a laugh, which I guess means he knows what I’m talking about. He wipes at his eyes.

  Lara smiles as if she gets the joke, but I can tell that she doesn’t. “It’s where they remake something from the start and pretend the original never happened. Some stuff gets rebooted over and over again. I never understood why they just couldn’t leave things alone.”

  “Money,” Kyle says.

  I nod. “Probably. Okay, so, what’s the most recent movie you guys remember being out before you came here?”

  “The Lion King!” Lara squeals immediately, and I can’t help but laugh.

  I’ve seen it, of course, but I think I was too young when it first came out to see it on the big screen.

  “Forgotten Flame,” Kyle says.

  “I don’t recognize the name. Any others?”

  “Hmm. I didn’t get to see much of popular culture. Scent of Memory? I think that’s what it was called.”

  I ponder, but I don’t recognize that either. I’m kind of half-assing my way through a theory that has us all on the same timeline, but from different points along it. A scene from Back to the Future 2 pops into my head as I consider that maybe Kyle came from an alternate timeline, and that maybe there are many alternate timelines. It isn’t lost on me that the third film in that franchise features a time traveling train, either. If the multiple timeline hypothesis holds, that makes everything about this situation far more complicated. If I intend to see my mom and Nana and Alice again, I need to not only find the right time, but the right timeline. “Nope. Don’t know that one either. But here’s what I’m thinking: I think we’re all from different times. I think this train can time travel. Lara, it seems obvious that you’re from a time a few years before I was born. Kyle, well, I’m not sure. Can you think of anything else that might let us pinpoint you?”

  “What if I’m from so far in the future that neither of you is able to corroborate anything I say?”

  “That… I hadn’t thought of that. Is the stuff in here familiar?” I ask, gesturing at the posters.

  “Care Bears, yeah. I don’t know that, though,” he says, pointing at the Rainbow Brite poster. “But it’s possible I just wasn’t paying attention.”

  “God, I wish we could go outside for a minute.”

  “Why?” Lara asks.

  “Time works out there. We went outside to get to carriage eleven where we found you. We were in a hurry though. We should have had this conversation, but we didn’t.”

  “Then I think that needs to be our plan,” Kyle says. “The next time the train stops, we go outside. We take a piece of paper and a pen — if we can find those things — and we write down as much as we can remember about ourselves. When we’re back on board, we can compare notes.”

  I nod along as he talks, growing more excited with every word. “That,” I say, “is a wonderful idea.”

  twelve

  The Search

  I’m starting to get tired but, of course, I have no idea what time it is. This feels like a mid-afternoon slump. It can’t possibly be bedtime, can it? I decide maybe food is the answer. “Who’s hungry?”

  Lara looks timid. “There’s some stuff in my refrigerator, but not much...”

  “Hey, you do
n’t have to give us your food. I know a much better way to get it. Kyle, I don’t think you know this either.”

  “I figured when you brought me food that you just got it from the dining car.”

  I nod. “I did. But it’s… a little weird.”

  On our way to the dining room in car twelve, we stop in fourteen, the sleeper car with the names on all the doors.

  “Do you know who these rooms belong to?” I ask Lara.

  She shakes her head. “I’ve knocked on the doors more than once. Nobody ever answers, and they’re all locked except the bathroom.”

  I can’t resist trying for myself. I pick the closest door – the name on the sign reads simply ‘Jane’ – and knock gently. When there’s no response, I hammer with the side of my fist.

  “What, you didn’t believe me?” Lara asks.

  “I did. I just… I don’t know. I want there to be someone home.”

  She gives me a knowing smile. Kyle looks like he wants to give it a try, too, but after a moment of indecisiveness, we decide to move on.

  The dining room is even more depressing than I remember. Vinyl tiles adorn the floor, mostly a dirty shade of off-white, but some are black. There’s no pattern to it, but I guess maybe someone wanted to liven the place up a bit. It didn’t work. The walls are beige and, surprisingly for a carriage meant for passengers, there are no windows. The crate cars and the one with the colored line don’t have windows either, but I wouldn’t expect them to. It seems odd in here, but also welcome as we don’t have to look at the outside world. Harsh fluorescent lights flood the space with a pallid glow that reminds me of lemonade. We plop down at the first table we come to.

  “Okay, let’s do a magic trick,” I say. “Think about your favorite meal, but don’t tell me what it is.”

  “Eden, I’m hungry,” Lara whines.

  Kyle glances uncertainly around the room, then gives me a look like he thinks I might be insane.

  I grin. “Trust me, guys.”

  “Okay, okay,” Lara says. “I’m thinking of it.”

  After a moment of hesitation, Kyle chimes in, “Me too.”

  I picture a burger and fries, melted cheese oozing out of the bun, with an orange Fanta. I wonder if we can get brand names here. I didn’t see any familiar brands behind the bar in the dining car where I met Mitch, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything.

  “Now what?” Lara asks.

  “Now we wait.”

  “Seriously?” Kyle asks.

  “Seriously. It works in the other dining car, anyway. At some point in the next few minutes, whatever you imagined will appear on the table in front of you. I can’t guarantee it’ll work here, but I’m hoping it does, or we’re going to start having problems. Especially if we can’t get back to the front half of the train.”

  “What’s it like?” Lara asks. “Up front, I mean.”

  “It’s pretty nice. Luxurious—”

  “Apart from my room,” Kyle adds.

  “—yeah, apart from that. It’s very functional back here, not very pretty, not that comfortable. But it’s nice up front. We’ll take you to see it when we can.”

  She seems inordinately pleased by this and smiles down at the table. “Thanks.”

  “No worries, kiddo. So, you haven’t seen anyone else since you got on?”

  “Nope.”

  I wonder again how long she’s been roaming the carriages with nobody but her ghosts for company. I wonder why she’s locked back here when Kyle and I weren’t. Because she’s a child? Some other reason?

  Kyle and Lara both recoil in surprise as plates of food appear on the table in front of them. I laugh.

  “Jesus!” Kyle says.

  “Pretty cool, right?”

  The first thing I notice is that brand names are allowed. Kyle has a can of Dr Pepper, Lara has Coke, and I have my Fanta. Perfect. It does beg the question: how the hell? But I’ll think about that later. For his meal, Kyle orders the Chicago-style deep dish pizza he told me about. Lara has gone for sushi, which I spend a moment staring at, wondering where the hell the train sources its fish. My burger and fries glisten with grease, the cheese just starting to become melted enough to begin making its escape from its bready confinement. Oh, God, I need this.

  I take a bite, trying not to moan with pleasure this time, and I think of Alice. This is basically what I ordered for lunch on the day the world ended. That’s why I ordered it. It’s hard, knowing I’ll never see her again. It’s hard knowing that about everyone I loved, everyone I knew.

  The more I think about ways to get back to them, the more convoluted they start to seem. Timelines and causality and confusing shit like that. Anywhere I choose to go, they wouldn’t be my family, my friends. They wouldn’t know who I am, unless I already existed, and that would be so weird, and… completely unfair of me. What if I happened upon a timeline where I’d died as a child? What would re-inserting myself back into my family’s lives do to them? Maybe they’d accept me and maybe they wouldn’t, but… I don’t think I can do that to them.

  I’m sobbing and the tears are landing on my fries. “Eden?” Lara asks. “Are you…”

  I shake my head before she’s finished.

  “What’s wrong?”

  I can’t seem to control my voice, but I manage to choke out, “I’m just realizing I’m never going to see my family again.” I’m annoyed that I let myself believe there might be a way to get back to them. I got my hopes up.

  Lara gives me a sympathetic look, as does Kyle. I take a deep breath and try for something coherent. “I’ve been thinking ever since I formed my time travel theory that I could maybe take charge of the train and somehow make it take me back to my family. Until now, I didn’t consider how weird that might be. It either wouldn’t be my exact family, or they’d not be able to deal with the fact that there are two of me, you know?”

  Kyle nods, his head lowered.

  “But…” Lara says, and I meet her gaze.

  “But what?” I ask when she hasn’t spoken for a while.

  “Sorry, I’m thinking. Are we saying that we’re going to spend the rest of our lives on the train?”

  “We could get off, I guess. But who knows where we’d end up, or when?”

  “So that’s what we’re saying. We’re stuck on the train because it’s familiar?”

  “Lara, I don’t think that’s what Eden’s saying,” Kyle says.

  It’s not what I’m trying to say. Not exactly, but maybe it’s close enough. I have everything I need to live here except everything that makes life worth living. Maybe if I leave, I can find people to share life with. Or maybe I’ll walk for years and never find another living soul. It’s not a bet I’m willing to make. “I guess it is what I’m saying. You’re free to do whatever you want, though.”

  “Right,” Lara says, and returns to her food. I think I’ve upset her.

  Kyle says, “We need to find out what the train is and where it’s going. We can’t say anything for sure without knowing that. We might reach the end of the line and be forced off into some unimaginable hell. Maybe into that gray shit that’s out there. We need to know what other stops are along the way.”

  He’s exactly right. He has this knack of cutting through the problem and getting to the crux of the matter. “How do we do that?”

  “We start by searching every inch of the place.”

  I nod, thinking about the crates, and about the empty sleeper compartments. Even if the doors are locked, maybe we could break them down. “Yeah. Yes, okay. Let’s do that.”

  “Can I finish my sushi first?” Lara asks, apparently electing to not be pissed at me. Good. I didn’t have that skill at her age. “It’s really good.”

  I smile. “Sure thing.”

  We stand outside Lara’s room some time later. My hand is on the handle of the door across the hall.

  “It’ll be locked,” I say.

  “The only way t
o know is to try it,” Kyle says.

  He’s right, but I still find myself apprehensive and I’m not sure why. It’s not the potential invasion of privacy, though I don’t honestly believe there’ll be anyone behind the door. It’s more like simple knowledge that we’re doing something we shouldn’t be on a train that seems to ignore a myriad of concepts I assumed were immutable.

  “Do you want me to do it?” Lara asks.

  “No, I can do it.” Screw it. I depress the handle as far as it’ll go and wait to see if anyone inside objects to our imminent intrusion. Nothing happens, so I push the door inward. There’s a deafening sound of air rushing past and then I see what’s inside.

  “Fuck!” I shout and step back into Lara, who goes sprawling on the floor. I land between her splayed legs, grabbing at Kyle’s hand on the way down and causing him to stumble into the wall behind me. There’s a mind-numbing sound like when you rub your finger around the rim of a wine glass, but it’s loud and it’s all-encompassing and it feels like if it goes on any longer, it’ll turn my brain off.

  Inside the room is nothing. I don’t mean that it’s an empty room, I mean that there’s nothing there. There is no floor, no walls, and no ceiling. It’s like standing in the open door of a spaceship and looking out into a completely empty universe, all dark, forever.

  Kyle has recovered and hurriedly pulls the door closed. The sound stops immediately.

  “Jesus Christ, what was that!?” he shouts.

  “I… I don’t know.”

  “Nothing,” Lara says from her position on the floor behind me. “It was nothing. The absence of anything.”

  “Was it a vacuum in there until we opened the door?” I ask. “The sound when I pushed the door open, was that air flowing in?”