Off Track

by Neil Bullock

  I stare at him until he starts to look uncomfortable. “All right, Mitch. You promise you’re not coming for Kyle again? For any of us?”

  He gapes at me for a second. “I promise. I—”

  “All right. I’ll hold you to it.” I scoot closer to him and lean in to whisper. “Because if you do, I am going to take great pleasure in making you scream.”

  I pull back, offer Mitch my biggest smile, and leave.

  Lara gets up and hurries toward me as soon as I enter the dining room in car twelve. “Are you okay? What happened?” she asks. She’s frantic and deeply upset. I can see a kind of wildness in her eyes that she’s barely keeping concealed.

  “I’m okay.” I give her a quick hug. “How are you guys? Kyle, you doing all right?”

  He nods slowly, while Lara says, “We’re fine. Shaken.”

  “Good.” I’m surprised I don’t feel more shaken right now. Adrenaline, I guess. The comedown will be punishing. I sigh, then look around the room. I can’t believe this is the same room where we had a party just the night before. Looking at it now, it seems everything has changed. “Okay, so, Mitch claims he’s sorry. Says he doesn’t know what came over him. Kyle, can you tell me what happened?”

  Kyle gazes at me for a silent moment before saying, “I was in here having breakfast when the door through to the next car suddenly slides open, and there’s this bald guy standing there. I think I greeted him, but he didn’t say anything. Just walked over, grabbed my arms and twisted them behind my back, then started pushing me out of the room. We got to car nine and he threw me headfirst against the wall. I think I was unconscious for a while. When I came to, he was sitting there staring at me. When he opened the door, I started to plead. You walked in shortly after.”

  Lara looks concerned. “You… you didn’t try to fight him off?”

  Kyle seems momentarily offended. “Of course I did. I couldn’t move once he had hold of me. That guy is extraordinarily strong. Like, inhumanly strong.”

  “That’s another thing to worry about, then,” I say. If Mitch were the frail old man he appears to be, I doubt any of us would have much of a problem incapacitating him, but if he overpowered Kyle, who is easily two of Mitch and all muscle, Lara and I have no chance at all. I wonder how I was able to pull him back from the door like I did. “Anyway, Mitch says he doesn’t know why he did what he did, and he couldn’t tell me where he even got the information that inspired him to do it. He claims he doesn’t want to harm you — any of us — anymore, and he claims he won’t try again.”

  Lara’s eyes almost pop out of her head. “You believe him?”

  “No. No, of course I don’t. What do you take me for?” I elbow her gently, but she doesn’t react. I guess the mood isn’t ready to be lightened. “No. I don’t believe him.”

  “So, you think he will come after Kyle again, or…?”

  “It’s difficult to say. I have an idea about that, but for now I think we have to consider the fact that it’s better to be playing nice than to be at war. We’re confined to this train. Mitch probably has keys, and who knows what else he has access to? If, as James says, Rona can control some aspects of the train, they could be working together. There are more of us, sure, but I think if either one of them wanted us dead, we would be dead. If he’s pretending to play nice, even if he’s working toward some other goal, that gives us time to plan a counterattack, or at least a decent defense.”

  Lara nods. Kyle just watches me intently, I’m not sure he’s heard any of what I just said.

  “Kyle, would you mind going to Lara’s room and getting my bottle of water from the fridge, if you’re up to it?”

  Lara cocks her head, then a grin slowly spreads across her face. “You think the crew will help?”

  “I don’t know, but James seemed pretty unhappy about the fact that Rona had made them all invisible. I’m guessing they’re not on great terms with either Mitch or Rona.”

  “Sure.” Kyle says, and slowly stands, turns, and wobbles.

  “You okay?” I ask.

  He waves his hand to dismiss my concerns, then slowly plods toward the door. When he’s gone, I take Lara’s hands in mine and ask, “And you? You’re sure you’re okay? You said some things back there.”

  “About pushing Mitch out of the train? I meant every word.”

  “I know. But feelings like that can be… hard to deal with. Trust me. I had a lot of anger towards my dad once. It can consume you if you let it and I don’t want that to happen to you.”

  She holds my gaze for quite some time, then she smiles. “I’m fine. Really.” She pulls her hands from mine and hugs me tightly. I hope that’s the end of it.

  Kyle returns moments later holding the bottle of water in one hand, and one of the glass bottles of alcohol in the other. He walks over to us. “Listen, I wanted to thank you… both of you.”

  Lara assumes a faux stern expression. “Don’t be stupid.”

  “You don’t have to thank us. We look out for each other on this train,” I say. “Right?”

  Kyle nods emphatically. “Damn straight. So, what’s this plan of yours?”

  I take a deep breath. “Our immediate problem is closing off the back of the train in a way we can control. Mitch or Rona must have keys for the door in carriage eleven. Maybe the crew has something we can use to lock the door in here, a padlock or something. If not, well… I have another idea, but I would need to go back to my room.”

  Kyle immediately looks uncomfortable. “For what?”

  “I have—” I begin, then I’m not sure if I want to admit the next part. After a moment, I figure this isn’t the time to keep secrets. “I have a bottle of Oxycodone. I was considering downing the entire thing just before the train turned up.”

  Lara looks shocked by this. “Oh,” she whispers, then louder, “You think the crew will consider slipping some into his food?”

  “I don’t know. It’s a lot to ask, and I’m not sure we’re there yet. There’s always a tiny possibility that Mitch is telling the truth and he really doesn’t know what happened. But I’d like to have the bottle in case things get worse. If the crew isn’t willing to do it, maybe we can figure out a way to.”

  Kyle shakes his head. “This is messed up. We’re talking about murdering someone.”

  I nod sadly, but there’s nothing else to say. It is messed up, but what alternative do we have?

  “Can I come? To your room, I mean?” Lara asks. “I’d still like to see the rest of the train, even if it’s just a quick look.”

  I want to say no. I want to say that I’d be happier if someone stayed with Kyle, but Kyle is probably the size of three of her. Can she really protect him? The more I think about it, the more I think she might be better off with me. At least I can keep an eye on that wildness I still see in her eyes. “You okay with that?” I ask Kyle.

  He nods reluctantly.

  eighteen

  Emma

  Rather than head straight for the Oxy, we decide to see if we can achieve some peace of mind first. We sit around our usual table and I gulp a couple mouthfuls of water. “We should order some food, then we know there’ll be crew in here.”

  Lara nods, but the churning in my stomach means I can’t think about food. I want to drink as little water as possible just in case we need to do this again, but I’m also conscious of how little time I had with James before I stopped being able to see him, and I’d drunk half the bottle. I’ve had nothing to drink today, though, and maybe this will work better if the water is the only thing in my system.

  I wonder again why Mitch allowed me to pull him back from the door if he’s as strong as Kyle claims. Why did he just lie there on the floor while I threatened him? The fact that he didn’t just kill all of us there and then seems to suggest he has something else in mind, but what?

  Kyle is clutching the bottle of alcohol he brought back from Lara’s room by the neck in shaking hands. I assume he intends
to hit Mitch over the head with it if he makes an appearance, but he’s starting to look a little unhinged. “Kyle? You’re shaking. You’re sure you’re all right?”

  He gives a little shake of his head. “I don’t know. Being so close to that… that gray stuff. It feels like it’s inside my head, crowding out my brain.”

  Shit. I’m really not ready for something else to go wrong. We have enough to deal with. Everything I can think to say is just a meaningless platitude. “You’ll be okay. We just need to figure out a way to defend ourselves, to make ourselves safe.” I’m far from certain safety is a concept that exists for us, and if any of that gray shit got into Kyle, well, who knows what it might do to him? We know literally nothing about it except that it seems to want to attract our attention when we look its way. What if some of it got into the train and is floating around, looking for someone else to infect?

  Lara is uncharacteristically silent through all of this, and I wonder if she might be affected too. She was closer to the gray stuff than I was. In fact, she faced it head on while she pulled Kyle to safety. She hasn’t said anything, but she was further away than Kyle was. Maybe it will affect her more slowly.

  I fix my gaze on the door to carriage eleven. I don’t expect Mitch to come for us now, but the more I think about it, the more paranoid I become. Maybe now is the perfect time to come for us. It’d certainly surprise the hell out of me. Suddenly, the back of my neck begins to tingle, and I turn around.

  There’s an old woman in the corner, standing behind a short countertop that juts out from the wall, watching me with sunken eyes. Her skin is pale and her hair white, and while she has made an attempt at gathering it up into a neat pile atop her head, she hasn’t quite managed it. It’s lopsided and messy. She wears a dirty uniform that once might have been blue. It’s covered in patches and tears which have been stitched together.

  “Hello,” I say, and both Lara and Kyle start. They look at me and see that I’m staring into the corner. It’s a good thing they believe I’m not insane, because this probably looks ridiculous.

  “Hello,” the old woman replies. “Eden, is it?”

  “That’s right. Can I ask your name?”

  The woman smiles sadly. “You can call me Emma.”

  “James said he’d been on board for lifetimes and he didn’t remember his real name. Is that the same for you?”

  She shrugs. “As you know, it’s… difficult to judge time while on board. But yes, lifetimes seems about right. Hundreds of lifetimes, maybe.”

  Hundreds of lifetimes? I’m starting to wish Lara had volunteered to do this. I feel like every new piece of information sends my brain reeling. “Do you know why I can see you?”

  “I think you and your friends are correct about the water. It comes from outside the train, and I think that lets you bypass whatever renders us invisible. Some of us, maybe not all. I know that this train has a lot of capabilities that you have probably not guessed at. As you know, it can hide things. It can also turn off portions of reality aboard.”

  “The unoccupied rooms?”

  Emma hunches over, resting her elbows on the countertop in front of her. “Yes. There were once whole carriages like that, and there may be again. The train can create matter. It can add and remove cars as needed. Each one begins as a shell and can be decorated in whatever way The Creator sees fit.”

  I hold up a finger, and Emma nods. I quickly relay everything she has said so far to Kyle and Lara.

  Lara’s eyes widen and she pulls her pencil and paper from her pants pocket and starts scribbling frantically. Kyle doesn’t react at all.

  “What about our age differences?” I ask. “Lara seems to have been born before I was, but I’m older than her. Can the train time travel?”

  Emma’s eyes crinkle as she smiles playfully. “No, of course not. Do you know how complicated that would be?”

  I can’t help but laugh at that, but almost at once I start to consider what it means for me. If I can’t go back to a time before all this shit happened to me, I can’t get back to my family. I stare at the floor for a second to compose myself before I say, “So, I can’t go home? I can’t see my family again?”

  Emma shakes her head sadly. “Everything changes. The universe moves ever onward. Family is transient, especially to people like us; people on board the train, where time cannot penetrate.”

  I think about that for a moment. It seems profound. It seems like I should be able to take something from it, but mostly it leaves me feeling empty and a little bit scared. Eventually, I ask, “Are you saying people on the train don’t age? Don’t die?”

  “Exactly.”

  My head spins. “But… I miss them.”

  Emma’s expression is sympathetic. “Your family? Yes, nobody is immune from the feeling of loss. Not even us. There are those whom we miss, but they are gone and there is no changing that. Consider how you feel about the people you’re with now.”

  I sigh. Immortality. Living forever. But only if we stay on the train with a man who has already tried to kill one of us, and a woman who may or may not be in league with him. I shake my head. “Eternity is too long.”

  She smiles, then stands up straight. “Be glad, then, that you are not a member of the crew. We are beholden to the train until there is no longer a train of which to speak.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. It is the hand we were dealt, and we live with it. You must figure out how to do the same.”

  “Do you know how we can get off?”

  “The Creator put the train on a kind of autopilot. If you access the controls, you can affect the route.”

  “Is Rona The Creator?”

  Emma voices a bitter laugh. “No. She was, at best, an assistant. The true creator left long ago to tend to matters elsewhere. One day, he will return.”

  I wish we knew for sure whether Rona was working with Mitch or not. If we could rule it out, we could find her, ask her to stop the train so we can get off and live our wonderfully finite lives. I start to imagine the moment when we might finally step from the train and not have to get back on. When I realize I’m wasting time, and water, I manage to pull myself back into the conversation. “James said Rona made you into ghosts.”

  “Indirectly, yes. Mitch is the one who enacted that particular form of hell. Rona merely showed him how.”

  My head is spinning. Does this confirm that Mitch and Rona really are working together? And to what end? “Can it be reversed?”

  “Undoubtedly, but we do not know how. Mitch is dangerous, Eden. We have almost no interaction with anyone since we were hidden, but the interaction we do have is with Mitch, and it is usually abusive and violent. Sometimes it seems like he’s not even present, like something else is in control.”

  “That’s terrible,” I say. I wish there were something that marked people out as evil, something you could detect at a distance. “He tried to kill Kyle. We’re afraid he’ll try again.” I see Kyle move his head at the sound of his name, but I don’t look his way.

  Emma only nods as if this doesn’t surprise her in the slightest.

  “Do you have anything that might be able to help? Is there a way to lock the door in here from this side so he can’t get in?”

  She nods again. “We heard you talking. One of the others is going to bring you the lock you desire.”

  The relief I feel is immense and immediate. I take a deep breath, hold it for a second, then let it out. “Thank you.”

  Emma shakes her head. “Remember everything else I’ve said, Eden. The lock may keep you safe, or it may not. The train can change around you. Who’s to say doors cannot cease to exist? Or walls?”

  I open my mouth and inhale, then hold the breath. My eyes dart from Emma to the floor and back. My shoulders sag.

  “What is it?” Lara whispers.

  I shake my head. “What about my other plan? If you were listening, you must have heard it.”
/>   “The pills? Yes, that could work. If you can get them, we’ll see what we can do.”

  “You can’t… get them for us?”

  “This is not our fight. We can help in limited ways, but—"

  The old woman disappears. My shoulders slump and I turn back to Lara and Kyle and relay the rest of the conversation.

  nineteen

  Captive

  The promised padlock and key appear on the table moments later, startling all of us. I pick it up and test its weight in my hand. It’s hefty; you could do some serious damage with this thing.

  The doors between carriages are all controlled by the same open and close buttons that exist on the doors to the outside world, but it seems someone designed the internal doors to be manually lockable. There is a C-shaped handle on the door itself as well as a corresponding one on the frame. I position the lock so that it goes through both and click the shank home, and I wonder if this is what safety feels like. If it is, I’m not impressed.

  I turn back to the others, a resigned smile on my face. “Better?” Lara asks.

  “I hope so. I still need to go get the bottle of Oxy, but more than that, I need to let my brain catch up to everything that’s happened. It feels like there’s too much to think about.”

  Lara nods. “That’s because there is.”

  I glance around the room looking for a clock before I realize that’s pointless. “Does anyone have any idea what time of day it is?”

  Kyle, who is sitting with his head almost between his legs, elbows on his knees, as if he’s trying not to pass out, glances up briefly and shakes his head. Lara says, “Probably mid-morning.”

  “Fuck, really? It feels like it should be time for bed. Not that I could sleep. I’m not sure I’ll ever sleep again.” I intended the hyperbole as a joke, but it falls flat. Lara actually looks like not sleeping again might be a real possibility for her, and I regret saying it.