by Peter Clines
“What?” asked Eli. Images of his mother flashed through his mind, of Robin and Corey at the Emporium, of Jackson’s, the Pizza Pub, and of his small apartment. “What’s wrong with Sanders?”
“Nothing’s wrong with it,” Harry said. “Not in the way you think.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’m so sorry,” said John. “You’re traveling together, so I assumed he knew.”
“I hadn’t explained it to him,” Harry said. “Not in so many words.”
“What?” demanded Eli.
She sighed. “Mr. Teague,” she said, “do you remember what I told you about the slick spots? The places that slide loose from history?”
He nodded. “Like the town on the Nevada border,” he said. “The one stuck in the ’60s.”
“Yes,” said Harry. She pitched her voice soft and gentle. “Precisely. And these are the places we use to travel. Each one is an entrance to a different point in history.”
“Yeah,” he said, “I remember. What about Sanders?”
And even as he said it, the world crashed down on him. The Emporium video store. The radio stations. The lack of internet and cell phone towers and cable television.
She reached out for his hand. He let her take it. “We’re talking about Sanders, Mr. Teague. You’re from one of the slick spots.”
22
“No, I’m not,” Eli said.
Harry nodded. “I’m afraid so.” She shot a look at John. “I had hoped to introduce the idea with a bit more subtlety.”
“My apologies,” said the engineer. “I merely thought—”
“Don’t try to take the blame. It’s my own fault.”
“It’s nobody’s fault,” Eli said, “because it isn’t true.”
John opened his mouth to speak, but closed it at a glare from Harry. He turned and decided to study the gauges and the view through his mirror. “The wye should be coming up soon,” he said to the boiler. He began to hum a song Eli found familiar, but couldn’t place.
“Eli,” she said, “I know you think we first met in the 1980s, but think carefully. When did we meet the second time? What year was it that night on the side of the road?”
He shook his head. “I’m not from a slick spot.”
“Eli, I’ve used Sanders at least five times to travel through history,” Harry said. “Every building, car, and piece of technology in your town tops out at 1988.”
“Maybe it’s a…a former slick spot.”
John shook his head, but kept humming.
“Look,” Eli said, “you told me slick spots form when a lot of people think everything’s perfect. The dream works on them wanting things to stay the same, right?”
“Correct,” said Harry.
“Believe me, nobody thinks that in Sanders. It’s not stuck at a high point; it’s at a low one. The town sucks. I mean, it’s my hometown and I love it and I…I want to get home. But it’s sucked since I was a little kid. There aren’t enough jobs. The roads need a ton of work. I think everybody wants it to change and get caught up with the times.”
Harry frowned. “That doesn’t make sense,” she said.
He shrugged.
Outside the windows of the train engine, the trees and snowy clearings had been replaced by warehouses and pavement. The city had risen like bread to its high point and then settled back enough to form a hard crust, one charred on the edges. In the mirror above the boiler, weeds and broken bottles decorated the oncoming tracks.
John’s humming picked up as he reached the chorus of his song. Eli recognized it as an old Peter, Paul, and Mary song. Something his mom used to hum and sing years ago.
Harry turned to him again. “You said you worked with computers, yes?”
“Yeah,” said Eli. “At a bank in Dover.”
“And you just drive in and out?”
“Yeah.”
“With what kind of car?”
“An old, patched-together Taurus, a…” He sighed. “An ’88.”
She looked at John. “Could that be it? If he’s slipping out and spending a lot of time outside of the town limits?”
“I’m not slipping out.”
She ignored him. “Could it be affecting his perceptions?”
John stopped his humming with a cough. “Possibly. I have heard stories of anomalies, people who sensed something wrong about their town.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my town,” said Eli.
Harry started to say something else, but he waved her off and stared out at the city.
Turning the Steel Bucephalus ended up being a somewhat monotonous procedure. John braked, adjusted levers, and then spent fifteen minutes backing the train up. Then he moved forward again and Eli recognized some of the landmarks, now on the opposite side of the track.
Twenty minutes later, the Bucephalus slowed to a halt. The three of them climbed down from the engine and into the snow. Harry tugged her cloak tight around herself. “I’ll take care of Eleanor,” she told Eli. Caution colored her voice. “You can help John.”
Eli glanced at the forest, still red with the early sun. The second time he’d seen the same sunrise. “Are you sure?”
“I survived many years without you at my side, Mr. Teague. I’ll be fine.” Then, to reassure him, she swept her cloak and coat back to reveal the holsters hanging against the back of her thighs. She winked, adjusted her tricorne, and marched off into the forest, snow crunching under her boots.
“Come on, then,” said John. He’d pulled on the hanging coat from the cab and then a thick black overcoat over that. A gleaming top hat rode on his head. “Let’s get the ramps down before I catch a chill and regret stopping for the two of you.”
They marched to the far end of the train. Eli counted five cars along the way. One, right behind the engine, was stacked high with an immense pile of split logs. The next four looked like passenger cars with dozens of small windows, although all the drapes were pulled on the last two. The final car looked like a boxcar. John pulled on the wide door’s latch to drag it open, and he and Eli hauled themselves up.
Shelves lined the inside of the boxcar, and stacks of cardboard boxes covered most of the floor. Two long metal plates stretched across the floor, each one almost two feet wide and over ten feet long, with book-sized teeth jutting down at one end. They reminded Eli of huge car ramps, and then John started to move one and he realized that was exactly what they were. He grabbed the other end, heaved it up, and they walked it to the door.
“You give a lot of people rides, I guess?” Eli asked, dipping his chin at the ramps.
“Enough to make them worthwhile,” said John.
Eli climbed down and walked the ramps away from the boxcar as John fitted the teeth at the end into a slot on the floor. They finished the second ramp just as the sounds of Eleanor’s engine echoed through the woods. The car’s wheels spun as it lurched and lunged through the snow.
Harry lined the Model A up with the twin ramps and John guided her with small movements of his hand. The tires slid once on the steep slope, but Harry recovered and Eleanor crawled up and into the boxcar. A few quick maneuvers lined the car up between the doors, facing the back of the train. John and Harry used a half dozen bright-orange ratchet straps to secure the car while Eli watched from below, poking at the ragged tear the faceless man’s bullet had left in his coat sleeve.
They returned to the warmth of the engine’s cab. John hung both of his coats and began to adjust levers and valves across the boiler’s face. “If the two of you could grab a few logs,” he said, “I think we can be on our way.”
Harry led Eli out across the connector to the next car, and they each gathered three or four chunks of wood. John waved at the open door beneath the boiler, and they tossed the logs into the flames. One fell short and Eli gave it a kick with the side of his shoe. John pushed the door shut with his boot and watched one of the gauges for a few seconds. “Excellent,” he said. He pulled on the whistle cord two
times, eased back the brake, and the Steel Bucephalus rolled forward down the tracks.
“Wait a minute,” Eli said. “This already happened.”
Harry and John looked at him. “I beg your pardon,?” she asked.
He waved his hand at the window, toward Independence. “Right now,” he said, “we’re walking through town. The earlier us. I didn’t think about it then. We heard the train whistle. Two times, just before we went in the saloon.”
“I would guess so, yes,” John agreed.
Eli looked back and forth between them.
“I think our Mr. Teague is getting his first real taste of what it means to travel in history,” Harry said.
John reached up and inched the overhead throttle back a few inches. “There’s a lot of good straightaways in this part of the country,” he said. “Especially if I cut over into the 1930s. We should be able to make it through most of Arkansas by nightfall, and then I can have you in early 1850s New Orleans by a little after lunch tomorrow.
“Eighteen fifty,” said Harry. “It needs to be late March of 1850.”
He rubbed his chin through his beard. “A little tricky. New Orleans wasn’t really interested in train lines in that era—too much river traffic.” His hand dropped from his chin down to his hip. “If memory serves, there’s a few miles of the New Orleans and Nashville tracks the Bucephalus can reach. Work on the line’s stalled by the mid-1840s, and it’s practically abandoned by 1850.”
“Thank you.”
“No need to thank me. You called in a favor.”
“And as always,” she said, “you’ve gone above and beyond.”
“Nonsense,” John said. “There’s favors, and then there’s just being a good host. Speaking of which—” His eyes went from her to Eli and back. “When was the last time you two had a decent meal?”
—
The dining room took up the back half of the Pullman car with the guest quarters. It could’ve been a hotel suite. Nice carpet, a few plush chairs, a high-backed couch, a small stove, even a bookshelf and a small boom box. John had furnished his train with random items that had caught his eye throughout history.
Half the cans for dinner looked like World War I rations. The other half had pull tops and brand names Eli didn’t recognize. John warmed it all on a stove in the tiny kitchen and served it on fine plates and bowls. It tasted wonderful after two days of biscuits and jerky. The three travelers shared a bottle of wine, which John insisted had been given to him by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Harry had rolled her eyes and snorted, and while John smiled at his own statement, he wouldn’t back down from it.
Then Harry and John had some private matters to discuss, so Eli had retired to his guest room. It had a small desk with a chair, a standing wardrobe, and a high twin bed with what looked like a very modern mattress, although Eli didn’t know what counted as “modern” anymore. Thick drapes hung on either side of the window, and for a brief while he watched the dark countryside roll by outside.
After a few sniffs of his collar, Eli pulled off his shirt and tossed it on the chair. He’d been wearing the same clothes for almost two weeks now, since Boston. They needed to be washed, or at least rinsed. He wondered if John had a washing machine somewhere on the train.
He pried off his shoes, then peeled off his wool socks and the cotton ones underneath. The skin of his feet prickled at the touch of air, and the carpet’s texture felt wonderful. He tried clenching his feet, making fists with his toes like in that movie, but it didn’t loosen his feet much or make him feel like an action star.
He spread his arms and flopped face-first onto the bed. The wool blanket scratched at his chest, but he welcomed any sensation not tied to his shirt. He rolled over and stared up at the ceiling. A basketball-sized globe of frosted glass stared back at him, its gaze bright enough to make him close his eyes.
He lay there and thought about Sanders. The town that never got cable or cell phones or a single computerized cash register. Where comic books still came on a spinning wire rack. Where a VHS rental store had survived his grade-school years. And high-school years. And college years.
Could Harry be right?
He mulled it over. Then his thoughts wandered to Harry, and going out to bars with his friends, and Nicole down at the theater, and not having a job when he got home. The thoughts blurred together into a series of warm images and soft sounds and faint raps…
He blinked his eyes open. A light chill had crept across his arms and chest. It was still night outside his window, but the train didn’t seem to be moving.
Two more knocks echoed through the room’s door. “Mr. Teague?” Harry stage-whispered outside. “Are you up?”
He tugged his shirt back on, pushed a few buttons through their holes, and opened the door. Harry stood in the narrow hall between their rooms, her knuckles raised to knock again. Her free hand held the lapels of a thick white robe together. The kind of robe people expected at a hotel or a spa.
“What’s up?”
“Did I wake you?”
He shook his head. “Is there a problem?”
“No, I just…I needed to talk to you about something.” She waited in the hall. Eli realized what she was waiting on and got out of the way.
Harry stepped into his room. She glanced at the bed for a moment, then shifted her attention to the small chair and sat down. The robe fell away to reveal faded red leggings with frayed cuffs. When she reached down to sweep the edge of the robe over herself, Eli glimpsed the same color between her lapels.
“Are you wearing red long johns?” he asked.
“A gentleman does not question a lady about her undergarments.”
“He might when she shows up at his room in the middle of the night.”
She scowled at him, then her face softened. “Please, Mr. Teague,” she said, “this is a serious matter.”
“Sorry. Okay, what’s up?”
Her fingers flexed on the robe’s lapels. “I know the past few days have been difficult for you. Not just the events, but also some of the things you’ve learned. I wanted you to know I’m very impressed with how well you’re dealing with things. So is John.”
“Well,” said Eli, “for the record, I’m still not sure I believe all of it.”
“I know,” she said. “I don’t think the wine came from Roosevelt either.”
He chuckled.
“I’ve mentioned, I believe, that it can be difficult to keep track of the passage of time when one travels through history.”
“Yeah.”
“One of the great challenges is to keep track of how long the search has been ongoing. This is difficult, since the search itself exists outside of history. It limits the ways we can record things.”
Eli nodded. “Like with the favors.”
“Precisely. We want to honor those who came before us, so we do it the only way we can. By word of mouth.” She met his eyes, held his gaze. “Christopher Pritchard. Phoebe Fitzgerald. Abraham Porter. Alice Ramsey. Roscoe Montgomery.”
He blinked. “What?”
“This is the Chain,” she said, putting emphasis on the word. “Our Chain. Every searcher has one. It’s our links back to Roscoe, who first found out how to travel with the slick spots and taught others.”
“How did he figure it out?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Seems like a weird thing to just stumble across.”
“I know he drove a delivery truck in the 1930s, I believe between New Jersey and New York. He ended up on the road sometime just before America entered World War Two.” She shrugged. “I wish I had more to tell you. So much of this has been passed down from person to person.”
“Okay.”
“Christopher Pritchard,” she said again. “Phoebe Fitzgerald. Abraham Porter. Alice Ramsey. Roscoe Montgomery.”
“Alice Ramsey?”
“One of the few who left the search. Maybe the only one. She was on the road for about ten years, I believe, a
nd then decided to go back to her old life. Slipped in almost right where she left off.”
“I thought everyone was in this until they die? That’s the only way out?”
“It always is. Except for Alice. The faceless men never went after her for some reason.”
“Well, maybe I could go home the same way.”
Harry shook her head. “I’m afraid not. Others have tried. They were killed.” She sighed. “That’s just the way of the search. Sooner or later, almost all of us catch a bullet in the head, like they did to Theo. It’s how Roscoe died. And Phoebe.” Her eyes slid to the floor.
“And Christopher,” added Eli.
“Yes,” she said. “And Christopher.”
She settled back in the chair and stared out the window.
Eli took it as the perfect moment to say nothing.
Harry cleared her throat. “Christopher found me when I was nineteen. He came into town in Eleanor, scared several horses and two mules, and began to draw water from one of the town’s public wells.”
“Two mules?”
“My family used the mules for everything. I’d ridden into town on one for groceries, led the other one to use as a beast of burden.”
“I can’t picture you riding a mule.”
“In a dress,” she added. “I had to ride sidesaddle. Or I would’ve if we’d had more than a blanket.”
Eli smiled.
“Now please stop interrupting while I unburden myself, Mr. Teague. This is difficult enough.”
“Sorry.”
“He was amazing,” she said. “In my whole life, I’d maybe met a dozen people who weren’t from our town, and they all looked the same. Closer to poor than to rich. At least a week of dirt on them. Tired. Everyone was lean and wiry back then. Even the women.
“And there he was. So different. And handsome. Six foot tall, half that across the shoulders. And he just looked so…safe. So relaxed and confident, like nothing could hurt him. He stood there and pumped water like he’d done it as a career, even though he was plainly rich.” She glanced at Eli. “I’d heard of automobiles, of course, but no one I knew had ever seen one before. They were a thing for wealthy men. And here was one right in front of me. I stood there, staring at him, for a good five minutes before he noticed me.” The corners of her mouth quivered. “I’d never seen a man over the age of twenty without a mustache.