Lulu and I watched as the people streamed out of the train in a manner that was like the firefly pixies. With practiced ease they got the equipment ready and stretched out what looked like a fire hose and a hand pump. They got one end into the river without crossing the area where I had noticed the bones.
I finally put the Japanese broadsword away when one of the pixies started playing with the hair of the woman with the can of peaches. We helped with the water, and while I helped, I kept an eye out for Bansi and for some of his friends. He hadn’t really seemed threatening, but boy, was I paranoid?
“Taking turns sleeping on the train?” I asked Lulu.
“Straight up,” she said back.
The woman with the peaches said, “I know you won’t believe me, but there’s no harm for you on the train. The worst part is that Andrews over there snores.”
Andrews said, “I do not.”
I glanced at the woman with the peaches. She was about thirty years old. Her hair was red, the kind that looks like carroty sunshine in the right light. Her eyes were brown, and she had a warm smile. She was wearing a heavy coat and overalls underneath. I noticed her hands were stained as she passed over some of the equipment for us to carry. The firefly pixies fluttered around her head. I wasn’t sure if they were attracted to her or to her hair.
“My name is Clora,” she said. “I’d shake your hand, but they’re covered with coal dust. Everyone takes a turn at shoveling the coal into the fire. It’s what makes the steam that makes the engine run and means we don’t have to ride bikes or walk.” She laughed. “I don’t about you, but that itty-bitty, narrow bike seat wasn’t made for a woman.”
“Where are you from, Clora?” Lulu asked.
“Missouri,” she said. “I was headed toward Montana because I have-uh-had a brother up there, but I got involved with a group of people in Nebraska. Then Hanley came through and I volunteered to go to D.C.”
I looked around. There were about fifteen people from the train. They had shored up the hoses, made sure there weren’t any leaks and started the hand pump. People were taking turns with the hand pump to keep the water flowing into whatever part of the train it needed to go into.
“I’m Sophie and she’s Lulu,” I said.
“And what about your little fairies?” Clora cooed at the firefly pixies.
“Their names are very complicated. The one on your head is—” I sang the name for Flies-With-Red-Gold-Pink-Flowers. Flowers’ head popped up as she tugged on the red-red-red hair. “I call her Flowers for short.”
“We like these humans!” Flowers sang-yelled.
I smiled. It was relieving to have a stamp of approval from the girls. Some of the other firefly pixies swarmed around Clora, and I could see her resisting waving a hand at them. “They like to listen to people singing.”
And of course, a few of the other people heard that, and one immediately broke out into a rousing rendition of “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad.” As Lulu and I helped pack up equipment and cart it back to the train, they sang, “Ghost Train” and “Downbound Train.” Obviously the riders had been giving this a lot of thought.
The pixies liked the rollicking train songs better like “Chattanooga Choo-Choo.”
As they got everything where they wanted it, Craig climbed aboard and said he’d be back in about an hour once they got the train rotated around in a nearby turnabout. Stephen explained that it wasn’t really a turntable but something called a wye, which was a triangle-shaped set of tracks. It took them the longest to back up the rear cars and hoppers.
So there I was, waiting on a train. Who would have thought?
As we waited, Clora cooked something on a fire they made by the platform. I don’t know what she was making, but the others thought it smelled good. My stomach was turning, and it wasn’t because of Clora’s cooking.
I glanced back at the town. The sick feeling had returned. I didn’t want to be in this place, and there was something to be seen here.
I had the feeling that I had seen what I needed to see but that I hadn’t really seen it.
The firefly pixies were acting nervously, as well. They were bemused by Clora, and they were getting used to the idea that we were going to travel on the large metal creature. I had to sing for nearly twenty minutes before I convinced them of the fact. Finally they nodded, and I drank a half bottle of water to soothe my sore throat.
Without being obvious, I kept a hand free. I wanted to be able to reach for my broadsword. I also kept looking back at the town of Sunshine.
Someone was watching us.
For a moment, I thought I heard a flute playing over the sounds of the train engine. Some strains of an eerie song that made a series of goose bumps flow down my back and over my arms.
They watched as the train came back down the line, and we loaded up. We put our bicycles in one of the rear cars and found a place to settle down. Craig and Stephen wanted to reach the Nebraska state line before we stopped for the night.
I didn’t start feeling relief until we were twenty miles away from Sunshine.
Chapter 8
That Devilish Iron Horse…
Riding on a train with a group of strangers was more than a little disconcerting. Just riding on the train would have been disconcerting all by itself, but throw in a group of people I didn’t know, and it was much worse. It reminded me of the first time I had come into the redwoods camp and all the people had come to meet the newcomers. I wanted to take a step back and linger in the shadows, except there was a problem this time. There weren’t many shadows to be found on the train.
The people there were friendly enough. But they were optimistic in a way that irritated me. Every one of them had lost someone or many, many someones. But months had passed since the change, and everything was looking up because there was a steam train chugging along.
Glorioski.
They shared their various stories. These were the obligatory where-were-you-when-it-happened stories. In an airport terminal. In their house. On a fishing trip. On a train snoozing on the bunk seat. (That was Craig. Turns out he had lots of train experience but not necessarily steam train experience.) In another house. Passed out on a beach in Pensacola, Florida. (That was a twenty-something-year-old man named Fremont.) All had been asleep, or unconscious, in the case of Fremont. Landers, the man who got messages in his brain from long distance, had been snoozing by the side of a trail on the Appalachian Trail. He thought it had been Virginia, but it might have been Tennessee. He wasn’t certain, and to be sure, it didn’t matter. He didn’t realize what had happened until he passed an empty camp where four sleeping bags were left and then another one that had a group of five. When he’d gotten to a ranger’s station, he became fully aware.
I managed to dodge that conversational bullet. I didn’t like talking about the panic I had felt when I thought my father had wandered off. He hadn’t, but I hadn’t known it at the time. It was only after searching frantically that I realized that his clothing, wedding ring, and boots were still at the campsite. I didn’t know then.
We were on the train for the third day, and I was starting to relax. It was one evening where everyone had been talking genially, when I realized the group was staring at me. Landers had asked me a question. I looked at him. He was about twenty-five. It was a little hard to tell because the change had aged some people. It was hard enough as it was without adding magical spice to the mix. The lines on his face could have been genes, or they could have come with the onset of the new world. He was only a few inches taller than I was but broad in the shoulders and white blonde hair fell to his shoulders. His eyes were icy blue. He might have been the human counterpart of a Siberian husky.
The train’s chug-chug-chug was nearly hypnotic. I thought I would never get used to it, and furthermore, I didn’t think I could get used to sitting on my butt. I took more than a few extra turns at shoveling coal into the furnace because I hated sitting still for longer than a few minutes at a time. Some o
f the others read books or played games. Lulu got into an involved game of five-card draw and had won about fifty thousand dollars in useless hundred dollar bills. Someone had even produced a thousand dollar bill to bet with. I guess they had been to the bank or maybe an antique store. (It had a picture of Grover Cleveland on it. Who knew?)
Occasionally, the group came together to eat. Someone (Usually Clora) would do the cooking, and the food was shared communally. I never minded cleaning up, and Clora was almost as good a cook as Gibby.
After the food was consumed, we sat around and chatted. The firefly pixies came out of the gerbil cage and entertained them for a brief period. One man had a nice voice and a willingness to sing show tunes to the pixies. Lulu produced some fresh earthworms for the girls because they couldn’t hunt while the train was moving. Then the subject of where-were-you came up, and I tenaciously kept my mouth shut. Of course, Landers pushed the issue.
I would have thought that a telepath would have an idea that I didn’t want to share. Landers said his gift didn’t work that way.
“What about you, Sophie?” Landers repeated his question.
Lulu glanced up from her card game. She sat with her back to me and glanced over her shoulder. I could see she had three kings in her hand before she straightened the cards into a single set. She tapped the edge on the makeshift table constructed of three suitcases. Then she glanced at Landers and shook her head.
“What about me?” I repeated stiffly.
“What happened to you during the change?” Landers persisted. He had to see the hard light come into my eyes, but his expression became set.
“What difference does it make?” I asked slowly. I didn’t really like Landers. He saw too much. He reminded me of a mean little animal who takes a bite out of your ankle and then won’t let go. The teeth have to be pried loose. Sometimes the jaw would have to be broken.
“I keep hoping I can talk to someone who was awake,” he said. “You know, at the time it happened. Someone who saw what happened.”
“I wasn’t awake.”
“So what happened to you?”
“I woke up. Things had happened. The world was suddenly depopulated.” I smiled, but it was kind of a bared-teeth look. I heard Spring growl warningly as she took in the tenseness of my body. “Kind of like it is now, except we didn’t have a steam train.”
“But—”
“So what are you doing on the train, Landers?” Lulu asked suddenly.
Landers looked at Lulu. She straightened her shoulders and folded the hand. Three kings was a killer hand. I wondered what was going through her head. Not that long ago she had been my tormentor, and now she had become a pseudo guardian. Talk about disconcerting.
“Communications,” Landers said easily. “I can get messages from Hanley and some of the people in D.C. It’s a handy gift.”
“Hmm,” Lulu said. “So what are you telling the people in D.C. about Sophie?”
Landers’ mouth opened and then shut. He didn’t like Lulu’s tone.
“Are we really meeting friendly people?” Lulu asked. “Or maybe people who want to use psychics?”
Stephen coughed. “It isn’t like that. The Prez is a pretty nice guy. He’s a good ol’ boy from Texas.”
Lulu looked around at the other people. “Isn’t that what the Germans said about Hitler once? He was just a good ol’ boy from Austria.”
“Are you comparing the President of the United States of America to one of the worst dictators in modern history?” one of the other people asked with a gaping expression.
And once again Lulu had surprised me.
“No. I’m just saying this isn’t the same world it used to be. Maybe this Maston guy is just as good as you say he is, but I don’t know that. And I didn’t vote for him. None of you did, unless you just happened to be from his section of Texas.” Lulu went back to the game with a grim smile. “Who’s dealing?”
Spring buzzed near Landers’ face in order to get a good look at the human who had been irritating me. She came back and landed on my hair. “Man-Who-Knows-Too-Much-With-Hair-The-Color-Of-The-Sun bothers Soophee? The sisters will skewer him. He will wish for death to come quickly.”
“It’s okay, Spring,” I sang. “He’s just nosy.”
“Nosy?”
“Someone who wants to know everything whether it’s his business or not.”
Spring grumbled. The firefly pixies had a way of disseminating information that would have made the NSA jealous. A human who wanted to know everything was something they would have found extremely distasteful.
Landers watched me sing to the firefly pixies, and I could see the frustration on his face. He wanted answers, and he wasn’t happy that he hadn’t gotten them.
Lulu was watching me watch him. One of her eyebrows went up questioningly. I shrugged minutely. I didn’t like Landers’ inquisitiveness, but it was likely nothing. Oh, wasn’t I wonderfully paranoid about everything now? I suspected I might be looking a gift horse in the mouth, but I couldn’t help myself.
I looked out the nearest window. In a few minutes, I planned to take a turn with the firebox. I was going to shovel until my shoulders shrieked with agony. It was one way to get through this endless ride. We were almost to Omaha. We would switch to another train there because there was some kind of obstacle in the city that prevented the train from going to the tracks that went east. Stephen and Craig hadn’t elaborated. One of the others said it had to do with the change. Gee whiz, there was a surprise.
However close Omaha was, it was nearly dark, and the train would soon stop. They didn’t like traveling at night. It made them nervous because of so many new things out there. Several someones would take turns feeding the fire, and several someone elses would keep watch from a position on top of the tallest car. Reportedly, they’d had close calls with not only new species but unfriendly humans. They apparently weren’t quite like the Burned Man, but unfriendly was bad enough.
At the other end of the car, Clora chopped vegetables even while she tended a little fire. It had been built in one of those portable fire pits that sat on a four-legged stand. It kept the inside of the car warm, but the windows were open on that side so we wouldn’t asphyxiate. Several other people lit candles and put them in hurricane lamps that hung from the ceiling. The sun set, and the windows became dark.
The train began to slow down. I could hear a longer lapse between the chug-chug-chugs.
As I sat there waiting for my turn with the firebox, I had to ask myself a question. What was I doing here? I could be snuggling up to Zach. I could have a nice little house with Kara. I could be hanging out with the firefly pixies and waiting for the other boot to drop. I could be working on my relationship skills. Instead, I had volunteered to tramp over the entire United States and had dragged several firefly pixies with me, not to mention Lulu. I suddenly felt stupid.
There was a sudden tremendous thump on the side of the train. The car rocked just a little. The brass hurricane lamps that were already swaying with the gentle motion of the train as we crossed the flatlands of Nebraska, started to move violently. One hit the wall and broke in a shower of glass. The candle immediately went out.
“What the hell was that?” Landers asked, rising to his feet.
The firefly pixies flew about in the cabin of the car. They had their silver toothpicks out and were prepared to do battle with the unknown.
Stephen headed for the front of the train. Clora put heavy oven mitts on and held on to the fire pit so that it wouldn’t tip over. Lulu glanced at me.
We could feel the train slow even more at the same time we heard the squeal of brakes. Craig was stopping the steam engine so something was happening.
One woman peered out into the darkness, cupping her hand over her eyes so she could better see into the gloom. “There’s something moving out there,” she said. Her name was Hetta, and she was a robust forty-something.
“What?” someone snapped.
“It’s big,”
Hetta said. She was from Alabama and had a pronounced drawl. She carried a competition level crossbow with steel bolts, and she had brought down an antelope a day before. I wasn’t happy about the cleaning part, but the steaks Clora had made were tasty. It was likely that Clora was using more of the antelope for whatever she was making at the present, but I wasn’t really thinking of that.
What I was thinking about was the bad feeling I had. But when something goes bump against a train that weighs in the neighborhood of tons plus, then there was always room for more than a bad feeling.
There was a screeching noise as something shoved against the train again. I blinked and cocked my head to listen.
I was looking at the windows when Hetta jumped back with a gasp. Her gray-streaked braids flew into the air as she bumped into one of the seats behind her with an abruptness that made her gasp again. She stared at the window and so did everyone else. Something huge and alien had landed against the glass and was stuck there. The wavering light from the hurricane lamp revealed a sucking mouth with multiple rows of teeth. It was the color of pitch on a dark night, and the teeth were nearly as black as the gums.
There were other bumps. The windows were systematically being covered with the flying things. “Close the windows!” I yelled. There were some more screeches as if they had heard me.
For a moment no one moved and then everyone scrambled to get to the open windows. Landers slammed one shut just as something else attached itself, and he jumped back with a grunt. “Now what?” he said. “Now fricking what?”
The screeching had changed in pitch. These immense beings had been thwarted, and they knew it. I listened again, wishing that I could shut the people up around me. They gasped at each bump, and one person was loudly praying to a saint I didn’t know.
What I wanted to do was look at the animals. I could see the black eyes above the sucking mouth. There were five of them and they were faceted like an insect’s. It worked against the glass like the glass was something it wanted to eat or something it wanted to destroy.
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