by Jake Marley
“I can’t leave them!”
Thursday pointed to the leather satchel in the passenger footwell. “Not even for that?”
“This is the turn!” the driver screamed, and Peligra reached out and grabbed Thursday’s shoulder. He felt the car lift and sway and slide out beneath them, tires squealing, car turning to the right as its back end swung, drifted left, and Thursday felt lifted, lighter than air, like he could fly if he let go and then the car rocked and gravity came crashing back and slammed him down hard onto the boards.
Another explosion behind them. A fireball that brightened the sky and sent plumes of black smoke upward. A lot of the smoke shifted, regrouped, and fell back to earth. The swarm, going after the next engine.
“Straight shot to the rails!”
Peligra screamed into the raging wind. “Faster, then! It’s on our tail.”
The driver nodded, and the car roared again. Such speed, and Thursday was caught up in it, lost in it. Exhilaration and terror in equal measure, like kissing death and living to tell the tale.
They raced forward. Faster and faster. More palms. More wreckage. More broken shops and stores. There were no marauders on this stretch of road, but there were curious faces on guard duty, peering over the edges of buildings but not willing to waste the arrows or bolts on something moving so fast and with such dark purpose. Many of the scattered people ran away, taught all their lives that engines brought death and that there was no such thing as a car that could still drive in this sad and broken world.
Thursday saw, over his shoulder, that only one other car had made the turn, the one directly behind them. Four Muertas rode like Valkyries on the platform, spattered in blood with their weapons raised high. The grill of the car was flecked in gore.
And then, turning the corner, crowding behind them, came the swarm.
Thursday watched the driver explode first, like he was a grenade. It was sudden, horrific, and the car swayed, throwing the Muertas off balance. Then the swarm caught them, engulfed them, chewing through them to get at the racing engine of the car. The electricity.
More speed. The tires squealed as the driver went around a downed telephone pole, skidded between wrecks, plowed through half-assed roadblocks of cheap fencing and chicken wire.
“Peligra?” The driver’s voice was high and scared and desperate. Thursday looked ahead and saw the road was clear, but the driver started screaming.
That’s when Thursday saw his hands. The black tips of his fingers. The sores on his skin.
The swarm was waking inside of him.
The driver’s hands exploded on the wheel. Blood sprayed the dashboard, and black hornets shot forward like bullets, eating through into the engines. The driver shrieked and something in the engines shrieked right back and the car swerved and bucked and Peligra reached forward and grabbed her leather satchel, then she wrapped her left arm over Thursday’s head and put her mouth right against his ear.
“Live through this,” she said ferociously, and something in the car exploded. In less than a heartbeat the car lifted violently from the earth, rocked, and flipped.
~~~
Screaming fire, raining death, buzzing horror. Gravity gone. Velocity. Metal and chaos and—
Impact.
Thursday’s eyes were shut but part of his arm touched the ground and snapped back violently. He screamed, flipped, hit with his shoulder and screamed again rolling, tumbling, skidding across the ground as the world exploded behind him and his arm was wrong, busted, broken, flopping around and his mind focused on the break, the pain, as he slid across pavement and it tore his clothes and pulled away skin and he came to rest against a concrete wall. He instinctually turned away from the wreck he’d just left behind, hiding his face with the only arm that would respond, feeling heat behind him, feeling the burn on the back of his neck.
Someone else was screaming, too. Close by. And the sound was too raw, filled with rage and pain and sorrow.
They screamed together as the world roared behind them, and then their screams were too loud, too rough, and they stopped.
Thursday was beside Peligra, and slowly they both rose to bloody hands and knees and saw their car upside-down with a hole the size of a tractor tire blown through it. The swarm ate around the edges, rocking the car, killing all of the hours and hours of work done by the mechanics.
They were panting together, and Peligra found her feet first and grabbed Thursday by the pack. It had miraculously stayed on during his chaotic flight from the wreck, but his knees wouldn’t hold him. They were torn, bloody, ragged. He fell, and she pulled him back up again. Dragged him. Thursday’s arm was a riot of pain, and the break was very, very bad. The arm would be useless.
“Get out of your head and into the world!” Peligra screamed. “On your feet now! Up!”
Thursday nodded and stumbled and crawled after her. She pulled him around behind an office building, away from the swarm. She set him up with his back against the wall and wiped blood from his eyes.
She unbuckled one of her belts. She took his broken arm, and Thursday flinched away from her. “Yes, this will hurt.” She used one of her hammers as a splint, wrapping the belt around its handle and his busted arm, and buckling it tight.
Thursday screamed again. Couldn’t help it.
Her hands moved over his body, searching for injury, and she found every pain, every new bruise. He’d fallen before, been banged up, but this was bad. Everything hurt, and he just wanted to rest. To sleep. He closed his eyes.
She grabbed his hair and yanked, and Thursday found her staring at him.
“You lived,” she said. Her eyes were red from crying, from smoke, from her own pain.
“You told me to,” he said.
She looked around the corner, scanned the skies, then ducked back and leaned against the building as well. Her body shook, but whether it was from pain or grief or spent adrenaline, Thursday didn’t know, but he imagined it was all three.
“I’m sorry,” Thursday said, but she put up a hand to silence him.
“No. I followed my Queen’s orders. She had faith. We took our chances.”
Thursday finally took a look around. They were at an intersection. According to the street signs they’d been traveling on something called Sepulveda, but Peligra had pulled them onto a street called Imperial to hide behind the building.
The Imperial Highway. When Thursday told her, Peligra nodded. “This is the second turn. It takes us to the Bone Rails.” She looked up at the sign and said the word again. “Imperial. Like a queen.”
“You know where we’re going from here?”
“Yes.”
“Are you hurt?”
“Not badly.” Then, looking away. “Not physically.”
He didn’t know what to say. He was exhausted and in exquisite pain. His body was ready to shut down rather than feel any worse.
He let it overwhelm him. Carry him down.
The last thing he heard before sleep was Peligra, beside him, whispering, “We all get our time.”
~~~
It was almost night before they felt rested enough to continue onward. Peligra had splinted his arm fairly well, but the pain was excruciating and every small movement seemed to flare it up again. The weight of the hammer as his splint didn’t help. This entire journey was started because Thursday was promised a cure in Seattle, but he wondered if they could mend his ruined arm while they were at it.
Peligra had her leather satchel across her body, and her hand rested on it instead of the missing hammer on her hip. Without her mask she seemed naked, almost vulnerable, and more and more Thursday noticed her turning her face away from him as if trying to hide her scars.
They found the Metro rails and went on foot, keeping the dying sun on their left. North was their destination. North to someplace called the Castaic Gateway.
Neither of them wasted breath on conversation. They were both used to the long silences of the watch, and both were aware of the possible dan
gers surrounding them. Thursday only left the tracks once, scrambling down to find a two-foot length of metal pipe, ragged on one end. It wasn’t a Louisville Slugger, and it was a far cry from his crossbow, but he finally felt a little more in control with some kind of weapon at hand. And he wouldn’t have to get in as close as Peligra did with her hammer.
“This story,” he said, suddenly curious. “Will you tell it to me?”
Three steps. Crunching gravel beneath their boot heels. The rails were covered in grit and sand, disused for decades. Overgrown palm trees swayed, finding water somewhere beneath them. Enough to survive, at least.
“No,” Peligra said. No argument, no discussion.
“I’m just making conversation.”
She shook her head. “No. I’d rather we didn’t.”
That settled it, and when the sun set and the moon rose they continued along the rails and prayed that it would take them where they needed to be.
They slept badly in a shed along the rail yard. It was dusty and cobwebbed and filled with rusted tools and broken equipment. Thursday was grateful for the rest, and woke to sunlight beyond the door and Peligra digging through the piles of rusted junk, searching for salvage.
She found another hammer, but threw it back onto the table. “Too rusted.”
They ate tortillas and drank sparingly from the canteen Peligra carried in her leather satchel. Thursday’s pack had the food and his book, but he’d been too afraid to carry water despite his long thirst after the endless desert. He couldn’t afford to damage the guidebook by soaking it.
Another two hours on foot, and their path ahead narrowed. Junked cars were stacked like bricks on either sides of the rails, getting higher and higher like walls.
Thursday knew a kill corridor when he saw one.
There was a boulder blocking the path, too. A black stone as large as one of the junked cars.
A stone with a face.
Not a stone, Thursday thought. A skull.
“There will be guards,” Thursday said, settling his grip on his broken pipe.
“We’re here,” Peligra said. “The Bone Rails.”
The skull across their path had once belonged to a monster. Or a storybook dragon. Jagged teeth filled its jaws and Thursday could have easily put his head into the skull’s eye sockets.
“Tyrannosaurus Rex,” a man said from behind the wall of junked cars. “Tyrant Lizard King, or something. From the Greek, I think.”
The man was big and bearded and bald, with sunburnt patches peeling away from his scalp. His spear was made of iron or steel and looked ancient, but made with purpose. He’d found this, or stolen it, from some museum or another. This was not repurposed from the dead world around them.
The big man looked down the rail past them. “I expected you yesterday. Many more of you as well.”
“The swarm,” Peligra said, and the man winced.
“So it’s over before it started? Saint de España has won.”
“Not yet,” Peligra said, and her hand tightened on the satchel at her hip.
The big man’s eyebrows went up. “You’re from Queen Mary?”
“I am Peligra Bruja. The queen’s daughter’s daughter.”
The big man smirked “I’m the Custodian of the Bone Rails.”
“What are you laughing at? My name?”
“Maybe a little, but my name is Tom Bucket, and my folks were fond of limericks, so if I do laugh just know I mean it in good spirits.” He grinned with straight white teeth. “You’re welcome here. I’ll keep my promise, princess. Who’s your friend?”
“I can speak. I’m Thursday Forrester. From Louisville, Kentucky.”
“He’s a tourist,” Peligra said. “And don’t call me princess.”
~~~
Tom Bucket took long strides and never stopped scanning the territory they passed through. The railway led them under the debris of a decimated freeway and across a large parking lot with scrawny trees pushing up through cracks in the pavement. A stadium rose up along the far edge, beside the broken freeway. “We’re in Exposition Park,” Tom said. “That’s the Coliseum behind you, and that big building up ahead is my sanctuary. Formerly called the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, it’s now the way station for the Bone Rails after the museum was gutted by vandals forty years ago.”
“The skull on the tracks? Is that why you call it the Bone Rails?”
“I didn’t give it that name,” Tom Bucket said, “but some yahoo put a dinosaur rib cage on an old Metro car long before I was born, and the name stuck.”
“The Bone Rails,” Peligra said.
“That’s right. It’s practically a legend around here now. Even Saint de España won’t touch the Bone Rails. Not his territory, not his property. The neighborhoods are still full of strangers and scavengers, but they stay away, too. Names have power.”
The front of the museum was a ruin of fallen stone and scattered brick, and a small path had been made between the rubble to enter the building. Tom Bucket, big as he was, had no trouble weaving through it like he was on a deer trail through a forest. Inside they could smell the dust and rot of time. The chambers of dark wood, cracked marble tiles, and long shadows echoed with every step, and though many displays were cracked and destroyed Thursday still saw enough of the museum to know it had once been grand.
“This place is full of history, and history is powerful stuff. It reminds us of what we were and can help predict what we’ll become.”
“What is your prediction, then?” Peligra had her jaw thrust forward, as if she were squaring up for a fight.
“I’m a romantic,” Tom said, “so I expect we’ll get our shit together and rebuild.”
“You’re a fool, then. Progress is change, not a reproduction of history.”
Thursday said, “From all that I’ve read, recreating the mistakes of the past seems to be all we’re any good at.”
“That’s pretty pessimistic for a tourist,” Tom said.
“Yeah, well, it’s been a rough couple of months.”
Tom had set up camp in the Hall of Mammals. He spoke constantly, explaining the many displays around the room, dark now, and mostly empty. Dioramas of the rain forest, the tundra, the jungle. The desert. He built a fire in the center of the hall, in a pit he had clearly made from the broken structure of the museum out front, and in the flickering firelight those displays created too many shadows that seemed to move and watch.
Tom supplied Thursday with a fistful of aspirin—not enough to do much more than dull the pain in his arm and extremities, but it was better than nothing. When Thursday thanked him, Tom waved it off.
“I’m glad for the company.” He poured them clear water into ceramic mugs with the name of the museum printed on the sides.
Tom had no trouble breaking the silence that Thursday and Peligra were accustomed to.
“You ever heard the term ‘knowledge is power?’ That’s how I feel about this place. It’s falling down around my ears, but there’s still power here. There’s still knowledge. I know it might be a fool’s errand, and that I’m little more than a guard dog over a bunch of dusty old tomes, and I understand that I can’t stop the destruction that happened before I was even born any more than I can go back in time and save us all from the anomalies that fell from the stars and changed our world forever, but if I spend the rest of my life pushing back against superstition and ignorance, that has to be a life well lived, doesn’t it? Shouldn’t we all be thriving for civilization?”
Tom’s grin was crooked and filled with the weight of grief.
“What do you mean, superstition and ignorance?” Peligra asked.
“Our promises are based on a story, and stories are created by the imaginations of men and women. I have to admit I got shivers when Queen Mary told me today was the day to uphold my role as Custodian and fulfill my promise to take the Muertas along the Rails. It’s exciting to be part of a story. But I’m nervous now. I thought you had some weapon to calm t
he swarm, and that you’d be bringing an army. The Rails run on more than hope and blind faith. Electricity, to be blunt. Electricity calls the swarms, so we’ll be in danger.”
“Many have died for this. I’ll continue to believe, superstition or not. We will go north. We will do our part to rebuild civilization, like you said. And when I go back I will return victorious.”
“You can come with us,” Thursday said. “Three’s stronger than two.”
Tom nodded. “As much as I dread it, it was what I was raised for. I was salvaged from a kill camp where they were harvesting children. The former Custodians gave me a life, gave me a name, gave me purpose. They’re all gone now, I’m the only one left. We used to care for the building next door, too. There were lots of us, hoping that one day the knowledge contained in these buildings would help us rebuild the world. When the last horde came, I barely survived. I locked up the Science Center the best that I could, and put up some danger and biohazard quarantine signs to really scare ‘em off.”
He rolled the mug in his hand and sipped at his water.
“There’s a space shuttle in there, you know. I keep hoping that maybe, someday when we all stop fighting each other, we can get our act together and learn to fly to the stars again. Maybe find out where our visitors came from.”
Peligra was silent. Thursday started to say something, but Tom interrupted him by standing.
“We’ll leave in the morning, and I’ll get you through Union Station and out the other side.”
“We can go now,” Peligra said.
“Morning. I need to see the tracks,” Tom said. “The Bone Rails aren’t safe at night. Nothing is.”
“Then we will rest.” To Thursday, Peligra said, “Will you help me with my map?”
Tom seemed delighted. “You’re a cartographer?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know that word.”
“A mapmaker?”
“He is,” Peligra said, pointing to Thursday. “But he’s teaching me.”
“Is that so?” Tom grinned hugely and motioned towards the door. “I’ve got something for you, then.”
