by Noah Mann
I smiled and turned the radio off, hiking back to Del’s immediately to retrieve the other handheld and chargers for both. When I returned I set about testing what I hoped would work, disconnecting the wires powering the speaker on one of the radios and connecting the leads to a bright LED flashlight bulb. Outside, I leaned the ladder against the barn wall and climbed to the roof, placing the modified handheld at the peak before switching it on and turning the squelch down fully. Had the speaker still been in place, crisp static would be sounding, but, instead, the power meant to construct sound from the device now set the bright and tiny bulb to shining. Setting the squelch near its maximum, the light went out. From my belt I took the unmodified radio and tapped the transmit button quickly, sending a quick, voiceless transmission. Set to the same frequency, the modified radio received the strong signal and the light flashed on for an instant.
“Right,” I said, and climbed down from the barn roof, leaving the modified radio there and returning its near twin to my pack. It was time for the real test.
In the dark I hiked to a rise nearly five miles from my refuge, peak of the mountain rising another two thousand feet from the spot I’d set out for. It was familiar. I’d camped there before on hunts, the appeal of the level area its elevation for observation, and the more personal fact that, from it, I could look directly across the forest to my refuge. The line of sight was perfect, and I needed to do no more than bring the binoculars to my eyes and tap the transmit button one more time so that, across the distance, I could see the light affixed to the radio blaze bright atop my barn.
I turned off the radio and sat for a moment on a cool rock bulging from the earth. I had my detonator. Now all I needed was a bomb big enough to turn Whitefish to rubble and bring the very cleanse that Layton envisioned right to his doorstep.
In the morning, I thought to myself. I’d work then on securing the part that would go boom.
Thirty Seven
It sat where I remembered, weathered by winter and drenched through the early tantrums of spring. Ten years old, it had to be, the white body work showing patches of sanded rust, logo of the Federal Railway Administration faded on each door. The ungainly small metal wheels inboard of its standard tires seemed out of place where they hung beneath the frame. I’d seen the vehicle, and others like it over the years, driving normally along a roadway, then swinging onto a set of train tracks and lowering the secondary set of wheels, the combination of rubber and steel allowing the old but powerful Chevy to speed along rails meant for behemoths ten times its size.
Porter...
Ed Porter. That was the man’s name. The one who lived out of the way in Stryker, a blip on the map that made Fortine look like Missoula, and Eureka like Las Vegas. He was an inspector for the Railway Administration, or had been. I’d run into him once on a hunt, and shared a conversation over some fresh venison backstrap. His job, as he’d explained it, consisted mostly of tooling up and down the tracks between his home base and Missoula, verifying that the private operators were living up to their commitments to keep the line safe and maintained. All he had to do, as he put it, was avoid being on the track at the same time as some thousand ton monster fully able to obliterate him.
And this was his ride. Parked just outside his small house a few hundred feet from the siding off the main track. A three hour walk through the grey woods had brought me here. I looked through the window and saw the keys in the cup holder hanging from the heater vent, but I didn’t open the most certainly unlocked driver’s door. Not yet. I had something else to do first. Inside.
I turned to Ed’s house, white paint peeling in places. New shingles stark like islands surrounded by old roofing, some personal repair handiwork evident. Hesitation stalled me from mounting the front steps. What I might find inside held me back momentarily. But the horror of Ed Porter in death was not all that stalled me.
I was tired. Exhausted. Not from mere physical exertion. It was beyond that. It was almost...spiritual. Inside I felt increasingly hollow, the emptiness deepening with each step I took away from the man I’d been and toward the person I needed to be.
Or was choosing to be.
I had killed. More than once. And now I was going to kill again, without any moral argument against what I’d planned coming to mind. It was that far I’d come. How much I’d changed. On the hike from my refuge to Stryker I wondered on that, and on just how many degrees difference there were between what Major Layton was, and what I was becoming. He killed. I killed. There was the point of motive to consider. I knew that. But the end result, an acceptance of killing as a necessity, seemed hardly distinct at all. People were going to die at my hand, the Major among them, hopefully, and I was okay with that.
In fact, I was looking forward to it. To an end. An end of something. Something that I could control. Me. The wider world had spun itself toward self-annihilation. A microbe had found the genetics of the planet’s flora irresistible. All things had brought me here, to Stryker, to Ed Porter’s house. And from here I would do the thing I had chosen to do, not that had been chosen for me.
Anarchy had settled upon the world, from continent to continent, in every corner. True enough. But I was my own order.
I mounted the steps and forced the front door open, its simple latch snapping the door jamb as I put my weight against it. No stench filled the space even though I could see the body in the easy chair, head tipped back, skin pulled taut over bone, mouth gaping open in death. The room was cold, nearly ice cold, the full spring warm up still to come. What had to be the remains of Ed Porter had been preserved, almost mummified in the dry environment within. That would not last, I knew. In days, maybe, the decay would begin in earnest, and what was left of the man I’d once shared a wild meal with would be set upon by maggots and flies. They survived, of course. Thrived, even, as one by one those of use who’d swatted and sprayed them dropped dead. Circle of life in all its gory glory.
I turned my attention away from Ed, who, during our feasting on venison had regaled me about trains. Anything and everything trains. In the garage out back of his house, if I cared to look, I might find the model railway setup he had described. The weather had been held at bay by windows that remained unbroken, and on his walls, undisturbed, were picture after picture of trains, locomotives and the cars they pulled, most, if not all, taken by Ed himself during his travel up and down the rails.
And, in a wall unit to the left of his fireplace, books. And books. And more books. Every last one about some facet of trains or railroading. There were generic books, resplendent with beautiful photographs of engines, old and new. Novels where the setting was aboard a train. And technical manuals on everything from vintage steam locomotives to the proper maintenance of switching equipment. Among the latter I found what I’d hoped would be here, a binder than had to be thirty years old titled ‘Brake Testing And Service Under Adverse Rail Conditions’. I could imagine Ed snapping up the obscure manual in some used book store, giddy with delight at his discovery.
I took the book from its place on a low shelf and flipped through it, pages and pages of yellowed diagrams and instructions nearly overwhelming me. But only until I found what I thought I needed. A simple schematic, actually, addressing the steps to take in releasing frozen brakes on rolling stock. Like box cars and tank cars.
I pulled the page from the manual and, carefully, slipped it back in place, the gesture of maintaining the sense of cleanliness and order Ed Porter had held himself to almost natural. A decent man sat behind me, dead. If possible I suspected Ed would have chosen to die on the rails. Maybe at the controls of a locomotive. But here, surrounded by reminders of that life he loved, was as close as he could get. And I wasn’t going to sully what he’d made for himself.
“Rest in peace, Ed,” I said, tucking the paper I’d taken into my pocket and heading out.
My next challenge, no less important than what I’d just found, sat before me. The truck. I opened the door and reached to the cup holder without
getting in, slipping the key I retrieved into the ignition and rotating it forward. The response I got was a disappointing click.
The battery was dead.
A winter in the cold, without use, made it not surprising at all that I wouldn’t get the engine to crank. Not on the first try. And not with that battery. I’d expected as much.
The garage sat just behind the house, wide barn type doors closing off from outside. I pulled one half open and took a small flashlight from my pocket to light up the space. The elaborate train table dominated the garage, stretching almost fully across the width, maybe a foot on the left side, and two on the right, just barely enough room to pass. I side stepped along the wall with more clearance and emerged at the back of the space, more traditional contents here. An axe. Shovel. Gas can.
And a spare battery.
I adjusted my AR to hang fully behind my shoulders and crouched, picking the battery up, cradling it in front as I began to shimmy along the train table, making it half way when the garage door slammed shut and the whole structure seemed to tip, wall behind slamming into me. The battery tumbled from my grip and onto the train table, crushing a station in miniature that had been expertly crafted. I fell forward with it as the table collapsed. Above, the open rafters shook, and items that had been stored in the recesses below the roof began to rain down, boxes of Christmas lights and childhood toys crashing and shattering. I groped for a handhold to steady myself and scrambled across the broken table as the wall I’d just stood against splintered and a massive brown paw punched through, long black claws stretched wide, reaching out.
“Shit!
I rolled and grabbed my AR from behind, swinging it toward the paw as it pulled back, claws grabbing at the exposed clapboard siding, a two foot chunk disappearing as it was ripped out, blinding bolt of sunlight slanting through as I fired, four rounds spitting out of the suppressor.
The wild beast screamed outside, a guttural cry, not of defeat, but rage. Within a few seconds it charged back at the garage wall, head and one paw tearing through. The mighty creature, usually muscled and stout, poked through gaunt, patches of its chestnut fur missing. It had surely awakened from its winter slumber in the past two months to find the world changed. To find the food it craved gone. Had it found others of its kind during this new famine it faced and feasted upon them? Is that how it had survived until now when it saw me as, possibly, its last, best hope for further survival?
It was a fighter. But so was I.
I took fast aim, ignoring the view through the tactical scope, and fired straight at the bear’s wide face, four shots, each connecting. At least one appeared to traverse the nasal cavity and penetrate the wasting male’s brain, as the near quarter ton bear went almost instantly limp, head and paw caught in the opening it had punched, the rest of its body falling slack outside. A last, steamy breath slipped from the grizzly, and then no more.
All that had tensed about me relaxed at once, the sensation one of instantaneous and total exhaustion, strength and determination draining away. For nearly half an hour I sat on the remnants of the mangled train table, back against piled boxes that had fallen from the rafters. I could have slept, but I didn’t let myself. My brain and my body simply existed there for a time, not thinking or moving, the dead grizzly before me. Finally I made myself rise and put a hand to the bear’s head, stroking his coarse fur. He’d only been doing what was in his nature to survive. As was I.
I gathered the battery from where I’d dropped it and carried it out of the garage. It slipped into the spot vacated by the dead battery and the truck turned over after gasping a few times. The gauge read only a quarter tank, and though it might not take that much fuel to accomplish what I needed the truck for, I topped it off once I reached my refuge, using the covert driveway at the north end of my property.
For the first time in a while a pickup sat between my house and the barn. The pieces were mostly in place. But, like Layton, I had to wait.
For the wind.
Thirty Eight
Three days into summer it came.
Spring had fizzled, dry and bleak. The blight had taken not only what there was, but what might have been. That was what spring was to me—a time of possibilities. In the mountains, the valleys, the cities and towns, winter slumber was pushed aside for life to flourish. Old and new. It was the clichéd time of beginnings. Three months of birth and rebirth. Once, it had been that. Now it simply passed as a date on the calendar and the sensation that the warm-up had come.
And with it the wind.
I had no idea the exact conditions Layton was waiting for. There were no vast meteorological services to inform as to whether a wind event was to be short lived, or sustained. But, if the dying man was to be believed, Layton had grown up in Whitefish. He would very likely be operating on memory. An ingrained sense of when the wind he wanted was more than transitory. I couldn’t wait that long. I had only one condition.
It had to be blowing furiously from the north.
An almost nostalgic blast from what winter had been, the wind came, cool and dry, slipping beneath a sky of deep blue and over the moonscape the earth had become. It started before sunrise and grew stronger, whipping steadily at thirty miles per hour, with gusts that had to top fifty on a few occasions. I suspected that Layton was going to wait. As yet, I’d found no preparation of the tank cars parked along the rail line during my times patrolling. There’d been no sign of any push north from Whitefish. Layton and his men, it seemed, had decided to avoid confrontation and prepare for the cleanse.
I could wait no more.
I loaded what I needed into the back of Ed Porter’s truck, the more delicate gear on the passenger seat to ride next to me. Before leaving I paused and looked back at my house, my refuge. The odds of me returning were beyond my ability to calculate. What I was about to attempt would either work, or not. One possibility in the latter aspect of failure could very well be the end of both me and the place I’d called home for more than half a year.
Neil was gone. Del was gone. If that was my fate by the time the day was up, I would join the many and leave the few. I only hoped I could take Layton with me.
I climbed into Ed’s truck and drove down the hidden back driveway, turning onto Weiland Road, reaching the main north-south highway a few minutes later, the tops of a few of the tank cars visible to the left as I headed south, nearing my destination just before noon. I steered onto the road grade crossing over the tracks, but did not continue. Instead I turned right, onto the tracks, positioning the vehicle over the rails where they transitioned over the asphalt crossing. Putting into motion what I’d practiced, I engaged the small rail wheels, hydraulics lowering them so that they settled onto the steel rails, taking the weight of the vehicle. Trying forward and reverse, the pickup moved as expected, and I set off down the tracks, south, in the direction of Whitefish.
There was a stop to make first. A stop that had to be made. Blocking the way to Whitefish was the last tank car, the one closest to town. I pulled up to it, bumper of the pickup just nudging the car’s knuckle that would connect it to other rolling stock. I climbed out, taking the modified radio with me, LED light gone, just the bare speaker wires and extensions protruding from the plastic body. From the back of the truck I grabbed the small satchel we’d kept our scavenged TNT in. The explosives were already prepared with blasting caps and electrically operated fuses. I attached the package to the underside of the tank car and wired the modified radio to it, but left the power off.
Next I found the braking mechanism, and the connecting lines that would hook it to a longer train of cars. I severed the hoses and manually disengaged the wheel brakes. On the flat here, the tank car shifted just a foot or so, but did not start rolling on its own. That would take some help.
Ducking under the long brown cylinder, I turned the squelch on the radio almost to maximum and drew a breath as I turned it on. It held, stable, the TNT package—and me—still in one piece. I hustled to the pickup and e
ased forward against the knuckle again. The pickup’s thick raised bumper creaked backward, bending, but holding as I gave the vehicle more gas, the tank car ahead moving now, ever so slowly at first. Then, as we transitioned onto a slight grade, the speed picked up. Soon I had the tank car moving at five miles an hour, then ten, then slowing again on a level stretch of track a few miles from town.
This was my stop. I opened the door and dropped my backpack and rifle as the pickup and tank car trundled forward. Both thudded almost gently down the berm that sat beneath the tracks and came to rest on soft earth. From the seat next to me I took a length of metal that I’d fashioned and fixed one end under the steering wheel and wedged the other against the accelerator pedal, forcing it all the way to the floor. The engine raced, pushing the tank car toward another downhill section of track. I had to go now.
I half-stepped, half-leapt from Ed Porter’s pickup, landing awkwardly on the side of the berm, rolling to the bottom, the earth there rocky, one sharp slab of stone jabbing into my shoulder. It took me a moment to shake off the pain and grab a few breaths, but I had no time to spare beyond that. The gravelly berm slipped under my feet as I ran back up along the track. My pack and rifle lay a few feet apart. I gathered them up and looked south along the track to see the pickup and tank car accelerating down the grade ahead.
* * *
A quarter mile. That was the distance. Uphill. I ran it with my pack and suppressed AR in just under two minutes. At the top of the hill my lungs burned and my legs were shaking. Huge gulps of air did little to soothe the fire in my chest. Adrenalin pushed me beyond the gasping pain and I took the radio and binoculars from my pack, bringing the latter up to scan the town, focusing on the rail yard just east of the river. Tracking right, my view shifting west, I finally found the tank car, rolling at speed, Ed Porter’s pickup pushing it. It was maybe thirty seconds from where I needed it to be. I had to be ready.
