Malorie(38)

They walk. The train sways. Malorie imagines a black landscape passing, gradations of darkness, a world she and her teens will never see.

“Is that music?” Tom suddenly asks.

Dean stops again.

“You can hear that?” He goes quiet, and Malorie listens for what Tom heard. “There are three musicians on board. Playing guitars in the dining car. They do it often. I can’t believe you can hear them, John.”

Malorie finds Tom’s wrist in the darkness and grips it. They are in the new world now, but that does not mean they are of it.

Don’t get lazy.

The three-word mantra has kept her and these teens alive for so long. The small but powerful phrase that separates her and has always separated her from the people who think they can defeat indefatigable circumstance.

But despite his mom’s hand, Tom still responds.

“It sounds good.”

Dean laughs again. Malorie wonders if she turns red in front of him.

“It definitely does,” Dean says. “But it’s not as cool as the fact that your ears work like they do. That, John, is phenomenal.”

“Who keeps the tracks clear?” Malorie asks again. Her own voice sounds petty. Like she’s looking for control. “How can you be sure we aren’t going to crash?”

Dean stops walking again, and this time Malorie does bump into him. She can tell he’s taller than she is, wider. She backs up.

“Do you remember Buster Keaton?” he asks her. She thinks of her dad. Dad liked Buster Keaton.

“Please, just tell me how—”

“He made a movie called The General. Brilliant sequence where he’s clearing the tracks of falling logs. It’s so well orchestrated that you almost think it’s magic. Well, this isn’t anywhere near as funny as that, but at the head of the train, there’s a smaller, metal cart. And upon that cart is a man named Michael. And Michael makes sure nothing enormous has fallen across the tracks.”

“Isn’t that dangerous?” Malorie asks. “What he’s doing?”

“Of course it is. But Michael wants to do it.”

“But he could die out there and we wouldn’t know.”

“Jill,” Dean says. “I have answers for all these questions. Good ones. If you’d—”

“Please. Answer them now.”

She feels something she hasn’t felt in ages. Something like overstepping. For the first time since leaving the school for the blind, Malorie is demanding answers from someone who is helping her.

Isn’t Dean helping her? Isn’t this train helping her reach her parents?

“So Michael has a switchbox with him out there. The engineer—”

“There’s an engineer?”

“There has to be. Her name is Tanya. She’s incredible. If Tanya doesn’t receive a transmission from Michael’s box for more than ten minutes, for whatever reason, even if we discover later he only dropped it, she stops the train.”

“Has this happened before?”

“No.”

“And has Michael ever found objects on the tracks? Ones you had to make stops for? To clear?”

“Yes. Fallen trees. And once, a dead herd of elk. We think they went mad.”

“Mad…”

“There are stretches this train passes in which hundreds of creatures roam.”

Malorie thinks to turn around. She thinks to take the teens and walk straight out the back of the train and leap back to the tracks. They could brave the walk again. They could be back in Yadin in a few days.

But she doesn’t want to leave. Not yet. She trusts just enough of what she hears in Dean’s voice to make her stay. So instead, she asks more questions. And it feels a little like she’s dipping a toe in the new world after all.

“How do you know that?”

Dean breathes deep, and Malorie braces herself for something she doesn’t want to hear.

“Well, two ways,” he says.

“Yeah?” Pressing.

“Yes. One is similar to what I’m understanding about John here. We’ve had young riders who can hear much better than you or I ever will.”

“And the other?”

Dean spills it.

“Passengers have gone mad. Riders who perhaps took the train for an opportunity to watch the world pass.”

“But how?” Panic rising in her voice. “The windows are blackened, right?”

“Of course. But—”

“Then how?”

“Between cars. If one really wanted to look…they could.”

Malorie steels herself.

“How many passengers have gone mad on this train?” she asks.

Dean doesn’t hesitate.

“Seven.”

The shape of panic now. In the vicinity. So close to her.

“And what happened to those people?”

Dean doesn’t hesitate again.

“Myself and David escorted them off.”

“You tossed them off the train?” Olympia asks.

“Yes. Without a bit of debate, I’m sorry to say.”

Malorie likes this answer. But she’s far from feeling safe.

“They didn’t ask to go mad,” she says.

“I know that,” Dean says. “Believe me. I’m haunted by every one of them.”