Malorie(55)

Before pushing her off the train.

She thinks she hears one of them leaping, too, just before she hits the tracks, headfirst, just before she blacks out and sinks into a darkness no blindfold on Earth could provide.





TWENTY-ONE


Dean is in the first storage car, the very back of the train, when he hears what sounds like people moving by the train’s back door, the door Malorie came through when she and her two teens boarded. He knows his mind is piqued by the things Malorie has been saying. A missing son. A creature in storage.

And the fact that she believes touch can drive someone mad.

This worries him. Not because he believes everything he hears, but Malorie is especially believable. She’s sharp. She’s dedicated. And, most of all, her kids have survived this long. Dean has nothing but unfathomable respect for any parent who pulled that off.

He didn’t.

Blindfolded, he steps through the boxes of canned goods and clothing, his palms out, moving slow, lest something was jostled loose by the motion of the train, something that would hurt to run into.

He thinks of something touching his hand. He imagines going insane.

In his version, he doesn’t act stealthily. There’s nothing cunning about his vision of madness. Rather, he’s embarrassed by what he does: he sees himself, frothing, wild-eyed, racing the halls of this train with an axe.

He shakes his head no. He doesn’t need to be thinking this way. Not while searching for a casket that the woman Malorie thinks may be harboring a creature.

Who told her this? It doesn’t matter. Rumors abound on a blind train. A lot of scared people. But if safety is truly his top priority, then he must look into this now. Only, look is the one thing he won’t do.

Or perhaps one of two things.

“She’s really gotten into your head,” he says.

She has.

He doesn’t know yet how he’s going to search the casket for what’s inside.

His first idea was to open the lid and reach in. Nobody knows any more about the creatures now than they did seventeen years ago, but Dean believes some things must be assumed. For example, the space they take up. If Dean opens the casket and feels a dead body within, it stands to reason that there wouldn’t be space for a creature as well.

But Malorie has him questioning reason.

Is there any? Any more?

Who’s to know if they occupy any space, any of what people know space to be, at all?

He knocks a box off a table with his hip and bends to pick it up. He can tell by its weight that it’s clothing. He sets it on the table just as the train jolts, and he reaches out for balance. Finding none, he imagines the fingers of something that can drive him mad.

He opens the box of clothing.

Scarves. Winter hats. No gloves. That’s okay. Hats will do.

He uses two as gloves and, still blind, continues deeper into storage. The coffins are the first to be loaded in as they are typically the heaviest and can be used as a tabletop if need be. For this, he has to go all the way in.

“Malorie,” he says, “I hope you realize I’m braving this for you.”

He thinks of his staff, if such a word applies. David, Tanya, Michael, and Renee are only people looking for progress, no different than Dean. They’re more family than workmates, as they’ve done the impossible together: got a train running in the new world. He can’t have them getting hurt. He couldn’t live with that. It’d be like reliving the loss of his children, but possibly worse for not having learned the first time around.

He bumps a second table and, his hands covered with hats, he discovers he’s reached the coffins.

Two of them. To be delivered to Mackinaw City. Those who have asked for them will take them from there and bury them wherever they want them to be buried.

Dean breathes in. Holds it. Breathes out.

In a world without pills or therapy, it’s as effective an anti-anxiety treatment as any he could imagine.

He feels along the wide wood surface of the first coffin.

It’s clear.

He opens the wood lid.

The smell is strong. Too strong. Dean turns his head and gags. He brings one of the hats to his mouth and gags again. Eyes closed, he can easily imagine what makes this smell. A decomposing body without what was once modern science to stave off the stench.

“Malorie,” he says again. “Thanks a lot.”

He reaches into the box and feels an arm. A chest. A second arm. Legs.

Then, the head.

He closes the lid.

He takes a few steps from the box and allows his breathing to return to normal.

The second coffin is deeper into the space, boxed in by the first. He climbs up onto the first and feels the lid of the second. Two boxes have somehow ended up here. Dean doesn’t doubt it was the motion of the train, but it’s not difficult to imagine someone or something else rearranging things in here for reasons he knows nothing about.

Reason.

On his knees, the hats still over his hands, he lifts the second lid. He’s prepared this time, breathing only out his mouth, and he gets to work checking it immediately.

He feels legs. Fingers. Arms. This man is naked.

Dean’s hands move fast, too fast, and the hat slips from his left.

He yanks his arm back.

“Jesus,” he says.

He doesn’t want to reach back in for the hat. Doesn’t want to touch the dead body (something else?)