She grabbed his arm tight, looked down at the flashlight. “I’m not even going to tell you what a flashlight and rechargeable batteries cost. You drop it over the side and-”
“I know, I know. You’ll toss me over and feed me to the cannibals and blah blah blah.”
“Just so you understand.”
He took his position up front. The sun finished its escape, and the night went dark and cold quickly. Mortimer flipped on the flashlight, and the beam stabbed out far and strong, lighting up the track a good fifty feet in front of the train.
Mortimer kept his eyes on the track but allowed himself a glance at the sky. The stars hung bright and vivid in the deep black of space. With the wind in his hair, the light out front, Mortimer almost felt like he was flying, the train gliding along smooth and straight.
The forest widened, the trees falling away on both sides. They were on a long bridge. Mortimer fished around with the flashlight. They were crossing over a river. It must have been one of the dozens of middling-sized rivers that fed the Chickamauga. It would be deep and cold with mountain runoff. Mortimer leaned over the edge, looked down, the flashlight beam playing over the running water. He estimated it maybe twenty-five feet down. His gaze came back up, away from the river.
A face, slack jawed, haunted eyes.
It startled him. Mortimer gasped. It had only been a second, a glimpse. But Mortimer was sure he’d seen a pale figure, greasy haired, standing on the bridge at the edge of the track. He leaned over the side, shined the light back the way they’d come.
Nothing. Had he imagined it?
He swung the light back forward again. A gap in the track, twenty feet away, the metal rails twisted and scorched as if from a blast. Mortimer’s eyes shot wide. He drew breath to scream a warning.
Too late.
The handcar dove into the gap, jammed and jerked to a halt, the flatcars piling up behind. The crash was a shattering mix of splintering wood and groaning, clanging metal. He heard a number of screams, the loudest his own as he flew headlong onto the railroad track ahead of the train. He landed hard, the wind knocking out of him. He rolled and tumbled.
Then he was flying, wind flapping his clothes. Stars flashed over him, then his breath was taken away by the freezing sting of impact. The river closed over him like a cold tomb. He bounced against a rock, kicked, paddled, surfaced. He had time for one ragged breath before the river took him down again.
Mortimer spun and tumbled in the dark water, the current sweeping him an unknown distance in time and space, the cold searing him to the bone with white-hot pain. His lungs burned. He broke the surface again, gasped and gulped breath, taking in water too. He coughed and picked a direction in the implacable night, kicked and stroked for the bank. The icy water had sapped him.
He was about to give up when he touched bottom, dragged himself onto the land and flopped on his back in the patchy snow and mud. He lay a moment, chest heaving as he sucked air. Every limb screamed murder.
The ripple of orange along the water made him sit up. He’d come down the river farther than he’d thought, the current so swift. In the distance, hellish light bathed the bridge. The Muscle Express burned, the flames reaching into the sky.
It must have been visible for miles and miles.
XV
Shivering, aching and cramped from the cold, his wet clothes clinging to him, it took Mortimer nearly an hour to pick his way along the steep bank until he stood almost directly below the blazing train. He stood in its heat, let the warmth spread through him.
Had Tyler been aboard? Bill? He shuddered to think of them burning alive.
But there had been no fuel. The train had been powered by muscle. What had caused the fire? Or who? The same people who’d sabotaged the track. An ambush. He jerked his head around, scanning the tree line. Nobody.
He had to get ankle-deep in the water again to make his way to the other side of the bridge. He found crates busted open. The train had been looted. His eyes raked the water and the far bank. No bodies. Where were the muscle guys? Had Mortimer been the only one thrown clear? The bodies had been taken.
Cannibals.
A shiver crawled up Mortimer’s spine that had nothing to do with the cold.
Turn around and walk the other way.
But he didn’t. At the very least he owed Bill. He had to know, had to see. He started walking upriver, keeping close to the bank, clueless where else to go.
Soon he’d have to stop and build a fire and damn if anyone saw. Hypothermia was fast becoming a bigger worry than cannibals. But Mortimer had no matches, and if he did, they’d be soaked. He could rub sticks together until doomsday and never get a fire. Everything near the river was snow-soaked and muddy.
Why had he come down from the mountain? There was no point in continuing. He’d lost the Uzi. The police special was at the bottom of the river. He couldn’t rescue Bill even if he was still alive. All of Mortimer’s possessions were lost, even the Armageddon dollars.
He’d have traded every last Armageddon dollar he had for dry clothes and matches.
