The Talisman

chest and pull the trigger back.

A great hole opened redly in the middle of the mottled chest, and the dripping teeth snapped together. Jack kept the trigger depressed, and the Uzi raised its barrel by itself and destroyed the creature’s head in a second or two of total carnage. Then it was gone. Only a large bloodstain on the side of the cab, and the smear of blood on Jack’s shirt, showed that the two boys had not dreamed the entire encounter.

“Watch out!” Richard yelled.

“I got him,” Jack breathed.

“Where’d he go?”

“He fell off,” Jack said. “He’s dead.”

“You shot his hand off,” Richard whispered. “How’d you do that?”

Jack held up his hands before him and saw how they shook. The stink of gunpowder encased them. “I just sort of imitated someone with good aim.” He put his hands down and licked his lips.

Twelve hours later, as the sun came up again over the Blasted Lands, neither boy had slept—they had spent the entire night as rigid as soldiers, holding their guns in their laps and straining to hear the smallest of noises. Remembering how much ammunition the train was carrying, every now and then Jack randomly aimed a few rounds at the lip of the valley. And that second entire day, if there were people or monsters in this far sector of the Blasted Lands, they let the boys pass unmolested. Which could mean, Jack tiredly thought, that they knew about the guns. Or that out here, so near to the western shore, nobody wanted to mess with Morgan’s train. He said none of this to Richard, whose eyes were filmy and unfocused, and who seemed feverish much of the time.

12

By evening of that day, Jack began to smell saltwater in the acrid air.

36

Jack and Richard Go to War

1

The sunset that night was wider—the land had begun to open out again as they approached the ocean—but not so spectacular. Jack stopped the train at the top of an eroded hill and climbed back to the flatcar again. He poked about for nearly an hour—until the sullen colors had faded from the sky and a quarter moon had risen in the east— and brought back six boxes, all marked LENSES.

“Open those,” he told Richard. “Get a count. You’re appointed Keeper of the Clips.”

“Marvelous,” Richard said in a wan voice. “I knew I was getting all that education for something.”

Jack went back to the flatcar again and pried up the lid of one of the crates marked MACHINE PARTS. While he was doing this he heard a harsh, hoarse cry somewhere off in the darkness, followed by a shrill scream of pain.

“Jack? Jack, you back there?”

“Right here!” Jack called. He thought it very unwise for the two of them to be yelling back and forth like a couple of washerwomen over a back fence, but Richard’s voice suggested that he was close to panicking.

“You coming back pretty soon?”

“Be right there!” Jack called, levering faster and harder with the Uzi’s barrel. They were leaving the Blasted Lands behind, but Jack still didn’t want to stand at a stop for too long. It would have been simpler if he could have just carried the box of machine-guns back to the engine, but it was too heavy.

They ain’t heavy, they’re my Uzis, Jack thought, and giggled a little in the dark.

“Jack?” Richard’s voice was high-pitched, frantic.

“Hold your water, chum,” he said.

“Don’t call me chum,” Richard said.

Nails shrieked out of the crate’s lid, and it came up enough for Jack to be able to pull it off. He grabbed two of the grease-guns and was starting back when he saw another box—it was about the size of a portable-TV carton. A fold of the tarp had covered it previously.

Jack went skittering across the top of the boxcar under the faint moonlight, feeling the breeze blow into his face. It was clean—no taint of rotted perfume, no feeling of corruption, just clean dampness and the unmistakable scent of salt.

“What were you doing?” Richard scolded. “Jack, we have guns! And we have bullets! Why did you want to go back and get more? Something could have climbed up here while you were playing around!”

“More guns because machine-guns have a tendency to overheat,” Jack said. “More bullets because we may have to shoot a lot. I watch TV, too, you see.” He started back toward the flatcar again. He wanted to see what was in that square box.

Richard grabbed him. Panic turned his hand into a birdlike talon.

“Richard, it’s going to be all right—”

“Something might grab you off!”

“I think we’re almost out of the Bl—”

“Something might grab me off! Jack, don’t leave me alone! ”

Richard burst into tears. He did not turn away from Jack or put his hands to his face; he only stood there, his face twisted, his eyes spouting tears. He looked cruelly naked to Jack just then. Jack folded him into his arms and held him.