“They’ll make a movie about us,” said Santiago, “made for TV.”
We all laughed.
After a while Santiago said, “I wonder if they’ll include the kids we killed?”
Zeller and I were silent.
“Do you ever dream about them?” Santiago asked.
“Why should we?” I said. “It doesn’t matter anymore. We’ve been through all this before. We just have to get out of here and find the Army.”
“You and Cooper used to talk about ghosts,” said Santiago. “I heard you once.”
“True enough,” I said.
“We should have brought him with us,” said Santiago. He was lying on his back in the middle of the caboose, staring up at the ceiling.
“Do you believe in ghosts?” he asked.
“No,” I replied.
“I do,” he said. “I think we’re given a choice when we die. We can go up or down, or we can stay right here. Those who choose to stay here are usually just too angry to go anywhere else. Or maybe too sad, I guess.”
“That was Cooper’s theory too,” I said, but in truth I wasn’t sure anymore.
“I know,” said Santiago.
“That’s ridiculous,” said Zeller.
Still on his back facing the ceiling, Santiago rubbed his forehead. I wasn’t sure if he had even heard Zeller.
“Maybe in the end it doesn’t matter,” he said.
“I just can’t believe it,” Zeller said, obviously still stuck on the question as to where we go when we die. “After all, we all have a soul.”
Santiago just lay there, smiling.
Suddenly Zeller stood up and walked to the doorway. “I’m going out,” he said, and stepped out into the night.
“I like that,” Santiago said. “It’s good to believe.”
“Maybe,” I replied. I walked to the doorway and looked out over the ocean. I watched Zeller balance himself on one of the rails of track that led nowhere.
Santiago reached out and took my poncho liner and wrapped it around himself. “Just take this back if you need it,” he said.
“I will.”
I walked out into the rain. It felt refreshing for a change, as if what I smelled and tasted when it began had been washed away. But it still didn’t taste like the rain I remembered from home.
After a few minutes, I walked back into the caboose and stoked the fire with a stick. Sparks and ashes rose and snapped.
Then it was eerily quiet. The rain had stopped for the first time in countless days.
Santiago and I stepped out of the caboose. Zeller was there too, and we all stood and looked to the sky. A thunderclap sounded in the distance, but sure enough, there was no sign of rain.
“We move out tomorrow,” Santiago said. “We’ve already been here too long.”
TEN
THE NEXT MORNING WE ROSE EARLY. WE CLEANED AND oiled our weapons in the gray light of dawn, and after a breakfast of rice gruel, we moved out. For no good reason, we felt strong again.
We decided to take the road. If the Army really was looking for us, we thought, they’d find us on the move. They had to be making their way toward the city on the road. We talked about what it would feel like riding into the city at the front of that hard, sharp edge.
I walked point and we marched along like professionals. As the morning moved along, we passed a number of people traveling along the road in the same direction as us. We wondered if they were leaving the city because they were afraid of what would happen when the Army and the clans met on the streets of the city. But they didn’t pay much attention to us in any case. Our uniforms were filthy and in tatters, and by this point we were hardly recognizable as Americans. We were simply men in rags with weapons.
The diet of nothing but rice had left us weak, and after the initial high we stopped often to rest.
We’d been walking for several hours when we came across a truck mounted with an anti-aircraft gun on the side of the road. A crowd of people had gathered around, but they dispersed as we walked into their midst, leaving the truck to just a few armed men.
“Let’s just keep walking,” Santiago said under his breath. His wound had scabbed over, but it was still swollen with infection. “Don’t look at them, just keep walking. These guys don’t want a fight.” As we passed, the armed men smiled at us.
Then we heard another truck approaching, moving fast. It slowed as it passed alongside us, and the men in it called out to the armed men. Then I heard the low thump and slap of helicopters’ rotor blades. I turned toward the sound in order to gauge the direction and the distance.
The armed men were suddenly serious, and they climbed back into the truck. Once they were aboard, they sped off. One of the men quickly manned the anti-aircraft gun.
The other truck followed, and one after another the two of them turned onto a side road that went off into the desert. We stood where we were and watched. I could tell now by the sound of the helicopters that they were Apaches.
When the helicopters came into sight we waved our arms to get them to notice us. Suddenly, the trucks began firing at them and the helicopters fired back. I could hear the whine of the big .20 calibers spinning on the helicopters’ snouts. Rounds tore into the dirt around both of the trucks, and before long one of them burst into flames.
The first truck we had come across was undamaged as of yet, and it moved off slowly, back in the direction of the main road.
The other truck was burning up quickly, and I could see a few bodies littered about. A thin wire of black smoke climbed into the sky.
As the surviving truck accelerated toward us, we stepped well off the road to give it plenty of room to pass. But just as it did so the helicopter launched a rocket. The truck exploded into a fireball.
