only to keep his mind from pondering heavy things. Yet even though he tried, he could not settle his thoughts enough to sleep. Jix still told himself that he was traveling with the train just to gain information before returning to the City of Souls, and reporting what he had found to the king-but not even he was sure of his own motives anymore. At first he had told himself that he’d leave in Dallas, find a big cat somewhere, and furjack his way back home, but instead he stayed with the train. There was too much about this train of souls that intrigued him: the sleeping witch in the caboose, the train’s destination-which the king himself would like to know about if, indeed, it was real… but most of all he stayed because of Jackin’ Jill.
After their last encounter, Jill made a point of ignoring Jix, and yet he often caught her watching him out of the corner of her eye-but whenever he returned the gaze, she would get snappish and say, “What are you looking at?” It always made him smile.
As a skinjacker, he had the privilege of staying in the parlor car, so he and Jill were never too distant from each other, and when Jill got tired of pretending to ignore him, she would ask questions.
“How long have you been at this? Furjacking, I mean?”
But the real question was hidden beneath her words. She was more interested in knowing how much time he had left.
“The time will come that my slumbering body dies, and I can no longer furjack, just as that time will come for you.”
“So you know about that…”
Jix nodded. His Excellency had explained to him right away about how his body was in a coma-and how his gift of skinjacking was only a temporary one. “When I can no longer do it-when I become a normal Afterlight, I will find a coin, and pay my passage into the light.”
“You mean you don’t have your coin now?”
“No.” The truth was, His Excellency had his own special use for Evercoins, but Jix wasn’t about to tell Jill that. “Why is your hair like that?” he asked her.
“Tornado,” she answered, and shook her nasty, nettled hair. “You hate my hair, don’t you? Everyone hates it. I don’t care.”
“It’s wild,” he told her. “I like wild.”
She squirmed at that. “How about you?” she asked. “How did you wind up in Everlost?”
“I was attacked in my sleep,” he told her. What he didn’t tell her was that he was attacked by a jaguar that had wandered into the village. He liked to think that maybe he had furjacked that same cat once or twice in his travels.
When the train reached Austin, Jill had asked Jix to join them when they went out reaping. “You can jack a circus tiger,” she suggested, “and eat some really obnoxious kid in the crowd.” Jix couldn’t tell whether or not she was kidding, so he made up an answer that was equally unnerving.
“Humans don’t taste good to a cat,” he told her. “I only eat them when there’s nothing better.”
He did not join them, because he was not convinced the gods would approve of reaping. True, the Mayan gods were fairly bloodthirsty-particularly the jaguar gods-but there was a proper sense of nobility to those ancient stories of carnage. There was nothing noble about reaping.
When they reached Austin, there was finally a dead westbound track, heading toward San Antonio. Southwest, more accurately, but there was a very good chance that once they reached San Antonio, it would become a northwest track, heading toward the western states. Then, right around sunset the next day, as they neared San Antonio, the train came screeching to an abrupt halt.
All of Jix’s senses peaked to high alert, and he instinctively knew there was going to be trouble.
Milos left the parlor car, furious at Speedo for bringing the train to such a jarring stop-but even before he reached the engine, he saw the reason.
“Problem!” shouted Allie from the front of the train. “We’ve got a problem here!”
“I can see that!” Milos shouted back.
Once again, there was a building on the tracks. Speedo had managed to stop the train about a quarter mile away from it this time-but seeing it from this distance was almost worse. It wasn’t something so small and quaint as a clapboard church. You couldn’t even call it a house. This thing was a mansion.
Speedo leaned out of the engine compartment, looking like he was dripping sweat instead of pool water. “H- H-How many Afterlights do you think it took to move that onto the tracks?” asked Speedo, nervously. Milos did not want to consider the answer.
“We’ll send a team to investigate,” Milos said.
The skinjackers now peered out of the parlor car at Milos for an explanation.
“What gives, what gives?” asked Squirrel. “Did you find out why we stopped so hard?”
Then Jix, leaning out of the entrance to the parlor car, pointed over Milos’s shoulder, to the south. “There! Do you see that?”
Milos looked to where he was pointing. Night was falling quickly; the sky was already dark… and yet there was light coming from behind a nearby hill.
“Is that a city?” suggested Jill, probably hoping she could go reaping again.
“I don’t think so,” Milos said, his worry building. It looked like headlights in a haze, but the source of the light was still hidden by the hill. “It’s getting brighter.”
Jix released a growl that sounded much more like the real thing than any of his previous attempts. “We can’t stop here!” he told them. “We have to leave. Now!”
“We can’t leave!” Milos told him, pointing to the building in their path.
“Then go backward!” Jix shouted.
“Backwardsh?” said Moose. “Back to where?”
“Anywhere!”
Then there came a sound like the mechanical groaning of some infernal engine.
… Grr-ah-Grr-ah-Grr-ah-Grr-cha! Grr-ah-Grr-ah-Grr-ah-Grr-cha. ..
By now kids were looking out of the train windows, pointing at the light, murmuring to one another, while the sound coming over the hill got louder and more menacing by the second.
… Grr-ah-Grr-ah-Grr-ah-Grr-cha! Grr-ah-Grr-ah-Grr-ah-Grr-cha. ..
“What is that?” asked Jill. “Some kind of machine?”
“No,” said Jix, just as the source of the light finally crested the hill. “It’s a war cry.”
Now it was clear what that light had been. It was the combined glow of countless Afterlights coming over the hill toward the train. This was an invading force.
“ Bozhe moi! ” It didn’t take a Russian translator to get the gist of what Milos had said.
As wave after wave of Afterlights came over the hill toward them, the awful sound resolved into the voices of a mob shouting their singular war cry:
… Oogah-oogah-oogah-cha-ka! Oogah-oogah-oogah-cha-ka!
Mary’s kids were not prepared for this.
Months ago, when she had gathered her army of children, she had readied them for battle against the Chocolate Ogre-but back then, they knew exactly what they were up against, and had the advantage of being the attackers. This, however, was an ambush, and no one knew what to do, so everyone panicked.
Kids ran from the train, then ran back to the train, then ran out again. Kids screamed, they cried, and they fought with one another, as if that was somehow going to help.
“Stop it!” Milos demanded “Everyone stay calm!” But of course no one did.
… Oogah-oogah-oogah-cha-ka! Oogah-oogah-oogah-cha-ka!
The approaching marauders had faces painted with neon-bright war paint-green, yellow, and red-that glowed even more brightly than their bodies did, and many of them held what appeared to be weapons.
Milos ran up to the engine cab, where Speedo looked at him, wide-eyed and frozen like a rabbit before the radial. “What do we do?” warbled Speedo as Milos climbed in.
Milos looked toward the mansion, still a quarter mile ahead of them. “We ram it!” Milos said.
“Ram it? But…”
… OOGAH-OOGAH-OOGAH-CHA-KA! OOGAH-OOGAH-OOGAH-CHA-KA!
“I said RAM IT!”
Milos didn’t wait for Speedo. He grabbed the control stick and pushed it all the way forward.
