The Dead

The locomotive hurtled close to the bridge. Duncan guessed that the engineer was now close enough to see that slight rise, the slope in the tracks where the bridge hinged with the trestle.

The train wailed one last time, a ringing note that sounded almost like a scream of terror. Brakes squealed. The train slowed, just barely. Then the locomotive reached the base of the incline.

It derailed immediately, veering to the right, but momentum kept it skidding upward, the passenger cars trailing behind. When it came to the end of the bridge, the drop was enough to make it heel onto its side and roll over the edge of the trestle. Its coupling snapped, but not before the cars behind began to roll; the train’s front end twisted clockwise. Car after car followed the locomotive into the Squankum, striking with huge white splashes like bomb-blasts. The whole train went over the side, all eleven cars, sinking swiftly from sight.

Duncan put his eye back to the telescope, searching the water for survivors. After a time, some floundered to the surface.

Now at last there was a way he might be able to help. He got up and ran from the beach, back to the main path, pelting west as fast as he could, images of richly rewarded heroism filling his mind. He envisioned himself on Nightline, chit-chatting with Ted Koppel. He thought of his ex-wife standing dumbstruck on the sidelines as the President of the United States pinned the Congressional Medal of Honor on his chest. Reaching the rail embankment, he scrambled up onto the clinkers.

And stopped in his tracks.

A man stood some distance up the line, facing him. He seemed to be wearing a trooper-uniform, but this was almost certainly not the trooper from the booth; this man was much taller, with a massive build. He was too far away for Duncan to see his face clearly, but Dunk thought he could make out a tremendous grin.

The man flung his head back, as if with a peal of silent laughter, and his hands jerked up from his sides with awful steel-trap speed, reaching straight out toward Duncan, clawing the air; he started forward at a stiff but impossibly fast run.

“What the fuck?” Duncan said, then spun and raced back to the trail. He knew he wouldn’t be able to outdistance the man; he could only hope to lose him among the weeds.

Rounding a bend, Duncan split off onto a narrow side path, guessing that the man, fast as he was, could not have been close enough to see him do it. On and on between the high tasseled weeds he dashed.

At first he caught no sound of pursuit. He figured the man had continued along the main path. Gasping, he began to slow. His lungs burned, and there was a vicious stitch in his side.

Then he heard the swift heavy footfalls, the rustle-and-rattle of a body brushing weeds. The man had doubled back, taken the turn.

Duncan sped up again. Breath exploded from his lips. His legs pumped. He forced as much speed into them as he could, trying to ignore the fatigue tightening his muscles, the pain in his lungs and chest. He hadn’t run so much since the track team in high school.

He hit a long straight stretch. Midway along, he looked back.

A swift stiff-legged shadow, the trooper was about thirty feet behind, head still flung backward, white hands outstretched.

The straight stretch ended in an s-curve, beyond which lay a three-way fork. Duncan pelted into the left-hand path, went about fifteen feet, and dove deep into the weeds on the left, stems popping and crackling about him; striking the ground, glasses flying off, he lay still, one hand over his mouth to muffle his panting.

He heard his pursuer draw near and pause, apparently at the fork. Duncan twisted, looked back toward the path. Without his glasses, his vision was blurry, but he still made out a shadow rushing behind the moonsilvered silhouettes of the weeds. The temperature seemed to plummet.

The figure was gone in an instant. The cold vanished. The sound of footbeats faded, swallowed by the sigh of wind in the weeds.

Duncan let his hand drop away from his mouth. He took air in enormous gulps, and began to feel around for his glasses.

God, I hope I didn’t lose ‘em, he thought. Sixty Goddamn dollars a pair, and-

The footbeats were coming back. The shadow reappeared. Slowed. Stopped and turned. The cold settled over Duncan’s flesh again.

The man was standing right in front of the spot where Duncan had dived into the weeds. The wind died. Duncan thought he could hear the man whispering to himself in a dry lifeless voice. Duncan’s skin crawled. But despite his terror, a snatch of George Harrison drifted into his head:

I’ve got my mind set on you, I’ve got my mind set on you…

The man didn’t stir. Agonized with suspense, Duncan wondered why. Surely, if the trooper knew where he was, he would’ve made his move-

“Think so, Dunk?” asked the trooper.

Jesus, Duncan thought, paralyzed with panic.

“Nope,” said the trooper, and plunged forward into the weeds like a threshing machine gone berserk, arms flailing, bits of ripped stalk flying into the air above.

Duncan leaped up to flee, struggling to force a path through the growths in front of him. He barely went two paces before the trooper caught him, pushed him down, and jumped astride his back.

Duncan tried to roll, but the man kept him pinned. Duncan went for the pen-knife in his pocket, but his hand was blocked by the man’s right leg. He yelled and fought, but it did no good. A heavy blow cracked across the back of his head. Blackness billowed into his skull.

Done for, he told himself, and went under.

But writing himself off counted for nothing; lying on his back now, pervaded by an intense chill, he woke. The cold seemed to radiate from his assailant, who was sitting on his stomach; Dunk could barely breathe. Between the absence of his glasses, and the way the trooper’s head was silhouetted against the moonlit sky, Duncan could tell little about the man’s face, except for that gigantic grin.

Duncan’s hands were on his chest, bound. He shifted them toward his face, saw that they were tied with his own belt. He smashed them into the man’s solar plexus, but he might as well have been striking a boulder.

“Leave me alone!” he gasped. “Leave me…”

The trooper pressed Duncan’s arms back down with a frigid palm, and pushed his other hand close to Duncan’s eyes. Between the man’s fingers, Duncan could make out something dark, dirt maybe, with little bits of root and old dead weed sticking out.

“What are you going to do?” Dunk cried.

The trooper drew his arm back, then sent his fist crashing into Duncan’s mouth, smashing through his upper and lower teeth, driving his jaw down against his Adam’s apple. The sides of Duncan’s mouth bulged almost to bursting, and his throat swelled as the fist chugged partway down his windpipe. Duncan’s head and neck reverberated with pain.

The trooper opened his fist and pulled it back, dragging a filthy taste of dirt and rotten weed across Duncan’s tongue. Dunk’s throat was clogged with a solid plug of earth.

Why? Dunk thought dazedly. Why this way?

Vomit spewed up from his belly, but couldn’t break through the plug; the pressure was horrendous. It seemed he was going to explode. He tried to cough, but felt as if all the muscles in his throat had burst. His eyes rolled up and closed.

He was dimly aware of his attacker shifting. There was a sound like a spade being driven into the earth beside him; was the trooper grabbing another handful?

Momentarily Dunk sensed something rushing toward his face, and the fist rammed into his toothless maw again, driving the first handful in further, depositing a second for good measure.

The trooper pulled his hand out slowly. Duncan writhed and gagged. His eyes bulged open. He could practically feel the blood vessels popping in them.

The trooper leaned forward, pushing his face down near Duncan’s, close enough for Duncan to see it clearly.

The horror of that sight was almost enough to make his strangulation seem trivial.

He tried to scream, but no sound could force its way through his throat. He jerked his head aside, trying to look