The Talisman

hand.
    ‘I want to open up one or two of those cases on the flatcar and see if we can get ourselves some weapons.’
    ‘I hate and detest guns,’ Richard said. ‘You should, too. If nobody had any guns, your father—’
    ‘Yeah, and if pigs had wings they’d fly,’ Jack said. ‘I’m pretty sure somebody’s following us.’
    ‘Well, maybe it’s my dad,’ Richard said in a hopeful voice.
    Jack grunted, and eased the little gearshift out of the first slot. The train appreciably began to lose power. When it had coasted to a halt, Jack put the shift in neutral. ‘Can you climb down okay, do you think?’
    ‘Oh sure,’ Richard said, and stood up quickly. His legs bowed out at the knees, and he sat down hard on the bench. His face now seemed even grayer than it had been, and moisture shone on his forehead and upper lip. ‘Ah, maybe not,’ he whispered.
    ‘Just take it easy,’ Jack said, and moved beside him and placed one hand on the crook of his elbow, the other on Richard’s damp, warm forehead. ‘Relax.’ Richard closed his eyes briefly, then looked into Jack’s own eyes with an expression of perfect trust.
    ‘I tried to do it too fast,’ he said. ‘I’m all pins and needles from staying in the same position for so long.’
    ‘Nice and easy, then,’ Jack said, and helped a hissing Richard get to his feet.
    ‘Hurts.’
    ‘Only for a little while. I need your help, Richard.’
    Richard experimentally stepped forward, and hissed in air again. ‘Ooch.’ He moved the other leg forward. Then he leaned forward slightly and slapped his palms against his thighs and calves. As Jack watched, Richard’s face altered, but this time not with pain – a look of almost rubbery astonishment had printed itself there.
    Jack followed the direction of his friend’s eyes and saw one of the featherless, monkey-faced birds gliding past the front of the train.
    ‘Yeah, there’re a lot of funny things out here,’ Jack said. ‘I’m going to feel a lot better if we can find some guns under that tarp.’
    ‘What do you suppose is on the other side of those hills?’ Richard asked. ‘More of the same?’
    ‘No, I think there are more people over there,’ Jack said. ‘If you can call them people. I’ve caught somebody watching us twice.’
    At the expression of quick panic which flooded into Richard’s face, Jack said, ‘I don’t think it was anybody from your school. But it could be something just as bad – I’m not trying to scare you, buddy, but I’ve seen a little more of the Blasted Lands than you have.’
    ‘The Blasted Lands,’ Richard said dubiously. He squinted out at the red dusty valley with its scabrous patches of piss-colored grass. ‘Oh – that tree – ah . . .’
    ‘I know,’ Jack said. ‘You have to just sort of learn to ignore it.’
    ‘Who on earth would create this kind of devastation?’ Richard asked. ‘This isn’t natural, you know.’
    ‘Maybe we’ll find out someday.’ Jack helped Richard leave the cab, so that both stood on a narrow running board that covered the tops of the wheels. ‘Don’t get down in that dust,’ he warned Richard. ‘We don’t know how deep it is. I don’t want to have to pull you out of it.’
    Richard shuddered – but it may have been because he had just noticed out of the side of his eye another of the screaming, anguished trees. Together the two boys edged along the side of the stationary train until they could swing onto the coupling of the empty boxcar. From there a narrow metal ladder led to the roof of the car. On the boxcar’s far end another ladder let them descend to the flatcar.
    Jack pulled at the thick hairy rope, trying to remember how Anders had loosened it so easily. ‘I think it’s here,’ Richard said, holding up a twisted loop like a hangman’s noose. ‘Jack?’
    ‘Give it a try.’
    Richard was not strong enough to loosen the knot by himself, but when Jack helped him tug on the protruding cord, the ‘noose’ smoothly disappeared, and the tarpaulin collapsed over the nest of boxes. Jack pulled the edge back over those closest – MACHINE PARTS – and over a smaller set of boxes Jack had not seen before, marked LENSES . ‘There they are,’ he said. ‘I just wish we had a crowbar.’ He glanced up toward the rim of the valley, and a tortured tree opened its mouth and silently yowled. Was that another head up there, peering over? It might have been one of the enormous worms, sliding toward them. ‘Come