The Talisman

reality of all this home to Richard – brought it home with a final, undeniable thud.
    Then Jack’s voice was calling him back from far away: ‘Hey, Richie! Jason! You almost fell over the side!’
    Finally they were in the cab again.
    Jack pushed the lever into the forward gear, pressed down on the accelerator bar, and Morgan of Orris’s oversized flashlight started to move forward again. Jack glanced down at the floor of the cab: four Uzi machine-guns, almost twenty piles of clips, ten to a pile, and ten hand grenades with pull-pins that looked like the pop-tops of beercans.
    ‘If we haven’t got enough stuff now,’ Jack said, ‘we might as well forget it.’
    ‘What are you expecting, Jack?’
    Jack only shook his head.
    ‘Guess you must think I’m a real jerk, huh?’ Richard asked.
    Jack grinned. ‘Always have, chum.’
    ‘Don’t call me chum!’
    ‘Chum-chum- chum !’
    This time the old joke raised a small smile. Not much, and it rather highlighted the growing line of lip-blisters on Richard’s mouth . . . but better than nothing.
    ‘Will you be okay if I go back to sleep?’ Richard asked, brushing machine-gun clips aside and settling in a corner of the cab with Jack’s serape over him. ‘All that climbing and carrying . . . I think I really must be sick because I feel really bushed.’
    ‘I’ll be fine,’ Jack said. Indeed, he seemed to be getting a second wind. He supposed he would need it before long.
    ‘I can smell the ocean,’ Richard said, and in his voice Jack heard an amazing mixture of love, loathing, nostalgia, and fear. Richard’s eyes slipped closed.
    Jack pushed the accelerator bar all the way down. His feeling that the end – some sort of end – was now close had never been stronger.
    4
    The last mean and miserable vestiges of the Blasted Lands were gone before the moon set. The grain had reappeared. It was coarser here than it had been in Ellis-Breaks, but it still radiated a feeling of cleanness and health. Jack heard the faint calling of birds which sounded like gulls. It was an inexpressibly lonely sound, in these great open rolling fields which smelled faintly of fruit and more pervasively of ocean salt.
    After midnight the train began to hum through stands of trees – most of them were evergreens, and their piney scent, mixed with the salty tang in the air, seemed to cement the connection between this place he was coming to and the place from which he had set out. He and his mother had never spent a great deal of time in northern California – perhaps because Bloat vacationed there often – but he remembered Lily’s telling him that the land around Mendocino and Sausalito looked very much like New England, right down to the salt-boxes and Cape Cods. Film companies in need of New England settings usually just went upstate rather than travelling all the way across the country, and most audiences never knew the difference.
    This is how it should be. In a weird way, I’m coming back to the place I left behind.
    Richard: Are you expecting to fight an army?
    He was glad Richard had gone to sleep, so he wouldn’t have to answer that question – at least, not yet.
    Anders: Devil-things. For the bad Wolfs. To take to the black hotel.
    The devil-things were Uzi machine-guns, plastic explosive, grenades. The devil-things were here. The bad Wolfs were not. The boxcar, however, was empty, and Jack found that fact terribly persuasive.
    Here’s a story for you, Richie-boy, and I’m very glad you’re asleep so I don’t have to tell it to you. Morgan knows I’m coming and he’s planning a surprise party. Only it’s werewolves instead of naked girls who are going to jump out of the cake, and they’re supposed to have Uzi machine-guns and grenades as party-favors. Well, we sort of hijacked his train, and we’re running ten or twelve hours ahead of schedule, but if we’re heading into an encampment full of Wolfs waiting to catch the Territories choo-choo – and I think that’s just what we’re doing – we’re going to need all the surprise we can get.
    Jack ran a hand up the side of his face.
    It would be easier to stop the train well away from wherever Morgan’s hit-squad was, and make a big circle around the encampment. Easier and safer, too.
    But that would leave the bad Wolfs around, Richie, can you dig it?
    He looked down at the arsenal on the floor of the cab and wondered if he could really be planning a commando raid on Morgan’s Wolf Brigade. Some