The Talisman

gun.’
    ‘Jack—’
    ‘Richard, get a gun! ’
    Richard bent over and got one of the Uzis. ‘I hate guns,’ he said again.
    ‘Yeah, I know. I’m not particularly keen on them myself, Richie-boy. But it’s payback time.’
    6
    The tracks were now approaching a high stockade wall. From behind it came grunts and yells, cheers, rhythmic clapping, the sound of bootheels punching down on bare earth in steady rhythms. There were other, less identifiable sounds as well, but all of them fell into a vague set for Jack – military training operation . The area between the guardhouse and the approaching stockade wall was half a mile wide, and with all this other stuff going on, Jack doubted that anyone had heard his single shot. The train, being electric, was almost silent. The advantage of surprise should still be on their side.
    The tracks disappeared beneath a closed double gate in the side of the stockade wall. Jack could see chinks of daylight between the rough-peeled logs.
    ‘Jack, you better slow down.’ They were now a hundred and fifty yards from the gate. From behind it, bellowing voices chanted, ‘ Sound-HOFF! Hun-too! Hree-FO! Sound-HOFF! ’ Jack thought again of H. G. Wells’s manimals and shivered.
    ‘No way, chum. We’re through the gate. You got just about time to do the Fish Cheer.’
    ‘Jack, you’re crazy!’
    ‘I know.’
    A hundred yards. The batteries hummed. A blue spark jumped, sizzling. Bare earth flowed past them on either side. No grain here , Jack thought. If Noël Coward had written a play about Morgan Sloat, I guess he would have called it Blight Spirit.
    ‘Jack, what if this creepy little train jumps its tracks?’
    ‘Well, it might, I guess,’ Jack said.
    ‘Or what if it breaks through the gate and the tracks just end ?’
    ‘That’d be one on us, wouldn’t it?’
    Fifty yards.
    ‘Jack, you really have lost your mind, haven’t you?’
    ‘I guess so. Take your gun off safety, Richard.’
    Richard flicked the safety.
    Thuds . . . grunts . . . marching men . . . the creak of leather . . . yells . . . an inhuman, laughing shriek that made Richard cringe. And yet Jack saw a clear resolution in Richard’s face that made Jack grin with pride. He means to stick by me – old Rational Richard or not, he really means to stick by me .
    Twenty-five yards.
    Shrieks . . . squeals . . . shouted commands . . . and a thick, reptilian cry – Groooo-OOOO! – that made the hair stand up on the back of Jack’s neck.
    ‘If we get out of this,’ Jack said, ‘I’ll buy you a chilidog at Dairy Queen.’
    ‘ Barf me out! ’ Richard yelled, and, incredibly, he began to laugh. In that instant the unhealthy yellow seemed to fade a bit from his face.
    Five yards – and the peeled posts which made up the gate looked solid, yes, very solid, and Jack just had time to wonder if he hadn’t made a great big fat mistake.
    ‘Get down, chum!’
    ‘Don’t call m—’
    The train hit the stockade gate, throwing them both forward.
    7
    The gate was really quite strong, and in addition it was double-barred across the inside with two large logs. Morgan’s train was not terribly big, and the batteries were nearly flat after its long run across the Blasted Lands. The collision surely would have derailed it, and both boys might well have been killed in the wreck, but the gate had an Achilles’ heel. New hinges, forged according to modern American processes, were on order. They had not yet arrived, however, and the old iron hinges snapped when the engine hit the gate.
    The train came rolling into the stockade at twenty-five miles an hour, pushing the amputated gate in front of it. An obstacle course had been built around the stockade’s perimeter, and the gate, acting like a snowplow, began shoving makeshift wooden hurdles in front of it, turning them, rolling them, snapping them into splinters.
    It also struck a Wolf who had been doing punishment laps. His feet disappeared under the bottom of the moving gate and were chewed off, customized boots and all. Shrieking and growling, his Change beginning, the Wolf began to claw-climb his way up the gate with fingernails which were growing rapidly to the length and sharpness of a telephone lineman’s spikes. The gate was now forty feet inside the stockade. Amazingly, he got almost to the top before Jack dropped the gear-lever into neutral. The train stopped. The gate fell over, puffing up big dust and crushing the unfortunate Wolf beneath it. Underneath