“Why don’t you just give up,” suggested Allie, who was in the perfect position to heckle them. “After all, Milos, you should be used to failure by now—and you’re so good at it!”
He glared at her. “Maybe we should crash right through it,” Milos suggested, “using your face as the battering ram.”
Allie shrugged. “Fine with me,” she said, knowing that it was impossible for her to be hurt in Everlost. “I just want to see the look on your face when the train derails and sinks to the center of the earth.”
Milos just grunted, knowing she was right. One would think that ramming a wooden building would just shatter it, and the train would chug on through—but Everlost was not the living world. The church had crossed into Everlost, and things that cross into Everlost are permanent. They can’t be broken, unless it was their purpose to break. They can’t be destroyed unless destruction is what they were designed for. So crashing into the church was likely to derail the train, since the church’s memory of staying put was probably more powerful than a speeding locomotive.
“How did it even get here?” Speedo asked, fuming. As the engineer, he had a singular mission: get the train moving. Anything other than forward momentum was his own failure as far as he was concerned. Typical for a thirteen-year-old. Milos, who had crossed into Everlost at sixteen, was a bit more calm about it. Still, Allie secretly relished the fact that every problem they came across made Milos look less competent in his role. Charisma went only so far.
“It got here,” Milos calmly explained, “because it was built and torn down before the tracks were.”
“So,” said Speedo, impatient as ever, “why is it in our way?”
Milos sighed, and Allie chimed in her response. “Because, genius, if the living world tears two things down in the same place, and both cross into Everlost, we’re stuck with both of them.”
“We didn’t ask you!” snapped Speedo.
“But she is right,” Milos admitted. “Mary called it ‘jamnation.’”
“Right. And then there’s ‘Marification,’” Allie added. “That’s Mary Hightower making up words so she’ll sound smarter than she really is.”
Speedo glared up at her. “You shut up about Miss Mary, or your new place will be inside the boiler.”
“Oh, dry up,” she said, which irked Speedo even more, because, as everyone knew, he couldn’t. Allie hated the fact that Mary, the self-proclaimed savior of lost children, had been elevated into goddess status by her mere absence. As for jamnation, Allie had come across plenty of examples of it in her travels. The strangest had been a school from the 1950s built on the same spot where a Revolutionary War fort once stood. When the school burned down, and crossed into Everlost, the result was a bizarre juxtaposition of brick and stone, classrooms, and garrisons. In Everlost the two buildings both still existed in the same space, and were melded together in bizarre ways.
The evidence pointed to the same sort of thing here: that the foundation of the church and the train tracks had merged, leaving the train at a permanent dead end.
Allie, however, knew something Milos and Speedo didn’t, and if she played it right, she could finally make a bargain for her freedom.
“I know a way past the church,” Allie told them.
Speedo thought she was just taunting them again, but Milos knew her well enough to know she wouldn’t say it unless she meant it. He climbed up on the cowcatcher, wedging himself between the train and the church so he could get close to Allie. Close enough to grab her—or slap her—but Allie knew he wouldn’t. In spite of everything, Milos was a gentleman. Sort of.
“What are your thoughts?” he asked her.
“Why should I tell you?”
“Cooperation,” Milos told her, “may help your situation.”
It was exactly what Allie hoped he would say.
“She’s just wasting our time,” grumbled Speedo, but Milos ignored him, and leaned close to her so that Speedo couldn’t hear. “I cannot offer you freedom,” he whispered. “You are too much of a threat.”
“But I don’t need to be tied to the engine.”
“It is for your own protection,” Milos said, as he had told her before. “Mary’s children need a scapegoat. They need to see you punished, and since we feel no pain in Everlost, strapping you to the front of the train looks far more punishing than it really is. In fact,” Milos added, “I envy you. Your journey west is far more invigorating than mine.”
“There are things worse than pain,” Allie told him, thinking of the humiliation she had to endure by being a captive on display.
“How about this?” Milos said. “If what you have to say helps us, I will imprison you in a more comfortable manner.”
“Untie me first,” Allie said, “and then I’ll tell you.”
Milos smiled. “Not a chance.”
Allie smiled right back. “Well, it was worth a try.” She knew that Milos was vain and self-serving—and that his conscience only went as far as it met his needs—but he did have a moral code, if you could call it that. He was a man of his word. Odd that Allie felt she could trust him after all the terrible things she had seen him do.
“I see lots of things from the front of this train,” Allie said. “Things that the rest of you don’t see.” She paused, stretching it out, making them wait for it. Then she said, “I saw something when the train entered this valley—about a mile back.”
“What did you see?” asked Milos.
“If you’re not going to untie me,” Allie told him, “you’re going to have to figure it out for yourself.”
“Very well,” said Milos. “We are in no hurry to leave anyway. We’ll figure out our own way around it.” Then he looked at the blank white face of the church before them. “In the meantime, enjoy the view.”
Milos stormed away from Allie, refusing to be manipulated by her. She was the prisoner, not him—although more and more he felt like his own hands were tied. Around him dozens of Mary’s children had already come out of the train. Some played hide-and-seek, or tag—always moving fast enough to keep from sinking into the living world. There were girls on the roofs of the train cars playing jump rope, and kids beneath the wheels, playing cards—as if they knew they would be stuck here for days, maybe even weeks. In fact, they had come to expect it.
Of course, they could always leave the train and continue on foot, but Milos decided long ago that it would not be wise. The train was a fortress for them. It could protect them against whatever they came across—and although they had not seen a single Afterlight since crossing the Mississippi, it didn’t mean they weren’t there.
In the weeks since commandeering the train, Mary’s Afterlights had all settled into their own comfort zones, and the rail car population divided along predictable lines—or at least predictable by Everlost standards. There was an all-girls car, and an all-boys car, for those who bonded strictly along gender lines. There were a few “insomnoid” cars for souls who chose to give up sleep entirely, since slumber was optional for Afterlights. There was a car for sports-minded Afterlights who ran from the train each time it stopped, to play one ball game or another, and a car for those kids whose repetitive daily routines involved quiet, indoor activities—and of course the “sleeping” car, and the “prison” car—both of which served their own unique purposes.
To keep Mary’s children happy and subdued, Milos made sure that the train would stop twice a day for several hours of playtime, and each day the games would eerily mimic the day before, down to the scores, the fights, and the things the kids shouted to one another. Each kid fell into his or her own personal pattern that was the same day after day—what Mary had called “perfectition”: the perfect repetition of a child’s perfect day. Milos figured the deeper the trenches of their personal ruts, the less Mary’s children would bother him.
Then there were times like this, where the train came to one dead end or another, and was stuck for days until they figured out a proper course of action.
Milos looked back to the church, and wondered what Mary would do . . . but he wouldn’t be getting advice from her anytime soon.
As he strode alongside the train, considering the situation, Jackin’ Jill came up to him. As always, her blond hair was wild and full of nettles, as if she had been attacked by a tumbleweed. Was it Milos’s imagination or were the nettles in her hair multiplying?
“If you’ve gotten us stuck again, then we should go skinjacking,” she said. As a skinjacker, she, like Milos, was much closer to life, and did not settle as easily into daily routines. But Milos knew Jill didn’t just want to go skinjacking. When she wanted to possess the living, she had a darker purpose in mind.
“Call it what it is,” said Milos. “You don’t want to go skinjacking. You want to go reaping, don’t you?”
“My last orders from Mary were very clear,” Jill said. “I won’t put everything on hold just because you’re a wimp.”
Milos turned on her sharply. He would never strike a girl, but Jill often brought him to the very edge of his temper. “What I did for Mary proves I am anything but a coward.”
“So why do you only let us reap once a week?”
“Because there needs to be limits!” Milos shouted.
“Mary’s vision has no limits, does it?” The fact that Jill could stay calm made him even angrier, but he resolved to calm himself down. Losing his temper gave her control, and he was the one in charge here. He had to remember that.
“The difference between you and me,” said Milos, “is that I reap because it is what Mary wants. But you do it because you enjoy it.”
Jill did not deny it. “In a perfect world,” she said, “shouldn’t we all enjoy our jobs?”
Milos agreed to lead the skinjackers on a reaping excursion that night, but under the strictest of rules. “We will take no more than we can carry, and I will choose where and when.”
“Whatever floats your boat,” Jill said, caring only that she would get her chance to do her dirty work.
Moose and Squirrel were also part of the skinjacking team, bringing their number to four. Although Allie was also a skinjacker, Milos knew she would never come reaping, even if he did set her free from the train.
“Can I take two, Milosh?” Moose asked. “Pleashe?” Moose was a linebacker who had made his unfortunate crossing into Everlost during a high school football game. As such, he was doomed to wear a blue and silver football uniform. That uniform included a helmet and an eternal mouth guard stuck between his teeth, so everything he said came out slurred.
“Yeah, yeah,” said Squirrel, “Moose can carry mine back to the train.”
“Thatsh not what I meant!” said Moose.
Squirrel was a twitchy rail of a kid. Milos never knew the manner in which Squirrel had crossed into Everlost, only that his exit from the world of the living had been supremely embarrassing, as evidenced by the way Squirrel’s cheeks and ears would go red at the mention of it. Since Afterlights had no flesh or blood, one had to be severely embarrassed for the distant memory of blood to turn one’s face red.
