But the real question was hidden beneath her words. She was more interested in knowing how much time he had left.
“The time will come that my slumbering body dies, and I can no longer furjack, just as that time will come for you.”
“So you know about that. . . .”
Jix nodded. His Excellency had explained to him right away about how his body was in a coma—and how his gift of skinjacking was only a temporary one. “When I can no longer do it—when I become a normal Afterlight, I will find a coin, and pay my passage into the light.”
“You mean you don’t have your coin now?”
“No.” The truth was, His Excellency had his own special use for Evercoins, but Jix wasn’t about to tell Jill that. “Why is your hair like that?” he asked her.
“Tornado,” she answered, and shook her nasty, nettled hair. “You hate my hair, don’t you? Everyone hates it. I don’t care.”
“It’s wild,” he told her. “I like wild.”
She squirmed at that. “How about you?” she asked. “How did you wind up in Everlost?”
“I was attacked in my sleep,” he told her. What he didn’t tell her was that he was attacked by a jaguar that had wandered into the village. He liked to think that maybe he had furjacked that same cat once or twice in his travels.
When the train reached Austin, Jill had asked Jix to join them when they went out reaping. “You can jack a circus tiger,” she suggested, “and eat some really obnoxious kid in the crowd.” Jix couldn’t tell whether or not she was kidding, so he made up an answer that was equally unnerving.
“Humans don’t taste good to a cat,” he told her. “I only eat them when there’s nothing better.”
He did not join them, because he was not convinced the gods would approve of reaping. True, the Mayan gods were fairly bloodthirsty—particularly the jaguar gods—but there was a proper sense of nobility to those ancient stories of carnage. There was nothing noble about reaping.
When they reached Austin, there was finally a dead westbound track, heading toward San Antonio. Southwest, more accurately, but there was a very good chance that once they reached San Antonio, it would become a northwest track, heading toward the western states. Then, right around sunset the next day, as they neared San Antonio, the train came screeching to an abrupt halt.
All of Jix’s senses peaked to high alert, and he instinctively knew there was going to be trouble.
Milos left the parlor car, furious at Speedo for bringing the train to such a jarring stop—but even before he reached the engine, he saw the reason.
“Problem!” shouted Allie from the front of the train. “We’ve got a problem here!”
“I can see that!” Milos shouted back.
Once again, there was a building on the tracks. Speedo had managed to stop the train about a quarter mile away from it this time—but seeing it from this distance was almost worse. It wasn’t something so small and quaint as a clapboard church. You couldn’t even call it a house. This thing was a mansion.
Speedo leaned out of the engine compartment, looking like he was dripping sweat instead of pool water. “H-H-How many Afterlights do you think it took to move that onto the tracks?” asked Speedo, nervously. Milos did not want to consider the answer.
“We’ll send a team to investigate,” Milos said.
The skinjackers now peered out of the parlor car at Milos for an explanation.
“What gives, what gives?” asked Squirrel. “Did you find out why we stopped so hard?”
Then Jix, leaning out of the entrance to the parlor car, pointed over Milos’s shoulder, to the south. “There! Do you see that?”
Milos looked to where he was pointing. Night was falling quickly; the sky was already dark . . . and yet there was light coming from behind a nearby hill.
“Is that a city?” suggested Jill, probably hoping she could go reaping again.
“I don’t think so,” Milos said, his worry building. It looked like headlights in a haze, but the source of the light was still hidden by the hill. “It’s getting brighter.”
Jix released a growl that sounded much more like the real thing than any of his previous attempts. “We can’t stop here!” he told them. “We have to leave. Now!”
“We can’t leave!” Milos told him, pointing to the building in their path.
“Then go backward!” Jix shouted.
“Backwardsh?” said Moose. “Back to where?”
“Anywhere!”
Then there came a sound like the mechanical groaning of some infernal engine.
. . . Grr-ah—Grr-ah—Grr-ah—Grr-cha! Grr-ah—Grr-ah—Grr-ah—Grr-cha . . .
By now kids were looking out of the train windows, pointing at the light, murmuring to one another, while the sound coming over the hill got louder and more menacing by the second.
. . . Grr-ah—Grr-ah—Grr-ah—Grr-cha! Grr-ah—Grr-ah—Grr-ah—Grr-cha . . .
“What is that?” asked Jill. “Some kind of machine?”
“No,” said Jix, just as the source of the light finally crested the hill. “It’s a war cry.”
Now it was clear what that light had been. It was the combined glow of countless Afterlights coming over the hill toward the train. This was an invading force.
“Bozhe moĭ!” It didn’t take a Russian translator to get the gist of what Milos had said.
As wave after wave of Afterlights came over the hill toward them, the awful sound resolved into the voices of a mob shouting their singular war cry:
. . . Oogah—oogah—oogah-cha-ka! Oogah—oogah—oogah-cha-ka!
Mary’s kids were not prepared for this.
Months ago, when she had gathered her army of children, she had readied them for battle against the Chocolate Ogre—but back then, they knew exactly what they were up against, and had the advantage of being the attackers. This, however, was an ambush, and no one knew what to do, so everyone panicked.
Kids ran from the train, then ran back to the train, then ran out again. Kids screamed, they cried, and they fought with one another, as if that was somehow going to help.
“Stop it!” Milos demanded “Everyone stay calm!” But of course no one did.
. . . Oogah—oogah—oogah-cha-ka! Oogah—oogah—oogah-cha-ka!
The approaching marauders had faces painted with neon-bright war paint—green, yellow, and red—that glowed even more brightly than their bodies did, and many of them held what appeared to be weapons.
Milos ran up to the engine cab, where Speedo looked at him, wide-eyed and frozen like a rabbit before the radial. “What do we do?” warbled Speedo as Milos climbed in.
Milos looked toward the mansion, still a quarter mile ahead of them. “We ram it!” Milos said.
“Ram it? But . . .”
. . . OOGAH—OOGAH—OOGAH-CHA-KA! OOGAH—OOGAH—OOGAH-CHA-KA!
“I said RAM IT!”
Milos didn’t wait for Speedo. He grabbed the control stick and pushed it all the way forward.
The couplers shuddered, the wheels moaned, and the train began to move, picking up speed, with the first of the invaders just fifty yards away.
“I don’t like this!” Speedo complained, bracing himself against the bulkhead. “I don’t like this at all!”
But Milos knew what he was doing. The mansion, just like the church, was resting on the tracks. The attackers had put it there—which meant that the train could knock it off of the tracks and barrel right on past, escaping the mob. All it took was enough momentum.
Jix, who still hung out of the door of the parlor car, was nearly thrown off by the sudden momentum, and Allie, who, as always, had the best view of the rapidly approaching mansion, screamed, calling Milos every foul name devised in the English language, but her voice was drowned out by the roar of the engine as they accelerated toward the mansion. She had no idea what would happen to her once she hit. The impact couldn’t hurt or kill her, but what if the crash tore her soul to bits, and every bit, still alive and kicking, sunk down to the center of the earth? Whatever was coming, she knew it wouldn’t be pleasant. She shut her eyes, and gritted her teeth as she, and the train, connected with the building at sixty miles per hour.
CHAPTER 14
The Neon Nightmares
In the early 1900s, a man who had made a fortune in oil decided to build a ranch in the middle of nowhere, complete with a thirty-room mansion: a showplace of a home fit for balls and galas and all those kinds of high society events that the rich attend. It was built on the right-of-way of an old rail line, but as that line no longer existed, no one thought it was much of a problem.
For a dozen years or so, the mansion was the talk of Texas; however, lightning strikes the rich and poor alike, and on one unfortunate night, a sizable lightning bolt set the place aflame. It burned to the ground in just a few hours. Now in the living world there’s nothing but a hint of a clearing where the mansion once stood—but such a home, built with the blood, cash, and tears of a man who loved every inch of it, could not vanish from existence. The mansion crossed into Everlost in exactly the same spot where it was erected . . .
. . . which was right smack in the middle of the ghost train’s path.
When the train struck the mansion, the building did not slide off the tracks, because, unlike the little church, it was exactly where it was supposed to be—and although the building was shaken down to its foundation by the locomotive strike, it did not yield. In the end, the mansion wanted to remain where it was more than the train wanted to barrel through—and so the train derailed.
The train cars uncoupled, folding together like an accordion, riding over one another, or just flying off the tracks like model trains running over a toy car—because every child with a train set eventually creates a massive derailing as part of the fun—and like toy trains, these train cars could not be damaged by the crash. They were simply thrown every which way.
Everyone experienced the crash differently.
Jix, who hadn’t been able to decide whether to stay on the train or jump, had clung to the hand rail of the parlor car, and was sent flying by the impact. He could only hope he had enough cat in him to land on his feet.
Allie got the worst of it. She was shredded by the impact, but the shredding only lasted for an instant; then even before the engine stopped tumbling, her body was stitching itself back together. It felt like worms weaving through her insides. Meanwhile, the world spun as the engine tumbled before finally coming to rest. Allie thought the crash would loosen her bonds, but they didn’t. She was still tied to the nose of the train. She was right side up now, which meant that the engine was upside down—but even though it had settled, it was still shifting, and she was tilting slowly backward. She quickly realized what was happening; the engine was sinking tail-first into the living world. In a minute—maybe less—it would sink all the way down and she would be submerged in the earth.
In the engine cab, Speedo was thrown against the control panel and dazed as the engine launched off the tracks, and when it finally stopped tumbling, Milos was no longer in the engine cab with him—he had been ejected out of the open door upon impact.