Free Spirit by J. P. Hightman Page B

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    Bruised and battered, the college boys strode toward other passengers on the snowfield. They passed Tess, who was moving away from the unconscious man, as a train conductor stumbled around a car.
    â€œGo,” he said, and Tess realized he had a leg injury. “Go, get to the engine car. They may have an emergency box, medicines…”
    Urged on by him, Tess went toward the engine, a black mass against the ivory landscape. It was a long walk, and the sounds of pain filled the air behind her.
    An engineer lay up ahead, apparently dead, thrown from the engine cabin. She approached and could see the engineer’s bodyhad leaked blood into the snow, a pool of it now slowly being sucked back into his body.
    She stopped, staring, unsure this had actually happened.
    â€œOh God…help me…” Her words escaped in a whisper, and she looked back for help. Instead she discovered the legless man behind her had vanished from the snow, and only the crush of ice where he lay remained as evidence he’d ever been there. People were too busy to take note, or to see her at all. The only one to look over was the conductor who’d sent her forward, now collapsed and in pain. He yelled impatiently, “We’ve got no way to signal anyone, we need supplies—is there anything in there?”
    Trembling, Tess moved closer to the locomotive, confused, hating every step she had to take. Inside the engine cab, a trainworker lay dead, his eyes open and fishlike. There was a strange mist about him, possibly steam, and Tess fumbled around to find anything useful when she was suddenly startled.
    The dead man had moved.
    She saw his reflection in a brass fitting in the engine cabin. His bloated, watery eyes had fixed upon her.
    She kept herself very still.
    â€œTess…,” the worker hissed out of unmoving lips.
    For an instant, she tried to ignore it, forcing herself to recognize the sound as being from her imagination, but the hiss came again, quieter. “Tess…”
    She turned in horror—stifling a scream—but the body was still. She stared at it, shaking, wondering if she’d conceived it out of true distress. But she knew she hadn’t.
    Bodies could do things they weren’t supposed to do. She andTobias had heard of at least half a dozen places on Earth where a body could move after death, sometimes long after death, if the elements were right. She had read of it many times, but to see it happen with her own eyes was more disturbing than she could have imagined.
    She emerged from the engine, terrified, and empty-handed. She needed Tobias, just for a moment, to settle her mind.
    Up ahead, helping passengers out of a car, Tobias yelled to her, “Did you see something? Was anything in there?”
    She couldn’t answer. He could see her fear, but he couldn’t come to her.
    Trying to control her mind, she walked back down the tracks toward him, her boots crunching through the snow. Sattler and the other young men walked the snowfield to her left, assisting the injured. Two other gentlemen, strong men who looked to be in their forties, pulled open a banged-up train door.
    Tess saw the first man signal Sattler. “A lot of these people are in a state of shock and immobility. They’re the first-order cases,” he told him.
    â€œWhere do we get blankets?” said Sattler.
    â€œBelieve they’ve got ’em in the last car.”
    Sattler, Michael, and Ned headed for the intact caboose, still on the rails.
    Tess continued toward Tobias, who was helping the dour, thin woman with the dolls get out of the train car.
    â€œMy dolls…,” she said. “You have to get them.”
    Tobias stared at her demurely. “We have more important concerns right now. Like you.”
    The thin woman stepped awkwardly, and Tobias’s hand slipped from her back to below her waist. “Be careful with me,” she snapped. “You will not