Chapter 4

She felt the cool air inside a tunnel. Countless dead bodies lay in heaps around her; Kieli stood in their center. Some had their throats slashed, some had their abdomens blown away by gunshots, some had swords sticking out of their backs. Most of them were already corpses, but there were some who soon would be. Those who could move walked over the corpses, desperately carrying their injured, exhausted limbs forward before they succumbed to gravity, aiming for the tunnel’s exit. Kieli had become one of the soldiers. She lent a shoulder to a badly wounded comrade as she dragged her own body, now missing a leg. When they were only a few steps away from the exit, a sword was thrust violently into her companion’s back. Supporting the weight of her collapsing friend, she turned around; behind her stood the “enemy.” His face was blurry, and she couldn’t make it out, but the one thing that impressed her was his blank expression, showing no sign of emotion. Without the slightest change in that expression, the “enemy” pulled the sword out of her friend’s back, releasing a powerful spray of blood. Kieli yelled something, and before she knew it, she had pointed the black gun in her hands toward the “enemy” and fired. The shot blew away the side of her opponent’s head and one of his eyes. But the opponent merely scowled slightly, shook his head in annoyance, and, turning his blood-soaked sword, slashed at her effortlessly, as if it was a conditioned response that had permeated his spinal cord. “Wah —” She opened her eyes, surprised at her own cry. She looked around, unable to remember where she was for a second. She was in a rectangular space that stretched narrowly before and behind her. The dim morning light penetrated the windows, spaced evenly along both walls, and she kept feeling a slight, regular vibration under her rear as she sat on a seat that was not particularly soft. Music played from an old-fashioned radio on the windowsill at a low volume, only loud enough to fill the boxed seats where Kieli sat with her company. The music was mixed with terrible static, as if it was coming from very far away, and it was a type of music Kieli had never heard before. “This is a song from a long time ago. It’s called rock.” She heard a low voice coming from the speaker over the music. “The Church forbids it, saying it’s savage or something, but guerilla radio stations play it in secret.” “So there used to be different kinds of music besides Church music before the War?” Kieli asked in a quiet voice to match the speaker’s volume, and the radio told her yes. “There were lots of different kinds. And a lot of different value systems. Of all of them, I like rock the best. Those are songs that are about living through your own power.” “Hmmm…” Kieli put her head against the cold glass of the window and gazed absently outside, turning an ear to the up-tempo melody that played faintly. She wasn’t the best singer and didn’t have a pretty voice, so she hated singing in the choir, but she felt like she might learn to like this music. She found herself thinking, “I wish Becca could have heard this.” Becca, with her bright, clear soprano voice and perfect pitch, was the most wonderful singer of hymns Kieli knew, but she actually seemed to have ten times more fun when she joked around singing parodies than when she was singing the boring hymns. She would be so happy to learn that the world had fun, free music like this and not just hymns. Under the sky, dotted with thin, sand-colored clouds, the train continued its course along its track through the vast wilderness. Becca had said good-bye immediately after they left the Easterbury station, and for one reason or another, conversation was sparse as they passed the night on the train. Now it was the next morning. Now that she thought of it, she had had a dream. Could it be that the soldier who refused to give up, who kept walking on his own even after losing a leg, was the Corporal…? “Corporal” was what Harvey called him, and apparently it was the rank he had achieved before dying in the War. He had died on the Easterbury battlefield in the final stages of the War, and the radio he possessed had made its way to a town very far away, where Harvey happened to pick it up, and they were on their way to where his physical remains slept. Or, that was the gist of their journey that Kieli had been able to figure out from their bits of conversation on the train. Still facing outside the window, Kieli cast a sidelong glance at Harvey as he sat diagonally across from her. He leaned deeply into his seat, resting his crossed legs on the one next to Kieli’s. Whether their conversation registered in his ears or not, his gaze was fixed diagonally downward, and he hadn’t moved an inch for a long time. It was no wonder Kieli had mistaken him for a corpse when she first saw him in front of Easterbury Station; when Harvey wasn’t doing anything, he stopped moving completely, as if he really was dead. The skin on his left cheek, though scarred the day before, was almost perfectly healed now that one more night had passed. It would seem that the legend that said that he would get up again and again, no matter how many times he was killed, as long as he didn’t lose the power source in his heart, wasn’t an exaggeration. It was hard to believe right away that this man who seemed no older than a college student was in the War eighty years ago, just like the spirit in the radio, but it must be true — this was something she heard from the radio the night before. Harvey never participated in their conversations anyway, but it was a given that whenever the War got brought up, he would look clearly unhappy and pretend to be asleep. “What?” Harvey asked, raising his downcast gaze slightly. This took Kieli off guard; she opened and closed her mouth a few times, and answered, “Nothing. I was just looking,” giving a reason that wasn’t really a reason. At some point she had stopped just looking sideways at him — she was leaning forward and staring him in the face. Of course he’d wonder what she was doing. He glared at her suspiciously, and Kieli pulled her head back. “Herbie,” the radio called out, as if throwing her a life preserver. “That’s Harvey,” Harvey corrected him, sending his gaze toward the radio, his eyes only half open. “History homework is right up your alley. Even more so if it’s Church history — you could tell her more than she’d ever want to know. You should just help her already.” “You’re kidding. Why should I?” Harvey retorted immediately, scowling. The radio was clearly pretending he couldn’t hear him when he answered Kieli’s, “Really?” instead. “He’s wandered all over the planet for decades since the War ended. If he didn’t learn a lot about history, then he’s just plain stupid. And while he’s at it, he could tell you what kinds of filthy tricks the Church has been playing behind the scenes since the War — ” “Aaahh!” Harvey yelled, a bit slow to interrupt the radio. He ran his eyes over the other box seats in the car, wearing an expression that said going on would cause trouble. He lowered his voice and said, “Shut up, you piece of scrap. You wanna make me a traitor to the Church?” “Why care now?” “I don’t care; I just want to spend the time I have left in peace. Anyway, a report like that, you should just write whatever’d make the Church happy and get your grade.” Talking like a normal upperclassman, the legendary Undying, the Demon of War, laid the subject to rest and pulled a cigarette out of a pocket in his work pants. Looking alternately from one face to the other (though, to be accurate, one of them didn’t have a face), and listening to them argue, Kieli remembered one of the questions she thought Harvey might have the answer to. Her grandmother had told her never to speak of it in front of people at Church or school, but she thought it would be okay to ask Harvey. “Um, hey. Harvey, have you noticed that there’s no God in the Church?” “What are you talking about? Have I noticed…?” As Harvey brought a lighter to his cigarette, he turned only his eyes toward her and furrowed his brow, but he didn’t deny it. Rather, he seemed to be wondering why she would be asking about something so obvious. Kieli automatically brightened. “Do you know why that is? I think this planet was too far away, so He went back home,” she went on enthusiastically. This time, Harvey’s expression seemed genuinely confused as he held the lighter, still lit, in front of his face. His cigarette fell out of his gaping mouth. “You know. When the Saints who made the Church left their home planet and took God with them.” Kieli thought there must be something wrong with the way she’d asked and tried to explain further, when a stocky silhouette arrived and stood beside her seat. She broke off and looked up to see a man in a dark blue uniform standing in the aisle. There were two rows of beautiful gold buttons running from its neatly closed, high collar to the hem above his knees. It was a railroad conductor’s uniform like the ones Kieli aspired to wear, just a little, when she was a little girl. (The kids in her Sunday school class made fun of her, saying a girl could never be a conductor, and her dream was easily shattered.) “Oh.” She hurriedly pulled a slightly bent ticket out of her skirt pocket and offered it to the conductor. The conductor leaned over and peered at the ticket, then smiled as if to say, “You’re okay.” His kind, gentle smile reminded Kieli of her childhood dream, and she smiled bashfully back at him. While Kieli put her ticket away, the conductor moved over to Harvey’s seat, but Harvey completely ignored him as he once again lit the cigarette he had placed back in his mouth. The conductor just leaned forward and smiled as he did with Kieli, and moved on to the next box of seats. “Why didn’t you show him your ticket?” Kieli complained on the conductor’s behalf. Harvey just glanced sideways at her and blew smoke diagonally up towards the ceiling. “Show who?” “‘Who?’” Kieli peered questioningly outside the box and cast her gaze at the conductor’s back as he moved away from them down the aisle. The seats were packed with travelers despite its being the middle of the Colonization Days vacation, but now that she looked, not one of them reacted to the appearance of the conductor as they carried on their own business — sleeping, chatting, etc. But the conductor went through the motions of looking carefully at each ticket, smiling kindly at each of them, and walking on. After the uniformed back vanished through the door to the car in front of them, Kieli realized, a little late, that her ticket had already been checked yesterday, and by a different conductor. She let out a little “Ah!” Of course the other passengers wouldn’t have noticed him; he was a ghost in the shape of a conductor. When she looked at Harvey, his hand was at his mouth holding his cigarette, as if to hide his smirk, and he was looking pointedly to the side. Kieli glared resentfully at him and said, “Tell me these things sooner!” “Not my job.” “……” He didn’t have to say it so flatly. “He’s not hurting anybody. He won’t mind if you just leave him alone,” the round speaker said in a calm voice; apparently the Corporal in the radio had realized long ago. Somewhat embarrassed at being the only one who didn’t figure it out right away, Kieli squirmed in her seat. She had mixed feelings about being in this odd situation. It was the exact opposite of all her previous circumstances, when she was the only one who could see spirits. But, thinking about it, she felt strangely relieved that the people who were with her could see the things she could see. She really was glad she had come with them. Although Harvey seemed to think she was a nuisance. “I wonder what he’s doing.” When Kieli expressed her simple curiosity over the spirit conductor’s strange behavior, Harvey, in the opposite seat, had his eyes directed away from her as he puffed his cigarette and stated the obvious — “He’s checking tickets” — in an unfriendly tone. “I wonder what he’s doing,” she repeated more clearly than before, and cast her gaze firmly at her addressee’s profile. “…Look.” After she waited a full five seconds, her companion ran out of patience and a vein twitched in his temple. “Let’s get one thing straight. This is advice from your elder. It’s not like I’m telling you this because if you get involved with these troublesome ghosts and for some reason the sparks fly in my direction and threaten my peaceful schedule then that’s a huge nuisance, but since that is the case, I’m telling you.” His cigarette hung from the corner of his mouth as he made his oddly worded introduction. He continued, “You let them take too much advantage of you. The reason people normally can’t see them is that they’re already dead and don’t have that much influence in the world anymore, and they’re not even little annoyances, so nobody can see them. If you want to live a normal life, then stop reacting every time you see one and just ignore it.” After taking a little time to digest the meaning of his long-winded speech, Kieli looked meekly down at her lap and thought that he might have a point. If she imagined she couldn’t see anything, she should have been able to be like normal people. But that seemed like a very difficult task to Kieli. “Augh, you don’t have to look so sullen.” Seeing Kieli so glumly deep in thought, Harvey ruffled his hair in exasperation and spat, with a bit of self-contempt, “I mean, it’s not like I’m living a normal life myself.” That’s when it happened. The ghost conductor came back from the car ahead of them and passed through the aisle next to Kieli and the others again. Or rather, he ran through, kicking the hem of his uniform out of the way, with such incredible speed that it was as if a dark blue wind had blown by. When Kieli poked her face into the aisle in surprise, he had already vanished through the door to the car behind them. “I wonder what he’s doing.” She tilted her head and returned to her original posture. Harvey was glaring at her with half-opened eyes. “I guess that troubled look on your face just now had nothing to do with my advice.” “It did, but this and that are…” Kieli was unable to finish her excuse. “Eh?” Just then, the train was rocked by an abnormal centrifugal force, and the next thing she knew, Kieli’s whole body was flung to the window. Her cheek pressed against the pane, and as her field of vision shook with the severe vibrations, the reddish-brown earth looked as if it was being pushed up toward her. Before her eyes, the window glass hit the ground and shattered, and Kieli frantically covered her head. It all happened in an instant. “…eh?” She opened her eyes very timidly, her arms still over her head. The scenery had rotated ninety degrees. The flattened side wall was under her feet, and her soles rested on scattered pieces of glass. The ceiling was where the wall had been, and broken bulbs blinked with a listless, yellow light. The passengers that had been flung out of their seats lay here and there in artless heaps, their limbs bent at odd angles, like dolls that had been tossed aside by an owner who had tired of them. A fine, blood-colored mist had settled toward the ground and was coiling around her ankles. “Kieli.” It was just like that dream in the tunnel. A long, narrow, confined space; mountains of dead bodies as far as the eye could see. “No…” “Kieli, calm down.” Just as she was about to scream, someone grabbed her shoulders. “Don’t get worked up. We’re the only ones who can see this. The train is moving like normal,” a low voice whispered in her ear. “Calm down,” the voice admonished one more time, and she was brought back to reality. She looked around her again, and nothing out of the ordinary had happened. The floor under her feet continued its regular vibrations, and the passengers were in their seats like before, passing the time by chatting, reading, or sleeping. Some of them looked dubiously at Kieli, who was standing with her arms over her head, but they didn’t pay her much mind and quickly returned to their own business. “Now sit.” Kieli felt a push at her shoulders and fell back into her seat with a thud. Harvey breathed a light sigh of relief and sat across from her. She tried to ask him something, but her brain wasn’t working very well, and her mouth flapped open and closed a few times before she finally managed a simple, “What was…?” Harvey didn’t say a word, just shoved his cigarette butt into the ashtray installed in the windowsill. The radio, sitting directly above the ashtray, answered instead. “Probably the memories of the conductor’s ghost. Must have died in the accident when the train turned sideways.” “The conductor’s…” “But hey, for a normal human, you picked that up pretty vividly. You’ve got a rare condition. Hey Herbie, did you know there were people like this?” “Picked up…?” Kieli turned a questioning gaze at Harvey, who made his usual correction of, “Harvey,” before sluggishly recrossing his legs where he sat and saying, “The moment a person dies, their strong emotions, regrets, and the like are released, right? Those memories are sewn over space and objects, and you end up picking up on them. It happens more easily when a spirit possessing those memories is close by.” “The memories of the dead…” Kieli remembered the scene of the accident she saw a moment ago and stiffened. A bloody fog drifting through a closed space, piles of dead bodies. The conductor died in that terrible accident. Not only the conductor, but all the people riding the train, most likely including small children. Before she knew it, the color had gone out of Kieli’s hands. She clasped them tightly together. “Don’t let it bother you,” Harvey said quietly, closing his eyes and sinking his tall figure into his seat as if planning to go to sleep. “He’s already dead. It’s not like you can do anything about it.” “If I can’t do anything about it, why am I able to see it…?” Kieli couldn’t help saying. Harvey didn’t answer. Harvey and the radio both went silent after that, and Kieli, now with nothing to do, dozed a little, listening to a tune that was a more moderate tempo than the rock music from earlier. The next thing she knew, she started to dream about the tunnel again. She thought, It’s that scary dream; I need to wake up; but her body wouldn’t move. In her heart she desperately implored, Harvey, wake me up! As soon as she did, she sensed someone next to her, and thanks to that person, she opened her eyes. “Harve…” Relieved at having been pulled out of her nightmare, Kieli looked up to see the conductor in the dark blue uniform with gold buttons standing over her, peering at her. Out of reflex, Kieli started to get out her ticket, but then, realizing what she was doing, stopped her hand in her pocket. Just like last time, the conductor nodded at her with his gentle smile as if to say, “You’re okay.” As expected, he did the same with Harvey (Harvey, of course, kept his eyes directed diagonally downward and ignored him, just like last time) and moved on to the next seat. Kieli stood up from her seat a little and gaped at the conductor’s back as he disappeared into the car ahead of them, performing the exact scene he had showed them earlier. When she sat back down, Harvey hadn’t moved except to direct his half-opened eyes at her. “Do you know what ‘learning ability’ is?” “Don’t you wonder what that conductor is doing?” “No,” Harvey said flatly, closing his eyes again. Kieli frowned, upset that he wouldn’t pay any attention to her. Then, just like before, the conductor’s spirit returned with a frantic look on his face. In the blink of an eye, he ran by Kieli and her fellow travelers and disappeared into the next car. Not even a second later, the image of the accident assaulted Kieli once more. Kieli closed her eyes tight so she wouldn’t see it, but the scene went on, ruthlessly realistic, on the other side of her eyelids. She was more calm than the first time, as she watched passengers being thrown around and crushed in the overturned train, but that calmness made her see the details all the more clearly. She covered her head with her arms, and somehow managed to wait it out. “Harveyyyy…” She looked up, almost in tears, at Harvey, who sat up grudgingly and adjusted his position. “You can look at me like that, but…” At that moment, the same dark blue uniform stood next to the seat. Kieli started and looked up to see the exact same conductor with the exact same expression. The third time she saw it, his friendly smile started to look creepy. Even Harvey’s jaw dropped a little, and he watched, weirded out, as the ghost in uniform left, his smile plastered to his face. “Hey, what do you think he’s doing?” This time, not even Harvey scoffed when Kieli asked the question for the umpteenth time — because he didn’t have time. The conductor returned in less time than he did before, and immediately the disastrous vision of the car turning over spread before them. Before it vanished, the conductor came for the fourth time, walking through the dead and injured bodies on the ground, smiling and inspecting tickets. Kieli covered her mouth, feeling nauseated as she watched the convoluted scene. “Don’t you think something’s strange? I thought he was a harmless spirit who had just fallen into an endless replay of his memories of the accident, but…” the radio said, a nervous air in his voice. “You’re right,” Harvey agreed, finally serious. He didn’t care a bit when I said it. Kieli stood up, a little peeved. “Kieli?” Harvey looked up at her, questioningly. “I’m going after him,” she answered shortly, and stepped into the aisle just as the conductor’s spirit was about to disappear through the door to the deck between cars. She quickly chased after him. “Herbie.” Behind her, she heard the radio shoo him out and sensed Harvey sighing and getting out of his seat. The conductor’s spirit passed over the uncovered deck and continued on to the next car. None of the passengers noticed the ghost walking down the aisle, and a sense of the weariness of traveling through the night accompanied the peaceful voices that drifted throughout the car. Kieli went down the aisle at a trot and looked back once just in front of the door to the next car. Harvey wouldn’t run but took long, very reluctant strides toward her, holding the radio in one hand. Strangely, she felt a bit relieved seeing him. She turned back around and went out to the deck, where she was surprised to find the conductor’s back halted immediately in front of her. The back suddenly turned around, and Kieli froze, her head almost ramming into his belly. Then she realized there was no way they would crash into each other. The conductor just went through Kieli’s body and ran back the way he had come. Kieli watched the conductor hurry off and looked back at the place he had been standing. It was in front of the couplers that linked the two cars. She held her hair back as the wind blew it every which way and looked down at her feet. The image of the track filled her view as it ran past, vibrating fiercely, and for a moment she felt dizzy. Right in front of her shoes, the couplers, shaped like two large fists clenched together, rattled as the metal fittings struck each other. They collided with each other so violently that they jumped in time with the moving cars’ vibrations. She stood there, not grasping the meaning of the situation right away, when a voice came down from above her head. “It’s broken.” Kieli pointed her chin straight up and looked above her. Harvey was peering over her head at the couplers. He said it so matter-of-factly he might as well have said, “Toaster’s broken. Guess I can’t have toast this morning”; so for three more seconds, she still didn’t take in the significance. After looking back down at the couplers, she finally realized that the fittings that held them in place were broken. “Isn’t that dangerous?” “I dunno. If they’re not careful, the train could derail.” Thinking, And isn’t that dangerous?, Kieli looked incredulously back at Harvey and asked, “What should we do?” Harvey took on a thoughtful expression, like he was thinking something as trivial as, “Well, I can just have cereal instead of toast,” and simply said, “If it starts to look really bad, I can just jump off, right?” Kieli couldn’t respond immediately; she gaped up at the face above her. “Why you…So you don’t care as long as you can get away?” the radio interjected in place of the speechless Kieli. Harvey blinked, apparently surprised that anyone was complaining, and looked down at the radio in his hand. “No, I could carry you and Kieli.” “Never mind,” Kieli said, not wanting to listen to this nonsense any longer, and she shoved aside the heartless giant who was blocking the door. She had to hurry and warn the conductor — the living conductor this time. The instant she returned to the passenger car, the vision of the overturned car spread before her eyes. She froze for a second, but, realizing that the ghost conductor’s memories were still on loop, she frantically shook the scene from her mind and ran down the aisle. The passengers in the real seats chatted peacefully, overlapping the illusion of the injured, looking up and sending dubious glances in her direction. She kept going straight through the car she had been sitting in to the last car, finally catching up to the conductor’s spirit. The conductor stood still. Before his eyes lay his own dead body, part of his chest crushed in the accident. As he stared down at his corpse from his own memories, the conductor froze in terror. The conductor hadn’t made it. Most likely, he had discovered the broken couplers and run back to stop the train but didn’t make in time and met his end here. Kieli didn’t stop; she ran past the conductor. The conductor may not have made it then, but Kieli could make it now — so that these tragic memories wouldn’t become reality again. “Mr. Conductor!” Kieli arrived at the conductor’s room and slammed the door open. The other conductor, who had apparently been enjoying a leisurely breakfast, looked up in surprise. “It’s terrible! The couplers are loose! That car back there!” In broken sentences, Kieli, out of breath, frantically tried to explain the situation. The conductor, a sandwich stuffed in his mouth, wore a blank expression and said something like “Wha ha maher?” Kieli nearly exploded with frustration and waved her arms violently up and down. “I said the couplers are broken! Hurry and stop the train!” Perhaps her fearsome rage overwhelmed him, because the conductor picked up the intercom that connected to the engine room. He gulped down his sandwich, pounded his chest, and cleared his throat, then turned to the mouthpiece and drawled, “Uhh…” Kieli couldn’t wait any longer; she snatched the transmitter from the conductor. “Slow down immediately! There’s going to be a big accident!” she barked curtly and shoved the phone back at the stunned conductor. She flew out of the conductor’s room with the same force with which she had run in, and dashed back toward the front car, shouting, “We’re making an emergency stop! Grab onto something!” to the passengers on either side of her. Harvey, gazing at the train tracks, realized that they had put on the brakes. At the same time, he also realized that they probably wouldn’t stop in time. The front cars were approaching a gentle right-hand curve. “Herbie!” the radio urged from his hand. “Harvey,” Harvey sighed briefly. “I’m not really a friend of the people, serving the public for no compensation. For that matter, I’d actually prefer mankind be destroyed. Every night, I pray to the heavens that an asteroid will hit the planet, but my wish never comes true.” “Kieli does everything she can. I like that.” The radio’s answer didn’t really connect; apparently he didn’t want to talk about the destruction of mankind. “What, you’re getting attached? Didn’t you want to go back to your grave?” Harvey asked maliciously, a smirk rising to his lips. The radio stayed silent. Heaving another sigh, Harvey reluctantly started to tie the radio’s cord to the deck’s handrail. If I hadn’t gotten mixed up with that girl, I wouldn’t have to go to all this trouble. He didn’t want to take anyone with him in the first place, and if the Church found him out, it would be trouble. Now that he thought of it, he did have the option of shutting her up permanently — but of course at this point in the journey, he didn’t feel inclined to do that. “Gah, what the hell am I doing…?” he moaned. When he finished tying the radio to the rail, a strong centrifugal force pulled him to the left. The rattling sound from the joined couplers came to an abrupt stop and the car opposite him floated upward. “Damn it, my arm just healed,” he grumbled to no one in particular as he took the rail with his right hand, planted himself firmly on the deck, and reached for the couplers with his free hand. He grabbed the coupler from the other car and forced it back to the one in front of him, and held them together with the full weight of his body. “Stupid! Just go back…!” The intense shaking traveled through his arm and rattled his brain. As he put the couplers together, they caught the skin of his fingers and tore the flesh off. He lost concentration for just a second when he felt a sharp pain run through him, like his fingers were being twisted off, but he soon gathered his wits and shook off the pain, leaving only a faint, unpleasant throbbing sensation in the core of his brain. Suddenly, the brakes kicked in, and the radio hanging from the handrail swung violently. When he caught sight of the radio’s cord coming undone and the radio flying into the air, Harvey involuntarily let go of the handrail and grabbed the cord. “Ah…” Damn, he thought, as he and the radio slid sideways and were thrown off the deck. “Herbie, you idio —” the radio’s jeers were lost in the high-pitched screech of metal scraping metal. “Harvey!” He faintly heard a girl’s voice through the ear-shattering din and stopped breathing as, without warning, something squeezed his neck from behind. Kieli had jumped through the car door and was clinging to the hem of his jacket. She strangled him with such force that any normal person would surely have suffocated as she pulled him back toward her, and he fell to the deck, taking the small girl with him. It looked as if time had stopped temporarily as one of the cars remained suspended in the air and then thudded back onto the track. The train had stopped. The screech of the brakes, the shaking of the cars, the howl of the wind — all sound stopped abruptly, and a terrible quiet fell over their surroundings. After a few seconds of silence, the murmuring of the passengers — some anxious, some relieved — finally reached their ears. “…What the hell am I doing…?” Still lying faceup on the deck, Harvey let out all the breath he had been holding, just as his exhaustion overcame him. “Harvey, you’re heavy.” Kieli struggled under the arm he had flung to the side, but he was tired and chose not to move it for a while. Kieli was told that they wanted to send her a letter of thanks, but since this was of course the first time in Kieli’s life that she had had such an experience — and on top of that, she was not used to receiving so much praise — her first reaction was to politely decline. “And how can we ever thank you, sir?” The conductor (the one who was eating a sandwich) took off his hat and bowed deeply to Harvey. “I’ll call the rescue party right away. We have to get you patched up.” Harvey acted indifferent to the thanks paid him and Kieli, but when he heard the second part, he yelped in panic. “No, that won’t be necessary. And I don’t want your thanks, either. If you have men with enough time to waste writing thank-you notes, why don’t you put them on the maintenance team?” Kieli couldn’t tell if Harvey’s refusal was polite or rude, but he dragged her off, just as she was starting to think it might not be so bad to get a thank-you letter, and ran away from the conductor. The long, gray train stood on the wilderness tracks like a dead snake. Railroad company emergency cars from the east and west sandwiched the train, and the company was about to start investigating the accident. The passengers had been forced to disembark and stood in circles near the track, complaining about the accident and confirming each other’s safety. Kieli heard, from fragments of their conversations, that a similar train accident had happened in the past. Apparently a pair of couplers had been broken, and every car behind the break had derailed; many people had been killed or injured. One of the victims had been the train’s conductor. Kieli was in danger of falling as Harvey dragged her along with his left hand, his stride easily twice the length of her own. She noticed that his hand was covered in blood. “Harvey, are you okay?” “Why?” Harvey slowed down a bit and turned around. After following Kieli’s gaze, he looked as if he was only just noticing it himself. He said, “Oh, sorry. I got your coat dirty,” and let go. “I don’t care about that. Let me see it.” Kieli took his blood-covered hand back in hers and pulled it toward herself. The skin from his fingertips to his palm was stripped off, and it was bright red with fresh blood. She started to look away from the awful state of his hand, but when she looked closer, she saw that the bleeding had mostly stopped. Instead, the blackish liquid, like coal tar, was oozing out and starting to coil around the wound the way it did when his neck got hurt at the old station. “That can’t be fun to watch,” Harvey said gruffly in response to her stares. He pulled his hand away and shoved it into his coat pocket. “Doesn’t it hurt?” “Eh, I can ignore it. I’ve been trained that way.” Harvey had quickened his pace again, and he soon left Kieli behind. She hurried after him and looked over Harvey’s shoulder at his profile. Kieli didn’t know what it was like to be able to ignore pain, but she figured that didn’t equal not hurting. While she thought about it, Harvey went back to the bags they had left by the side of the track and, his left hand still in his pocket, used his other hand to pick up his backpack and the radio. “We’re walking to the next station. Is that okay with you?” Kieli stopped for a moment and whined in protest. She had heard that the emergency cars would be taking groups of passengers to the next station. “I don’t want them asking annoying questions. It’s not that far.” Kieli doubted whether or not something that “wasn’t that far” for Harvey’s long gait would be “not that far” for her, but Harvey showed no interest in hearing her opinion and started walking. Feeling that if she sulked too much, he would say something like, “If you don’t like it, you can ride the train by yourself,” Kieli sped up and followed him. As soon as she started walking, she felt someone watching her from behind and turned around to see the conductor’s spirit standing in the distance. Still wearing his kind smile, he stayed beside the train as if protecting it. The conductor removed his hat and bowed deeply in thanks. She felt as though she could hear a voice say, “Thank you.” Under her breath, Kieli murmured a good-bye. “Kieli. If your legs are too short, I’ll carry you.” “I’m coming. Wait up.” Kieli didn’t really understand what Harvey had said, but his words urged her on, and she trotted up to him. They started walking on the track, side by side. The train track continued in a straight line through the wilderness to the horizon hung with sand-colored gas. Far in the distance, she could just make out the next town.