Page 142 of The End of the World As We Know It

NOW

The Corvid rammed the Chevette’s back end again, sending a jarring vibration through the smaller car’s framework. The steering wheel jerked in Elise’s hands. She was thrown forward in her seat, crying out as the belt pulled tight across her chest. Ruby clattered against the passenger door and her legs flopped loosely.

Elise regained herself just in time. She swerved, avoiding an old, half-dead mesquite by a yard or two. Its lower branches rattled off the windshield and over the roof. The Corvid emerged through the dust in her rearview, the black smoke still pouring out of the open windows. It thumped the Chevette again, but not as hard. The dented trunk lid flapped up and down. And all this time, there was no discernible damage on the Corvid. It rumbled and shone.

“What are we going to do?” Ruby wailed.

“I know what we’renotgoing to do,” Elise replied, talking as much to herself as to Ruby. “We’re not giving up.”

She steered around a sprawl of rocks and boulders, then jumped on the brakes and cranked the wheel right. The Corvid pulled alongside her. Elise turned the wheel the other way and slammed sidelong into it. Metal crunched. Sparks flew. Dusky smoke rippled across Elise’s window. She tried peering through it, believing she’d see the devil behind the wheel. There was a hint of something—his pointed beak, perhaps—but the smoke was too thick to be certain.

They bumped three more times. The Chevette’s rear driver’s-side door buckled inward and rattled. Elise went hard right and the Corvid went left, each steering around the faded, half-buried wreck of some old vehicle. A wake of buzzards gathered on its roof took wing with spectacular, reluctant slowness.

The train was two miles distant, moving south to north across the horizon. It trembled on its track like a living thing.

Elise thought it was modern diesel train at first, no doubt carrying important cargo or passengers (there had to be some reason for it operating when everything else was shut down), but as they drew closer, she saw that it was actually an old steam train. Its locomotive was a burnished silver, hauling a line of wooden passenger cars. Their windows reflected the sunlight in cadenced beats. A plume of whitish smoke flowed from the chimney and hung shimmering in the air.

Elise had no idea where the train was going but she longed to be on it, sitting safely and comfortably next to Ruby, feeling the cradle-like rhythm of its wheels on the track. She imagined driving alongside the train, then she and Ruby leaping from the Chevette onto one of the passenger cars, like outlaws in a cowboy movie. It was a wonderful but absurd thought. Elise shook her head and it dissolved.

Another thought took its place, not quite as absurd, and not so easily shaken. It had an edge of possibility, in fact—too little to hope for, but too big to disregard.

For most of her life, darkness had trailed her. And when it wasn’t behind, it was ahead—something she’d either edged around or fallen into. Now, a seam of brightness opened inside Elise. It was smooth and true, and she rode it like this train rode its track.

“Sing,” she said to Ruby.

“Huh?” Ruby looked at her, confused.

“Sing,” Elise repeated, and pointed at the train, now only a mile away. “The song about the train.”

“What? I don’t… don’t…” Big tears rolled from Ruby’s eyes. She was so scared.

“The song the old lady sings in our dreams.”

The Corvid veered into them again, coming from the left. It hit Elise’s door, nearly folding it in half. The window shattered, spraying the interior with glass. Both Elise and Ruby screamed. The Chevette swerved dangerously to the right, narrowly avoiding a sloped boulder that would have flipped them like a coin. Elise pumped the brake and turned the wheel, swinging the back end around. She passed behind the Corvid and raced away in another direction, now almost parallel to the railway track. Her door swung open loosely. It trembled for a moment on its compromised hinges, then fell off. Elise clutched the wheel, feeling even more vulnerable. She put her foot to the floor.

The Corvid followed. Elise watched it in the rearview, making adjustments to keep it behind her.

“Sing!” she said to Ruby.

Ruby nodded and started in a thin, wavering voice: “This train is bound for glory, this train…”

“Sing louder!” Elise said. “Like youbelieveit, Ruby. Sing with your soul!”

“This train”—a little louder—“is bound for glory, this train…”

“This train is bound for glory,” Elise joined in, pulling every wordfrom that seam of light inside her. “All who ride, you must be holy. Lord oh Lord, talking about this train…”

The Corvid tried to pull up on their left, but Elise maneuvered that way and forced it to drop back. It thumped into their rear bumper again and something else was ripped off—the trunk lid itself, Elise realized. The Corvid drove over it without missing a beat. It swung out the other way, trying to pull level on the right. Again, Elise timed her movement, turning the wheel and keeping the Corvid in the rearview.

“This train don’t carry no liars, this train,” they both sang, their voices steadily growing stronger. Elise’s focus switched from the train to the mirror and back again. The track was no more than five hundred yards away. They raced toward it on a diagonal. The Chevette’s needle was at sixty but dropping. The engine didn’t have much left.

The Corvid hit their rear end yet again. Elise was thrown against the wheel, but kept singing. She looked at the approaching locomotive, four hundred yards away now. Ruby tightened in her seat. She’d yanked one of the California Raisin figures from the dashboard and clutched it like a talisman.

“This train don’t carry no liars. Don’t carry nothing but the holy fire. Lord oh lord, talking about this train…”

Elise held on to the light inside and kept her foot to the floor.

Three hundred yards. The needle had dropped to fifty. Elise urged more from the engine. She sang so loudly that her throat was raw. Ruby accompanied her word for word—a desperate, faithful harmony. They headed toward the track and the train kept rolling.