Jack.
And I wasn’t alone anymore.
I put one hand on the side of your face and shook your shoulder with the other. I saw the inmate number that was stitched into your shirt: 373.
Nobody kept prisoners anymore. They had all been executed during the chaos. Some escaped. But, dude, you looked so skinny and starved, and felt so bony under my hands that I figured maybe you just now got out of wherever they’d been keeping you locked up.
I leaned closer to your face. “Hey.”
Then I caught glimpse of Jay Pittman’s rifle barrel pointing down at your forehead.
And Pittman said, “You getting all queer on the kid, Kirk?”
I bit my lip.
Pittman was testing me in front of other guys, and there was no way I could back down. So I grabbed the barrel of Jay’s rifle, and as I stood, I pushed the butt of it into his midsection, hard, driving him backwards to the edge of the platform. He struggled against me, but backwards was no strategy against forwards, and in two lunging steps I pushed Jay Pittman over the edge; and he went out flat, flapping his arms as he splashed down into the deep rainwater that had pooled over the useless train tracks in the storm.
“Son of a bitch!” he yelped, gasping and thrashing around for his dropped rifle, frantically trying to launch himself back onto the safety of the platform. A couple of the guys who’d been previously occupied beating the shit out of my friend helped him up, and Pittman began crazily stripping out of his clothes with all the passion of a man who’d been set on fire.
He must have had about ten of those black suckers on him, all over his body. He looked like he was growing snakes or something. Pittman slapped and swatted at them, cursing.
He should have known better than to fuck with me. I didn’t have to say another word about it. Pittman whimpered and shook, covered in stripes of his own watery blood, as the others helped pick the parasites from his bleach-white skin.
And that’s how I found Jack Whitmore in Marbury.
You.
Only it wasn’t really you.
Fucking Marbury.
* * *
We liked to think that our crew was a cut above the others.
We were good fighters, still knew where food could be found, and in spite of Jay Pittman’s testosterone-fueled idiocy, we were the smartest, too. Fent believed that when all the other teams had gone, been run off or killed, we’d still be survivors. And maybe it was Preacher’s nonsense that bled into our skulls about things working out in the world, these being what he called the glory days and all, but every one of us bought into that empty optimism, too.
Even in Marbury, you have to believe in something, I guess.
Charlie being dead was a bad thing, though. And standing where I was, and seeing how Charlie had fallen, I couldn’t believe that you, scrawny Jack Whitmore, had anything to do with it at all.
Wrong place, wrong time.
If they ever made coins in Marbury, those words would be etched where you’d expect the “In God We Trust,” or whatever.
Wrong place, wrong time.
Some of the guys were obviously mad at me, not just for what I did to Jay Pittman, but because I didn’t point my shotgun at you. I could never point a gun at you, no matter what you were, no matter where we were. I saw the dirty looks they gave me when I put your arm around my shoulders and helped you stand.
I grumbled to the Rangers, “Get out of the way. I’m taking him to Fent.”
And as they parted a pathway along the platform toward the main hall, I whispered, “Jack. Jack Whitmore. Don’t you know who I am?”
But you didn’t say a thing. You just kind of hung there like dead weight, bleeding on my bare skin and feet. I’d never had the chance to put on a shirt or my boots once the shooting happened.
When I got far enough away, Jay Pittman began shouting about how fucked up I was. That was okay. He was probably right, and guys are going to blow off steam when they need to. He had no way of knowing who you were to me, anyway, so I pretended like it didn’t matter. Otherwise, he’d have gone for another swim. A longer one.
“Hey. It’s me, Conner Kirk,” I whispered.
You kept your head down, dripping little dots of blood from your broken nose.
But just when we stumbled past what was left of some kind of ticket booth at the end of the platform, you looked up. At first I thought you were going to say something to me, like, Hey Con, thanks for saving my ass.
But you still wouldn’t talk.
The weirdest thing was that when you did lift your face up, one of the guys from another fireteam—a guy named Walpole—looked at you, straight on. And for a second, I swear I saw something reflected in the other Ranger’s eyes. Something that looked just exactly like those first few times I caught a glimpse of all the shit swirling around inside the Marbury lens, back when you and I spent time together in the hotel in London.
It seemed so foggy, and so long ago.
And then the Ranger who was staring at you went completely white, just like all the blood had been sucked out of him. I’d seen enough corpses in that condition to know what that color looks like, and this was it.
* * *
The guy points a finger at you.
I say, “Back off, dipshit.”
And Walpole says, “That’s him. That’s him. That’s the Jumping Man.”
And I’m thinking, this is crazier than shit.
The guy’s got to be high, wacked-out on black salt.
“Shut your fucking mouth.” I try to push past him and hope he’s not going to start something and draw too much attention to us.
But this is Marbury, the land of wrong place, wrong time.
So this Walpole guy spins around and disappears behind the other Rangers that have all started coming over to see what the hell is going on.
And not three seconds later, there’s another gunshot and everyone crouches, or starts running after the guy.
“We need to get the fuck out of here,” I whisper.
* * *
But where could we go?
You didn’t even seem to register what was going on. Your mouth hung open, dripping red, and your head lolled around like you were asleep on my shoulder.
I was pretty sure one of your teeth had gotten knocked out, too.
You were fucked up, Jack.
As I got away from the platforms and into the tunnel to the main hall, I caught sight of Pittman, hitching up his soaking pants, dragging everything else he’d been wearing behind him or slung over his shoulder, dripping and cussing, trying to catch up to us. There were still trails of watery blood streaking Pittman’s skin.
To my right, a group of Rangers gathered around Private Walpole.
He was down on his back, staring blankly up at the stone archway of the tunnel’s ceiling.
Walpole had shot himself clean through his own neck.
The front of his throat was an epaulet of meat hanging over his left shoulder.
I truly had never seen so much blood in my life. I had to practically jump over it, barefoot as I was, but you just drag-stepped your boots through it, leaving smeared footprints behind to mark our trail into the main hall.
“What was he screaming about?” someone said as we passed.
I ignored the Rangers. They were scared about what was going on.
And scared was dangerous.
Pittman caught up to us. “What the fuck, brother? What the fuck?”
“I don’t know what that’s about, Pittman. I really don’t.”
* * *
“A prisoner?”
Fent looked pissed when I got back to our little fort of pews tucked against the wall where a huge DEPARTURES AND ARRIVALS board kept a frozen record of the last trips through this one forgotten station in this fucked-up world.
Brian Fields had come back from his cruising. He looked tired and his clothes were half undone. I was sure Fent had already given him shit about that, but what was she going to do? This was Marbury, and guys were going to do whatever guys were going to do until it killed them.
Or maybe until they killed themselves.