Maureen, on the other hand, knew next to nothing about trains, only that Dennison River Bend had a depot, and she thought the trains that came through it went to all sorts of places. What those places might be, she did not know.
“She thinks if you make it that far, maybe you can hop a freight,” Avery had said.
Well, he had made it this far. Whether or not he could actually hop a freight was another matter. He had seen it done in the movies, and with ease, but most movies were full of shit. It might be better to go to whatever passed for a downtown in this north country burg. Find the police station if there was one, call the State Police if there wasn’t. Only call with what? He had no cell, and pay phones were an endangered species. If he did find one, what was he supposed to drop into the coin slot? One of his Institute tokens? He supposed he could call 911 for free, but was that the right move? Something told him no.
He stood where he was in a day that was brightening entirely too fast for his liking, tugging nervously at the scarf around his waist. There were drawbacks to calling or going to the cops this close to the Institute; he could see them even in his current state of fear and exhaustion. The police would find out in short order that his parents were dead, murdered, and he was the most likely suspect. Another drawback was Dennison River Bend itself. Towns only existed if there was money coming in, money was their lifeblood, and where did Dennison River Bend’s money come from? Not from this trainyard, which would be largely automated. Not from those sad-looking buildings he’d seen. They might once have been factories, but no more. On the other hand, there was some sort of installation out there in one of the unincorporated townships (“government stuff,” the locals would say, nodding wisely to each other in the barber shop or the town square), and the people who worked there had money. Men and women who came to town, and not just to patronize that Outlaw Country place on the nights when some shitkicking band or other was playing. They brought in dollars. And maybe the Institute was contributing to the town’s welfare. They might have funded a community center, or a sports field, or kicked in for road maintenance. Anything that jeopardized those dollars would be looked at with skepticism and displeasure. For all Luke knew, the town officials might be getting regular payoffs to make sure the Institute didn’t attract attention from the wrong people. Was that paranoid thinking? Maybe. And maybe not.
Luke was dying to blow the whistle on Mrs. Sigsby and her minions, but he thought the best, safest thing he could do right now was get as far away from the Institute as fast as he could.
The switch-engine was pushing the current bunch of freight cars up the hill trainyard people called the hump. There were two rocking chairs on the porch of the yard’s tidy little office building. A man wearing jeans and bright red rubber boots sat in one of them, reading a newspaper and drinking coffee. When the engine driver hit the horn, the guy put his paper aside and trotted down the steps, pausing to wave up at a glassed-in booth on steel stilts. A guy inside waved back. That would be the hump tower operator, and the guy in the red boots would be the pin-puller.
Rolf’s dad used to mourn over the moribund state of American rail transport, and now Luke saw his point. There were tracks heading in every direction, but it looked as though only four or five sets were currently operational. The others were flecked with rust, weeds growing up between the ties. There were stranded boxcars and flatcars on some of these, and Luke used them for cover, moving in on the office. He could see a clipboard hanging from a nail on one of the porch support posts. If that was today’s transport schedule, he wanted to read it.
He squatted behind an abandoned boxcar close to the rear of the tower, watching from beneath as the pin-puller went to the hump track. The newly arrived freight was at the top of the hump now, and all of the operator’s attention would be fixed there. If Luke was spotted, he’d probably be dismissed as just a kid who was, like Mr. Destin, a balls-to-the-wall train freak. Of course most kids didn’t come out at five-thirty in the morning to look at trains no matter how balls to the wall they were. Especially kids who were soaked in river water and sporting a badly mutilated ear.
No choice. He had to see what was on that clipboard.
Mr. Red Boots stepped forward as the first car in line rolled slowly past him, and pulled the pin coupling it to the next. The box—STATE OF MAINE PRODUCTS emblazoned on the side in red, white, and blue—went rolling down the hill, pulled by gravity, its speed controlled by radar-operated retarders. The hump tower operator yanked a lever, and STATE OF MAINE PRODUCTS diverted onto Track 4.
Luke walked around the boxcar and ambled toward the station office, hands in his pockets. He didn’t breathe freely until he was below the tower and out of the operator’s sightline. Besides, Luke thought, if he’s doing his job right, he’s got eyes on the current job and nowhere else.
The next car, a tanker, was sent to Track 3. Two car carriers also went to Track 3. They bumped and clashed and rolled. Vic Destin’s Lionel trains were pretty quiet, but this place was a looneybin of sound. Luke guessed that houses closer than a mile would get an earful three or four times each day. Maybe they get used to it, he thought. That was hard to believe until he thought of the kids going about their lives every day in the Institute—eating big meals, drinking nips, smoking the occasional cigarette, goofing on the playground, and running around at night, yelling their fool heads off. Luke guessed you could get used to anything. It was a horrible idea.
He reached the porch of the office, still well out of view of the tower operator, and the pin-puller’s back was to him. Luke didn’t think he’d turn around. “Lose focus in a job like that, and you’re apt to lose a hand,” Mr. Destin had told the boys once.
The computer sheet on top of the clipboard didn’t contain much; the columns for Tracks 2 and 5 bore only two words: NOTHING SCHEDULED. Track 1 had a freight to New Brunswick, Canada, scheduled in at 5 PM—no help there. Track 4 was due out for Burlington and Montreal at 2:30 PM. Better, but still not good enough; if he wasn’t gone by 2:30, he’d almost certainly be in big trouble. Track 3, where the pin-puller was now sending the New England Land Express box Luke had observed crossing the trestle, looked good. The cut-off for Train 4297—the time after which the station manager would not (theoretically at least) accept more freight—was 9 AM, and at 10 AM, ’97 was scheduled out of Dennison River Bend for Portland/ME, Portsmouth/NH, and Sturbridge/MA. That last town had to be at least three hundred miles away, maybe a lot more.
Luke retreated to the abandoned boxcar and watched as the cars continued to roll down the hump onto various tracks, some of them for the trains that would be heading out that day, others that would simply be left on various sidings until they were needed.
The pin-puller finished his job and climbed the switch-engine’s step to talk to the driver. The ops guy came out and joined them. There was laughter. It carried clearly to Luke on the still morning air, and he liked the sound. He had heard plenty of adult laughter in the C-Level break room, but it had always sounded sinister to him, like the laughter of orcs in a Tolkien story. This was coming from men who had never locked up a bunch of kids, or dunked them in an immersion tank. The laughter of men who did not carry the special Tasers known as zap-sticks.
The switch driver handed out a bag. The pin-puller took it and stepped down. As the engine started slowly down the hump, the pin-puller and the station operator each took a doughnut from the bag. Big ones dusted with sugar and probably stuffed with jelly. Luke’s stomach rumbled.