I was briefly tempted to share with him, but self-preservation kept me from opening my mouth. If my calculations were correct, I had enough Cladoxpan to survive for about five days—if I rationed myself severely. That would have to last till I got back to Gulfport or at least found a helot patrol. Sharing with this guy would cut that time in half, and along with it, my chances of survival. With a broken leg, the guy was doomed anyway. Even he knew it. Any Cladoxpan he drank would be wasted.
When he saw that his pleas weren’t getting him anywhere, he tried to steal it. The kid had once been brawny; under normal conditions, he wouldn’t have had any problem. But given the condition he was in, even an old man could’ve taken him. The most brutal sort of Darwinism was in force: only the healthiest, youngest, and strongest survived. After a few sad attempts and a few punches, the poor guy gave up.
Defeated, he slumped on the floor in agony. With a rosary in his hand, he prayed quietly as tiny veins burst all over his skin. From time to time, he writhed in pain from a cramp. His tremors became so severe he could no longer hold his rosary. After forty minutes, the string of wooden beads slipped through his fingers, and his hand contracted into a claw. His eyes were completely bloodshot. The kid raised his head and, with every ounce of control he had left, shouted, “Please!” His heart-wrenching cry stirred my soul.
Without stopping to think, I stood up and grabbed the hammer someone had hung on a nail by the door. Before anyone could stop me, I walked up to the kid. He sensed my presence at his side; his now-sightless eyes pointed in my direction.
“You sure?” I asked quietly.
The kid nodded and grabbed my pant leg. Maybe he was afraid I’d change my mind. His lips had nearly stopped obeying him, but he managed to whisper an almost unintelligible “Thank you.”
I picked up the hammer, took a deep breath, and brought it down hard on the kid’s occipital bone. He went limp, like a cow on the slaughterhouse floor. I hit him three more times to be sure he wouldn’t rise from the dead.
Covered with blood, I slumped back to my corner. Everyone in the car stared at the corpse in silence. No one would meet my eyes, but they didn’t reproach me.
As the train rattled on, I furtively wiped my eyes. The blood on my face mixed with my tears, forming ornate ribbons down my cheeks. I looked like a psychotic clown, but I couldn’t stop crying.
I’d killed a man. A living man. The fact that he was about to become an Undead didn’t mitigate my pain. I was a murderer. As the train rolled on, I realized that even if I survived that hellish journey, part of me had died in that boxcar.
37
We were the only ones left.
The train stopped five times; at each stop, they unhooked a car. Ours was the last car, so I suspected we wouldn’t be traveling much longer.
I rummaged through the belongings of fellow passengers who’d died near me. In one woman’s purse, I found a blank notebook and a lot of useless stuff, including a tube of pink lipstick. Pink lipstick? On a deportation train? Then I remembered that Jews had taken the most startling things with them, such as violins and lamps, en route to Nazi concentration camps. I don’t know why, but I put the lipstick in my pocket.
I guess the will to survive, to see another dawn, is the trait we humans value most. The lipstick must have been a symbol for that woman, the way Lucullus was for me. She’d told herself that this nightmare would end someday and she’d want to look beautiful again. She’d be someplace safe and happy, where her biggest concern was having pretty lips. Just then the woman’s body started wobbling on the floor, bumping against my shoes, in time with the train rumbling down the tracks. What good was her symbol now?
Only twenty people remained out of the original one hundred and fifty. Over half were crushed to death, died of thirst, or were killed when someone tried to rob them. The rest had succumbed to TSJ when they ran out of Cladoxpan. Most people’s reserves had only lasted six hours, and we’d been traveling for nearly twelve.
I was in pretty good shape. With the Cladoxpan hidden in Lucullus’s basket, I could hold out for several days. I didn’t know how much the other survivors had left. Enough for a few hours? A month? It was like a poker game; you kept your cards close to your vest. You didn’t know if the guy in the corner was glaring at you because he was terrified you were turning into an Undead or because he was turning into one. If it weren’t for the basket, I’d have been dead hours ago, lying in the middle of the car.
I didn’t understand why they dropped off each group so far apart. At first I assumed it was to keep us from ganging up on the guards and taking control of the train. That may have been partly true. Most likely, they didn’t want us to transform into Undead all at once. It was easier to deal with one or two Undead, even a dozen, instead of hundreds all at once. We weren’t people to them, just monsters. Maybe they were right.
I wasn’t proud of the things I’d seen and done in that train car, but if I hadn’t done them, I’d be dead. I was determined to fight to the end.
The train slowed down. The click-clack of the wheels finally stopped. The sixth stop for the sixth car. Our turn.
Its brakes screeching, the train came to a complete stop. Our journey of hundreds of miles was over. Inside the car, the silence was absolute, except for the flies buzzing around the swollen bodies and the hollow cough of a very sick man. They kept us waiting in there for five long minutes. The tension was unbearable.
“Why don’t they open the fucking door?” a guy sitting near me muttered.
“Maybe they don’t open the door,” murmured a guy in his fifties, the oldest survivor. “Maybe they park the train car and leave, then collect our bones on their next trip.”
“Shut the fuck up, goddammit,” snapped the first guy. “They gotta open the door.”
I hoped with all my heart he was right. I figured the Green Guards were scouting the area for any Undead. Finally, with a screech, the door opened for the first time since we’d gotten on. But the Green Guards didn’t look inside.
“Everybody out, goddammit!” cried a distorted voice. “Man, what a stench!”
“Don’t get too close to the door, Tim,” said another voice. “There may not be anyone alive in there.”
“Should we toss in a grenade?” Tim sounded unsure.
That comment spurred us survivors to move toward the door. Nobody wanted to die like that.
I squinted and shaded my eyes. The light was glaringly bright, even though the sun was setting. After twelve hours in darkness, my eyes were very sensitive. I took several deep breaths to clear my lungs of the stench inside the boxcar.
Then I saw why the Green Guards’ voices were distorted. They were wearing gas masks. I understood why. The smell of the overheated car full of dead bodies, vomit, and shit was overpowering.
“Hey! You have to unload that car!” one of the guards said, pointing his assault rifle.
“Whaddaya mean?” asked the guy next to me. “It’s full of corpses. There’s just a few of us left. That’ll take all day.”
“You have one hour, you sons of bitches,” said the guard, cocking his rifle. “Move your ass if you wanna live. Let’s go!”
Like automatons, we organized into pairs and started clearing the bodies out of the boxcar. As I held the feet of a pregnant woman and dragged her off the train, I wondered why we were doing it. Why didn’t we jump the guards and grab their weapons? Why didn’t we fight? The answer was obvious—we wanted to live a little longer, even ten minutes more. Breathe that wonderful, clean air. Survive.