The Backup Train

           Forty people, the news anchor announced, had died in the bombing of an apartment complex less than five miles away. Bryanna had passed the building countless times when going to the grocery store. The bank. The hair salon. The office, when she still had an office. Her coworker, Virginia, had lived in the complex. Loved dogs. Hated scary movies. Baked cookies with candy cane-shaped sprinkles and butter cream icing for Bryanna and her colleagues every Christmas Eve. Had she perished in the blaze? She didn’t know and had a feeling that she didn’t want to.

The newscast jumped to a video that showed the building bursting into flames, bricks flying through the cerulean sky. When the smoke cleared, she could see that it had left only a blackened ridge of foundation and jagged, dancing flames.

           Back to the news desk. The anchor had started summarizing the events leading up to this. Bryanna didn’t listen. She didn’t have to. She had lived them for the past year and a half, as had everyone else in the country. Stories like this ran almost exclusively now—a bomb here, a shooting there, enemy tanks barreling through their weakened borders and firing their cannons into the wind. That she and Casey may not survive another twenty-four hours had become her first thought when she woke in the morning and her last before falling asleep on the few nights on which she did manage to sleep. Their adversary had not yet completely decimated their forces, but it had made it clear that it would not stop until it did.

           The news anchor stopped abruptly, drawing a hand to her earpiece. Her face went cauliflower-white. Quickly, she gathered herself and said, “This just in. Officials have received a note signed by Bauler” —referring to the terrorist group behind the attacks—“They say, quote, ‘Like what you got today? Just wait until Saturday.’ The note has been turned over to police, who will be investigating. More details as we know them.”

           Saturday. The day after tomorrow. Her gut jumped.

           “You can’t stay here,” Casey declared, as pale as she felt.

           “Huh?” she asked, struggling to catch her breath.

           “I’ve got enough to get you a one-way train ticket. I’ll have to check the schedule, but, hopefully, they’ll have something available tomorrow…”

           “And what about you?”

           Ignoring the question, he pulled his phone out of his pocket and swiped his finger across it a few times. “Alexander Station,” he said, referring to the only intact train station in the country, “has two trips to Egbertia tomorrow. We’ll get you on the first.”

           “You didn’t answer my question.”

           He sighed as one would have at a wife demanding a foot massage in the middle of a tornado. “I’ll come later. First, I’ve gotta see if I can’t sell this place and give us a little more cushion.”

           “Nobody’s buying a house here, now, Casey.”

           “You don’t know that. It’s worth a try.”

Oblivious to the gravity of the situation, or perhaps because he had sensed it, their cocker spaniel-poodle mix pranced in, tail wagging. He came to her and swiped his tongue across her sweaty hand. She rubbed behind his ears; his topaz-brown eyes sparkled with warmth that, today, couldn’t pierce her flesh.

“All right, Dewey, lay down,” Casey commanded the pooch. Dewey padded to Casey and did so.

           She turned back to Casey. “I’m not leaving you behind.”

           “I’ll be fine,” Casey insisted, rubbing Dewey’s ears. “I’ve got my watchdog to keep me safe.”

           He understood the absurdity of that claim; he knew that a scrappy mutt would offer no protection against ghouls with guns and insatiable bloodlust.

           She shook her head. “Screw the house. It’s not worth—“

           “Do you know how big a help it’ll give us if I can get something for it? Even a few thousand could be the difference between eating and starving.”

           “Then I’ll stay with you.”

           Casey sighed. “Then you’re gonna be a liability. I’d rather have you taken care of, so then I can concentrate.”

           “And what if they get you? What am I gonna do then?”

           He fixed her with a gaze whose intensity, even with her every muscle steeled, sent shivers up her spine. “You’re gonna live.”

           She didn’t tell him that the request had shredded her insides. She didn’t tell him that she wouldn’t do this. She didn’t tell him that she didn’t want to live without him. She could see in his eyes, hear in his voice, that it would do no good. He would try to sell the house, and, if present, she would only hinder him.

           Swallowing a tennis ball-sized lump, she said, “Fine. But I’m not going to Egbertia. I told you, I hated it there when I did study abroad.”

           He sighed. “All right. I guess I can get you one more stop along—to Jaceland. Any objections?”

           She shook her head, biting her lower lip, and then collapsed into tears.

*         *         *

           Casey paced across the living room, hands shoved into the pockets of his ratty jeans, glancing alternately at the wall clock and out the window. “What part of, ‘Be on time,’ doesn’t he understand?” he grumbled.

           “It’s only a few minutes,” Bryanna pointed out.

           “I know, but I told you, I—“

           “You don’t want me to be a sitting duck on the platform if I miss the train. I know.” That that concern had some validity; the monsters who had invaded their country had rendered it an unsafe place for loitering of any sort. What she didn’t understand was why his friend’s tardiness surprised him.

           “I could just take a taxi,” she suggested.

           “No. Too expensive.”

           Her scowl deepened, her grip on her suitcase tightening. She’d packed the essentials; a few days’ clothing; toiletries; a Stephen King paperback about a man who’d gone insane, to keep her from going insane. He’d bring another bag, and Dewey, when he came.

           “He’s here,” Casey announced, already heading for the door.

           Bracing herself, she rose and followed him outside, to the BMW that Tyler treated like a surrogate child. Tyler hadn’t bothered turning it off, just rolled the window down and nodded at Casey. “Hey, Case.” He flicked a glance at her and quickly back, as if the sight of her burned his corneas. “Bryanna.”

           “Thanks for driving me,” Bryanna said, quelling a cringe.

           Casey, meanwhile, had already grabbed her bag and loaded it into the trunk. Coming back around, he said, “Step on it, Ty. I don’t want her to be late.”

           She had done all right up to this moment; now, however, it hit her. Tears blurring her vision, she sprang forward, snapped her arms around Casey, and laid on him the most passionate kiss of her life.

           “You’re gonna be late,” Casey said, pulling away and scowling.

           “Yeah, yeah, I know. I just…Take care, Casey.” She climbed into the passenger’s seat and gave him one last glance. “I love you.”

           Tyler floored it, and the engine roared, preempting any reply from Casey.

           They rode in silence, Tyler gripping the wheel so tightly that his knuckles blanched, new jowls sagging below the corners of his lips. She looked at the rubble that had once been her hometown until she couldn’t look at it anymore and then turned her gaze to her sneakers. Invisible palms pushed up her stomach, urging her to say something, but she didn’t know what to say. She thought of the first time she’d met Tyler, at a soiree held at the sprawling estate of his best friend, an investment banker whose chin mole she remembered but whose name she’d forgotten. Casey had introduced them, Bryanna feeling, in the gown Casey had bought her for the occasion, like an ape draped in diamonds, an alien layer of goop blanketing her face. Champagne flute in one hand, he’d looked her up and down; his eyes flickered like those of one regarding a child who had painted her bedroom with Desitin. Casey had gone to fetch drinks for them, and, the second he passed out of earshot, Tyler had remarked, “I’d recommend a lighter shade on your lips, and a slightly cooler tone of blush—the one you’re wearing’s more flattering for a winter…as much as that brand’s products are flattering for anyone, that is.”

           And, just like that, she’d no longer needed the color. “I’m not used to wearing makeup,” she’d said.

           “Yeah, I didn’t think so.”

           Any other man, she would have told to try painting his face, and then they’d talk. Instead, she’d said, “Nice meeting you,” and marched off. Casey could follow her, or he could go back to Tyler; she didn’t care.

           He had returned to Tyler and chatted with him for another few moments and then come to her. He’d known better than to ask her why she’d bailed.

           Yes, a taxi—even the dented, dusty relics now exclusive in this town—sounded like Heaven right now.

           Tyler glanced at the clock, and his scowl deepened. “We’re gonna be late.”

           Do you care? She couldn’t imagine that the thought of her in the vulnerable position a missed voyage would impose would be even a tremble on his Richter scale. Luckily for him, however, she knew that pointing that out would serve no purpose.

           He pressed harder on the gas; the car groaned, the outside world stretching into a green and brown blur. He blew through a traffic light—none of those in town had worked in months—and rounded the final bend. She undid her belt and poised her hand above her door handle.

           “We’ve got five minutes; you should make it,” he muttered, more to himself than to her. “These things’re never on time.”

           He stopped in the lot, tires kicking up dust where the asphalt had worn away. She opened her door, stepped out, fetched her bag, and headed for the ticket office.

           As she entered, hear heart plunged. The line stretched nearly out the door. No way would she make her train. But what else could she do? She’d take the next one, and Casey would never have to know.

           As she waited, her mind continued to race. They’d said Saturday. But why trust them? They could have said that to throw them off—because, in reality, they planned to attack another day. Maybe today. They could hit Casey, or here; a train would make an easy, prolific target.

           She scanned the travelers ahead of her. Did any of them look suspicious? Not particularly…but, then, she never had known how to read people. And most of them had baggage. They could easily be packing a bomb.

           Calm down. Obsessing’s not gonna get you anything.

           Nonetheless, she found herself spiraling. Only twenty-eight and thirty, respectively, she and Casey should have had time. Time to marry. To buy a house in a safe place. To build a doghouse for Dewey. To have children. Grandchildren. To retire and move to a beach where they could dip their toes in alabaster sand and fill their lungs with sunshine. They didn’t deserve to die here, now, in a war they had had no hand in creating and no hope of solving.

           Screw his arguments. She should have insisted upon taking him and Dewey with her. If anything happened to them because of her failure to do so, she would never forgive herself.

*         *         *

           An hour later, she lumbered through the train’s gasping, rusty steel doors and settled into one of its faded Rexine seats. She glanced out the window, at rubble as far as the eye could see; shuddered; and turned her focus to the other boarding passengers. An old lady, her crown of silver curls wrapped in a tattered paisley-print scarf; a middle-aged man whose t-shirt and jeans looked as if bathed in dirt; a young mother and child whose eyes pierced straight to her heart. None of them looked suspicious. But, then, monsters often didn’t.

           She shifted, continuing to watch them and the other passengers. Her heart jumped every time one of them shifted their weight, took a deep breath, or reached into their handbag. False alarm after false alarm. Each promising she would not be able to discount that the next worrisome act as such.

Two grueling hours in, the one person she never would have expected, holding the leash of the one canine she never would have expected, walked through the door between cars. When he spotted her, his face went plaster-white. “You don’t understand,” he babbled. “I…I didn’t wanna hurt you…”

           Her mind swam, the room melting and swirling and seeming to crumble beneath her.

           “And you thought just taking off wouldn’t hurt me?” she managed at last.

           “I…I thought it’d be easier for you if you didn’t have to face me…”

“Bull,” she snapped, heat flaring in her chest. He didn’t care how she felt, as long as he got what he wanted. A clean conscience. His pick of their stuff. Dewey. Safety. A new home. No more strings attached to her.

Tears singed her eyes, but she blinked them back. She would not stroke his ego by letting him see her break. God knew, she would have plenty of time to do so, alone, later.

A voice boomed over the loudspeaker: “Attention, passengers, we are now approaching Egbertia. Please prepare to disembark if this is your destination.”

Swallowing, she jumped to her feet and extended a hand. “Give me the dog,” she ordered him.

“What?”

“Give me the dog. It’s the least you can do.”

He looked at Dewey, flesh knotting at the corners of his lips. Finally, he handed her the leash, and she headed for the doors.

“Wait. This isn’t your stop.”

She turned back to spear him with a glare. “It is now.”