the deserted boxcar, then darted back when he saw the switch-engine driver walking up the hump, holding a phone to his ear. He stopped for a moment, and Luke was afraid he might have been seen, but the guy was apparently just finishing his call. He put his phone in the bib pocket of his overalls and passed the box Luke was hiding behind without so much as a glance. He mounted the porch steps and went into the office.
Luke didn’t wait, and this time he didn’t amble. He sprinted down the hump, ignoring the pain in his back and tired legs, hopping over tracks and retarder braking pads, dodging around speed sensor posts. The cars waiting for the Portland-Portsmouth-Sturbridge run included a red box with SOUTHWAY EXPRESS on the side, the words barely readable beneath all the graffiti that had been added over its years of service. It was grimy, nondescript, and strictly utilitarian, but it had one undeniable attraction: the sliding side door wasn’t entirely shut. Enough of a gap, maybe, for a skinny, desperate boy to slip through.
Luke caught a rust-streaked grab-handle and pulled himself up. The gap was wide enough. Wider, in fact, than the one he’d dug beneath the chainlink fence at the Institute. That seemed a very long time ago, almost in another life. The side of the door scraped his already painful back and buttocks, starting new trickles of blood, but then he was inside. The car was about three-quarters full, and although it looked like a mutt on the outside, it smelled pretty great on the inside: wood, paint, furniture- and engine-oil.
The contents were a mishmash that made Luke think of his Aunt Lacey’s attic, although the stuff she had stored was old, and all of this was new. To the left there were lawnmowers, weed-whackers, leaf-blowers, chainsaws, and cartons containing automotive parts and outboard motors. To the right was furniture, some in boxes but most mummified in yards of protective plastic. There was a pyramid of standing lamps on their sides, bubble-wrapped and taped together in threes. There were chairs, tables, loveseats, even sofas. Luke went to a sofa close to the partially opened door and read the invoice taped to the bubble wrap. It (and presumably the rest of the furniture) was to be delivered to Bender and Bowen Fine Furniture, in Sturbridge, Massachusetts.
Luke smiled. Train ’97 might lose some cars in the Portland and Portsmouth yards, but this one was going all the way to the end of the line. His luck had not run out yet.
“Somebody up there likes me,” he whispered. Then he remembered his mother and father were dead, and thought, But not that much.
He pushed some of the Bender and Bowen cartons a little way out from the far sidewall of the boxcar and was delighted to see a pile of furniture pads behind them. They smelled musty but not moldy. He crawled into the gap and pulled the boxes back as much as he could.
He was finally in a relatively safe place, he had a pile of soft pads to lie on, and he was exhausted—not just from his night run, but from the days of broken rest and escalating fear that had led up to his escape. But he did not dare sleep yet. Once he actually did doze off, but then he heard the sound of the approaching switch-engine, and the Southway Express boxcar jerked into motion. Luke got up and peered out through the partially open door. He saw the trainyard passing. Then the car jolted to a stop, almost knocking him off his feet. There was a metallic crunch that he assumed was his box being attached to another car.
Over the next hour or so there were more thumps and jolts as more cars were added to what would soon be Number 4297, headed into southern New England and away from the Institute.
Away, Luke thought. Away, away, away.
A couple of times he heard men talking, once quite close, but there was too much noise to make out what they were saying. Luke listened and chewed at fingernails that were already chewed down to the quick. What if they were talking about him? He remembered the switch-engine driver gabbing on his cell phone. What if Maureen had talked? What if he had been discovered missing? What if one of Mrs. Sigsby’s minions—Stackhouse seemed the most likely—had called the trainyard and told the station operator to search all outgoing cars? If that