done it with his mind, while in the grip of those damned lights. Once upon a time the limit of his mind-power was pushing pizza pans off restaurant tables or fluttering the pages of a book, but times had changed. He had changed. Just how much he didn’t know, and didn’t want to.
The train slowed more and began rumbling over switching points. Luke was aware that he was in a fair amount of distress. His body wasn’t on red alert, not yet, but it had definitely reached Code Yellow. He was hungry, and that was bad, but his thirst made his empty belly seem minor in comparison. He remembered sliding down the riverbank to where the S.S. Pokey had been tethered, and how he had splashed the cold water over his face and scooped it into his mouth. He would give anything for a drink of that river water now. He ran his tongue over his lips, but it wasn’t much help; his tongue was also pretty dry.
The train came to a stop, and Luke stacked the boxes again, working by feel. They were heavy, but he managed. He had no idea where he was, because in Sturbridge the door of the Southway Express box had been shut all the way. He went back to his hidey-hole behind the boxes and small engine equipment and waited, feeling miserable.
He was dozing again in spite of his hunger, thirst, full bladder, and throbbing ear, when the door of the boxcar rattled open, letting in a flood of moonlight. At least it seemed like a flood to Luke after the pure dark he’d found himself in when he woke. A truck was backing up to the door, and a guy was hollering.
“Come on . . . little more . . . easy . . . little more . . . ho!”
The truck’s engine switched off. There was the sound of its cargo door rattling up, and then a man jumped into the boxcar. Luke could smell coffee, and his belly rumbled, surely loud enough for the man to hear. But no—when he peeked out between a lawn tractor and a riding lawnmower, he saw the guy, dressed in work fatigues, was wearing earbuds.
Another man joined him and set down a square battery light which was—thankfully—aimed at the door and not in Luke’s direction. They laid down a steel ramp and began to dolly crates from the truck to the boxcar. Each was stamped KOHLER, THIS SIDE UP, and USE CAUTION. So wherever this was, it wasn’t the end of the line.
The men paused after loading ten or twelve of the crates and ate doughnuts from a paper sack. It took everything Luke had—thoughts of Zeke holding him down in the tank, thoughts of the Wilcox twins, thoughts of Kalisha and Nicky and God knew how many others depending on him—to keep from breaking cover and begging those men for a bite, just one bite. He might have done it anyway, had one of them not said something that froze him in place.
“Hey, you didn’t see a kid running around, did you?”
“What?” Through a mouthful of doughnut.
“A kid, a kid. When you went up to take the engineer that Thermos.”
“What would a kid be doing out here? It’s two-thirty in the morning.”
“Aw, some guy asked me when I went to get the doughnuts. Said his brother-in-law called him from up in Massachusetts, woke him out of a sound sleep and asked him to check the train station. The Massachusetts guy’s kid ran away. Said he was always talking about hopping a freight out to California.”
“That’s on the other side of the country.”
“I know that. You know that. Would a kid know that?”
“If he’s any good in school, he’d know Richmond is a fuck of a long way from Los Angeles.”
“Yeah, but it’s also a junction point. The guy said he might be on this train, then get off and try to hop one going west.”
“Well, I didn’t see any kid.”
“The guy said his brother-in-law would pay a reward.”
“It could be a million dollars, Billy, and I still couldn’t see any kid unless a kid was there to see.”
If my belly rumbles again, I’m finished, Luke thought. Deep-fried. Nuked.
Billy and Duane loaded a few more Kohler crates into the boxcar, then rolled their ramp back into the truck and drove away. Luke had time to catch a glimpse of a city skyline—what city he didn’t