I walk and fume, and walk and fume for hours. I can feel Lucas’s presence behind me, only because I know he has to go the same direction as I am. When I look over my shoulder, there’s no sign of him.

  I refill my canteen from the river and fume a little more. If I am fuming, I can’t be thinking about what might be happening on the train right now. I am so deep in my thoughts that I don’t take in my surroundings for some time—I just walk, piloted by my body’s machinery while my brain goes about its separate business.

  Eventually, the ache in my legs and shoulders draws me back to awareness. The light is even and gray, the day tilting toward dusk, and there’s still no sign of the train graveyard. I wonder how far away it is. For the first time since finding the tracks, I start to worry that I might be going the wrong direction after all. But, I reason, I am following the same river we were following when the storm hit, and in the same direction. The graveyard must be ahead still.

  When at last a clump of clearly manmade shapes interrupts the horizon, my heart leaps. The excitement quickly recedes, however, as I draw nearer and realize it’s not the train graveyard at all, but a small city. A station just like so many train stops I’ve visited before. I don’t remember Yanto mentioning any stations between Nokon City and Cabe’s Falls, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any.

  Maybe the others are there too. At the very least, I can find somewhere to sleep, and creaking stars, bathe, and ask around about the others.

  As the station looms, however, my senses begin to prickle. Something feels wrong about the city. I step under the archway that welcomes me to Haven Station in fading letters and pause to take in the stillness and silence of the place. There is no sound of doors closing, or children playing, no smoke from chimneys or scents of cooking, no light pouring out of windows. The whole city is cloaked in unearthly silence.

  I’ve been here, I realize. Of course I have. It’s just been a while. This must be why Yanto never mentioned the place. It was decommissioned a few years ago, and all its residents moved on to new towns, leaving these buildings abandoned. I try to shake off the feeling of wrongness. It’s only natural that an abandoned city feels eerie. Every empty place that was built to encompass lives has a haunted quality. Cities get decommissioned all the time, though, and there’s nothing to fear. With any luck, I can still find something useful in this one, even if it’s just a bed in which to hurl my aching body.

  I pick a house at random and try the front door, finding it blessedly unlocked. I head first for the kitchen, but the cupboards are bare. Makes sense, they would have packed everything when they left, but a girl can hope. The house smells of must and something else. Something unpleasant that I can’t quite identify. A cursory examination of the other rooms yields nothing useful to me, so I move on to the neighbors.

  At the third house, I spot a small, rectangular mechanism embedded in an outside wall. A power generator. Fuck yes. I connect the two tubes emerging from the top, then repeat with the bottom set and hold my breath. There’s a low whirring sound, and the porch light flickers on. Amazing.

  Inside, dim lights come to life as I enter each room. The kitchen is mostly bare, but there remains a sealed jar of peanut butter, two tins of fish, and—against all odds—a can of instant coffee. I think I might cry.

  When I turn on the tap, it sputters briefly, and murky water rushes out. I leave it running, and after a minute or two, it is mostly clear. There’s no kettle in the kitchen, but I find an empty food tin which I fill with water and set on the stove to boil while I explore the rest of the house.

  The next room is the sitting room, and it’s about what I would expect in a house this size. A sofa, a few armchairs, a radio table, and a large window that doubles as a monitor so inhabitants could watch community news and story mods.

  Strangely, there are several pieces of luggage on the table. Items they couldn’t fit in the transport to bring with them, maybe? I open each one and find it full. I can’t imagine why they left so many of their clothes and belongings here, but I’m not going to complain. There’s probably something clean—or at least less dirty—in here I can change into. It feels a little wrong to dig through a stranger’s belongings, but not as wrong as walking around in damp, mud-crusted jeans.

  I find a pair of linen trousers that look like they’ll fit, and a soft sweater that I’ll probably drown in, which sounds pretty ideal at the moment. Not a good traveling outfit but it will work for sleeping in tonight. I head down the hall, the overhead light sputtering on as it senses my movement and revealing a bundle of something I can’t immediately identify piled against one wall. Blankets? I take a step toward whatever it is and freeze.

  On top of the bundle is a corpse. No, that’s not right. The bundle itself is a stack of three corpses. They’re placed neatly atop each other like linens, arms folded across their chests. Papery skin still clings to their bones, and the topmost one stares at the ceiling with gaping holes that once were eyes. What the bloodrotted fuck.

  What happened here?

  I don’t want to be here anymore. I don’t want to look for supplies or bathe or sleep or eat here. I want to get away from this place as fast as I can.

  Heart thudding painfully in my chest, I back out of the hall, unable to tear my eyes from the pile of bloodless corpses. A hand touches my shoulder, and I scream.

  We grapple for a moment, the stranger and me. Their arms wrap around my chest, and I twist and writhe to escape their grasp. I feel my feet lifted off the ground and kick wildly, making contact at least a few times with my assailant’s shins.

  We tumble to the floor together, and I gain the upper hand, twisting around to face them. They’re on their back now, and I’m straddling them, fist raised, when I hear my name.

  “Tali!”

  It’s the assailant speaking, I realize. They’re saying my name over and over.

  “Tali, it’s okay! Tali, it’s me!”

  “Lucas?”

  He looks up at me wide-eyed, holding his hands out to ward off my blows.

  “Are you… okay? What’s wrong?”

  “Oh my stars,” I lower my fist. “Oh my stars, it’s you.”

  Suddenly aware that I am still straddling him, I scramble off and sit with my back against the wall, attempting to steady my breathing.

  “Are you okay?” He repeats. “I didn’t mean to scare you, I’m sorry.”

  I stare at him for a few seconds, uncomprehending. I open my mouth to explain, then close it again.

  “Look,” I say at last, pointing toward the hall.

  Lucas frowns. “What? What’s going on, Tali?” Face still creased with confusion and concern, he peers around me into the hallway.

  “Oh fuck,” he breathes.

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh. fuck.”

  If I choose to, I can stay angry until the sun dies, but I never stay panicked for long. After my initial shock, my more rational self takes over and begins to run the ship while the part of me that wants to scream and scream about the corpses piled in the hall retreats to the back of my mind.

  It makes sense now, that the luggage is still in the house. The inhabitants apparently never made it out. What I can’t figure out is why.

  “Could it have been a gas leak?” Lucas suggests. “People sometimes die in the night without even feeling it.”

  “Sure, but they don’t usually fold themselves up neatly and stack themselves on top of one another when they do.”

  “Well obviously, someone did that part afterward.” He has turned my boiling over tin of water into two tins of almost drinkable coffee and he hands me one.

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  “Yeah but why? You think they have some sort of hallway pile burial ritual here?”

  “Probably,” he says solemnly. “Like, ‘honey your brother died. Just put him on top of your father in the hall.’”

  I snort before I can stop myself and then scowl at his pleased expression.

  “I mean, this station was definitely in the middle of decommission, right?” He says, more serious now. “Maybe there just wasn’t time to bury them. Or maybe someone was supposed to come finish the job later and then it got overlooked by an admin or something.”

  “Maybe.” It doesn’t feel right to me though. “Either way I don’t want to stay here with them. Let’s find another house for the night.”

  He accepts the “Let’s” as if we weren’t both wondering whether I would allow him to stay with me, but shakes his head at the proposition. “I checked most of the nearby houses. This is the only one with a generator, at least in this neighborhood. We can go pick another one if you want, but we won’t find heat and electricity.”

  I weigh my desire for a shower against my impulse not to remain a houseguest to the dead and after a moment the shower wins out. I don’t like walking past the house’s former inhabitants to get to the bath, but I remind myself they are long past caring and force myself onward.

  The shower is cold, but it’s clean. I scrub the mud off with the soap from my pack and step into the warm, dry clothes of my dead hosts. Between the coffee and the clean clothes I’m feeling significantly more sanguine about the situation. It’s creepy, but it’s a far cry better than the way I spent last night and I am bone weary.

  Lucas and I find a few blankets in the luggage and when I start to move the couch across the hallway entrance he takes the other end and helps, wordlessly agreeing to seal off the mouth of the makeshift crypt before we try to sleep.

  He stretches out on the couch and I curl up in one of the armchairs. Despite my weariness, sleep doesn’t come easily. I can’t stop thinking about the bodies down the hall—each on their back, legs straight and arms forming a neat X over their chest. Who would do that? Why?

  I can hear Lucas shifting restlessly in the dark and I’m selfishly glad I’m not the only one being robbed of sleep.

  “Tali,” he says quietly after a few minutes. “I’m sorry.”

  I let the words hang in the air between us without response. I definitely don’t forgive him and I’d rather file the issue away for later examination since we’re apparently stuck together for the moment.

  “You really don’t know why she had you do it?” I ask at last.

  “I really don’t.”

  “So she just snaps her fingers and you obey.”

  “It’s not like that…” He pauses for what seems like a long time. I wait. “I know her,” he says eventually. “I know her story and her character. She wouldn’t be cruel just for the sake of it.”

  I almost laugh. If what he’s seen of Nev’s character differs that greatly from what I’ve seen, she’s absolutely pulling the wool over his eyes. “You realize that’s insane right? She says go ruin Tali’s life and you think ‘well, I trust your judgement’ and just do it?”

  He draws in a sharp breath as if to argue but pauses again. “Yeah,” he says. Simple and quiet and without excuse. It annoys me.

  Feeling combative, I press. “So what’s this story that elevates her so high in your esteem?”

  “I can’t tell you that,” he sounds apologetic.

  “Really Lucas?”

  “It’s not mine to tell.”

  I let out a single harsh laugh. “Well, good to know you draw a line somewhere I guess.”

  If the jab lands, he gives little indication.

  “You’re telling me if Charlie asked you to do something you couldn’t explain you wouldn’t trust him enough to do it?”

  “Charlie would never ask me to do anything like that, because Charlie’s not a shitty person and a worse friend.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  I sit up, truly angry now. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “I’m just surprised you’re still so loyal. He didn’t even question your guilt. Not for a second. Didn’t give you a chance to explain at all. Doesn’t sound like a fantastic friend to me.”

  That one stings but I have no intention of letting him see me falter.

  “He didn’t have much of a choice. Nev made it so public… he would have looked like he was giving me special treatment if he’d done anything else. He’ll let me explain when I find him again.”

  Lucas’s silence might as well be a laugh.

  “What?” I demand.

  “Nothing. I just hope you also draw a line somewhere.”

  He rolls onto his side, facing away from me.

  “And you think Nev will welcome you back with open arms after you confess?” I ask.

  “No,” he admits.

  I don’t know what to say about that so I remain silent.

  “Listen, I haven’t said this because I don’t want to make excuses,” he says after a pause, “but I honestly had no idea how much trouble you were going to get in. It wasn’t supposed to be so permanent. At least that’s what I thought.”

  “So what was it supposed to be?”

  He doesn’t answer for so long that I start to think he might not. Finally, he sighs.

  “You just hated her so much.”

  “What? I didn’t hate her. Now I hate her.”

  “Well you didn’t like her and you made it obvious.”

  “So what? She has to have every person on the train like her?”

  “She has… a story,” he says.

  If he’s about to attempt to elicit my sympathy, he’s in for a surprise.

  “Which I can’t tell,” he adds. “And it’s not important. She is trying to find some information and she thinks Charlie has it. So she’s trying to get it from him. But the closer she got the more it seemed like you would try to stop her. I knew she was trying to drive a wedge between you two, I won’t pretend otherwise. I just didn’t think she’d go quite as far as she went.”

  “How noble of you.” If I had paused a half second before speaking I might have filed down the sharper edges of the words.

  “Anyway,” Lucas says, ignoring me. “We got into an argument about it. I wanted her to intervene before we left Nokona and at least get you back on the train. She refused.”

  “Must have been some fight, if you left the train voluntarily.” It’s not that I’m impressed by his principled stand, but I can’t help but feel a mild respect for it.

  “Well…” he says reluctantly, “If I’m being honest, I thought I could find you and apologize before the Talavar left the station. I didn’t exactly mean to get left behind.”

  The laugh that leaves my lips is sharp and involuntary. The next one contains more actual mirth. I find, in fact, that I can’t stop laughing. From the darkness where Lucas lies there is only a prickly silence at first. After a moment, though, he relents with a tentative giggle. All the stress and fear and tension of the last few days floods out of us both and we laugh until our eyes run.

  In the morning, Lucas and I find ourselves back in our now familiar state of mildly hostile co-existence. I momentarily consider leaving him behind again, but dismiss the idea. He is going the same direction I am and will only catch up with me again.

  Besides, this empty city creeps me out and I’d just as soon have someone else with me til I leave it behind. My instinct is to leave town immediately, but I know I should look for more supplies. If the Professor really is gone, and most of our luggage with him, we will run out sooner than later.

  We leave our slightly mummified hosts to their rest and move on to other houses. Most of them are empty. Some yield meager supplies: a few blankets, a few more tins of food, some matches. It seems the residents of this station packed thoroughly when they left.

  I’ve lost count of how many houses we’ve passed and how many we’ve searched, when we find another body. This one is lying on the sofa in a dark sitting room, one arm hanging off the edge as if its owner is simply taking a nap. On the end table, a small notebook lies open, a pen marking the place where someone stopped writing. I pick up the book and glance at the page. It looks like the beginning of a letter, abandoned after only a few lines. I move to replace it on the table, then pause and pocket it on impulse. We leave without looking for anything else.

  After that, we find more bodies. Some are piled neatly outside of houses and shops like firewood, others are discarded with less care. Two hang upside down from a clothing line between the windows of two houses as if someone bled them like animals.

  Staring up at these in horror, I tell Lucas, “We have enough. We need to get out of this town.”

  He agrees wholeheartedly and we return to the main street, walking quickly.

  When the tracks run past the community center, however, we both slow down. Nearly every station has a place like this, where people gather to contribute blood and distribute supplies delivered by the train. If there’s any single location where we’re likely to find a decent number of supplies, this is it.

  The center is a wide, unimposing building with double doors over which a sign with cheerful, hand-stenciled flowers reads “The Gathering Place.” The flowers feel especially grotesque in this dead station.

  Inside it looks like any other administrative building with a series of doors leading down one hall, and another set of double doors presumably opening onto the common area where town meetings could be held and blood contributions administered. We split up and start checking doors. I check the main administrative office first and finding it locked, move on to the next door. This one opens to a small kitchen where I find a few cans of fruit, several unlabeled meal envelopes, a portable water filter (thank the stars) and a small first aid kit, fully stocked. I cram the items into my bag and keep moving.

  The rest of the smaller offices don’t yield anything of use. There’s a children’s area, a large bathroom where the water is somehow still running, and a few staff offices. I use the toilet, then head toward the double doors to check out the common area. I take one step inside and stop cold.

  It takes me several seconds to understand what I’m seeing. The common area is set up for blood draws, with individual draw stations lined up in neat rows and columns. Each chair is still occupied. In row after row of faux leather chairs, the skeletal remains of the last patients sit as if waiting to be dismissed. Like the other bodies we’ve found, hair and clothes and leathery skin still cling to many of them. Some have slim tubes still hanging from their arms. The tile floors are covered in dark stains and against the far wall, hundreds of other bodies are piled in a huge mound. These ones are not neatly stacked—they look as if they were poured out of a giant box onto the floor. The room smells faintly of rot and dust and old blood.

  “Lucas!” My voice cracks and what I meant to be a shout comes out as little more than a whisper. I clear my throat and try again.

  The doors swing open and I hear his sharp intake of breath as he takes in the scene.

  “Holy blighted blood,” he breathes.

  The rational part of my brain knows that these people are long dead. That whoever, or whatever killed them is gone and we are in no danger ourselves. The rest of me is uninterested in these assurances.

  “Let’s go,” I say and I’m back outside beside the railroad tracks before my conscious thoughts catch up. Lucas’s face has gone paler than I’ve ever seen it and I’m gratified to see he’s as frightened as I am.