I let Lucy crawl out first. I pretend that it’s because I’m a gentleman. But it’s not. It’s because my back is nearly snapped in half. The pain is burning all around me. Bouncing from the tip of my toes and all the way up to the front of my skull and back again. I suck it up yet again and crawl out after her. By the time I make it from out underneath the train, she is already out of the crawlspace and holding out her hands to help me up. I take them with my breath held. She pulls so hard my back cracks really loudly. Even she hears it.
‘Are you okay?’ She asks and holds me once I’m up and out of the gap. She speaks softly in the new found silence. Just like before. It melts my heart right away and I slump over her shoulder.
‘Your back again?’ She starts to rub her hands around the base of my spine. I tell her it’s helping but I lied.
I really don’t want to but I pull away. I have to walk it off. She doesn’t look offended so I don’t say anything. I just run my hand down her arm and all the way until we touch finger tips as I walk away. The agony burns through my legs with every step but I swear I’m not going down. How many times am I going to fall like this? It’s just plain unlucky. Or so I tell myself.
The tunnel is still reasonably well lit. The lights behind us are still intact but the exploding train wiped out all of the ones nearer to the door. At least the door was wiped out too though so we have a way out of the tunnel without having to backtrack. I can’t see any cracks in the hull of the ship though. And I can’t see any more of the flying dinosaurs either. I think we might be safe. And I have an idea on how to lift our spirits and generally make the two of us feel a little better.
I can see the tip of my axe glistening in the flames ahead. I suck up the pain yet again and bend down to retrieve it. It’s warm to the touch but the wooden handle hasn’t been burned or scarred either.
‘Come on, I’ve got an idea.’ I turn to see Lucy weeping into her hands again. She tries to hide it behind a yawn and a stretch but it’s as transparent as glass. She steadies herself and wanders over, kicking some of the rubble aside as she does. She takes me by the hand and nestles her head into my shoulder. She closes her eyes for just a second too.
‘What are you thinking? Climb through the torn door and see what we can find?’ I stroke her copper hair a second and drag her around me to face me.
‘Are you hungry?’ She just looks dazed and confused by my stupid question. She doesn’t answer but she has to be. I know I am. Very. I haven’t eaten since Kolt captured that snake out in the desert. But that must have been days ago. There really was no way of telling time here. We were inside, then outside, then back in again and constantly dealing with problems and blood curdling issues that it just didn’t matter what time it was.
But I would like to know. It would be nice to figure out how long we had been here. I pull her with me and make my way slowly back to the fallen train. The fire, though intense, had burned fast and had died out into embers just as quickly.
The train carriage had rolled onto it’s side but it wasn’t too far off centre to be uncomfortable. I enter through the smashed window and quickly check that the way is clear. It had been lit in a clean surgical light when we first stepped into it. Now it’s choked with smoke and flame scarred. The carpets are on fire still and the last of the birds is laid dead in one corner. I nudge it’s carcass first with my boot and then again with my axe a few times. No sound or movements means that it must be dead. Good. My plan might just work out after all.
There’s enough of the diesel left to feed the fire a while and the various parts of the train that were flammable would feed it a while longer still. That’s pretty much just the carpets really. But I can tear up the cushion and felt pads that line the benches too. That will keep us warm for even longer still. Lucy finally joins me and takes a seat. It’s a bit skew whiff to one side but she manages to get comfortable by laying down across it. I take to the task of dismantling the place and feed it to the fire in the centre of the carriage. Lucy must think I have lost it.
But she actually asks me if that’s true when I take my axe and start brutally hacking at the torso of the meaty and muscular frame of the overgrown bird. I succeed in hacking off two massive cuts of tender and bloodied meat. They, even uncooked, look like two of the nicest steaks you could ask for. I slop them on the dirty floor. I don’t care if they kill me. I’m eating them either way. I take my axe to the leathery wing. The skin splits with relative ease and I fashion two wraps, one for each of the two steaks.
I place the axe down and wrap the tender looking meat around the thick skin. Perfect to cook them in. Lucy has propped herself up and has begun to smile a little. She must have caught on. Her expression is a curious mix between admiration, love and utter bewilderment. It just spurs me on frankly. My axe is double sided. I place one steak on one side of the blade and the other next to it on the other side of the tip. I then prop the axe into the fire using whatever shard of metal would hold it best in place. I wedge it in good and immediately hear the skin start to crackle and burn. They won’t take too long but best to cook them through. Lucy’s smile has evolved from a gentle, thin and admiring smile and into an easy chuckle. One filled with pride in me.
‘You complete caveman.’ She laughs as I sit down beside her. I nudge her playfully.
‘I guarantee that will be the best tasting meal you have ever had.’ I laugh with her and point to the now sizzling steaks. I’m really looking forward to mine. It must have been literally years since I had anything even like it. Maybe even back on the farm with my Dad come to think of it. It even conjures a tear for me to think about it. Not that I show it. Sadly our laughter and light mood dies off after a few minutes. It was nice to lift our spirits just for a moment but the reality of our situation eventually invaded what would have otherwise been a really nice moment for a fledgling couple to enjoy.
I don’t know why I thought that. A couple. Maybe I was getting ahead of myself and ahead of her too. But that was how it felt and it made me feel better to just think it so I just went with it. Not that I would ever tell her. I’m not that brave. And I can’t persuade the new me to be that brave either.
No matter. We just sit in silence and try to enjoy the flames and the warmth they create. It’s peaceful but the atmosphere of the place would not give it away. It remains tense. With more than one undercurrent flowing around the room. There is something I need to ask her and I can tell it’s distracting me. But I’m going to be the jerk who spoils our meal. I’ll just ask her after a while.
The steaks are cooking really well now. The room is filling slowly with curious mixes of black and white clouds of smoke and the gentle rasping of the sizzling meat. It smells exceptional. It’s making my mouth water. I wait as long as I can as Lucy naps contently by my side.
I need to know why she freaked and lost it when one of those flying monsters started dragging at her legs. That really was out of character for her and it was making me sick thinking about it. I know everyone has a fear. An off switch. Something irrational that makes them terrified beyond reason. Maybe that was hers. But it just didn’t add up. And no way was she going to open up to it. Even when I did start prying for it, I doubt she will tell me. I nudge her awake.
‘I think these are good to eat. You want to join me.’ She rubs her eyes but smiles contently. She looks shaken again and I wonder what she might have been dreaming of. I thought back but only briefly to what she had said about her latest nightmare and it unsettles me.
‘You okay?’ I clarify but she only nods her head. I take the handle of the axe and bring the nicely cooked sizzling dino-steaks out of the slowly dying fire. Shame we have nothing to eat them off of or even with. I guess we will just have to wait for them to cool and go at them like animals. I’m fine with that but I think Lucy might just be humoring me. She doesn’t look like she has any appetite. Something is really troubling her. I need to know what so I can try to fix it.
/> ‘Listen…’ I start as I unwrapped the meat from the skin blankets I had hastily but rather resourcefully crafted. ‘Even if you don’t feel like eating, I think you should. No idea where the next one will come from…’ I smile to her and rub the top of her shoulder with a gentle caressing palm.
‘They look amazing.’ She smiles, forces herself to perk up with a deep breath, and takes one of the steaks off the axe without worrying about the mess or the heat at all. I must have given my surprise at that away in my face.
‘What?’ She protests and takes a hearty mouthful. Trying to stop smiling at the same time.
‘I knew I liked you.’
We say little more and tuck into the only meals either of us had enjoyed for what feels like a lifetime. The meat is cooked perfectly to my taste. Moist, greasy and tender. But well enough so that it falls apart with each rotation of the jaw. Only the odd big fat vein spoils my enjoyment of it and I think I might have made a right pig of myself by finishing it in no time. But when I look up, Lucy has pretty much destroyed her’s too. And I’ve no idea why I found that so attractive. The perfect girl. Or so I happily thought. Distracted at last from the horror around us.
She finishes and just laughs when she realizes how much of a mess she was in. She just rubs the grease from her lips away with her jacket sleeve and then cleaned her hands across her thighs. I do the same. No time at all for manners. I doubt I would even be able to remember any after so long in that mine. We were animals at the end of the day. And treated like ones too.
‘Why did it upset you so much.’ Time for me to be that jerk. The guy I didn’t want to be to get the answers I need and want.
‘It doesn’t matter.’ She smiles at me, her legs tucked up against her chest where we sat upon the floor, and her head resting ajar against her knees.
‘Are you sure?’ That isn’t what I wanted to say. I wanted to say “no chance” or something more offensive and cruel but I hold it back.
‘Yeah.’ She sighs. ‘I think I know what this place is. I think I know what’s going on here.’ My heart sinks. Not because she is talking in riddles. Because I know exactly what she meant. I’m starting to figure it out too. I just didn’t want to know. It’s another truth I’m happy to hide from. Another realization that I was all too happy to forget and run away from. I think I knew from the start.
‘Don’t say that.’ I nervously run my hands through my long greasy hair and sigh to fight back a tear. Not like me at all. This girl really does have me off balance.
But I was starting to get it. I was starting to figure it out too. For all the conflict in my mind and for all the times I fought with the obvious truth it was hiding from me, the answers were starting to ebb through. The burning man who thought I was God. The drowning woman who didn’t want to be saved. Then there was Kolt. Kolt who had been dead all these years and never able to move on. I didn’t believe in ghosts before I came here.
That was the old me though. What choice did I have now though? When confronted with them in so vivid detail. This word was unlike our own. And a small theory was starting to warp it’s way around my tired mind. Kolt died in a fire. When he saw his ship again he burst into flames. The burning man aboard the ship died in a fire that would not consume him entirely. A fire that would not die. The drowning woman who wanted to drown again and again. People who died here constantly relived that death in the life beyond it. That death relived itself over and over again and hung there. In this world, unlike to my knowledge of Earth or any other, death was not the end. And the afterlife was a torturous remake of that same death.
I hope it’s wrong. I hope I’m wrong. I hate myself for even thinking it and I hope it’s just a figment of my imagination. I want to ask Lucy what she thinks but I daren’t. Because I already know the answer.
‘Listen.’ She began rubbing my arm gently. ‘Let’s stay here a while and sleep.’ She hit the nail right on the head. We’re both tired. Maybe after some sleep the world might not seem such a bleak place. Maybe I could start to think right again. She pulls me to lay beside her and she cuddles into me and shuts her eyes. I’m not getting to sleep. But every muscle in my body is aching so hard that I know I need to rest. Even if it meant just staying here, holding onto her, for a few hours to recharge.