Bentley Little - The Burning

At some point, the train would reach its final destination. Probably sooner rather than later. He was not exactly sure what would happen there-well, he knew what, although he did not know how -but he realized that he needed to find some way to stop it. He thought of what he'd seen out the windows. An army of Native Americans was waiting for them at Promontory Point. Aligned originally against the white society that had abused them both, the Native Americans had gone from allies to enemies over generations due to the all-consuming hunger of the Chinese dead. Dennis had no idea how the men of the tribes had discovered that it would happen at the Point, the burning place, or what was behind their gathering; all he knew was that if they failed, the dead would have free rein and no one would be safe. He could not allow that to happen. In school, in the ethics class he'd taken the semester before dropping out of college, there'd been endless discussions about how choosing not to act was still a choice and choosing not to act against evil made one complicit in that evil. They had all sworn that were the opportunity to arise, they would take a stand no matter what the personal consequences.

Now he had the opportunity to act on that promise.

If he could only figure out how.

He wished Cathy were here. His sister might be young, but she was smart and good at thinking on her feet.

On an impulse, he tried his cell phone, but it didn't even turn on. There was no light, no beep, nothing. He pressed his face to the window. On the other side of the glass, no historic scenes were replaying themselves for his benefit. There was only darkness.

"Dennis."

He looked over at Malcolm, the medical student. "Yeah?"

"You think it's all true?"

Dennis nodded. He did. Like that of any other minority group, the known history of the Chinese in America was pretty bad. To discover that it was even worse and more brutal than he'd been led to believe was not exactly a shocker.

"But it's still not worth retaliating for?"

"Against people who had nothing to do with any of it and don't even know what happened? No." He frowned. "Why? Are you changing your mind?"

"No. No, not at all. It's just that ... why are we here? What do they need us for? What do we bring to the table? You know what I'm saying? There must be a reason. But ... what is it?"

"I don't know," Dennis admitted.

"It worries me," Malcolm said.

Dennis nodded. "Yeah. Me, too."

Thirty-three

Promontory Point, Utah

What surprised Angela most about the gathering was its size. The shots on television had not done it justice. There it had looked like the crowd of an ordinary football game behind the reporter. Viewed here from the road, however, there seemed to be enough people to fill five or six stadiums. The sight was impressive ... but also a little creepy. The fact that this many individuals had suddenly, inexplicably and simultaneously walked out on their ordinary lives and used whatever means necessary to get to this place left her feeling not only frightened but overwhelmed. If whatever they were dealing with had the power to summon thousands of people over such a broad geographic area, they had no hope in hell of combating it. They might as well turn tail right now and run as far away from here as they could get.

The car approached the edge of the gathering. A brown sign by the side of the road read golden spike national historic site. Somewhere in the middle of this massive assemblage was a visitors' center, were roads and parking lots that led to the structure, but the amorphous nature of the crowd and its incredible scale had engulfed those permanent fixtures and temporarily changed the topography of the land. She could not tell where anything was located.

Derek pulled next to a CNN news van. A satellite dish atop a long pole protruded from the center of the van high above the gathered throng. Black wires and cables ran in bunches from within the vehicle's open center door outward into the crowd.

"The train's not here," Derek said.

"Yet," Angela emphasized. For she felt certain that it would be. And soon. She had no clue as to why it was late or what detour it could possibly have taken, but she knew in her gut that the corpse-hauling locomotive would arrive. This was where it was headed; this was its destination.

She unbuckled her seat belt and got out of the car. Her legs hurt from being cramped in the same position most of the day, and she stretched gratefully, thankful to have freedom of movement once again. As Derek, his mom and his brother got out of the car, she walked over to the news van to see if she could find out what was happening. Poking her head in the open door, she saw banks of electronic equipment and a row of six small television screens showing six different shots of the crowd, but no person inside the vehicle. She glanced from one screen to another, looking for some kind of clue, something that would give her an idea of where to go and what to do, but there were only scenes of campers and crowds, people milling around.

"Can I help you?" someone asked behind her.

She pulled her head out of the van to see a clean-cut young man only a few years older than herself carrying what looked like a video camera and an extra length of coiled cable. "Uh ...," she stammered, caught off guard. "I, uh, was just wondering ... uhm ... no," she said. "Sorry." She moved away to let the man into the van.

"What now?" Derek asked, coming up next to her.

"I don't know," Angela admitted.

"These are close quarters. If that train gets here, if those . . . zombies come out and that mold starts infecting people?" He shook his head. "It would spread really fast."

She'd been thinking the same thing, but she had no idea what they could do to prevent any of it. She felt helpless, powerless, useless.

"Maybe we should leave," Derek's mother suggested.

His brother, Steve, nodded nervously. "Yeah."

"No," Angela and Derek said simultaneously.

They looked at each other and smiled. Where there's humor, there's hope, she thought. She wondered what her parents were doing right now, wondered what they would say if they knew she was here and why. She hadn't talked to them for the past two days. For all she knew, they thought she'd been kidnapped, and were calling Flagstaff police to send a search party after her.

The sun was starting to go down.

"What do we do about sleeping arrangements?" Angela asked. "I don't think there are any hotels around here."

"I don't even think there's a bathroom," Steve said.

Derek shrugged. "I guess we'll just sleep in the car."

The temperature was dropping, too.

Angela looked around at the crowd of Native Americans. They all seemed to be men, but they were old and young, fat and thin, crew cut and ponytailed. One thing they had in common was that they completely ignored one another. The communal spirit usually present at large events like concerts and football games was absent. It was as if thousands of individuals with absolutely nothing in common and no interest in one another happened to find themselves in the same place at the same time.

Between the crush of bodies, she thought she saw a portion of railroad track.

It's coming, she thought. It will be here tonight.

She said nothing to Derek. But when he took her hand, she squeezed it tightly, hoping to stop her trembling.

The second day passed slowly. They had run out of things to talk about and none of their immediate neighbors seemed in the mood for discussion, so mostly they sat around silently and waited. Henry wished he'd brought some reading material, but he hadn't and no one else had either. He could have spoken to reporters, given them his take on the situation for broadcast. But he had a career to think of after all of this was over, and it was more important to maintain his credibility than provide himself with diversions. Toward the middle of the day, he hiked around a bit, surveying the surroundings and trying to strike up conversations with other sojourners to no avail. He returned hot, tired and frustrated.