Chapter 19
Malcolm had never been so lost for words.
The smell wafting off his brother made his guts roil in rebellion, but he couldn’t tell if it came from the strips of flesh that curled back from his body like paint peeling off a house, or from the layer of pulsing blue-gray skin beneath.
He’d loved his brother once, and the fraternal bond had lingered despite years of rejection and resentment.
Watching the way Elias had treated Violet, and Malcolm’s own love for her growing, he’d realized what a bastard his brother truly was. But this …
“Cat got your tongue?” Elias asked, his voice thick and gruff. Changing. “I asked you a question, Mal.”
Are you fucking my wife, brother?
Laughter bubbled up in Malcolm’s chest. A bit of madness.
What was he meant to say in the midst of this?
Just the once, brother. Once upon a time, perhaps, but any love or bitterness from the past meant nothing now.
Elias seemed almost to be dying, rotting, right in front of him, and yet he spoke as if he didn’t even realize it.
“Elias…”
Sadness washed over him. He felt no guilt for falling in love with Violet—Elias had been cruel and cavalier—but hate and disdain bled out of him as he watched his brother stagger toward him.
Malcolm covered his nose and mouth, wincing at the stink, and took a step backward.
Part of him thought he should try to find a doctor on the train, but nobody could have looked at Elias and believed a doctor could save him.
“What’s happened to you?” Malcolm asked.
Elias smiled. His teeth were thin and sharp and plentiful. His eyes held a cloudy, faraway gaze that reminded Malcolm of soldiers during the war who’d gotten their hands on opium and used it to escape, sometimes forever. But no drug could do something like this.
Only disease.
“Stay back, Elias.” Malcolm retreated farther. “Keep away from me.”
“Not to worry,” his brother choked. “We’re not here for you.”
Malcolm froze. Ice ran up the back of his neck. “Who the hell is ‘we’?”
Elias shuddered. His smile vanished, and he reached both hands to his face, cringing in anguish or pain, perhaps both.
His eyes remained opium-distant. “You don’t see.
You can’t see. There are trees as tall as the world, wearing the faces of gods.
Their branches are hung with little flames like candles. ”
Something wept from the corners of Elias’s eyes, but not tears. Certainly not tears.
“I’m going to find you help,” Malcolm said. “Lie down. Just wait, and I’ll…”
Mid-sentence, he saw Elias’s gaze twitched toward the crate.
For a minute, he had forgotten his purpose on this train, the promise he’d made to their mother, but there was a kind of hunger in the way Elias glanced that way.
Intention and awareness that suggested that even if Malcolm had forgotten Maggie’s body for a moment, Elias had not.
Malcolm shuffled to one side, making sure he could get between Elias and the crate if it came to that.
Elias took a step closer, but no longer toward Malcolm.
He moved toward the crate, now, and Malcolm understood.
Whatever had infected his brother, it connected back to the raven, to Maggie’s death, to the promise he’d made.
“Don’t go near her again,” Malcolm said quietly.
Elias laughed. And cried. His fingers clawed the scraps hanging from the shiny gray flesh being born from inside the man he’d been.
His eyes opened wide, and seemed to lock onto Malcolm’s face, yet they still had that distant sheen.
“There are others. Some are just waking up now, digging themselves up from the dirt. It hurts them, Mal. You have no idea how much it hurts. My bones are burning inside me, but the old ones have lived with agony for so very long.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Elias.”
“That’s okay, brother. You don’t have to understand. Maybe it’s better if you don’t.” He went rigid, seemed to be sniffing at the air. “Oh. There are others coming.”
Elias staggered slightly, as if pushed by a wind Malcolm could not feel. He winced, head drooping in sorrow. “It’s like claws inside me. Ripping, shredding … and they all feel it, too. I hear them screaming in my head.”
The noise of the train rattling over the tracks seemed very loud.
Malcolm stared at his brother, and surprised himself by taking a step toward him.
In Korea, he had seen men turned inside out by mines and grenades.
He’d seen skulls blown apart and limbs left behind on a battlefield.
These were images that slithered into his nightmares, no matter how hard he worked to erase them from his waking mind.
Yet he’d never seen anything that shocked him more than the transformation before him.
Elias had been still. Now he shook like a wet dog, bits of stinking gray meat sloughing off, some heavy enough to smack the floor and others drifting slowly down.
“Mal,” Elias whispered, shoulders slumped. Head still lowered.
The fog of shock cleared for a moment, enough for Malcolm’s conscience to peer through. This is your brother, he thought, finally truly able to see the anguish and pain and horror that gripped Elias. Help him.
Malcolm reached out. His heart pounded with the fear of catching whatever this was, but he thought Elias might die. How would he live with himself if he didn’t at least offer comfort?
Elias snapped his head up, staring at Malcolm’s extended hand. His nose had rotted away, leaving a bump with two slits for nostrils. They flared as if he inhaled Malcolm’s scent, and then Elias began to tremble.
His eyes locked on Malcolm’s. “I don’t want to kill you.”
Malcolm withdrew his hand. “I’m glad to hear it.”
Those teeth again, that silver smile in the shadows. “But I might.”
The door between cars opened with a clank and the shift of air pressure. They both turned to watch Violet and Alfie nearly topple into the baggage car.
“Close it!” Violet snapped at Alfie. “Can you lock it?”
Alfie ignored her, fumbling with the latch.
“What is it? What happened?” Malcolm asked, rushing to Violet.
“Locked!” Alfie said.
They all stared at the door as if waiting for someone on the other side to test the lock. Seconds passed, and nothing happened. Violet deflated in relief and turned to Malcolm, but her gaze shifted as she saw what remained of Elias looming in the shadows of the baggage car.
Violet screamed and jerked backward. She slammed into the locked door, and something slammed back. Alfie jumped, then pulled her away from the door.
“What the fuck is doing that?” Malcolm snapped, pointing at the door.
Alfie nodded toward Elias. “I think we’ve got a more immediate problem.”
“Is that…” Violet pulled away from Alfie and started toward the center of the baggage car. “Is that Elias?”
Malcolm had turned his back on his brother.
Elias grabbed him by the shoulder, fingers digging in hard, painful even through his shirt and coat.
Malcolm jerked away, backed into Alfie, who kept him from falling.
The stink of Elias was nearly as bad as the revulsion Malcolm felt at having been touched by whatever he’d become, even through his clothing.
“Kill me, Malcolm,” Elias rasped. “Do it fast. This … whatever is happening to me … it’s not just my body. It’s in my mind. Kill me quick.”
Malcolm froze. The floorboards of the baggage car seemed to undulate as they passed over rough track.
“Elias,” Violet said, “what are you, now?”
The pale gray flesh glistened. Black veins pulsed. “I don’t know.”
Alfie dashed to his duffel, shoved a hand in. “To hell with it.” He pulled out a gun, black-barreled and heavy-looking.
“No!” Malcolm shouted, and Alfie hesitated.
Elias fell to his knees. He looked up at Malcolm. “There are others. I feel them. Inside the train, but up ahead, too. Closing in.”
Up ahead? Malcolm strode to the window, dragged it open, and thrust his head out.
Cold rain whipped at him, and he squinted against the wind.
He looked east along the tracks, up toward the top of the train, studied the engine—only the coal car separated them from it.
He caught no sign of anything out of the ordinary.
Only here, in the baggage car.
Then, just north of the tracks, something pale flashed from the woods, darting through the rain, toward the train.
It leaped to intercept the engine and was gone so fast Malcolm might have thought he’d imagined it, if it had not now been followed by a scream, rocketed back to them on the wind. A scream from the engineer.
“Elias,” he began, but any further questions would go unanswered. When he turned to look, his brother lay sprawled on his face in a smear of dry and rotten skin and gore.
Violet had a trembling hand over her mouth. Alfie had turned ghostly pale.
None of them wanted to get close enough to see if he was dead.
Something slammed against the door hard enough to crack the wood. The lock strained with the next blow. Alfie raised his pistol, aiming at the door as he backed slowly away.
“It killed them,” Violet said, rushing to Malcolm. “Everyone in the first two sleeper cars. They’re all…”
She shook her head with the memory. Malcolm glanced around for a weapon. There were several chains on the floor with metal collars, there to secure animals like the goat. He bent, picked up a chain in both hands, and yanked hard.
He didn’t doubt Violet’s words. After the raven, such a murder scene seemed all too possible.
“Did you see it?” he asked her. “What is it?”
“I think it’s … that.” She pointed at Elias.
Malcolm felt sick. He’d expected the answer, but now it was real. True.