THE LAST TRAIN (eBook)

John Cline (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
368 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
9798317810283 (ISBN)

Infos

'The Last Train' is a harrowing journey seen through the eyes of a thirteen-year-old girl as she flees New York in a time of chaos and violent anarchy in America. With undying will and courage, she sets out to make it to the far north where trains have been ferrying people to safe zones. Helped by some, hunted by others, she endures a series of shattering events as the world dissolves into social disorder. 'The Last Train' is a thrilling story that captures the zeitgeist of our times.

John Cline is a long-standing executive producer in the world of advertising and film, having produced hundreds of commercials over the years. He directed an award-winning short, 'A Letter to Jonathan,' which The New York Times described as 'exquisite.' Additionally, he has written novels and screenplays throughout his life. His first novel, 'The Forever Beast,' was published by EP Dutton. A new and exciting series of mystery novels is pending release. John lives in the New York City area.

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"e;The Last Train"e; is a harrowing journey seen through the eyes of a thirteen-year-old girl as she flees New York in a time of chaos and violent anarchy in America. Her undying will and incredible courage propel her on a journey north up the Hudson River Valley, hoping to find trains that have been ferrying people to safe zones. Helped by some, hunted by others, buffeted by a series of shattering events, she remains determined to make it -- against increasingly dangerous odds. As she does she is haunted by flashbacks, both poignant and horrifying, of her family enduring the unraveling of their life, and as the world around them dissolved into social disorder. "e;The Last Train"e; is a thrilling story that captures the zeitgeist of our times.

Textauszug

1

I have the pains again.

I’m hungry but this isn’t in my stomach and I don’t want to tell Mother or Father because maybe they’ll leave me behind. The pains are below my stomach and I think maybe they are a disease of some kind, maybe because of the stream water and puddle water we’ve been drinking. It’s also been raining and yesterday I caught raindrops from the sky with my tongue but even now I don’t think the rain is bad for you. It must be the puddle water. But I can’t tell Father. Back last week they almost left Sonny behind because he was crying too much as we passed through a bad spot and he could have got us killed, and I heard Mother and Father talking about it afterward and they decided to forgive him because he’s just a child. But you never know these days.

We’re in a garage off the road and it’s dawn outside. Everyone is tired most dawns, even the militias. I pull Sonny closer to me and bring his head to my shoulder, away from the body lying near us. I don’t want Sonny looking too close. This body was alive once, maybe even yesterday, I think, a man walking on his two legs. Maybe he had a family. Maybe he loved someone. I don’t know. Maybe we all did. After a while I do what I know I should without being told and I pull the shoes and jeans off the body. There’s no blood on them but his shirt is soaked red so we can’t use it. Inside the jeans are some coins: a quarter, a nickel, one shiny penny. It reminds me, for some reason, of my youth.

Thirty one cents. I show Sonny and he smiles. The first smile in two days, I’ve been counting. I give him the penny. He grabs it with his little fingers and disappears back into himself.

Father and Mother are on the other side of the car, quiet time. I hear them breathing together. I don’t know much but I know enough to know that this is some sort of release for them. They seem to breathe easier after these quiet times. I wonder if I’ll ever get a release. I wonder if Sonny will.

The body’s legs are white and soft. I know we shouldn’t but we have not had a pillow for weeks and so I close Sonny’s eyes and lay his little head on the man’s thigh and I lay mine on the calf and we lie there on the garage floor like that for a little while and maybe I fall asleep, I’m not sure, because all of a sudden I hear Father and my eyes open. He seems excited. He’s found a steel door in the garage floor and inside the hole is a can of gas.

We gather around the can and he lifts it, heavy in his tired arms, and the gasoline sloshes like gold inside and we laugh as loud as we dare.

He moves to the car with it, staying low, we always stay low in case I haven’t mentioned that yet. He takes a yellow handled screwdriver from the tool belt that he wears around his waist and unscrews the sheet metal panel that covers the gas tank. It takes some time as his hands shake. I feel for him, for Father. He seemed so strong to me once and now I see how frail his arms and fingers have become. He is dirty like the rest of us. He didn’t want this. He is a picture of disappointment and despair. But he stays strong for our sake, I imagine. Now he twists off the gas cap and pours the gas into the car slowly, never spilling, patient as the last drops from the can drip into the tank. He puts the can down gently so it won’t make a noise, and that is when we see the shadows.

Two men. I see their silhouettes in the windows on the side of the garage. They move slowly. They are carrying guns.

Father has the only gun among us so I pull Sonny behind the car with Mother. The men come around the corner into the garage, rifles extended.

-We don’t mean any harm, Father says.

-Nor we, one of the men says. Just trying to stay alive.

-Amen, Father says.

They are both heavy and one of them is bearded and their clothes are ragged. One wears a soiled baseball cap with an Indian on it. The Indian’s tongue is sticking out.

-That car work? the bearded one asks.

-A little.

-Gas?

-Found some here, just a few gallons or so.

-That right?

-Yes.

-Give it to us, the other one says.

-You can travel with us if you like, Father says.

-That’s not what we mean. We want the car.

-I know what you meant, but I have these two children, and the woman. We need the car to head north. We can take you also.

-Give it to us or we kill them, the bearded one says.

-Too much dying, Father says.

He raises his hands in the air.

-Please just take it and let us be.

The men move forward and the bearded one hits Father in the stomach with the butt of his rifle. Father collapses and Sonny cries out. I put my hand over Sonny’s mouth and he is breathing like an animal through his nose.

The bearded man gets in the front seat of the car and twists the keys so that the engine rumbles. It doesn’t start. He swears. His gun is in his lap and pointed upward. The other man comes around to the driver’s side and tilts his ball cap up and relaxes the barrel of his gun downward and that is when Father shoots them. He is on his knees and catches the bearded man in the head, and the man’s hair seems to pop out on the other side along with a spray of blood and other stuff that gets on me and Sonny and Mother. Sonny is crying and I hold him. The man with the cap fires at Father through the broken front window of the car. I know enough now to know that it’s a shotgun and it sprays pellets in Father’s direction, splitting glass and ringing off metal and some of them hit Father. He grunts loudly and I can see blood spread along his shirtsleeve but he fires his handgun and the bullets hit the man with the baseball cap in the chest and the man spins downward like he’s been screwed into the garage floor. My ears hurt.

-Get the guns, Father says.

Mother takes the rifle out of the grip of the bearded man in the car. Then she pulls on his body and it spills out of the car and into a pool of oil on the floor. She kneels near him and checks for ammunition and anything else she can find in his pockets. She strips the man of his shoes and throws them in the car.

I kneel near the man with the baseball cap. His legs are twisted under him. I grab his gun but he opens his eyes and he is bleeding from his mouth and trying to curse through the blood and he fights me for the gun. I scream.

Father makes it around the car and hits him in the head with his gun and the man’s body goes limp.

-Woulda been us or them, Father says to Sonny and me.

I nod but Sonny says nothing. He hasn’t spoken a word since the bridge, anyhow. He is shaking and I take him in my arms while Father searches the body. Father yanks the pants off and finds a box of bullets in the man’s underwear.

-Hiding them, he says.

Ammunition is precious to us, like gasoline. There are those like the militia that seem to have a never-ending supply and then there are travelers like us who have to hoard every bullet. Father tucks the box under the car seat.

Father smiles down at me and musses my hair, which is already knotted. A little while goes by while Mother washes and bandages his arm where he caught a shotgun pellet.

-Don’t have the tool to get it out, she says.

-It’s alright, Father says. It’ll just have to stay inside me.

And then he says we need to leave. Heading further north, as we always are.

There’s talk of trains that carry travelers like us northwest. They say there’s a place beyond the fighting. Father is skeptical but we are heading north anyway, there’s no place else to go.

I have the pain again. I buckle over and this time Mother sees me and she comes over and puts an arm around me.

-Where does it hurt? she says.

I point to my abdomen. She nods. She strokes my hair. One of her breasts is exposed, large and white as a porcelain teacup and I wish that I could go back to being a baby again and sucking on the breast of my Mother for comfort and warmth and food. She sees me looking and buttons her blouse, dirty and ripped as it is, and gives me a small smile.

-We’ll make it, she says.

I nod. I know in my heart we won’t, not all of us.

-Don’t worry about the pain, she says.

Father says there are three kinds of people now. Travelers like us, fleers from the coasts, mostly. Then militia, armies of men and women and boys and girls with guns, protecting I know not what or why, but in packs and with brutal force and hateful eyes. And residents. Residents don’t always have guns but sometimes they do, and they’ll shoot you if you cross their property. Sometimes residents are aligned with the militias and just as often they are not. Sometimes they will take you in, sometimes they will kill you in your bed. It’s a crapshoot.

-Listen, Father says.

It’s a drone. A whining hum like the sound of a model airplane, the kind that boys would fly in Prospect Park with remote control.

-Over there somewhere, Father says, pointing over a ridge of trees outside the garage door.

-Get in the car, Mother says.

We all know the militia will arrive any time now. They come after the drops so the travelers can’t get any of the ammunition or supplies. The drops just feed their strength. I sometimes wonder if the drops are supposed to feed their strength. Father says the drops are for the travelers and residents, but I have my doubts.

I suppose to myself that there is a fourth kind of person: whoever it is that is dropping the ammunition and food from remote...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 28.7.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Krimi / Thriller / Horror
• ISBN-13: 9798317810283 / 9798317810283