“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 hangingfrom 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.
