That is to say, they were a part of the living world, and as such could not carry the ghost train anywhere but to the center of the earth. There was, however, a single track heading south, which wasn’t ideal, but at least it was there. They took on a southerly heading, rolling at a cautious snail’s pace into Texas, and through Dallas. No dead westbound tracks in Dallas, either.

“I’m sure we’ll be able to pick up a western line once we hit Austin, or San Antonio,” Speedo told Milos, with some confidence. “I think maybe I lived in Austin when I was alive. Or maybe Austin was my name, I can’t really say for sure. I was in New Jersey when I died, though. At least I think I was. Do you think people from New Jersey would name a kid Austin?”

Speedo was always a blabbermouth when Milos came to visit him in the engine cab, since he was usually there alone with no one to talk to while the train was moving. The problem was, once Milos was in there with him, he couldn’t leave and go back to the parlor car until the train stopped, so he was a captive audience, and Speedo knew it.

“If that church didn’t fall off the tracks,” said Speedo, “I would have been able to find enough tracks to build a bypass eventually—I’m the best finder—I used to find so much stuff—and then I’d trade up. I even traded up for the Hindenburg—that was mine, not Mary’s—bet you didn’t know that, did you? But I guess it’s nobody’s now, just floating out there with no one to pilot it. The best thing about a zeppelin is that it doesn’t need tracks. If we coulda gotten it past that lousy wind, we would have been there months ago, wherever ‘there’ is.”

Milos decided it was time to stop the train, give the kids a few hours of playtime, and himself a break from Speedo.

Whenever they stopped—which was still at least twice a day—Milos would wander among the kids as they played, doing his best to “play Mary.” A comforting hand on a shoulder, and such. Usually though, the kids just flinched.

“This place that Mary wants us to go,” they would always ask Milos. “Is it far?”

He tried to answer them the way that Mary might. “Distance and time mean nothing to us; we are Afterlights.”

While this might have worked for Mary, they just stared at Milos like they were waiting for a punch line. It quickly became clear to him that whatever shining points he had earned the day they pushed over the church were losing their luster. Desertions started again—kids would even desert while the train was moving, like rats jumping from a sinking ship.