Then, just before Nick left the engine cab, Charlie pointed to his cheek and said, a little awkwardly, “Uh … you got a little spot there.”

Nick sighed. “That wasn’t even funny the first time, Charlie.”

“No,” Charlie said, “I mean the other side of your face.”

Nick reached up and touched his good cheek. His finger came away with a tiny spot of chocolate. He wiped it between his thumb and forefinger until it was smudged away. “Just get us to Memphis.”

Nick knew that time was running out for him.

There was no way he could deny it now. It wasn’t just the spot on his cheek—little eruptions had begun to pop up all over Nick’s body, rising like pimples, oozing chocolate through the fabric of his clothes when they popped. Those tiny brown patches were everywhere, and were beginning to connect like raindrops on concrete, spreading like a relentless rash, to his back, his scalp, and places he didn’t even want to think about. His chocolate hand was weak and getting weaker, the fingers almost fusing together. His left eye was always clouded, and losing more and more sight each day. His shirt, which used to look like a white shirt covered with brown stains, was now more brown than white, and the original color of his tie had long since been forgotten. Even his dark pants, which had always hidden the stains, could no longer resist the umber onslaught, and his shoes looked like two piles of brown candle-drippings giving rise to the rest of his body.

Nick knew it was his own memory that was poisoning him—or lack of memory. He had forgotten so much of who he had been in the living world, there was barely anything left of him. His family, his friends, they were all gone from his mind. All he knew for sure was that he had been eating a chocolate bar when he died, and it had smeared on his face. Soon his only memory would be the chocolate, and then what? What would happen when there was nothing else left of him?

He didn’t want to think about it. He didn’t have time to think about it. All that mattered was the task at hand—and only part of that task was building a fighting force. The rest of his plan he kept to himself, because if he told the others what madness he had in mind, he’d have a whole lot more deserters.

Before they left Chattanooga, Zin presented Nick with the flag she had made, and Nick told Charlie to fly it from the front of the train, for everyone to see. The design was a series of silver stars, in the pattern of the Big Dipper, sewn on a rich brown fabric.

“My papa always said the Big Dipper was there to catch falling stars,” Zin said. “Kinda like the way you’re here to catch falling souls.”