Because the horizon wasn’t the real horizon, he finally
understood—all night, and for as long as it took him to really see what lay at the end of his vision, he had drastically underestimated the size of the Blasted Lands. Jack finally understood, as the sun began to force its way up into the world
again, that he was in a broad valley, and the rim far off to either side was not the edge of the world but the craggy top of a range of hills. Anybody or anything could be tracking him,
keeping just out of sight past the rim of the surrounding hills.
He remembered the humanoid being with the crocodile’s tail
that had slipped around the side of the little shed. Could he have been following Jack all night, waiting for him to fall asleep?
The train poop-pooped through the lurid valley, moving with a suddenly maddening lack of speed.
He scanned the entire rim of hills about him, seeing noth-
ing but new morning sunlight gild the upright rocks far above him. Jack turned around completely in the cab, fear and tension for the moment completely negating his tiredness.
Richard threw one arm over his eyes, and slept on. Anything, anybody might have been keeping pace with them, waiting
them out.
A slow, almost hidden movement off to his left made him
catch his breath. A movement huge, slithery . . . Jack had a vision of a half-dozen of the crocodile-men crawling over the rim of the hills toward him, and he shielded his eyes with his hands and stared at the place where he thought he had seen
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them. The rocks were stained the same red as the powdery
soil, and between them a deep trail wound its way over the
crest of the hills through a cleft in the high-standing rocks.
What was moving between two of the standing rocks was a
shape not even vaguely human. It was a snake—at least, Jack thought it was . . . It had slipped into a concealed section of the trail, and Jack saw only a huge sleek round reptilian body disappearing behind the rocks. The skin of the creature
seemed oddly ridged; burned, too—a suggestion, just before
it disappeared, of ragged black holes in its side . . . Jack craned to see the place where it would emerge, and in seconds witnessed the wholly unnerving spectacle of the head of a giant worm, one-quarter buried in the thick red dust, swivelling toward him. It had hooded, filmy eyes, but it was the head of a worm.
Some other animal bolted from under a rock, heavy head
and dragging body, and as the worm’s big head darted toward it, Jack saw that the fleeing creature was one of the mutant dogs. The worm opened a mouth like the slot of a corner
mailbox and neatly scooped up the frantic dog-thing. Jack
clearly heard the snapping of bones. The dog’s wailing
ceased. The huge worm swallowed the dog as neatly as if it
were a pill. Now, immediately before the worm’s monstrous
form, lay one of the black trails left by the fireballs, and as Jack watched, the long creature burrowed into the dust like a cruise ship sinking beneath the surface of the ocean. It apparently understood that the traces of the fireballs could do it damage and, wormlike, it would dig beneath them. Jack
watched as the ugly thing completely disappeared into the red powder. And then cast his eyes uneasily over the whole of the long red slope dotted with pubic outpatches of the shiny yellow grass, wondering where it would surface again.
When he could be at least reasonably certain that the worm
was not going to try to ingest the train, Jack went back to inspecting the ridge of rocky hills about him.
7
Before Richard woke up late that afternoon, Jack saw:
at least one unmistakable head peering over the rim of the
hills;
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two more jouncing and deadly fireballs careering down at
him;
the headless skeleton of what he at first took to be a large rabbit, then sickeningly knew was a human baby, picked shining clean, lying beside the tracks and closely followed by: the round babyish gleaming skull of the same baby, half-sunk in the loose soil. And he saw:
a pack of the big-headed dogs, more damaged than the
others he had seen, pathetically come crawling after the train, drooling with hunger;
three board shacks, human habitations, propped up over
the thick dust on stilts, promising that somewhere out in that stinking poisoned wilderness which was the Blasted Lands
other people schemed and hunted for food;
a small leathery bird, featherless, with—this a real Territories touch—a bearded monkeylike face, and clearly delin-
eated fingers protruding from the tips of its wings;
and worst of all (apart from what he thought he saw), two completely unrecognizable animals drinking from one of the
black pools—animals with long teeth and human eyes and
forequarters like those of pigs, hindquarters like those of big cats. Their faces were matted with hair. As the train pulled past the animals, Jack saw that the testicles of the male had swollen to the size of pillows and sagged onto the ground.
What had made such monstrosities? Nuclear damage, Jack
supposed, since scarcely anything else had such power to deform nature. The creatures, themselves poisoned from birth, snuffled up the equally poisoned water and snarled at the little train as it passed.
Our world could look like this someday, Jack thought.
What a treat.
8
Then there were the things he thought he saw. His skin began to feel hot and itchy—he had already dumped the serapelike
overgarment which had replaced Myles P. Kiger’s coat onto
the floor of the cab. Before noon he stripped off his homespun shirt, too. There was a terrible taste in his mouth, an acidic combination of rusty metal and rotten fruit. Sweat ran from his hairline into his eyes. He was so tired he began to dream
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standing up, eyes open and stinging with sweat. He saw great packs of the obscene dogs scuttling over the hills; he saw the reddish clouds overhead open up and reach down for Richard
and himself with long flaming arms, devil’s arms. When at
last his eyes finally did close, he saw Morgan of Orris, twelve feet tall and dressed in black, shooting thunderbolts all
around him, tearing the earth into great dusty spouts and
craters.
Richard groaned and muttered, “No, no, no.”
Morgan of Orris blew apart like a wisp of fog, and Jack’s
painful eyes flew open.
“Jack?” Richard said.
The red land ahead of the train was empty but for the
blackened trails of the fireballs. Jack wiped his eyes and
looked at Richard, feebly stretching. “Yeah,” he said. “How are you?”
Richard lay back against the stiff seat, blinking out of his drawn gray face.
“Sorry I asked,” Jack said.
“No,” Richard said, “I’m better, really,” and Jack felt at
least a portion of his tension leave him. “I still have a
headache, but I’m better.”
“You were making a lot of noise in your . . . um . . .” Jack said, unsure of how much reality his friend could stand.
“In my sleep. Yeah, I guess I probably did.” Richard’s face worked, but for once Jack did not brace himself against a
scream. “I know I’m not dreaming now, Jack. And I know I
don’t have a brain tumor.”
“Do you know where you are?”
“On that train. That old man’s train. In what he called the Blasted Lands.”
“Well, I’ll be double-damned,” Jack said, smiling.
Richard blushed beneath his gray pallor.
“What brought this on?” Jack asked, still not quite sure
that he could trust Richard’s transformation.
“Well, I knew I wasn’t dreaming,” Richard said, and his
cheeks grew even redder. “I guess I . . . I guess it was just time to stop fighting it. If we’re in the Territories, then we’re in the Territories, no matter how impossible it is.” His eyes found Jack’s, and the trace of humor in them startled his
friend. “You remember that gigantic hourglass back in The
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Depot?” When Jack nodded, Richard said, “Well, that was it, really . . . when I saw that thing, I knew I wasn’t just making everything up. Because I knew I couldn’t have made up that thing. Couldn’t. Just . . . couldn’t. If I were going to invent a primitive clock, it’d have all sorts of wheels, and big pul-leys . . . it wouldn’t be so simple. So I didn’t make it up.
Therefore it was real. Therefore everything else was real,
too.”
“Well, how do you feel now?” Jack asked. “You’ve been
asleep for a long time.”
“I’m still so tired I can hardly hold my head up. I don’t feel very good in general, I’m afraid.”