What’s That?

The next section had a different approach to the panels. Rather than putting them up on buildings, someone had taken advantage of the track running along a path cut into the hillside, and had built simple supports out to one side to hold the panels.
“This is great!” Cy exclaimed. “I wish they were all like this; Much easier to clean than the rooftop ones.”
“So much easier.” Bug agreed, leaning out with their longest brush to get the farthest part of a panel. “I guess there can’t be that many places like this though?”
She gestured at the steep hillside and at the cutting in which the railways tracks ran. Branches overhung the tracks, and in a few of the places they’d passed earlier trees had clearly come down and been cleared away enough to keep the path open.
“Probably not an option lower down the valley?” She suggested. “You’d need a steep slope, and it’s mostly too flat and wide down there for this trick to work.”
“How could you build something that’d let you lower the panels easily?” Asked Luce. “Like Cy said, to make them easier to get to. I can imagine a hinge or something at the bottom of a pole, with the panel on the top, but I can figure out how to lift it up without …”
She paused for thought, making odd hinging motions with her arms as she tried to puzzle through the thought.
“How do you raise and lower it without having to lift the whole pole? It just makes the problem worse.” Luce concluded with a frown on her face.
“A rope or something?” Bug suggested. “Or would you need a second pole to make the rope high enough so you’re not pulling it along the ground?”
They all considered this as they cleaned, Luce going as far as to sketch out little diagrams in the dust, then furiously clean them when they didn’t work.
“It’s harder than it looks to solve.” Cy conceeded. “Which is probably why Lumpy climbs onto rooftops instead.”

Around mid-day they were debating whether to just break for lunch where they were, or whether to press on to the next station or building, when Bug suddenly looked up ahead, peering through the trees.
“What’s that?” She asked, cutting through the bickering masquerading as discussion coming from Cy and Luce. “There’s something glowing.”
“Is it near the track?” Luce asked.
Bug climbed on top of the railcart for a better look.
“I’m not sure, but I think so. Maybe it’s on a building; There’s a shape there, something big.”
“Is it two different colours?” Cy asked. “I can see some kind of yellow flickering, but also something glowing like a lantern, not quite white.”
“Flickering like a fire?” Bug asked, clambering down. “Is someone camping out here?”
Cy shook his head.
“No, more like the machines at the station. You know the little lights on that thing that Mister Station’s cables go to? Like that.”
They all looked back and forth, at each other and at the track ahead, until Luce sighed and spoke up.
“Well, I’m not going back this early.” She declared. “They’ll say we got scared, or weren’t working like we said we would, or something, and we’ll never get away again.”
Cy and Bug both nodded glumly at this, and Luce continued.
“So let’s go and see what it is.”
“Carefully.” Cy added.
“Quietly.” Agreed Bug.
They glanced back at the railcart, and Cy checked the brake, just to be sure. Bug pointed uphill, directly away from the tracks, then along towards the light, and they all started scrambling up the bank into the forest.

They worked their way up through the trees, cutting off a bend in the tracks, until they once again came to the top of the bank above the rails. A little way up the valley sat the station they’d been wondering about getting to.
“OK, so I was wrong about the distance.” Admitted Luce. “I thought it’d be much further; It seems like it’s closer than the other ones are.”
“I think because it is?” Cy replied. “I figured that we’d make good time because of how easy it was to clean all those panels, but I didn’t think it’d be this close.”
“I can see the light.” Bug reported, trying to drag the conversation back to the actual problem. “And something else.”
The station looked the same as the last one, a long narrow building parallel to the tracks with solar panels on the roof, a long platform outside, and an awning covering just that part of the platform that was outside the structure. It should have been dark under there, but some of the shadowed area was instead lit with a soft glow, not quite white but not quite yellow. What the awning entirely failed to cover was a railcart, half-covered by a mottled green and grey tarpaulin, sitting on the tracks outside the station.
The children stared at it for a while.
“That’s definitely not ours, right?” Luce asked. “It didn’t somehow roll uphill to beat us here or anything?”
“It looks taller than ours.” Said Cy, “It’s almost level with the platform, and ours is about half that height.”
They moved along through the woods some more until they were almost opposite the station, looking down at the railcart and the soft glow on the platform.
“I can’t see that flickering anywhere.” Said Cy. “But look there!”
He pointed to the platform, crouching down. Luce and Bug followed suit, and saw a bundle of cloth sitting on the platform near the mystery railcart, lit by the soft glow.
“Is … Is that a foot sticking out of there?” Bug asked.
The other two looked closer.
“Could be?” Cy replied. “Kinda looks like someone wrapped up in a blanket, but … badly?”
The possible foot twitched, and they all jumped.
Cy lost his balance and fell forward, grabbing at the nearest branch to stop himself from dropping onto the tracks below. The branch cracked but held, and he ended up hanging halfway over the edge of the cutting, clinging onto the branch with both hands.
Bug and Luce had been lucky enough to fall backwards instead, crashing into small foliage and ending up sitting on the ground.
They all looked towards the blanket-wrapped person on the platform, trying not to move, or in Cy’s case, fall.
The foot twitched again, and slowly withdrew into the nest of what were probably blankets. From his new slightly closer and lower position, Cy could just hear a man’s voice, mumbling.
“I don’t think that’s Lumpy.” He whispered, slowly finding hand and foot holds on the face of the cutting and starting to climb. “Doesn’t sound like his sort of muttering.”
Bug and Luce reached down to help Cy back up, and they all sat at the top of the bank, wondering what to do next. After a lot of wordless pointing, gesturing, and shrugging, Bug sighed and spoke.
“We have to go and look. Carefully.”

At Cy’s suggestion of ‘Let’s be a bit clever about this’ they walked further up the valley through the woods before climbing back down onto the tracks, so that it wouldn’t be obvious where they’d come from. Broken and crushed branches and foliage along the rails clearly showed where the mystery person had been; There were places where a larger branch had been thrown aside, but mostly the railcart had just rolled over things which would have stopped the children completely.
“Heavier cart?” Bug wondered. “Or are they just stronger than we are?”
“It looks bigger.” Cy replied. “But going downhill might help too, I think.”
Up ahead they could see the end of the station building. As they approached, Cy pointed at a yellow flickering light on a sign hanging from the rafters of the awning over the platform; Erratic streaks of yellow dots raced from right to left across a dark background, not making any sense, but still bright enough to cast shadows on the underside of the awning.
As they crept closer, they could see a pile of bundles on the tarpaulin on the railcart, looking suspiciously similar to their own camping supplies. Jugs probably containing water, something with poles sticking out which Bug thought was probably a tent, even a little supply of firewood. Unlike their neatly packed railcart, however, this one was a mess. It might have been tidy once, but someone, presumably the owner of the mystery foot, had torn through it, scattering the railcarts contents in the search for something, then roughly stuffed most things back under the tarpaulin. A bag of something edible had fallen unnoticed off the side, between the railcart and the platform, and was being investigated by a collection of birds, rats, and squirrels, though so far they hadn’t been able to get it open.
When they reached the end of the platform Cy and Luce climbed up, while Bug stayed on the tracks, walking carefully along a rail to avoid making too much noise. They could all hear the muttering now; Three mumbled words, over and over again, coming out of the blanket-covered shape.
“What can you see?” Bug whispered. “Down here it’s just that dropped bag and some angry squirrels.”
“There’s the blanket, which has a red ‘X’ on it, or maybe a plus sign?” Luce reported. “And a big plastic package with the same ‘X’, and some smaller stuff that came out of it.”
Cy crept closer, then stopped and covered his nose.
“They smell terrible!” He hissed. “Like an outdoor toilet.”
Bug walked closer, then did the same rapid clutching at her face. Luce, wisely, hung back out of smelling range.
“Yeah, they’ve shit themselves.” Cy continued reporting. “Maybe wet themselves too.”
“Pretty sure they’ve been sick here, off the edge of the platform.” Said Bug. “Even the rats are avoiding it, which can’t be a good sign.”
Luce, still hanging back, prodded with her foot at an empty foil package which had drifted down the platform. She flipped it over and froze, staring at the symbol on it. Cy and Bug hadn’t noticed, and were still discussing the figure in a half-whisper.
“There’s some water in bags up here; One’s leaking, so they’re lying in a puddle.”
“Their railcart is definitely heavier than ours. The wheels are metal, and much bigger. The whole thing is bigger.”
“How’d they move it?” Cy asked, walking cautiously around to what was probably the head end of the blankets and crouching down, trying to understand the mumbling.
Bug stepped around to the front of the railcart, watched closely by the one remaining squirrel too stubborn to give up on the bag of food, and reported back.
“There’s a sort of harness attached to the front here, like straps on a pack, but with ropes going back to the cart.” She said. “So I guess they pulled it themselves?”
She crouched to look under the railcart.
“There’s a brake, but it’s just a lump of wood wedged between the wheel and the rail. Looks like there’s gears and levers and stuff under there, but I can’t see a motor or anything, so it must be like ours; Stripped down for parts.”
Luce finally broke out of her freeze.
“Don’t!” She hissed. “Don’t touch anything!”
Bug and Cy went still, and for a while the station was silent, except for the muttering.
“Uhhh … Why?” Cy eventually asked.
“There’s a packet here at my feet, and I’ve seen the symbol on it before.” Luce replied, still staring at the foil package. “It’s that one with the broken circles? It’s on one of Mister Station’s machines, the one he won’t let anyone else go near because it’s too dangerous.”
Bug looked across the litter on the platform beside the blanket-wrapped person. Most of it was scraps of plastic or paper, but wedged under a fold of blanket was another scrap of foil, and off beside the doors into the station building was the glint of broken glass.
“Cy?” She asked. “Can you see anything up there that looks like a syringe or an injector or something?”
Cy looked around without standing, and pointed to one of the platform benches. Under it, resting against the leg, was a discarded syringe.
Luce slowly stepped away from the foil packet and looked around, peering in through the station windows at the empty waiting room. Unlike Mister Station’s place, this one had screens on the wall, and as she watched, yellow text marched across the top half of one of them, over and over again.
“So they injected themselves with something that made them sick?” Asked Cy. “How does that make sense?”
“Maybe not.” Bug replied. “That machine at Mister Station’s place doesn’t make him sick, but it would make other people sick, I think. It must be like that somehow.”
“Some kind of emergency medicine?” Suggested Cy, who had leaned slightly closer to the blanket pile and cocked his head to the side. “They’re definitely saying words. Three short words, but I can’t make out what they are.”
Luce had her hands around her eyes, looking in through the grubby window, trying to make out the letters as they crossed the screen. The sign on the platform was made of a grid of individual lights, but this was a proper screen, though only the top half worked; Age or damage had turned the bottom half into a dark green blur.
“Could they see into the station from there?” Luce asked, still peering in through the window. “If they weren’t covered with a blanket, could they see into the waiting room?”
Cy and Bug both nodded, and Bug, seeing where Luce was going with this, crouched a little to try to match the viewpoint of the blanket-wrapped figure. She saw the screen, read the text as it marched across, and sighed.
“It’s our names, Cy.” She said, glumly. “Look at the screen in there; It’s our names.”
Cy stood, slowly, and looked in at the waiting room screen. Below him, the voice continued to mutter indistinctly, over and over again.
“Bug. Luce. Cy. Bug. Luce. Cy.”