Back To The Village, Part 1

“I’m still not sure that this is a good idea.” Said Luce. “But I can’t think of any other option.”

They’d all been able to agree, immediately, that touching the sick person was a really bad idea. It was after that point that the decisions got harder.
Luce argued for leaving them in place and racing back to the village, on the grounds that it was safer and because clearly someone, probably Mister Station, was trying to contact them. She relented once Cy and Bug carefully moved the blanket back using a coordinated approach with a couple of sticks, and they all saw just how sick the stranger looled.
He was somehow shivering and sweating at the same time, with a nasty grey tint to his skin. He’d probably been clean-shaven at some point not so long ago, but now sported patch vomit-encrusted stubble to go with his dirty and unkempt hair.
Unsurprisingly, with the blanket off, he smelled even worse.
“Do you think he was always that skinny?” Cy wondered, backing off a bit. “It looks like his skin only just covers his skull.”
The trio decided that they couldn’t leave him in place while they went for help; He didn’t look like he’d live long enough for them to make it back to the village, let alone for someone to take the return trip.
Bug experimented with trickling water onto the man, in the hope that he’d wake up, or at least drink some, and got some limited success when he opened his eyes and managed to drink a little of the stream before going back to his mumbling. Cy maintained that he’s tried to say ‘sick’ a few times, though neither of the other two had heard it, and thought it was just ‘Cy’ and some coughing.
After some attempts at pushing or rolling him all the way, they slid their stinking cargo back onto his railcart by wrapping him in his blanket, then using a rope to pull the whole person and blanket bundle off the platform and onto the cart. It worked surprisingly well, aside from the nasty thud when his head dropped from the platform to the cart deck.
“I’m sure he’s fine.” Bug confidently declared. “He’s wrapped in a blanket.”
“Not sure it matters much anyway.” Cy muttered to Luce. “The alternative is leaving him here to die, and we’re not doing that.”
The problem of moving the stranger’s railcart and eventually their own was solved by Cy, who enthusiastically tied a branch as tall as he was to the front, so they could pull or push the cart without having to touch the stranger or his gear.
“Once we get back to our cart.” He explained. “We can tie the other end to the back of ours, and then just roll back downhill to the village.”

Even Cy looked surprised when his plan worked first time.
The stranger’s railcart was much heavier than theirs, and it took all three childrens full strength to get it moving once they kicked the wedge under the wheels free. Keeping it moving was no effort at all, the discovered, and it took some panicked hurling of branches onto the rails to stop it from slamming into their railcart after it picked up speed on its way down and around the bend.
Now, with the two carts connected by the branch, Cy, Luce., and Bug sat uncertainly on top of their gear, looking downhill, Cy rested his hand on the brake lever.
“If we go too fast.” He said. “We can just slow down or stop. Right?”
The trio looked at each other uncertainly. Behind them, the muttering started again.
Luce and Bug nodded.
“Do it.” Luce said. “This is the fastest way.”
Cy gently released the brake, tensed to slam it back on if anything unexpected happened.
Absolutely nothing happened.
Bug leaned over the side to look at the brake mechanism.
“It’s definitely not on.” She reported. “Shall I get out and give us a shove?”

The eventually got the railcarts moving by pushing against the ground with branches, because nobody was willing to push from ground level and risk being run over by, or even touching, the stranger’s railcart.
“Told you it’d work.” Luce said triumphantly as their little railcart convoy slowly gained speed. “It’s like that time we built a raft with Lumpy and Doctor Erik; Same idea.”
Bug leaned over to look at the track rolling past underneath them, the sleepers passing by faster and faster.
“Didn’t expect that we’d pick up speed this quickly.”
She tucked her pushing-branch into their bundle of gear, then sat on top of the pile to look out over the top of Cy and Luce, ducking the occasional low branch.
Cy was perched at the very front, eyes fixed ahead in a mixture of glee and terror as they continued to pick up speed. He reached back behind him, feeling around for the brake lever.
“Uhhhh … Do you think I should?” He asked. “We’re going pretty fast now.”
“YES!” Came the simultaneous reply from the other two.
“But carefully! Slowly!” Luce added. “Gently.”
With painful slowness, Cy pushed the brake lever until they all felt the gently tremor as brake pad met wheel.
After some experimentation, and one restart because they went too slow on a flatter section, they found a brake position where they didn’t pick up too much speed, but the brake itself didn’t smell like it was burning. By Bug’s estimation, they were travelling at a bit more than a running pace.
“I could keep up with it for a little bit.” She claimed, looking at the ground passing underneath them. “ But not for long, and I don’t think I could catch it.”
“Is there any chance that Lumpy hasn’t ridden this thing all the way from the top?” Luce wondered aloud, then shook her head. “Why’d I even ask that; Of course he has.”
Bug and Cy nodded agreement.
“I wonder whether the brake would actually catch fire if you went fast enough and then jammed it on?” Bug asked. “It’s just a lump of wood.”
“Let’s not find out?” Cy suggested, then leaned suddenly forward, peering out ahead of them. “Uhhh … This might sound sort of familiar, but … Do either of you see a light up ahead?”

The trio peered ahead, and after a few moments, Bug and Luce saw it too, shining through the trees around a gentle bend in the track.
“Yellow, or maybe orange?” Bug confirmed.
“But not flickering like the one at the last station.” Luce added. “This one’s solid, apart from the trees in the way.”
The railcart convoy rounded the last bend and the station they’d camped in the previous night came into view, exactly as they’d left it, aside from the glowing orange-yellow sign hanging under the platform awning. Without being prompted, Cy gently applied the brake and slowly brought them to a halt.
“We didn’t miss that, did we?” He asked. “We couldn’t have not seen it, or something?”
“Not a chance.” Said Bug. “It’s right outside the waiting room we slept in, I think.”
Luce looked back and forth between the sick stranger behind them and the glowing sign ahead, then sighed.
“One of us should go and look.” She declared. “The last one was just our names, so maybe it’s just that again.”
“I didn’t know those things did anything.” Bug muttered. “Thought they were just a decoration, or a pigeon roost, or something.”
They stared a while longer, until Cy spoke up, saying what they’d all been thinking.
“What if there are more people there?”
Bug slid off the railcart and stepped away from the track.
“I’ll go look; I’m the sneakiest.” She said, squirming into the woods. “I’ll see what the sign says, see if there’s anyone there, then come back.”
Cy and Luce watched the foliage move as Bug made her way through, parallel to the tracks but hidden from view, heading down towards the station.
“What do we do if there’s someone there. Some new stranger, but … less sick?” Cy wondered. “We should have a plan.”
“If there’s nobody there, and the sign is the same as the last one.” Luce suggested. “Then we just keep going. No change in plan.”
“If the sign is different, or says more, …” Cy continued the thought. “Then we figure out what to do once we know more.”
Luce nodded.
“And if there’s someone new there.” She said. “Then they’re maybe not very nice, because they abandoned this guy, and even if there’s a reason for doing that, they’re still in a place they shouldn’t be.”
“Lumpy, at least, would have a problem with that.” Cy agreed. “He’s big on people not noticing us.”
He thought a bit longer, looking between the station, the brake lever, and the cart-pushing branches.
“I think.” He declared. “That if there are more new people, we get these carts moving as fast as we can past the station, and we keep going, no matter how scary it is, at least until we get to that tiny village.”
Luce looked at him.
“How come?” She asked.
“Bug said that we were going faster than she could run, and Bug’s pretty fast.” Cy explained. “So if there’s more strangers there, and they want to stop us, it’ll be harder because we’re already moving fast, and if we keep moving fast then they can’t catch us.”
Cy paused for thought.
“Besides.” He added. “Lumpy told me once that a person travelling alone might be OK, and a group travelling together might be OK, but a group travelling separately is bad news.”
“So in this case, if there’s more people.” Luce said glumly, untying the cart-pushing branches. “They’re bad news.”

Up ahead, unseen by Cy or Luce, Bug crawled out of the woods and crossed the tracks in a low crouching run. From her hiding place she’d seen no signs of life in the station, nor any sign that anyone but them had been there recently, but she’d not been able to read the sign. Still in a crouch, she worked her way along the bushes at the track edge until she reached the edge of the platform and station building. From here, the sign was legible, and her eyes grew wide as she read the scrolling lines of text.
“Shit.”