Back To The Village, Part 2

Bug hoisted herself up onto the platform, and moved from window to window in a low crouch, peering in through each one in turn. Eventually she got to the other end of the station building, and having seen nothing other than the sign to be alarmed by, she waved at the others.
Back on the railcart, Luce & Cy shoved off with their branches to get the convoy moving again, and they slowly rolled into the station. Bug had walked back along the platform to stand just before the sign, and they pulled to halt beside her.
This sign was in better condition than the one at the previous station; Two rows of text marched from right to left in yellow-orange dots of light.
“BUG. LUCE. CY.
“COME BACK TO STATION. AVOID RIVER. SICKNESS IN VILLAGE. AVOID VILLAGE.”
Mostly for something to do while they thought about the sign, the children re-filled their water jugs from the supply in the station, occasionally glancing at the sign but not mentioning it out loud. There was no screen inside the the waiting room like there had been at the previous one, but a less faded patch high on wall showed where one used to hang.
“Maybe it worked better, so they moved it?” Said Bug, pointing. “And the other one wasn’t worth taking?”
Luce and Cy stared at the scrolling sign above the platform.
“What if there’s a third bit? Or a fourth?” Cy asked. “We didn’t see that second line until now.”
“Which is a shame.” Luce cut in. “ Because that would have been a useful thing to know before we got close to a sick person. Or moved them.”
Cy ploughed ahead with his thought.
“So what do we do if there are more instructions we still can’t see?”
“This sign’s showing as much as there’s room for.” Luce observed. “There are no missing lines or empty spaces, so two lines must be all it can do, right?”
Cy nodded, looking closely at the sign, and following the small bundle of cables leading out to it from the station building.
“Can’t see any ‘Next Page’ or ‘Next Message’ buttons anywhere, so if Mister Station sent that message, he’d have to know that two lines is all we’d get?”
Bug and Luce nodded agreement.
“Sp, we keep going? Same plan?” Luce asked, then gestures at their railcart convoy. “This guy must have something to do with the sickness, surely?”
Bug gently closed the waiting room door and walked across to their railcart, stepping down onto it and raising her hands to the platform edge, ready to start pushing.
“Same plan.” She agreed. “Maybe this guy is the cause, or maybe he’s just really unlucky, but … He’ll die if we don’t help him.”
She paused for thought as Luce and Cy climbed aboard, picking up their pushing-branches.
“Besides.” Bug added with a grimace. “If we weren’t careful enough and we caught this sickness too by helping him … ?”
“Then it’s too late now.” Cy finished glumly, then leaned on his branch.
Bug shoved against the platform edge, Luce shoved with her branch, and the railcart convoy slowly rolled out of the station.

By unspoken agreement, they didn’t stop moving all day.
Rather than coming to halt to swap positions and replace the person on the brake lever, they just slowed down a lot, so that they wouldn’t get to a dangerous speed while nobody was in control.
Luce munched on a lump of cheese in a chewy flatbread as they rolled past the burned-out station.
“I sort of expected there to be a sign here too.” She commented. “Hanging from a tree or something, where we wouldn’t have seen it.”
Bug paused mid-bite of her own almost-sandwich, and hand on her lunch and one on the brake lever.
“I know we’d never been up this far before, so we wouldn’t have recognised them anyway.” She said. “But I wonder how many other things are in plain sight like that? We see them, but we don’t recognise what they do because we’ve never seen them doing it?”
Cy reached out and let his hand hit the foliage as they rolled past.
“That’s a weird thought.” He agreed. “Mister Station’s stuff is complicated and I don’t know what it does, but aside from that, I thought I knew what everything in the village is for.”
“Even the communication panel things?” Asked Luce. “Or the generators?”
Bug applied the brake just a little as they rounded a bend, then glanced quickly back at the others.
“I know what you mean, I think.” She said, shifting her attention back to the track ahead. “We don’t know how the generators or the comms panels work, but we know what they do.”
“But the signs on the station platform were just black boxes.” Cy continued the thought. “I didn’t think they did anything at all.”
“Other than hold up pigeons so they can all crap in one specific place.” Bug added with a grin.

The sun was just starting to drop below the valley walls when the railcart convoy rolled into more familiar territory. Luce was on the brake lever at that point, and Bug and Cy were standing behind her, looking around for any sign of anything new.
Cy spotted it first.
“No smoke.” He said, quietly. “The village is right over there but there’s no smoke.”
Bug looked around.
“There’s some over there, isn’t there?” She asked, pointing.
“I think that’s Mister Station’s place; The steam from the chimney, but … More than usual?”
The trio fell silent as they coasted around the last few bends in the track. Off to the side, through the trees and across the valley, they could see occasional glimpses of the village, houses dark and streets deserted.
“I can’t see anyone, or any lights, and there should be some people moving around, shouldn’t there?” Said Cy, continuing to search those brief glimpses of the village for any sign of life.
“What id the reason for avoiding the village is because they’re all as sick as this guy?” Asked Luce. “Or even more sick?”
Bug filled in what they were all trying not to think.
“Or worse.” She said as they coasted around the last corner and Mister Station’s place came into view.
The station lights, thankfully, were on. The combination platform sign and pigeon roost had a now-familiar scroll of yellow-orange text running across it, the waiting room doors were open and spilling a warm glow across the platform, and as Luce slowed their railcart convoys approach, a familiar scrawny figure stepped out and looked around.
“Lumpy!” They called out in unison, watching the figure look up, wave, turn slightly as if to call back through the waiting room doors, and then very slowly crumple and fall.