Sherman was barely large enough to contain the small depot at its heart. The man who ran the place was nominally federal, but truthfully he’d shot himself in the war to be sent to some backwater where he could drink away his salary. He didn’t refuse their money, and didn’t care to see how much coal and water they took.

It was noon when they were underway. Tommy was shoveling again, but the spots where the bullets had torn through his clothing were left exposed to the sun, so along with the constant activity of shoveling, there was the constant rubbing of burning skin on harsh cloth

Christ in Heaven, I need a distraction. Talk. You’ve been quiet.

What’s there to say anymore, Tommy? You kill despite hating killing. You want friends more than anything, and are more likely to shoot someone for smiling than smile back. You want to die, but you’ll eat people alive to survive. I’m just a voice in your head, and you’ve already made up your mind.

Even if it was only in his own head, Tommy went silent. Fields became forests, forests became marshy, marshes became boggy. Hours later, the train honked twice, and he stopped shoveling. He hauled himself over the edge of the car. The wind whipped around him as the train began to slow. He entered the locomotive. Cassidy was staring dead ahead. Before Tommy could even ask, he also spotted what was ahead.

“If I’m looking at the map right, this is near the border of Louisiana.”

“Can’t’ve gotten this far already.”

“Well, it did. Good Lord Almighty.”

The strange hazes and clusters of moist growth, signs of nascent Rot were already forming from the trees. Open sores were forming from the ground and the trees were shedding their leaves in favor of the pustular bowls of wood that were so marked of Rotten vegetation.

“Guess we can hope southern Louisiana held up better. Seems like this part didn’t put up much of a fight.”

Cassidy shook his head. “Naw, no, that doesn’t make a lick of sense. It wouldn’t matter if the enemy were gaining ground as fast as they could walk, they wouldn’t be this far. The Rot’s spreading faster than any of its forces.”

“That’s pretty smart, I reckon. The enemy can’t form a solid line to push you back if they have to watch from every direction.”

Cassidy looked over at him. “I came from outlaw hunting myself. Never thought Rot could spread like this, so I don’t have any gear for it. What’s our play, y’figure?”

Tommy looked at him flatly. “You come looking for me without any gear to hunt an Apostate?”

Cassidy looked at him with the most aggressively puzzled expression. “You wanted me to wait until Michael took the whole South? You wanted me to grab Rot gear for the first Apostate who wouldn't actually be in the Rot?”

“Yeah…. s’pose you’re right. Anyway, we can get the train through this, but once it gets denser we’ll need to figure something else out or go on foot.”

Cassidy took this short break to pull out a cigarillo. He puffed on it thoughtfully.

“Well, assuming it’s light out here, as long as we swing south as hard as we can, we’ll stay in the lighter parts the whole time.”

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Tommy rubbed at his collar bone. “That’s dangerous. Might come up on people less than inclined to let us hunt after we leave our stolen train. Still, probably better than getting bound up deep in the Rot without any gear.”

----------------------

It was evening when they saw smoke, the deep marshes having masked the billowing black clouds until the fire itself was also visible.

The scene was apocalyptic. Miles of burning fields, farmhouses that had clearly been evacuated or ransacked. Barns filled with animals whose owners had fled, burning within their confines. He kept shoveling coal, but it was half an hour of fire in every direction. The smoke passed through his lungs with heat, but whatever he was, it didn’t bother him more than feeling an itch in his chest he couldn’t scratch.

It reminded him of his early days. He’d arrived at almost the same time as the Rot, so he’d seen every stage of people’s interaction with it. Fire featured prominently in the early days. If the Rot was young enough, it even worked sometimes. The deeper you went, however, the wetter and more toxic everything became. Starting a fire went from easy, to hard, to suicidal.

Didn’t stop some. Turns out, when given sufficient motivation, people can come up with solutions to almost anything. When a big enough group wanted to make a defensible camp, they didn’t put up spikes, or build a fence. No point. No, they’d spray some good ol’ Agni. Some strange gel that had come from India, but boy did it burn. Surround your camp with a few layers, and you’d have a perimeter twice as strong as any fence. Had to wear gas-masks, or at least what passed for them, but people would eat their own hands to feel like they could rest their eyes without taking the chance of not opening them again.

He was among a rare few men who knew that some things didn’t care a whit about the fire. Some things screamed, some things roared as they burned. Some things laughed.

The burning fields passed.

------------

Cassidy slept in the locomotive. There was a small room in the back, where one conductor would rest whilst the other worked. Tommy sat in the seat that oversaw the train controls, his bundle of weapons rested against his foot. His nerves were more at ease out here. The sounds, the smells, the wind on his face, the Rot was a place more familiar than Texas, even if it was mild.

The ground was already becoming soft and pliant, and most plants were shedding their natural shapes. No crickets chirped, no birds sang. There was no moonlight, and even the stars shimmered in prismatic colors, beyond the great haze.

Someone was walking towards the train. They thought they were being stealthy. Tommy opened a window and slipped out.

The figure couldn’t have been older than…fifteen? No older than twenty, to be certain. With Tommy’s life experience, he could only correlate Hunting to working third shift. Everyone looked like they could be fifteen or thirty, unless they were fifty.

The rifle was massive in the boy’s arms, but he was lanky. It took him a few minutes, but the boy made it to the edge of the tree line. Tommy held a pistol. It was interesting, watching someone who was actively trying to not be seen.

He let the boy make it to within ten steps of the train before he placed the barrel of his gun against the base of his skull.

“What’re you doing?”

The boy jumped what looked like a foot in the air, but Tommy’s hand slammed down on his shoulder. The boy’s voice was high, panicked, but not cracking.

“Mister, I wasn’t gonna hurt anyone, I swear!”

“I don’t care what you weren't gonna do. Drop your rifle.”

The weapon clattered to the ground instantly. It discharged a shot down the rail line, and the boy did a full-body flinch.

“I was just gonna hitch a ride! Didn’t figure anyone was gonna be on a passenger train going this way. Was just gonna stay in the back.”

"What was the rifle for?"

The boy turned to look at him, but Tommy held his shoulder firm.

"You figure it'd be wiser to not have a rifle?" The question sounded genuine. Tommy drafted several responses, but Cassidy tumbled out of his room. The rifle shot must’ve woken him, because he had his shotgun in hand.

“Hell’s going on!?”

Tommy projected his voice, but didn’t relax his grip.

“We got an attempted stowaway. Possible runaway.”

The boy twisted in his grip to glare at him.

“I ain’t got nothing left to run away from.”

Tommy clenched his hand and forced the boy onto his knees. He pressed the barrel into the boy's skin hard enough to draw a small amount of blood.

“Don’t do that again. Won’t end well.”

Cassidy stepped out, into the night. His eyes and mind finally adjusted.

“Hell's fires, Tommy, why’re you holding him like that. Let him up.”

Tommy gave him a hard look.

Cassidy rolled his eyes.

“What’s he gonna do? Wrestle your pistol away? Pull a knife? Grab his rifle and lever it so fast neither of us can stop him? He’s just a kid, let him up.”

Tommy spat to the side. He released his grip and drew back his pistol.

He kicked the kid’s rifle to the side, then walked back towards the train.

“The hell’r you going?”

“You don’t like how I deal with people? Fine, you deal with him. If you get shot, I’ll make to sure avenge you before i'm incapacitated by laughter.”