5:47

July.

Near the railroad tracks, Vic’s house sat. The small, single story shack leaned to the left. Most of the remaining shutters hung crookedly. Every day, the sun stripped another layer of color from the paint.

A Volkswagon Bug in the driveway sat with one corner on cinder blocks. The faded yellow paint hid some of the rust. A crack ran half the length of the windshield.

Vic sat in a once-white lawn chair. His belly supported a roast beef sandwich as he read the sports page. The grass tickled his shins. He reached for the beer sitting next to him as the train rumbled by. He barely glanced at the 5:47 as it approached the station, on time as always. After seven years, Vic didn't hear the screeching brakes anymore. If faces stared at him through the passing windows, he never noticed.

Glass exploded. Metal twisted shrilly. The sounds erupted from in front of the train, where a pick-up had wedged itself between the engine and the tracks. The truck burst into flames. The train rocked, tilting toward the left - Vic’s side of the street. It hung for a minute, like a motorcycle rounding a corner, and fell back into place. The six-car train stopped five hundred yards short of its destination. The last car dangled over the edge of the tracks.

Two more pick-up trucks raced down this side of the train, shiny black monsters with bright rows of lights over their cabs. Men hung from the passenger windows, pointing shotguns at the train. Vic cursed, gathering his beer and paper, and retreated to his front door. He looked back as the gunmen start shooting at the train and the passengers trying to escape. A few motorcycles, another truck - probably more on the other side - moved in like vultures. The men all wore black leather jackets, their insignia embroidered onto their backs: wolves with salivating jaws. At least a dozen of them boarded the train. The wolves ignored Vic.

One of the men emerged from one car, dragging a woman. She was blonde, pretty and petite. The man threw her into the bed of his truck, tearing her flowery dress. Vic sighed. He could do nothing but watch the rape.

The wolves circled the train, dragging other passengers out. Some, they shot. Others, they smashed with the butts of their guns. They took everything valuable: money, watches, jewels. Most of the women were more fortunate than the blonde, who screamed in the back of the truck as two more wolves took their turns. Most were either killed, beaten, or ignored. The blonde struggled, kicking one between the legs hard enough to knock him off the truck. Her efforts only increased her pain. The men spilled themselves in her and on her. Half a dozen men took their turns with her. Some slapped her. Some threw her head against the truck by her hair. Tears and blood and semen covered her face and body. Distant sirens signaled the end of the raid.

Yes, these happened frequently, and sometimes Vic read about rapes in the papers. But he'd never seen an assault, never witnessed a rape. The motorcycles disappeared first, scattering in all directions. The woman was left in the back of the truck as they started to drive. She rolled, purposefully, and fell from the moving truck. Law Bikes chased the fleeing wolves. They shot their guns, putting a hole in the side of the one of the trucks. A moment later, everything was gone but the wrecked train, Vic, and the woman.

She staggered through the street, unclothed, crying. Vic ran out to her and gave her his shirt. She looked at him, her lips quivering, and leaned heavily upon him as they walked.

He half-carried her to his house and brought her straight to the bathroom. He ran hot water into the bath, and sat her inside. "I’ll get you some clothes," he said. "My wife had some dresses."

When he returned, she hadn’t moved. The water rose close to the top, and she only stared at the faucet. He turned it off. "What’s your name?" he asked, hanging the dress on the doorknob.

"Christine," she said.

"Really? My wife was Christine." He got soap and a rag, offered it to her. "Clean yourself up, Christine."

She looked into his eyes, the first time, but neither accepted nor rejected what he offered. Was that fear, hatred, or anger?

"Listen," he said, "I couldn’t stop them, but I wasn’t about to leave you there to die. You could have done worse. I could be like them, like most people." He set the rag on the edge of the tub, and walked to the door.

"It’s a nasty world these days, Christine. My wife, she was in a train during one of these raids. They raped her, too, but no one came to help her. The Law Bikes, they chased the men who did it. I think more Lawmen died than wolves, or whoever the Hell did it. They never told me. She died there, alongside the train, because no one went to help her, and I was here, a thousand miles away."

Vic closed his eyes, hating to remember the phone call which told him all this. Had someone led his wife off the street, she might have lived. Instead, a couple of teenagers had found her and raped her again. She died, next to the train, six hours after the raid. Lawmen, as good as they were at chasing, never prevented, and never helped the victims.

No one ever helped the victims.

Vic shut the bathroom door behind him and turned on the news. Footage of a train raid greeted him. They showed a different train, in a fancier part of town, and cut to a man with blood oozing from beneath a rag on his forehead.

"When are we going to do something?" he asked. "I mean, it’s not safe anywhere anymore, if these gangs control the streets. Hospitals are closing because the gangs raid them for drugs and money, and what do the Lawmen do? They sit there, watch, and wait for everything to end rather than risk their lives like we pay them to!"

They cut away to the pretty anchorwoman, sitting comfortably in her air conditioned studio. "Someone shot this man, who remains unidentified, less than ten minutes later as our camera crew prepared to leave. One of our crew, Thomas Payne, was also shot. Let’s have a moment of silence…"

Vic switched off the television, to shut the self-centered bastards up, and checked with Christine. "How’s it going in there?" he asked through the door. Christine emerged, wearing his wife’s dress. She smiled timidly. Though her lip was cut, and a scratch stretched from her eye to her neck, she was clean and no longer trembling.

"I feel better," she said. "Maybe we could get you home, then," Vic suggested.

"No," she said, touching Vic’s hand. "I have no home. My husband was on that train with me, my only family. He tried to stop them."

Her smile saddened Vic, because he knew it was an improper response. "We had everything we owned on that train. We were moving. There’s no place for you to take me, unless you want to give me to the Lawmen."

"No," Vic said, "the Lawmen are as dangerous as the wolves. You can stay here."

September Near the railroad tracks, Christine sat. Vic watched her from the bedroom window. The dresses in his closet get tighter on her every day. The air cooled, and the sun shrank. Christine stared, from the comfort of the Bug in the driveway, as the 5:47 passed.

It squeaked hideously as it pulled into the station. The neighbors abandoned their houses sometime before Christine arrived, so the block belonged solely to them. It wasn't the life she wanted, but Vic imagined what her life might have been if she hadn’t rolled out of the truck. The picture nauseated him.

Every day, she watched the train. A week ago, she had asked him to teach her how to shot a pistol. Every day since, they’d gone into one of the empty houses and shot holes in the barren walls and broken mirrors. He drew targets in one of the living rooms, and already struck center with every shot.

When he looked at her, Vic both smiled and frowned. She gave his life meaning again. He couldn’t fall in love with her - because the only woman he could love was already buried - but her presence comforted him. When he woke to find her next to him, he watched her chest rise with her breath and thanked God he had helped her. But he knew she wanted something else. She loved him no more than he loved her, but he provided what she needed.

She watched that train, the one which had turned her life into a nightmare, every day. Sometimes, she cried. When they first made love, they reawakened passions both thought dead. Sex improved every night. Vic didn't fool himself into believing it would last forever.

December Near the railroad tracks, the first snow gently covered the Bug in Vic's driveway and his brown lawn. He watched from the bedroom window as it fell; inside the car, which hadn’t moved in years, Christine waited for the 5:47 to scream by. She wore new clothes, several sizes too small because she continued to grow. She hadn’t bled since Vic found her, so he knew she wasn't just gaining weight. It wasn't his baby, though. It belonged to one of the wolves.

The train came late. After it stopped in the station, Christine climbed out of the car and came back in the house. "They’re not coming again," she announced when she got to the door of the bedroom. Vic turned slowly. The pistol gleamed in her hand. She cleaned it all day, waiting for the train, but the gangs never came. The news reported other places they struck, random attacks throughout the nation. The Lawmen had disbanded completely just before the end of autumn, after one of the gangs raided their headquarters.

"They might," he told her. "Not soon enough," she said, looking down at her belly. "I’m getting fat."

"You’re beautiful."

"You lie," Christine said, "but that’s kind of you."

Vic watched her retreat into the bathroom.

He never lied.

She hid her sobs by filling the bath, but she didn't fool him. He read the paper as the bath filled, waiting for Christine to ask him to join her. She always did.

February Near the railroad tracks, winter was harsh. Christine stared through the bedroom window at unused tracks, blanketed by four feet of white. Vic sat near her, reading an old paper because the walk into town was too long and cold. Television reported less gang attacks, less of everything except the snow. Someone talked about reuniting the Lawmen, but complained that some had gotten together to form a gang of their own. Television annoyed Vic, so he rarely turned it on anymore. He preferred to look at Christine.

"It’s getting warmer," she said, without turning. "When do the trains start again?"

"April," he told her. "Sometimes, the trains are pretty. When will the wolves be back?"

April Near the railroad tracks, flowers burst with the new season. Like Vic’s deceased wife, the garden loved the warming months. It grew wild now, without his wife to care for it. Still, it brought Vic joy to sit in it.

He heard the 5:47 roll past, the first of the new season. Christine still said she was getting fat. A few more weeks, she would find herself thin once again, or at least thinner than she'd become. Vic read the paper, listening to the silence which followed the train. Christine’s beauty increased daily, and Vic began to wonder if he could fall in love with her. He understood the reverse could never be true. He expected she’d leave any day. She didn't show her discontent in any way. She made love just as rigorously, wondered at the sky and the birds like a child, cooked sometimes and allowed Vic to cook as well. Outwardly, their lives appeared perfect, but no love existed underneath. Christine’s needs and desires were different, and she’d only stay for as long as Vic satisfied those needs. Vic feared what those needs might be.

"They’re not coming back." Christine came around the side of the house, walking through grass which was only beginning to show shades of green again. "I don’t think they’ll be coming around again."

"Good," Vic said. "No. No, I’m not sure that’s really all that good."

Christine sat in the second chair, and stared at the garden. "Your wife kept this?"

"It was beautiful once."

"You really miss her."

Vic nodded. "Sometimes, I dream about our wedding day. The world was different then. It was before the Lawmen, before the gangs."

"Now it’s after the Lawmen," Christine told him, "and the gangs have gone from this place. If I’m going to have a wolf’s baby, at least the child should have a decent father, Vic."

Vic looked at her and understood. Maybe Christine wouldn’t be disappearing all that quickly, after all.

"There’s a judge in town who can still marry us," Vic said. "He was a friend of mine once."

"Everyone was your friend once."

"Perhaps."

Vic looked to the overcast sky. "We can call him tomorrow."

"I’d like that."

The brown walls of the courthouse gave off an odd smell, but they couldn’t diminish the beauty of Christine in her white gown. Her belly was obvious under the shimmering material. Vic didn't ask where she'd found it. The judge sat on a high chair and stared down at them with uncontrolled gray hair.

"By the power vested in me," he said at the end, "I pronounce you man and wife." He gave Vic a wink. "Kiss the bride, you old fool."

The kiss was like that of a first date, because it was one of their first. Vic wondered at that; they’d been living together since the raid, eight months before. Six of those months, they'd slept in the same bed. Kisses reminded him of the old world, before the changes which brought the Lawmen and the gangs. At seventeen, he'd kissed his first wife for the first time, in a bar around the block from school. He’d been drinking, and friends dared him to do it. To avenge this, she'd stolen his heart, became his wife, and traveled by train after the raids started.

Near the tracks, Christine insisted upon a honeymoon. They set up a tent in the backyard, kissed and made love throughout the rest of the afternoon. They stopped only to eat. Their meals done, they returned to the backyard to spend the rest of the night, but not until after the 5:47 lumbered past.

May near the tracks, a child was born. He had his mother’s eyes, wide and blue, and a soft smile. He was quiet, contemplating the world around him. Vic held the baby, whom Christine had named Victor, and wondered what trials the child would face. Unlike Vic, the child would never see his world change for the worse; it already had worsened.

Less than a week later, Christine climbed out of bed and did her things about the house. Her excess weight all belonged to Victor now. She walked more gracefully and showed more life. She was, now, mother and wife. Vic wondered what else she may have wanted in life. She acted happy, but reserved her genuine smiles for the baby. Then, the 5:47 passed Vic’s house, and a pick-up blocked its path again. Christine and Vic watched as the black trucks and motorcycles of the wolves emerged from everywhere.

"They’re here," Christine said, jumping up and down and clapping her hands together. "They’re here. Get me my gun."

"They’ll kill you," Vic told her.

"I only want one," she said. "Revenge, Vic. I need it. Get me my gun."

He brought it to her, the thing which would bring her death. No emotion prevented him, though something should have. He was about to lose her; he knew this. He feared this. But he'd never denied Christine anything, and he didn't plan on starting now.

"Thank you," Christine said.

She carried little Victor in her arms.

"You see, for nine months we lived here. They took away everything my life was, and left me here with you." She leaned toward Vic and kissed his lips.

"I’m not complaining about what they left me with, just what they took away. My husband, my daughter."

"Daughter?"

Christine shook her head. "She was three. They shot her, and then my husband, and at that point I wanted nothing more than to die. They dragged me outside, raped me, and again I wanted nothing but death.

"But death didn’t come. You prevented that. So I had to live, knowing all that I lost, all that should have been mine, with this child of rape and with you."

She smiled, softly. "I’m not complaining about being left with, just the fact that it happened at all."

She raised the gun and pointed it at Vic’s face.

"You see, I wanted to die at that point, and you didn’t let me. You never would. They’ll kill me fine, though, since I can’t do it myself, and they can decide if they want their son."

She shook her head. "Who the Hell did you think you were, sparing my life when I needed no more of it?"

Near the railroad tracks, silence followed the crash. Hers was the first gunshot to break that silence, and the last Vic heard.

END