by Terry, Mark
“What the hell is that?” Edison asked as they heard a tremendous roar outside.
Tesla pointed to the ceiling. “The excimers!”
Grgor and Simon, standing on opposite sides of the cabin, reached for parallel spots on the platform and hit identical switches. The small engineers’ compartments overhead flipped open. A compact version of the energy weapon Tesla had used back on the Wabash line dropped from each compartment.
From the dark sky, there was a flash of movement on the starboard side. Simon fired the weapon out into the void and it lit up the night. Nothing moved in the clouds. Then as quickly, there was a flash of movement on the port side. All heads turned as Grgor vanished. No noise. A burst of energy from somewhere far below aimed off into the distance. Nothing else.
Without a word, Simon ran to the open entrance and fired down into the darkness. His eyes showed fury. After several moments, he stopped shooting. Simon pondered a moment, lifted his chin, turned, and stripped off his jacket. The inventor’s protégé wore something strapped to his back.
“A parachute!” Ida exclaimed.
“How come I didn’t get one?” Edison asked angrily.
Simon climbed the ladder to the roof of the locomotive.
Tesla unwrapped some steel coil. He looped it through several hoops welded to the engine walls and around their waists, then secured it with a cable lock. “We’re much safer staying in train,” Tesla said, not looking up. “I’ll secure us.”
The three of them held on for several minutes, looking out both sides, down at the ground, and up into the sky.
Ida shouted, “There!” as a streak of light crossed above and behind them.
A high-pitched whine emitted in the dark and a burst of energy shot across the stern of the flying engine. Another streak of misty light, now from the starboard side, directly aft. Another bolt of energy lit up the sky and the streak passed just above the rooftop.
With a thud and a drag, Simon slipped off the port side and dangled in the air for several moments. Finally, he swung himself in, hit the floor, and lay there gasping, his face covered in blood, several long gashes across his scalp.
A streak came from the port side, crossing under the flying engine. Simon shot out into the starless void and then once more climbed out on the roof of the cab.
“Christ!” Edison shouted.
“He’ll be fine,” Tesla said. “We are prepared.”
“What do we do now? We haven’t another one of those…guns,” Ida said.
“The excimer is short lived device. Too much power required. Needs bigger battery cells.” Tesla adjusted a thick metal belt around his waist.
“What is that?” Edison asked.
“Is big battery,” Tesla answered. He unbuttoned his shirt to reveal a metal harness strapped over his shoulders.
“You’re wearing it?” Ida exclaimed.
“Too big otherwise.” Tesla shrugged.
Ida shook her head in wonder. “What are you going to do?”
“When he gets close enough to grab, I'll give him a dose of ultraviolet energy that should be enough to kill him.”
“And what about us?” Edison exclaimed.
Tesla looked at him with raised his eyebrows. “You should be fine. He grabs me and I give him shock of his eternal life. I’m insulated. Only thing that would hurt you is if you somehow were able to get shocked, but I’ve got floor lined with rubber matting.”
“Um, Nikola,” Ida said slowly.
Tesla turned as Ida held up the steel cable wrapped around them, securing them to flying locomotive.
“Vampire!” Edison shouted, pointing at the apparition hanging off the port entrance.
Tesla unlatched the steel cable and it sank to the floor, loose about them. Ida stepped out of the loop, as did Edison, and Tesla’s arm drew the coil back like a bullwhip.
The Gunslinger appeared on the starboard side in beastly form, his black long coat billowed in the wind. The monster sank a razor-sharp claw into the metal roof of the locomotive and pulled himself in. His eyes glowed a deep scarlet.
Tesla whip-cracked the wire, and it looped twice around the vampire’s waist. Arcs of ultraviolet light shot into the beast's body. Ribbons of crackling electric power burst from the Gunslinger’s eyes, and he howled an unearthly, ungodly sound. The human visage appeared, grimacing in pain. The vampire grabbed Edison by the collar and shoved him backward through the port opening. The inventor’s arms pin-wheeled and he plunged into open space.
The beast wrenched the wire back and forth, knocking Tesla around in the cab, bouncing off one wall and then the next as he held on. The Gunslinger roared, jerked the line, and swung Tesla toward the starboard opening. Ida screamed. Simon leaned in, reached a hand out, and lifted Ida up and out of the cab.
The inventor slid along on his stomach and slipped into open air. He scrambled for a grip, and his hands found the driving connecting rod which propelled the wheels while on the ground. In the air, the steel had become cold and was covered with sand, so his grip held. Tesla looked across to see Edison hanging from the sand ejector on the other side of train. He had one foot hooked up around the port driving rod and was climbing back into the cabin.
The Gunslinger wrested the agonizing cable from around his body. Pieces of his coat that had been riddled with Gatling cannon shells were now floating off him in singed and smoking strips. Standing alone in the cab, he gritted his teeth in fury. He went to the port side and saw Tesla hanging there. He went to the starboard opening and found Edison clutching to that side. A blast came from the bow of the flying engine. The impact struck the vampire in the side of the head and he staggered backward.
Grgor sat astride the smokebox, one hand clutching the stack, the other gripping the excimer weapon. Simon and Ida at the rear of the train huddled and clutched for purchase. Tesla and Edison both scrambled to make their way back into the cab.
Then the vampire, clinging to the ceiling like a spider, crawled out of the cab, hand over foot, and onto the roof. The burned features turned toward Grgor, and the body slowly came erect. The Gunslinger’s right arm hung loosely at his side, black and bloody.
Ida and Simon slipped back into the cab behind the Gunslinger, and the vampire stepped closer to Grgor.
Inside the cab, Ida pulled Tesla up, while Simon helped Edison back inside. The four stood for a moment, gasping. Then an electrical bolt shot across the engine, bringing them out of their daze.
Wedderburn and Grgor grappled at the front of the train, the heavy-set Croatian holding off the one-armed vampire. The excimer went off again, arcing worthlessly into the starry night. Wedderburn swung his left arm across Grgor’s shoulder knocking him off his feet and sending the excimer skittering across the cold steel. Grgor slipped off the side of the engine, struggled for a grip, and dropped into the darkness.
Simon lunged out of the cab, grabbed the excimer off the crown of the engine, and fired. The Gunslinger turned and smiled, and the shot hit him high in the chest. He staggered.
Tesla grabbed the cyclic lever and shoved it all the way in reverse. The Jenny Lind lurched to the left, and Wedderburn toppled off the locomotive and disappeared. Edison stumbled across the cab, hit his head on the wall, and blacked out.
Interlude 67
Sunday, March 19, 1893, 5:47 a.m.
Pikes Peak, Colorado
No other view combines the sublime and the grandeur of Pikes Peak at sunrise. The extent of the view from scaling the rocks is breathtaking. The view from a thousand feet in the air above caused John Randolph to scream. The hand that curled under his armpit squeezed his chest like a vice, and he stared down through his dangling feet at the passing landscape. To the north ran the main line of the Rockies, with snow-capped peaks as far as the eye could see. To the south and west lay the open plains stretching to meet the blue sky.
The sun poked its face above the horizon, and the bookkeeper held his hands up defensively. The whole range of summits bathed in the golden hue of mo
rning peaked out from the horizon. Slowly rays burst forth, one after another. His senses grew bewildered.
“Uh-oh,” the vampire carrying Milo and Randolph muttered. The first sun rays crossed the huge vampire’s face and scalded his cheek. The trio immediately descended into the forest. The vampire’s grip loosened and Randolph and Milo went tumbling to the rocky dirt.
Milo stumbled, leaned against a Douglas fir, shuddered, and vomited. John Randolph sat with his legs under him, his mouth hanging open, and sweat across his brow. Milo heaved again. Randolph sucked in a gulp of air and then let out a long, awful scream. When he finished, after a long minute, he looked around, unsure of himself. There came a low chuckle from above, and John Randolph screamed again.
The heavyset vampire in overalls hung in the air, looking down on them, a huge creepy grin on his ghastly face with red eyes and fangs. With another chuckle, the fat vampire lifted into the sky and disappeared.
Looking around at patches of old snow, scrub oak, and sagebrush and hearing Milo heaving nearby, the bookkeeper asked, “Where are we?” He wrapped his jacket tightly around himself, his breath coming out in a cloud.
Milo stood up straight and adjusted his hat. “I hate traveling by vampire.”
The bookkeeper looked around, his head swiveling from side to side, his face ashen. “Where are we?” he asked again.
A hand grabbed a fistful of his jacket and pulled him upright on his knees. “The master has given us a task. When it is done, you are free,” Milo said, nose to nose with the bookkeeper.
“Free,” John Randolph rasped as he came to his feet, staggering. Milo pulled him out into a clearing. The bookkeeper gasped, looking around. “What is that?”
“Purple mountains! Fruited plains!” Milo muttered, waving his arms.
The bookkeeper stared out over the majestic view of snow capped peaks and green fields. “Where are we going?”
“The master is prepared!”
When Edison awoke, morning had come to Colorado. He touched the side of his head and pulled back, wincing. Simon extended a hand to help him to his feet, but the inventor waved the man off and stood.
Tesla held the controls of the flying locomotive engine. Simon went over to Tesla who was furiously working the fuel pump and jumping from the lateral to the vertical controls to maintain stability. They shouted at each other below the howl of the wind, but their words were lost beyond them. Simon nodded and then, with a glance back at Edison, stepped off the platform into the void.
Edison rushed to the edge, to see a white parachute bloom in the early sunlight. “What the hell is going on?” he shouted.
“Forget about that! He’s going to prepare for us. We’ve got to land as quickly as possible, and given our gross weight and wind speed, there are only so many places we can land where I can maintain control.” He pulled to the left on the altitude control and pulled slightly back on the directional. He craned his neck out the port side, then adjusted the directional again.
“Where are we landing?” Edison asked, looking out.
“We’re landing on Pikes Peak. We’ve got to go to Colorado Springs.”
“I don’t need to go there,” Edison asserted.
The rocky granite face of Almagre Mountain poked up through the tree cover as the flying locomotive crossed the Sangre de Cristo Range and broke through the cloud cover.
“We’re going in!” Tesla shouted.
The flying locomotive came in at a fifteen-degree tilt, its rear wobbling side to side, shearing the top off several bristlecone pines.
Edison lost a handhold and skidded towards the edge. Ida grabbed the neck of his coat and stopped the slide. Tesla pulled the first lever all the way back and the front of the locomotive pulled up. The flying vessel crossed back above the timberline.
Ida held on to Edison as he scrambled back in. “Nikola, what’s happening?” she asked.
“We’re in autorotation. I have to reduce pitch of rotors and bring us in slowly.”
“You’re going to glide us in?”
“I’m trying! Glide path is based on our weight, altitude and airspeed and rotations per minute. I’m working it out in my head.” The permafrost raced up to meet the locomotive as it drifted to the left. Tesla grunted, threw the second lever fully forward, and they pulled back to the right. “If I can’t flare up before we land, our forward momentum will be too much to control!”
“Nikola!” Ida shouted.
Edison leaped to his feet and he threw his arms around the driveshaft. A moment later, the flying train skipped on the permafrost, spun one hundred eighty degrees and hit the ground again. This time it came to rest after dragging through the rocky surface several dozen yards, kicking up a cloud of dust as high as the mighty pines around it.
At an elevation of 14,115 feet, the summit of Pikes Peak afforded a wonderland of mountain reservoirs, scenic beauty, rolling mountains, and startling timberline. Late summer storms hurled against the granite slope and the dawn air reached freezing in all but the warmest parts of the year. Bristlecone pines—the planet’s oldest living organism, some of which have been growing for more than two thousand years—covered the area.
Edison staggered out of the haze, covered in dirt. He shook debris out of his hair and coughed. Ida came out of the permafrost mist waving her arms, her hair askew, blown back from her face. They stopped and looked back at the crashed engine as the cloud dissipated.
Tesla strolled from the crashed engine. He brushed his hands across his coat, looked back at the Jenny Lind, and shook his head.
“Tesla, what the hell happened? Why didn’t we land in Colorado Springs?”
“The altitude affected our approach. We had to land before we lost complete collective control.”
“What are we going to do now?” Ida exclaimed, throwing her arms out at the mountain range.
Nikola walked past her smiling. “We’ll take train.”
“How the hell is a train getting up here, Tesla?” Edison growled. He motioned back towards the crashed vehicle. “Can’t we take the flying train back?”
Tesla stopped and turned. “In that? At this altitude, we couldn’t even get off ground!”
“Why not?” Edison demanded.
Tesla held his fist up in front of his face and ticked off the reasons one finger at a time. “Lift coefficient, times density of air, times velocity of air.” Then he turned and continued walking.
Ida followed, straightening her hair and glancing back at Edison.
“And where the hell is this train?” Edison asked. He still hadn’t moved.
Tesla pointed to his left without looking back or stopping. “We’re just north of Manitou Incline. I think I saw Barr Trail as we came in overhead. It is few miles to depot. Should only take couple of hours on foot.”
Edison watched Tesla and Ida traverse a steep incline and disappear briefly from view. Then he followed them.
Tesla, Ida, and Edison were seated in the cog railcar starting down from Pikes Peak.
“You know, I read touching poem by woman named Bates, written about Pikes Peak. There’s been talk of making it national hymn,” Nikola Tesla said, seated next to Edison. “But real beauty of mountain is railroad.”
Outside the windows, the beautiful plains of Colorado blue spruce and Ponderosa pines slowly passed by. Yellow-bellied marmots scurried up to take a look as the railcar passed.
“Conventional railroads use friction to adhere to tracks.” Tesla turned to look at Edison. Both inventors sat rocked back in their seats as the train descended a nearly forty-percent grade. “They would never be able to make it up and down such steep mountain.”
Edison braced against the seat in front of him, gripping behind the headrest. Even so, he felt himself inevitably slipping out of his seat and constantly adjusting himself. “Who the hell would have thought there would be a railroad at the top of a mountain,” Edison muttered.
/> Tesla leaned over. “First ones to reach summit were supposed to be dignitaries, but they got turned back by landslide. It was actually Denver Choir who were first to reach top of mountain.”
“Nikola, this is an amazing piece of machinery. I had no idea you could get a railroad up a mountain this way!” Ida looked out the window admiringly.
“Pikes Peak’s beautiful landscapes drove mule trains up to summit for years before installation of cog rail. My father had sent me to boarding school in Switzerland to avoid war. That’s when I had idea. Beautiful mountain scenery is why I helped Swiss create cog railway. That was before I made trip to Paris.”
A man sitting in the booth across from them dropped his hat when he tried to adjust the coat under his arm. It rolled all the way to the front of the car, where it lay. Nobody moved to grab it.
“Cog railcar has special mesh gear which grabs onto center rack rail running up and down mountain.” Tesla bit his cheek. “It can only go about ten miles an hour, at best, but I’ve got some ideas that will get railcar from bottom of Pikes Peak to summit in less than fifteen minutes. Just looking for right place to test it. Can’t use it here unless they’d let me tear out existing cog rail.” Tesla adjusted himself in his seat as he felt himself sliding.
A child, about four years old, somewhere behind them slipped out of her seat. She slid down the center aisle and came to rest on top of the man’s hat. She tried to sit up and muttered softly, rubbing her behind, “Mommy, that hurts.” Several riders chuckled.
Interlude 68
Sunday, March 19, 1893, 11:55 a.m.
Colorado Springs, Colorado
The trio arrived in front of Tesla’s high voltage laboratory on Kiowa Street. The School for the Deaf was a mile or so down the road. The institute stood as the only other building in sight in the dense woodland of blue spruce, bristlecone pines and Douglas firs. The unsurfaced road wound up Almagre Mountain towards Manitou Springs into a remote corner of the frontier town.