Leland grunted and went down, dropping his rifle with a clatter.
Nathan fired at that twisting limb, blowing the hand off at the wrist.
A second and third arm darted out from the seat berth, their flesh as pallid as eels. They slashed for the stricken gang leader. Leland stopped one blade upon his rifle, but one steely edge took him across the ear. He screamed that time.
“The hell is that!” Gilbert yelled as arms erupted from the berths on either side of him and slashed his legs. He fired, blowing out a section of the ceiling, and staggered back.
Then the entire aisle became a swarm of flashing, slashing knives.
17
A blade sliced across Nathan’s right knee, crumpling him. He dropped and lurched for his hidden attacker. Gunfire ripped through the dark as the men behind opened fire, but at what, Nathan had no idea.
For there were no attackers.
All there was—in front of him, anyway—was an arm, holding a large knife, extending from the center of the seat as if it was an exceptionally big shoulder.
The arm reared back, flexing at an elbow, and stabbed for Nathan’s face.
He deflected the thrust with his rifle, got past the elbow, and grabbed the wrist. The limb fought back, pulling and attempting to back-slash, but Nathan, in disbelief at what was happening, held on and refused to let go.
More gunfire around him, and the flash and sizzle of a ricochet.
The arm attempted to pull away from Nathan. He leaned back, stretching the thing out like a snake, before the air overhead exploded. He fell backwards, holding a shotgun-severed arm, while a stern Shorty Charlie Williams broke open both barrels and reloaded. Realizing what he held, Nathan dropped the arm and kicked it away.
Across the way, Gilbert stood within one berth, angled his rifle over the backrest, and fired three quick shots into the seat. Jimmy Norquay hurried through, firing as well, but Nathan collapsed in his berth and watched in horror as the remaining stump in the cushion’s center oozed oil.
“Holy shit!” Gilbert was yelling. “Holy shit, holy shit!”
“Quiet, Gilbert!” Jimmy shouted and got the silence he wanted. The shooting died away to nothing. In the aftermath of the short but unexpected fight, Nathan reached out and prodded his knee with his fingertips. He hissed at the contact, knowing full well he’d been cut.
“You okay?” Shorty asked, his torso looming over the berth behind the one Nathan occupied.
“That thing cut me,” Nathan winced, eyeing the bleeding stump and then the dark floor, where the detached arm lay.
“Got me, too,” Gilbert groaned while checking himself out and shaking his legs.
Leland rose, his hat fallen off his head. “We need some light in here.”
“I’ll get it,” Jimmy said.
“Watch your legs. Goddamn things are… are in the seats.”
Nathan couldn’t take his eyes off the bleeding stump embedded in that grand cushion. He lurched to his feet just as Jimmy fired twice more, swearing at unseen assailants.
“More of them?” Leland asked.
“A damn nest of them,” Jimmy reported. “Except…”
“What?”
Jimmy took a moment to stomp upon a seat. It took several attempts. When he’d finished driving his heel into whatever it was, he stood back, breathing heavily, and his shoulders slumped.
“It’s just arms, Leland,” he reported. “A damn nest of arms.”
“Check under the seats,” Leland said.
Nathan was already ahead of him, pulling, pushing, and finally trying to pry away the cushions. Nothing moved.
“Use the knife,” Shorty suggested.
Nathan considered the blade that had cut him but decided he didn’t want anything to do with that infected piece of metal. He pulled free his own Bowie knife and, composing himself, stabbed it down into the cushion.
The knife hit wood.
Nathan’s hand stung at the connection, but he didn’t stop. He cut away the fabric and gutted the feathers within.
“Oh,” he muttered when he stopped and studied what he’d uncovered. “Oh… Sweet Jesus.”
The stump grew out of the wood underneath the box, in a sinewy collection of roots and organic matter he didn’t recognize but knew would haunt him for a very long time. There was no body, just that tough fibrous attachment that might’ve been the ends of an organism turned inside out. Nathan studied those beet-red tubes in mounting horror, before stabbing the base of the limb and sawing away. Halfway through, the arm stump detached itself like a leech filled to capacity, leaving a dark-stained wood.
“Sweet, Sweet Jesus,” Nathan muttered again, and swept the unholy protrusion onto the floor with his knife. Grimacing, he tapped the very surface where the arm had attached itself.
Solid, unbroken wood.
Except an arm holding a very large knife had moored itself there.
Jimmy returned with the detached oil lamp, swinging it around. Leland pressed a hand to the side of his pale face, his fingers seeping blood.
“Arms,” Nathan said. “Nothing but arms.”
“The hell is going on here?” Mackenzie said for them all, at a loss as to explain the horrifying sight.
“I cut around one,” Nathan said. “Right down to the wood. Just an arm. With a knife. Attached to the plank like a goddamn leech.”
“Must be someone underneath,” Mackenzie said.
But there was no one underneath. No one trapped inside the seat, impossibly contorted to fit a hidden chest’s dimensions. A quick hammering of the seats showed immaculate workmanship, and no means of entry or exit. Nothing could be stored within, unless the builders had installed the seats with a person inside, but that was just as impossible as what had just happened.
A stoic Jimmy quieted everyone when he stooped into one berth and did some serious cutting. A short time later, he held onto a skinny arm dripping and severed at the shoulder.
“Oh my god,” Leland whispered.
Jimmy tossed the lifeless meat away and shone the light around. “They died all the same,” he said, inspecting the others. “Looks like one or two for each berth. Mostly along in the middle of the aisle. The one I stomped on? The one like a snake nest? There were five or six in that.”
“Man-sized?” Mackenzie asked.
Jimmy scowled and didn’t answer.
For a time, the six men stood and absorbed the numbing horror of the situation. Nathan regarded each one in turn, even Gilbert, who might’ve once been perceived as the jumpiest of the bunch. Not so. Gilbert held his rifle at chest-level, above the seats, and appeared very much in control and alert. In fact, no one showed even a flicker of the fear that Nathan was feeling, and he realized in a match-strike of understanding that these were not ordinary men. These were seasoned outlaws. They’d all seen and done things where blood had been spilled. And even though what they’d just experienced was definitely supernatural and beyond imagination, one thing above allowed them to keep their wits and their nerves under control.
And that was the resolve to not show any outward fear, to not break in front of the other gang members. Such a breach of outlaw etiquette would not do, under any time of extreme duress. No one wanted to partner up with a weak will and mind. If the situation were different, say, if they were holed up in some bank on the prairie and surrounded by North West police and facing a potential hanging if caught, a gang member crumbling under such pressure would be a weak link in the chain. A liability.
No one wanted to be the weak link.
And no one sure as hell wanted to be a liability.
Liabilities were frowned upon, mistrusted, and ultimately shot, for fear of endangering the rest of the gang.
So Nathan took two deep breaths, held them, and let them out slowly, all the while taking a firmer hold of his Winchester, which killed both passengers and bodiless limbs just fine. On this wavering plane of reality, he held onto his weapon like it was an anchor dug in. It kept him mentally in place
, despite a killer undercurrent attempting to sweep him away. Faces were set and reflective, eyes glittered in the lamplight.
“We on the right train here, Leland?” an uneasy Gilbert finally asked.
Leland didn’t reply, his face set as he continued pressing the side of his head. Blood dribbled over his fingers. Jimmy swung the light around, bathing the man’s features in an orange hue.
“I mean,” Gilbert continued, trying to organize his thoughts. “Passengers who become monsters? And now arms—bare arms—with knives, trying to cut us to pieces?”
Leland still didn’t answer. He stood there until he motioned for Jimmy to get the lamp out of his face.
“This is…inexplicable,” the gang leader admitted. “I don’t know what’s going on. But I’ll tell you this. Nathan and I had an encounter as well. With the engineer of the train. The engineer wasn’t a person at all. It was… an apparition.”
“A what?” Gilbert asked.
“A ghost,” Mackenzie clarified, pulling his scarf down to reveal a deadly serious expression.
“A ghost,” Leland repeated. “We shot the thing, but our bullets passed right through it. In the end we managed to drive it from the train. That was the last we saw of it. The train itself, however, is a solid thing. This,” he patted the seat, “is certainly real to the touch. The passengers, these things.… they all seem to bleed. To die. Suggesting we’re not quite on… a ghost train.”
“But a crazy train,” Nathan added.
“A crazy train,” Leland said, looking from one face to the other. “A crazy train that probably doesn’t have the payroll car that we were looking for. So, following all that, I’d say… yes, Gilbert. We’re definitely not on the right train.”
The lamplight shaded Gilbert’s profile as he warily looked from one end of the car to the other.
“A crazy train,” Nathan said. “We’re on a crazy ghost train.”
“Fucked up train,” Shorty Charlie Williams muttered.
“I don’t know what we’re on, truthfully,” Leland said. “But if it makes you feel better calling it that, go ahead. It’s certainly not what I expected. Regardless, gentlemen. The plan doesn’t change. The train controls were damaged. The brakes do not work. Even now, we’re speeding along faster than before. We can’t unhitch the main engine from the passenger side, but perhaps we can unhitch the caboose.”
“And if we can’t?” Mackenzie asked.
Leland’s eyes glittered in the flickering lamplight. “Then we ask Jimmy here what his thoughts are on using his remaining dynamite on the couplings. Whereupon we coast to a stop. One way or another, we’re getting off this train.”
“Why not blast the couplings now?” Eli demanded. “On any of these cars?”
Nathan shook his head. “You see those couplings back there? They’re all melted together into one big black kernel. Same as back front.”
“We’d have to blast through the floor first,” Jimmy said. “And there’s another risk.”
That got the men’s attention.
“We could derail the train,” Jimmy said.
That silenced the lot of them. At the speed they were traveling, they could be shot through a window or have their heads bashed against the hardwood berths. Or simply crushed inside the cars as it compressed like an accordion.
“The caboose will have to do…” Leland reasoned, studying his companion.
“I think so…” Jimmy said and nodded in support of the plan. Nathan drew strength from the Metis man’s stern expression. He suspected Jimmy Norquay had a bar of iron in his spine that went from tail to skull.
“I’m in,” Nathan said. Jimmy and Shorty nodded their consent.
“Whatever you decide, Leland,” Mackenzie said.
“Yeah, whatever,” Gilbert said quickly, not wanting to be seen as undecided.
The gang’s thoughts were known, their intent clear, and Nathan, for one, knew this particular group was a determined one.
“All right then,” Leland said, looking to the next door. “Watch the shadows. And let’s get ready to move.”
18
Nathan and Leland sustained the only wounds from the surprising attack. Gilbert and Mackenzie both inspected themselves and were relieved to find their thick winter dusters had saved their extremities. Gilbert held up the ends of his coat and poked fingers through the slash that, thankfully, didn’t cut any deeper.
Nathan doffed his outer winter shirt and cut the thing into strips. He shared the makeshift bandages with Leland, and they trussed up their wounds as best they could. Once done, the six men approached the waiting door of the next car, mindful of the nearby seats. Mackenzie took the lead, and the once cattle thief gripped the handle. He waited until the others got into position, ready to fire.
With a nod from Leland, Mackenzie pulled the door open.
The vestibule was empty.
Shorty crept forward, and the rest followed the big man to what Nathan believed was the tenth car. Shorty stopped at the entrance, gripped the handle, and squeezed his sizeable frame out of the way in case the others had to open fire.
He opened the door.
The men didn’t shoot. The oil lamps within burned low, allowing more than enough light. Not a soul in sight. An eerie ambiance hung over the deserted car, however, tugging at the threads of superstitions best forgotten, and bedtime tales of things that existed only in dark places. Nathan, in particular, wondered what had changed all the passengers into such horrifying creatures in the first place.
Moving as quietly as they could manage, their rifle barrels gleaming in the soft light, they entered the car. Shorty and Mackenzie went on ahead, while Gilbert trailed. They checked on the berths before passing each row, not caring to be ambushed a second time. Nathan and the others gathered behind them, casting wary glances back the way they traveled.
Shorty reached the exit door and readied himself to crack it open. “All set?” he asked the others as they gathered.
Leland gave him the nod.
Shorty pulled back the door, and a winter wind blasted the gang. Nathan’s hat blew off and landed against his back, where the chin string kept it. He shied away from the gale at first, only to peer beyond the doorway.
The vestibule was gone.
“What the hell?” Nathan whispered in puzzlement.
Shorty looked around the edge of the portal as Leland strode forward and stopped upon the threshold, where his coat flapped in the wind. “Damnation,” he said.
A moment later, Nathan understood why.
A roofless flatcar lay out before them, bare and forbidding. An ominous darkness swallowed up the deck’s edges, and a tempest of a crosswind cut across that open expanse. No railing along the sides, and lamplight revealed a smattering of ice and snow upon the dimpled iron. Above the intimidating pitch blackness, however, the night sky shone in its full glory.
The stars caught Nathan’s attention, but with all that had happened in the last ten minutes or so, he couldn’t identify what bothered him about the scintillating spectacle overhead. They were still oversized and twinkled with unnerving indifference.
“We ain’t going across that, are we, Leland?” Gilbert asked.
“Looks like we’ll have to.”
“Shit.”
There were no connecting plates to the flatbed, just a foot-wide chasm that had to be stepped across. The space below was a flashing screen of lights that weren’t quite sparks. The display puzzled Nathan, so he handed off his rifle to Mackenzie, and crouched at the edge of the platform.
“Jimmy,” he said. “Give me that lamp.”
“See something, Nathan?” Leland asked.
“Yeah, I do.”
“What is it?”
“Give me a second.”
Jimmy handed over the lamp, the flame protected from the wind by glass. Nathan lowered the light into the gap. Right there, framed between two sets of rails, and a pair of jostling couplings that shivered and shook, was another night sky. Deep
. Infinite. And positively frightening.
Even as he looked, stars zipped across that space like streaking comets.
“What is that?” Leland asked, taking notice.
“That ice, Nathan?” Mackenzie also inquired.
Nathan couldn’t quite answer, however, as his voice failed him. He looked to the right and saw no land. Nothing lay to the left, either. At first, he thought it was a trick of the dark, but the night was too bright to conceal the landscape. Then he thought they had to be on the wide flatness of the prairies, except he knew they’d all boarded the train in the Rockies.
Then there was the absolute lack of anything beneath them that defied all explanation.
“Leland?” Shorty asked plainly, filling the lapse of conversation.
“Yes, Shorty?”
“You see any mountains around?”
That was met with a resounding silence, where only the wind raised its voice, and the train continued to power its way along the rails. Nathan drew back from the gap. He held out the lamp for Jimmy, except Jimmy didn’t take it. Like the others, Jimmy was trying to make sense of the missing world around them. The mountains had vanished. There were no hills, no forests, and certainly no bodies of water. Only the night existed. As far as anyone could see, the only thing surrounding the train was that vast emptiness of space. The only thing holding up the speeding locomotive was the thin set of rails beneath it, suspended in the air without any visible trusses, defying both gravity and reality.
“The hell’s going on, Leland?” Gilbert asked in a low voice that wavered around the edges.
Leland didn’t answer.
“There’s no ground underneath us, Leland,” Nathan said as that familiar nervous energy returned to his chest and lower legs. “There’s nothing. Not a damn thing.”
Those closest held onto the car’s door frame and leaned over.
“Oh Sweet Jesus,” Gilbert exclaimed and jerked himself back.
The sight was worse when the lamplight was out of the way, when their eyes could adjust and behold that endless, star-studded chasm beneath them. All the while, the wind slapped their faces.
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