Two more figures passed through the door, winking out of sight around the corners. Then the remainder. Gilbert stopped on the other side of the portal, placed his back to the wall, and opened fire, supporting Eli as he picked his shots.
The wind screaming in his ears, Nathan rushed past them and stumbled inside another passenger car. He joined Leland just a few feet away from the door, the leader’s rifle raised and pointed. Nathan turned and aimed his revolver.
Jimmy stood next to the doorway, and a crackling fuse lit up his fist. Framed in that doorway was a raving, teeming frontline of passengers. An ebony current of faces and claws that filled the flatcar’s framework, and shocked Nathan to his trembling core.
Eli and Gilbert retreated inside. Jimmy tossed the stick back onto the flatcar.
Shorty slammed the door closed, and everyone inside dove for cover.
The dynamite exploded.
20
The train shuddered and the door to the passenger car crimpled inwards, as if a heavy weight had slammed into it. The window remained intact, oddly enough, but Nathan didn’t care. All he cared about was that the dynamite had done its job. He lifted his head, peeking out from the berth where he took cover, and inspected the door. The floor rattled underneath as the great machine continued to speed forward.
Other heads and figures rose, their attention focused upon the closed portal. Shorty lumbered to the door and inspected the damage. He reached for the handle, thought better of it, and retreated a step. A second later, a scratching rose from the metal, followed by a hammering of fists. The door quivered in its frame but did not open.
“Blast warped the door,” an astonished Jimmy said, looking to Leland.
The gang leader stood and stared. “They can’t get through,” he whispered.
“They can’t get through,” Jimmy repeated.
“Not yet,” Eli Gallant said and started extracting shells from a bandolier. He thumbed them into his rifle. “But the thing on my mind is, we can’t get out that way.”
“Why the hell you want to go out that way?” Nathan asked, getting some of his nerve back.
Eli regarded him. “It ain’t that I want to go out there, it’s that I like having the option.”
The hammering continued, even intensified.
“We’re not staying here,” Leland decided. He glanced over his shoulder at the poorly lit train. “Another passenger car?”
“Empty, too.” Eli reported. “I saw to all of that.”
More fists rattled off the door, distracting the men.
“We better go, Leland,” Nathan said and entered the aisle. “That door might not hold for long. What’s in the next car, Eli?”
“Just another passenger car.”
“Another one?” Leland asked with reserved doubt.
“Another one,” Eli replied in a saucy tone, greeting Gilbert with a nod. “But that ain’t what’s bothering me, Leland Baxter. What’s bothering me is that flatcar out there.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because when me and Gilbert and the boys were walking through here, there was no flatcar. Even when I went on ahead and then backtracked through the same fuckin’ cars, there was no flatcar. You understand me now?”
The door shook underneath multiple impacts, distracting the stunned men.
“Come on,” Nathan said, unable to wait any longer. He hurried down the aisle, towards the next door. The rest of the gang followed in a stampede of feet. The berths were empty, and the overhead compartments had all been opened. Eli had been busy, apparently.
They reached the end and glanced back. Only two lamps lit the interior, but Nathan thought he could see the distant door shiver from the constant pounding from beyond.
“There’s nothing ahead?” Leland asked.
“Nothing,” Eli answered.
“Open the door.”
Nathan opened it with one hand, his gun held ready in the other. The dark vestibule shook with the motion of the train, but it was empty.
“What were those things, Leland?” Jimmy asked. “The passengers, I mean?”
“I have no idea.”
“Maybe we just hold off on the questions,” Nathan said, striding to the next door, where the window wasn’t lit like the others. “Until we’re someplace safe.”
“Like where, shithead?” Eli barked. “There’s only more passenger cars that way. This whole fuckin’ train is nothing but a string of passenger cars.”
“There must be others,” Leland said. “There has to be.”
“There ain’t shit on the other side of that door.”
Nathan grabbed the handle and opened it.
A chasm of blackness greeted him, and a howling wind much like that at the bottom of a mine shaft blasted by his face.
“Holy shit,” Eli said. “The lights went out.”
“Get something from the other car,” Leland ordered.
But when they looked back, one lamp had already expired, while the other one flittered weakly. In seconds, the dark smothered the light.
“Christ Almighty,” Eli said. “Left in the dark with a bunch of you shit flingers. I’ve died and gone to hell.”
“Shut up,” Leland said.
Nathan could no longer see their faces, but he sensed their closeness. In the dark, that steady drumming on the door seemed all the more ominous.
“Go on ahead, Nathan,” Leland said. “But be careful of those knife arms. The ones we encountered earlier. We’ll follow after a time.”
“Be careful,” Jimmy echoed.
“Careful?” Nathan asked. He peered into the gloom, unable to see anything. So he marched forward, feeling his way along the tops of the berths. Nothing tried to cut him.
“Come on then,” he called back when he reached the midway point.
“We’re coming,” Leland said, and winter boots trudged over the floor. “Stop at the next door.”
“I’ll probably break my nose on the next door,” Nathan muttered, forging ahead, the seat rows his only guide. He looked for windows but couldn’t see any. He stopped and entered a berth. His fingers felt a window sill, but no blind. No curtains.
“What the hell…?” He trailed off, feeling the frame.
“What’s wrong?’ Leland asked nearby.
“There’s no stars,” Nathan said. “I’m at the window but there’s no curtains. I’m tapping on glass.” Which he immediately did. “And there’s no stars. I mean, there’s nothing. All them stars we saw aren’t there anymore.”
“The hell you say?” Eli demanded.
Nathan tapped his gun barrel off the glass. “Nothing.”
“Shoot it out, then,” Eli said.
But that didn’t set right in Nathan’s mind.
“No,” Leland said. “Just… just leave it. Move on, Nathan. Perhaps the next car will have light.”
“Why not blast it?” Eli wanted to know.
“The shot might alert the passengers as to where we are,” Leland said in the dark.
That quieted the lot. Nathan knew their nerves were frazzled. He knew because his nerves were frazzled. Memories of all those faces and claws and the total absence of fear…
“Keep going, Nathan,” Leland said.
So Nathan kept going. He returned to the aisle, his footfalls louder than the hammering far behind. Leland and the others followed, scuffling along the floor and occasionally cracking the wood with a rifle. The air smelled of varnish, familiar and pungent.
“The hell are the windows? And the night?” Gilbert asked and got shushed by someone.
“So dark,” Mackenzie said, his voice barely a whisper.
And it was so dark. Nathan ran a hand over a seat, across a small gulf of empty space, and touched another cushion before repeating the process. He couldn’t see a damn thing, as if the oil for the lamps was used up and gone.
“Keep going,” Leland said, just a few steps behind him.
“Those cars you went through, Eli,” Jimmy asked. “They all as dark as this?”
Eli didn’t answer.
“Eli?” Jimmy asked.
“They had their lamps burning,” Eli replied, sounding both sullen and nervous.
“Not anymore they don’t,” Mackenzie said farther behind.
“Keep going, Nathan,” Leland droned. “Keep going.”
Step after step, seat after seat. One hand sliding over fabric in a whisper of contact and then repeating, until he touched a fat knob which he instinctively knew was a person’s shoulder. Nathan jerked his hand back and collided with a seat.
“What’s wrong?” Leland asked.
“Sounds like he found something,” Jimmy said.
“Yeah,” Nathan got out, his thumb easing off the hammer of his revolver. “I found something. Maybe someone. Hold on.”
“Anyone there?” Leland asked.
There was a person there, but as Nathan reached out, he was both thankful and frightened at what he might find. What he might touch.
“Wait,” he said and stretched out his hand a little further. His fingers brushed cloth, clean and dry. Stitches. Seams. Thick and straight like railway tracks themselves. He explored a little further. There was a coat and he patted down a chest, a man’s chest.
“Feels like a man,” he reported.
“He’s letting you touch him?” Eli asked harshly. “The bastard’s long dead.”
“Probably,” Leland muttered.
Probably. The thought echoed in Nathan’s mind. He reached inside the folds of the coat where fibers brushed the back of his hand, raising the hair on his neck. He located an inner pocket and a quick pat down revealed it was empty. Nathan’s hand rose to a collar, to a neck, where he caressed cold skin and shorn whiskers down to the quick. Touching dead skin wasn’t anything new to him, so he searched for a pulse. As expected, there was nothing.
“Dead,” he said to the others. “I’m feeling the throat.”
“That’s too bad,” Leland said.
“You search his pockets?” Eli asked.
“That’s a good idea,” Gilbert piped up.
“Leave his pockets be,” Leland ordered, steel in his voice. “We rob trains, not corpses.”
Nathan’s fingers slid up from the man’s lifeless neck, gliding over a jawline. He felt the lower nub of an ear, and drifted along the jaw to the face.
Except there was no face.
There was a stretched lower lip followed by an empty cavity. At first, Nathan thought he’d reached the man’s mouth, except the way it was opened made it much too large. His fingers rose about an inch, then two, then three.
Then he grazed teeth and jerked back his hand.
“Keep going, Nathan,” Leland said, but Nathan wasn’t sure if he was being told to go forward, or to keep on touching. One thing was certain, he wasn’t going to keep touching, not in the dark.
Those teeth, those unseen teeth…
They weren’t a man’s teeth. They were a dog’s teeth. Or a wolf’s. A very large wolf. Pointed and curved. Nathan’s heart started up again, thumping at his ribs like a size-twelve boot kicking at a door. His gun came up, pointed at the dark and ready to fire. He left the mysterious body in the berth.
“Yeah,” he said, half-expecting that thing to leap out of the seat and attack, only it didn’t.
“Yeah,” he repeated and took a tentative step forward, edging through that narrow void while the memory of dead skin and pointed teeth remained on his fingers. His breathing had quickened, his face sweaty, and he closed his eyes to compose himself. That darkness was nowhere near as deep as the one within the passenger car.
“Keep going,” a voice whispered at his back.
Nathan kept going.
“You say you touched something back here?” Eli asked, sounding genuinely puzzled. “Because I ain’t touched shit.”
Oh Jesus, Nathan thought, his mind racing.
“You’re searching the wrong spot,” Jimmy said.
“Am not.”
“Keep going, Nathan.” Leland advised. “Keep going.”
“There ain’t nobody here,” Eli said, his voice rising.
“You must’ve missed him!” Jimmy insisted, but there was a nervousness in his tone, as if he hadn’t been able to locate the body either.
Nathan’s hand went through a gap between seats and, instead of connecting with the next seat over, his hand kept right on sailing, which informed him he’d reached the end of the car.
Except there was no wall. No door. He explored the dark with one hand, holding his gun with the other.
“Leland,” he said. “Leland?”
“Yes?”
“There’s no wall.”
“What?”
“The hell he sayin’ up there now?” Eli asked.
“He said there’s no wall.”
“There’s no wall,” Nathan repeated. “No door, no nothing.”
Silence greeted that.
“Keep going,” Leland said. “But be careful.”
A hand engulfed his shoulder, and Nathan’s heart damn near exploded at the contact. He released a wheeze of pure fright, a sound one might make upon diving into arctic waters.
“Relax,” Leland said. “It’s just me.”
“Yeah,” Nathan whispered, composing himself.
“Make a chain, everyone,” Leland ordered. “Take a hold of the man’s shoulder in front of you.”
“He said shoulder, Mackenzie,” Eli stressed. “Not my ball sack.”
“Fuck you, Eli.”
“Be quiet,” Leland commanded. “Keep hold of each other. And keep alert.”
“The hell is that smell, Leland?”
What was that smell? Nathan asked himself, wondering where the bouquet of varnish had gone. Another scent replaced it entirely—a strong, viscous smell, of dampness, and of rot. Of unchecked mildew left to grow wild and steep in its own putrid juices. Nathan’s boots sunk into the floor, causing him to stop in his tracks at the sensation.
“What’s wrong now?” Leland asked, very close to his back.
“Floor’s all wrong.”
The gang leader paused. “Seems fine to me.”
“I must’ve sunk half an inch.”
“What?”
“At least.”
Nathan probed the floor with a boot, feeling a solid surface just underneath that mossy softness. Nothing surrounded him, and he waved a hand around that cauldron pitch just to make sure, splitting only air.
“What are you doing?” Leland asked. “I can feel you moving.”
Nathan hesitated. “There’s nothing around me, Leland. Not a damn thing.”
Silence, then.
“He’s right,” Jimmy said.
“Can’t feel a thing.” That was Mackenzie.
“The fuck the seats go?” Eli wanted to know.
“We keep going,” Leland said. He nudged Nathan forward, even though his guts were sinking with every step.
“The floor,” Leland said soon after. “You’re right about the floor.”
And the smell grew stronger.
“What is that?” Eli asked.
Gilbert spoke then. “Smells like your—”
“Shut up,” Leland said, cutting off the man. “Just shut up.”
Nathan took a step, the gang leader still holding onto his shoulder. His feet sloshed through water.
“We should go back, Leland,” Jimmy advised.
“There’s no going back. If we go back, there’s only those things that were once passengers. They’re at the door now, Jimmy. They’re at the door. You heard them. Pounding away. And that was after the stick of dynamite. I don’t know how many of those things are on this train, but I don’t think… I don’t think we have the ammunition for an extended confrontation.”
That stark assessment struck nerves. Not even Eli Gallant opened his mouth.
“Forward, Nathan,” Leland urged. “Into the dark.”
Not willing to disobey an order, Nathan got walking. One careful foot after the other, his eye
s almost adjusted to the surrounding nothingness and he was still unable to see a thing. The water however, was rising. Over his boot soles, seeping inside, and chilling his feet.
The others sloshed along behind him.
“Water,” Leland said. “Up to the ankles.”
“Getting deeper, Leland,” Jimmy pointed out.
“If it gets too high, we’ll go back.”
“We could go in another direction,” Gilbert said.
“No,” Leland said. “And let me be clear. We’re moving in a straight line. Do not deviate from the path and do not let go of the man ahead of you. If we stray, if we break up, we’ll only have the sounds of our own voices to—”
“I see something,” Nathan blurted. “Up ahead.”
And there was.
A soft, eerie glow emanated from the end of the passenger car, roughly the width of the train. The gang studied the phenomena in the distance, which might have been a car-length away.
“What’s that?” someone muttered, sounding as if he’d covered his mouth and nose to escape that increasingly offensive odor. “Smells like someone got sick.”
No one answered. Nathan hitched his scarf up over his mouth and nose, but that foulness seeped through the material and polluted his eyes. Two strangely shaped objects beckoned them forward, offering a darkness not quite as forbidding as the one surrounding them. The glow fluttered, however, as if threatening to extinguish themselves at any moment. And in that unclean stench, in that damp graveyard dark, any source of light was better than none at all.
Nathan trudged forward, sloshing through water now at his shins. The others splashed along behind him. He hurried forward, the glow drawing him, able to discern walls just beyond the reach of his arms. The walls, however, gradually became a sunken steamship hue of rust, pocketed with shadow, and looking every bit as unclean as the air they breathed.
“I see something,” Leland said.
Nathan saw it too.
The two glowing twins were oblong, and perhaps the size of the passenger cars’ plush cushions. Each elongated shape seemed set into a wall, and beyond that, the same lighter shade of dark continued onwards, allowing them to see. Nathan stopped just before those glowing ovals, with Leland peeking over his shoulder.
“What is that?” the gang leader asked for them all.
Particles streamed past the oval-shaped aperture, some no bigger than a cluster of nail heads, some long and stringy, like the slobber hanging from a horse’s mouth. They flowed beyond the glowing openings, as if riding unknown currents. Nathan leaned in closer to one oval frame, keeping his shoulder clear of the nearby wall. He sized up the queer illumination and the specks and spots beyond. When he’d seen enough, he reached out with his gun.
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