“Look at that,” Mackenzie said, stopping and resting his rifle across one of the berths. “We’ve been hiking along this thing all damn day.”
“What number is this?” Nathan asked.
“Four fifty-six or fifty-seven. We stopped a few times.”
The passenger car gently swayed with the number, but it was enough to ease Eli and Jimmy into nearby berths.
“I’m done,” Eli said, glancing towards the window and making a face. “This’ll do me just fine for the night. Hey, Jimmy. Why don’t you get started on supper? Cook us up something nice.”
“Why don’t you cook us up some beans?” Jimmy retorted wearily from his seat.
“Beans it is,” Eli said and forced a fart into the air. “There you go. One order. Hope you wanted gravy with that.”
“Not now, not ever.”
Still, they were smiling when he said it.
“I’ll have some beans too, Eli,” Gilbert said, standing in the aisle.
“Sorry. Kitchen’s closed. Come back in the morning. Though I don’t think the menu will have changed much.”
Nathan collapsed in a berth. He crossed his legs, propping his feet up on the green cushion across from him. He doffed his father’s hat and tossed it on the seat nearby.
“Gilbert’s still standing,” he said, glad to be off his feet. “He’s got first watch.”
“Awww.”
“Hush,” Eli warned him. “You’ll do it. You’re the only one with strength still in his legs.”
“That’s from that thing I held onto back at the saloon,” Gilbert explained. “I don’t know what it did, but it topped me off without me taking a bite of anything.”
“Wish I’d grabbed on to one of those,” Jimmy whispered.
“Wish I’d gotten to meet another Channy,” Eli said.
“I ain’t watching all night,” Gilbert warned.
“I’ll take over when you’re tired,” Mackenzie told him.
“Tell me a bedtime story, Eli,” Jimmy asked.
“You’re a peckerface. The end.”
Soft laughter at that.
Someone spoke again, but Nathan didn’t understand a word of it. He was already falling asleep, his head pressed against the window.
40
Nathan awoke to a groan and pop of iron. A deep-sea wailing of metal being placed under terrible stress. The sound jolted him awake, and by the wild bird flurry surrounding him, it got the others as well. He stood and looked around, seeing the others rising to their feet, their faces and forms black with shadow, but a single oil lamp burned at either end of the car.
Who lit it? Nathan was about to ask.
When the rear of the car bent upward. The oil lamp on the wall shivered, and the glass cover fell away with a sharp tinkle upon the floor. Like a gigantic conveyor belt, the end of the train crinkled into a perfectly impossible ninety-degree angle. The bending iron screeched at being worked so, and the roof became a wide chute that quickly vanished from sight. A cliff formed there, upon the roof, and the overhead compartments crackled and puffed dark clouds of dust but did not break as everything rolled up and over that inverted precipice, where the light shimmered and swayed and diminished.
The sight ripped a panicked gasp from Nathan’s throat.
He realized he was the last man standing. The others were already fleeing, charging along the aisle, their boots stomping over carpeted floor, their coats and guns slapping out a clatter against the edges of the seats. Nathan took one last look at that cheeky defiance of reality and launched himself into the aisle. He lurched to a stop, gasped with fright, grabbed for his father’s felt hat still on the seat when his periphery vision registered a great looming wave of berths being sucked up into that gapped mouth. Now that the berths were being bent and rolled upward, the whole nightmarish scene resembled a gigantic Dutchman’s watermill.
The train was going up. Straight up.
Nathan had no intention of going with it. He clutched his father’s hat to his side as he pounded up the aisle after his boys. A great watershed growling and twisting of fibers screeched over the bending of metal. The floor trembled underfoot, but he stayed on course, stayed upright.
Twenty feet from the dark door to the next car, which was open and filled with black. Nathan knew just from the sight of it that something waited for him on the other side. He was being forced into the next reality, and expected the worse.
Or at least, worse than the bending train bearing down on his heels as he ran out of the aisle.
Nathan panted, winced, his limbs afire and charging, and he felt the hard pull of carpet underfoot as it was yanked upwards just as he dove for the open portal—
And crash landed into at least two sets of legs.
Threads of light ran along and brightened a red floor, and the seats—from what Nathan could see on his chest—were made of sculpted bone, a light brown bone, that rose up into… legs. And cushions. And a person sitting with an open mouth, bright red skin as if stricken by a serious disease, and a single wide-open eye the size of an apple.
Nathan screamed.
The one-eyed red man screamed with him. His one-eyed wife with blonde hair screamed as well, and their two children, one to each lap, positively bawled and buried their one-eyed faces into their parents’ clothing, only to sneak peeks, point, and smother their screeches again.
In fact, the whole car was screaming.
Gilbert got a hold of Nathan’s shoulder as Eli and Jimmy were struggling to stand. Mackenzie was nearing the center of a car crammed full of passengers—a very long car—the likes of which Nathan had never seen. Threads of light ran along the floor and ceiling of the interior, while the overhead compartments were beige with leather finishes and opened on a slant. Under those compartments were more lights, whole panels of them, which illuminated the full terrifying reaction of the passengers to the train robbers. The passengers wore clothing that was both familiar yet different. There were collared shirts of a material Nathan didn’t recognize. The men wore short pants that stopped mid-thigh, and some of their shirt sleeves were practically cut off at the mid-bicep. The female clothing was even more scandalous, showing off more blistering red skin that both shocked and, oddly enough, intrigued Nathan. Cleavage was in abundance, and hairstyles were positively—
Mackenzie fired his rifle into the ceiling, cowering the passengers into silence. He worked the lever and spun around, glaring at the masses who bent over into their seats with four-fingered hands clasped over their heads. It got quiet so fast that the soft plucking of some string instrument was momentarily distracting.
“All right,” Mackenzie shouted, whirling around in the aisle and watching for heroes. “Stay just like that. No one makes a move and no one goes for a gun. Just be real quiet and…”
While he talked, Mackenzie looked around, sizing up not only the alien passengers but the strange signs filled with odd stick figures and warnings of accidents he struggled to interpret. Nathan saw them as well, and the written characters accompanying the illustrations were unknown to him.
But then he saw outside the great sloping window, which resembled a regular full-size window except, somehow, it was squished to one side like a rhombus, and extended outwards oddly enough.
Beyond the glass was yet another surprise.
The flowery plains had vanished, and a charcoal grayness colored the earth. Mountains rose up. Stony colossuses that sped by faster than anything Nathan had ever experienced, and up until then, he’d experienced quite a lot. The upper portions of the mountains scrolled by, their snow-capped heights unseen, but the further the eye drifted to its base, the faster the land moved.
There was none of the gentle swaying as the train shot forward, but a rock-solid gliding that beguiled the hell out of Nathan.
And there was something else.
The train was curling around a mountain, and, as it turned, sunlight blazed through the windows. Except the light was diffused somehow, lessened by a gray coating
upon the glass.
Some of the passengers chanced looking up, their single eyes near bursting from their faces, wondering what their fates would be.
“We robbing these people?” Eli demanded, finally standing and with his rifle ready.
That turned the gang members’ heads.
“Are we robbing these people?” Jimmy wanted to know.
“I don’t think we should,” Gilbert threw in.
They waited on Nathan, who was watching Mackenzie. The man was bent over slightly and staring out the window, gripping the high cushiony seats, the material dimpled where folks had rested their heads. The cushions gleamed as if slathered in hair slick.
“Mackenzie?” Nathan called out, drawing his gun.
Mackenzie didn’t answer.
“Mack!”
That got him, and the bearded man turned his head. He looked none too happy about their present whereabouts. That would be a conversation for another time. Right now, however…
“Yeah, sure,” Mackenzie said. “But hurry.”
With that, he raced to the far door, which was made of black glass and framed in metal. Nathan looked over his shoulder as Eli and Gilbert started pointing guns in faces. They grabbed shoulder bags from the womenfolk and patted down the men. Nathan turned around and saw that the door they had dove through was now a plane of wide, dark glass, where he could see the ghostly image of himself sizing up matters. Above that, a white box blazed nonsense red characters across its face with flashing urgency.
“The hell are we now?” Nathan muttered.
“You doing crowd control, Nate?” Eli asked as he pushed by, working the right side of the train.
“Uh, yeah.”
“Good boy.”
Gilbert almost barreled him over then, clamoring after Eli and working the left side of the aisle.
Nathan ignored them, listening instead to the whimpers of the women folks, and catching a few glares from the men folk that chilled him to his nuggets. Motion from beyond the glass door distracted him then, in the area that should have been the old passenger car instead of this fancy modern bullet of a train. Beyond that black glass and his own stupefied image, he saw heads leaning out into the aisle and above the berths all looking at him.
“Best hurry up, boys,” Nathan warned as he drew his second Colt. Two-fisted now, he held them above the surrounding seats and glared his most poisonous back at the more defiant passengers.
That blinking urgent message kept on flashing over the back door, however. A second later, figures charged up the aisle of the adjoining car, and the passengers there got out of the way. The figures were faceless, wearing bulky clothing, and carrying—
Nathan blinked.
Rifles. Not rifles like the venerable Winchesters the boys carried, but shorter, fatter, and much more ribbed than regular weapons. The man who once wanted to be a lawman didn’t like the look of those guns.
“Time’s up boys, we got company coming!” Nathan warned and took aim at the glass doors.
Beyond which, an inner set opened, allowing in light and a single charging line of the soldiers. They rushed through the vestibule, towards the second set.
“We got company boys!” Nathan yelled louder.
The doors opened and he shot the first soldier not twenty feet away. The man blew backwards, crashing into the others and disrupting the charge. In that tumble of faltering bodies, however, there were more soldiers. At least a dozen.
Nathan continued firing at that twisting, flailing nest of limbs and torsos. A faceless head resembling a polished bucket leaned forward out of that writhing mess, and Nathan snapped off a shot, placing it perfectly in the center of the bucket. The impact straightened the figure, perhaps even dazed him, but he did not go down.
In fact, he pawed at that wash bucket helmet and rattled his skull as if just being kicked by a mule.
Nathan fired four more shots, thumbs working the Colts’ hammers, each bullet slamming into the soldier. The final hit sent him down, while that red flashing sign over the doorway actually started shouting.
Two things happened.
All at once, the passengers bent over in their seats, jamming their heads to their knees as if checking on their posteriors. Children were clutched close and forced down as well, just as a secondary line of gibberish blared out overhead, distracting Nathan from his gunfight.
A green light flared to life in the center of the head rest and formed a shimmering dome over each berth, no higher than Nathan’s lowest ribs. Gilbert cut loose a short yelp of fright, holding up a bag by its straps, except the bag had been cut free upon the light field extending over the passengers. The charred ends of the straps smoked as if severed by flaming scissors.
A horrified Gilbert held up those smoldering strands before throwing them down.
“Ahead of you!” Eli Gallant shouted.
An angry burst of gunfire punched bullets into the ceiling. Nathan flinched as those shots were only a step away from him. He raised his guns and fired—but got only the harmless clicks of spent chambers.
“Get down, Rhodes!” Eli commanded just as he opened up on the soldiers, spinning around the one who’d fired.
But the soldier didn’t release his weapon.
Nor did any of the soldiers Nathan had shot. In fact, those men were back on their feet, and looking very much alive.
One in particular stood just inside the open doorway, attempting to bring up his short bulldog of a rifle.
Eli fired at that figure, a measured tempo of working the lever, taking aim, and squeezing the trigger as toe-tapping as any drumbeat.
Nathan retreated, crouched low and staying out of that line of fire, moving up the aisle towards Eli. Behind the gun runner was Gilbert, shouldering a number of oversized pocketbooks and readying his own rifle. Jimmy was already at the other end, standing side-on to the glass door, and Mackenzie with him.
Nathan went by the gun runner.
“All yours, Gilbert!” Eli shouted as he ducked and turned to follow Nathan’s tail.
Gilbert opened up.
Say what you will about the unkempt gun runner… call him dirty or unmannerly, or even as stunned as your ass…
But the man knew how to shoot.
And could place a shot, without a doubt.
Which Gilbert presently demonstrated.
The man quickly realized that body shots didn’t have the effect he desired. Head shots were far more effective, but even those didn’t seem to put the soldiers down and keep them there.
So he did the next best thing.
He blew out a leg, which produced a scream heard above that white box shouting out gibberish. The soldier flailed and went down, but the others behind him teemed forward, their body language poised and impassive.
Gilbert shot an ankle out from one, pitching the guy forward in a heap. The gun runner aimed high and cracked back the head of the second soldier as if he were hooked on a clothesline. A third shot blew apart a hand and that soldier yelled out before cringing and dropping away. A fourth was hindered by the unexpected retreat, and Gilbert spun him round with one shot to the shoulder, before dropping him to that writhing mat piling up on the open threshold.
The fifth soldier, however, fired back—an uninterrupted stream of death that flashed over Nathan’s left shoulder, shredding a few of the head rests above the glowing light line in startling explosions of cottony tufts.
Nathan passed Gilbert’s position and could feel the vibe of concentration surrounding the gun runner.
Gilbert dropped to a knee and fired, giving back his reply and hitting the fifth soldier in the neck. The soldier dropped his weapon and clutched at his fountaining throat as his knees unlocked and dropped him.
“Move your ass, Gilbert!” Eli yelled.
But Gilbert did not. He continued to fire, keeping those faceless harbingers of the train at bay, working a punishing spell of devastation. They were screaming now, the soldiers, while others were barking commands. Some were eve
n crawling along the floor, worming their way to a better firing position.
Ten shots. Maybe twelve.
Gilbert would soon be dry.
“GILBERT, MOVE!” Eli barked, emptying his lungs on the order.
The black mass of soldiers choking the vestibule broke apart. One figure lunged from the doorway, over the writhing bodies below, and landed on his chest.
Gun up.
Gilbert shifted his aim and his Winchester clicked empty. That single note broke the gun runner’s spell, and he turned and ran.
Streamers of light screamed past him, missing his shoulders by inches, then missing his head by hairs. The ceiling above Gilbert burst apart in peppery punches of smoke and electricity as the line of fire went from right to left.
Eli tossed his rifle at Mackenzie, drew his pistols, and immediately turned and started blasting at the soldier inside the train. Jimmy exited the passenger car. The door of black glass simply opened for him when he approached it, and he ducked into the well-lit vestibule behind it.
Nathan raced after him, cringing, waiting for his skull to blow apart like that pillowy head rest. He got through the doorway with a peal of excitement.
Mackenzie stepped inside after him and leaned back out, working his rifle as Gilbert narrowly hauled his smoking ass over the threshold. He ducked inside and planted his frame up against the wall.
Eli turned and ran, lopsided, trying to give Mackenzie enough room to keep the soldiers busy.
Ten feet. Five.
Behind him, the glut at the far end became untangled. Two soldiers raised their awesome rifles and took aim. They moved in a haunting slow motion, lining up optical sights that simply made no sense. Twin strings of red light beamed from those sights, waving through the air until centering upon Eli’s retreating back.
The gun runner stomped over a white line and kept on running when those rifles fired upon him, transforming the glass doors closing on his heels into a lightning show.
Gilbert yelled and ducked. Eli threw himself against a wall and stayed there as the soldiers continued blasting the closed doors. Spidery holes flashed across the outer layer of the glass but somehow remained intact on the gang’s side. Through those jagged markings, the main mass of soldiers entered the train and advanced, firing at every step.
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