“How did it get worse?” Mackenzie asked.
“We couldn’t get off,” Festus replied. “And the dark was constant. Then the train changed. Things passed by the windows in flashes. Ghosts, we figured, enough of them to make the disbelievers believe. Never a clear look, but frightening flashes of …faces. Horrified faces. Some standing along the tracks, waving as if all were just fine. People went insane. Insane, I tell you. And the violence began. Acts of rage I can’t describe, but I’ve witnessed. Some of them formed gangs. Tribes, onto themselves. The train became segmented. Doors were barred any way possible. I secured the mail room because I had the appropriate means to do so. That didn’t stop people from… climbing over the roof. Seeking entry through the windows. It was a dark time. A terrible time, that went on and on forever.”
“How did you survive?” Jimmy asked. “Without food or water?”
“The train had stores, you understand,” Festus explained in a weary voice. “Ample stores to feed everyone on board. Those provisions became vital as you might expect. And after they were gone… in only a week, mind you, the odd thing was… no one was hungry or thirsty after that. You asked me earlier… what I clean myself with. I haven’t had to move my bowels since I stopped feeding, as impossible as that sounds.”
That was met with disbelieving stares.
“Not that it mattered. Dying of thirst or starvation is a horrible end for anyone, but we were deprived of death in those ways as we were deprived of stopping the train, you understand. People died, by each other’s hand, but as for dying for lack of food or water? No. No one did. And that only shattered more minds.”
“We met some of those passengers,” Mackenzie said. “And… we dealt with them most violently.”
Festus thought about that. “You shot passengers?”
“Close to a hundred, by my reckoning.”
“They might not have been passengers. They might have been other things. Monsters taking on the appearance of passengers.”
And they did just that, Nathan thought.
“How long have you been on this train?” Festus asked.
“Hours,” Mackenzie replied.
“Days,” Jimmy added, and he got agreement on that from Mackenzie.
“You think that,” Festus said warily. “Thing is, you might very well have been on this train for weeks. Months even. Or… or even seconds. You have no way of knowing, but you will when you start aging. Look at me. I knew I was on this train for a hundred and twenty years and a bit. I probably look a hundred and twenty years old. But you said only minutes ago the train has been missing no more than ten years. My point being… here? Time means nothing. Reality is dream, and dream is reality. Ghosts walk. Monsters exist. Mortals become immortal. I should be dead, sweet Lord above, and yet…”
Festus paused. “I can’t die. Not from failing health, it seems. Or from lack of food and water. Believe me when I say I’ve wished for death. Every time I’ve opened and closed one of those doors, hoping something would do me in. I leave them open at night, or whenever I sleep when there is only perpetual day. They’re closed when I wake up. I was fearful of this at first but… now I don’t care. That’s how it was you came in here. No one else has managed to enter when the doors were locked.”
Both Eli and Gilbert looked to Mackenzie at that point, their expressions alarmed.
“So, we can’t get off?” Jimmy asked.
“The train won’t let you off,” Festus replied. “Not if it can help it. I’ve tried, let me tell you, I’ve tried. I’ve gone places. Explored worlds, so to speak. Drawn by a gentle pull I can’t explain, but if you let it, that pull will always draw you back to the train. To another door, and whatever lies beyond. How many cars you pass through? See any of them other places? Those other worlds?”
No one answered.
“We’ve been places,” Nathan said for them all.
“Then you know what I’m talking about. I’ve seen all I’ve wanted to see and more. Probably could have stayed in some of those places. Maybe even died, as there are things that will certainly kill a man out there. Yet, in the end, all I ever wanted was to get back on the train and get back home. To my world.”
“We’ll find our way back,” Nathan said.
“You sure about that, youngster?”
Nathan didn’t answer.
“I don’t mean to scare you,” Festus said. “I’m just saying what is. And you don’t have to go right away. Stay awhile, if you want. Take that money. Take all of it. I got no use for it. No more than a house fly got use for it. But… when you’re ready to leave, if that is your intention, then maybe you’ll grant me a last request.”
Mackenzie was already nodding. “We’ll take you with us.”
That caught Festus off-guard. “No, no, not that. I… don’t want to go beyond the mail car. Not one step. Weren’t you listening to me? You can’t get off. The train won’t let you get off. We’re… trapped here. For all eternity. Or until something kills us outright. I’m too old to explore anymore. No, when you go, I want you to shoot me. Every bullet you can spare. Here.”
Festus tapped his chest.
“And here.”
He tapped his forehead. Three times. “Especially here. To make sure I don’t come back, ever.”
Nathan shifted from one foot to the other. Gilbert was shaking his head, while the others didn’t quite know what to make of Festus.
“We’ll find the caboose,” Mackenzie said. “And get off this train.”
“No one gets off this train.”
“We will.”
Festus studied them all in turn. “How many cars have you walked through already to get here?”
“Hundreds,” Mackenzie said.
“There’s thousands out there. Hundreds of thousands. I know. I stopped looking because I got too old. Best thing for us all is to sit around in a circle. You boys got the bullets. Just decide on the one who gets to shoot himself, after he’s done the others. That’s the only way off this train.”
“What do you know about a Chinaman?” Nathan asked, remembering that scene of a solitary figure wearing robes, with his hair tied back in a long ponytail, disappearing in a tunnel mouth.
The question visibly perplexed Festus.
“Going into a tunnel. All by himself. The night before the tunnel was opened?”
“I don’t know. Why do you ask?”
Nathan didn’t reply as he wasn’t sure why he asked. He just remembered the scene as it played out in his mind, but it felt right.
“Never mind,” he finished. He looked over at the others. “I don’t see any point in staying any longer.”
The men eyed each other.
“You can’t stay?” Festus asked.
“No,” Mackenzie said. “We’re going to try to get off this thing.”
“You’ll grow old trying. Or worse.”
“Suppose so.”
Festus nodded. “Well, it was nice talking to you, boys. Been a while since I could talk to someone who knew what I was talking about. I’d say good luck, but chances are… you’ll walk out that door,” he pointed to the one ahead, “only to come back in through that one.” He indicated the door they’d come in through. “I’ve seen it happen. Folks who were on the train, I thought long dead. They just march through here. Don’t even see me. They’re aged as well. Staring, just looking ahead, seeing what’s in the next car over. Happened a dozen times over my lifetime here. You’ll see.”
“We’ll see,” Nathan sighed, not liking the sound of that and not wanting to hear any more. He looked at Gilbert. “You got all the cash?”
As an answer, Gilbert bent and hoisted a mail bag. There were others on the floor.
“Tie them together. Hang them off your neck.” Nathan said.
“Not three hundred thousand, but it’s better than nothing,” Jimmy said.
“What’s beyond that door?” Nathan asked Festus, pointing at the one ahead.
“I don’t know. Could be an
ything.”
“Well, when the train was nothing more than a train, before it went into the tunnel. What was behind that door?”
Festus had to think. “Livestock car.”
“And after that?”
“Prison.”
“You had a prison car hitched?” Eli blurted in disbelief.
Festus half-shrugged. “Passengers didn’t know. Only us. It was in the back along with a handful of North West. Six constables. One corporal.”
“Anything else?” Nathan asked.
“One storage car. Then the rear.”
“All right, then.”
“All right nothing.” Festus shook his head and didn’t bother hiding his doubt. “You’ll see. I listed three cars, but it could be ten thousand between here and the caboose. If the caboose is still there.”
“Thanks all the same, Festus,” Nathan said, and tipped his hat.
“One last thing,” the old clerk said. “You probably already know this. But it’s worth repeating. Always close the doors behind you. Always. Lest… something follows you… into this reality. Or the next.”
Nathan’s spine tingled at the words of warning. He tipped his hat at the old man once again.
The men made quick work of tying off the money bags and hanging a pair around their necks. Festus watched them all through his dirty eyeglasses.
“What about them bags you took from those one-eyed passengers?” Nathan asked Gilbert.
They looked to where the bags were dropped on the floor.
“Give me a second,” Gilbert muttered and dropped everything before landing on his knees. He opened one and pawed through the contents. A frown quickly soured his face.
“The hell is this?” he said, upending the bag and dumping everything on the floor. There were combs, brushes, and soft crumples of paper, as well as small items no bigger than one’s finger, and other various things that the men couldn’t identify.
“The hell is all that?” Eli said, equally disgusted. He extended a boot toe and went through the mess, while Gilbert upended five more bags. Each contained different contents, although some were similar.
“That a wallet?” Jimmy asked, pointing the shotgun.
“Where? Oh.” Gilbert opened it up and a smile cracked his greasy face—only to sour again when he pulled the bills out. “The hell is this? This ain’t money.”
He held it out.
Mackenzie took it and couldn’t make sense of it at all. He passed it on to Nathan.
The bills—a considerable multi-colored wad—were covered in those odd characters. There were no numbers, and the pictures in the background were scenes of places Nathan had no idea existed, which didn’t really surprise him.
“Ain’t anything we can use,” Nathan said and tossed the bills onto the floor.
“The hell is this?” Gilbert said, holding up a poker deck of thin, especially durable cards. One side had pictures of those odd characters, while the other showed only more characters, but with an odd black strip through the middle. “The hell is this?” he repeated.
The cards were passed around and puzzled over.
“Strange,” Jimmy said, running a finger over one inflexible edge.
Eli was sniffing at one of the smaller containers, which he’d opened, and discovered a bright red stick of rouge inside.
Gilbert held up one of several sets of what appeared to be reading glasses, except the lenses were for one eye, and the glass was black, or red, or even blue. The frames were weird as well, going from a glossy black to white and every other color and shape in between. Gilbert eventually left them alone and went through some of the wallets. He only found more of the same.
“Nothing,” he finally said. “Not one damn thing.”
“We best be moving,” Jimmy said to them all.
Nods all around.
“Sorry about the mess,” Nathan said to Festus, indicating the strange contents spilled on the floor.
“Don’t worry about it.”
Nathan studied the little old clerk.
“You be careful out there,” Festus said.
That summoned a little smile to Nathan’s face. “We’re the careful types.”
Festus smiled back. “Don’t forget my last request, now.”
“You sure about this?”
“Oh, I am. I am. I hope… I hope to God, you’ll never know… what I know.”
Nathan supposed so.
“Go on then,” Festus said. “I hope you find what you’re looking for. And I hope, where I failed, where others failed… I hope you get off this train.”
Without another word, Nathan tipped his hat to the old mail clerk. He then eyed each of the men with him and settled on Eli.
Who stared back with a barely noticed nod of understanding.
Nathan looked back at Festus, released a weary sigh, and then walked to the door. One after the other, his gang followed him.
Except Eli.
Eli stared down at the little man, who stared back while clutching the varnished arms of his chair.
Eli worked the lever of his Winchester and pointed it at Festus’s head. “You ready, then?” he asked.
“I am, sir. And… thank you. I couldn’t have done this without you.”
Eli thought about that for about two seconds before blowing out the back of Festus’s head. When the old clerk hit the floor, Eli worked the Winchester again.
Festus asked for every bullet they could spare.
Eli spared him five.
42
“The hell you doing all the shooting for?” Mackenzie asked.
Eli turned away from the corpse crumpled upon the floor with his legs dead and dangly on the chair. “Last request,” he said, walking towards the gang. His bulk obscured the dead mail clerk, and for that, Nathan was relieved. He didn’t need to see Festus again.
“You all ready?” Nathan asked when everyone had gathered.
“You want to carry one of these?” Mackenzie asked of his mail bags stuffed with cash.
“Hell, no,” Nathan said while holding a gun, cocking the hammer as he did so. “You’re doing fine.”
The joke wasn’t funny, not with Festus lying just twenty feet behind, dead and finally gone.
Or so I hope, Nathan thought.
And hauled open the door to the next car.
Passenger car.
“Looks familiar,” Mackenzie said, studying the place.
“Thousands of cars,” Nathan said, lowering his gun. “Feels like we’ve gone through that now.”
“Move on, then,” Eli said. “Festus is already starting to stink.”
That’s what got them moving in the end. The smell of one dead old man. Night shone through the windows, without rhyme or reason. Two oil lamps provided pale light, one at either end.
Eli was in the rear and allowed the door to close. As the others walked along the aisle, he stopped, considered the door, and opened it.
Mail car. Still.
He closed it, holding his rifle, thinking as the train moved along. He held onto the latch, wondering if he should open it again. In the end, he left it, adjusted the mail bags of cash hung about his neck, and walked after the others.
They ambled up the aisle, strung out like a night patrol on alert. The weight of the train’s riches hung about their necks, and offered little comfort, but it was nice that they had something to show for their misery. Winter coats swished at their heels, while their boots clumped softly. Well-crafted berths remained unchanged, but the dark seemed to swallow them whole, in the middle of the car.
“Well,” Nathan declared. “Least we got the cash.”
“Now all we gotta do is get back so we can enjoy it,” Mackenzie said.
No one said anything to that.
“At least now we know what happened to the train,” Nathan said.
“We don’t,” Mackenzie pointed out. “We know what happened to the passengers, and how everything went all dark and such, but we don’t know why this is all h
appening. Why it got dark and stayed that way. Why we’re still… walking through car after car after car.”
“We may never know,” Jimmy Norquay said. “We might be on this thing forever. Just like Festus back there. Until, maybe, we stop in a car and give up. Until some other gunmen come walking through, and we beg them to kill us.”
“Christ, Jimmy,” Gilbert muttered, glancing left and right.
Mackenzie stopped just past the midway point, inspected a berth, and stepped inside it. Once at the window, he stooped and glanced outside at the bright field of stars.
“What’s wrong?” Nathan asked.
Mackenzie didn’t reply right away, and that silence bothered Nathan. And where he was, checking on what was outside the train, shook loose a memory.
“Mackenzie?”
“Yeah?”
“What the hell got your attention back in that car with all them one-eyed things?” Nathan asked out of the blue.
“You really want to know?”
“C’mon, Mack. Out with it. Nothing’s gonna bother us now. Not after what we’ve seen and heard.”
Mackenzie turned away from the window, half of him cloaked in shadow.
“I saw something back there,” he said. “Something that bothered me.”
“All right, what’s that then?’ Eli asked and stopped in the rear. The others were all ears.
“The sun,” Mackenzie explained. “Through the mountains there was a sun. The train was going around the mountains, maybe a little off course, but it looked like it was going towards the sun. Remember a while back, on the flatcar? That… green sun on ahead of the train? What I saw was… bigger. Much bigger than that and… I don’t say this lightly, Nate. I think… I think it was bigger, because it was closer.”
That silenced the lot of them.
“You didn’t see it right,” Eli said.
“Oh, I saw it right. Until Nate started yelling at me. Now, I’m not saying this to worry you. But I am saying… we might have another problem here. That sun looked bigger. We might be getting closer to it. I don’t know what that all means, but part of me, part of me is thinking… we won’t be on this train for a hundred years like old Festus. Something is going to happen long before that. Something is going to happen soon.”
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