“That’s it,” Eli said. “Show us how tough you are.”
“Just cover me is all.”
As an answer, Mackenzie dumped his armload and readied his rifle. He took up position to the right of the door, and aimed. Eli and Gilbert tossed their gear aside and readied their firearms. They parted and stood at angles, aiming at whatever might be lurking within.
Nathan was only half aware of what they were doing. He focused on the door. A bug of some sort buzzed by his ear, but he ignored it. The wild grass surrounding the decrepit outhouse swayed ever so slightly, as if aware of the approaching gunman.
Nathan drew back on the Colt’s hammer, the click sounding like the sinewy snap of bones.
He reached out for the rope of the front door and saw a short piece of wood jammed at the base, to keep the portal closed. Nathan kicked that away and pulled the door open.
His stomach lurched.
“Jesus H. Christ,” Eli Gallant said behind him.
“And all his disciples,” Mackenzie added.
Before them, clear as the sky overhead and simply too unreal for the mind to grasp, even though they had seen plenty beforehand… was a dark tunnel, some ten feet long perhaps, leading to the interior of a passenger car. An empty passenger car, with light spilling in from grimy windows. The spatial dimensions were not even right, as the width of the car was greater than that of the outhouse, and yet, by some unknown folding of space and time, there it was.
Contained within the dilapidated shithouse walls, was the next reality.
The tunnel wavered, as if the gateway would not last for long.
Nathan stared at that trembling portal and shook his head in disbelieving wonder. The door cracked on leather hinges held together by rusty nails, and the sound broke his paralysis.
Gun still in hand, he quickly gathered up his clothing and gear, as did the others.
Not ten seconds later, he ventured into that unstable tunnel, with Mackenzie and the others at his back. The walls, roof, and floor were an oily black that shivered, but after a few steps, the familiar vestibule walls came into view. Nathan stopped at the tunnel’s end and peered inside the moving train car.
“Well?” Mackenzie asked from behind.
“Looks safe enough,” Nathan said.
“Go on then,” Eli urged. “Before something closes on this end.”
Nathan stepped into the empty passenger car, checking the first few berths and eyeing the unlit light fixtures that swayed overhead. Nothing hid between the seats, and nothing made a noise over the locomotive clatter of the train. Movement outside the car’s windows caught his eye. The glass was filthy and obscured the shapes somewhat, but… Golden sky, shimmering, shining, bouncing pure light off concentric rings of varying degrees of purple. The sight transfixed Nathan, until the things that distracted him in the first place dropped below the upper window frame, soaring into sight.
Birds.
Gigantic birds flapping wings that blazed gold. The colors were eye-popping. The creatures were long-necked, with saw-tooth beaks. Claws drawn up to the underbelly, which didn’t appear feathered at all, but rather the color of singed copper.
Then he realized what they really were.
“Oh my,” Mackenzie said from behind him, staring at the birds keeping pace with the train. Mini-suns flashed by the windows, causing the men to shield their eyes, but the birds stayed with the train.
“Birds?” he asked.
“Not birds,” Nathan corrected, remembering other stories his mother once read to him. “Dragons.”
Dragons.
Those were indeed dragons flying alongside the train. The knowledge stopped the four men in their tracks. They leaned forward and stared, grateful for the solid woodwork of the berths, utterly spellbound by what they were witnessing. The great beasts soared, unconcerned with the speeding locomotive. Leather wings snapped, generating enormous lift, but otherwise they coasted, riding air currents like waves. So focused they were on flying, the dragons left the train alone.
Mackenzie leaned into a window, rubbed a section clear with a shirt sleeve, and peered outside. He watched the flying creatures for a long moment before attempting to see what lay ahead. There he stayed, transfixed.
“Anything, Mack?”
Mackenzie glanced back, his face full of concern. “It’s closer.”
The others approached the windows and pressed their cheeks to the glass.
Sure enough, that troubling sun was closer. Bigger. And the train was making its way for its fiery center.
“We gotta get off this thing,” Gilbert said over the rattling and sized up the interior.
Nathan was already pulling on his winter coat and scarf and adjusting his gear for quick access. Once he had the coat on, he checked the inner pocket for the three sticks of dynamite Jimmy had given him.
Jimmy Norquay.
Though he’d only known the man for a short time, Nathan wished he could have known him a little longer. Frowning, he checked on the box of matches, as well as his Colts. Once prepared, he stepped out from the berth and marched towards the end of the car. Dragons flew on the other side of the train, some close enough that their massive forms darkened the interior. Gilbert took aim at one of the windows, fearful of the soaring beasts.
Nathan reached the next door and waited for the others. Mackenzie was next, with Gilbert behind him and Eli hurrying along in last place, keeping his rifle above the seats.
“Ready?” Nathan asked when they’d all gathered.
Eli took cover within one berth and aimed at the portal. Mackenzie and Gilbert did the same.
“Open that bastard,” Eli said.
Nathan yanked the door across.
Snow whipped into his face, driven by a freezing wind. Nathan flinched at the drop in temperature and shied behind the nearest wall. He pulled his scarf up and over his face. With a look at the others, he peered through the doorway.
The scene was maddening.
In the passenger car they currently stood, there were dragons flying alongside them.
The next car, however, was a wintry flatbed coated in perhaps two feet of snow.
Where dirty sunlight lit the interior they stood in, the flatbed was obscured by blowing snow. Two different weather patterns separated by only a finger of metal. Two different worlds separated by the thinnest partition. The sight was unreal. Jaw-dropping. Ball-clenching.
“I’m going insane here, Mack,” Nathan said over the rising wind.
“I’m already crazier than a two-dick coyote,” Eli declared softly. “But this…” and there he trailed off, unable to finish.
“Certainly an eyeful,” Mackenzie replied, pulling up his own scarf to protect his face.
“Eyeful my ass,” Gilbert said. “This is crazy. Crazy.”
For moments they stared down the snowstorm and didn’t say a word. It could be their world, but the lack of landmarks didn’t allow them to be certain.
“It’s a flatbed, Mack,” Nathan finally pointed out.
“Close the door. Maybe it’ll change.”
Nathan tried closing the door. The door would not close. He scowled and tried all his might to move the latch, but it didn’t budge. In the end, he stood back and kicked at the thing, stomping hard heels into the metal.
The door remained open.
“You contrary piece of shit,” Nathan swore and thought about Jimmy’s dynamite. He quickly discarded the idea, knowing he would probably do more damage than good.
“Hell with it,” Eli said, pulling his own scarf up and over his face. “We’re already dressed for weather. What’s thirty feet?”
Gilbert covered his own face.
“Let’s go,” Nathan decided. He carefully stepped onto the snow-covered flatbed. There was no gap, however, no visible couplings, as the doorway opened directly onto the white and narrow plane. The cutting winds had sculpted sizeable drifts in the center of the flatbed, and wild flurries pelted the peaks. The snow surrounding the drifts
first reached mid-shin, but quickly reached Nathan’s knees. It was a wet snow, a late winter snow, clingy and as thick as cement. Even as he stood there, the snow sticking fast and whitening his form, he knew that the longer he waded around in this shit, the whiter, wetter, and more miserable he would become. The platform hidden underneath wasn’t slippery at all, but to his dismay, the flatbed’s distinct edges were not five feet from where he stood.
Beyond that, nothing except a whirling, shrieking wall of white. There was no land to be seen, and as far as he knew, they might be racing across two narrow rails without any ground below it. Ahead, he couldn’t see the next car. Perhaps it was from the speed of the train, or maybe they were passing through a blizzard.
Nathan swung around to the others, who set their feet and leaned into the gale, sizing up the task ahead. He waited for their thoughts.
“Go on,” Mackenzie waved, holding his rifle with the other. “Quicker we get across the better.”
Gilbert and Eli stood at his back, twin wraiths hunched over with rifles at the ready.
“Come on then,” Nathan said, making himself heard over the wind. “And watch the roofs for passengers.”
With that, he started stomping through the fat drifts.
48
Snow lashed into the four men making their way across the flatbed. Nathan put a hand to his father’s felt hat and angled his head into the crosswind. The front of his duster was already blasted white. A large drift as high as his hips lay to his right, and past that, perhaps a five-foot-wide walkway to the opposite edge. There was nothing ahead, no lamplight, no sign of a train car waiting. All there was, was that gnashing wind, the stinging snow, and the white ribbons gusting off the edges of the flatbed. There were no mountains surrounding them, no forest, no nothing that resembled western Alberta.
Nathan placed one boot into the snow after the other, the cold penetrating his gloves and the exposed bits of his face, but little else. He walked slowly, mindful of the edge of the flatbed, and the milky nothingness that flashed by beyond that.
Thirty feet by his guess, into a void of white. The crosswind intensified, blasting him, crumpling his father’s hat and seeking to rip both it and him from the exposed walkway. His frame was now thick with snow, the ice pelting him with huge suffocating clumps. Eli Gallant was cursing, but the wind stole the man’s choice words for the storm.
Forty feet, and still no sign of the next car. Nathan squinted into that harsh squall which seemingly became stronger, furious at the men for challenging it. He tried shuffling through the snow until it reached his knees, which required him to lift his boot entirely free before stomping back down.
Nathan forged on.
Fifty feet, and all that he could see was that dismal drop to the left, just a leap away, and the growing wall on their right. The way ahead remained nothing more than a savage curtain hiding everything past ten feet. Underneath their footing, however, the flatbed’s wood and iron was the bedrock shoring up Nathan’s sanity.
“See anything, Nate?” Mackenzie hollered from behind.
Nathan made sure both his feet were down before glancing over his shoulder, surprised to see Mackenzie not two paces on his tail. Gilbert and Eli were at his back, their hair blowing madly in the wind. They all resembled sick snowmen, white, but with a cancerous black just underneath.
“Nothing,” Nathan yelled back.
That prompted Mackenzie to crane his neck to look ahead.
Nathan resumed his stomp and stagger of a walk, weathering the wind and moving forward only when it seemed to diminish. His coat blew about his legs despite being buttoned to the knee—any more and he risked toppling over.
Sixty feet, and the storm only got worse.
A blast of wind ripped past Nathan and the entire world disappeared. He staggered, still stubbornly holding onto his hat, caught in a tempest. White streamers surfed the crest of the nearby snowdrift. Snow cut across his eyes. On reflex alone, Nathan dropped to his knees, and placed his shoulder to the slope of the nearby drift. The stormy air raked over his bowed back, and almost tore his hat from his head.
Nathan wouldn’t have it.
He made a fist about the battered brim and held his hat fast to his head. If it left his skull, then the boys at his back would be on their own, because he would leap off the flatbed to reclaim it. Shuffling along on his knees became an energy-draining slog. He swept away snow with his free hand, and even collapsed at times and getting icy mouthfuls.
Seventy feet.
No passenger car.
But an otherworldly growl perked Nathan’s ears, and he stopped to listen.
Nothing, only the raging wind. Grimacing, the cold seeping past his outer and inner layers, he resumed his painful crawl.
Only to hear that disturbing sound again. A deep but rising buzz, like a dozen men hauling a rope through an eyelet as if their lives depended on it, but more mechanical. The buzz spiked, pitched, and dropped partially because of the raging wind boxing his ears, but he sensed there was more to it. Much more. And it was getting closer.
Of that he was certain, just as certain as he was of its danger.
He crawled faster, pushing through heavy snow and wishing he had one of those dentist-invented plows. His shoulders ached from his efforts, but he kept on clearing the way, knowing it was easier for the others. The cold finally breached his gloves, icing his hands, chilling his fingers. His hands drove through the snow, swept the top layers away, so that he could move up to his knees, then repeat, in a locomotion mirroring the hellish train they were trapped upon. Jimmy Norquay was no fool. Grandparents or not, the peaceful, warm tranquility of that farm was a distant dream and one that—
Nathan’s hand punched through a crust of snow, all the way to the bottom, and then nothing—but air. His forward movement sucked him down just as an entire mantle of snow fell away, clefted cleanly in the middle by a frosty set of iron couplings. Nathan crashed his elbow off the flatbed’s edge, and his entire arm sang out as if dipped in fire. That paralyzing grip forced Nathan to lash out with his other hand—the one holding onto his father’s hat. He hit the flatbed edge straight across the chest, with enough force to stun him for a second, just enough time to gaze down into what seemed to be a rushing avalanche right below him.
Framed between two black lengths of railway.
Then he was hauled back by the ankles, while Mackenzie and Gilbert screamed.
Nathan turned his head just before the flatbed edge cracked off his chin. His flailing arm got hooked and yanked free, sending another shot of agony up its length and crisping his brain.
“You okay, Nate?” Mackenzie was shouting. “You okay?”
Nathan realized the man had placed himself between the drop-off and himself. Nathan nodded.
“Goddamn flatbed ended right there,” Gilbert shouted over him. “We’re gonna haveta jump it.”
Jump it? Nathan thought, the pain slowly receding. Jump to the next flatbed?
Nathan got himself to his knees and nodded to Mackenzie that he was fine. The men huddled together as the roaring drew closer—an intense repeating sputter that echoed in the storm.
Not echoing, Nathan realized in a moment of clarity. There was more than one coming closer.
“We gotta go,” he croaked as he rose to his knees. He studied the gap.
Five feet. No more. One leap, without a run, but it would be close. Snow covered the next flatbed over, and icicles drooped like magical fangs from the exposed edge.
He still had his hat, though, and Nathan drew strength from that.
He stood, shakily, the winds buffeting his upper frame. He kicked at the snow covering his side of the flatbed, until a small clearing revealed the iron and wood edge. All the while, that wildcat purring whipped his attention to the other side of the train. Whatever was making the noise was on both sides now, and drawing closer, still.
“The hell you—”
Waiting for, Eli Gallant finished as Nathan jumped.
The wind buffeted him, and he felt himself veering to the left as his boots clattered onto the flatbed. He lunged forward, falling flat, while his left arm dangled off into infinity. That sensation of swinging in the frigid wind was all Nathan needed to regain his wits. He hauled his arm back to safety.
Just as Mackenzie landed in a heap beside him, in an explosion of snow. Nathan shied away from that and crawled back from the flatbed’s cliff. He heard the others shout, but he didn’t bother replying. Nathan didn’t want to be caught crawling another eighty feet to the next flat car when whatever was making that ungodly buzzing noise finally closed in upon them.
A quick glance over his shoulder, however, informed him that the others had made it across. They were on their hands and knees again, but behind him.
So they crawled, scuffling through the deepening snow while that bobcat growling only got louder. At the forty-foot mark or so, a glow briefly penetrated the blizzard depths, ahead and to the left. Then it was gone. Its appearance stopped Nathan for a few heartbeats.
But an inhuman yowling got him moving again.
“The hell is making that noise?” Gilbert yelled out, but no one answered him.
The wind seemed to diminish. The curtains of snow slackened and grew thinner. As the weather weakened, Nathan’s fright swelled, urging him to crawl faster, but stay low, for fear of being discovered. He was coated in white now and not easily seen. Or so he hoped.
The buzzing grew in volume. Multiple suns streaked by, some closer than others, running parallel to the flatbed. Outlines could be seen, but the details were blurred by blowing snow. And that hideous caterwauling continued and got louder, as if a band of those alien pirates that had harpooned the Great Serpent and Archie Whasisface had finally tracked the train robbers down.
A sun charged the flatbed from the left as one angry buzzing spiked above all the others. A second later, an inhuman banshee yodeling cut the air and frightened Nathan bad enough that he dropped into the snow.
Not before glimpsing that sun—no bigger than, say, a small wash basin—fly over his head in a roar of smoke and heat and fury. There was a mass behind that fiery comet blazing over him, and he thought he saw shining metal, just before he went flat and breathed in a face-full of smoke.
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