Nathan started coughing.
A second later, he felt his shoulders grow hot and saw that they were on fire.
Nathan rolled onto his back, extinguishing the flames, while other suns blazed through the wintry gauze surrounding the flatbed. Mackenzie pushed past in a rabid flight reflex, shoving him aside to escape.
A boot heel crunched against his shoulder before pushing off.
Then Gilbert and Eli were moving past him. Gilbert tracked the moving suns with his Winchester while Eli stopped and helped Nathan to his feet.
“Get up, Rhodes,” Eli barked into his face. “The pirates are back.”
Pirates? Nathan’s expression asked.
“Yes, pirates! Goddammit! Now get moving!”
Eli whirled him around and shoved him towards… a door. Underneath a rack of fearsome icicles was the ice-glazed door of the next passenger car. Mackenzie was already there, hauling the thing open, while just to his left, and oddly out of place, was a burning oil lamp.
Mackenzie disappeared inside the car and Gilbert was right behind him.
There was a roar that drove Nathan’s head into his shoulders, and the flatbed shuddered under a heavy weight. Eli was already turning at the noise, his face slackening at what he saw. Nathan looked as well and wished he hadn’t.
An immense thing had landed atop the flatbed, angled up alongside the amassed snowdrift. It spewed smoke and flame out the ass and underneath, where overturned pots flared fire. Even as Nathan watched, the snow underneath the chrome chassis melted in alarming rivulets, creating a raging fog. The metal glistening in that magician’s cloud and the forward section of the vehicle snapped to one side, shining an impossibly bright light towards the men. Handlebars were spread over an elaborate working of metal pipes, pistons, and drums, the manner and purpose alien to Nathan.
But then it came to him.
As the rider detached himself from its steed.
A chrome visage much like the dragons they’d just seen was mounted above the sunlamp, and the thing’s jaws worked as if demanding fresh meat.
But that only held Nathan’s attention for an instant, for the man-thing riding the metallic dragon horse was dismounting.
They weren’t pirates. At least, not the pirates that had killed Archie and the Great Serpent. This was something else, every bit as alien, however, and smiling a yellow-toothed smile while extracting a curved cutlass that buzzed with red light. The owner was perhaps a head taller than the men, at least as wide across the shoulders, and dressed in what looked like expensive leather. A pot helmet adorned with spikes covered its head, but the face was open, and its features shocking. Reptilian, yet similar to a man’s face, its eyes covered in black spectacles of a style that Nathan had never seen before.
The thing threw its arms wide and cut loose with a scream that caused Nathan’s very balls to seek higher ground.
Eli whipped up his Winchester and fired.
The first shot hit the monster’s leather chest and shut him up.
The second shot twisted him to one side.
The third shot actually smashed out one side of the thing’s sunglasses and cracked its head back with a wire of black oil.
That last shot, however, killed the creature, which toppled onto the flatbed without a sound. The glowing sword skidded sideways, buzzing, melting snow until it reached the flatbed’s edge and flipped over in a wink. The dragon’s head roared. The thing it was attached to flared to life, the fiery parts smoldering heat and smoke, just a second before the unit blasted off the flatbed, leaving its dead rider behind.
Two more suns charged into view, running up the side of the train and angling towards the two men.
Nathan didn’t care, he was already running.
He blasted through the open doorway, and Eli was a heartbeat behind him. Gilbert slammed the door shut and took aim upon it, while Mackenzie was standing back in the aisle, crouched and peering out the windows. The snowstorm had weakened to half its strength, and visibility was that much improved.
What the men saw, however, didn’t lift their spirits.
“The hell are they?” Nathan yelled out.
Mackenzie was already taking aim with his rifle. “No idea. Thought they were pirates.”
One of the riders streaked past the passenger car, screaming all the way, and fired a weapon. Broad bands of green light blew through the train’s windows in explosive sprays of glass. The tops of cushioned seats erupted into flames. The overhead compartments splintered as if smashed from above and fell to the floor. Flames burning the cushions and woodwork waved madly until blown out by the winds surrounding the speeding train.
“Jesus Christ!” Eli Gallant roared through the smoke and chaos. He went to a berth and sent a shot through the glass. Growling all the way, he hunkered down, cleared the window frame of shards, and poked his rifle’s barrel through the opening.
He fired three shots off at the things speeding alongside the train.
“They ain’t pirates!” Eli roared in between shots. “They’re robbin’ the train! Just like us!”
Crouched in the aisle, Nathan exchanged shocked looks with Mackenzie.
A second before a second barrage of destructive green light smashed through the other side of the train, and sliced a narrow path of destruction from right to left, as the rider blazed past on its screaming metal dragon. Glass sprayed across the interior. More seats were shredded and set aflame.
And within that very same second, one of those bursts of killer light blew Mackenzie’s head completely apart.
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In the split instant it took for the green light to blow apart everything it came into contact with, it took Mackenzie’s life as well. The sight of the cattle rustler’s face exploding whilst utterly astonished would haunt Nathan for a very long time. Bone and face matter flew across the interior, most of it thankfully missing Nathan, and when he looked back, Mackenzie’s headless corpse was splayed out in the aisle.
“Mack’s dead,” Nathan yelled out, and pulled his guns “Mack’s dead!”
Gilbert and Eli lifted their heads.
“Those sorry sonsabitches,” Gilbert huffed with a poisoned glare.
An equally pissed-off Eli thumbed fresh shells into his Winchester, tossing aside a bandolier as he emptied it. “Bastards killed the only educated peckerwood I liked,” he said, with a murderous scowl. “Watch my back, Gilbert.”
“Watchin’ it, Eli.”
Eli Gallant went to work.
Leather riders shot past the train on their metal dragons, the very air spewing smoke in their wake and becoming easy targets to anyone adept with a hunting rifle. Thing was, Eli didn’t have just any hunting rifle. He had a Winchester. Furthermore, he wasn’t just a decent shot, Eli Gallant was a goddamn marksman. And he knew a cooler head resulted in a much higher kill count.
Which he went about demonstrating.
One of the dragon riders flashed by the broadside of the train, much too far out to track, but there were plenty of others. In fact, some of them appeared to be rising above the train only to come down on the other side.
Eli shot one, punching its helmet to one side and twisting the rider. The metal dragon it rode veered off and crashed into something with a frightening mine-blast of snow. Eli shifted, then held his fire until he got the shot he wanted. Another dragon pitched forward, the front of the metal beast tipping violently facedown and ass-up, flinging its rider free with a yodel that morphed from pure battle rage to surprised squeal.
The door to the car slid open, surprising the three men. A rider stepped forward with a hand cannon raised.
Gilbert Butler, true to his word, watched their backs and put a bullet through the unprotected throat of the rider. A torrent of green gushed from the killing wound, polluting the front of the creature’s leather coat. The thing did a spastic jig for all of a split second before it dropped dead. A second rider was behind it. The creature fired, sending a green spread of killer light through the rear
walls of the train car.
Through the haze, Gilbert blew out one of the thing’s knees. The creature dropped, losing its weapon. Gilbert fired three more shots into the rider, each bullet connecting, each bullet shoving the thing outside and away.
Before it disappeared.
Thunder knells rattled the train’s walls and roof, causing Nathan to look up.
Those devastating light weapons shredded the ceiling. Carpet jumped off the floors and sizzled down to the bare iron underneath. One berth erupted into flame while another exploded in a mesmerizing flash of feathers. Nathan lunged from one berth to another, watching the ceiling and keeping low to avoid the same fate as Mackenzie. Light beams punched through the flimsy metal and wooden compartments like a super-powered Gatling gun, but with a much higher rate of fire. More beams razored through the ceiling at an angle, marking the flight of a rider passing overhead, while two more lines ripped through the walls in a lethal crossfire.
Nathan threw himself to the floor to escape that destructive scissoring.
Above him, a tremendous weight hit the roof.
A glowing sword stabbed through the varnished ceiling in a burst of splinters. A powerful force dragged the blade left, down, then right, before completing a square. More fancy wooden compartments fell from the ceiling. Smoke blew through destroyed windows while the upholstery burned. A black boot resembling an iron block stomped through the ceiling, forcing open a well-cut lid. Shapes steadied themselves before unleashing rapid fire blasts at the train’s floor. Light beams slammed into the once decadent furnishings of the Majestic 311. Fancy glass fixtures exploded. Berths jumped as if stomped on by giants. Fires ignited and smoke whorled in savage crosswinds.
Then the boarders ceased firing.
They’re going to drop in, Nathan realized.
He already had the stick of dynamite out and its fuse lit. He ran past Mackenzie’s headless corpse and chucked the stick through the breach. He was rewarded with several peals of surprise—and glimpsed a hand actually reaching out and catching the dynamite.
A second before the explosion engulfed the boarders and flung them away.
Gilbert continued firing through the open doorway, which was blocked by the very rider he’d killed. Eli worked his Winchester, connecting with most shots and even blasting some of his targets out of the saddle entirely, dumping them in a snowy wasteland.
“Hey, Eli!” Gilbert shouted, crouching, with his back against a smoldering wall. “There’s a bunch of them on the flatbed. I think they’re gonna charge us.”
“Well, then, don’t let ‘em, Gilbert!”
“I’m reloading here.”
Nathan heard that, and he turned and raced through the smoking aisle, stomping over debris or kicking it aside. He fired through the burning doorway, sending whatever his Colts had screaming at the alien train robbers. He reached the second last berth, which still was untouched in the firefight, and ducked within.
“Thanks Nate,” Gilbert called out, rapidly thumbing shells into his Winchester. “I’m ready here.”
With that, he shucked off a bandolier, worked the rifle’s lever, and eyed the open doorway.
Nathan shook the spent casings from his Colts and reloaded, dropping one shell in his haste and not bothering to pick the damn thing up. There was no time. A fiery explosion erupted outside the train, and Eli cut loose with a peal of murderous delight.
“These cocksuckers ain’t that tough!” he roared.
Nathan wasn’t so sure.
Gilbert stood, turned, and fired off three rounds before quickly returning to cover and dropped into a crouch.
The wall to the left and right of his head blew inwards in jets of fiery green, driving the gun runner to the floor. More beams sliced through the passenger car’s end, destroying those fine berths and forcing Nathan and Eli to the carpet.
“Christ,” Eli growled. “These weasels are turning my guts!”
“I heard that,” Gilbert agreed.
“Get ready to run,” Nathan said as he lit the fuse of another stick of dynamite, producing that familiar sidewinder hiss.
That shut up both gun runners.
Nathan rose to his knees and tomahawk-chucked the dynamite out onto the flatbed, where it disappeared from sight.
For a second.
The initial blast was immediately joined by a much larger, very much expected second, third, and fourth explosion, which shook the train right down to its steel wheels. The wall Gilbert once had his back to blew in and upwards, removing a huge section of the roof there. Snow gusted in, dousing the flew flames born from the blast.
For a moment, Nathan stared.
From underneath a pile of debris, Gilbert lifted his head, his face whitened and staring.
“The hell was that?” a bewildered Eli asked.
Nathan didn’t know, but what he said was, “We better run.”
He got to his feet. Eli helped a staggering Gilbert, who scanned the floor for his rifle.
“Leave it,” Eli shouted, and so Gilbert did.
The smoke allowed them a little cover, but Nathan guessed the unexpected explosions—which he still didn’t know about—gave them a few seconds to get clear of the passenger car, which, to this point, had the living shit kicked out of it. He pounded up the aisle, his duster flailing in his wake. Things continued to burn around him, and those metal dragon riders circled the moving train. Nathan tracked each vehicle’s front light fixtures, which looked like small suns. Only thing was, the riders weren’t even firing at them. At least not at the moment.
Ahead, the next passenger car door waited, materializing out of the smoke and offering escape.
Nathan reached the door and turned, his gun at the ready.
Eli and Gilbert were only paces behind him and closing, but so were the riders.
As one, the otherworldly riders saw them sprint for the car’s end. They altered their flight paths and converged. They commenced firing, splitting the air with those fearsome beams. And, right in the open, were the two fleeing gun runners.
They’re dead, Nathan thought, just as he gathered enough of the frigid air to scream.
Yet not one light beam came close to hitting either one of those lucky bastards.
The train still powered ahead with a single-minded determination, and the riders couldn’t bring their weapons to bear upon their moving targets. Their flying dragon machines shrieked overhead and across the passenger car. They blew apart the last few windows, shattered the last few light fixtures, and made a smoking cheese out of the other half of the train car, but they were all hurried shots, wide shots, fired at moving objects from moving objects.
Nathan opened the door and ushered the two men inside. He followed them and slammed the portal shut. Darkness engulfed them. The familiar dark of a vestibule, and at the other end, another door, with a single grimy window set into the wood at the top.
Eli was already there, opening the door, allowing a winter wind to buffet their faces.
When they all stopped and stared at what lay ahead.
“Christ Almighty,” Eli whispered.
The three train robbers stood just within that dark threshold, where wind and snow pelted their staring frames. The attacking riders had been busy—not only were they firing upon the passenger car Nathan and the others had occupied, they were also aiming at the one the men sought. The opening of the door did not offer an alternate reality as they’d hoped; rather, they piled right into another passenger car that had sustained terrible damage to its interior. In fact, half of the car’s roof had collapsed, forming a ramp that greeted the three men, while the berths underneath flashed and burned.
Eli slammed the door closed, waited a second, and opened it.
Same car, same destruction.
Eli slammed and opened the door again. No change.
He tried a third time, and scowled at the same result.
“No time,” Nathan said and felt it to be true. He pulled his second Colt and faced the doo
r they’d just come through.
“We can go up and over,” Gilbert said, pointing with his own pistol.
That got the others thinking. Eli regarded Nathan, who shrugged.
That was enough for Eli Gallant. He looked at the first step and saw there were no pitfalls. With that, he started ahead, and Gilbert followed. Once in the car, however, they faltered, searching for the best way up.
Nathan holstered his weapons and, knowing the bikers would be following, took out his last stick of dynamite. He lit the fuse from a flurry of flames consuming a berth. He jammed the stick into the slot at the door’s base, where it rolled loosely, but stayed.
Didn’t matter, it wasn’t going to roll towards them.
Taking a breath, Nathan raced between the two gun runners. “Go!” he shouted as he took two steps and launched himself at the fallen roof. He slammed down, chest first, his teeth rattling. He managed to get a foot into a crack underneath, which he used to push forward while searching for a handhold. The wind blew his hat off his head, but the chin string kept it to the back of his neck. Nathan grunted, took the time to find his grip, and pulled himself up.
Into a windstorm.
The dynamite went off behind him, but Nathan didn’t even feel the blast. The train was traveling at an impossible speed, and the roof was both slick and gritty with ice and snow. He wore gloves, but it would be a chore to crawl along the roof.
“You back there?’ he shouted and half-turned his head towards his shoulder.
That was when he glimpsed it.
The sun.
Closer than ever. In fact, the train—and the hundreds of cars between the engine and Nathan’s precarious position—were heading right for that ball of fire, straight down the middle of it. A perfect circle of yellow burning through the falling snow, glaring like the indifferent eye of some mythical beast. The attacking riders buzzed around the last train car and the ones after that, assaulting a section of the great machine like angry mosquitoes. Smoke rose from the last car, from damage done to both sides, but the rest of the locomotive appeared unaffected. Nathan then realized there were no mountains to be seen. Nothing below, in fact, except the infinity of open, empty space.
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