The huckster began to get up and stretch when there was a thump against the side of the car. He heard the sound of keys jingling and the door slid open. Dex caught a quick glimpse of two Hellstromme Industries guards before he ducked down behind the crates.
Dex heard the rustling of paper. "Let's see, the doctor said he needed a crate of capacitors. That should be it right there," said one of the guards. The hexslinger heard the two men struggle with a crate. There was a heavy thump, a few muttered curses, and the sound of a dolly rolling out of the car.
Dex waited a few moments, then crept slowly out from his hiding place. Through the open door he could see a flat plain of tall grass. He moved to the door and cautiously peered out. There was nothing but grass as far as he could see.
He stuck his head out of the door and looked up and down the length of the train. There was little sign of activity to the rear. Behind the car he was in, Dex saw another boxcar, a number of flatcars piled high with rails and ties, a flatcar with some sort of large, armored vehicle and a number of small rowboats lashed down on it, and yet another flatcar loaded with what looked like the pieces of an unassembled derrick.
Dex looked toward the front of the train and saw that there were four more boxcars between his car and the engine. The door to each car was open and a ramp extended from the door to the ground. The huckster noticed that there was a ramp in place at his own car also.
All of the activity Dex had heard seemed to be occurring at the front of the train. About one hundred yards beyond the engine, two squads of Hellstromme troopers strained hard at some ropes. The men began to slowly walk backward, and as they did, a large, metallic ring rose into the air. One side of the ring rested on the ground, and the huckster could see that this edge of the enormous, steel circle sat in a trench that ran beneath the train tracks. Once the ring had been lifted perpendicular to the ground, a small army of workers scurried forward to attach braces and supports that would hold it in position. Another group in white lab coats began to lay pipe between the ring and a large, steam engine sitting beside the tracks.
Despite his greater interest in getting as far from the train as possible, Dex paused for a moment to study the strange object. It was made of some sort of shiny metal and was nearly forty feet in diameter. The metal hoop itself looked to be nearly three feet thick. The setting sun glinted off the ring's face, giving it a blood red tinge, and it seemed to the huckster that there was an inscription engraved in the metal.
That's all very interesting, thought Dex, but how the Hell am I going to get out of here? The huckster quietly slipped down out of the boxcar and crouched in the shadows beneath it. He scanned the terrain on both sides of the train: nothing but miles of prairie grass. He spotted a small grove of trees on the horizon, but they looked to be well over two miles away. Using a hex to shadow walk away was not an option.
Dex crawled forward beneath the train cars; maybe if he got close enough to hear something, he could find out what was going on. He had only moved forward about two cars when he heard voices. Casting the same hex he had used to hide earlier, he carefully peered out from the shadows beneath the train.
A neat row of telegraph poles ran alongside the tracks on the opposite side from which he had exited the train. Two men wearing white lab coats with the Hellstromme Industries insignia were seated at a small table. On the table was what looked to be a portable telegraph set. Wires ran from it to the poles. Both men were looking in the direction of the metal ring and talking excitedly.
"I still don't think it will work. How can he predict with any certainty what..."
"Don't you see? He already knows exactly what he'll find. It's all subjective. The power of his intellect..." The second scientist trailed off as a third man approached them.
The newcomer also had a lab coat, but Dex could see that he wore an expensive, tailored suit beneath it. The huckster looked down at his own soiled clothes ruefully. At least someone out here had a sense of fashion.
As the man drew closer, the hexslinger could make out his features. He had high cheekbones and dark, deep-set eyes under a pair of bushy, black eyebrows. He had a well-manicured beard that was in complete contrast to the unruly mass of black hair on top of his head. Dex recognized him instantly from his newspaper photo-none other than Doctor Darius Hellstromme himself-the West's foremost "Mad Scientist."
Hellstromme walked up to the table. He stood there for a few minutes without saying anything. There was the blast of a steam whistle from the direction of the ring and the famed inventor turned to the pair of scientists. "The transducer is ready," he said. "Telegraph the roundhouses in Des Moines and Kearney and tell them to proceed." The two scientists began to frantically tap out a message.
When they finished, the trio watched the train intently as if waiting for something to happen. Dex suddenly felt uneasy and very vulnerable in his position beneath it.
For a few moments, nothing happened. Then a strong gust of chillingly cold wind blasted beneath the train. Dex felt his body turn cold as if the gale had gone straight through his bones. He was pelted with sand and grit the wind picked up from the rail bed. Once the dust cleared, the huckster saw that the three scientists seemed completely undisturbed by the wind. Hellstromme was smiling.
A few seconds later, another blast of wind roared beneath the train, this time in the opposite direction. Again Dex felt an intense cold that seemed to numb him to the soul. The intensity of the wind caused him to lose his balance and he fell forward. He put out a hand to steady himself and it came down on one of the rails. There was an instant of pain, a quick sensation of cold, and then his hand went completely numb. He jerked his hand back in shock and looked down at it. A black line of charred flesh the width of the rail ran across his palm.
The huckster looked back at the rail. The silvery steel had turned ebon black, shot through with white swirls. Dex wasn't sure, but it looked as if the swirls were moving. As he looked around, he noticed that the train's steel wheels had undergone the same transformation.
"Excellent," said Hellstromme. "Let's get underway."
A wave of overwhelming and irrational fear washed over Dex's mind. He had to get out from under the train! The car was going to collapse and crush him; the train was going to start moving and he'd be sliced up by the wheels; the guards would find him and shoot him like a dog. The frantic huckster bolted out from under the train on the side opposite the scientists like a frightened jackrabbit.
Every instinct in his being urged him to run screaming across the plain, but the rational part of his mind managed to reassert some control and stop him. He looked toward the front of the train. The troopers had formed up into squads and were marching back to their cars. He wouldn't make five steps before he caught a bullet in the back.
The side of the train was in deep shadow. Dex took advantage of this fact to swing up into the car unnoticed.
The huckster looked around for a place to hide. Unlike the car he had previously occupied, this one was not filled with crates. The walls of the car were covered with racks of coffinlike bunks. I'm not sure I like the looks of this, he thought. Dex lifted the lid of one. It was empty save for a few heavy blankets and a pillow.
Iron pipes ran from the bunks to a large, coal boiler in the center of the far wall. Despite the warmth of the day, the stove was lit and radiating heat in nauseating waves. Steam pipes also ran up to a spherical, metal object about four feet in diameter hanging halfway down through the car's roof.
Dex could feel his fear fading and he cursed himself for panicking. If he had stayed under the train he could have simply remained there until it moved on. There was more than enough clearance for the train's wheels to have passed over him as he lay there between the rails. Now he was trapped. He could hear the sound of approaching troopers.
The huckster noticed a hatch in the bottom of the sphere and yanked the lever which opened it. It dropped open, exposing the interior of some sort of turret. There were handholds attached to the in
side of the hatch, and Dex used these to pull himself up into the sphere, pulling the hatch shut behind him. He squirmed his way past the large Gatling gun which filled a good portion of the turret and plopped down into the small seat behind it. Well, he thought, as long as these yahoos don't feel the need to shoot anyone, I'm safe.
Momentarily hidden, Dex pulled a sweat-soaked handkerchief from his pocket and wrapped it around his burned hand. He cursed himself again for his cowardice, but he suspected it may not have been avoidable. He had read stories in that rag, the Epitaph, that suggested the Wasatch rails were made of some sort of mystical metal. His sudden fear may have simply been a by-product of whatever deranged experiment Hellstromme was conducting.
That thought mollified his ego somewhat, so Dex turned his attention to his spherical prison. Pipes ran into a device attached to the rear of the Gatling gun. Since there was no crank, the hexslinger assumed that the gun was driven by steam. There was also a small assortment of levers on either side of the gun which Dex guessed rotated the turret, but in his present situation he refrained from testing his theory.
There were also four view slits spaced evenly around the enclosure. Each one was covered with a heavy, metal shutter.
Dex slowly lifted the shutters so he could see what was happening outside.
On the left side of the train, the Hellstromme troopers had formed up in neat rows outside the boxcars. They all held bizarre weapons which could only have come from the factories of Hellstromme Industries. Some held Gatling rifles, others had multi-barreled shotguns, and a few had bulky, backpack-sized flamethrowers.
"Count off!" yelled an officer.
"One!" bellowed the first trooper in line as he stormed up the ramp into the boxcar. The other troopers followed suit, each one trying to shout louder than the one before him. Dex felt the car rock beneath him as each man entered. He heard the sounds of lids opening and closing below him.
Soon only the two men Dex assumed were officers remained outside. One saluted the other. "All troops present and accounted for, sir!" he barked.
The second officer returned a lazy salute. "Right. Let's close 'em up and lock 'em down." The two men disappeared from sight, and the huckster could hear the sound of doors slamming closed. A few minutes later the train began to slowly back down the track away from the ring.
Dex noticed that ring had changed since he had last looked. Small whirling devices had either been attached to, or deployed from, the edges of the ring. Steam plumes shot from vents on top. The inscription he had noticed earlier now glowed with the dull, red light of iron in a forge. The letters of the inscription were from some foreign alphabet he had never seen. Blue arcs of electricity raced across the ring's face. A small crowd of lab-coated scientists scurried around the base of the ring making last minute preparations.
The train continued to move down the track until the ring was only a small silvery dot on the horizon. The brakes came on and the train slid to a stop with the howl of metal grinding on metal.
A loud, booming voice that could only be Hellstromme's came from the front of the train. "Ten...nine...eight..." Despite himself, Dex swallowed hard and wiped the sweat from his face. What was this madman about to do?
"Two...one...Engage!" There were two loud booms from the vicinity of the locomotive followed by a whooshing noise that reminded the huckster of Fourth of July skyrockets. The steam engine surged forward and the boxcar jolted sharply as the slack in its coupler disappeared and it followed. Dex nearly fell out of his seat.
The train gathered speed at a tremendous rate and the boxcar began to sway dangerously as it zipped along the tracks. The normal clickety-clack Dex associated with rail travel blurred into a monotonous drumming sound. Smoke from the locomotive's stack came in through the vision slits and the hexslinger choked on the sulfurous vapors.
The ring was approaching much faster than it had receded. Dex saw that it had changed again. It was now surrounded by a constant crackle of electrical energy and the scientists which attended it were scattering like sheep to avoid the deadly blue bolts which occasionally arced off to the surrounding ground. The terrain beyond the ring's center could no longer be seen, it had been replaced with a long, cylindrical tube that seemed to extend to infinity; it narrowed to a dot at its far end. The walls of the tube glowed with the same dusky red light as the ring's inscription.
The locomotive's whistle broke into a scream that to Dex sounded like the wailing of a thousand tormented souls. Despite the heat in the poorly-ventilated turret, the huckster was chilled to the bone and the beads of sweat on his body turned to ice-water. He felt a rising panic and willed himself to remain seated. Like before, the urge to claw his way out of the turret and bolt from the train became almost overwhelming.
Suddenly the ring was upon them, and the train entered the tunnel. As Dex's boxcar passed through the ring, blue fingers of electrical energy danced across the roof. The current raced through the metal turret, jolting the huckster out of his seat and standing his hair on end. He dropped to the floor gasping for breath, and curled into a ball.
The first thought to penetrate his pain-wracked mind was that he was. cold. The second was that he was floating. The hexslinger straightened himself out with a groan and opened his eyes. He took a deep breath and then began coughing uncontrollably as the icy air seared his lungs.
The fit eventually passed and Dex was able to look around while taking shallow breaths through his cupped hands. The train was hurtling through the tunnel at a tremendous speed; the glowing red walls streaked by like the trail of an enormous meteorite.
It was incredibly cold. Ice had formed around the edges of the turret's view ports and frozen sweat plastered his clothing to him. Dex considered pulling it free, but after a few exploratory tugs suggested that skin might come off with the fabric, he though better of it. The moisture in his breath froze nearly instantly, forming ice crystals which floated around the turret's interior.
The huckster pushed against the gun to get back in his seat; a few patches of skin remained on its barrel when he pulled his hand away. He gingerly fastened the leather strap on the seat across his lap, being careful not to touch the metal buckle. Once that was taken care of, he curled into an icy, shivering ball of woe. The purpose of the coffin bunks below became obvious to the miserable hexslinger.
The train continued to streak through the tunnel for what seemed an eternity to the freezing huckster. He began shivering uncontrollably, his teeth chattering like a pair of castanets. He drifted in and out of consciousness. In his waking moments the interior of the turret swam in and out of focus and the swirling red of the tunnel walls seemed to consist of hundreds of leering, demonic faces looking in at him and mocking his predicament.
The tunnel walls disappeared and Dex felt his weight return. The lacy ice crystals formed by his breath collapsed and crashed to the floor. A blast of furnace-hot air forced its way into the turret.
There was a tremendous crash and the sound of tearing metal. The boxcar rocked violently and the hapless huckster's head slammed back against the wall. He blacked out for a moment. In his semiconscious state he could only register an all-pervasive rushing, grinding noise. The boxcar lurched hard enough to snap the frozen leather across his hips and he dropped to the turret's floor. The locomotive's whistle screeched and then was followed by an eerie silence broken only by the patter of small stones falling around the car. Dex struggled to sit up, but his vision blurred and he passed out again.
He awoke to the sound of men's voices. He heard a mechanical click and the floor of the turret suddenly disappeared. The huckster grabbed for the gun barrel, missed, and fell heavily to the floor of the boxcar. He looked up into more gun barrels than he had fingers and toes.
Rough hands grabbed him. His body was still shivering spastically and there was little he could do to resist. A man pushed past him and climbed into the turret. He was spun to face one of his captors. "Mister," the trooper said slowly, "you've got a lot of explaini
ng to do."
A gun barrel poked him none too gently in the back. "Move," said another trooper. Dex was pushed out of the car and he fell to the ground in a heap. Before he could move, he was grabbed again and pulled to his feet.
The huckster looked around for the first time. He was in an enormous, circular, underground cavern. The entire place was suffused with a dim, reddish light and he could just make out the roof of the cavern far above. The floor of the cave rose above him in a series of terraced ledges.
Dex looked back at the train. It had plowed a deep furrow in the ground. The locomotive was mired up to its drivers in the earth and steam and smoke billowed out of ruptured plates. Troopers with shovels were busy digging around the engine's wheels, while men in heavy, protective suits worked to clamp patches over the venting boiler.
Behind the locomotive, the boxcars snaked in a crazy "S" pattern. They had remained upright, but further back the flatcars had overturned. It looked as if the weight of the armored vehicle on the rear car had caused the end of the train to whipsaw around, snapping the coupler between the flatcars and the last boxcar. Troopers swarmed over the toppled cars, inspecting the cargo. Some had assembled a derrick and were attempting to pull the vehicle upright.
Dex felt the return of the fear he had experienced earlier. A portion of his brain screamed at him to run and not look back.
He forced the panic down with some effort-he wasn't about to show fear in front of these goons. He shook the hands of his captors off and growled, "You can let go. I'm not going anywhere."
This show of bravado calmed him, but he couldn't shake the feeling that some unseen menace lurked in every shadow of this place. As he looked around, he saw that he wasn't the only one who felt this way. Many of the troopers often paused in their work and looked behind them as if they expected some slavering beast to be standing there.
The Good, the Bad, and the Dead Page 5