1931 The Grand Punk Railroad: Express

by Ryohgo Narita

  In contrast to the white suit outside the door, who had turned pale and averted his eyes, Ladd was acting genuinely wired.

  As he imagined just what kind of monster had killed Dune, he jumped around as if he was really enjoying himself. Each time his feet came down, blood splashed up, and Ladd’s white suit grew redder and redder.

  Finally, Ladd gave a great laugh—“Hya-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”—then abruptly shut his mouth and left the conductors’ room.

  As he passed Lua, he spoke to her, his expression serious:

  “Be careful. I dunno what it is, but something on this train is real bad news. Nobody sane kills things that dead. He’s not some corpse-loving pervert like Bluebeard or a bloodthirsty killer like me, though. He’s a monster with an overkill mania.”

  He stopped, glancing at Lua’s face.

  “I’m off to kill that guy and the black suits, so you go hide somewhere, a’ight?”

  Ladd smiled. Unlike his earlier smiles, this one had warmth in it somewhere. Lua nodded. In response, his face warped again, and he said:

  “I’m the one who’s gonna kill you, see.”

  At those words, Lua blushed and nodded again.

  The guy’s a nutcase, as usual.

  Their white-suited companion, who’d been watching the exchange, muttered this to himself, silently:

  That line right there? That’s what the rival in Westerns and stuff always says to the hero when he saves him. I’ve never heard anybody say it to their girlfriend or fiancée.

  And he knew. He knew the guy had meant what he said and that someday, he probably would kill Lua.

  He also knew that was what Lua wanted, too.

  That’s pretty horrendous. What happened here?

  When he saw the legless corpse lying in the first freight room, Czes involuntarily sucked in his breath.

  No matter how you looked at it, this couldn’t be the work of the black suits. In fact, the dead man was a black suit. The next thing Czes thought of was the group in white suits: If it was that lunatic who came to the dining car, then maybe… The immortal was a possibility as well, but it wasn’t as though immortals’ physical strength changed very much; they just didn’t die anymore. They had fewer weak points than the sort of vampire that turned up in novels, but in an ordinary fight, they’d definitely lose. That was immortals for you: They simply didn’t die, and that was all.

  In terms of other people who could have made this corpse…

  Words Czes had heard just a moment ago surfaced in his mind.

  The Rail Tracer.

  “Yeah, right.”

  In spite of himself, Czes spoke this denial aloud. Maybe, somewhere deep in his heart, he was uneasy, and he’d tried to cancel it out by force.

  Another possibility is that he took a direct hit from my explosives.

  The thought reminded him of the hidden cargo he’d loaded on board. The explosives he was going to sell to the Runorata Family were being carried in the next car back. Half of it was powder explosives, packed in special boxes. The other half had been fashioned into clay grenades and sticks of dynamite. They were a bit like handicrafts he’d made for fun, but he’d heard that they actually did use clay bombs in Japan.

  The Runorata Family was in the middle of a war, and they wanted explosives they could use immediately. They also wanted them to be powerful articles that were easy to handle.

  This new type of explosive, which had been created as a by-product of Czes’s research, was more powerful than conventional explosives, and its stability with regard to impacts had been improved. However, after all, it was just a research by-product. He’d been attempting to sell it off cheaply when the Runorata Family had bought it.

  It wouldn’t have been odd for anyone sent flying by those explosives to lose a leg or two, or even be blown away entirely, depending on the situation. That said, since there were no wounds on the corpse other than its missing lower half, he could eliminate that possibility easily.

  So was it the white suits who’d killed this black suit after all, then?

  In any case, he’d find out when he actually met them. Losing interest in the corpse, Czes started toward the conductors’ room again. He’d almost run into some white suits on his way here, but their crazy leader-type hadn’t been with them, so he’d ducked into nearby compartments or bathrooms and hidden until they passed by. After all, if he didn’t negotiate with the group’s central figure, he’d never get anywhere.

  That man isn’t the type to stay in one place. If I make for the conductors’ room, I’m sure to find him at some point.

  Half-convinced of this, Czes headed for the conductors’ room.

  And, as he’d planned, in the second freight car, he finally managed to run into Ladd.

  “Nn?”

  For now, Ladd and the others had decided to head back to the front of the train, but in the second freight car, they encountered a small figure.

  It was the boy he’d seen in the dining car.

  “What, kid? Need something?”

  Ladd treated him coldly, but inwardly, he was already starting to want to kill the boy.

  What’s with you, brat? I know you were in that dining car a minute ago. I know you saw me slaughter that black suit, so what’s with that face, huh? What are you so relaxed for? You think you’re not gonna get offed because you’re a kid? Don’t mess with me, punk. I’ll kill you.

  As dark flames blazed inside him, the boy spoke, smiling brightly:

  “Mister, you’re really strong, aren’t you! You startled me!”

  His intent-to-kill gauge fell slightly.

  “Oh yeah? You think so?”

  “Uh-huh! If you got into the ring, mister, they’d have put a belt on you by now, absolutely!”

  The intent-to-kill gauge fell farther.

  “Huh. I don’t hate brats who are good at complimenting people. So? Whaddaya need?”

  “Actually, I had a favor to ask you.”

  “A favor?”

  The intent-to-kill gauge rose a bit.

  “This isn’t really the place for it. Let’s step into this room to talk.”

  Saying this, the boy went into the freight room, then beckoned to him.

  The intent-to-kill gauge rose.

  “Hey, hey, hey, hey, you rotten little way-too-amiable brat. Do you know what we are?”

  “Don’t look so scary, mister.”

  The room held boxes of all different sizes; Czes found one that was just the right height and sat down on it.

  “Can it. The only reason you’ve still got a pulse is that the great Ladd here is gonna be twenty-five this year and you didn’t talk to me like I’m old. That achievement’s all that’s keeping you alive, and don’t you forget it. Whether your ‘favor’ makes me laugh or ticks me off is gonna determine how much your life is worth, kid.”

  Ladd’s lips were smiling, but his eyes were almost saturated with murderous intent.

  However, without seeming the least bit daunted, the boy looked Ladd full in the face and innocently asked his “favor”:

  “Listen, mister, listen. All those people in the dining car—could you massacre them for me?”

  Ladd’s intent-to-kill gauge jumped and dipped violently.

  His unsettled expression didn’t escape the boy; he kept talking, pressing him harder.

  Both his tone and his attitude had changed completely.

  “You’ll receive fair compensation, of course. You’ll get to enjoy yourselves, and I’ll be purchasing my own safety… Although I’ll have to ask you not to pry into what I mean by ‘safety’ in this case.”

  On hearing what the boy said, Ladd’s eyebrows came together, and the eyes of the other two opened wide.

  Had those words actually come from this boy?

  Of the group, Ladd was the first and only one to recogni
ze his true nature, and he spoke.

  “You…ain’t no kid.”

  “You’re quick on the uptake. That’s a great help.”

  Nodding with a genial smile, Czes continued his negotiation.

  “If you kill all the passengers, your reward will be two hundred thousand dollars.”

  Czes was getting five hundred thousand from the Runorata Family for the explosives. Viewed in that light, his offer to the white suit wasn’t an unaffordable sum, and it would be a small price to pay if it let him identify the immortal. Once these guys killed the passengers, he could take his time eating the one who started to regenerate.

  Considering that low-ranking workers in bootleg liquor factories were currently paid around two hundred dollars a week, it certainly was a huge sum… That said, this was contrasted by the fact that it just about equaled the amount Al Capone made from bootleg liquor in a day.

  “Nah, I’m not touching that one.”

  Ladd was impressive, too: Immediately adapting to this abnormal situation—in which the other guy was an adult who looked like a kid—he promptly switched his brain over to financial negotiations.

  “Just how many people do you think we’d have to kill in the dining car alone? Well, we could kill ’em easy, and we were planning on killing half of ’em, anyway, but I’m not letting you yank us around for chump change like that. Besides, we’ve already got a cash cow to milk. Right about now, my guy on the outside is threatening and sweet-talking the railway company out of about a million dollars. I’m just letting him do what he wants, so he might be asking for a billion or so.”

  “And you actually think a plan that reckless is going to work?”

  “It’s not a question of whether it will or not. It’s all about guts. And hey, if you’re gonna take that angle, there’s no guarantee you’d pay up, either.”

  At Ladd’s words, Czes’s young face warped into a wry smile.

  “That’s very true. From what I can see, though, you may be a homicidal maniac, but you’re ordinary enough to adjust to society, and amusingly, you even have subordinates. That said, you don’t seem to plan at all. I’d assume you’ve lived this long by shrewdly responding to situations as they develop, correct?”

  “Don’t just decide how guys live…”

  In contrast to Ladd, whose tension had begun to drop, Czes’s words picked up momentum:

  “In that case, shall I cooperate with you? I’m in the middle of a deal with New York’s Runorata Family. After this incident is over, I wouldn’t mind putting in a good word for you and ensuring that you’re given a warm welcome.”

  On hearing that, the white suit behind Ladd raised an objection:

  “The Runoratas are one of the biggest syndicates in New York. I doubt they’d agree to harbor mass serial killers that easily.”

  “That’s simple. Just make it unnecessary for them to harbor you.”

  “Huh?”

  “I’ve loaded a large quantity of explosives onto this train…for use in my transaction with the Runoratas, you see. After you’ve disposed of the people in the dining car, I’ll detonate some of them. I brought extra, just in case, so that won’t be a problem.”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “We’ll use that explosion to make them stop the train, and during that time, we’ll disembark and make our escape. Ah, I’ll need you to help carry the remaining explosives. In any case, the cause of the explosion will be simple: The mysterious group in black that occupied the train blew it up. It’s sure to be front-page news.”

  Chuckling, Czes went on, his eyes gradually filling with madness. He wasn’t aware of it, and he probably would have denied it, but his eyes were the same color as those of the man he’d once eaten.

  The warped, stagnant color they’d been when he’d abused Czes.

  “But listen—”

  “It’s fine. The station employees saw the ‘orchestra’ load a lot of cargo onto this train. Besides, those crates actually do seem to have been packed with lots of weapons. Everyone who’s seen your faces will die, and you, who are on the passenger list, got caught up in the explosion and blown to kingdom come… What do you say to that?”

  Then he struck his hands together lightly.

  “Or, if you like, you could leave one member on the train and have them act as a ‘survivor’ and fabricate testimony.”

  When he’d said that much, Czes stopped to wait for the other man’s reaction. After a short silence, Ladd spoke quietly:

  “That don’t make sense.”

  “Oh?”

  “If you’ve got a bomb like that, why aren’t you doing this yourself? Just light the thing, and you’d be done.”

  “That would be inconvenient for me… I’ve got business with a certain corpse, you see. If it got blown to bits, I’d have a problem.”

  Ordinarily, immortals regenerated around their brains. If he blew this one up with a bomb and their head happened to fly off the train, it would be a catastrophe. Besides, if the corpses were very fragmented and mixed together, the immortal might regain consciousness while he was searching for the regenerating body. Czes wanted to make finding the immortal for certain his top priority.

  To finish up, Czes changed his tone and expression back to their childlike versions and asked his “favor” of Ladd:

  “Please, mister… You’ll do it, won’t you?”

  Intent-to-kill gauge at max.

  Immediately, Ladd’s “live eyes”—which brimmed over with energy—returned, and he cheerfully pointed his gun at Czes’s forehead.

  “You said I lived this long by ‘shrewdly responding to situations’ on the fly. Wrong, lousy brat. I’ve never once calculated how I live.”

  The next instant, Ladd’s rifle spit fire, and the top half of the boy’s head was blown off.

  “I calculate how I kill.”

  “Why’d you kill him, Ladd? That would’ve been a pretty good deal.”

  “Mm, yeah. But did you see the guy’s eyes? He had this look on his face that said ‘I’m not gonna get killed.’ He was sure we wouldn’t kill him! He was making a monkey of the great Ladd Russo, see? It was sort of, y’know, frankly, he made me sick, so I shot him up.”

  “Yeah, but, c’mon…”

  “I don’t like it, though. Even right when I blew his head off, he looked cool as a cucumber… What the hell was that about?”

  When Czes opened his eyes, Ladd and the others were no longer in the room.

  …Good grief. That fellow’s a trickier customer than I thought he would be. How many seconds was I unconscious? It’s usually about twenty…

  Czes’s immortal body was apparently quite used to having its head destroyed. He’d regained consciousness at almost the same moment as he finished regenerating.

  Huhn. He destroyed my head rather frequently, after all. With blunt instruments, knives, the wall, the floor… Come to think of it, that was the first time I’ve been shot with a gun. It’s rather nice to have the pain be over in a moment like that.

  After checking to make sure the wound in his head had closed completely, Czes started to leave the freight room.

  Just then—

  “Waaaaaugh! Jacuzzi! Stay with me! It’s just a flesh wound!”

  “Your wound is going to be just fine!”

  There were voices yelling in the corridor, coming closer. They belonged to the weird gunman couple, Isaac and Miria.

  Thinking it would be a bad idea to be seen here, Czes hastily hid behind a mountain of cargo.

  “Huh? There’s nobody here.”

  “Yes, it’s deserted!”

  Isaac and Miria began to search behind the cargo. Timing his move for when they got close to where he was, Czes circled around to the opposite side, careful not to make a sound.

  “That’s strange. From the way they were talking, it sounded as though somebody had been shot dead in here.”

  “Yes, like someone had brought up some sort of deal, and they’d turned them down and killed
them!”

  Why do they know all that?

  Even as he wondered, Czes used the moment when Isaac and Miria had gone around behind the cargo to escape from the room.

  There’s no help for it. I’ll just keep an eye on the situation for a while longer. After all, the group in black may get a chance to kill the hostages in the dining car.

  Czes hadn’t noticed, but…another figure had been lurking in that room.

  The figure was dyed as red as wine.

  I completely failed to pick up on that. Who’d have thought that Czes kid was full of such evil ideas? Or, no, I guess he isn’t a kid.

  Claire had been in charge of the passenger list, so he was able to put names and faces together for most people… Although the white suits and black suits all seemed to have used pseudonyms.

  He’d happened to see the group of white suits go into this freight room, so he’d sneaked in from underneath. Each car on this train had a section of floor that could be opened for use during emergency inspections.

  …And so he’d opened the trapdoor in the corner of the freight room, but he’d never expected to hear a conversation like that one. At the sound of the voices belonging to Isaac and Miria, Claire went back down under the train, quietly closing the trapdoor.

  All right, what next? Well, Czes is dead, so let’s call that good. I guess I’ll just take things in order and go to the second-class compartment the white suits were in.

  Claire, who’d been in the shadows of the cargo the whole time, was positive Czes had been shot and killed.

  Prior to this point, Claire had disposed of two white suits in a third-class compartment. Because he hadn’t felt like taking any extra trouble, he’d just tossed them out of the train, along with the corpses of three black suits that had been in the same room.

  He’d had a reason for temporarily returning to the rear cars. Unless he sent the signal from the conductors’ room at the designated times, the engineers would realize that something was wrong and stop the train. If that happened, the black suits and white suits might fly into a rage and start killing passengers. Even without that, if the train stopped, it would cause problems for Claire personally.