Last Train from Perdition

by Robert McCammon

  He drank from the Japanese bottle. Drained it dry. Still he burned, and still he yearned.

  Something scuttled in the alley.

  It took him two seconds to focus upon the gray rat that was feasting upon a scattering of garbage in the snow. What was in that pile of refuse was difficult to say, but even to one of vampiric nature it was repulsive.

  Blood flowed within the rodent. That was all Lawson needed to know.

  He was on the rat in a blur of motion. It was picked up before it realized it was in danger. The desperate creature who gripped it opened his mouth to tear the rat’s head off and drink the fluids in a fountain of gore from the ragged neck.

  “Mr. Lawson?”

  Someone behind him, in the alley.

  He froze, standing in the falling snow with the squirming rat right at his mouth, the small claws struggling for purchase, the red eye a bloody cup of terror.

  “Mr. Lawson? Sir?”

  It was the doctor. Lawson would’ve sensed him there, but all his powers and energies had been aimed toward feeding this ungodly hunger.

  He dropped his hand. The rat gave him a little nip on the index finger as it jumped free. No ichor rose; the rodent’s teeth had not gone deep enough. The little scratch would be healed in a few minutes. The rat scrabbled into a tangle of broken crates and was gone.

  He turned toward Fossie, who stood about ten feet away at the alley’s entrance. If the doctor had seen what he was about to do, what of it?

  Take him, the vampire thought. Do it quickly…

  Fossie cleared his throat. Snowflakes were stuck on the lenses of his spectacles. “I…have sent the message. The train’s moving out. You should be on it, ya?”

  They stared at each other in silence for a few seconds.

  Then Lawson nodded.

  “Yes, I should be,” he answered, and when he approached Fossie the doctor drew back. Maybe he’d seen nothing, maybe he’d seen everything; at the moment Lawson cared not.

  The train’s whistle gave a shriek and the bell clanged. The wheels were moving…slowly at first, grinding across the rails. White steam hissed from beneath the engine and coal smoke and cinders were beginning to plume from the flared bonnet stack. The big whale-oil headlamp was burning in its protective red tin box mounted just in front of the stack, and leading the engine was a badly-dented cowcatcher that looked as if it had already dispatched a few buffalo to their happy grazing grounds. In the cab the engineer stood at his controls and the black fireman was shovelling coal into the engine’s burning maw like he himself was a well-oiled machine.

  As Lawson reached for the handrail to pull himself up the steps to the passenger car’s front platform, Fossie called out over the increasing noise of the moving wheels and song of steam. He said, “Whatever your illness is…good luck to you.”

  Lawson did not answer nor look again at the doctor. He went into the passenger car, closed the door at his back, and set eyes first upon the thin, rigid figure of Eli Easterly seated to his left. The man wore a Bible-black suit with a white shirt and a black string-tie. His face and hair were nearly the same shade of gray. Beside him on the slatted wooden seat was a brown leather suitcase, worn by years of wanderings. Their eyes met, but very quickly Easterly shifted his expressionless gaze to watch the last lamps of Perdition slide past.

  Lawson wondered what Easterly would think if he knew the vampire’s Eye—the flaming orb that entered a human mind and revealed all—had shown him on the train trip up from Helena that this individual had killed at least ten men, had fallen upon the salvation of whiskey and God in equal doses, had become a travelling preacher for years to atone for his sins of wife-beating, whoremongering, and murder in the name of bounty hunting, and had been in Perdition to visit the grave of his only son, shot in the back two months ago and laid to rest in a muddy field along with all the other sons and daughters.

  It was a terrible dark justice that claimed the innocent, Lawson thought, because the Eye had shown him that nearly all of those men Easterly had killed were shot in the back.

  The whistle blew again, a mournful sound. Snow whirled past the windows. Lawson smelled the rich perfume of Blue’s blood, and he wondered how in the name of Christ he was going to make these thirty long miles.

  Five.

  Lawson passed Eli Easterly and looked for a place to settle himself where he could close his eyes and try to mentally escape this confinement. They had set the ladder with Blue upon it down in the aisle between the seats, toward the rear of the car. Blue was still unconscious, a blanket supporting her head and the second tucked in around her. The bulldog conductor was standing over her, one hand braced against a seat and the other checking his pocketwatch to see how much time they’d lost. Ann sat in the seat ahead, her pistol on the slats uncocked but within quick reach. Mathias, Presco and Rebinaux sat on the other side of the aisle in varying stages of sullen resignation, though Mathias—having gotten a fearsome glimpse of something, he knew not what—kept a hand clasped over his eyes as if in terror of seeing it again, and he muttered to himself so much that his former cohorts in crime glanced at him as one might take in a pitiful wretch whose mind had crumbled.

  Lawson sat down on the seat facing Eric, who had distanced himself by several rows from the others.

  “Thank you,” the young man said. “I never would’ve—”

  “Keep your voice down,” said Lawson, as quietly as possible over the rumble of the wheels. “What I have to say to you I don’t want anyone else hearing.”

  “All right. What is it?”

  “I want to know…did you ever try to get back home?”

  “I couldn’t. I had no money of my own, so I couldn’t get very far even if I did get away. Mathias watched us all like a hawk and kept everything in his strongbox…and I have to tell you, we’re leaving about eight thousand dollars behind in that cabin.”

  “Does Fossie know where the cabin is?”

  “Maybe. It wouldn’t be hard for him to find. Why?”

  “Your gang just bought the doctor a suitable office and surgery for the next person who needs it. I’ll telegraph him from Helena to let him know. You’ll of course tell me where the cabin is and where the strongbox is kept. Agreed?”

  “Sure, but I wouldn’t doubt that Cantrell won’t try to find it first, knowing it’s there to be found.”

  “Will he find it?”

  “Not unless he pulls up the floorboards under Mathias’s cot. But he’ll have to break the box open. The key’s in Deuce’s pocket right now.”

  “It won’t take us long to get to Helena,” Lawson said. “The telegraph office is right there at the station.” He leaned closer toward the young man. His senses were keen; he could smell the blood flowing through Eric’s veins. “Another thing,” he went on. “Listen to me carefully.” He paused for a few seconds to make sure he had Eric’s full attention. “In Helena you’re going to go with the girl on the hospital wagon. I’m going to give you three hundred dollars. You won’t be travelling to Cheyenne with the others. You’ll catch a train from Helena to Omaha as soon as you can and you’ll go home. Are you hearing me?”

  Eric didn’t answer quickly enough. Lawson repeated with some force behind it: “Are you hearing me?”

  “I am,” Eric said. He stared out the window beside him, at the darkness that spat snow against the dirty glass. The train was curving, probably going through a mountain pass. “I thank you for getting me out of there,” he said. “I will go home…but you don’t know what it’s like, living with my father. And my two brothers…both of them hung the moon, he thinks. I, on the other hand, am a maker of mud pies. I suppose he told you all about me.”

  “Enough to know you’ve made some damn bad choices.”

  “I didn’t choose to be born to this family. I didn’t choose to be different from my brothers. To want to live for anything but work, and stepping on people in the name of commerce and politics.” He spoke that last word as if it were a fatal disease. “To want
adventure…freedom from the kind of life that’s chained them both down so they can’t take a piss without asking his permission. Oh, and they had to marry into the right families. Well, I’m made that way, Mr. Lawson. I’m made to turn my back on everything my father thinks is holy, because I’m telling you…I don’t fit in his church.”

  Lawson nodded. He understood the young man’s point, but that was not why he was here doing this job. “I was paid to get you out of Perdition and aimed toward home. I’m also keeping you out of jail…possibly prison, or worse if Mathias could convince a judge you killed someone. Which I’m not sure you haven’t. But look at me and listen very closely, Eric…it’s not up to me whether you stay in Omaha, in your father’s house, or wherever. It is up to me to make certain you do at least go see your father. Then you can go and do as you please. But…you are going to Omaha, and you are going to see him. If you don’t, I’ll hear about it.” Lawson settled back against the hard slats. “I won’t like hearing that you’ve disobeyed me, after what Ann and I have done. I’ll track you from Helena if I have to, and I’ll find you. So do me the favor of time and yourself the favor of mercy, and at least let your father see his son.”

  Eric kept his gaze directed out the window. He drew a long breath and released it, and from that action of resignation Lawson understood that Eric had been thinking of catching a train in Helena for anywhere but Omaha.

  “I’ll go see him,” Eric said at last. “I won’t promise I’ll stay there a whole day.”

  “As you please. My business with you and your father is concluded when you set eyes upon each other. I wasn’t contracted to be your guardian angel.”

  “Fair enough,” the young man agreed.

  Ann suddenly said, “Lawson! She’s coming around!”

  At once Lawson was on his feet and walking back along the car toward where Blue lay. Ann was kneeling at her side and the conductor was standing over her. He moved aside to let Lawson kneel down. The aroma of dried blood in the packed wound hit Lawson with a force that no one else in the car could possibly understand. His face tightened. His lower jaw wanted to unhinge and the fangs to slide out from the upper. The images of destroying everyone here in a fury of insane greed wanted to further unhinge the iron door of the crypt he carried with him to protect weak humans just like these.

  Blue’s eyes fluttered. She was as pallid as death, and already she looked to Lawson as she might if she were turned…and yet, if she were turned she would never need worry about lead bullets again. They might hurt, but they could never kill.

  “Water,” Blue whispered.

  A leather-covered canteen was offered from an age-spotted hand with crooked knuckles.

  Lawson took it. He unscrewed the cap and as gently as possible put the canteen to Blue’s lips. She was able to drink just a little, but most ran down her chin. Lawson handed the canteen back. “Thank you,” he said.

  “Sorry she’s in such a bad way,” said the conductor. He returned the canteen to a shelf above where he usually sat. “Which one of them fellas shot her?”

  “The one who used to have a gunhand,” Ann said.

  “Somebody talkin’ about me?” Rebinaux spoke up. “Hell, ain’t my fault Deuce pushed her! I weren’t aimin’ to shoot no saloon girl!”

  “But you did,” the conductor answered. “I ought to come over there and knock a few teeth outta that dumb-lookin’ face.”

  “Come on then, pappy!” Rebinaux started to get out of his seat. He was grinning like a pure fool but there was meanness in his mouth. “I’ll bust yore ass with one gotdamn hand!”

  “Sit down.” Mathias reached up and took hold of Rebinaux’s jacket sleeve. The man’s voice was a weak ghost of what it had been at the first of the evening. “There’s no point in that, Johnny.”

  Rebinaux jerked away. His cheeks had reddened and his overhanging brow seemed even lower than a few seconds before. “No point? No point? Hell, we’re all bound for Mexican neckties and we’re sittin’ here doin’ nothin’? Jesus eatin’ hominy, Deuce! You’re supposed to be lookin’ out for us! In the old days we’d storm this bunch and turn ’em guts-side out! We’d take this whole damn train over! And look at us, Keene!” he said to his other companion, trying to pull him into this fray. “We’re the saddest sacks ever sittin’ in shitty britches!” Presco responded by staring at the floorboards. “Well,” Rebinaux raved on, “you can both go all hangy-dog but at least I can knock a damn old man into next week!”

  “Come on yourself, sweetpea!” The conductor smiled, though his face was also blooming red and his white eyebrows were dancing. He turned to fully face his adversary. His hands had become fists, and he planted his feet like a man who would not be moved. “One wallop from Glorious George Gantt and your head’ll be on the moon ’fore mornin’!”

  “Sit down,” Mathias repeated.

  “Seems we ought to clean house startin’ with that punk!” Rebinaux showed his bad green teeth at Eric Cavanaugh. “I told you we shouldn’t oughta take him on! Look what he’s brung us!”

  “Sit down, Dixie,” said the vampire. He stood up and drew back his coat to show his two guns. Of course no one but Ann knew that the Colt with the grip of yellowed bone, sitting backwards in Lawson’s holster on his left side, was loaded with six silver bullets blessed with holy water by Father John Deale. The silver angels could kill a human, yes, but they were meant to penetrate the skull of a member of the Dark Society and in so doing burn the creature’s body to a fine ash. Within Lawson’s coat was a derringer that also carried two of the consecrated bullets. “Down,” he repeated, putting a hand on the pistol with the rosewood grip.

  “You ain’t gonna shoot an unarmed man!” Rebinaux spat back. “You ain’t got the stones for that!”

  “You and I measure courage in different ways. Ann, which ear should I take off?”

  “Gentlemen,” said a hollow voice. “Please.”

  Eli Easterly had risen to his feet. He came along the aisle slowly, and though the train was moving at a good clip now and the car was rocking a few degrees back and forth he kept his balance well, not needing to touch any seatback as he passed. He positioned himself between Lawson and Rebinaux. “I have no idea what’s transpired here,” he said, “but violence is never an answer.” His sad gray eyes in the gray face under the gray but carefully-combed hair were fixed upon Lawson. “You’re an intelligent man. You understand the futility of violence.”

  “I understand it’s sometimes unfortunately necessary.”

  “Perhaps. But I doubt it’s necessary to deprive anyone present of an ear.” He turned his head toward Rebinaux. “You should sit down, sir. God is in this place. He will protect, if you allow Him.”

  “I don’t need protection! I need a damn horse and two hours head start!”

  Easterly nodded. “Even so,” he said quietly.

  The moment hung. Then Rebinaux made a farting sound with his mouth toward Glorious George Gantt. He said, “You can all go straight to Hell and roast your nuts! You too, lady! And you most of all, ya coward!” After making this statement to Deuce Mathias he staggered across the aisle and sat by himself on a seat toward the front.

  Easterly came forward a few more paces to look down upon Blue, who was making small whimpering sounds but appeared to be for the most part unconscious again. “Wound near the heart,” he said. “She’s lost a lot of blood.”

  “She has,” Lawson answered.

  “Dr. Fossenhurst couldn’t remove the bullet?”

  “No. We’re taking her to the hospital in Helena.”

  “And these men?”

  “Bound for Cheyenne. Wanted for crimes in the territory.”

  “Ah. You and the young lady are the law?”

  “In a way.”

  A faint smile pulled at the corners of the man’s mouth, but his eyes remained cold. “I thought I recognized you for what you are on the trip up. I’ve seen many of your kind, but this is the first time I’ve met a female bounty hunter.” He gave Ann
a slight nod.

  “We have a job to do.” Lawson decided not to try to correct the man as to their true mission. “We intend to do it with no further violence. About Dr. Fossenhurst…are you a friend of his?”

  “Not exactly. He wrote a letter to me informing me of…” The gray eyes blinked, and the faint smile was gone. “A tragedy in my family.”

  “I’m very sorry, Mr. Easterly,” Lawson said, and immediately he realized what mistake the need for blood and all this aroma of gore had done to his senses.

  Eli Easterly’s face remained blank. His head cocked slightly to one side, as if he were trying to puzzle out exactly what he was looking at. “I don’t recall telling you my name,” he said.

  “Didn’t you?” Lawson asked, himself feeling as if his world was rapidly spinning out of control.

  “No, I did not.”

  “Surely you—”

  “No.” Easterly’s right hand slid into his coat. It emerged again holding a small unornamented silver crucifix, which he clasped to his chest. “It’s Reverend Easterly,” he said, and Lawson felt the drawing of some sharp blade between them. Red embers of a fire had begun to ignite deep in the man’s eyes. Lawson thought He doesn’t know, but he senses—

  There was sudden jolt that made Easterly stumble backward and grip the seatback beside him. The jolt brought a squall from Johnny Rebinaux. Ann staggered into Lawson, but the vampire held steady.

  The train’s wheels shrieked, an ungodly sound. The timbers of the passenger car groaned as if in mortal pain.

  “Christ Almighty!” Gantt hollered over the noise. He had nearly been pitched to his knees.

  In struggling to keep his balance, Easterly lost the crucifix. It hit the floor with a metallic chime a few inches from Lawson’s right boot.

  The train was slowing. Steam bellowed from beneath the engine and for an instant whitened out the windows. Then it had cleared and again there was just the night and the blowing snow. The train continued to lose speed, the wheels still screaming, and then…