Last Train from Perdition

by Robert McCammon

  “I think,” said the reverend, “that she’ll be sleeping well enough very soon, don’t you?”

  “Give her a sip if she needs it.” Lawson could do nothing more for the girl. It looked as if Fossie’s Mule Punch wouldn’t be necessary for the moment, because Blue’s eyes had closed and she had—thankfully—drifted off again. “Watch her carefully, will you?”

  Easterly nodded, and Lawson could tell he was sincere in his regard for the girl’s life. He figured it was probably because Easterly had stolen so many men from their wives and children in his past life as a back-shooting bounty hunter. Lawson turned away to give his attention to Rooster, who had come along the aisle with his rifle ready and his face contorted in a snarl of anger and fear.

  “Who you shootin’ at?” Rooster demanded. “How come you lettin’ Mr. Tabberson lie out there and die? Come on, tell us!”

  “Watch that gun, Rooster,” Gantt cautioned, though his voice was weak.

  “Pardon, Mr. Gantt sir, but hush up! I’m wantin’ to know what Alabama’s got us into! That fella says he’s a warbuck, I’m kinda believin’ it’s so!”

  “That’s what I think!” Mathias had stood up from his seat. “You should’ve seen him back at the Palace! And look at him now! There’s something mighty wrong about this gent!”

  “I am not a warlock,” said Lawson, and he spoke it loudly and forcefully enough to silence all other voices.

  “What I am,” he went on, into the small noise of the wind keening around the car, “is a vampire.” He moved his gaze from face to face and found them all frozen. “Well…a correction. I’m not entirely gone…that is, not entirely like one of the things that has blocked this track and has taken Mr. Tabberson to his death…or worse. They’re out there in a large number. If they got in here or got to you out there, they would either take you to be turned or they would drink you dry and then tear you apart. I could do that too, if I were of a mind.”

  “Wait a minute, wait a damned chicken-pickin’ minute!” Rebinaux said, and he too was on his feet. “What the hell is a vampire? I thought you said you was from Alabama!”

  Lawson grunted. This was going to take a little demonstration.

  “Mathias,” he said, “do you have a coin?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Take the coin and throw it as hard as you can against the front wall.”

  “Huh?”

  “Just do it. As hard as you can.”

  Mathias removed from his trouser pocket a small coin. He shook his head as if he thought Lawson utterly insane, and then he reared his arm back and threw the coin with all his strength a distance of a little more than twelve feet.

  “Pitching is not your game,” said Lawson, as he leaned against the front wall next to the door. He opened his right fist to show in his palm the Liberty Seated ten-cent piece.

  They had not seen him move. He had been standing several feet behind Mathias one instant, and in the next he was at the far wall, waiting there at his leisure. He had gone along the aisle past Rooster and the Winchester hardly leaving a swirl of disturbed air. Rooster’s back was still to him when Lawson spoke, and when he spun around he brought the rifle’s barrel up again aimed at the other man’s chest.

  “Easy, Ann,” he said, because she’d drawn her gun once more and it was levelled at Rooster’s head. “It’s not me you have to fear,” he told the group. “It’s those things out there. Lead bullets can hurt me, but they can’t kill me or my kind. There are two ways to do that: a consecrated silver bullet through the skull, or cutting the head off. I’m sure you have questions, but be brief. We have to figure out a plan of—”

  “A vampire,” said Reverend Easterly. He had risen to his feet from Blue’s side. “I’m not an uneducated man. I’ve even read Polidori’s book. I would say you are a lunatic, sir, but I’m afraid I know better.”

  “Good. That advances us somewhat.”

  “Of all the Satan-spawned garbage on this earth and in the world beyond…I never thought I’d see the likes of you. I’ve heard of your kind for years, but to see one…” Easterly had the crucifix between his hands again and held onto it as if to dear life itself. “They have been the subject of legends in Europe for hundreds of years,” he told the others, but his eyes never left Lawson. “Spawn of the Devil, the very worst disciples of evil under the sun.”

  “Under the moon, to be exact,” said Lawson.

  “I thought them fiction,” the reverend went on. “A figment of a mad imagination. But now…seeing you…knowing you. Why don’t you tell them what you drink to give yourself a so-called eternal life?”

  “I’ll do better. I’ll show them.” He decided to put on a display of his speed again, and within an eyeblink he had passed Rooster once more and was opening the large canvas bag that Ann had brought aboard holding his clothes, his protective black shroud, and other items. From the bag he took another of the Japanese bottles. He uncorked it, held it over his open mouth and poured. The blood ran out onto his tongue, which fortunately had not yet become forked nor turned black but it was the color of gray ash. He closed his mouth and felt the blood being absorbed by the hollow fangs in their pits in his upper jaw. It was a delicious taste, though it had somewhat of a stockyard flavor; nothing could come close nor was nearly as satisfying or as strength-giving as the real thing.

  Lawson corked the bottle again and said with gore on his lips, “Cattle blood, gentlemen. A priest friend of mine in New Orleans secures it for me. What Reverend Easterly is trying to tell you is that vampires drink human blood. And yes, this is true.” He dropped the bottle back into the bag with a smile.

  Then he propelled himself at Eli Easterly. His smile was gone.

  Human eyes could not follow him at his half-speed; the human mind could not comprehend his full speed. He was there and then he was not, as if he’d abruptly vanished. In the next heartbeat he was in Easterly’s terror-stricken face, and the terror was intensified when Lawson’s mouth opened wide, the lower jaw unhinged and from the upper jaw the fangs slid out. Easterly’s crucifix came up; with no effort Lawson knocked the man’s hand aside and the Cross flew away across the car.

  Lawson grasped the man’s collar and spun him around, standing behind him to face the rifle Rooster held and—yes—the pistol the soul-shaken Eric aimed at him too.

  “Lisssssten to me, every one of you!” he said, as he allowed the fangs to retract and his mouth to properly arrange itself. “You can think of me as a monster, that’s fine. There’s a war going on, and Ann and I are in it. You are too. I’m sorry for that but it can’t be helped. Now…together, we’ve got to figure a way out of this. We could try to wait them out, until sunrise, but they won’t allow that. You’re going to have to follow my directions or before this night is over you’ll either be dead or you’ll be on the way to being turned…which will make you like them. Or me. And gentlemen, just look at what I am. You have no damned idea what this is like. I am a dead man walking…but by God I won’t be destroyed by them. Or taken by them, and I’ll protect Ann and all of you as best I can.” He looked from face to face. It might have been a trick of the lamplight, but everyone seemed to have gone a few shades gray. Even Rooster.

  “Any questions?” Lawson asked.

  The wind shrieked and the snow was blown in white gusts past the windows. Otherwise there was silence.

  Then: “They must want something. What is it they want?”

  “They want me,” Lawson said to Mathias. He released Easterly, who to his credit did not cringe nor fall to his knees in terror, but simply lowered his head and went over to retrieve his crucifix. “And they want Ann. I spoke to one out there who I think is their leader. He looks like a twelve-year-boy but he’s far from it. He said if Ann and I give ourselves up, they’ll let all of you go.”

  “Well…hell…” said Rebinaux, but he sounded as if his mouth was stuffed with cotton bolls.

  “If you want to save us,” said Presco, who was near jabbering, “then…that’s th
e only way, ain’t it? Lord Jesus and Holy Joe, I don’t want to be et up or turned into no blood-sucker!”

  “Unfortunately,” Lawson answered, “they lie. As soon as they had us, there would be nothing to stop them from going through this car like a roomful of flying knives. And if you think you could get outside and outrun them…I’m twenty-five years turned, gents. Some of them will be eighty…ninety…a hundred years or more. They get faster with age.”

  “Shit creek,” Gantt muttered. His eyes were wild. “We’re up shit creek, ain’t we? I mean…I can’t hardly believe what I’m—”

  The conductor was interrupted when something came out of the woods on the right.

  It slammed against the window between Mathias and Eric with a force that nearly shattered the glass. Even so, the window cracked with a gunshot noise along the diagonal. Stuck there for a few seconds was a bloody mass that had an eyeless face and a flame-red beard. The mouth was open, but there was nothing inside the mouth but the darkness of the night beyond.

  The naked skin of Jack Tabberson slid down the glass, leaving thick scrawls of gore to mark its slow passage. Then it fell away, into the snow.

  Eight.

  Keene Presco began to laugh.

  It began almost as a low stutter, then it went high and wild, and the bearded bear of a man staggered and almost fell and suddenly in his laugh there was a choking sound that might have been the birth of a cry of terror.

  “Hold on to yourself!” To Lawson’s surprise, it was the reverend who’d spoken the command. Easterly’s voice rang out so forcefully that it stopped Presco’s cry in mid-choke. “There’s no use in that!” Easterly continued. All eyes were upon him. “Whatever this…man is,” he said, motioning toward Lawson, “we’ve got to trust him.” His face betrayed the disgust he felt at saying that. “Before God I never imagined such a company as this, but here we are.”

  “I’ve got this rifle!” Rooster said. He had turned his back on the bloody window. “I’ll take ’em down bullet by bullet!”

  “Like I told you, lead can hurt them but it can’t kill,” said Lawson. “Ann, how many silvers do you have?”

  She checked her holster, counting with her fingers. She had one silver to every three leads. “Five in the cylinder, eight in the holster. Twenty more in my bag.” She took the opportunity to slide a sixth silver into the pistol.

  “Good. I’ve got thirty, plus the four in my gun and two in the derringer.”

  “How many would you say are out there?”

  “I couldn’t tell.” Lawson balked at saying Very many, because the truth would only further fray raw nerves. He didn’t want anyone panicking and trying to run for their lives through the snow…they’d end up like Tabberson, if the vampires were in a mood to be merciful. He saw in her face that she wanted to ask another question… My father, among them? He looked away, and on this subject Ann did not pursue him.

  “This ain’t happenin’!” Rebinaux’s voice was as choked as Presco’s had been. “Man alive, I’m sittin’ in the Palace drunker’n eight skunks! This just ain’t—”

  There came the sound of someone walking on the front platform.

  The door’s glass inset was dirty with coal smoke, but through it could be seen the top of a small boy’s head, the wind-touselled hair, and the blurred upper portion of the pallid face. A hand rose up, became a fist, and knocked at the glass.

  “That’s the boy?” Mathias asked. He had gotten himself under control and was eerily calm, as if at the bottom of his barrel had been a courage that he’d not expected to find.

  “He calls himself Junior,” Lawson answered. “And remember, he’s not a boy.”

  “Boy, warbuck or blood-sucker,” said Rooster, “I’ll put a slug right ’twixt his eyes!”

  “Steady.” Lawson took two strides toward him, reached out and grasped the rifle’s barrel. He pushed it toward the ceiling. “All you’re going to do is make him mad.” The fist knocked again on the glass, with insistence. With no effort Junior could shatter that glass and let the wind in to gnaw at everyone whose veins carried human blood. “Let’s find out a little more about him and our situation.”

  “Our situation? We’re at the damned gates of Hell, ain’t we?” Gantt asked.

  “Everyone be easy,” Lawson cautioned. He approached the door. “Rooster, take your finger off that trigger. Eric, put your gun down.” The young Cavanaugh failed to respond. “Eric!” Lawson said, in a sharper tone, and this time he was obeyed.

  Lawson opened the door. The wind and snow blew in past Henry Styles Junior, who smiled up at his opponent with boy-sized teeth that had a space between the front two.

  “Are you free to talk?” Junior asked.

  “I am.”

  “A fine assortment here.” The creature had quickly taken appraisal of the passengers, as if he’d just opened a box of candies. His gaze snagged on the wounded girl. His chin lifted and his nostrils flared. “Oh,” he said, “she smells delicious. But she’s dying, isn’t she?”

  “I’ve heard what you want. Is there anything else?”

  “Yes indeed.” He came in and closed the door behind him, but he ventured no further into the car. He locked eyes for a few seconds with Eli Easterly before he returned his full attention to Lawson. “We don’t want these blood-puppets. We want you and Miss Kingsley. They’ll be free to go, as soon as you disarm yourselves and we have you. You know, her father wishes to see her. Would you like that?” He offered Ann a ghastly smile, but she made no reply.

  “And your sister too,” Junior went on. “Eva’s here. Yes, that’s right. This will be a family reunion.” When Ann still gave no response, Junior’s gaze shifted to Lawson. “What point is there to resist, Trevor? You’re searching for LaRouge; she wants to see you. All will be taken care of, all will be as it should be. But…Trevor, let these humans go on their way, won’t you? And that girl there…shouldn’t she be getting to a doctor?”

  “We both know that you won’t let this train pass,” said Lawson. “Granting life is not in your nature. I know, Henry…because part of me is what you are. Didn’t you ever want to fight it? Didn’t you—”

  “It is a losing battle,” came the answer, in the voice of a little boy grown cold over the span of decades. “A foolish endeavor, leading to extermination. Miss Kingsley?” he called. “Would you like to see your father and sister now?”

  “My father and sister,” she managed to say, “are dead.”

  “You have that wrong…Ann, if I may. What they have found—and all of us have found—is true life. A life of abundance and power beyond the dreams of blood puppets and their faulty beliefs.” He fired a quick scornful glance at Easterly. “What you think of as life is death, Ann. Look at your friend Lawson here. He knows it’s true, because part of him wants to take hold of this life, to revel in it, to experience the fullness of our rapture, to never perish. Don’t let him lie to you and say he does not. And here he is now, making his stand.” Junior grinned; it was not a pretty sight. His eyes glinted red and his lower jaw appeared misshapen, as if near jumping out of joint. Lawson figured the blood smell of Tabberson had fired them all up into a frenzy, and now this aroma of Blue’s blood was working on him in the close confines of the car.

  “Making his pointless stand,” Junior said, “and dooming all of you fine people to a tortured fate.” The child-vampire swept his arm across in a motion that seemed to be pulling his audience into his chest. “Well, he’s just plain selfish! What your engineer got was a quick release. Yours will be a long experience.” His smile, like a jagged razor slash, centered upon Lawson. “Ten minutes, sir. That is your…shall we say…deadline.”

  “Here’s your damn deadline,” said Rooster, and fired his rifle from the hip.

  The blast made an explosive sound within the car. A bullet hole appeared in the wall behind Junior, along with a splatter of thick black ichor. The Winchester slug had passed through his body on the left side.

  Junior rocked back on hi
s heels, then righted himself. His smile had faded only a fraction. He touched his shirt where the black stain was spreading. Lawson knew that the ichor would stop flowing within a few seconds, sealing the wound at both entrance and exit. Already the ichor would be healing any damage to the mysterious dead-in-life internals of the vampire. Lawson knew; he himself felt as if he were withering from the inside out.

  “I think that broke a rib or two,” Junior said. “Ohhhhh…you will so regret—”

  Ann’s gun had come up. Her face was a study of cold fury. She pulled the trigger.

  Henry Styles Junior for all of his one hundred and five years was the quickest vampire Lawson had ever seen. Even as Ann’s pistol cracked and the silver angel blasted from its barrel, Junior had hurled himself headlong at the window to his right. He was smashing through the glass as the consecrated slug passed his blurred shape and smacked into the wall. Then he was gone, leaving the wind to blow snow through the broken window and small bits of glass to fall with the sound of tinkling chimes.

  At once Lawson was at the window with his vampire-killing Colt drawn. He scanned the night, seeing rocks and wind-twisted trees but no trace of movement from the Dark Society.

  “That was not very smart,” he said to Rooster, and he did not fail to note that the rifle was now aimed at his own midsection. “Please, let’s not be really foolish.”

  “Hell, what do you expect?” Rebinaux’s voice had gone as high as a flute. “We just gonna sit and wait here to get killed? I’m for runnin’ for it! Get my ass outta here while I can! Deuce…Keene…you with me?”

  “Yeah,” said Presco. “I’m with you. I ain’t stayin’ here and waitin’ to be et!” He gave a brief glance at Ann’s pistol. “You can shoot me if you please, but I’m gettin’! Deuce, how about it?”

  Mathias was a few seconds in answering. “You won’t make it fifty feet from this train. Look what they did to that engineer.” He shivered. “Can somebody draw the curtain on that window? It’s going to get real cold in here, real—”