Last Train from Perdition

by Robert McCammon

  Quick, he was about to say, but it came more quickly than he’d thought.

  A shot rang out. The bullet broke through the next window and knocked a chunk from the seatback in front of Eric. A second and third bullets finished the job on that window. More gunfire erupted from the other side of the train. “Get down!” Lawson shouted, as the glass began to be shattered from every window along the car. A slug shrieked past Lawson’s head and broke the glass behind him. One of the oil lamps was hit and spilled its burning fuel upon the floorboards. As Ann dove for the floor to cover Blue, a bullet ricocheting off the edge of a window clipped the brim of her cap and knocked it off her head. Gantt cried out in pain as wood splinters pierced the side of his face. Mathias felt a bullet pass so close to his skull he thought it might have left a part in his hair. Rooster was firing back, standing in the aisle shooting from one side to another and seemingly oblivious to being hit though the slugs were zipping by him to the left and the right. “Get down!” Lawson hollered at him, and at last the fireman seemed to realize the danger he was in. One last shot into the night and he threw himself down between two seats just as a couple of hornets passed through where he’d been standing.

  The barrage of bullets went on for maybe fifteen more seconds. When it ended every window had been opened to the bitter cold and the walls of the passenger car had been pierced by at least twenty slugs.

  In the aftermath of the gunshots there was the noise of the wind shrieking through the splintered frames and the crackling of the fire gnawing at the floorboards. Lawson crawled to the puddle of burning oil, took his coat off and mashed the flames down. It occurred to him that in short order the freezing temperatures would make the humans long for the warmth of a fire, but for now they couldn’t be forced out into the open any more than they already were.

  “Jesus! Jesus!” Rebinaux was saying, from his huddled position on the floor.

  Lawson could smell fresh blood; someone had taken a slug. “Who’s hit?”

  “Took a faceful of splinters,” Gantt croaked. “Damn close.”

  “I’m all right,” Ann said. “Lost my cap.”

  “The girl?”

  “She wasn’t hit.”

  “Anyone else? Eric?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Easterly?”

  “Untouched,” he answered.

  “I’m good,” said Rooster.

  “Mathias?” Lawson prodded.

  “All right…for the moment.”

  “Lord…God…I’m hit,” said the rusty sawblade voice of Keene Presco. “Busted my damn collarbone…left side.”

  “How bad?”

  “Hurts somethin’ awful…bleedin’…but I don’t think I’m dyin’.” Another shot was fired into the passenger car, followed by a second and a third, but there were no cries of pain or panic. Lawson figured the bullets had come in one glassless window and out one opposite. Wanting us to keep our heads down, he thought. Particularly my head and Ann’s. He took a moment to dump the lead from his second Colt and arm it with the silvers.

  “Alabama?” Rooster called from further along the car. “You got any ideas?”

  “Keeping from being shot is the first one.”

  “If you’re like that thing,” said Mathias, “you don’t have much to worry about.”

  “It would be an inconvenience I’d rather not endure.”

  “You gotta get us outta this!” Rebinaux piped up. “You and me, we’re brothers from Dixie, ain’t we? You can’t let me die!”

  Lawson didn’t know how to answer that, so he remained silent.

  “Gettin’ mighty cold in here,” Gantt said.

  And then, from outside, a voice called that at first seemed to be part of the wind.

  “Annie?” it said. “Annie, come to a window!”

  Lawson heard her make a choking sound that wrenched at his heart.

  “Annie? Eva’s here with me! Eva’s here!”

  “You know one of those monsters?” Easterly asked.

  “Her father and sister,” Lawson said, so Ann wouldn’t have to. “Both taken and turned.”

  “Annie? Baby? Look out here at us!”

  “You know what they mean to do,” said the vampire.

  “Shoot me in the head as soon as I raise up. They’ve likely got a rifle already aimed.”

  “Ann? Sssspeak to me, ssssister!”

  That voice was the worst; it was at once both a fierce demand and a pitiful entreaty, and Lawson knew it must be repulsing Ann and pulling at her in equal measures. She had not seen her father or sister in months; did she dare now to lift her head over the bullet-riddled sill to lay eyes upon what her family had become?

  “I love you, Ann! I sssstill love you!”

  “I’ve got the direction fixed,” Ann said quietly, but enough to reach Lawson. “Standing about eight feet apart, maybe twenty…twenty-five feet from the window next to me.”

  “Come to us, Annie! We can all be together again!”

  “Lawson?” Ann called.

  “Yes?”

  “I can do it.”

  “I know you can,” he said. “Do you want me to—”

  “No.”

  He heard the hammer of her pistol being cocked, even though she was muffling the noise under her coat.

  From where he crouched on the floor he couldn’t see her toward the rear of the car, but he knew she was readying herself for what she needed to do. He started to say Careful but he did not, for he knew she would be…and this she had to do alone.

  “We’re waiting for you, Ann,” Eva called. “Come join ussss…join ussss.” The eerie voice was whipped away by the wind.

  Ann had to strike while she could still locate them by sound.

  She lifted her head.

  Through the falling snow she saw their shapes, standing about eight feet apart but maybe thirty feet away instead of twenty; the wind had done that trickery. She had the impression of ragged figures, like a pair of impoverished beggars. She could make out no facial features and she didn’t want to. All she could tell was that one was taller than the other though they both were sickeningly thin. She brought her gun up and took a fraction of a second to eyeball where she wanted the silver slug to go.

  Her finger was on the trigger. Already the creature who had once been Eva Kingsley was whirling away, long dark hair flying in the wind, but the shade of David Kingsley had stepped forward, both arms outstretched toward her.

  “My Annie,” he said, and he sounded to be in terrible pain.

  She caught a glimpse of the gore that covered the front of his shirt and his suit coat. She dared not look into his face. She heard the high report of a rifle being fired from amid the rocks to her left. Without flinching she fired her revolver at the same instant as the bullet hit the windowframe beside her.

  She didn’t have to wait to know that the bullet had struck the center of his forehead. When the second rifle bullet passed through where her own head had been, Ann was crouched down on the floorboards with the smoking gun pressed to her bosom and her eyes squeezed tightly shut.

  Lawson lifted his head and saw the figure burning, breaking apart in red-rimmed fissures, turning to ashes that would be scattered upon the rocks and through the trees of this wild country, a long way from the boardrooms and banks of Louisiana.

  The creature that had been David Kingsley perished in silence, but just before his head imploded he looked up into the snowfall though by then he had no eyes.

  As he crumbled and the empty clothes fell, there came from the distance a feminine scream that started off as a cry of despair and became a shriek of rage. Lawson at the moment was thankful he couldn’t see Ann’s face.

  Something hit the top of the car. Then came the sound of another weight, following seconds after.

  “What’s that?” Gantt directed the question to Lawson, but in truth he knew what it must be. And he answered it himself: “One of ’em’s up there!”

  “Two,” said Lawson. He was already bra
cing for what had to be coming next.

  A tremendous blow was struck to the roof of the car; the entire car trembled and the boards whined in protest. Another blow was struck…a third, and a fourth, two of the winged shapechangers at work, tearing off the lid of this box to get at the sweetmeats within. The things sounded as if they were using iron hammers, but Lawson figured they only needed their fists and claws.

  Rooster dug into his coat, brought out more shells for his rifle and reloaded. He started to stand up. Lawson said, “They’re waiting for that,” and Rooster settled to the floor again.

  A third weight landed atop the car. They were near breaking through. The roof was cracking, the boards bending inward. Rooster fired upward…two shots, but the creatures didn’t slow their assault.

  “All right,” Lawson said, mostly to himself, because he figured he had about twenty seconds before the things got in. He was up and out the door at the back of the car before Ann or any of the others had fully registered that he’d moved, and so fast that even the vampires hiding amid the rocks with guns were unable to mark him as a target. Outside, he swung upon the metal ladder that gave access to the roof and jumped the rest of the way.

  The three winged horrors that were beating the roof to pieces turned toward him as one when his boots hit the surface. There were two males and a female, all of them gray-fleshed and sinewy, dressed in rags, the female with long silver hair and one of the males missing his left arm at the elbow. Lawson had time to think that this male might have been stolen from a battlefield just as he had been, and then he shot the creature between the eyes and the thing screamed as it burned. It fell away, its skull crisscrossed with red fissures, its wings beating holes in the flurry of snow.

  Then the other two were upon him.

  The female was the faster of the two. She was leaping at him before he could get his Colt trained on her. At the same time, gunshots rang out from the rocks to his left and from the woods to his right. Bullets zipped past as Lawson fought the female’s claws from getting at his eyes. The male swooped at him. Lawson shoved the female away. She went off the top of the car but her claws took most of his waistcoat with her. Along with it went his derringer in its inner pocket. A bullet tore into his right arm just above the elbow, paralyzing his gunhand. He drew his second Colt with his left hand, dodged a claw aimed at his face, felt the stinging pain of a second bullet grazing the back of his neck, and fired into the male creature’s skull.

  As the vampire convulsed and burned before him, Lawson was struck in the right side by another bullet. He knew fear. It came to him that this could be the end of the line for both himself and Ann. For all his quickness and power there were too many of them. He could see more of the winged shapechangers coming at him from the woods and the rocks. How they achieved this ability he didn’t know, but at the moment he was sure he didn’t have it.

  More shots were fired. Ann, Rooster and Eric were firing from the car. The female vampire came at him once more, with renewed determination. Her claws grasped his shoulders and her fangs yearned toward his throat. She had nearly snapped shut on him when he put the Colt’s barrel under her chin and fired a shot that sent the bullet through the top of her head. Still she held onto him as she began to break apart, and even as her eyeballs sank in and her gaping mouth became a hole in which the fangs melted like candle wax her claws dug deep and her wings were beating, trying to lift him off the roof. She got him up about six feet in the air before her skull sizzled away, her arms fell from the rags of her body and the wings collapsed like burning black paper.

  Lawson got off a shot at the creature coming at him from the right but the thing dodged aside in midair and the bullet streaked on over the trees. The female vampire’s hands, both aflame, were still clenched to his shoulders and when he shook them off they flew away in ashes.

  There were too many, and too many bullets being fired at him. He holstered his gun and as he scrabbled down the ladder a slug ricocheted off the metal. He got back into the car, slammed the door shut and threw himself onto his belly, where he crawled like a wounded animal between two seats and lay there leaking ichor that smelled of a sulphur pit in Hell.

  Nine.

  “How many did you take?” Ann was leaning over him. The firing had stopped and for the moment there was just the high sharp cry of the wind.

  “A couple.” Lawson winced and touched his hurt side with his left hand. The ichor had turned that part of his shirt ebony, as well as his right sleeve. “Damn it,” he said. The pain was more nagging than severe. His damage would heal in a few hours, though he’d be slowed down until everything had knitted together again. That was part of their aim in shooting him; not to kill, because that was impossible with the plain lead slugs, but to steal his speed and resolve. “I won’t be able to use my right hand for awhile. My arm’s broken.” He reached back and put his fingers against the hot line a bullet had grazed across the nape of his neck. “Lucky there. I wouldn’t like to know what a broken neck feels like.”

  “Trevor.” She had spoken his name in nearly a whisper, and though her face was still composed it was a mask, because Lawson saw in her eyes that she was fighting the same fear that had hit him up on the car’s roof. “What are we going to do?”

  “We won’t give up,” he said, in answer to what she was really asking.

  “Those things have got us trapped!” It was Gantt’s voice from further up front. He sounded at his breaking point. “Lawson! This is your fight, not ours! Listen…listen…all of you…do we deserve to be slaughtered? What have we done to get into this?”

  “Steady up, Mister Gantt,” said Rooster.

  “Steady up? Do you want to die?”

  “No…ain’t what none of us want.”

  “It’s his fight, Rooster! We don’t have no damned part in this!”

  “Sir…that’s where you’re wrong.”

  The voice that had spoken those five words surprised Lawson; it belonged to Eli Easterly. The reverend had remained near Blue. The girl was semi-conscious. Easterly had been at her side to console her and also to keep her calm if she came more fully awake. Snow had blown in and whitened the man’s hair and eyebrows, which along with his gray-toned flesh and gaunt features made him appear more vampiric than even Lawson.

  “Whatsay?” Gantt fired back.

  “You are wrong,” Easterly repeated. “It is our fight, too.”

  “Hell it is!” Rebinaux squawked. “I ain’t done nothin’ to them things!”

  “You don’t have to,” said the reverend, as he placed a hand on Blue’s forehead; her eyes had opened, and she was whispering that she was cold. He adjusted her blanket as best he could. “It seems to me that whatever Mr. Lawson is, he is by far not the worst of them. Before getting on this train I never would’ve thought such a thing possible…that I would feel I should help him survive in whatever way I can, instead of calling upon the Lord to destroy him and the rest of his tribe.”

  “Think again, preacher!” said Presco. “Your Lord ain’t listenin’!”

  “The Lord does listen, but He depends on the human hand to do the work. Or the hand of whatever is available. In this case, Mr. Lawson.” He gave Blue as much of a smile as he could muster. “Shhhhh,” he said. “Just rest…close your eyes…rest…”

  “You’re crazy! We cain’t fight ’em! I ain’t stayin’ here waitin’ to die, I’m gettin’ out!” Presco stood up, his bloodied right hand pressed to the wound near his collarbone. “Somebody come with me!” he said, his eyes wild. “Johnny, let’s you and me—”

  The bullet came from the right side of the train, down amid the trees. It took off a chunk of Presco’s jaw. As he turned toward the gunfire with an expression of righteous indignation, like a man who has brushed against a hornet’s nest, the second bullet hit him in the upper chest and the third one, fired from the left side of the train, got him in the brainpan. He pitched forward with a small grunt, really a soft exhalation of breath, probably the softest sound the man
had ever made in his life.

  He slithered down amid the seats, twitched a few times and then was still.

  There was a long moment of silence.

  “Bloodsuckers with guns,” said Mathias. He gave a hard, hollow laugh. “Kick my ass and call me Fannie.”

  “More than guns.” Eric had dared to lift his head to peer out the window to the left, then he ducked down again. “Riders coming.”

  Both Lawson and Ann took a chance to look. Two riders were approaching on horses. Lawson recalled the spur he’d seen on the shapechanger’s boot. He didn’t like this; it smelled of something he’d never experienced before. The vampires riding on the horses had already transformed themselves into the winged creatures, but their wings were folded back along their sides. One looked to be wearing a cavalry’s officer’s cap. The horses showed no signs of being skittish with those things on their backs, and this is what made Lawson ask himself: Could an animal be turned?

  The question was hanging there when the two riders spread their wings into the wind and left their saddles. The horses continued on through the snow, and as they neared the passenger car they began to change into beasts from a madman’s nightmare.

  Their flesh, leathery at the beginning, rippled and hardened like overlapping scales of thorny armor plate. Their heads lengthened and malformed into what Lawson thought might have resembled the ancient descriptions of dragons roaming the haunted forests of old Europe. One of the creatures began to grow two more legs from its sides that pushed it along more like a spider than a horse.

  They were not slowing, but coming at full gallop and slither.

  “Brace yourselves!” Lawson shouted.

  The first smashed into the left side of the passenger car. The other hit a heartbeat after. The car’s wall burst inward in a shower of broken planks, splinters and the rest of the glass from the windowframes. The entire car shuddered and nearly was torn off the rails and its couplings to the coal car ahead and the freight car behind. In the chaos of destruction Lawson saw that Easterly had thrown himself over Blue as protection and Ann had put an arm up to shield her own face from the flying debris.