How the West Was Weird, Vol. 2

by Barry Reese

Passing through the kitchen, the porter nodded to the busy cooks without saying a word. He’d expected the aroma of chicken soup to be in the air, but it was missing, replaced with something else – something he couldn’t place but didn’t seem completely foreign, either. A cute kid with yellow hair was holding a stuffed bear and sitting on the prep island. “Hey there, sonny.” The porter grinned at the kid, knowing he’d been rooming with his sister back in Car 18. “You helping cook the meal?”

  “Giant is hungry,” the boy said with a rueful smile, holding up the stuffed bear.

  “He bothering you, Jerry?” the porter asked one of the three cooks with a smile.

  “Not as much as you, Clem,” the cook grinned back. “Don't worry, the kid will get something to eat.”

  “And Giant!”

  “Of course, of course,” Clem said, ruffling the boy's blonde hair. “They'll feed Giant, too!”

  The porter left them, purposely ignoring the two Haver-ton agents that stood silently at each end. He moved forward to collect and punch, collect and punch, collect and punch. When he reached Car 7, he came across three cowboys who’d also boarded in Kansas City.

  “You see that China girl and rich bitch sitting together in the back?” a gruff cowboy named Rodrigo asked the porter.

  “Can’t say that I did,” Clem lied, “but I still need to collect tickets in the six cars between here and the engine.”

  “Nah, they ain’t that way,” Edgar the heavy-set cowboy scoffed. “The white chick's too proud to sit up here with us common folk. I'd go back and say hi, but them damn red coats won't let us through the kitchen. Says both sides have to stay separate.”

  “That’s Morgan Company policy, I’m afraid,” the porter replied with forced politeness. The train had ten cars on either side of a large kitchen car in the center, and each half of the train was arranged as a mirror image of the other. This meant that moving away from the kitchen car were two dining cars, two recreation cars, two bench cars, and four bedroom cars. At the front, of course, still remained the engine cars and at the rear of the train were two baggage cars and lastly the newly added caboose.

  Rodrigo laughed. “Well then, old man, next time you go back to Car 18, Room 7, you tell Hanna we aim ta finish what we started last night.”

  “Jesus, 'Rigo,” the third cowboy, a young man named William who barely looked old enough to shave, said nervously. “How did I get hooked into this?” he moaned. “I'm just a bell boy! They're gonna kill us!”

  Rodrigo and Edgar looked from William to each other, and then back to William with a look on their face that openly admitted they'd made a mistake bringing Billy Boy into their plans. “Of course Hanna wants to kill us,” Rodrigo whispered back harshly. “That was the plan, remember?”

  As if remembering the porter was there, Edgar snapped at him to go bring them some fresh coffee.

  The porter smiled politely at the cowboys because that was his job. He hated the implication of Rodrigo's words, and it didn't take a Haverton agent to put his threat and the Korean woman's bruises together. Just like it didn't take one to figure out that it was not a coincidence the women had chosen this train to board. Clem furrowed his brow, and moved back towards the kitchen, intending to give Jerry the word to drop diarrhetics in their coffee.

  “You have not finished collecting tickets,” a tall, brown-haired Haverton said in a British accent as he put a hand in the porter's chest.

  “I want some coffee,” the porter snapped back. The Havertons were acting more and more like they were in charge of the train with every crank of the engine. “Got me a headache and yer making it worse.”

  “Kitchen's busy making dinner for the honored guest in the caboose. Rabbit stew. Specially prepared.”

  Clem glanced to the window to see the plains roaring past and took a step back. Taking off the light blue cap that matched his uniform, he ran his other hand through his thick, unkempt salt-and-pepper hair, then fingered his bushy mustache. The Haverton gave off an air of easy confidence; whenever he moved or spoke it was done in a relaxed, assured manner that told you he was in charge. He stood an athletic six-foot-something tall, and was dressed in a slightly different uniform than the rest of the Havertons: black boots, black jeans, white shirt, and a dark red duster that held all manner of weapons. If he wore a hat (the porter thought a bowler would look decidedly unfashionable with the duster), he didn't have it on inside the train. He wore high-end electric blasters on his hips that impressed, but didn't intimidate, the porter. He'd seen unspeakable weapons during the Civil. “Now, listen here, young man. Y'all might be on board this train to protect that mysterious caboose, but this is still a Morgan Company train, which means I outrank you, despite yer fancy uniform. Now get on out of the way so I can get me to the kitchen.”

  The tall man offered a skeptic smile. “That accent doesn't even sound real, porter,” he said jovially. “Looks like I'll have to run a background check on your employment record… Samuel.”

  “Wow,” Clem said, putting his hat back on his head, “yer scary.”

  “You two done making out?”

  The porter and Haverton turned to find the curly-haired brunette standing in the doorway.

  “How'd you get through the kitchen?” the Haverton asked, momentarily surprised, but still managing to draw one of his electric blasters.

  The brunette smiled. “Wasn't tough.”

  “You promised to open your legs?”

  The brunette flashed a dazzling smile, bringing her left hand up to undo another button on her blouse to show off a bit more of her ample chest to the Haverton. The agent was a pro and told himself not to look, to keep his eyes locked onto her large brown orbs instead of her blossoming fleshy ones below. He wasn't about to give her the satis—

  Something sharp pressed against his thigh. “Hunter's knife,” she sneered, letting the point of her knife slide up towards his crotch. “It's not as fancy as your science gun, but it'll cut the sausage.”

  The Haverton nodded, putting his gun back into its holster. Though he'd come out of this confrontation for the worse, he'd taken his measure of the woman and liked what he saw. “What's the score?”

  “The score?” the woman asked, dropping her knife into her tall black, boot. “The score is that everyone in the kitchen is dead.”

  Two Havertons, three cooks, two waitstaff, one kid, and one teddy bear, all covered in blood.

  “They're all dead,” the porter said, holding a kerchief to his mouth as his stomach danced violently. The stench of death was overwhelming.

  The Haverton and the brunette shared a glance.

  “Agent Bellingham,” the Haverton said to the brunette, extending his hand. It was time to be civil.

  “Jill,” the brunette answered, shaking his hand after just a moment's hesitation.

  “Jill what?”

  “Just Jill.”

  “Well, Just Jill, the porter's going to be useless.”

  “Give him a minute,” Jill suggested, glancing over her shoulder to see the old man bent over. “If he can keep his lunch in, he'll be alright.”

  “Will you be alright?”

  “Does it look like I'm scared?”

  The porter was horrified; while he struggled to keep his head, Bellingham and Jill were trading barbs. Swallowing down a reflex gag, his stomach lurched and he ran from the car, knowing he'd never outrun what he'd seen. He’d let these two figure out the death while he went forward to the engine car to radio ahead about the problem.

  Blood still ran and dripped down the walls and appli-ances as Jill eyed the Haverton with thinly disguised lust. Bellingham was exactly the kind of man she liked and exactly the kind of man she couldn't have anymore. Turning away from the agent's hazel eyes, Jill took a deep breath and tried to survey the scene in greater detail.

  She failed.

  “I know, darling,” her father pleaded from his knees. “I know you do not love Dotson. I know you likely never will. I doubt there is any man who can tame
your wildness! But I beg of you to think of your mother and your sisters and this house you live in! Without the money Winters brings, my company will fall and our fortunes with it! Marry him, my darling, or we shall all be shamed!”

  “Let June marry him,” Jill replied, hating her father. “She loves him.”

  “But he wants you!”

  “He wants me because he can't have me. That's all.”

  “Then that will have to do!”

  And it did. Jill knew it then and she knew it now. For all of the “wildness” that her father and mother so scorned, Jill was not unaware of all they had provided her and if she had to marry the rich and handsome Dotson Winters for the good of her family… she shrugged. There were worse fates. She might like to play in the dirt, but she had no desire to live there.

  Bellingham smiled laconically and raised his hands in mock surrender as Jill's smoldering eyes came back to his. “Just Jill can handle herself. So noted.”

  Jill looked around at the carnage. “What do you make of all this?”

  Bellingham turned serious again. “Isn't anything I haven't seen before.”

  “Stop playing tough guy,” Jill snapped, bending down to look at one of the chefs, “and start playing detective. I thought Havertons had brains to go along with all that brawn.”

  Bellingham nodded, scanning the room with inquisitive eyes. He moved towards the Haverton at the far door. He moved past the blood-soaked child without looking at him. Dead kids creeped him out. “What about you?” he asked as he bent down to look at the shredded body of Tommy Drummund. Tommy had spent the first fourteen years of his life as a slave, spent the next four as an aide in Sher-man's regiment, and the last one as a Haverton, and now he'd been eviscerated in a kitchen of a westbound train.

  Bellingham knew what this death meant without even checking the identity of the other body.

  “What about me?”

  “You're into this,” Bellingham remarked coolly, taking his eyes off Drummund's corpse. “We've got two dead agents, three dead cooks, two dead waiters, and one dead kid and you’re standing there loving it.”

  Jill gave a resigned shrug. “Yeah,” she said slowly, “I do love it. Always have. It's a weakness, I know,” she said, holding up her hands, “but… I'd rather be here than in a knitting social. You said yourself you've seen this before. Prove it. Put words to the nightmares and tell me who did this.”

  Bellingham rose to his feet. “Werewolves,” he announced stoically.

  Their eyes on each other, neither of them saw the child's face break into a devilish smile.

  Hanna was slumped against the wall in one of the bench cars, her head leaning against the window as she absently rubbed her left wrist, feeling the ghostly presence of the missing ruby bracelet. She paid little attention to the world that sped by the locomotive. Growing increasingly moody with this trip, Jill erroneously believed Hanna's mind was still trapped in that hotel in Kansas City last night, when it was actually still burdened with Newport...

  Sleep was not coming to Haneul, as she knew it wouldn't. In the morning she would rise from this bed and attend to the man that was bound to marry the woman she loved. Hanna had long held that Jill's mother suspected there was something more between her eldest daughter and the house servant than friendship, and while there was, there was probably not as much as the Mrs. feared and certainly not as much as Hanna desired.

  It was the Mrs. who likely ordered Hanna to attend to Dotson, thus succeeding in both keeping Hanna away from her daughter and punishing her by making her serve the man who would have what Hanna could not – a life with Jill.

  There was only one benefit to this arrangement, as Hanna was given her own room at the top of the mansion. She glanced to the wall, knowing that Dotson lay sleeping on the other side. There was a door connecting her room to his and Hanna had fantasized several times about opening that door and catching Dotson in the arms of another woman. There could be no greater solution to their problems – the infidelity would keep Dotson away from Jill, and the shame would cause his parents to bribe hers, or perhaps force him to marry Jill's sister instead of Jill herself. The family would thus be saved financially and Jill would be free to continue her wild ways, unbound by the chains of marriage.

  Hanna sighed, hating herself. Twenty-seven and still riddled with the fantasies of a school girl.

  Tossing aside the sheets of the luxurious bed, Hanna moved to the large windows that overlooked the Atlantic Ocean. A waning moon, a gentle ocean, and a cloudless night conspired to pour copious moonlight into the room. She gave a half thought to taking a sheet with her to cover her nakedness, but it never fully formed. If there was anyone on the beach that night, let them see her body.

  “You are perhaps the worst assassin I have ever known,” said a voice from behind her.

  Hanna spun in the dark. “Dotson?”

  The young man had a gun in his left hand, pointed straight at her heart, and stood half-protected by the door that joined their rooms. “But you're not an assassin at all, are you, Haneul?” he asked.

  “I don't know what—”

  “If your parents were alive, I'd already be dead.”

  Hanna's shoulders slumped.

  Dotson placed the gun in the pocket of his red robe and stepped into the room. “I love Jill,” he said honestly. “I will be good to her.”

  Hanna looked at him with pity in her eyes. “Oh, Dotson, you're such a foolish boy. A nice boy,” she added quickly, “but a foolish one. I don't play the games my parents played. I have rejected that life.”

  “The life, maybe, but not the drive. You protect Jill with your life,” he said, making a point to move into the shadows of Hanna's room. “Jill doesn't realize it, of course, but you have.”

  “I don't know what you mean,” Hanna said weakly.

  “When you were eight and the zombies came to the house, you pretended to be afraid, and begged Jill to sit with you in the dark,” Dotson said with true admiration in his voice. “She really thinks it was she who saved you, and not you who convinced her to protect you in the attic the zombies could never enter.”

  “How do you know this?” Hanna asked, a sense of dread moving through her. “You're just—!”

  “Hush!” Dotson ordered with a harsh whisper, risking a temporary step into the moonlight to still her tongue. “I am nothing but a boy with a lot of money and an incurable lust for a woman I can have no other way.” He walked in the shadows to sit on the edge of Hanna's bed. He was facing the door away from her as he talked. “My family made its fortune through small investments in many industries,” he explained. “Our money isn't old enough and our business interests aren't glittering enough for me to marry up. It is up to me to expand the business in other ways.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  Dotson rose to his feet. “You already know the answer, Hanna. Jill's father is a whaling merchant, but that is not the only business he deals in, as you well know. His ships visit every corner of the globe in their quest for sea monsters to kill, and sometimes things come back to America in those ships. Dangerous things. Dark things.”

  “And?” Blood pounded through her veins. When her parents had died she thought that was the last conversation on this topic she would ever have.

  Dotson moved back towards his door. “Winters money. Her father's ships. The whaling industry is dying, Hanna, but it is not dead, and the people your parents worked for will not stand to see it revitalized. Someone will try to kill me,” he said with an unshakable knowledge of the veracity of his words. “I had thought it to be you.” He flashed an honest, if sad, smile. “I am glad—”

  The door to Hanna's room opened and Dotson quickly and silently stepped back into his room. Hanna neither saw nor heard him go because her boiling blood erupted simultaneously in exaltation and heartbreak.

  “Hi, baby,” Jill smiled wickedly. “I want to have some fun,” she said, her words slurred from too much alcohol. The brunette let her whi
te robe fall to the floor and moved onto the bed, crooking a finger at Hanna to draw her forward. “After all, I'm not married, yet, am I?”

  Hanna surrendered to Jill's advances because Hanna always surrendered to Jill's advances.

  Inside the supply area, Bellingham reached inside his dark red coat and removed a small, round, brass object. Jill thought it was a pocket watch until the Haverton brought it to his lips and blew into a small opening for several seconds. Pulling it away from his mouth, he popped it open (very much like you would do with a pocket watch) and spoke into the interior. “Kitchen car. Quarantine. It's a Chicago.”

  Bellingham removed the communications device and looked to Jill. They were alone in the smaller supply area section of the kitchen car, surrounded by carts, plates, cups, serving trays, and utensils. “Works by vibrations,” he explained. “It operates on the same frequency as a dog whistle. You blow into it to activate the receiver, which we all keep in our ear. It gives us twenty seconds to talk along the vibrational trail.”

  Jill leaned back against a metal cupboard. “We've got a wolfman loose on this train,” she reminded him. “You think I care how your stupid toys work?”

  The Haverton ignored the dig. “There's only two ways out of this car,” he said, pointing to the door to her right and then back through the kitchen to the door on her far left, past all of the dead bodies. “If you came through this door and I came through that door...”

  “Then the killer is still here?” Jill asked, shaking her head. “Don't tell me you missed—?”

  “The escape hatch in the ceiling?” he answered with a smile. “You are good. Do you need a job?”

  “I didn't think Havertons had women agents.”

  “Oh, we don't,” he grinned, “but we're always in need of secretaries.”

  “Ass.”

  “I've got to know,” he pressed, turning serious, “if you're going to see this through to the end.”

  “You're inviting me to stay?” Jill asked, surprised. “This is where men usually tell me to go sit in a corner and look pretty.”