EPILOGUE I
December 31, 1931Evening
As he gazed at the corpse that lay beside the tracks, a man muttered, sounding as if he couldn’t be bothered:
“Aah… If they’d at least left ’em all in one place for us, this would’ve been easier.”
“That’s disrespectful.”
In the midst of a light snowfall, two men conversed.
Bill Sullivan and Edward Noah: agents employed by the United States Bureau of Investigation. The two men were cleaning up after a certain strange incident that had occurred at the end of the year.
Although it was clean-up work, they were naturally investigating as well. Many police officers were separately carrying out their duties in front of the corpses that lay scattered along the tracks. While they’d used the term scattered, the intervals between the remains ranged from several hundred yards to several dozen miles. However, there was no doubt that all the bodies were all from the same incident.
The corpses all seemed to belong to people who had been on the same train.
“Nn… Don’t be so stuffy.”
“Never mind that. There’s something I want to ask you.”
Bill scratched his head. Edward, his face serious, put forward his question:
“Why did they summon us here together? This would generally be a job for men from another post, wouldn’t it?”
Edward and Bill worked for a rather unique branch within the Bureau of Investigation. Although it wasn’t independent as far as structure was concerned, there was a tacit understanding at the Bureau that it held several men who were to be given special jobs intermittantly with their regular work. Bill and Edward were among those who took these special missions.
“Uh… Well, to be frank… They were on the passenger list. They spotted it at Chicago Station.”
“‘They’… You mean immortals?”
Immortals. Here, as they were collecting corpses from the tracks, it was the most unsuitable word imaginable. If the medical examiners working beside them had overheard, it wouldn’t have been at all strange for them to bust out laughing.
No, it wasn’t just the medical examiners: It would have been normal for any ordinary person to laugh after hearing that. After all, big, important agents were talking, straight-faced, about fairy tales like “immortals.”
However, these two knew it wasn’t make-believe.
More than two hundred years ago, alchemists who’d crossed to this continent had summoned a demon during their voyage and had managed to acquire indestructible bodies. Stories that clichéd were rare, even among fairy tales, but it was the truth, so there was no help for it. The greatest proof was that their direct superior was one of them.
In other words, they were in charge of monitoring—and guarding—the immortals who were scattered across America. Of course, the existence of immortals wasn’t officially acknowledged. Moreover, they absolutely could not allow it to be acknowledged.
“Erm… Do you remember the characteristics of immortals?”
“Yes. One: ‘They don’t age, and no matter how badly their bodies are injured, they will completely regenerate, with a focus on their heads.’ Two: ‘The single exception occurs when immortals fight to the death. In this case, if one puts his right hand on his opponent’s head and wishes to eat them, the other will be absorbed into that right hand and die.’ Three: ‘The one who absorbed the other is able to make all the other’s knowledge his own.’ Four: ‘Immortals are unable to give false names to each other or to register them publicly.’ End list.”
“Aah… You don’t have to recite the document verbatim like that. Well, so, that means they’re forced to give their real names on passenger lists… You see?”
Mildly disgusted, Bill continued speaking. Edward peppered him with even more questions.
“And? What about those immortals? Were they involved in this mess?”
“Nn… Donald’s currently checking to see whether they arrived intact. Since detection was delayed, we lost the initiative.”
Even as they continued their conversation, another body bag joined the ones behind them.
Seeing this, Edward clenched his fists.
What in the world had happened here?
The Flying Pussyfoot, a transcontinental limited express bound for New York via Chicago.
Just what sort of tragedy had transpired on that train…?
PROLOGUE I
COSTUMED BANDITS
December 1931California
The curtain rose on this crazy ruckus with one dumb sentence from a moron:
“Let’s do a train robbery! I hear those pay well!”
Another moron agreed with that moron’s moronic remark.
“Wow, that’s terrific! We’ll be rich!”
In darkness so deep they couldn’t even see each other’s face, a man and a woman—Isaac Dian and Miria Harvent—were getting all excited over a subject that fell halfway between dangerous and absurd.
Deep in a certain mining gallery in California… The couple who, up until a year ago, had been famous among a (very) select few as “the costumed bandits” stood in front of a rock wall, illuminated by the light of a lantern.
The pair’s modus operandi had been to conduct robberies in flashy costumes and then, once they’d fled a certain distance, to change into different costumes and make their escape. Of course, since all the things they’d stolen had been incomprehensible articles like clocks, chocolate, and the doors of a museum, they’d never managed to make the national newspapers.
The job they’d pulled in New York in November of the previous year had been their last one, and they hadn’t dirtied their hands with a robbery since. Currently, they spent every day excavating gold, saying, “We’ll steal treasure from the earth.” They’d arrived too late, more than eighty years after the Gold Rush, and the only work left for them was endlessly swinging pickaxes in an abandoned mine.
One day, more than a year later, Miria—dressed in women’s coveralls—spoke:
“By the way, Isaac, people usually take gold from rivers, right? Why are we digging a hole?”
Isaac answered that tragically late question with absolutely zero hesitation.
“Ha-ha-ha, the people around here don’t know where to find gold, that’s all! Actually, when I tried to pan for gold dust down at the river, some guys bawled me out; something about ‘claims’ or some such. And I didn’t even know them!”
“How humiliating!”
“But! I saw a centipede in front of this abandoned mine! It was a monster of a centipede, too, with hundreds and hundreds of legs!”
“Eeeek, how creepy!”
At Isaac’s very specific yell, Miria shivered in spite of herself.
“Heh-heh-heh! Well, you see, Miria, in the Far East, they say centipedes are the gods of gold mines! At that, I was convinced! I knew we’d find tons of gold here!”
“We haven’t found any at all, but that’s amazing!”
Applause from one lone person echoed vainly inside the mine.
“Oh, but, but, if centipedes are gods in the Far East, what do you suppose their crosses look like?”
“Let’s see. They probably have a centipede twined around a cross, don’t you think?”
“How Catholic!”
They had conversations like this every day, but today, one thing was different.
“Oh, that’s right, Isaac! A letter came from Ennis and Firo!”
Smiling innocently in the light from the candle, she took a letter from inside her coveralls.
Ennis and Firo. Friends they’d met in New York a year ago.
Firo was an executive in a small criminal organization, while Ennis w
as a homunculus who’d been created by a certain alchemist, but Isaac and Miria didn’t know a thing about the pair’s circumstances.
In addition to this, during the trouble over the “liquor of immortality” that had broken out at the time, these two had also become immortals. However, they didn’t have the slightest inkling of the changes that had taken place in their own bodies.
That’s right: They weren’t human, but immortals, monsters that would ordinarily have traveled back and forth between fear and envy.
That said, either way, they were living happily now, and it was a topic that had absolutely nothing to do with them.
Miria read the letter from Ennis and Firo aloud by the light of the candle.
Most of the content consisted of suggesting that they come to New York City for a visit for the first time in a year.
However, there was a part of Ennis’s letter that concerned them.
Isaac and Miria, the two of you feel just like a brother and sister to me. I never got to meet my real brothers, the ones who existed before I was made. Thinking of them makes me very sad, but thanks to you, I'm able to overcome it—
As she read that passage, Miria asked Isaac a question, sadly:
“Say, Isaac? Does that mean Ennis’s big brothers are already dead…?”
For his part, since Miria suddenly looked as if she was about to cry, Isaac hastily contradicted the idea.
“No, no, no, that’s not it, that isn’t it, uh… Made…? Never got to meet…? Erm, this is, you see—”
He worried for a bit, but before long, he smacked his hands together.
“Ah, that’s it! She means she wants a little brother!”
On hearing this, Miria’s expression brightened cheerfully, and she cried out:
“Like when a happy-looking little kid pesters its mommy!”
“Yes, that’s the one! I see. So Ennis is happy, then.”
“She’s happy!”
After satisfying themselves with this for a short while, the two of them noticed a different problem.
“But we’re not Ennis’s mother, so we can’t do anything about it, can we?”
“Hmmm. Well, that’s a pity, but let’s bring her some sort of incredible souvenir instead!”
At that point, for the first time, the two began discussing plans to head to New York.
However, they currently had one massive problem: a lack of money. Over the past year, they’d been able to sell the blue stones they’d dug up instead of gold for high prices—for some reason—and they’d managed to keep themselves fed that way, but at this point in time, they really didn’t have the extra to buy a souvenir.
Then Isaac smacked his hands together in realization again, calling out in a loud voice that echoed through the mine:
“Let’s do a train robbery! I hear those pay well!”
“Wow, that’s terrific! We’ll be rich!”
“By the way, train robberies are when you take the train to your destination, do the robbery, then get on a train and escape, right?”
“That has to be it!”
“All right, then, just like last time, let’s steal money from the evildoers in the mafia!”
“Yaaaay, Isaac, you’re an ally of justice!”
“Now then, which mafia outfit should we train-rob…?”
Just then, abruptly, the flame of the lamp went out.
Their surroundings were plunged into pitch-black darkness.
“Eeeeeek, scary!”
“Wa-wa-wa-wait, Miria, don’t worry! At times like this, you mustn’t move around! Just hold still and wait right here until help comes!”
“Wow, Isaac, you’re so reliable!”
The next evening… In a mine near where Isaac and Miria had been, men in coveralls were enthusiastically shooting the breeze as they swung pickaxes.
“Say, remember the folks that were digging up the abandoned mine over yonder?”
“Yup, the ones that dug up lapis lazuli sometimes?”
“They took ’em away on stretchers this morning. Suffocation, they said. They were doin’ just fine by afternoon, though.”
“How ’bout that. They must’ve found ’em real fast. Normally, they’d be dead.”
With no idea that Isaac and Miria were immortal, the miners honestly admired their good luck.
“The guy said something about seeing a centipede with several hundred legs, and that’s why they were digging for gold, didn’t he?”
“What’s all that about?”
“Damn if I know. He spouted off something about eastern religion or some such. They knew so much about the Far East it was weird.”
An elderly miner who’d been listening to their conversation from the side jumped in, disbelief in his eyes.
“Y’mean the boss of that mine? The thing that’s got several hundred legs?”
“You know about it, Gramps?”
“Do I know about it…? That ain’t no centipede. That’s a millipede.”
By then, Isaac and Miria were on a train.
First, they were headed to Chicago, that mafia hotbed. After they’d done a job there, they’d get on the train and make their escape.
They’d already settled on a getaway train.
A limited express bound for New York: the Flying Pussyfoot.
PROLOGUE II
DELINQUENTS
December 29, 1931The Dead of Night
“No, uh, so, um, um, how do I put this, let’s—you know, peacefully, let’s settle this peacefully, okay? We’re, all of us, we’re adults, so, all right? Okay? It’s fine, we can do it, see? So, so listen, let’s just calm down and think about this.”
Near a factory on the outskirts of Chicago. There were no streetlamps or neon signs to be seen in this alley, and a hushed darkness had settled in. Here, in a place that silence would normally have suited well, a voice echoed, clearly out of place.
Of course, conversely, when you considered that it was the shrieks and pleas of a man being held at gunpoint, there might have been no more appropriate place for it. In the moonlight, several men with guns—most likely members of an urban mafia family, given their clothes and demeanor—surrounded one young man.
If there was one odd thing, it was the black tattoo in the shape of a sword that was inked on the blubbering lad’s face.
“So, so, those guns! Put them dooown! Okay, okay? Please, I’m so scared I think I’m gonna go crazy, I mean it! Please, I’m begging you, only I don’t have one red cent on me at the moment, so for now I’ll just apologize, so please put down the guns, put down the guuuuuuns!”
Meanwhile, the men with said guns looked at each other dubiously. They all wore dark-colored trench coats, and as they stood, surrounding the crybaby of a young man, they blended into the darkness.
“Hey, are you sure this is the guy?”
“Should be. ‘Has a sword tattoo on his face.’ It’s gotta be him.”
“Yeah, but he’s completely pathetic. It’s really him?”
“Well, let’s just ask ’im.”
The man who seemed to be the leader of the group grabbed the boy’s collar. He’d already started crying anew.
“Hey, cut the waterworks. I’m about to ask you a real easy question. Depending on your answer, we may send you back home to your mommy, safe and sound. You get me?”
“Wah, wah, I-I don’t have a mommyyy…”
The next instant, the butt of a gun slammed into the wailer’s face, just below his eye.
“Yegyaaah!”
“Nobody asked about your situation! Huhn? What did I just say? I asked you, ‘Do you hear what I’m saying,’ you rotten little maggot.”
The mafioso hauled the boy—who was on the point of falling over—back into place by force, shoved the gun right under his nose, and began speaking slowly.
“—Listen up, you lousy blubberer. If you don’t want me to combine your nostrils by drilling a new hole in the top of your skull, say your name, slowly and clearly.”
Trembl
ing, the boy nodded vigorously, swallowed his tears, and said his name:
“Hic…hic… Ja-Jacuzzi. Jacuzzi Splot.”
On hearing those words, the mafiosi exchanged looks and snickered, their expressions deflated.
“Bwa-ha, you gotta be kidding me… We catch the boss of the scum that’s been causing all this grief for the Russo Family, and he’s a sniveling coward? Truth is, we were only planning to scope out your hideout today. Then there you were, with a dumb mug that matched your description, out strolling around without guards, see? Kind of a letdown, ain’t it? Ha-ha, it’s hilarious, right? Right?”
When his laugh, which was almost a sigh, ended, the suit knocked the lad who’d called himself Jacuzzi to the ground.
“Yeah, it ain’t funny at all, ya damn brat. What’s with you, huh? You tore up our turf, so I was wondering what sort of tough guy you were, and this is it?”
With veins standing out on his face, the ringleader slammed a kick into the boy.
“T-tore up your turf? We—hic—we were just…”
“Just what? You made liquor and sold it without permission, you teamed up and obstructed Russo Family business like it was goin’ out of style, and then you robbed businesses under our protection—what about that ain’t tearing up our turf?”
Jacuzzi had just been enduring the kicks, but he abruptly stopped whimpering and loudly objected.
“Y-y-yes, we’re punks, but, but, the first—the first time we sold liquor, you’re the ones who killed eight of us! And so, and so, we made up our minds to, to fight the Russo Family for all we were worth!”
That tearful accusation seemed to really get under the mafiosi’s skins; their faces went bright red, and they clenched their fists.
“To hell with that! Don’t think we’re gonna let you die easy. We’ll take lots of money and time and turn you and all your friends into—”
“Wah, wah…hic, never mind that, please, hurry and put down the g-g-guns, i-i-if possible, I don’t want to—k-k-kill you.”
Jacuzzi’s voice clearly interrupted the mafioso’s.
“You little runt! Do you understand the situation you’re—?”
“No, no, NO, I hate it, it’s really scary! I hate seeing blood, and hearing bones break really scares meeee!”
1931 The Grand Punk Railroad: Local Page 1