Tracks

by K. M. Tolan

  He stared after the Westbound until its caboose disappeared around a turn. “See ya, Dad.”

  Vincent glanced around the small clearing with its delicate yellow flowers and beckoning shade trees. Part of him felt the glorious peace tugging at his soul, beckoning him up those tracks. He could still walk to his destination, and never find his legs getting wobbly or his belly empty no matter how long it took to get to that far station. The mountain shone above him like a beacon of promise fulfilled. Just not his promise. Not yet.

  Prying loose a palm-sized chunk of crystal from a nearby clump of rock was easy enough. He gave the clear rock an experimental lick, and shook his head in wonderment. Rock Candy Mountain indeed. Well, didn’t his father say it was all about what you expected heaven to be? Pocketing his sugary prize, Vincent stepped out on tracks whose rails looked to have been fashioned from the milky silver of captured moonlight. He stole one long look at that glorious peak, and turned back down the ravine. The roadbed behind him vanished, leaving an inky darkness.

  His cane transformed, elongating into the steel shaft forged from his own iron will. Vincent drove the sharpened end deep into the netherworld beneath his feet, and thought of both Katy and Samantha.

  Eighteen

  Vincent stopped, his hike back to life from the Rock Candy Mountain having reached its queasy end. The tracks he had followed, seemingly for days, plunged at an impossible grade into a tunnel of bright daylight. Having endured walking in darkness with only the bump of ties against his shoes to guide him, he thought he would welcome the sight of anything. But not this. The body he had left behind lay motionless at the bottom of the incline beneath a spreading oak, his brown long coat serving as a blanket. From the look of things, he was in the Erie estate’s surrounding gardens.

  Judging from Samantha’s sobs and frantic thumping on his chest, he wondered if he would still have a chance to finish the coffee Dad shared with him. Sammy didn’t look in particularly great shape either, her fancy blue dress hanging in tatters from her shoulders.

  He sucked in a breath and took a step, immediately losing his footing in a headlong reunion with his carcass. The shock of pain and disorientation threw Vincent into a brief convulsion. He fought to gulp in a lungful of air, trying to focus on Samantha’s face hovering over his. His head spun as he threw off the last remnant of well-being fostered on the Westbound. Even thinking demanded effort, his brain slopping through muddied thoughts just to work up a phrase.

  She gripped his shoulders. “Please stay with me.”

  Damn if he couldn’t hear that old train whistle calling his name again. Maybe the poison she gave him proved too potent, or her blow to his head caused more damage than either of them anticipated. Didn’t matter. He managed to build a smile with leaden muscles. There was nothing to be afraid of. Baron’s daughter or not, Samantha’s heart was in the right place, and he loved her for that among many things. She would free Katy herself when the chance presented itself. He would give her the reason.

  Marshalling the remaining strength his battered body possessed, he placed the rock candy in her hands. “Yours.”

  A parting kiss would have been nice, but she was on her feet an instant later. Sammy being her one-track self, he thought after she vanished from his fading sight. Too bad. He wanted to let her know how much he would miss her. There was always later. Time didn’t matter so much aboard the Westbound. He could stick around for a few more cups of coffee after Mom and Dad had their long talk and disembarked at the station. Sammy would be stepping aboard by and by. He closed his eyes, letting the pain drift away to the sound of Number 9’s chugging engine.

  There was nothing idyllic about half-drowning from the torrent of hot sweetened water forced down his throat. Vincent’s eyes shot open, his senses catapulting awake from an electric sensation. He sat upright with renewed strength.

  Samantha poured the rest of a white cup’s contents into his mouth. “All of it,” she commanded between sobs.

  He pulled in another breath before a second jolt shook him to his soul. Colors leapt out at him, from the startling blue of an overturned teapot to the bold green paint wrapping a small shed next to the tree. The fresh scent of grass and lavender assailed his nostrils. For a moment, he thought himself beneath the shimmering heights of the Rock Candy Mountain again. What else would explain the sudden clarity and complete loss of pain?

  She gave me the rock candy. He stared at the cup held in her shaking hands. “Why? That was for you. It’s what you’ve been after since the beginning.”

  “That’s what I thought too,” she sniffed, tossing the mug aside to hug him. “I couldn’t bring you back. Something was wrong. I’m so sorry!”

  “I’m not,” he returned, astounded by the choice she made. Hell, he hadn’t felt this good in years. She, however, had consigned herself to endure that thing inside her. “I’ll get you another rock.”

  “Not today you won’t.” Her arms enwrapped him, Samantha’s kiss on his lips fervently sincere. “I can live with myself, but apparently not without you. I love you, Vincent. You saw what I was and didn’t turn away. Don’t ever leave me.”

  He embraced her in turn and caressed her mouth with his in a passionate reply, not caring how many times she cracked him over the head for his liberties.

  This time she didn’t flinch, and her laugh as she drew back could have come from his own exultation. She swept away a spider web’s tangle of black hair and grinned. “We haven’t much time. Can you walk? Are you really okay?”

  “Are you?” he asked, risking his newfound energy by helping Samantha to her feet.

  She held a hand against a torn panel of her top to keep from revealing more embarrassing swaths of skin. “My yegg side isn’t much for fancy clothes, but yes. A few bruises, maybe. Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “I’m fine, and I suspect you left Red’s place with a lot less yegg in you than you think, Sammy. Any chance you seen my cane?”

  She pointed to where the walking stick leaned against the oak’s trunk. She flashed a massive ring inset with a glittering yellow jewel. “I also have this. My father’s signet ring. Give me a couple moments to get my traveling clothes on.”

  “Traveling clothes?” He watched her duck into the gardening shed before catching sight of both the teapot and a small Bunsen stove beside it. “You planned ahead.”

  “Not for everything,” her muffled voice returned. She re-appeared in a plain white blouse stuffed into worn jeans. A rifle was slung over the shoulder of a leather hunting vest. “Not for you, apparently. How about we just grab your sister and run? Hell with all of this. Find Red’s Ohio and never leave again.” She pulled off the ring and threw it against the teapot.

  “It’s a good idea, Sammy, but Dad warned me about late apologies and regrets. We’ve a job to do. You might be the baron’s first victim, but he’s not done making more. And anyway, you really don’t want to run the Erie Railroad, do you?”

  She shook her head. “I did until I met you. If my uncle wants this place so bad, he can have it. He’ll know what to do with the likes of Cannoli better than I would.”

  “Fine, let’s get Freedom out of that diesel, grab Timepiece, and call in the troops. Hopefully your father won’t think we’re crazy enough to double back.” He bent to retrieve the ring. “You’ll be needing this.”

  They both turned at the sound of running feet and what sounded like clubs beating at hedgerows. Rolling mists fought off an afternoon sun.

  “The steam children can’t keep this up forever.” Samantha pointed to a gap in an ivy wall behind them. She slipped on the ring he tossed her then hesitated. “Do you really love me?”

  In lieu of everything she had given up for him, it was a crazy question. “You told your father you’d marry me.”

  She looked down. “To keep Father from killing you.”

  He hardly believed the words coming from his mouth, but not the emotions forcing the admission through his lips. Crazy, treacherous—she was
all of that and more, and still Samantha managed to rise above everything he ever wanted. ”I would be proud to call you my wife, Samantha. I don’t deserve it, but I’ll ask anyway. Marry me.”

  Gruff voices interrupted any answer trying to emerge from her gaping jaw.

  He grabbed his cane. “Think on it while we’re running, ok?”

  Weaving in and out of bushes with search parties crawling around them was hard enough without his partner grinning and delivering unexpected kisses. The fog settled around them in a humid blanket, suggesting Glory and her vengeful sisters had not forgotten them. The murk allowed them to skirt clusters of police and workers scouring the estate’s grounds for them. Samantha’s intimate familiarity of less-traveled paths led them safely to the western plaza where the baron held his trial.

  Crouched next to a small sculpture, Vincent inspected the gray outlines of the Erie family’s private railway station. He saw the diesel clear enough to tell its access panels were still an open invitation. “How long was I out? How many days?”

  “Hours,” she corrected. “About three. Come on. Let’s go. There’s nobody near the engine.”

  He dismissed his surprise at how little time had actually passed, his thoughts on more obvious dangers as he squeezed her shoulder. “That’s what worries me. Not a soul around and everyone knows this would be high on the list of obvious places I’d head to.”

  “You were mostly dead when they last saw you,” she reminded him. “Come on while we’ve still some fog left.” Twisting free of his cautioning hand, she pulled the rifle off her shoulder and sprinted across the concrete flagstones.

  Swearing, he dashed in front of her, wishing she were a little less bull-headed. Vincent glanced right to where the slapped-together plywood platform still waited with its row of pig iron. Nobody there, either? This was too good to be true. Especially the part about him running ahead of a crazy girl with a gun. Part of him didn’t care with the diesel holding his sister only yards away. He saw the coils of glass pipe clearly now, along with the red valve that would release Freedom from her prison.

  Common sense caught up with him one step too late. Scores of swirling black clouds erupted from hiding places among the locomotive’s wheels. A bullet whizzed by his head, sending a yegg tumbling to the concrete. The rest kept coming.

  The rifle behind him cracked once more, felling another monstrosity. Then the yegg were on them. Vincent lifted the cane, hardly noticing its transformation back to its true form. He impaled the first attacker to reach him. The next yegg staggered back from a solid hit with the lining rod’s wedge. Two more creatures took its place.

  Emitting a shriek, Samantha charged ahead of him. She threw her rifle aside, her fingers extended to shred flesh.

  The yegg came to an abrupt halt, as if unwilling to harm the baron’s daughter.

  She stood there, chest heaving and eyes wide with murderous promise. A second defiant cry issued from her drawn back lips. She looked down at herself in confusion.

  She’s not changing, Vincent realized, aware of her intent. The yegg seemed equally indecisive.

  A boiling cloud of bleak miasma vaulted over the semi-circle of combatants, its red eyes piercing through twisting vapors.

  “Get back!” Vincent pushed her behind him. He raised his lining rod to challenge this new menace.

  She knocked him aside. “Don’t. He’ll kill you.” Swallowing, she approached the larger demon, her fists balled. “Father. You will not hurt him.”

  Jake’s bulky form emerged from the darkness around him, daunting even in workman’s dungarees. The baron’s chief foreman rested big hands on his hips and stared down at her. “Well? What the hell you wait’n fer, girl? Let’s see that black little heart of yours shine.”

  “You saw,” she replied. “I tried to change, and I couldn’t. Isn’t that what you wanted for us? A way out of being yegg?”

  “A way up,” he grunted. “The best of both.” Jake rubbed his unshaven chin for a moment, then swiveled his head Vincent’s way. “Howzabout I rip your boyfriend’s arms off, or maybe snap his neck? See if that don’t help ya see if it’s gone.”

  Vincent had only an instant to raise his lining rod. Jake drove him into the ground like a tent peg, tearing the bar from his grasp. Fingers clamped around Vincent’s throat with a killer’s practiced grip.

  Howling, Samantha threw herself at her father, clawing and punching. Her assault did little to loosen Jake’s grip.

  “Now that’s my girl,” Jake laughed, shrugging her off with no more effort than might be reserved for a discarded wrap. Grunting, he hauled Vincent to his feet and threw him to one side.

  Vincent gasped in a mouthful of needed air.

  Jake did not attempt to stop him from recovering his lining rod. The foreman’s attention fixed on his daughter. “Ya really can’t bring out the yegg? How’d that happen?”

  “I don’t know,” she confessed. She turned from Jake to the other yegg that had reverted to the guises of everyday railroad workers. “I…” Her eyes glistened, but the smile dawning on her face could have warmed the sun itself. She nodded toward Vincent. “I love him.”

  Jake spit on the ground. “Ain’t nothin’ that simple.”

  Vincent faced Samantha’s father. “Maybe the problem with your kind is you don’t want free bad enough.”

  The foreman thumped his chest. “Problem’s in the blood, Mister Big Shot Gandy Dancer. baron’s got the way out. Sammy’s proof of that.”

  “By raping women like you did my mother?” Samantha hissed.

  Jake grinned. “Wasn’t that way at all, Sammy. Baron knew it too. Now I’m gonna show him the payoff. Yur clean of the beast but still tough like I taught ya to be. Maybe His Honor will keep boyfriend here out on stud.”

  And I’ve had about all of your shit I’m going to listen to. Vincent looked up at the man, returning a disarming grin of his own. His fingers tightened around the lining rod’s shaft. “So, I’ve your permission to marry her?”

  Jake’s laugh was anything but complimentary. “Ha! Sure.”

  Vincent snorted as if sharing the joke. “Gee, thanks, Dad.” He swung the flat end of the lining rod against the side of Jake’s skull. The foreman dropped to his knees. “Samantha. Run!”

  Vincent sent the tip of his weapon into the next onrushing yegg’s guts before the workman finished transforming. Spinning away from the scream and blood, he sent a second assailant to the flagstones. He glanced behind him. Damn her, she wasn’t running. She grabbed her rifle instead, using it as a club.

  Swearing, Vincent focused on the closing ring of yegg, but a wall of steam drove him back. He reeled into Samantha, avoiding one of her wild swings. A second blast finished separating them both from their attackers.

  “Now you both run,” Glory’s voice hissed overhead.

  He staggered, nearly tripping as Jake’s massive hand closed about an ankle. The foreman glared at him. “You be good to my little girl, chump. She gets scratched and they’ll find the rest of ya floating in a sewer. Nobody hurts my Sammy. Nobody. Got it?”

  The grip on his leg loosened. Jake could easily have sent him slamming to the ground, but only glared meaningfully at him. “I got it,” Vincent replied. “Tell your boss the same goes from me if he touches her.”

  “Like I told ya. Nobody hurts her.” He released Vincent’s leg.

  Vincent grabbed Samantha’s arm and fled toward the gardens. “Think I just got your father’s blessing.”

  “Wonderful,” she gasped as they ran. “We need reinforcements.”

  “Couldn’t agree more. We’re heading to the yard. Still got your father’s ring on?”

  “Of course.” She stopped among decorative hedges to catch her breath. “You…really want to…marry me?”

  He rewarded the wide-eyed incredulity on her face with a hasty kiss. “Hell yeah. Now move your legs before Daddy changes his mind.”

  Vincent plowed through patches of clinging grayness, dodging small shrubs a
nd rock-lined edgings. He heard shouts behind them, but none close to the zigzagging path Samantha ran within the gardens. The wrought iron back gate was a welcome sight when it materialized from the fog.

  He paused for breath on the slope leading into the rail yards, a diluted sun casting some clarity across the field of steel rails and boxcars.

  Samantha extended her rifle toward the damaged east end of the power plant. “There’s people over there with cranes. Looks like they’re trying to lift out the diesel you rammed into the boilers.”

  His attention went beyond the still-intact chimneys and burners on the plant’s west side. Several sets of rails curved away from the yard before fanning out into separate spurs. “What’s down those tracks behind the plant?”

  “The Detroit line among others.”

  “Well something about the area feels right. That’s where I’ll put the track down. Then we’ll pay a visit to the Detroit spur and finish my father’s job. Ready?”

  She waved the hand wearing the signet ring.

  He traded time for distance, creeping around lines of freight cars and dormant locomotives to keep them shielded from eyes both ahead and behind. The workers crawling over twisted metal sheets and girders at the plant already had their hands full with the engine he had plowed into the slave boilers. His primary concern was the growing line of searchers he glimpsed at the top of the hill. When they realized he had gone into the yard, and put two-and-two together, this place would look like a kicked anthill.

  He craned his neck, not appreciating the clearing sky. Had the steam children spent themselves? The trio certainly weren’t anywhere in sight. It was probably for the best. The last thing he needed was anything drawing attention to him. That would change once he dropped new rails back to the waiting hobo train. Hopefully, the two kings weren’t too busy with either the yegg or each other to notice.

  He aimed for an area adjacent to the tree line, the narrow field pockmarked by milkweed and castoff ties but otherwise clear. The lane ran alongside existing spurs in a southwest arc behind the plant’s stacks. He managed to edge close to his goal without risking the open areas. Crouched behind the last in a line of black tank cars, he motioned Samantha up beside him. “Those boys on the hill will see us the moment we start running, so let’s walk out like we belong here. Might give us a few extra minutes while they make their minds up.”