by Eric Flint
"Are you interested in the study of natural science?"
Trace worried his hat in his hands. "I don't guess I ever thought about it." In his youth he had spent too much time preparing for the next world to contemplate this one, but a few years of trail riding had turned his attention the other way. "Don't suppose I'd be much of a trail guide if I didn't know a bit about the beasts of the field."
She smiled her chilly smile. "Well put, Mr. Tracy. I wonder if you would give me your opinion on this specimen I've acquired." She inclined her head for him to follow.
Trace didn't. "You said you had somethin' to tell me?"
She stopped, head cocked like one of the birds in the cages. "Did I?"
"In your letter. The one you sent through Jamison's store." She was looking at him with polite inquiry, and Trace squirmed like a schoolboy. "You said you'd been investigatin' my condition . . ."
"Your condition? Are you ill?"
Trace clenched his jaw. She was toying with him, that was all, trying to make him look foolish, or maybe wanting him to beg for her help. He locked his teeth together and glared at her.
"I think you'll be interested in this," she said, turning again toward the far corner of the room, which was swathed in black fabric like a tent. Her sleeve brushed the cages along the wall, and Trace noticed all the birds crouched and fell silent as she passed, the furred animals retreating into corners and balling up.
He followed her into the black tent in the corner, having to bend almost double to pass under the flap she held up for him. The interior was dark and close, lit by a small electric lantern with a pierced tin hood. As soon as she dropped the tent flap, something swooped at his head.
"What the devil—" He ducked and swatted at it with his hat, caught something small and light in the crown of it. He peered into the hat, reached for the small crawling thing, but she put a hand on his wrist.
"You don't want to do that. I can't be certain this group isn't rabid."
Bats. Trace snatched his hand back and shook the thing out of his hat. Bats. He looked up, saw the flickering of wings darting from one corner tent pole to the other. Unconcerned, Miss Fairweather crossed to a worktable, on which rested a long glass box, like the display cases in Jamison's store. There was a single bat in this case, small and drab. Trace had seen plenty of them on the prairie, especially down near the Mexico border, while droving cattle.
"That's a bloodsucker," he said.
"Indeed. Desmodus rotundus, in the Latin. A torment to livestock in the southern parts of this continent." She drew on a pair of cattleman's heavy gloves as she spoke. "There are thousands of species of bats all over the world, but this one appears to be unique in its method of locomotion. Not only can it fly, which is remarkable enough in a mammal, but it can also run. Observe."
She reached into a small canister beside the glass case and drew out a bit of something red and dripping—liver, by the smell. She opened a small door on top of the case and dropped the morsel inside, leaving a smear of blood down the side of the glass.
In a flash, the bat in the cage leapt toward the treat, levering the bony tips of its wings on the floor and swinging its hind legs between, like a man on two crutches, covering an amazing amount of distance in a single stride. Four leaps and it was to the end of the case, hunkered over the dark tidbit, pale tongue lapping eagerly. Other bats swooped down from the ceiling, drawn by the smell of the blood. Miss Fairweather slipped off the gloves and dropped them on top of the case.
"It's an extraordinarily efficient means of travel," she said. "Twice the length of its body in a single leap. Imagine the distance a human could cover at that speed. It's almost a pity our limbs aren't proportioned for it—look here."
She reached across the box and lifted a small tray into the circle of electric light. In the tray was another of the animals, wings stretched wide and pinned to the cork beneath it, teeth bared in a rictus of agony.
Its torso had been neatly flayed to the bones, the skin and muscle pinned open like a show curtain. Trace could clearly see its heart fluttering.
He recoiled. "Is it alive?"
"Of course. Observe the connection of the long muscles, across the breastbone to the wing—where a man's pectoral muscles are located."
Trace had a sudden revolting image of a man pinned just so on her tin-topped table, cut open like a rabbit but without its neck broke first.
"Its shoulder and back muscles are terrifically strong—designed for flight, but also serving well to propel it along the ground." She took up a tool, slender and pointy, and jabbed it into the creature's tiny armpit, causing a jerk of the wing and a squeak.
Disturbed, Trace turned away. There was a small folding table beside the door-flap, on which rested a kerosene lamp and a flurry of papers. A notebook, half-full of Miss Fairweather's spidery handwriting, lay pinned open by a crystal paperweight and a stack of pamphlets. The top pamphlet showed a man in a greatcoat, the capes ruffling like crow's feathers, his face distorted in an animal grin as he menaced the young lady beside him. Varney the Vampyre, was the title.
"The physiology of this animal is of course merely coincidental to my work," Miss Fairweather said. He heard her skirts rustle as she moved closer behind him. "I am studying the transmission of diseases borne in the blood. A fascinating subject, though frustrating, as it is continually bound up in myth and superstition." She watched as Trace lifted the Varney booklet. It was old and yellow, messily printed, with a price of two pence in the upper corner. "A good example of type—that particular drivel was serialized for almost three years, widely read by the masses in London. Do you know nearly every culture in the world has a myth about evil creatures or spirits that drink blood? Even the ancients recognized the necessity of blood to life. Nearly every culture has a taboo against its consumption, except those which permit it in ritual. You may have that booklet, if you wish. I have finished with it."
Trace looked at her. "Ma'am, I don't mean to be rude, but do you have a job for me, or not?"
Her eyes narrowed in on him, coolly amused, pitiless as a hawk's. He had the feeling she was poised with a sharp tool, examining him for a soft place to stab.
"Have you engaged in any further communications with the spirit world," she asked, "since we last spoke?"
Trace dragged his gaze away from hers. He saw spirits all the time—whether he was looking or not. They seldom spoke to him, and when they did he tried not to answer. People tended to wind up dead if he did. "Not that would interest you," he said.
She made an amused sound and flung back the tent's black curtain. Trace's eyes watered at the sudden light, but he followed her out. She crossed to one of the black trestle tables and pulled a folded paper parcel from under a landslide of foolscap. "Rest your mind, Mr. Tracy, the assignment I have for you should not involve any communication with the dead. Unless you perhaps think it will help." She gave him a thoughtful look, then a tiny shrug and spread out the contents of the packet as he moved closer to see. "This is the proposed path of the Union Pacific's Short Line to Oregon—you were aware of its construction?"
"Yeah." Damn right he was. When it was done he'd have to find a new job.
"Teams of workers are carving a path for it through the northern Rockies—mostly Chinese immigrants, a few Irish, living in mobile camps that progress along with the grading and track-laying crews. This is, of course, one of the last holdouts of the Native American Indian—I believe there are still Ute and Shoshone living wild in these mountains?"
"Last I heard."
"In recent months there have been several attacks on the worker's camps. The railroad managers blame it on Indians or wild animals, but the attacks are too random for the former, too well-organized for the latter."
Trace felt a sudden mad urge to laugh. "And you want me to go find out what it is."
"Not exactly, Mr. Tracy. I want you to bring back a specimen."
* * *
The seat vibrated under Trace's butt as the engine continued its grind up the
gentle grade, ever higher across the Plains before the final lurching mount over the Rockies.
The emigrant sleeper car smelled of sweat and smoke, stale farts and tobacco, burnt coffee and dust. Always dust—it eked in through the windows even when they weren't open, blew in through the sliding car doors as the porters came and went. Trace's ears and nostrils felt coated with the constant grit of it; it was ground into his skin beneath his collar. His handkerchief and towel were stained yellow with it.
There were thirty-four souls in his car, eight of them children. The littlest ones had been restless and cranky at first, weary of the long confinement, but after seven days they were broken-spirited, listless, hanging over their seats, sitting in the aisles, staring out the windows.
The adults weren't in much better shape. Everyone had been chatty and excited across Kansas, exchanging names, handshakes, hometowns, dreams and photos if they were to be had. The two families with children were meeting relatives out west, as were some of the single men and one newlywed couple. Twelve of Trace's fellow passengers were the Baptists, including Martin Kingsley and the importunate little fellow from the St. Louis depot, who was called Brother Clark. Kingsley was gracious and apologetic, glad to hear that Trace had found other employment and professing delight at finding themselves on the same train.
"You have an honest face, sir," Kingsley said to Trace. "If you find yourself in need of lodging or company when we reach Seattle, please know you're welcome to join our camp."
"Thanks," Trace said, pretending not to hear Brother Clark's sniff.
Weary though they were of the confinement—and Trace was probably worse off than most, since he was a head and foot too tall for the seats and sleeper bunks—it was hell and away easier than hauling wagons and oxen through rocks and gulleys and swollen rivers. He'd made this trip three times before, taken two solid months to cover the distance they'd ridden in six days. It boggled the mind.
Not that they didn't have adventures along the way. They had wasted a half-day in St. Joseph, sitting and fuming on a side track, while their engine was changed out, stock cars were uncoupled and new cars linked on. At each depot and whistle-stop, there was a mad scramble off the train for food and privy breaks, and there was never enough time for both. More than once, passengers paid in advance for a meal and heard the all-aboard blow before they could consume it. After the fourth time this happened, Trace saw the father of the three smallest children seize a whole turkey off a serving platter, tuck the bird stuffing-and-all under his arm, and thrust his free hand into his coat pocket as if he had a pistol. The man and his family backed hastily out the door and made a clean getaway back to the car, where they divided their booty with as much whooping as a tribe of red Indians.
Trace had learned during his army days that the best meals to be had were from local farmers, who hawked their wares at each depot. The prices were outrageous, but he had more than a hundred dollars in his pocket, the advance paid to him by Miss Fairweather, and he spent her largess on bread and milk, hard-boiled eggs and cheese, sausage and the odd bit of pastry. It was too early in the year for fresh produce, but one farmer's wife sold him a pint each of pickled beets and tomatoes, which he shared with Boz.
Boz seemed enviably comfortable in the colored car, where all the passengers were men and no one cared if the others took off their boots and vests or smoked cigars. The short, railed balcony outside the colored car was also more comfortable than the gentleman's lounge in the second-class car. Out here was fresh air, and room to straighten his aching knees, and no raised eyebrows if he chose to smoke and socialize with his friend.
Trace was no stranger to the rough beauty of the Rockies, but always before there had been the need to hurry, to worry about nightfall and snowfall and rockfall. Now there was only to ride, and look, and try not to think about the possibilities of damnation and torture on a tin-topped table. The mountains were blue and regal, capped with snow and gilt with gold that made him think God's grace still touched the earth.
"This is a lot easier than the last time we came this way," Boz said, echoing Trace's thoughts.
"Yep." He took a long drag on his stub of cigar, the last one Miss Fairweather had given him. She had given him cigars when he set out on the last job for her, as well. He wondered if it was her way of giving a condemned man a last smoke.
"What's eatin' you tonight?" Boz asked.
"We're gettin' close," Trace said. "Furthest of the attacks was just south of Eagle Rock."
"Oh, that. Can't see as we've got anything to worry about on a movin' train. When we get off at the next stop, then I'll start worryin'."
"Fair 'nuff."
The wind filled their ears for a few minutes. Then Boz said, "We catch this killer, how we supposed to fetch it back to her?"
"Dunno," Trace said. "Figure on crossin' that bridge when we come to it."
"It's got to be omething' human. Indians tearin' up the bodies to look like animals."
"You ever see Indians do that while you were ridin' with the Ninth?"
"No." Boz exhaled smoke. "Indians like to mark their kills. But they ain't stupid. You put anybody in a corner they fight harder. Figure they got no strength left, they fight dirty."
"Most things do," Trace agreed.
The back door of the emigrants' car opened, and a man stepped out onto the short railed balcony—Mr. Flanders was his name, with his little daughter Tess on his arm. They were both bundled up warm, and the little girl squealed with delight, flapping her hands at the fresh air and the bright sunset. The wind whipped her fine curls around her face.
"That ain't all of it, though," Trace said after a while.
Boz followed his line of sight. "The passengers?"
"Yeah."
"You know for sure she was the one bought their tickets?"
"She owned up to it," Trace said grimly. "Said she tried to help the less fortunate, and give to good causes, and encourage the civilization of the West, and a lot of other horse shit. Then she said, 'I know you won't let those poor people ride into danger unknowing and unprotected.'"
"Shit," Boz said, with horrified awe. "You told me that in the first place, I wouldn't'a rode you about it."
"Huh." Trace rolled the cigar between his fingertips. There was more to it than that, but he didn't want to pursue the issue of his malleability where Miss Fairweather was concerned. Not yet. "She might've been bluffin'. What she told me about these attacks is true, they ain't attacked any of the passengers nor inside the towns, yet."
"But she ain't always told us everything straight."
"No," Trace agreed. He took a last long drag and flicked the butt over the railing.
* * *
Trace couldn't sleep that night. Not that sleeping on a train was ever a sure thing, what with the cramped space and continual jostling, but tonight his mind would not rest. He wasn't worried. He wasn't preoccupied. He was simply awake.
After a while he turned on his side and pulled back the curtains of the sleeping berth to let in the small amount of light from the oil lamp overhead. He reached for his vest, hanging on the hook outside, and felt around until he found the little Varney pamphlet folded in the breast pocket.
He hadn't intended to keep it. It was pretty awful reading and only included chapter eighty-eight, so it was impossible to make heads or tails of the story, except that some foreign feller named Lord Varney was a vampyre and the rest of the characters were too silly to do anything about it.
Miss Fairweather's notes in the margins were far more intriguing.
Commonalities:
Consmptn. of blood
Exceptional strength
Nocturnal/sunlight averse reactn
Diff. to kill; possbl purifying methds—fire, water, pure metals/woods, medicnl garlic, salt?
She'd claimed to be studying diseases of the blood, and dismissed the vampyre myth as superstitious nonsense, but as Boz had noted, she seldom told him anything straight. She did seem to tell him things for a
reason, but he usually had to puzzle out the reasoning for himself.
She wanted a specimen, she'd been studying bloodsucking bats, and she'd given him this story about a bloodsucking man—because she suspected he'd find something like?
Trace let out a soft chuckle that was equal parts disbelief and admiration. If she'd told him straight out he was going hunting for a giant vampire bat, he'd have told her she was crazy.
"Is it a joke you can share?" a voice asked softly, and Trace looked up to see he was being observed. Miss Eliza, Martin Kingsley's unmarried sister, had the berth across from Trace. Her curtain was likewise open, her long hair falling over her shoulder in its braid, her head in her hand.
She was younger than her brother, but a few years older than Trace, with a face round and smooth as a girl's. Her dark hair had a single long streak of silver, sweeping from her right temple back into the braid. Her eyes were warm in the lamp-light.
"Not a joke, just a bit of foolishness," he said, stretching to hand the little book across the aisle.
She looked it over slowly, turned a few pages, an amused curl to her lips. "I used to love these penny dreadfuls when I was a girl," she said. "Fairies and ghosts, especially. When Father would give me pennies for the collection plate, I always held one back. Then when I had stolen enough, I bought a book in secret." She passed Varney back to Trace. "Are you quite shocked?"
"You're a downright reprobate, Miss Eliza," he said.
She chuckled. "I'll be glad when we reach Seattle. Even though the hardest part is still to come, at least I'll be occupied again. This forced idleness is maddening."
"Have to agree with you there."
"Why are you going to Oregon, Mr. Tracy? My brother said you'd found work, but you didn't tell him what it was."
"I'm supposed to bring back some cargo for a rich lady in St. Louis," Trace said, and paused. "Doubt I'll even go all the way to Oregon."
"I wish you would. Martin thinks highly of you, and you seem to be a practical man. We have a lot of zeal, but not a great deal of practice at living in the wilderness." She sighed. "I sometimes think my brother's zeal outweighs his good sense. Now you mustn't tell him I said that."