Night Train

by David Quantick

  The man looked, if anything, slightly shocked by this information.

  “Then how did you get on this train?” he asked.

  “Oh fuck off,” said Poppy. “This is a joke, right?”

  “We don’t know how we got on this train,” said Garland. “We don’t know where we are or how we got here.”

  “This is most irregular,” said the man. “You’ll have to come with me.”

  “What if we don’t want to come with you?” asked Poppy.

  “I want to come with him,” Garland said.

  “Nothing to lose,” agreed Banks.

  “That’s the spirit,” said the ticket collector.

  “We’ll see,” Poppy said.

  * * *

  They barely registered the next carriage (buffet car, mauve interior) as the ticket collector led them into it. From time to time, he muttered to himself.

  “That’s it,” he said, occasionally adding, as if to reassure himself, “He’ll know what to do.”

  “Who’s ‘he’?” asked Garland. “The driver?”

  “Oh goodness no,” said the ticket collector. “Goodness me, no.”

  “Are you for real?” Poppy said. “Or just animatronic? Because you sound like you should be in a theme park.”

  “Sticks and stones,” said the ticket collector. “Not far to go now.”

  “Have we met before?” Banks said to the collector.

  “I don’t believe so,” he replied.

  “You look really familiar.” He turned to Garland. “Doesn’t he?”

  “Yes,” Garland agreed.

  “He’s a clone,” said Poppy. “Same as the soldiers.”

  “Let’s just keep moving,” the collector said, prodding Banks again.

  “Are you?” asked Poppy. “Are you a clone?”

  “I don’t think that’s an acceptable word,” Garland said.

  * * *

  The rest of the walk passed in silence.

  * * *

  As they entered the next carriage the bursts of light in the sky were turning silver, and becoming more frequent.

  “It seems to be getting brighter outside,” Banks said.

  “Blue skies are promised,” said the collector. He looked confused by his own words. “Just electrical interference,” he said. “Nothing to worry about.”

  * * *

  The next carriage was extremely ordinary. The seats and tables seemed cleaner than usual, with new fabric on the chairs and no scratches on the tabletops.

  “Sit down, please,” said the ticket collector.

  “I don’t believe it,” Garland said, pulling something down from the luggage rack.

  “It’s another book,” Poppy said.

  “It’s the same book,” Banks noted.

  “Please put it back,” the ticket collector said.

  “I intend to,” said Garland. “It’s unreadable.”

  “I really must insist,” said the collector.

  “She’s doing it,” said Banks. “He seems a bit rattled,” he added.

  “Well, it’s just us and him,” Poppy replied. “He’s clone alone.”

  “That’s enough,” said the ticket collector, and there was a new harshness in his voice. He took something out of his coat. It was an electric cattle prod.

  “Do you know what this is?”

  Garland looked at Poppy.

  “I told you to stop using that word.”

  “I bet it’s OK if he says it.”

  “Just stop it.”

  * * *

  Garland put the book back in the rack and they sat down, watched by the collector.

  “We could disarm him,” she said.

  “With smiles and charm?” asked Poppy.

  “With physical force.”

  “Can’t be bothered,” said Poppy. “Besides, we’re going to find out what’s going on soon enough.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “My,” said Banks, “we are infused with the commando spirit today.”

  * * *

  “I wonder how many of these tables we’ve sat down at,” said Poppy.

  “One or two,” replied Garland. “Where’s he going?” she added, as the ticket collector disappeared through a door.

  Poppy leapt to her feet.

  * * *

  “This door’s locked,” she said.

  “Of course it is,” said Banks.

  “I’m just saying.”

  * * *

  Poppy sat down again.

  * * *

  “I mean, a conductor,” she said after a while.

  “He said ticket collector,” Banks corrected.

  “I think it’s the same thing. Either way, it doesn’t matter if he calls himself the Akond of Swat, he’s clearly gone to get the boss.”

  “The driver,” said Garland.

  “I don’t think it’s the driver. Who’d be driving the train?”

  “The conductor, then.”

  “He is the conductor.”

  “Let’s not go there again.”

  * * *

  Time passed, not quickly.

  * * *

  “This is it, then,” said Banks. He didn’t look happy.

  “Whatever it is,” Garland replied.

  “Good,” said Poppy. “I’m sick of walking through carriages, and meeting weird things, and… and buffet cars. I just want something to happen.”

  “I don’t,” said Banks. “I very much don’t want something to happen.”

  “What about you?” Poppy asked Garland.

  “I just want to get to the front of the train and meet the driver,” said Garland.

  “What for, though?” said Poppy. “You get to the front, you meet the driver and what?”

  “Then I ask him,” said Garland.

  “Ask him what?” said a new voice.

  * * *

  The door between the carriages had opened, and the ticket collector had returned. Standing with him was another man. He was tall, and broad, his long blond hair streaked with grey and tied in a ponytail, and he was wearing a red shirt covered in images of blue parrots and faded pink baggy cotton pants that went down to his knees and were fastened with a drawstring. They stared at him for a few seconds.

  “It’s a look, I suppose,” said Poppy.

  * * *

  “Come with me, why don’cha?” said the man. “Put that thing away, these people are our guests,” he told the ticket collector, who reluctantly shoved his cattle prod back into his coat.

  “Name’s Lincoln,” he said.

  “Banks,” said Banks. “Garland, Poppy.”

  “Yeah, I know,” said Lincoln.

  “Where did you come from?” Garland asked.

  “I just blew in from the Emerald City,” he replied.

  He looked at them all and grinned.

  “You hungry?” he asked.

  “Always room for more,” said Banks.

  * * *

  The restaurant car was entirely sumptuous. Wooden tables, bolted to the floor, were covered in blinding white linen tablecloths. Crystal glass and silver cutlery were laid at each seat, and across one wall was a bar stocked with a globe’s worth of drinks.

  “Take a load off,” said Lincoln.

  They sat down and he smiled.

  “You’re probably wondering why I called you all in here,” he said in a peculiar voice.

  “Yes,” said Banks.

  “We are.”

  He grinned. “Guess not everyone’s au fait with the cultural references. Never mind. Garçon!”

  From nowhere, a waiter appeared.

  “What,” said Poppy, “the fuck?”

  “They’re trained to be silent,” said Lincoln. “And when I say trained, I mean bred.”

  The waiter looked remarkably like the ticket collector.

  “Another one?” said Garland.

  “Cheaper by the dozen,” Lincoln replied. He picked up a thin leather pad and opened it.

  “I’ll have th
e usual,” he said, putting it down again. “They’ll have the same.”

  “Oh, will we?” Poppy said.

  “Dude,” said Lincoln. “You’re eating with me. You’re in the favoured position of being at the table with the choicest morsels.”

  “Is he quoting something?” asked Banks.

  “Don’t ask me,” said Garland, “I just learned to read.”

  “Oh, that’s right,” said Lincoln. “Denning did do that.”

  “You know Denning?” said Poppy, tensing.

  “Honey, I know everyone and everything,” Lincoln said. “I know, for example, that I just have to press this –”

  He produced a small black box from his red parrot shirt.

  “– and you’ll be jerking like a marionette.”

  Poppy grabbed at the box. Lincoln put it in his pocket.

  “Emits a disruptive charge,” he said. “Like an EMP only smaller. Not that you’d appreciate the benefit, seeing as you’d be trying to stop your own hands from clawing off your face.”

  He smiled at them.

  “Let’s enjoy our lunch,” he said.

  * * *

  The food came and it was unusually good.

  “This is champagne?” said Garland as the waiter filled their glasses.

  “Cristal,” said Lincoln, and for the first time he looked apologetic. “Rappers used to drink it.”

  “Used to?” said Poppy.

  “Rappers?” said Garland.

  “It’s very yellow,” Banks added.

  “You three.” Lincoln sat back in his seat and grinned. “You’re quite the superhero team-up.”

  Poppy held up her bear.

  “Don’t forget Teddy,” she said.

  * * *

  Sometime later, Poppy sat back and belched, deep and loud.

  “I wish you’d stop doing that,” Garland said.

  “You’re not my mother,” said Poppy.

  Lincoln said, “You sure about that?”

  Poppy stared at him.

  “Joking,” Lincoln said.

  “Thank God,” said Garland.

  Lincoln drained his Cristal.

  “See,” he said, “what I like about you guys is the – what’s the word? – the sheer lack of curiosity. Here we are, three courses in, and you haven’t asked me one single question. I mean, we’re on a train, for God’s sake, sixteen coaches long –”

  “It’s more than sixteen,” said Banks.

  “I think he’s quoting,” Garland said.

  “– and none of you have asked me, I dunno, why are we on a train? Where are we going? Who am I?”

  He leaned in and looked at them, one by one.

  “Who are you?”

  “That’s not true,” Garland said. “Everything we’ve done has been to find out what’s happening.”

  “Not for me,” said Banks. “I know as much as I want to know. I just want a quiet life.” He helped himself to some more Cristal.

  “Strike one,” said Lincoln.

  “Poppy here wants to know what’s going on,” Garland said. “She even got off the train.”

  “Then she got back on again. Strike two,” Lincoln said. “Which leaves you.”

  “Me?” said Garland, looking affronted. “I’m the one who made everyone head up the train. I’m the one who wants to find out. All those questions you asked, that’s what I want to know.”

  “Haven’t tried too hard to find out though, have you?” said Lincoln. “I mean, all you’ve done is walk up the train.”

  Garland said, “That’s not –”

  “He’s trying to make you angry,” Poppy said.

  “He’s succeeding,” said Garland. To Lincoln she said, “All I have done since I woke up on this train is try and find out what is going on.”

  “And yet you missed so many opportunities,” Lincoln said. “There’s a whole library here and you didn’t open one book.”

  “What do you mean?” Garland said.

  Banks produced the book they’d found from his kitbag.

  “Not so literal,” said Lincoln, laughing. “That’s just a book somebody left behind. Family heirloom kind of thing. I ain’t talking about that kind of book or that kind of library at all.”

  “What are you fucking talking about?” Poppy said.

  “I might have to zap you anyway,” Lincoln said. He sighed.

  “You’ve all got this place wrong. It’s not a train. It’s a book. These aren’t carriages – they’re chapters. And if you read a book right, if you look for the clues, you’ll find what you’re looking for.”

  He looked at Garland.

  “But you, lady… you haven’t been looking at all. You know why? Because you’re scared of what you might find.”

  * * *

  Garland got up and left the table. She walked to the end of the restaurant car and looked out into the night. She could see her reflection in the glass. It looked troubled, and uncertain.

  A memory returned to her.

  She was standing in a room, on one side of a long black box that had been placed on black trestles. On the other side of the box, Denning was talking.

  He said, “You know that if you consent to this, you’ll lose almost everything you had?”

  She knew he was trying to discern what she really thought, but in the last few years she had become adept at hiding her feelings behind a bland expression.

  “Am I consenting to this?” she asked.

  Denning nodded. “I admit this is being rather imposed on you from above –”

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “No,” he said, “not from above. But yes, a decision has been made, with which you are not involved, and as such ‘consent’ isn’t perhaps the right word. Nevertheless,” and as he said the word, his lips pulled back from his teeth, “you have been offered the option of continuing.”

  “And what you are asking me to continue is not acceptable to me,” she said.

  “Shame,” said Denning. “It would have made for an easier transition. You are more popular than –”

  He nodded at the box.

  “Be careful,” she said. “He may be gone and I may be going, but you should still choose your words with forethought.”

  “Oh, I always do,” he said. He took a piece of paper from his coat pocket. “As you’ll see when you read this.”

  “A contract?”

  “A consent form,” he said. “We may be protecting you, but that doesn’t mean you can just walk away. You know too much. Sign this, and that problem will be… erased.”

  She took the paper.

  “We both know I’m not going to walk away from this,” she said, placing the paper on the black box. Denning produced a pen.

  “Then why agree?” he asked.

  “What else can I do?” Garland replied, and signed the paper.

  * * *

  She returned to the table. The ticket collector stood behind Lincoln, as though awaiting instructions.

  Banks was finishing the Cristal while Poppy picked her teeth with a fingernail.

  “Denning,” Garland said. “What did he do to me?”

  “Finally, a question,” said Lincoln. “Nothing you didn’t know he was going to do.”

  “Did he take my memory?” she asked.

  “That was the deal.”

  “Why?”

  “He didn’t want people to know who you were. The best way to ensure that was to make sure you didn’t know who you were.”

  “Why can’t I read? Was that part of the deal?”

  “Not as far as you were concerned. As far as he was concerned, that was a safety measure. Didn’t want to prompt any memories.”

  “How come it’s coming back?”

  Lincoln shrugged.

  “It was a new technology. Untested and faulty.”

  He stood up.

  “I think that’s enough questions for now,” he said.

  Poppy said, “Just like that? I think she’s got more questions.”<
br />
  “I can speak for myself,” Garland said. “I mean, you’re right but…”

  “I don’t think you understand how things go down round here,” said Lincoln. He turned to the ticket collector, who had remained silent through the conversation.

  “I need you to stand over there,” he said.

  “Whatever you say,” the collector replied. As he walked over to the far wall, Lincoln took out a gun.

  “Is here OK?” asked the collector.

  “It’s fine,” said Lincoln, and shot him in the face. “You see,” he explained to Poppy, “from where you sit, this is pretty much my train. Let’s move on. There’s so much more to see.”

  Two waiters appeared. They opened the train door and threw out the ticket collector’s body.

  Poppy lunged at Lincoln and grabbed his throat. Before she could choke him, Lincoln tapped his shirt pocket and she fell to the floor, her legs twisting underneath her. He hit the pocket again and she stopped moving.

  “Like I said, my train,” said Lincoln, as Banks and Garland helped her stand. “Now come on.”

  * * *

  The next carriage was a conference room. It had a row of TV monitors circled round the walls where the windows should have been, and it was entirely filled by a long, oval wooden table with chairs set around it. The chairs made it hard to manoeuvre around the table, but Lincoln didn’t seem particularly bothered by this.

  “At least we’re moving further towards the front of the train,” said Banks.

  “Always looking on the bright side,” Poppy replied.

  * * *

  The carriage after the conference room was a bare shell. The floor was covered in zig-zag metal plate, reinforced to carry extra weight. The extra weight was a car. A huge red open-topped car, with white wall tyres and a silver grille.

  “I pushed for an enclosed vehicle,” said Lincoln, “so we could armour it up a little. But he said it was for personal use, by which he meant sitting in, because he couldn’t drive for shit.”

  “Who?” asked Banks, but Lincoln ignored him.

  “There were only three of these built in the world,” he said. “He had the other two compacted, as well as the people who owned them. He wasn’t too hot on competition.”

  “I’m not really interested in cars,” Poppy said.

  “Shame,” said Lincoln. “Because this might be the last one you ever see.”

  He leaned over the front of the car.

  “Look at that,” he said. “Beautiful detail.”

  On top of the grille, at the very front of the car, was a silver ornament, a tiny figure. It was a crucifix, and on it a half-naked figure, arms stretched, head lowered.