by DoctorHepa
Chapter 87
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The Nightmare Express Landing - Station 283
Time to Level Collapse: 6 days, 23 hours
I watched Donut train with the hole spell while we waited for the Nightmare Express to come for the second time. She’d gotten the spell up to level three. She was practicing with making the hole a smaller diameter. She’d figured out how to cast the spell, and with Mongo standing right there, she could cast Clockwork Triplicate, and the two extra Mongos would appear on the other side of the hole. We’d be able to clear rooms without having to open doors.
I spent the time trying to read the last Louis L’Amour book, but I couldn’t concentrate. I kept thinking of everything that had happened over the past several hours, plus Donut’s loud exclamations kept distracting me.
I checked my timer. The train would return in a half hour. I still had ten minutes before we needed to get ready.
We’d kept our visit to the Desperado Club short. Imani and Elle sent a note that they couldn’t make it. Neither could Bautista, who was nearing the end of the line on his train. So we decided to make it a quick visit.
While we walked through the club, The Sledge cast a magic protection spell on us, something he hadn’t done the last time. Our entire party glowed blue as we walked through the dancers.
“He buy spell with own money,” Bomo said, the longest sentence I’d ever heard a cretin utter. “He buy for Princess protect.”
“Ahh, thank you Sledgie,” Donut said, patting the rock monster on the head. She now rode on his shoulder when we entered the club. The Sledge made a grumbling, satisfied noise.
The Dodge guild wouldn’t let me in, but they did allow The Sledge to accompany Donut inside. She went in and then sent me a message that she’d be in there for an hour.
Donut: IT’S THE SAME THING AS OUR TRAINING ROOM, BUT IT’S EXPENSIVE. THE FIRST SESSION IS FREE, AND IT’LL RAISE IT A FULL LEVEL. IF I WANT TO RAISE IT UP TO NINE, IT’LL COST 20,000 GOLD. TEN IS 250,000! THAT’S OUTRAGEOUS!
Carl: Okay, I’ll be at the bar.
I’d learned that my new-found ability to see through thresholds didn’t work on all doors. It only worked on portals, magical doorways that were really designed to teleport people from one place to the next, like the one in and out of our personal space. It didn’t work on the front entrance of the Desperado Club, but it did work on the doorway into the backroom vestibule, the one from the local bar to the little area where Clarabelle sat.
The snap-a-photo feature, unfortunately, didn’t work if I wasn’t allowed access to the area, which was a major bummer. I still didn’t know how the hell this worked. It wasn’t magic. It wasn’t a skill. It was some sort of technology thing, a software upgrade that interacted with the dungeon. There was so much about this world and how it worked that I still didn’t understand.
I’d sat at the bar for the hour, staring glumly at my drink. I was approached a half of a dozen times, but Bomo dutifully kept people back. When the hour was almost over, I had a thought, and I approached the dance floor.
I waved at the crowd, motioning for everybody to form speech bubbles over their heads. There was about 20 other crawlers in the room, most of them human, most of them hovering around level 20.
“Hey guys,” I said when I had everyone’s attention. “I want to get into everybody’s chat. I think we should all make a habit of getting the chat details of everybody we meet. If we do it enough, we can create a network where we can all pass information much more easily. It doesn’t let you make a chatroom unless everybody is connected with everybody else, which isn’t really feasible, but we need to start an information exchange so we can all trade intelligence. We think we have an idea on how to get off this floor, but I know there’s probably lots of different paths to success, and it’s important we all know how to do it.”
Most of the people shrugged and then started fist bumping everybody else. I thought Bomo was going to have a heart attack, but I eventually fist bumped everyone in the room, adding an additional 22 names to my roster. When Donut appeared, I made her do the same.
Now, as we waited for the Nightmare Express, I sat there distracted from my book, shuffling through messages. One guy, a human warrior from Japan named Koki, had discovered a way to mass-send messages to everyone on your list at once, and now my messages were a mess of people asking for help and looking to trade items. It was too much, and I created a special folder that would keep them from popping up on my interface.
Still, people kept messaging me directly. I was spending a lot of time explaining what little we knew about the trains. It was important people had all the information, and I wanted to help, but I was shocked at how little some people had managed to figure out after three full days of this.
Carl: No, no. If it’s a colored line, it’ll always be subway train. Those are the ones that go up and never go back down. If it’s a named train, it can be something else. Like the monorails and the diesel trains and the steam engines. Those always go in loops. The named trains are the only ones you can use to get down to earlier stations. We just haven’t seen any that go back down to lower than 83.
Donita Grace: I just don’t get it. The Fulvous line is a subway and it just goes up and it doesn’t circle back.
Carl: Then Fulvous is a color. They’re using some weird colors.
Donita Grace: Well I’ve never heard of it.
I stopped responding after that. There was only so much I could say.
I was nervous about this plan. That’s because it’s a stupid fucking plan. But it’s all you got.
The Nightmare Express had a loop of an hour and a half. It hit that first station 83—the very first station we’d traveled to with the guy with the books, then 283 where we stood now, then 436, then back to a different 283, a different 83, and then back to that original 83. We’d been ready to jump on it during its previous pass, but I’d pulled us back at the last minute after I saw what we were required to do. If we’d gotten on, we’d have been screwed.
The ground had rumbled as the Nightmare Express eased into the long station. The train hissed as brakes squealed. This was an old-school steam engine, painted jet black. This train ran on coal, or maybe magic, but that explained the lack of a third rail. A wedge-shaped cow catcher sat low on the front of the train. It pulled about forty cars, most of them freight cars designed to haul livestock. As it pulled up, I could hear and see movement from some of the slatted cars, one after another. These were massive creatures, all scrabbling against the walls of their containers to get out. A pair of tentacles rose from one of the cages, and I realized with horror that these cars didn’t have tops.
There was about four feet from the top of the cars to the ceiling, though each car had what appeared to be chain-linked fence on top of the car which rose all the way to the ceiling. It was, I realized, to prevent people from jumping from the platforms to the top of the cars. Claws and fire burst from one cage. The next was a solid container, filled with water, with spikes sloshing out of the car, like it was filled with pissed-off narwhals. Water sploshed from the car and cascaded onto the platform. It smelled like seawater.
Not all of the train cars appeared to be filled with giant monsters. I quickly counted. Fourteen of the cars appeared to have monstrosities within. The majority of the other cars were rickety, empty freight cars. None of the freight cars had doors, at least not facing the platform.
There were only two cars on the train where we could get on: a caboose at the very back and a passenger car at the front, right behind the engine car, which had pulled into the forward tunnel the same way the colored lined trains did. There was no other way to get on the train. We’d positioned ourselves near the front, and I moved to enter the front passenger car. I grasped onto the door, and a message popped up.
This
door is exit only. Enter at rear.
“Goddamnit,” I grumbled, looking upon the train. My eyes caught the thin gangway above the open-top freight cars. It was immediately clear what we had to do. My Protective Shell wasn’t going to help. We had to get on the caboose, where the back balcony had a ladder to the roof of the car. From there we’d have to proceed up the train on hands and knees on the goddamned roof of the cars while the ceiling whipped by at a hundred plus miles per hour, all the while traversing 38 open-top cars randomly filled with jumping, snarling monsters. And if there was a war mage in there somewhere, he was probably hiding in one of those cars, ready to ambush our asses when we least expected.
Since it was from the back of the train to the front, my Protective Shell wasn’t going to work. The chain-link fence along the roofs of the cars prevented us from jumping up there. And I wouldn’t trust Donut’s Puddle Jumper spell, either, not when the target gangway was so thin. It didn’t let us move through walls, and I wasn’t certain it’d work anyway if the target was moving.
“Yeah, fuck this,” I said, backing away.
A minute later, and the train hissed, gathering speed.
“That was our plan,” Donut said, watching the train leave. “What are we going to do now?”
I started counting in my head how long it took the train to leave the station. It’d taken a full minute and a half. My Protective Shell only lasted 20 seconds. Shit. Too long.
I looked at Donut and Katia and laughed nervously. “So, I have an idea.”
* * *
“You know,” Katia said as I prepared to jump onto the track, “Hekla warned me that you were crazy. She told me to be careful because you’d likely get me killed.”
I grinned up at her and jumped down into the gravel between the railroad ties. “First off, you’ve told me this already. And this time the only one taking the risk is me. And Donut.”
“I don’t like this, Carl,” Donut said. She jumped down and landed on my shoulder. Mongo was left in his carrier, leaving Katia alone on the landing.
“It’ll be fine,” I said with much more bravado than I felt. I met eyes with Katia. “Be ready. But stay back in case we accidentally crash it.” I turned and started jogging my way up the track toward the oncoming train. It’d be in the station in about fifteen minutes. It’d take us five minutes of light running to reach the spot I’d mapped out.
The tunnel was cold and dark. My bare feet crunched on the gravel. Donut hummed nervously as I ran. I told her not to put the Torch spell on. I didn’t want her warning the engineer, which might cause him to slow down.
“I should have left Mongo on the platform with Katia so she doesn’t get lonely,” Donut said. We reached the spot. The station was now a distant speck of light. I could feel the vibration of the approaching train on the track. It was a small rumble, but growing.
“She’s a big girl. She can take care of herself.”
“If she is, then why do you keep telling her what to do? You didn’t even ask her if she wanted to get giant. You just shoved the backpack at her and told her to do it.”
“She likes it,” I said.
“But what if she didn’t?”
“Look who’s talking,” I said. “You with your boots and purple mohawk nonsense.”
“That’s different. Fashion is different than making someone change. You keep telling her to be herself, but you’re the one making her change the most of all.”
“I…” I paused. Donut was right. But in the words of the AI, this wasn’t Dr. Phil. We didn’t have the luxury of spending all day making sure we weren’t stepping on each other’s feelings. I didn’t want to be a jerk, but I also wanted to keep her alive. “You know what, you’re right, Donut. Next time I’ll ask her.”
Donut patted me on the head. “Good boy, Carl.”
The trembling of the track grew. I glanced at my clock. Right on time. “Okay, it’s time. Go ahead and set up your spell now, and let me know when it’s ready.”
“Uh, I think we went too far,” Donut said a moment later. “The closest I can get is about three or four hundred feet before the platform.”
“What?” I said, horror rising. “You said it was line of sight.”
“That’s what it says, Carl. It’s not my fault if the description is wrong.”
We had trekked too far into the tunnel. It was too late. She couldn’t cast her spell if we were running. “Okay, okay. We’ll be fine. Get ready to run your ass off after we teleport.” That motorcycle would be pretty useful right about now.
The tunnel lightened. I could hear the train, barreling down the track. It was still moving quickly, though the engineer was starting to apply the brakes. The distinctive squeal echoed through the tight tunnel.
A piercing whistle blasted. The distant light became an angry, round eye as the train barreled toward us. Even though it was slowing down, it still came at us at a terrifying speed.
Donut’s Puddle Jumper had a three-second delay after it was cast, so we had to time this perfectly. The train loomed, the cowcatcher approaching like a spear. Shit, it’s moving faster than I thought. “Cast! Cast now!”
I pressed down on Protective Shell. A moment passed, and we blinked.
Holy crap. I’d timed that a little too close.
We jumped a quarter of a mile down the track. Notifications started pouring in. The train roared through my Protective Shell. All the red-tagged monsters within were slamming against the wall of the spell and then getting pushed backward, hopefully splattering against the back of the train. The train continued to barrel at us. The back of the train screamed. Sparks showered. It’s not slowing down. It’s speeding up. Why is it speeding up?
“Fuck! Run! Run!” We turned toward the station, only three hundred and fifty feet away. So close.
Donut bolted, running faster than me. “Hurry up, Carl,” she cried without looking back.
It was like one of those dreams where you tried to run, but you were caught in something sticky. I knew I was running faster than any human had naturally run before, but I’d wasted a precious few seconds being disoriented and staring at the oncoming train. And then I’d spent another full second lamenting what a stupid idea this had been. The train seemed to have closed the quarter of a mile distance between us in mere seconds. How fast was this thing going? It’s a damn steam engine, not a bullet train. It’s out of control. It’s going to derail the moment it hits a curve. We must have killed the engineer.
Ahead, Donut leaped, vaulting onto the platform. She’d been running so fast, she rolled the moment she hit the landing. I saw Katia standing there, eyes huge as I approached the station.
I felt the train behind me. The ground rumbled as if in an earthquake.
I’m not going to make it.
I jumped.
I didn’t make it.
* * *
I crashed, I tumbled, and I broke.
Part of me registered that if my body wasn’t enhanced by my supernatural Constitution, I would’ve exploded like a blood-and-guts filled water balloon the moment the cowcatcher smacked me. The wedge was designed to throw whatever it caught aside, though in the tight tunnel, there was no aside except at the landings.
Being tossed onto the landing would’ve been preferable to what actually happened. I’d jumped just as the train caught me. I felt things break and snap within. I was flying, and then I wasn’t. I slammed against hot metal. I’d instinctively bashed onto my Heal spell while I was still in midair, but my health continued to plummet, so I hit a heal potion. I looked up in time to see Donut and Katia’s horrified faces looking at me as we rocketed past the station and back into the tunnel, still picking up speed.
I’d hit the cowcatcher and flipped in midair, getting slammed by the front of the train. My constitution, forward momentum, that Heal spell, and the fact my invulnerable foot was what actually caught the front of the train all conspired together to make sure I clung to life.
I lay prone on a small, flat sect
ion above the cowcatcher, just before the train’s boiler. The light sat on a platform just above my head, shining into the featureless tunnel. The front of the train burned. The chug chug chug of the train was furious, louder and faster than it should be. In the shadow I could see 666 was emblazoned in red letters on the front of the black boiler.
I took a second healing potion.
A terrible screeching noise rose from the back of the train. Whatever it was, it wasn’t slowing the damn thing down.
Donut: CARL! CARL!
Carl: I’m okay. I need to stop the train. Stay there.
Donut: THE TRAIN IS ALL BROKEN IN THE BACK. YOU GOTTA HURRY.
A short ladder led to a thin gangplank that ran along the exterior port side of the engine. The plank did not run along the starboard side, which was the side facing the station platforms. The rocky, uneven wall of the tunnel was right there, whipping by at breakneck speed. My whole body ached. I could see points where the train had sheared the wall off on earlier passes. If I reached out, it’d probably rip my arm off.
I gingerly moved to the ladder, and I pulled myself up, careful not to touch the massive boiler, which was getting hotter by the moment. A handrail ran the length of the boiler, leading to a square window where the driver could look out onto the track. A red light glowed inside the cab, but I didn’t see movement within.
Below, pistons spun and automatic steam-release valves along the wheels opened at random intervals, screaming hot gas into the passageway. With nowhere to go, the steam swirled in the tunnel, giving the already-dark channel a humid, hazy appearance. Everything was wet and hot, like the interior of a sauna.