by G M Eppers
“No, thanks, Grandma. You don’t understand. They are coming here to hurt you. Junior wants you dead, you know that, don’t you?”
She started crocheting. “Is this about the Krochedy trial I was on? That’s over and done with, dear.”
Roxy was staring at me as if she couldn’t believe her ears. “Mrs. Gumphy, are you listening to us? If Butte comes back here, you cannot let him in. Do you understand?”
“Well, I won’t be letting him in if he’s got that nasty Junior with him. I’ll tell him to take Junior right back where he found him. I’ll not have that man in my house.” She nodded emphatically at the yarn spiraling into her lap.
There was a light knock on the door, just a single rap, and then I heard a key sliding into the lock. I turned toward the doorway just as the door opened. It was Butte, letting himself in. He stood there, his hand still on the knob with the key hanging out of it, like the proverbial deer in the headlights. A deer dressed in khakis and a polo shirt. I knew he was going to bolt. “Roxy, stay here,” I said without taking my eyes off my father.
He turned and ran and I went running after him, not waiting for confirmation from Roxy, no time to grab my helmet off the entryway table. The unmarked vehicle was still there, completely quiet, as Butte high tailed it across the street and north up Sheridan Street. Of course. The APB was on Junior, not Butte. Or it was equally possible that they were both sleeping. With the windows tinted, I couldn’t tell. I had the time to slam the palm of my hand against the driver’s window to get their attention as I ran past, wishing the rifle slung across my back was a little more secure. It bounced against my hip repeatedly. I didn’t look back.
Dad ran past four or five houses and made a sharp right, cutting through someone’s yard. I turned into the same yard in time to see him climbing over the rear fence. He was unencumbered, or I certainly would have caught up to him by now. With the running start, I raised one of my rubber soled shoes and propelled myself over the fence, hoping there wasn’t a swimming pool there. I did come close to running into an elm tree, but darted around it just as Dad must have.
He hit South Palmer Street and climbed into the passenger side of a tan sedan facing south, which immediately pulled away from the curb, cutting off an oncoming red Toyota Corolla that nearly rear-ended them. At the same time, I heard the siren of the police car gear up, but it would be several seconds before they could make the U-turn and there were no cross streets, just back-to-back land plots. I didn’t want to wait for them anyway. I knew who was in the driver’s seat. I let my eyes fall to the license plate but only had a second before they were too far ahead. I saw the letters BZ and what I was pretty sure was either an 8 or a very dirty 3. Turning my head around, I spotted a guy with a motorcycle in the driveway right next to me. I took it as a sign and ran up. “CURDS business! I need this vehicle!” I said as I took the handlebars, straddled it, and hit the kickstart. The noisy engine roared to life, drowning out his objections and I sped off after the sedan, which entered a suburban circle, making me think they were going to turn around and double back. I slowed, just in case, but they curved around the circle and back onto South Palmer Street, which itself curved, forming the bottom of the horseshoe.
I suddenly realized that the other leg of the horseshoe was Butler Street. They’d gone this way deliberately.
On the motorcycle, the rifle was much less of a hindrance, but even if it had been there was nothing that was going to make me discard it. Even with the unmarked coming up behind me, knowing the police could pull over long enough to retrieve it, it would have felt irresponsible.
It occurred to me that letting the police handle it might be a good idea. I could pull over, discard the motorcycle, and get into the police car as they came through. They had the radio and could communicate with other units trying to get eyes on the tan sedan. But I didn’t want to give up. It sounded cliché, but this was personal. It was my fight, win or lose.
It seemed to be tan sedan day in the neighborhood, but none of them were trying to speed away. I checked out the license plates anyway as I zigged between them but didn’t see any that matched the few characters I remembered. A number of cars honked at me. Butler Street intersected with Adlai Stevenson Drive, a fairly major four lane throughway. The motorcycle was faster than their sedan. I had to be catching up. If they had turned right, the chase was on. Traffic on the east bound side was light and sporadic. They easily could be out of sight already. My stomach clenched at the thought of losing their trail when I’d been so close. Butler Street continued north of Adlai Stevenson Drive, but it was deserted. I checked the westbound lane, which seemed to be jamming up. A train was rumbling over the tracks fifty yards ahead of us, but that wouldn’t be blocking traffic. There was an overpass spanning Adlai Stevenson Drive. Perhaps there was an accident or something happening on the other side of the overpass, but I couldn’t see that far ahead. It was too much to hope for that it was Dad and Junior with their heads buried in air bags. A car would have been forced to go east or north, but my cycle had more options. As I watched for an opening, I had decided to go with the odds and stay with the crowd, guessing that Junior would try to get lost in plain sight. I spotted a tan sedan four cars up, idling in the inside lane of the bumper-to-bumper jam.
Hiding had backfired on them. Swinging the bike onto the shoulder I eased it up the lane toward the sedan, recognizing the plates as I got close. They’d seen me as well. The driver side door opened into a gap in the eastbound inside lane and Junior jumped out, causing two or three cars nearby to start honking their horns. He leaned inside for a split second, then closed the door and sprinted across the eastbound lanes. A second later, my father emerged from the passenger side, leaving his door wide open, and skirted the front of the car before following Junior. He stepped onto the safety of a cement median that tapered to nothing right next to their car and stopped.
From the other side, Junior was cupping his hands to his mouth to yell at Butte, and he waved for Dad to follow him. At the next gap in eastbound traffic, Dad sprinted across.
I swung the bike through behind the sedan, avoiding the meridian entirely, and screeched through the same gap seconds before the next group of cars.
Junior was running toward the train. He was several paces ahead of Dad, but Dad was gaining on him. If it took very long they would either miss their chance or Dad would lose his stamina. Or both. On the off chance that they didn’t make it, I steered the bike into a parallel path, or as parallel as I could make it as I avoided trees, and watched their progress. There were switches diverting the north/south track first east, then west, but this train was staying on the straightaway, rumbling south at a leisurely 20 miles per hour. I was glad to be on the east side of the tracks. After one major clump of trees there was almost no obstruction, but on the other side it was nothing but trees, it seemed, for miles.
His legs pumping, Junior neared the train, timing his reach and jump perfectly to grab hold of the access ladder on the rear of a boxcar, pulling himself up easily to stand on the running board. Breathing heavily, he turned to check the progress of his partner in crime. There was no way Dad was going to make it to the same car, but he’d watched Junior and poured on everything he had, catching the ladder on a car four spaces back from Junior. He didn’t get on the running board quite so gracefully, and kicking up a cloud of dust and possibly breaking a toe before he got there. He looked at me, his likely injured foot hanging loose, as I kept pace on the motorcycle, then headed up to the top of the boxcar, presumably to catch up to Junior.
I sped up and easily found Junior, waiting patiently on his car, confident in his getaway. I had to make a decision. I couldn’t keep following the train forever. There were a couple more major roadways which the train would pass over, including an Interstate which was coming up fast, and not long after that it bridged Lake Springfield. I guessed I didn’t have to worry about the possibility of them jumping off the other side of the track. With almost total obstruction it would
be suicide. Just like it would be suicide for me to try to cross the Interstate on the motorcycle. I was going to have to get on the train, too. I needed to stop the train. But the front engine was not even in sight. I glanced backward and noticed this train also had a rear engine, a push engine, about six cars back.
I slowed the bike, letting Junior and Dad shoot ahead of me. Let them think they were home free. They probably didn’t know what I knew. I allowed myself a little leeway, lining up with the third car up and steering the bike as close as I dared. The vibrations from the train felt like it was going to shake apart all my joints. I had to jut around a tree suddenly, but got back close to the train again quickly and ahead was a good stretch of clear land. I lined up with my seat just ahead of the back of a car and matched the speed. Counting to three, I stood up and grabbed the access ladder in one motion, stepping off the bike and onto the running board, my knuckles white on the metal rung. The bike veered off, tipped and crashed into a tree.
Taking more deep breaths and focusing on what I had to do, I turned, straddling the gap between cars, and transferred to the next car, wishing I had more time. I kind of wanted to stop the train before we hit the state line and ended up in either Missouri or Kentucky. I was hoping to stop it before Lake Springfield, but wasn’t sure I could. Trains take a long time to stop. I was also thankful I was familiar with this track and knew this span was straight for a good long while. Stopping a train on a curve was a sure way to derail it and I certainly didn’t want that. If I couldn’t stop before we crossed the lake, there was way too much open space for them to run off to on the other side. As I recalled, there was a police academy there, but not a lot else. It would be really ironic if they ended up running to the police academy, I thought.
The climb to the top of the car was easy enough as long as I didn’t look up at the landscape speeding by around me. I took a second to check the front of the train from this perspective and I could see the forward engine in the distance, starting to cross the overpass over the Interstate. Then I turned and sprinted across. I had a couple more cars to get past before I got to the engine.
The only tricky part was crossing the empty space between cars. It seemed to be wider each time, though I knew it wasn’t true. It was probably only a couple of minutes before I made it to the engine. I was worried the door would be locked, and I’d have to climb to the top and go in through the window. Then, what if the window was closed? Or worse, what if the rear engine was manned for some reason?
In the tail end of Section One of my Transportation Specialist course, I’d learned that the rear engines on trains were normally controlled by the front engine, which meant it was unlikely that anyone would be there. The door had a small window in it and I peeked inside, verifying that the cabin was empty. With the toes of my feet on the rear running board, I used my left hand to push open the sliding door, then jumped inside, letting the hydraulics close it. My knees buckled at the feeling of relative safety and I had to brace myself against the wall for a moment. The engine cabin stretched before me, with the control panel in the nose. Wasting no time, I took three large steps to get there, studying the panel. It was similar to the one I’d learned on, but not exactly the same and I didn’t want to make a mistake.
The first thing I had to do was disengage from the computer. It would be accessed from a DPU panel, which stands for Distributed Power Unit. When the train gets to its destination, the designation of Master DPU can be changed from the front engine to the rear so the train doesn’t have to turn around. I finally found the DPU and the toggle, but would it give me control while the other engine was still the master? And would the engineer in the front engine get a warning light or an indication of my sabotage? I shrugged. What if he did? He’d probably stop the train and that’s precisely what I wanted to do anyway. I flipped the toggle.
At first there was no indication that it did anything, but then some of the lights on the control panels went dark and others lit up. Under the panels were three large horizontal toggles. One by itself was marked THROTTLE, and the other two were mounted one above the other. The top was marked AUTO BRAKE and the bottom was marked IND BRAKE. The bottom would brake only the engine, probably breaking the knuckle in the process and stranding me while the rest of the train zoomed on. I wanted the top one, which would brake every car on the train. I moved the toggle to FULL and braced myself.
Wheels squealed like an incoming missile and warning lights began flashing all over the control panels. The poor engineer on the other end was probably in a panic to figure out what was going on. Fortunately, with the train only going about 20 miles per hour, it wouldn’t take as long to stop as the mile average, which was calculated for a speed of 50 miles per hour, but it would still take around three football fields. The wheels continued to squeal as I ran back the way I had come and back out the door to the running board. Hanging on to the access ladder of the first car by wrapping my arm through the rung up to my elbow, I hung out into the open to see if I could spot Junior and Dad, and to get some idea of where we were going to stop. Unlike standing on top of the car, from this level I could only see about six or seven cars ahead. Mostly, I saw trees. I was going to have to play it by ear.
As soon as it was slow enough, I jumped off and started running parallel to the tracks as the train continued to slow. I rapidly started passing cars and gaining progress toward the front of the train, keeping an eye out for activity ahead of me and dodging trees as I went, my left hip now thoroughly bruised by the rifle butt banging against it with every stride. I could live with that. But the chase was starting to wear on other parts of my body. My legs were starting to ache and my breath was hitching, but I dared not slow down. They weren’t likely to wait for the train to come to a full stop any more than I’d been.
While my view kept being obscured by the thick trees, there was sometimes a straightaway that allowed a glimpse. There was a very slight curve to the west as the train neared the bridge over Lake Springfield and as I ran the train came to a stop with the engine just out of sight around that curve. I spotted two small dark figures actually climbing back a couple of cars to get to an area that would allow them to hop off without falling into the water. They weren’t just trying to escape. Junior was heading somewhere. He had choices and yet he kept putting himself into my view. Why didn’t he jump off on the other side? The east side of the track skirted the shoreline here. The west had ritzy shoreline residences with huge yards. One of my earliest memories was of Grandma and Grandpa taking me trick or treating in that ritzy neighborhood. It worked. I got at least 6 full size Hershey bars and a couple king size Snickers, as I recall. I ate three and threw up on their couch.
Instead, Junior, with Butte in tow, was running toward the marina. Did he already have a boat there? Was he going to steal one? What the heck was he doing? It wasn’t just a matter of catching them anymore. I wanted to find out what they were up to.
The Springfield Ski and Boat Club is really a private marina, but being a Krochedy the odds were Junior had access to some kind of boat, probably a large one. With 36 slips on three docks, the Boat Club featured large, well-maintained lawns and a parking lot in the shape of a parallelogram. It was early in the year for boating, with a chill wind coming over the lake that actually felt good on my over-exerted, sweaty body. If I’d been at full strength, I think I could have overtaken them as they trotted over to the center dock and prepared to launch a gleaming power yacht painted in shimmering copper. Across the tailgate the name “Kroch Rocket” was painted in black script. Instead, I stopped to catch my breath and watched them crawl around on it. Butte was inexperienced and had to be told specifically what to do.
“You’re going after them, aren’t you?”
I was taking deep breaths, oxygenating like mad, gearing up for just that. It was only after he spoke that I noticed McGrone, in his uniform but without any medals, approaching and that one of the six or seven vehicles in the parking lot was an SUV taxicab. “What are you doing he
re?” Although I didn’t really need to, I bent over and put my hands on my knees, feigning an Olympic marathon runner level of exhaustion. I knew Junior was watching. Not as intensely as Butte was watching me, but watching just the same.
Just beyond McGrone, coming up more slowly, was Badger, his cell phone in one hand. Both had their HEP belts around their waists, though some of the pockets were conspicuously empty. “While you followed your Dad, we followed the gun.” He, however, was not panting like an overheated dog, nor did his legs, I suspected, feel like overcooked spaghetti. Okay, not overcooked, really. My legs were still a bit dente, but I wanted Junior to think they were overcooked spaghetti.
“The gun?” I’d been so focused on following them I’d forgotten about the prison break. As we talked, I was watching Junior and Butte crawl all over the boat. It seemed there were a lot of preparations to make before launching. Junior descended into the cabin at least six times. Dad stood on the dock, unwrapping the rope from the piling very slowly, and watching me in return. Probably, he was wondering why I wasn’t coming after them, after pursuing them all the way across town, especially now that I had two others to help me.
“The gun they used to break Junior out of prison,” Badger explained. “They tossed it, and the laundry woman, out of the car right before they drove away. The warden kept it for us.”
“And?” Dad had several more loops to go. The motor yacht being pretty valuable, Junior docked it as securely as possible.
