The Boundless

by Kenneth Oppel

  Light darts about from the impatient lantern. Compared to the antechamber this room seems empty. In its center is an enormous sarcophagus. Will spent the last three years in a port city that whispers ghost stories. Ghost lighthouses and ships, drowned mines, hauntings and forerunners. But never has he had a stronger feeling that he is in the presence of the supernatural. It’s a tingling in his toes, a weakening of his joints, and a faint but insistent whine in his ears that quickens his pulse.

  The lantern light sweeps over hanging photographs of Van Horne’s family—and then Cornelius Krieghoff’s The Blacksmith’s Shop. Will glances at Mr. Dorian and sees his eyes fixed to the canvas like a desert wanderer spying an oasis.

  “Fancy that, do you?” says Brogan. “Well, you’ll have lots of time to admire it. Boys, let’s get what we came for.”

  “It’s the spike, isn’t it?” Will says.

  Brogan sniffs. “The spike?”

  “You tried to steal it in the mountains.”

  “Oh, I’ll have the spike, but that’s just the beginning.” Brogan’s eyes narrow. “Your father never told you, did he?”

  The train judders, and Will takes a step to keep his balance. “Told me what?”

  “In the mountains, we weren’t just building the railroad. We was digging for gold, your father and me. The railway was bust, boy. Van Horne was a desperate man. No one would bail him out. Us men hadn’t been paid in two months. You remember going hungry, don’t you? What did your ma feed you those months?”

  Will does remember those times, when they ate the same flavorless soups and stews because his father sent no wages home. Without their mother’s factory work they would’ve been turned out on the street.

  “Van Horne was a desperate man. No one’d give another penny for his blessed railway. But he heard from some Indians that there was gold in the mountains. He set a team of us workin’ to blast tunnels to see. And we found gold, by God we did. Enough to save his railway. But he kept it secret—didn’t want people to know he was saved by sheer luck. And whether that gold really belonged to the company, well, that was a thorny question. One thing’s certain. Didn’t see Van Horne with soot and nitro on his hands. That fat cat’s soaked in the sweat and blood of others, and I hope he’s drowning in it now. We mined it, and Van Horne took it. But there’s plenty left over. This car ain’t just carrying a dead man.”

  Brogan swings his lantern so it illuminates three large crates against the rear wall. One of them is open, revealing the sly luster of gold bars.

  “That’s what your father was gonna use to launch the steamship line across the Pacific,” says Brogan. “But I’ll have it instead.”

  “You can’t!” Will says, his outrage sudden and fierce. “You can’t steal from him!”

  “I dug up that gold!” Brogan roars. “Same as him. Why shouldn’t I have my share of it? I didn’t get no promotion. I didn’t get handed the railway like your pa!”

  “He saved Van Horne’s life!” Will retorts. “And he worked for what he got. He’s no thief like you!”

  Will feels the nauseating fork of pain in his stomach before he even knows he’s been punched. He’s on his knees, gasping, streaming tears. Brogan spits beside him.

  “Thief? You ask your pa if he slipped some of that mountain gold into his pocket—if you ever see him again.” He turns to his men. “Fetch it up! Haul them crates to the doorway.”

  Mackie hasn’t taken two steps before he stops short. From within the sarcophagus comes the sound of someone dragging a breath into his lungs.

  Will jerks as the lid slides violently back. Maren’s fingers grip his arm and bite deeply. His whole body feels struck by lightning.

  From the darkness of the coffin, Van Horne rises. His mighty beard and sideburns obscure his shrunken face. A jacket hangs loosely about his collapsed chest. His once powerful hands are webbed with flaccid skin. As though he’s in the grip of a seizure, his torso quivers, then gives a great twitch, and Van Horne springs upright like some diabolical jack-in-the-box.

  There’s a crackling sound, a sudden acrid odor—and a terrible high-pitched gagging emanates from Mackie. His back arches and lifts him onto his tiptoes, chin angled high, as though being yanked by some invisible chain. His damp clothes steam; his arms tremble stiffly at his sides. The tendons in his neck stand out like knotted twine. To Will the sight is almost as terrible as the corpse towering before him.

  Chisholm grabs Mackie to drag him back, but the moment he touches his stricken friend, they seem welded together, and he too makes horrible choking sounds.

  Will looks back at Van Horne’s corpse—half convinced it’s working this devilish effect on Brogan’s men. But he sees now that it’s merely a mechanical wonder, like the ones he saw in the Zirkus car.

  “It’s just a puppet!” Brogan bellows at his men.

  “They’re being electrocuted,” Mr. Dorian tells him calmly. “It’s a trap.”

  Brogan levels the gun at Mr. Dorian. “I thought you turned it off!”

  “This runs off a separate battery.”

  There’s another snap, and Brogan’s two men collapse to the floor.

  Without turning his back on Mr. Dorian, the brakeman warily kicks at his fallen companions. They groan and tremble, their wide eyes unblinking.

  “They’ll recover,” says the ringmaster. “You needn’t worry.”

  As Will watches, Van Horne’s swaying corpse silently stretches out its skeletal hand and closes it around Brogan’s forearm.

  Brogan whirls with a cry, and tries to pull free. But with a metallic ratcheting sound, one finger after another locks around the brakeman’s flesh. The puppet’s arm is stiff and freakishly strong, holding Brogan at a distance from the sarcophagus.

  Brogan whirls on Mr. Dorian in fury. “You knew about this!”

  “Of course. I helped design this room for Mr. Van Horne.”

  “Get me free, or I shoot!”

  “I’m afraid I won’t be doing that,” says Mr. Dorian.

  Brogan squeezes the trigger. The hammer clicks. He squeezes again and again—six empty chambers.

  “Difficult to fire a gun without these,” says the ringmaster, holding out the bullets as if returning them to Brogan. Brogan lunges for them, but is brought short by Van Horne’s grip.

  “You’ll be released when we reach Lionsgate City.” He turns to Maren. “The painting, please. Don’t touch the floor. Beyond where we stand, every inch is booby-trapped.”

  Like a cat Maren springs across the carriage and lands on a small bureau near the wall. She lifts the painting off its hook and flings it toward Mr. Dorian, who catches it. Then she leaps nimbly back beside Will.

  Mr. Dorian is already savagely knocking the Krieghoff painting from its frame. Taking the hide-scraper from his coat pocket, he slits the canvas right off the stretcher. He hurriedly folds it and crams it inside his jacket. His hands are shaking.

  “We’re leaving!” he shouts, ushering Will and Maren out ahead of him.

  “Don’t be a fool!” Brogan shouts. “We can split the gold! You’ll be rich!”

  In the antechamber Will watches as Mr. Dorian swings the door shut—but with a bang, it won’t close. Mr. Dorian pulls harder. Something is jamming the door.

  “The bolt,” Will says, now understanding the sound he heard earlier. “It shot back out.”

  Mr. Dorian looks. Sure enough, a large metal bolt now protrudes. “Once we were through the time zone . . . ,” he murmurs, “it must have tried to lock itself again.”

  “What a shame!” crows Brogan from the other side of the door. “Can’t lock us in now, can you?”

  For the first time since Will met Mr. Dorian, he looks flustered.

  “Quickly,” the ringmaster says. “We need to get back.”

  Snow-laden trees flash past the open doorway. Maren climbs up the r
ope to the top of the funeral car. Will’s next. Going down was one thing, but lifting himself hand over hand is altogether more difficult. She helps pull him over the top.

  Will looks about, astounded. From the east the first light gilds the wrinkled slopes of the mountains that rise up all around the Boundless. The sky throws an icy cloak around Will, and he shivers.

  Below him, Mr. Dorian starts to pull himself onto the roof, and falters, his face pinched. Will and Maren kneel, grab hold of an arm each, and haul him over the edge. He nods gratefully, pulling the rope up after him.

  Will is shocked by how ill Mr. Dorian looks in the sun’s glare.

  “Are you all right?” Maren asks.

  “Just winded,” he says, standing.

  “It’s done,” says Will softly. “It’s over.”

  “Not quite yet,” says Mr. Dorian.

  Will turns. Silhouetted by the rising sun, six brakemen loom large as they make their way across the roof of the Boundless toward them.

  ATOP THE BOUNDLESS

  * * *

  “Get up!” Brogan roars. He kicks out at Mackie with his boot, catching him under the chin.

  Mackie splutters and then rolls over and retches on Brogan’s boot.

  “What . . . ,” he moans.

  “You got jolted. Move back before it does it again, and pull Chisholm with you.”

  Chisholm’s weaselly face begins to twitch, and he opens his eyes and sits groggily.

  “Jaysus,” says Mackie, looking at the towering corpse of Cornelius Van Horne, its chest raggedly rising and falling.

  “Puppet is all,” says Brogan, “but it’s got a grip on me. You’ll need to bust its arm.”

  “I don’t like puppets,” says Mackie.

  “You wanna spend the rest of your life in prison? Get over here!”

  Wincing with revulsion, Mackie steps closer to the corpse. He grabs the skeletal wrist and tries to snap it.

  “Strong,” he mutters, pounding his fist against the forearm.

  The corpse puppet shoots out its other hand and latches on to Mackie’s bicep.

  “It’s got me!” he wails. “It’s got me bad!”

  “Idiot,” growls Brogan. “Chisholm, haul your lazy carcass over here and free us up!”

  Chisholm draws closer, eyes buggy with fear. “You sure this ain’t the man himself?”

  “He’s underneath somewhere. This here’s mechanical,” says Brogan. “Peel its sleeve back!”

  Chisholm gingerly undoes the cufflink on the corpse’s sleeve and rolls it back. The color of the flesh is surprisingly lifelike, not hard like a mannequin’s.

  “Look there,” says Brogan, “there’s a little hatch or something.”

  Chisholm digs in with his pen knife and pries open a panel. A series of taut wires runs like vein and sinew through the arm.

  “Cut it—that’ll do the trick,” says Brogan. “You got wire cutters.”

  “Here,” says Mackie, pulling a pair from his back pocket and handing them to Chisholm, who drops them to the floor.

  “Still a bit shaky,” Chisholm says.

  “Hand ’em over!” barks Brogan.

  Brogan gets the teeth around the main wire and squeezes hard. Finally there is a sharp crack, and the corpse’s fingers go limp. Brogan pulls his arm clear.

  After freeing Mackie, Brogan looks furiously across the chamber at the crates of gold—unreachable. One step deeper into the room, and the floor would deliver another lightning bolt of electricity.

  “We’ll come back for the gold,” he says. “Right now let’s make sure the other lads have taken care of Dorian.”

  * * *

  The six brakemen pause, one car away from Will and the others, blocking their way to first class.

  “Where’s Brogan!” the tallest of them shouts.

  Will realizes this isn’t what they were expecting. Probably they thought they’d arrive to find the gold ready for the taking.

  “He’s locked up in the funeral car with Mackie and Chisholm!” Mr. Dorian shouts back. “It’s over, gentlemen. You’ve failed. And if you value your freedom, you’ll have the sense to turn back and resume your posts. We’ve not had a good look at your faces yet.”

  Will waits tensely. Maybe they’ll think Mr. Dorian has a pistol. In their fists Will sees a flash of a knife, a long wrench, the glint of brass knuckles. They don’t seem keen to back down.

  “We can go forward to the locomotive,” Will whispers to Mr. Dorian. “There’s the firemen, engineers. My father . . .”

  Mr. Dorian says nothing, his pale face still fixed on the brakemen. He looks like a strange raven more than ever, his black jacket blowing in the wind like spread wings.

  “What do we do?” Maren asks her ringmaster.

  He looks about, bewildered, and mutters to himself, “They should be here. . . .”

  “Who?” Will asks.

  “Get rid of ’em!” a voice behind Will shouts, and he turns to see Brogan, clambering like a monkey up the side of the funeral car, followed by Mackie and then Chisholm.

  Will swallows. They’re surrounded, front and back. With a shout the six brakemen rush forward.

  “We’ll get past them,” Will says to Maren. “They can come at us only one or two at a time. Get back to first class and sound the alarm.”

  “I’ll take care of Brogan,” says Mr. Dorian, and from his jacket he pulls out his hide-scraper and strides threateningly toward the other three, making vicious swipes through the air.

  “Here they come,” says Maren as the first brakeman leaps the gap to the funeral car.

  All Will’s body wants to do is retreat, but he forces it forward to meet the torrent of men. He has nothing to fight with, but suddenly remembers Mr. Dorian saying, “A good coat serves many purposes.” Two brakemen rush toward him, their arms spread like predatory birds come to feast.

  “Take hold of him!” one shouts to the other.

  Will shrugs his coat off and slings it at the two brakemen. The wind plasters it against their faces. Their hands fly up to drag it off. Lurching, they throw each other off balance. One stumbles right off the roof. With a cry he hits the gravel and rolls out of sight into the scrub. The second brakeman claws the coat off but trips. He grabs hold of the roof’s edge, legs swinging in empty air. Will can’t bring himself to kick the man off.

  And then Will is seeing only little bits of things, because everything is happening too fast. Behind him Mr. Dorian is squaring off with Mackie, Brogan, and Chisholm. His terrifying hide-scraper slashes the icy air. Even more terrifying is the expression on Mr. Dorian’s face—teeth bared, his eyes blaze with menace.

  To Will’s right a brakeman grabs hold of Maren, but with an easy twist she’s free. He grips her again by both arms. With a shrug she is loose, and this time there are handcuffs dangling from one of his wrists. Cursing, the brakeman comes at her once more, and a second man crowds in on her from the other side and grabs her tightly. They’ve got her now, but Maren steps nimbly out from the tussle, and when the two brakemen lunge for her, they find they have been manacled together. They yank each other off balance and tumble to the roof in a heap.

  There are only two men in front of Will now, with a gap between them. If he can just cross five or six maintenance cars, he’ll be above the crew cars. Get inside one of those, and he can spread the alarm. He runs for it.

  He dodges a brakeman and is about to jump to the next car, when his legs are seized from behind. He crashes to the roof, all the breath knocked from him. Gasping, he turns over and kicks out at the fellow trying to shove him off. Will has never struck someone before, but it’s instinctive. He surges forward and drives his fist into the man’s face. The brakeman staggers back with a surprised grunt. Then his brawny arm pulls back and punches Will so hard, he blacks out for a moment. When he comes to, his h
ead is dangling over the edge of the car. The tracks blur past. The brakeman leans down to heave him off altogether. Desperately Will looks for something to grab hold of, but there’s nothing.

  A long wooden pole catches the brakeman in the stomach and tosses him off the train—like a chopstick flicking a bit of beef. Will looks up and sees the Zhang twins striding past atop the train on their stilts. Li nods down at Will.

  “Hello, little bug!” he shouts.

  As Will scrambles back from the edge, he squints and sees another stilt walker emerging from the sun’s glare. It’s Roald, a brace of throwing knives strapped across his chest. At his side lopes Mr. Beauprey. He no longer has to stoop as he moves across the train, but stands to his full eight-foot height. He jumps cars and is in the fray.

  Will is about to keep running to first class, but he sees Maren throwing herself back from a brakeman swinging a lug wrench. He isn’t sure if she trips or the wrench strikes her in the shoulder, but she falls. Her head hits the roof hard. She doesn’t move. He shouts her name and runs into the thick of the fight.

  Mr. Beauprey is already trying to wrestle the wrench from the brakeman’s hands, as a second fellow pummels the giant from behind. Maren’s body starts to slide off the roof. Will throws himself toward her, skids, and grabs her arm.

  Instantly her hands are tight around him and she’s dragging him to the edge.

  “Maren!” he shouts.

  “Oh!” she cries, blinking. “I thought you were one of them!”

  “You’re okay?”

  “I was just faking. I was going to flip him off the roof!”

  “We’ve got help!”

  “I know!”

  “Tunnel!” someone bellows, and Will whips round to see a mound of stone rushing toward them like a troll’s head, mouth agape. Already the locomotive has steamed inside. The Zhang twins drop to the roof, their long wooden limbs askew.

  “Roald!” screams Maren, and Will catches a glimpse of her startled brother as the mountain roars over him. There’s a dull thud and a clattering sound, and then it’s all darkness and noise and smoke for a few long seconds before—