Tumultus

by D. W. Ulsterman

  Mac was the first to reach Imran, his hand extended out in front of him.

  “Glad to have gotten to know you, Imran – and thank you for all the help.”

  Dublin, Reese, and Bear were the next to tell Imran goodbye. Cooper and Brando were the last to walk up to the small man. Cooper tilted his hat upward slightly and then shrugged.

  “Don’t care much for goodbyes, Imran, so let’s just leave it at see you later, and call it good.”

  Imran ignored Cooper’s words and wrapped his arms around the rancher.

  “Be safe, Coop. Be safe.”

  Imran then leaned down and hugged Brando as well.

  “You too, Brando. Keep an eye out for everyone, ok?”

  The Doberman pulled his lips back and gave Imran a particularly enthusiastic snarling smile.

  Dublin and Reese sat next to each other staring out one of the many windows of the passenger car as the Russian’s family looked back at them. Yakov’s wife appeared particularly unhappy to see her husband being temporarily taken away from them. One of the girls though, the one who had been saved from dying of Leukemia, smiled back and waved as the train began to inch its way forward on the track, picking up speed as large clouds billowed out from the locomotive’s smoke stack.

  Within another twenty minutes the train’s speed had increased significantly. The landscape was one of flat, snow covered terrain for as far as the eye could see. Reese estimated the train to be moving at nearly twenty miles an hour and traveling south east. He looked over at Cooper, who was sitting silently staring out the window nearest to his own seat.

  “You know where we are heading, Coop?”

  The rancher looked over at Reese and then back to the window.

  “Has to be going through a place called Terrace. It used to be one of the main hubs for this part of Canada. From there he’ll likely cut northeast to Dawson Creek. We’ll want to keep as north as possible, stay away from the bigger urban areas where the more powerful Muslim warlords are found. I don’t know much about what is after Dawson Creek, though. I know we have a few mountain passes to get through, weather’s gonna get real cold, but hopefully, we’ll be making pretty good time. If there’s no trouble, we could make Churchill, Manitoba in about four days. That’s if the Russian sleeps at least a little. He can’t stay awake shoveling coal to keep us going all that time. Even he has to rest up.”

  Bear sat down next to Cooper and stretched his neck, trying to keep it from stiffening up after his encounter with Yakov.

  “That guy’s one of the strongest men I’ve ever met, and during my football days, I played with some beasts. Another ten seconds of him squeezing me like that and I’d have passed out.”

  Cooper Wyse looked down at Brando, who had curled up at his feet.

  “Lucky thing Brando jumped in there when he did, huh?”

  Bear scowled down at the dog and then remembered the Doberman biting into the Russian’s forearm. The scowl turned into a grin as Bear leaned down to scratch behind Brando’s ears.

  “Good boy.”

  Outside, the landscape was passing by just a little more quickly as the train’s speed had picked up to nearly thirty miles an hour.

  On the opposite side of the passenger car, sitting alone, Mac winced in his seat as the pain in his lower back transformed from a throbbing whisper into a screaming attack. Without any doctor telling him so, he knew the cancer had spread from his lungs. He could almost feel the tumors multiplying inside his body.

  Mac Walker was running out of time.

  XXXI.

  Dublin found the noise of the train soothing, making staying awake increasingly difficult as both the hours and the scenery outside passed by together. Reese sat next to her holding her hand, his head beginning to dip down toward his chest as sleep overtook him as well.

  Mac had fallen asleep within the first hour of the train beginning its journey, his head resting against the glass of the window he sat next to. Dublin sensed the fatigue in Mac, and knew the others in the group did too. He was trying so hard to hide how tired the trip was making him, but as the days wore on, that deception was proving even too difficult for the once incredibly strong and still proud Mac Walker.

  Bear and Cooper were sitting across from one another playing chess. The rancher shared how his former wife had taught him the game shortly after they first met. Cooper was never able to beat her, but over time, he had grown to appreciate the quiet intellectual challenge that a good chess match presented.

  Dublin’s mind wandered to the possibilities of what lay ahead of them. The day they left Alaska, though recent, now felt so long ago. She wondered what would become of Imran and his life at Wilfrid. And of the godfather and his strange yet understandable obsession with living in the long ago world of the 1950’s. Was the promised threat by those Muslim animals who killed that poor family, legitimate? Would a jihadist uprising wash over Wilfrid and then into Alaska?

  Mac had told Dublin not to worry. Alaska had been notified and was prepared, though according to Mac, the far greater threat was the increasing drone sightings that were taking place above the Alaskan skies. It was becoming clear the New United Nations was preparing to re-establish its dominance over the newly freed state, thus making the purpose of their own mission to Churchill, Manitoba, that much more critical.

  They had been on the train for nearly four hours, traveling for most of that time at nearly thirty miles an hour. Cooper had indicated earlier it would likely take about six hours for the train to reach Terrace.

  Looking out her window, Dublin noted the ground outside was passing more slowly. The train was slowing down.

  “Reese, we’re slowing down.”

  Reese’s head snapped up as his eyes adjusted to the view outside the window.

  “You’re right. Hey, Coop – why’s the train slowing down?”

  Cooper Wyse slowly took one of Bear’s chess pieces and then glanced out through the window across from him.

  “Don’t know. Imagine we’ll find out soon enough.”

  Mac had awoken and stood up, his right hand resting on the grip of his sidearm.

  “We should still be at least an hour or two outside of Terrace, right?”

  Cooper nodded as he continued to study the chess board.

  Mac walked to the back of the passenger car to look out the windowed door to see what was behind him. There was nothing but the train tracks and the near barren and frozen landscape. Seeing Mac becoming nervous, Bear rose from his seat and began looking outside as well.

  “What’s up, Mac?”

  Mac looked back at Bear briefly before returning his gaze to the outside.

  “Not sure. Just don’t feel quite right, you know? Maybe…maybe the Russian is just taking precautions before traveling through Terrace?”

  “One of us could go up to the front and ask him.”

  Reese’s suggestion remained unanswered as Bear looked to the narrow wooden plank that ran along the passenger car’s exterior wall that was the path to the front of the train.

  “You mean out there – while we’re still moving?”

  Reese was already moving to the back door of the passenger car.

  “Sure. He said if we needed something to just walk to the front. I’ll go.”

  Dublin grabbed Reese by his right arm and held him back from leaving through the door.

  “Reese, we can just wait until we’re stopped. You don’t have to go out there.”

  Reese smiled back at Dublin.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll be fine. That way we don’t have to be waiting in here wondering what is going on. Be right back.”

  Dublin and the others watched as Reese’s legs moved past the windows of the passenger car as he slowly made his way to the Russian at the front of the train. Though the train had slowed, Reese was surprised both at how strong and how cold the wind was that battered his body. He clung tightly to the steel hand rail that was just above his head on the upper portion of the passenger car while his f
eet shuffled sideways on the wood plank.

  Behind the locomotive, there was a smaller trailer containing a large supply of coal. This trailer was hitched to the front of the passenger car, and Reese saw there was no plank to walk alongside the coal trailer. Instead, he would have to jump into the trailer itself, walk over the pile of coal, and then down into the locomotive where the Russian was driving the train.

  Pausing to take a deep breath, Reese jumped from the plank into the back of the coal trailer, landing softly onto the dark pile of coal. Instantly, a cloud of dust rose up from his feet before settling onto his clothes. Each step he took over the coal pile created yet another small cloud of coal dust. By the time he reached the other side of the trailer, both his winter boots and lower half of his pants were covered in the dust.

  As his head rose up from the coal trailer to look into the back of the locomotive, Reese found himself staring directly into the eyes of the Russian glaring back at him.

  “What do you want?”

  Reese continued to pull himself out of the coal trailer before answering the question, which caused the Russian to merely repeat it with more volume.

  “What do you want?”

  The Russian was covered entirely in dark soot, the whites of his eyes the only place not inked in blackness. Behind him the considerable heat from the engine’s coal-burning firebox washed over Reese, causing him to already begin sweating.

  Losing patience, the Russian grabbed the front of Reese’s jacket with one blackened hand and pulled him down in front of him.

  “What do you want?”

  Reese removed the Russian’s hand from his coat and used his thumb to motion behind him.

  “We were wondering why you’re slowing the train down.”

  The Russian nodded and then turned to point at a small metallic box with four red lights on top of it. One of the lights was blinking.

  “Trouble. Something ahead of us on the track. That signal tells me if track is clear or not. Track is not clear. Two miles ahead, not clear. We stop, walk up, and find out why.”

  Without waiting for Reese to respond to the information, the Russian turned fully around and pulled back a lever that applied yet more brake pressure, causing the train’s speed to slow even further. Within minutes, the train stopped completely.

  The Russian jumped from the locomotive and began making his way to the back of the train as Reese followed him.

  Mac and the others had already exited the passenger car and met the Russian halfway. Both Mac and Bear were holding drawn handguns. Cooper stood just behind them with Brando sitting at his side.

  “Something blocking the track up ahead. Need to go see what it is. Could be trap. Could be nothing. Bring guns.”

  Having given his reason for stopping, the Russian turned around and began walking back toward the front of the train as Mac nodded toward the passenger car.

  “Get the rifles Bear, and an extra magazine for each one. Also make sure we all have our communicators in case we’re separated, and grab the sight scope too. We’ll follow this Russian down the track to see whatever is bothering him, but if things go to shit, then we are on our own. You follow my lead - my orders. Understood?”

  Everyone in the group nodded. Bear climbed back into the passenger car and then re-emerged a few minutes later carrying two M16 rifles they had taken with them from Cooper’s arsenal back at his ranch. As Bear was stepping down from the passenger car, the Russian was returning to the group with his own AK-47 under his arm.

  Mac shook his head and pointed to the Russian’s rifle.

  “Over the years I’ve heard so many people tell me the AK is the better weapon. No way, no how. Slower shooting, less accurate, and not nearly as reliable as the word of mouth makes it out to be. I’ll be carrying one of those American-made M16s, thank you very much.”

  The Russian looked down at his rifle and then over at Mac as he took one of the M16s from Bear.

  “AK-47 a better gun. More powerful. Russian. You’re holding a toy gun.”

  Cooper Wyse checked both of his Colt shooters, before returning them to their holsters.

  “I’d just as soon not need to use any of them.”

  The Russian looked back toward the train tracks and motioned for the others to follow him.

  “Ok – let’s go.”

  For twenty minutes the group walked slowly down the train tracks as the front of the locomotive disappeared behind them. There was no sign of anything amiss, but the farther the group walked, the more intensely Mac’s eyes stared out in front of them.

  The Russian continued to appear almost bored, his eyes looking down at his feet as he stepped along the dark, oil stained wood railroad ties that lay between the tracks.

  Dublin was the first to point out potential trouble as her eyes caught a glint of something well in front of them. She could not tell if it was metallic, or glass, but her eyes definitely spotted it momentarily flashing before disappearing.

  Mac had the group stop as he scanned the area trying to determine the best way to sneak up on whatever might be ahead of them. He took out the sight scope Bear had retrieved from the train and used it to look down the tracks.

  “Tracks bend to the left up ahead, so I can’t see farther than that. We’re going to go off the tracks here, walk along them on the right keeping our heads down. That way the rise in the ground where the tracks are will provide us at least a little cover and protection if we need it.

  The Russian shook his head while continuing to walk down the center of the tracks.

  “I don’t hide. I’ll go to see what is up there. You can come. You can stay here. I don’t care either way.”

  Mac was about to object but then changed his mind. The Russian would likely divert the attention of whatever was up ahead, and allow them a great chance of sneaking up on them from another direction.

  “Ok – let him go. We’ll do just like I said. Head down there, Keep to the right of the tracks, and see what’s what.”

  The group walked no more than a hundred more yards before Mac began to cough repeatedly. He continued moving forward and waved the rest of the group on.

  “Come on…keep going.”

  Cooper Wyse put his hand on Mac’s shoulder to get the older man to stop.

  “You keep coughing like that Mac and everyone within a square mile will hear us coming.”

  Mac’s eyes flashed angrily before realizing Cooper was right.

  “I know – just give me a second to catch my breath here. Can’t seem to shake this cold, or whatever it is. I’ll be fine.”

  The group waited another minute and then Mac began walking again.

  “Ok, I’m good. Let’s go.”

  The top of the Russian’s head could be seen above the tracks as he casually walked in front of the group about forty yards ahead. He was whistling.

  A shout issued from directly in front of the Russian. It was in Arabic. Mac cocked his head to the left and then told the others that whoever was up ahead on the tracks intended to take all goods from the train.

  The Russian stopped and replied in his own native tongue, causing the Arabic voice to scream back angrily in response. The Russian in turn replied in English.

  “I don’t speak your fucking language. Speak English, or shut up and get off of my train tracks!”

  Silence from the Arabic speaking voice followed the Russian’s words. This silence was then shattered as several rounds of gunfire rang out. Yakov felt a moment of pressure in the top portion of his left shoulder and looked down to see a small bullet hole having ripped through the exterior of his heavy wool jacket. This pressure was soon followed by a increasingly throbbing pain.

  He had been shot.

  “Ok. You want to play with guns? Yakov show you how to play with guns!”

  The Russian aimed the AK-47 in front of him and fired several rounds back in the direction of the Arabic speaking voice. As he did that, Mac and the others sprinted forward on the left side of the train track
s, crouching down in the hopes of staying out of view. Mac hoped that the Russian was smart enough to not point his weapon in their direction.

  Everyone in the group looked up in shock as the Russian raced by on the train tracks above them, still firing his gun, a wide smile flashing beneath his massive beard as his long black and grey hair flew out behind him. Mac rolled his eyes at Yakov’s overly aggressive attack.

  “Damn Russians.”

  A large explosion sounded no more than twenty yards behind the group. Everyone looked back to see the detonation rise up into the sky. Mac’s jaw set as he motioned the group forward again.