The blood-red men kept pressing forward, through the smoke and flames, while more and more of them plunged through the open doorway.
I kept hitting them, and they kept getting up again. I hit them with punches that would have demolished a house, but the damage just wouldn’t take. They were all superhumanly strong, and inhumanly resistant to punishment. If I hadn’t had my armour, they would have taken me down easily; as it was, all it could do was keep me in the game. They weren’t strong enough to hurt me through my armour, but the sheer overpowering weight of their numbers drove me back, step by step. All the way down the restaurant car, with Molly forced to back up behind me, still lobbing the odd nasty spell over my shoulder, like occult grenades. They didn’t do any lasting damage, but they did slow the enemy down. The blood-red men never said a word as they pressed forward, their unblinking gaze fixed always on me.
I kept grabbing individual attackers when I could, and throwing them out the window, but they were arriving faster than I could get rid of them. I hauled a table out of its setting and forced it into place across the aisle before me, then followed it with several more. Trying to set up a barricade. The blood-red men set their hands on the tables and tore the heavy wood apart like it was paper. They threw the pieces aside and came after me again. And I was getting tired. The armour makes me strong and fast, but it still relies on me to operate it. I grabbed hold of the nearest blood-red man and tried to tear his scarlet mask away, so I could see the face beneath. But there was no gap between mask and skin, as though they were sealed or fused together.
“Rip the mask off!” Molly yelled behind me.
“I don’t think it is a mask,” I said. “I think . . . it’s his face.”
“Rip it off anyway!”
And then we were interrupted by the sound of approaching feet behind us. I threw the blood-red man away and glanced quickly back over my shoulder, just in time to see a dozen or so train security guards come running in through the rear door. They wore the same black uniforms, but this time they were armed with all kinds of heavy-duty weaponry. Molly and I jumped back out of the way, to opposite sides of the aisle, and the security men opened up with everything they had, shooting at everyone in front of them.
They advanced steadily, blasting away at the blood-red men . . . who just stood their ground, soaking up the bullets as though they were nothing. They didn’t flinch and they didn’t blink, and they didn’t fall back one single step. The noise of so many guns firing at once was deafening in the enclosed space. An occasional stray bullet hit my armour, which obligingly swallowed it up. I glanced across at Molly, but she was already hiding under a table. The security guards kept on firing, yelling half-incoherent obscenities at each other in military Russian, their eyes wide and shocked at what they were seeing.
Chests and heads exploded under the impact of heavy ammunition, only to repair themselves in moments, like film running backwards. And step by step, the blood-red men forced themselves forward, into the heat of the attack, against the terrible pressure of massed gunfire, until they were close enough to lay hands on the security guards. They tore the men apart, limb from limb, ripping off heads with horrid ease and throwing them away. The guards died quickly, smoking guns falling uselessly from their dead hands. The blood-red men didn’t even bother to pick them up. Blood sprayed up to stain the carriage ceiling, then fell back in heavy crimson drops. More blood splashed across the fixtures and fittings, and ran in thick rivulets along the polished wooden floor. Until nothing was left of the security guards but a bloody mess in the aisle that the blood-red men kicked their way through as they came on.
Molly and I had taken the opportunity to fall back to the rear door. I looked down the length of the carriage, at the army of blood-red men striding through the debris of dead guards, with flames and smoke at their backs as fire consumed the whole back half of the restaurant car. They were still coming for me, relentless and implacable, like demons out of Hell.
“Well,” said Molly, just a bit breathlessly, “I think we know now just who it was killed all those people at the Department of Uncanny. Men who can’t be stopped, with inhuman brute strength, who don’t use weapons . . . Fits the bill, don’t you think?”
“Undoubtedly,” I said. “They killed all those people, looking for the Lazarus Stone. And they killed my grandfather. No mercy for these bastards, Molly.”
“I have no problem with the sentiment,” said Molly, “But I have to say . . . I really don’t see how we can stop people who won’t stay dead when you kill them!”
“The ones I threw out the window didn’t come back,” I said. “So let’s concentrate on the one tactic we know works. I mean, they’ve got to run out of numbers eventually. Haven’t they?”
“Do you want the truth, or a comforting lie?” said Molly.
“Convince me,” I said.
“This is a great idea!” said Molly. “I love it!”
We strode forward, laid hands on the first blood-red men we came to, and went to work. They had strength, but we had the element of surprise. I had my armour, and Molly had her magical protections. We picked the blood-red men up and tossed them out the carriage windows, one after the other. Half a dozen of them went flailing through the air, and out into the Siberian winter, before they even knew what was happening. But after that the blood-red men stuck close together, making it harder for us. And even as we thinned out the ranks, more and more of them came charging through that open doorway, appearing out of the smoke and flames as fresh reinforcements.
There had to be a dimensional Door back there somewhere. It was the only answer that made sense.
It was getting harder to see what I was doing. Half the carriage was on fire, with flames sweeping forward in sudden rushes, while thick black smoke hung heavily on the air. Molly’s face was flushed, and wet with sweat, I hoped just from the growing heat. The blood-red men kept throwing themselves forward, clinging stubbornly to my arms and shoulders, trying to drag me down by sheer force. I straightened my legs and stiffened my back, and would not fall. Molly was forced back behind me again, using me as a shield. I crushed skulls with my golden fists, and threw men away, but they just swarmed all over me with nightmare tenacity. More of them had caught on fire from the surroundings, but it didn’t slow them down.
We had to retreat; we had no choice. There were just too many of them, filling their end of the carriage, and forcing their way forward as more appeared. I backed away, step by step, with Molly behind me, until we slammed up against the rear door. I yelled for her to open the door, and then we both backed quickly through it. I slammed the door in the face of the blood-red men, and crushed the lock with my golden hand. Molly worked a quick spell to fuse the wood of the door with its surrounding frame. And then we both backed away some more. The door bucked and shuddered, and then tore apart as the blood-red men smashed right through it.
The other passengers, who’d thought they were safe from the madness, were shouting and screaming, running down the aisle to the far door and the next carriage on. Others retreated into the separate compartments, pulled the shades down, and locked the doors. Like that would help. One man stood his ground in the aisle, defiantly pointing a gun at the blood-red men coming through the broken door. His hand was shaking as he opened fire, and he barely missed Molly and me as we squeezed quickly past him. He soon ran out of bullets, but instead of doing the sensible thing and running with the rest, he just stood there and fumbled in his pockets for more ammunition. I grabbed at his arm to haul him along with me, but he just jerked his arm free and went back to his reloading. Molly was some way down the aisle, yelling to me, so I left him to it.
I caught up with Molly at the far end of the carriage. I hauled the door open and Molly darted through. I looked back just in time to see the blood-red men fall on the man who wouldn’t run. They surged forward, into the face of his bullets, uncaring and unaffected, even as he fired into them at point-blank range. They pulled him down and trampled him underfoo
t, and moved on. He didn’t scream for long. The blood-red men smashed in all the doors of the compartments they passed, and killed everyone they found. Again, the screams didn’t last long.
I retreated through the door, and locked it. There was nothing else I could do. I hurried down the new aisle with Molly at my side, and we soon caught up with the retreating passengers, packed so tight now that they filled the aisle and blocked the way to the next door. They shoved and fought each other blindly, in their need to get away. The blood-red men burst in the door and fell into the new carriage, bringing with them the last dying screams of slaughtered men and women, and the thick coppery smell of freshly spilled blood.
“I don’t think they intend to leave any witnesses,” I said to Molly. “I can’t let this go on. These people are dying because of us. Innocent bystanders. Just by being here, we’re endangering these people.”
“Well, what do you suggest?” Molly said roughly, her flushed face dripping with sweat. She was so exhausted she could barely hold herself up,
“I suggest we save as many as we can,” I said. “We can’t win this fight. There are too many attackers, and they won’t stay dead. Which is cheating, in my book. So, if we’re going to protect the other passengers, we need to lead the enemy away from them.”
I turned to the door in the carriage wall at my left, and kicked it open. My armoured boot sent the door flying out of its frame, and it went bouncing down the track behind us. Through the open gap, the featureless snow-covered landscape rushed by. I stuck my head out the gap, took a good look around, and then looked back at Molly.
“I saw we take the fight upstairs. Care to follow me up?”
“Oh hell,” said Molly. “Why not?”
I stepped out into the blasting wind, swung around, and clambered up the side of the heavily rocking carriage. The train’s jolting motions did their best to throw me off, but I grew sharp golden spurs on the palms of my gloves, and sank them deep into the wood of the carriage wall. It took me only a few moments to climb up onto the roof, stand up, and look around me. My armour kept me balanced as I took in the view. Snow and more snow, under an empty blue-grey sky. One of the back carriages was now completely consumed by fire, burning fiercely. Thick black smoke billowed up, snapped back in long dark threads by the racing wind. The flames were already spreading to the carriages on either side. Apparently sprinkler systems hadn’t been thought traditional.
Molly flew up to join me on the roof, soaring elegantly through the air. She landed hard beside me, as the last of her levitation magic ran out. She grabbed one of my arms to steady herself, and then quickly let go. She was shuddering hard in the bitter cold and the blasting wind. She was trying to maintain a layer of warmth around her, but it was already breaking down. Her magics were running out. But she wouldn’t say anything, so I couldn’t. It wasn’t as though there was anything I could do. Except stand between her and the worst of the blasting air, as a windbreak. She nodded briefly, appreciatively, but she was still shivering.
The blood-red men came climbing up both sides of the carriage, hauling themselves up by brute strength, quickly and without grace, punching holes in the outer walls to make climbing aids. Apparently untroubled by the rocking motion of the train, or the freezing wind. More of them burst out through the carriage windows, and out the doors at both ends. I moved quickly back and forth, kicking their hands away as they reached the roof, but there were just too many of them, and I couldn’t be everywhere at once. Molly tried to blast them away with sudden bursts of storm wind, but with her magics failing, her winds were quickly blown away and dispersed by the existing wind. All too soon there were thirty, forty blood-red men assembled on top of the carriage roof, with still more climbing up the sides.
I could have gone to meet them, knocked them down and kicked them off the speeding train, but I couldn’t see the point. Head-to-head confrontation didn’t work. So I turned to Molly.
“Run,” I said.
“What?” said Molly. “Where?”
“Away from them!” I said.
I took her by the hand, and we sprinted down the long metal roof. The blood-red men came running after us. We reached the end of the carriage worryingly quickly, and jumped the gap to the next carriage. I landed hard, still holding on to Molly, and we ran on. My armoured feet left heavy dents in the metal. Molly was breathing loud and strenuously at my side, but she kept up. She shot me a wide grin, and a laugh that was immediately torn away by the rushing wind. We ran on and on, until we ran out of carriages, and all that remained was the great steam engine itself and its massive bunker half full of coal.
The noise from the engine was deafening, and great blasts of blistering-hot steam shot past us, thick with flying cinders. Molly had to move quickly to stand behind me, one hand raised to keep the cinders out of her eyes. There was nowhere left for us to go, and the blood-red men were already charging down the last carriage roof towards us.
And, just like that, suddenly I could feel the presence of the Gateway. Off in the distance, not far ahead. A certain knowledge, like the pointing of a compass needle. Not a very pleasant feeling, knowledge of something that shouldn’t exist, that had no right to exist, in the natural world. Like a vicious itch I couldn’t scratch.
“Can you feel that?” shouted Molly, over the roar of the engine.
“Hell yes!” I said. “The train’s finally brought us within the Gate’s field of influence!”
“So what are we going to do?” said Molly. “We can’t stay on the train much longer, in case it carries us past the Gateway. Come on, Eddie, you must have a plan. You always have a plan, even if it’s usually a really bad one.”
“I thought you liked my plans,” I said.
“I promise I will love the arse off this plan, whatever it is, as long as it means we don’t have to fight the blood-red men any more! They are seriously wearing me out.”
“Okay,” I said. “Jump.”
Molly looked over the side of the jolting railway carriage, at the endless snowy plain rushing past us at speed. And then she looked back at me.
“Are you crazy?”
“We’re a long way from where I’d hoped to be,” I said. “But it feels like we’re in walking distance of the Gateway. You can feel that, can’t you?”
Molly nodded reluctantly. “Like dead cockroaches crawling all over my skin. Unnatural bloody thing. You really want to do this, Eddie?”
“Not as such, no. Do you have a better idea?”
“No, but . . .”
“The snow will break our fall.”
“All I’m hearing is the word break. It’s all right for you—you’ve got your armour.”
“You can fly down.”
“I haven’t got enough magic left to fly!”
“Some days, things wouldn’t go right if you paid them,” I said. “Please accept my apologies in advance.”
I picked her up in my arms, cradled her against my armoured chest, ignored her outraged cries, and jumped off the edge of the speeding carriage. We seemed to hang on the air for a long moment as the train shot past, carrying the blood-red men with it. And then the snow leaped up to meet us. We hit hard, the sheer weight of my armour driving me into the snowy bank like a nail into wood. My legs absorbed most of the impact, though Molly shook and shuddered in my arms. She’d sworn harshly all the way down, but the jolt of our sudden stop shut her up. I ended up sunk in snow almost to my waist, still holding Molly tightly. The moment she got her breath back she demanded I put her down, in a strained and rather dangerous tone. So I lowered her carefully onto the snowy bank.
She sank only a foot or so into the snow, but it was enough to make her cry out in shock at the bitter cold. I hauled myself up out of the hole I’d made, and stood beside her. We watched the Trans-Siberian Express race off into the distance, trailing flame and smoke. None of the blood-red men had jumped off the train to come after us. They were all standing unnaturally still, on top of the carriage, looking back at us.
The train quickly disappeared into the distance. I somehow doubted the blood-red men would still be aboard when what was left of the burning train pulled into its next station stop. It was all very quiet now, with the train gone. The freezing air was still, without even a breath of wind. Not a sound to be heard anywhere, and not a movement to be seen.
“Why didn’t they come after us?” said Molly, hugging herself tightly to try to stop shaking from the cold. “Not that I’m complaining, you understand . . .”
“Maybe they’re not equipped to survive in the wild,” I said. “Or maybe their orders didn’t cover leaving the train.”
“Maybe they know something about this place that we don’t,” said Molly darkly.
“Wouldn’t surprise me in the least,” I said, looking around. “Desolate bloody location.”
“I’ll bet there are wolves,” said Molly.
The more I looked, the more appallingly empty and deserted the snowy landscape seemed. Like a desert, covered with the perfect disguise. No trees or shrubs anywhere, no landmarks, nothing that stood out against the gently rising and falling snow, stretching off in all directions as far as I could see. And I could see pretty damned far through my mask. The sky was perfectly clear, just a pale blue, pale grey, cloudless cover. The sunlight was fierce and unrelenting, but gave no warmth at all. I could see Molly trying to summon her protections, to keep out the cold, but they were little more than a faint shimmer in the air around her. I considered armouring down, to join her, and then quickly pushed the thought aside. One of us had to be properly insulated from this appalling environment if we were to keep moving.
“How long do the days last up here?” Molly said suddenly.
Property of a Lady Faire: A Secret Histories Novel Page 26
