1931 The Grand Punk Railroad: Express

by Ryohgo Narita

  In order to do that, it was essential for him to identify the other immortal. Should he stealthily wound them all, one by one, or go around setting his right hand on each person’s head directly? But that would make it easy for the other person to spot him as well.

  I absolutely have to get rid of the immortal here. No matter what it takes.

  Even as Czes privately harbored these black thoughts, he made sure to keep his “innocent child” expression in place.

  Just then, the man in the gunman costume turned to him and called out loudly:

  “That’s right. If you’d done something bad, the Rail Tracer would have eaten you already!”

  “Chomp! Just like that!”

  A gunman costume and a bright-red dress. A couple of passengers, a man and a woman, in eccentric outfits. He remembered their names had been Isaac and Miria, or something like that.

  Isaac’s voice had pulled Czes back to reality, and to calm his mind, for the moment, he decided to listen to his story.

  “—That’s how my old man used to threaten me, anyway.”

  “It frightened you, didn’t it!”

  “Huh? The R-Rail Tracer? Wh-what’s that?” the tattooed guy asked timidly.

  When he looked, the man’s legs had begun to quietly shake.

  “What, you don’t know about it, Jacuzzi? You see, the Rail Tracer is…”

  “…And so, if you tell this story on a train…it comes to that train, too. The Rail Tracer!”

  “Eeeeeeeeeeeeek!”

  “The Rail Tracer,” huh? An absurd story. Although I suppose my own body and the demon are no different. When you look at it that way, that monster might really exist.

  Even as he’d kept an eye on his surroundings, Czes had listened to Isaac’s story.

  If you do something bad, you get eaten, hmm? If that thing actually exists, I imagine I’ll be the first one it eats. By the world’s standards, I’d certainly fall into the “bad” category. In fact, even now, I’m about to sell a large quantity of explosives to the mafia.

  If they used them in a dispute, there was bound to be damage to the general public as well.

  “Damage” was an abstract way to phrase it: If the explosives in question were used in the middle of town, there would certainly be deaths. Absolutely. A large number of them. Czes was well aware of this, and he was going ahead with the transaction, anyway.

  That wasn’t all. Even before now, Czes had used his young appearance to trick and ensnare all sorts of people. Sometimes he’d done it to make his life easier. Sometimes he’d simply abandoned himself to his hatred of humans.

  …So what? It isn’t my problem.

  To Czes, the question of how to eat the other immortals was far more important than the lives or deaths of strangers, or whether he was good or evil.

  If it was for the sake of that hunger, he thought he wouldn’t mind if everyone else in the world died.

  Eternal loneliness would be far better than having that damnable knowledge absorbed by someone else.

  As Czes thought this, his lips wore the faintest trace of a wry smile.

  Rachel, who was currently stealing a ride, was hiding on the train with astonishing boldness.

  She sat at a table in the dining car and, with no hesitation, ordered food.

  It wasn’t as if she didn’t have money, and she bore no grudge against the train’s cooks. Consequently, she had no issue with paying for food. Besides, the dining room on this train was managed independently of the railway, which made it even less of a problem.

  She hadn’t been completely careless in entering the dining car, though. She’d taken her seat just after the conductor finished his first inspection, so she wouldn’t need to worry about having her ticket checked for a while.

  In addition, the dining car was shared by everyone from first class to third class. People wore a wide variety of clothing, and even her own outfit, which was very nearly work clothes, didn’t seem blatantly out of place.

  On top of that, when taking a seat, she’d strictly observed the rule of sitting by a window. Although she called it a “rule,” it was just something she’d set for herself, so there was no penalty for violating it. However, if she was caught as a result, she wouldn’t get away with a mere lecture.

  That said, there’s an awfully aggravating guy on this train…

  She was looking at a man with a little mustache who was greedily devouring the finest item on the menu. He was an ugly man, not “portly” but just plain fat. He’d been boasting about himself nonstop for a while now, and his coarse laugh sent spittle flying.

  “Wah-ha-ha! It’s all thanks to my deep pockets that I’m able to ride high-class trains run by other companies!”

  That wasn’t what had irritated her, though. She’d recognized the man.

  There was no way she could have forgotten him. He was an executive at the railway company where her father had worked. He was also the man who had framed her father while he personally remained at the company, bathed in comfort. From the way he was behaving, he still hadn’t slipped out of his executive’s chair. The sight of him threw a stagnant shadow across Rachel’s heart.

  She thought about punching him, but she knew there would be no point. In any case, since she was a fare-jumper, she couldn’t risk causing a disturbance.

  As she clenched her fists, the vulgar voice continued to ring out callously.

  “Well, living a life of ease is my reward for having been faithful to the company and its people! Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

  Don’t give me that “Bwa-ha-ha” crap. To hell with you. Get cursed and rot and fall into the ocean and get swarmed by wharf roaches and eaten down to the bone. I don’t even want you coming back as scum on the waves. Disappear without a trace.

  Biting back her anger, Rachel willed a curse on the whiskered pig, then made sure not to look in his direction again.

  As she was eating the food that had been brought over from the counter (half in hopeless frustration), a young guy ran by her. He was crying.

  He had a tattoo of a sword inked on his face, and at a glance, he looked a little like one of the pirates who haunted the Caribbean. However, his expression was scrunched up miserably, and veritable waterfalls of tears were streaming from his eyes.

  In the instant the guy passed her, she heard him muttering in a low voice:

  “The conductor, I need the conductor, fast…”

  He’s not planning on bringing the conductor back here, is he?

  Rachel felt slightly uneasy, but she decided to continue her meal and keep an eye on the situation.

  Before long, the door the tattooed guy had exited through opened, and a man in white appeared. Everything he wore was white, from his necktie to the toes of his shoes, and he looked like a country bumpkin who was going to be in a wedding.

  In sharp contrast to the tattooed guy, this man strode grandly between the tables.

  For just a moment, Rachel’s eyes met his.

  She looked away immediately, but she felt strangely unsettled. She couldn’t seem to shake the feeling that he was sending out a danger signal, a type that was different from the orchestra couple she’d seen before boarding.

  Focusing her most intense wariness on the man, she continued to keep tabs on the situation.

  She had a bad feeling about this. A really bad feeling. It wasn’t her instincts as a habitual ride-stealer. Her experience as an information broker’s gofer, her dealings with a wide spectrum of underworld society—those were trying to tell her something.

  In preparation for the time when she might need it, Rachel quietly began opening the window.

  That time arrived almost immediately.

  Inside the dining car, three yells went up.

  Each voice carried well, and the words reached everyone in the car.

  The men in black tuxedos, who’d come in through the forward door, yelled:

  “Everyone on the ground!”

  In their hands, they brandished machine gun
s.

  The man in white, who’d been in the center of the dining car, yelled:

  “Everybody reach for the sky!”

  In his right hand, he held a shiny, copper-colored handgun.

  The man in ragged clothes, who’d come in through the rear door, yelled:

  “Hey, hey, hey! Nobody move!”

  In his hand, he held a single fruit knife.

  Dripping with cold sweat, the man next to Rachel muttered:

  “Wha…what do you want us to do…?”

  The men looked at one another’s faces. All of them wore expressions that said, What the heck is this?

  The first to move was the raggedy guy with the knife.

  “Uh…”

  Mumbling in a low voice, he took a couple of steps backward.

  “Sorry to disturb you, folks.”

  He closed the door quietly, then ran off in a hurry.

  One solitary knife hadn’t been enough to balance the situation, but as a result, the three-way standoff collapsed.

  …And that was the cue for tragedy.

  The man in white immediately drew his gun and fired off three shots in rapid succession. The passengers all began to scream, cowering down and covering their heads.

  Of the bullets the white suit fired, one made a direct hit on one of the black suits. Taking the bullet in the shoulder, he spun around and fell to the floor.

  As if in response, a rain of lead erupted from the black suits’ machine guns.

  Their aim was accurate, and in the blink of an eye, the white suit’s chest was dyed red.

  While the passengers screamed, Rachel slowly stood up, opening the window as she did so.

  As the man in white fell over backward, he fired several shots at the ceiling. Aim had nothing to do with it; the shock had only made his arm and fingers move.

  Instantly, the machine guns roared again.

  This time, a ferocious impact ran through the white suit’s stomach, and his body bounded up in a V-shape.

  Then the life faded from the man’s eyes, and he slumped heavily to the floor.

  By that time, Rachel had already slipped out of the train. Dexterously clinging to the ornamentation on the side of the car, she worked her way down, skillfully sliding through a gap between two of the wheels.

  The passengers and black suits were all completely focused on the gun battle. The only one to witness Rachel’s disappearance was the man who’d been sitting next to her.

  After that, a terribly hyperactive friend of the white suit appeared and reversed the situation in a twinkling.

  While the passengers were confused, unable to grasp the situation, one lone person did grasp it, quite calmly.

  That lot… They may prove useful.

  As Czes lay facedown in front of the counter, he was thinking about using the man in the white suit.

  “All right, Czes. Please take care of Mary.”

  “Uh-huh!”

  In response to Mrs. Beriam’s voice, Czes nodded decisively, then took the girl’s hand and left the dining car. He opened the door and started walking, looking around carefully as he went. At least for the moment, he didn’t see any white suits in the corridor.

  Leading Mary by the hand, he headed down the quiet corridor toward the rear cars. As far as Czes was concerned, this was a truly convenient situation.

  After the attack, Mrs. Beriam had told him, “Czes, I want you to go hide somewhere with Mary.” Personally, he’d wanted to leave the dining car and go find the white suits, but under the circumstances, if he’d said he was going out alone, the people around him would probably have stopped him.

  In the midst of that situation, Mrs. Beriam, worried for her daughter, had given him a good excuse for going out. He couldn’t possibly let it go unused.

  Only, naturally, from this point on, Mary would get in the way. He could take her to the white suits and give her to them. He could also kill her here.

  However, Czes really didn’t feel like it. It wasn’t because he felt sorry for her. The girl seemed to be about the age he looked. Deceiving her, betraying her… Wasn’t that exactly what that guy had done to him?

  He felt no guilt over killing children. If it was necessary, Czes wouldn’t hesitate to use livers taken from living children in his research, but betrayal was something else entirely. The idea of doing something on par with the man he hated most set a ferocious self-loathing ablaze inside him.

  He thought nothing of deceiving adults. That said, it wasn’t that he viewed children as sacred. Over the past two hundred years, he’d seen far more than enough of the cruelty and ugliness in them. The reason he couldn’t ensnare them, even so, was probably because he saw his own former self in the other child.

  The girl held Czes’s hand, trailing after him. Although her eyes were filled with fear, they didn’t hold the slightest doubt about him. If her eyes had been suspicious, he would probably have been able to get rid of her here, but…

  How much of a shackle will these damnable memories insist on being?!

  Even as Czes fumed inwardly, his hand held Mary’s tightly.

  When they’d passed through the lead second-class carriage and were nearing the next one, he spotted a janitor’s closet beside a bathroom.

  Carefully, he opened the door. Inside were mops and buckets, stored neatly. If he pushed the mops over to a corner, there would probably be room for a child to hide.

  “Okay, Mary, go in. You’ll be able to hide in here, if you’re on your own.”

  “B-but… Czes, what about you?”

  Mary watched him with worried eyes.

  “I’ll go on ahead and see how things look, so you hide here, Mary. Whatever happens, don’t move. It’ll be fine. I’ll be right back.”

  When Czes told her this, even though she was trembling, Mary nodded.

  In fact, once he’d finished negotiating with the white suits, he did intend to come straight back. Depending on how his discussion with them went, he might end up putting her life in danger—which would once again amount to betrayal, so Czes wanted to avoid it no matter what.

  Dammit, why am I hesitating? Every person in this world is prey, nothing more. They’re just livestock. Wasn’t that how I thought of them?

  Calm down. You’re only feeling sorry for her, that’s all. Sometimes people feel guilty about killing lambs and eating their meat. This is no different.

  Czes didn’t consider that even negotiating with the white suits might be a betrayal in and of itself. He had promised he’d protect Mary, but the other people on the train were none of his concern.

  That’s right. In order to remind myself that I am something extraordinary, and to seal these damnable memories away, and, most of all, so that I can survive—this train must become a noble sacrifice.

  Giving the very best smile he could manage, he quietly closed the door on the waiting girl.

  Czes had forced that smile, and the tense muscles of his face wouldn’t revert to his former expression easily.

  Even though he should have been used to faking childlike smiles…

  “C’mon, somebody switch me for guard duty.”

  In the freight room, one of the black suits was making demands of the other two around him.

  “Hey, don’t just leave your post.”

  “Nobody cares. They won’t cut those ropes that easily. And anyway, watching hostages isn’t in our job description.”

  “There was no way around it. Somebody showed up.”

  Technically, their job was to keep an eye on the Lemures’ weapons. The three of them had had too much time on their hands, but then, abruptly, the situation had gotten complicated.

  They’d heard somebody running down the corridor, so they’d leveled their guns and gotten ready to go outside.

  Then, before they could open the door, the door had opened on its own.

  A weird thug had been standing there, and as they threatened him with their guns, a couple in white had come along as well. With no help for it, th
ey had collared all three, only to have one last goon show up. They hadn’t known what was going on, but for the moment, they’d captured them all, tied them up with ropes, and tossed them into the next freight room over…

  “It’s within the parameters of our orders. Our instructions were to grab anyone who spotted us. If you understand that, get back to your post.”

  “Yeah, and I’m sayin’, somebody switch with me.”

  “All right, all right. For now, let’s go have a look at ’em.”

  With that, one of the black suits went out into the corridor with the other one.

  The remaining suit called to their receding backs:

  “Sure, and I’ll use the wireless to tell Mr. Goose about them.”

  However, his comrades didn’t respond.

  “Hey, you could at least answer…”

  He’d just stuck his head out the door and called to them when he realized there was something weird about the situation.

  Two men had left for the next freight room, but only one was standing in the corridor.

  “Hmm? Where’d George go?”

  The man in the black suit and glasses asked about his missing comrade, but as before, there was no reply.

  “Hey, what’s the matter?!”

  The comrade in the corridor was trembling violently. Finally, he managed to squeeze out a response:

  “He… He’s gone…”

  “Huh?”

  The man shook even harder; his back was to the window.

  “He disappeared. I just, I turned around, and he was g—”

  “Hey! Behind you!” the black suit shouted abruptly.

  A monotonous row of windows lined the freight car corridor. One of them was wide open. It was the one right behind his comrade.

  There was a red shadow in that window. It wasn’t the reflection of something in the car—the window was open as far as it would go.

  That red “something” was definitely standing outside the train.

  Then that crimson streak reached for his comrade’s back.