1931 The Grand Punk Railroad: Express

by Ryohgo Narita

  “Waaaaaaah! Isaac, are you okay?”

  What he saw was a woman in a bright-red dress, leaning more than halfway out the window.

  Beside the wheels, with the cold wind eating away at his body, Czes’s thoughts went by vacantly.

  I wonder what’s going to happen to me.

  The pain that red monster inflicted on me was completely new. And sometimes it was terror instead of pain. He pared my eyeball away little by little with the long scalpel, slit my arteries, blew hard into the wounds, did the same thing to my veins. That was only the beginning. The pain he gave me after that… I can’t remember it. All I can remember was that he had caused me terrible pain, and no matter how I try, I can’t remember the specifics. It’s not that I don’t want to remember, but that I truly can’t.

  I may already have gone mad. If so, things went exactly as that thing planned. Is this retribution? Is it punishment for attempting to kill the people in the dining car, or punishment for evil I did in the past? I don’t care which it is anymore. I just want it all to go away.

  …Come to think of it, that’s impossible, isn’t it…? Ah, I see. Is this retribution for having lived this long, for having gone against the logic of this world, for having gained immortality? I acquired immortality so that I could be happy, but this is the result? I was given betrayal first, then loneliness, and finally terror. Is this retribution? Retribution for having eaten my companion…?

  It’s gotten noisy up above. Who is it now? Has he come back? That red monster? Will he inflict more of that pain on me? —Please, no.

  No, nononono, anything but that, nonono, stop, I’m begging you, nononono, save me, somebody, anybody, save me, nonono—

  The pain didn’t come. Regaining a little of my composure, I surrendered my body to silence again. It doesn’t matter who’s up there. If I can get by without being hurt, I don’t care who they are.

  Even opening my eyes is too much trouble. How wonderful it would be if, when I opened them, everything up till now had been a dream. That’s it—this must be a dream. If I open my eyes, I’ll still be on that tall ship.

  I’m sure the things he did were all dreams, too, and Szilard eating our companions was a dream—

  A drop of some sort of liquid fell on my cheek.

  Ah, so this really is a dream. Spray from the waves just struck my cheek. All right, I’ll open my eyes. I’m still a child, and if I don’t wake early, they’ll all make fun of me—

  When I opened my eyes, there was reality. Before I had time to despair, a voice came down to me from above.

  “Aah! Miria, his eyes opened! He’s alive! He’s still alive!”

  What I saw was the face of that weird gunman. He was leaning far out of the window, hanging nearly upside down, peering into my face. He seemed to have scratched his hand on the windowsill; blood was trickling from it. Apparently, one of the drops was what had struck my cheek.

  What is this? What on earth is this man trying to do?

  “Just hang on! Help has arrived!”

  Help? Help for who? He can’t mean…for me?

  What is he doing? Why would he do something that pointless? Why does he have to do a thing like that for someone he just met? I don’t get it. I really don’t get it. If I were an old friend or a family member, or a lover, then I could see it. But a stranger he just met today? Why—?

  What’s this? The blood on my cheek, this guy’s blood… It’s trembling?

  What could it mean? No, this isn’t right. This is a completely different sort of motion from the wind or the vibration of the train. The blood is moving as if each drop is a living creature with a will of its own. It can’t be, it can’t be, no!

  Ah, how can this be? Ah, ah, how can this be?! It can’t be, it can’t be, not these loonies, not them, it can’t be! It’s not true! And here, of all places, at this worst of all possible times!

  My denial was in vain: The blood was flowing back up into the hand of the man before me. The cut on his hand was closing before my very eyes! I was sure of it: The man had not come to help me.

  This man, this immortal…

  He’d come to eat me.

  Isaac leaned out even farther and finally went out the window entirely. Miria desperately supported his legs, but with her strength, it was a pretty impossible task. Isaac braced his hands on the wall’s ornamentation, reducing the burden on Miria. Then, finally, he managed to grab the iron framework between the wheels.

  Cautiously, taking care not to step on Czes or get caught up in the wheels, he crawled under the train.

  “What’s this?! Your arm’s tied up! Hold on, I’ll get that rope off you right away—”

  You fool. You could have just eaten me before you set me free. The moment you untie the rope, you’re finished. My right hand will—

  Then Czes realized it. This time, he really did despair.

  His right hand had been ground off by the red monster, and it wasn’t part of his body now.

  “Great! The rope’s undone!”

  Stabilizing his own body with his legs and left hand, Isaac cradled Czes’s body with his torso so he wouldn’t fall. Then, as he tried to get a firm grip on Czes with his right hand—

  Smack.

  Czes knocked Isaac’s outstretched right hand away with his own left.

  The force made him start to slip away from Isaac, and he fell from the train.

  Take that! Now you won’t be able to eat me—

  Saying this, Czes grinned, but then his eyes flew wide open again.

  He was concentrating to the limit, and to his eyes, the scene seemed to unfold in slow motion.

  When Isaac realized that Czes had fallen, he had no time to think. If he’d been calm, he might have hesitated to do what he did next.

  However, his head wasn’t put together well enough to think of his own life under circumstances like these.

  In the next moment—without a single thought, in order to save Czes, Isaac had launched himself into space.

  No! Does he want my knowledge that badly?!

  Isaac’s right hand closed in on Czes’s falling body.

  It’s over. This man is going to eat me, right now. Someone is going to see those damnable memories! I can’t stand it, help me, somebody, anybody, I don’t care who, just save me, stop, please, please, stopstopstop—

  With a child’s scream, Czes squeezed his eyes shut.

  However, Isaac’s right hand never reached his head.

  Realizing that the impact of being dashed to the ground had been much softer than he’d anticipated, Czes gingerly opened his eyes.

  “Eeeeeeeek! Isaaaaaaac!”

  He heard Miria’s scream from the window, and there was something like a wall right in front of him.

  Realizing it was Isaac’s clothes, at that point, for the first time, Czes understood that Isaac was holding him.

  Isaac was holding on to the train with just his left hand and was being dragged.

  “Ga-ga-ga-ga-ga-ga-ga-ga-ga-ga-ga!”

  Giving a weird yell, Isaac desperately struggled to withstand the vibrations that were traveling up through his legs. The spurs on the heels of his western boots creaked, bouncing along over the ground. Naturally, they couldn’t spin properly on the gravel, and acting as simple protrusions, they only made Isaac vibrate that much harder.

  The spurs’ original purpose was to control the speed of a horse, but the ground that rushed past with the force of angry waves didn’t slow at all.

  That said, luckily, none of Isaac’s limbs were directly touching the ground. If he used both hands, he could probably manage to climb back into the train somehow. However, he refused to let go of Czes.

  His left hand gradually reached its limit, and his fingers were moments from slipping off.

  “Isaac!”

  Miria grabbed his hand. She’d also leaped out the window without giving it any thought, descending to the wheels more skillfully than Isaac had.

  However, her arms weren’t strong enough, and
no sooner had she caught him than she fell, too.

  Even so, Miria wouldn’t let the two of them get away from her. She hugged Isaac, shielding Czes’s body. In that instant, Isaac took his right hand from Czes, and in a lightning-fast move that was almost like a gunman’s, he threw the lasso he’d had on his back.

  However, after all, he was a gunman, and his cowboy act didn’t go well: The rope wandered through the air without catching on anything.

  The three of them were dashed to the ground, struck it with tremendous force, and bounced once. Even then, Miria didn’t let go of Isaac. Isaac didn’t let go of Miria or the rope. Czes was protected between them, jolted by an impact that had been reduced to an astonishing extent.

  Just when they thought it was all over, the end of the rope caught on something… Or rather, it was caught.

  By the hand of some unknown person who’d reached out from under the train.

  It had all happened in an instant.

  Rachel had circled around under the train and had spotted Isaac and the others clinging to the metal fittings by one hand. She’d reached out to catch that hand, but she’d been a moment too late, and they’d fallen under the train. However, at the same time, something had flown from Isaac’s body, and Rachel had involuntarily caught it.

  It was the loop of Isaac’s lasso, and its end was tied to the belt around his waist.

  The next moment, unbelievable force came to bear on her arm. On the other end of the rope, Isaac and the others had hit the ground and had begun to be dragged over the gravel.

  “Ugkh!”

  Even if one of them was a child, Rachel’s arm was supporting the weight of three people. She tried desperately to pull them in, but she really couldn’t.

  Would they fare better if she released them, instead of continuing to drag them like this? The thought did cross her mind, but under the circumstances, if she rashly let go, the rope might tangle in the wheels and turn the three of them into mincemeat. In the very worst case, the train might even derail. She really couldn’t let go, no matter what, but—

  Cruelly, her injured leg sent fierce pain through her nerves, and on reflex, she flung the rope away.

  “Aaaaaaaaaah—!”

  In spite of herself, Rachel screamed.

  A red shadow passed right over her.

  Claire was once again nimbly running along the side of the train, on the ornamentation.

  It was just as he’d done on the dining car, but even faster.

  Even as Rachel cried out, he reached for the end of the lasso that floated in the air.

  However, his hand fell a little short. Just when Rachel thought, It’s over, Claire launched himself off the wall. His body separated from the train completely, and in exchange, he managed to catch the end of the lasso.

  Before she even understood what had happened, before her very eyes, Claire’s body rotated dramatically.

  No sooner had he stretched his legs out in the opposite direction from the train than one of the poles beside the tracks rushed toward him.

  It’s going to hit him, she thought, but in the very next instant, Claire’s feet touched down on the side of the pole.

  After a moment’s pause, his body began to lean, obeying gravity.

  He immediately kicked the pole, leaping back into the air.

  The red figure showed up very well against the dim sky. There was even a sort of beauty about it.

  Then Claire was clinging to the side of the train again, at a spot a good distance behind his original location. From his face, you’d have thought absolutely nothing had happened. In fact, it was likely that absolutely nothing had. As far as he was concerned, he’d merely done something he believed he could do. He probably hadn’t thought falling was a possibility or felt even the slightest fear of death.

  If it had been just Czes, he wouldn’t have gone out of his way to do something like that, but the weird gunman couple were genuine passengers. They might be Czes’s accomplices in crime, but thinking about that could wait until after he’d saved them. On that thought, he’d simply launched himself into space to protect the safety of his passengers.

  Claire began to run with the rope, heading for the door beside him—the cargo door of one of the freight cars.

  For some reason, that door was wide open, and there was a big brown-skinned figure standing in it.

  Donny was bored.

  They’d finished crossing the river, and he’d thrown all the cargo they were after out the side door. He’d kept back one small box packed with grenades, the way Jacuzzi had told him to, but Nice had just taken that away as well. She’d said she and Nick were going to look for Jacuzzi, so Donny was the only person still here.

  With nothing to do, he’d been gazing out the open window, but…

  “Hey, you! Big guy! Gimme a hand!”

  Abruptly, somebody called to him. When he looked in the direction of the voice, he found himself looking outside the train.

  A bright-red figure was clinging to the side of the train, right by the door.

  “Ah, ahh! Y-you Rail Tracer?”

  That was a word Claire had never expected to hear from this big man. For just a moment, he looked surprised, but he immediately collected himself and began to act.

  Just when he’d been thinking that hauling them up by himself was going to take time, he’d discovered this giant. He’d spoken to him, simply thinking there was no reason not to use him. However…

  “Never mind, just hold this! Then haul on it as hard as you can! Thanks!”

  Donny was bewildered; he didn’t know what was going on. Abruptly, though, farther down the train, at the end of the rope, he realized he could hear somebody screaming.

  When he looked, he saw that someone was being dragged along at the end of the rope.

  “Muguah, this emergency.”

  On seeing this, he involuntarily grabbed the rope that had been held out to him. A powerful shock ran through his body, dragging him toward the outside. Donny grabbed the edge of the door, bearing up under the strain, and then he discovered who was hanging on to the end of that rope.

  The gunman duds and red cantina dress were unmistakably Isaac’s and Miria’s.

  “Aah, this bad. I save you! Nugaaaah!”

  No sooner had he spoken than, without thinking, Donny hauled on the rope with all his might. As a result—

  “Whoaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”

  Isaac and the others, who’d been dragged along the ground, leaped into the air, flew over the roof, and fell down the other side of the train.

  They had no idea that the rope that stretched taut when they did this brought Jacuzzi, who was fighting on the roof, a shot at victory.

  “Hey, we’re over the river. Wonder if we got away from them bandits.”

  “Okay, better start slowin’ down! The train’s gonna poop out!”

  The pair in the engine room raised their voices, and the speed of the train gradually slowed.

  As it did so, fragments of meat began to catch up with the train.

  …The red bits of meat that had been part of Czes’s body: his legs and right arm.

  When, with great difficulty, Isaac and the others finally managed to climb up to the top of the freight car, they rolled onto the roof and lay there.

  “Thank God, we’re saved!”

  “Yes, saved!”

  They wanted to keep lying right where they were, but they couldn’t: There was a boy in pain between them, a boy who’d lost his arm and legs.

  “All right, let’s go! Are you okay, Czes?!”

  “Hang in there!”

  The pair roughly shook the badly injured boy. Czes’s blood-starved brain was jostled nicely, and he felt his consciousness begin to fade again. Then the pair tried artificial respiration and chest compressions over and over, but none of it proved to be a fundamental solution.

  Just then, the sound of an explosion roared from the cars behind them.

  “What’s that? Enemies?!”

&nbs
p; “Look! There’s someone over there!”

  On top of the very end of the train, two figures clashed, and one of them vanished from the roof. Immediately afterward, an explosion that was different from the earlier one echoed, and great flames rose behind the train.

  Ordinarily, the two of them would have started to kick up a racket at that point, but now wasn’t the time. They were worried about Czes, but they’d also noticed the swarm of red meat fragments closing in on them, over the roof.

  “Waugh! Something’s coming! Something red is coming!”

  “Eeeek! I-I bet it’s the Rail Tracer! That must be the red monster they were talking about!”

  Even as they made a ruckus, the meat fragments crawled over the roof of the car, bounding across the coupling, steadily bearing down on Isaac and the others. The red, jellylike substance kept marching like an army of insects.

  “Hey, Miria! Those things are swarming Czes!”

  They tried to carry Czes and run away, but the fragments kept homing in on the body of the boy who was their host.

  “This is awful! They’re going to eat the parts of Czes they didn’t eat earlier, I just know it!”

  “Dammit! As if we’d let that happen!”

  Isaac covered Czes with his body, trying to protect the boy from the approaching red fragments. Miria flung herself on top of them, attempting to protect them both from the bits of meat.

  The fragments didn’t even seem to register that obstacle; they slipped through the gaps between their bodies. In the rising sun, the shapes of the three bodies, covered in red meat fragments, harmonized strangely.

  After a short silence, the sound of a tremendous explosion brought them back to themselves. Ironically, they’d been brought to their senses by the noise of the explosives Czes himself had made.

  “…Huh? The red stuff’s gone.”

  “Yes, it disappeared… How’s Czes?”

  When the pair timidly peeked under their own bodies, Czes was solidly there.