by Frank Tuttle
Darla’s gun roared. Gertriss waded into the fray, bellowing like a madwoman. Evis flew to her, bowling over an Angel before it could slash at her back, grappling with another that dared leap her way.
When it was over, Dame Fabbers was down but still breathing. Mr. Sands died with a bloodied Angel’s sword in his hand and a fierce smile on his face.
You just never know what’s hidden in a stranger’s heart. A lone Angel still mumbled and struggled to rise. I stilled it with a boot to its throat.
“I know you can hear me, old witch.”
It gritted its teeth. I put my weight on its windpipe, kept it from speaking.
“Shut up. That’s the best you’ve got? Dime-store Angels? Discount devils? You should have stuck to being arrogant and rich,” I said. “You’d have lived longer. We’re going to detach the luggage car. Leave you behind, just like I said, with your precious box and your damned gold keys. You can come after us or you can get ready to face the Playful. You don’t have much time. I suggest you start making wise choices, for a change. Dear?”
Darla didn’t need any prompting. She fired once, removing the Angel’s head above its aquiline nose.
It went limp.
“Evis, come with me,” I said. I looked Jiggles over. He was bruised and bloody and about as drunk as a man could get while still remaining upright, but he saw my look and returned it with a gap-toothed grin. “Jiggles, you know trains. You up for a run to the luggage car?”
“Lead on, Captain,” he said, spitting blood. “Dropped my damn flask back there anyways.”
Darla frowned at me. “Will uncoupling her car really help?” she asked.
I nodded. “Get these people headed forward,” I said. “As far as you can and as fast as you can. Still got a grenade or two handy?”
“Of course.”
“Good. Blow down any door you can’t force open. Go, hon. Right now. There’s no time.”
She just nodded. She fished in her skirts, came up with a stubby grenade, started herding people to the front.
I married well above myself.
Evis grinned. Gertriss kissed him and joined Darla. Jiggles reached into his mouth, yanked out a broken tooth, and kicked a dead Angel.
“I’m thirsty,” he said, and we followed him back toward the bar car.
The wreck of the bar car was empty but not still.
Wind from the hole in the side whistled and wandered, setting tablecloths flapping and bits of debris scooting across the floor. Twisted imps lay strewn about, none moving. Each was beginning to lose its shape, puddling on the floor in gooey red masses that resembled spills of bloody honey.
We made our way cautiously to the rear of the car. The landscape outside, a frigid expanse of glowing ice-spires and soft rivers of light that flowed and tangled across the sky, didn’t change once as we walked.
“Tell me the fastest way to uncouple the cars,” I said, my eyes on the door ahead.
Jiggles launched into a lecture about Horst linkages and where best to grasp the navis pin.
“Layman’s terms,” said Evis.
“You two hold the big iron handles,” replied the clown. “I’ll take hold of the leather-wrapped thing between them. We all yank at the same time. With any luck, that’s all it will take.”
“What happens if it won’t come loose?” I asked.
Evis forced the rear door open.
Across the rattling platform from us, the luggage car was open. What was left of the door flapped in the wind.
“Hell if I know,” replied the clown. He leaped onto the platform, put his grubby hands on the leather-wrapped handle of the shaft. “You boys waiting for Yule?”
I couldn’t see into the luggage car, but I knew damned well Mrs. Krait’s black spider eyes were focused on us all, knew she was probably just beyond the light.
What I didn’t know was how determined she was to kill me, as opposed to fending off the Playful.
Evis and I took our places. The big iron half-ring I found was covered in oil and grease but I managed to get my fingers around it and find a hold.
“Now,” yelled Jiggles, and we pulled.
At first, nothing happened. Then the shaft in the clown’s hand jerked, showing half a foot of shiny new steel. Jiggles grunted and his face went red under his white face paint.
Something like a tangle of dirty ropes erupted from the doorway. Lengths of it flailed away at Evis and Jiggles, snapping like whips. Wet coils lopped around my arms and my chest, pulling tight.
None of us let go. Jiggles cussed and heaved and the pin flew free and Evis attacked the whipping flails with his sword.
There was a loud metallic thud, and the luggage car began to fall behind.
The ropes around me stretched tight, threatening to haul me off the platform. Half a dozen vampire-quick flashes of Evis’s blade severed the lines pulling at me, and the lengthening distance between our platforms left the remaining whipping ropes with nothing to cling to.
The widow, or the thing she had become, appeared in the ruined doorway, her long dark limbs clinging to the frame against the wind.
Her mouth was no longer human. Nor was her face. But the look she loosed upon us with those featureless black eyes managed to convey pure hatred, and a hint of triumph.
She wiggled a bristly limb. Clutched in her new claws was the bag I’d sent up the kite line, the bag containing the keys.
Jiggles threw the navis pin, which struck her square in her bloated abdomen. She hissed and leaped back into the shadows, and an instant later, the opening was covered with a mass of writhing imps.
The luggage car continued to slow. The Star chugged west, and I’d done all I could, so I motioned to the door and led Evis and Jiggles back inside.
The clown slammed the door behind us.
“She has the keys,” said Evis. “My guess is she’ll have the box open pretty damned soon.”
Outside, a giant smashed his club at the ground, while the other roared. The new sun cast their shadows suddenly over us, and I felt the force of their footfalls through ground and train and boots.
Jiggles bent, stood, cussed.
“Well damn,” he said, turning his flattened, empty flask toward us. “Ain’t this a bad way to die?”
Chapter Fifteen
The fallen Angels in the sleeping compartment were melting, just like the imps.
We moved quickly through them, to the next car, and the next. Darla and crew left every door open for us. We reached the sixth of the Star’s nineteen cars before we discovered a doorway Darla had unlocked with her grenade.
I frowned. The walls were scarred in a couple of places with what looked like blows from a sword. The floor was pocked with bullet holes.
But no bodies. No blood. Nothing to indicate that anyone had fallen or been wounded.
I kept us going.
Jiggles brought up the rear, slowing now and then to inspect anything that resembled a source of whiskey. He hooted in glee, snatching up a miraculously intact bottle of hooch one of the conductors must have tucked away for later beneath a cushioned chair.
“Now I’m ready to fight,” proclaimed the clown, after pulling out the cork with his teeth. “Bring me a fresh batch of monsters!”
“Careful what you wish for,” snapped Evis.
A trio of middling-large imps came spilling out of a narrow door. “Don’t hurt us, don’t hurt us,” they cried, clawed red hands in the air. “We surrender.”
“My ass,” said Jiggles, who charged them, using his bulk to send them all flying.
The clown’s charge revealed that each imp sported a long narrow blade, stuck to its back with globs of black goo. Evis cut one in half, I tossed mine through a window, and Jiggles amused himself by stomping the remaining devil with his sturdy clown brogans until it stopped moving.
Gunshots sounded ahead. I snatched up an Angel’s bright sword just in case the widow’s minions were getting wise to guns.
Jiggles picked up one as wel
l. We headed for the hole Darla’s grenade left.
Sunlight streamed in. It didn’t dance or change colors. I spied a slice of perfectly normal blue sky above the roof of the next car, got my hopes up, had them dashed when I stepped outside and saw that the Star hurried through an endless field of scattered human bones.
“Nice place,” yelled Jiggles, over the rush of wind. “Might settle down here. Raise a family.”
Evis beat him to the next car’s door, opened it easily with a kick. We charged in.
Imps lay scattered, some just beginning to melt. Most showed signs of having met a scattergun. Some few bore the unmistakable signs of Darla’s precise aim.
One still moved, making a feeble effort to crawl toward the next door.
I caught up with it, got its attention with a kick that rolled it over.
“You can hear me through this thing, can’t you, Mrs. Krait?” I asked.
The imp blinked.
“I hope you plan to beg for mercy,” said the imp, in the widow’s voice. “Beg. I have turned the first key. I will complete the rituals, turn the second and the third keys in a few moments. Beg, and amuse me before you die.”
“Just checking. Have a lovely day, won’t you?”
I grabbed the imp by its scrawny neck, hauled it to the door, and tossed it onto the plain of bones, where it bounced and shrieked amid a spray of assorted remains.
Evis lifted an eyebrow. “You’re up to something,” he said. “I won’t ask what. Is it working?”
I shrugged. “Let you know in a few minutes,” I said. “Let’s catch up to the ladies. I don’t want them finding Stoddard first. He’s liable to use bad language, and get his ears boxed.”
Evis nodded. We burst into the next car.
A single Angel lay sprawled in the floor, pinned to the planks with its own sword. It was already going soft, beginning to look like so much cake frosting left out in the sun.
There was a note stuck through the sword up near the hilt.
Darling, it read, in Darla’s precise hand. Think of Buttercup.
“They’re on the roof,” I said. “Must be waiting until we’re on the platform.”
Evis pulled the sword from the body. “I’ll go first,” he said. “I’ll drop and hit their knees. You think you can make a head shot without mistaking me for one of the Heavenly Host, Markhat?”
I snorted. “You’re no Angel, pal. I’ll use my good eye to aim.”
“You don’t have a good eye,” said Evis. “Ready?”
We grunted affirmatives.
Evis wrenched the door open and leaped onto the platform.
Two Angels and an imp dropped down beside him. Evis ducked, his sword moving in a blinding arc that severed an Angel’s leg and cut down an imp before I got off three shots.
I struck the intact Angel just below its chin. Stunned, it froze, and Evis shoved it off the platform. I fired again, downing the imp, and Jiggles grabbed the remaining Angel by its throat, bashed it against the rails, and tossed it out into the plain of bones.
“The widow must be distracted,” noted Evis. “Or her hirelings are getting lazy.”
We could all hear the giants as they neared. Their footfalls were fast and close now, hard enough to shake the Western Star’s iron bulk with each tread.
Somewhere behind us, something shrieked, and a bright flash cast brief shadows west.
A third Angel dove at us. I sidestepped and shoved and it went over the rail before it could so much as mutter.
“Nicely done,” commented Jiggles, taking a swig. Evis bounded for the next door, pushed it open, and darted inside.
We followed. Another Angel dropped from the roof behind us, only to have the door slammed in its face by Jiggles.
We ran. The gangway was narrow. Doors threatened on both sides. The few that were open revealed empty kitchens or storage compartments filled with barrels and crates.
A couple of the doors bore fresh bullet holes, but there were no imps, no Angels, melting or otherwise.
Evis and Jiggles took the fore. I kept my eye behind us, wary of sneaky Angels, but the one we left behind never appeared.
“Getting cold,” said Jiggles, frowning.
“This can’t be good,” said Evis. Each of his words was accompanied by a faint puff of steam.
Every remaining shard of glass in the car went suddenly gray as intricate rimes of ice spread quickly across them.
I wasn’t dream-walking. Wasn’t asleep. But as the ice formed, the stomp-stomp of the giants’ approach faded, the rattle and clack of the Star quieted, and even the bite of the sudden cold began to fall away, as though everything about me began to recede.
Evis spoke, his face a mask of concern. Jiggles started my way, his rheumy eyes searching the gangway behind me.
“Go,” I said. I could not hear my own voice. “I’ll catch up.”
I couldn’t hear Evis’s reply in the deepening silence, but I could read his lips when he said, “Like hell.”
“You asked if I was up to something,” I said. Turns out lying is easier when you can’t hear your own voice. “I was. I am. This is it. Go.”
He cussed, but he whirled Jiggles around by his elbow and got him moving toward the front.
I waited, there in the silence.
I’ve endured other oddly quiet moments. The time the lines broke at One Tree Hill. Ten thousand Trolls roaring at once. Five thousand men shouting in terror. The high, thin slice of arrows as they arced down upon us, wave after wave after wave.
It had been so loud all day. Few died quietly on that hill. I’ll never forget the screams of horses.
Or the instant I simply stopped hearing it all, the instant the world went quiet, even as the Trolls charged and the arrows fell and Blue Tim died screaming in my ear.
The silence on the Star was even more thorough.
The chill was so distant I could barely feel it on my face. But it lingered.
Just like that, I was no longer alone.
Preachers will drone on and on about the piercing voice of Death. Shows what they know.
Death doesn’t speak. Death doesn’t make any sound at all.
Death is the absolute absence of noise and bother and fuss.
I felt her pause. That mass from the west, that boiling cloud of power. That was merely Death’s cloak. A flimsy garment, insubstantial and insignificant compared to what resided within.
She regarded me, silent, expectant.
“Yes,” I said, careful with the words I still couldn’t hear. “I touched the keys, the case. Handled them. But I never opened the case, never wanted the keys. If I am tainted, it came from necessity, not greed.”
The chill intensified. I remember waiting, at One Tree Hill, as Troll arrows fell like rain about me. Remembered wondering if the next instant would see me dead.
I don’t know how long I remained there, clothed in silence. I do know Death regarded me, the chill piercing me as her gaze lingered.
Then there was motion.
Death passed me by. Put her back to me. Walked away, toward the widow and her precious case.
The silence broke. At once, the Star rattled and shook and the floor lifted at the footfalls of giants and when I could move, I ran as if ten thousand new arrows were falling.
I didn’t stop running until I caught up with everyone two cars away from the coal tender.
Darla and Gertriss and Evis and all the rest stood in a circle, their backs toward each other, their hands filled with guns or blades.
No one stood up straight. They all bent or sagged or clutched at rails. The Dames took to the floor, too winded to do more than wave. Both were bleeding, though neither looked to be mortally wounded. Even Evis was panting a bit, though he alone retained a grin.
Darla pushed her hair back and met me. We hugged briefly.
That brief hug sent the last vestige of Death’s chill fleeing.
“What now?” she asked.
I led her to the closest window. Let
the shade up, peeked outside.
Sunlight streamed in. Prairie grass, tall and green, bent over in waves as the Star sped through it.
“I take back everything Mama ever said about you, Markhat,” said Evis as he and Gertriss joined us in the sunlight.
I bent, peered outside.
No bones hid among the grasses. No flashes lit the sky.
I looked back. The boiling mass of thunderheads was past us now, behind and above us, casting a deep bank of shadow over the plain and the rearmost cars. The giants still ran in pursuit, so close now their heads were obscured by the storm.
“We get to the tender car,” I said. “Then Evis and Jiggles and I do our bit, like we did for the luggage car, and release everything behind us.”
“Stoddard will fling his own shit,” said Jiggles, his face split in a genuine smile. “Pray let it be me who tells him what we’ve done.”
“Fine by me,” I said. “We let the cars go, and then we shove as much coal as we can into the boiler and we coax every bit of speed out of this bucket we can. The loci is about to collapse. Let’s not be here when it does.”
Evis nodded. “The widow?”
“If she hasn’t realized she’s been had yet, she soon will,” I replied. I motioned, and Darla started pulling people to their feet. “Another good reason to make some time.”
The door that led forward, toward the tender car, was locked. Evis gave it a good hard shove and I heard the lock split the frame. “Knock, knock,” he called out, before pushing the door open and sticking his head through it. “We’re Captains and paying passengers. Let’s not have any foolishness.”
I heard a muffled yell in reply. Evis opened the door and started hurrying people through it. “It’s Rowdy,” he called, back to me.
“Wonderful. Mr. Jiggles. Hang back, will you? Gertriss can take the luggage now.”
“Sure, boss,” said Gertriss, grabbing the case’s worn handle. She thrust the shotgun into Jiggles’s pudgy hands. “Don’t shoot my husband with it, you hear?”
