1931 The Grand Punk Railroad: Local

by Ryohgo Narita

  Abruptly delivering information he seemed to have heard from someone else, he began looking more and more as if he was about to cry.

  “My side and my arm and my thighs really, really hurt. There’s lots of blood, and I think I’m gonna…cry…”

  Immediately after he said this, he looked at his own blood, shrieked, and passed out.

  The regular Jacuzzi was back. As they scrambled to carry him away, Nice and the others knew the incident that had occurred on this train had come to an end.

  The morning sun gradually rose higher, shining down on the endless rails.

  It seemed to be quietly wishing them well as they headed for New York.

  Local—The End

  TERMINAL

  December 31, 2:00 PMNew York, Pennsylvania Station

  “Man, it’s late.”

  The three brothers who were the acting bosses of the Gandor Family stood in the lobby. The Flying Pussyfoot had been scheduled to arrive at noon, but that had been two hours ago, and it still wasn’t here. The middle brother, Berga Gandor, raised his voice in irritation.

  “Calm down, Berga. Long-distance trains arrive a few hours late all the time.”

  “…”

  Luck, the youngest, reprimanded his older brother, while Keith, the oldest, remained silent.

  Right beside them, another group was waiting for their friends. It was the party that was there to meet Isaac and Miria and the fellow alchemist. In specific terms, this was Firo Prochainezo, a Martillo Family executive; his rent-free lodger, Ennis; and Maiza Avaro, the Martillo contaiuolo. Of the group, Maiza was an alchemist from two centuries ago, and one of the immortals.

  Firo looked over at Keith and the others, asking them a question in a voice that wouldn’t be overheard by the people around them.

  “Are you guys sure? Having all three bosses in a place like this… You’re squaring off with the Runoratas, right?”

  “We’re able to relax and go out because it’s us, Firo.”

  “Yeah, I guess that’s true.”

  Firo was convinced. Like Isaac and Miria, during a certain incident a year ago, they had also become immortal. …Although not even the Bureau of Investigation knew this yet.

  “By the way, what sort of person is this alchemist, Maiza?”

  The man with glasses and a gentle face answered Luck’s question:

  “Let’s see… He’s the type who tries to shoulder everything himself, even though he gets lonely easily.”

  “The type who can’t live a long life, then. …If he were an ordinary person, I mean.”

  Luck spoke pragmatically. As if picking up the conversation, Berga began talking about the person they were waiting for.

  “Claire’s kinda like that, only the other way around. The kid’s ego is way too big. Cheerful personality, so it could be worse, but y’know.”

  Ennis, who was watching them, decided to ask about this person she didn’t know.

  “Then Miss Claire is a wonderful woman, cheerful and lively, with a self-assured core, isn’t she?”

  At that question, Firo and Luck looked at each other.

  “Firo, didn’t you tell her? That’s rather important…”

  “Actually, I guess I forgot. I mean, we talked about personality and things, but…”

  “Hmm?”

  As question marks appeared above Ennis’s head, there was an announcement that the train had arrived.

  “Okay, let’s go. Ennis, once you two meet, you’ll see.”

  Then they started toward the train, which was still exhilarated after its long journey, to meet the people they were waiting for.

  “Huh? Something seems kinda off.”

  The train that had arrived wasn’t the Flying Pussyfoot. It was a perfectly ordinary train, completely different from the luxury train they all knew.

  “From what I hear, there was trouble of some sort and they replaced the carriages.”

  Satisfied by Maiza’s words, everyone waited for the doors to open.

  “Come to think of it… Huey Laforet, wasn’t it? They nabbed him, didn’t they, Maiza?”

  At Firo’s words, Maiza’s expression clouded slightly, and he nodded. Seeing this, Keith gazed at Maiza wordlessly.

  “Oh, we should tell Keith and the others, too, shouldn’t we?”

  Maiza smiled as if to say there was no help for it. Then his expression tensed again, and he began to speak.

  “Huey Laforet, the self-styled revolutionary who was arrested a short while ago…”

  Everyone listened intently to Maiza’s words.

  “… he’s an immortal as well.”

  Just then, the doors opened, and the passengers began to pour out. For some reason, there were many whose expressions tended toward extremes, from faces that were flooded with relief to those that seemed strangely fatigued.

  Then, after the flood of disembarking passengers’ feet had subsided and a little time had passed, a woman in coveralls appeared. She had a very vigilant air about her, and when Ennis saw her, she thought she might be Claire.

  However, the woman passed right by Keith and the others. She seemed to have an injured leg; her left leg had a bandage wound around it, and she dragged it a little as she walked.

  Next, a man who looked like a magician appeared. From the look of him, he could have been nothing else: He was entirely enveloped in gray cloth. The Gandors’ eyes opened wide; they thought that this weird guy had to be an alchemist for sure… But Firo’s group was also muttering, “That’s a strange outfit.”

  The gray magician was followed by a man who seemed to be his assistant and was carrying his luggage. Behind him, a young man’s pitiful, tearful voice echoed through the area.

  Even as he cried from the pain in his legs, inside his head, Jacuzzi kept worrying.

  Where had that Ladd Russo guy disappeared to, anyway?

  And why had Isaac and Miria turned into that… yo-yo-like thing?

  What had happened to Czes? When he’d asked Nice, she’d only said she didn’t know and looked away.

  Speaking of Nice, even though they’d detonated all those bombs, the train hadn’t stopped. Why not?

  … And most of all, the red monster… No, the person in red clothes… Who had that been?

  What in the world had happened on that train, in the places they hadn’t seen? He knew worrying wouldn’t solve anything, but he couldn’t help thinking about it. He would have liked to have seen Isaac and Miria, but with his legs this way, he hadn’t been able to go around looking for them.

  I’ll ask at one of the local information brokers. They say there’s an information broker in this town that knows absolutely everything.

  Oh, but his legs did hurt. If he didn’t let these wounds heal up first, he’d get nowhere…

  Jacuzzi took a break from worrying for the time being and began whimpering about the pain again.

  “I-i-it hurts, it hurts! Wa, wait a second! Go a little slower!”

  A guy with bandages wound all around his body was crying and wailing. He had an impressive tattoo on his face. After him, others descended from the train: a girl who wore glasses over an eye patch, a man with a bandaged face, then a man who might as well not have been there, and finally a brown-skinned giant who was over six feet tall.

  “Do you think they’re a circus or something?”

  Firo and the others watched the odd group go, then continued waiting for their friends to arrive.

  The disembarking figures grew few and far between, and a forlorn atmosphere began to envelop the platform.

  Even so, they didn’t have the slightest doubt that the people they were waiting for would arrive.

  When the station workers had begun to close the carriage doors. The very last ones to emerge from the train were

  To be continued

  AFTERWORD

  First, a big thank-you to everyone who read this book, even though it has nothing to do with the main story.

  This story does have the “Baccan
o!” title on it, but the characters from the previous volume… do not tear up the pages in a new incident (with the exception of one couple). The world in which they’re set is the same, but the intent was to keep each incident separate. Most of the characters have been switched up, too. However, it’s still America during the same time period, so please assume that the characters from the last volume are still there, living somewhere offstage.

  I’m terribly worried that if I write a huge, sweeping, epic series, it will get axed right in the middle, or I’ll set up tons and tons of foreshadowing and the story won’t go anywhere, or I’ll run out of ideas at the climax and pull a “Catch the rest in the next volume!” and then never publish another volume. I do want to get good enough to write a long series like that someday, but…

  Partly as a consequence of that thought, for this Baccano! series, I’d planned to keep each volume as self-contained as possible, but—

  —as you can see from the “To be continued” there at the end, we’ve got a split volume right off the bat.

  Although it does say “To be continued,” the “Express Run” volume that comes next doesn’t start right after the end of this one. It’s actually going to be a story written about the same incident and set during the same time frame as this “Local” volume, but told from different perspectives.

  This volume rivals the previous one as far as the number of characters is concerned, and as before, it would be great if you’d think of your favorite character as the protagonist… Or that’s how it should have been, but as you probably noticed, there are a few characters that just disappear partway through the story. I’ll be writing about those characters’ movements and endings in the Express Run, so I’d be terribly thrilled if you’d read that volume as well.

  This one turned into an irregular split volume, but I’ll do my best to create stories that live up to your expectations, so please keep an eye out for me in the future as well.

  Movies, plays, novels, manga, and more: Trains make frequent appearances as an archetypal set in most genres. I chose a transcontinental railway for the setting this time around because, among other things, I like watching stories like that.

  In all sorts of stories, trains appear as more than simple sets. Sometimes they’re props, sometimes they’re important keywords, and sometimes they become the main character and add color to the story. I love that sort of atmosphere, but… Even now, after I’ve finished writing it, I’m not sure how I handled the train in this story. As I was putting the plot together, I imagined a train rolling with ferocious speed over an intricate web of rails, but all the way to the end, as I wrote, I was afraid the story might suffer a derailment.

  … Well. This is the first time I’ve been published in half a year, and I’m not quite sure what to write here.

  I managed to graduate safely, and aside from writing books, I’m living a terribly laid-back life.

  I got a late start due to my graduation thesis, and I’ll psych myself up and make up for that lost time: I plan to challenge myself to see just how much I can write in the year after this book is released. Of course, in this first year of my new life, I want to do my absolute best to polish my writing and story-creation skills, so that the day never comes when my editor smiles and tells me, “You’re boring. Don’t write anymore.” That’s my current goal, at any rate. I hope you’ll be patient and bear with me.

  * Like last time, note that everything past this point is thank-yous.

  To Chief Editor Suzuki and the good people of the sales and PR departments, who really helped me out—or rather, for whom I caused nothing but trouble—thanks again with this release.

  To Mine, who isn’t my supervising editor, but who told me a certain something that put pressure on me and made me shape up, and to everyone in the Dengeki Bunko editorial department.

  To the proofreaders, who caught the typos and dropped characters in my inexperienced writing, as they did for the previous book.

  To my family, friends, and acquaintances, particularly everyone in S City, who helped me out in all sorts of ways.

  To Katsumi Enami, who captured the individuality of all these diverse characters and added a dashing liveliness to the story, even though he was very busy.

  And to those readers who picked up this book as well, or who’ve picked up one of my books for the first time.

  Thank you very much. I want to hang on to this feeling of gratitude without letting it fade and devote myself daily to producing better results next time and into the future. I hope we’ll meet again then.

  Until next time…

  May 2003, at my place

  Playing the last five minutes of DEAD OR ALIVE (directed by Takashi Miike) on repeat.

  Ryohgo Narita

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  Copyright

  BACCANO!, Volume 2: 1931 THE GRAND PUNK RAILROAD: LOCAL

  RYOHGO NARITA

  Translation by Taylor Engel

  Cover art by Katsumi Enami

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  BACCANO!, Volume 2

  ©RYOHGO NARITA 2003

  All rights reserved.

  Edited by ASCII MEDIA WORKS

  First published in Japan in 2003 by KADOKAWA CORPORATION, Tokyo.

  English translation rights arranged with KADOKAWA CORPORATION, Tokyo, through Tuttle-Mori Agency, Inc., Tokyo.

  English translation © 2016 by Yen Press, LLC

  Yen Press, LLC supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact the publisher. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Narita, Ryōgo, 1980– author. | Enami, Katsumi, illustrator. | Engel, Taylor, translator.

  Title: Baccano!. Vol. 2 : the grand punk railroad: local / Ryohgo Narita ; illustration by Katsumi Enami ; translation by Taylor Engel.

  Other titles: Grand punk railroad: local

  Description: First Yen On edition. | New York : Yen On, 2016. | Series: Baccano! ; 2

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016013676 | ISBN 9780316270397 (hardback)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Science fiction. | Criminals—Fiction. | Railroad trains—Fiction. | Nineteen thirties—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Science Fiction / Adventure.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.N37 Bad 2016 | DDC [Fic]—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016013676

  ISBNs: 978-0-316-27039-7 (hardcover)

  978-0-316-27040-3 (ebook)

  E3-20160722-JV-PC

 

 

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