The Claus Effect

by David Nickle

  “What?” cried the oldest boy. The others hopped up and down enthusiastically.

  “It’s a big job,” Hauser said doubtfully.

  “We can do it! We can!” they shouted.

  “Well…okay. You see, I need some brave children to do the Julklapp for me.”

  “The Yule Klapp! The Yule Klapp! Yay!” Their cheering turned heads up and down the car.

  “Shh,” warned Hauser. “We must be very quiet. You know the recipient of the Klapp mustn’t expect it. You must tiptoe quietly to every door, or it won’t be fun. Now: we’re going to divide you into teams.”

  Five minutes later, Team A arrived in the first sleeper car. Giggling, they crept up to the door of Compartment 1. The oldest boy snapped his fingers importantly, and the youngest handed him a nicely wrapped, pink present.

  “Ein,” he whispered, and the others mouthed along with him; “svei, drei—”

  He yanked open the door to the compartment and pitched the present in.

  “Klapp!” screamed the children.

  Emily stared at the black window for a while, trying to decide whether she really trusted Ilsa. They were entering a hilly area, and the train had gone through one tunnel already. Finally, she said, “I’m worried about my aunt.”

  “Ah.” Ilsa smiled. “I wondered when you’d ask about that. She’s fine, Emily, don’t worry. She wasn’t home when the house was destroyed. We have agents watching her. I’m sure she’s just worried about you.”

  “I guess you’re right.”

  “You’ll see her soon enough. Who knows? If this all works out, maybe we can buy you and your aunt a new house.” Ilsa reached down and picked the German storybook off the floor. “Now, why don’t we think about something else for a while? Here, I’ll read you a story.” She flipped through the book. “This one is called ‘Das Stuttgarter Hutzelmannlein.’”

  “Oh, Puh-lease,” said Emily in exasperation, and turned to the window. They were entering another tunnel, and as the train fell into darkness, Emily thought again: I’m still worried about my Aunt. No matter what you say.

  “This is our car!” the girl protested.

  “No it’s not, it’s ours,” squawked the leader of the other team. “We were here first anyway.”

  “You weren’t!”

  The team leader took a package, opened a compartment door at random and tossed it in. “Klapp,” he said. “So there. Now we’re first.”

  “I’m telling Conductor Herr Hauser,” wailed the girl.

  “You do that. Klapp! Ha ha!”

  Emily was starting to nod off. She wanted to find Hauser and get the beds made up, but there was something she had to do first.

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” she said.

  “Okay,” Ilsa said. She was engrossed in the German storybook. “It’s at the other end of the car. Just rap on the boys’ door on the way by and get one of them to go with you.” She slowly turned a page, her brow knitting as she read.

  Well, I’m not going to do that! Emily thought as she eased out into the shaking, flickering corridor. In fact, she didn’t have to go to the bathroom at all. But she did have to get in touch with her Auntie, whatever Ilsa said. She remembered reading somewhere that trains sometimes had emergency telephones.

  Walking the drunkard’s walk of one new to trains, she passed compartment 4 without knocking, and a moment later passed the ladies’ room too.

  Little hands fumbled with the blue-wrapped box. Little fingers closed around the pink loop of ribbon and dangled it.

  A tiny hand grasped the door handle to one of the compartments. The figure paused, listening carefully for any sign that the inhabitants of the room had heard. No sound came from within.

  Satisfied, the figure slammed down the door handle, awkwardly hoisted the door open and skated the package inside. It slammed the door and ran off down the corridor.

  “Klapp!” it shouted.

  The little box twirled to a stop underneath the window. Adult hands picked it up and turned it over.

  “Hey, Marty,” said John. “Look at this.”

  “You fool, don’t—”

  KAAA-Lap!

  The explosion punched a four-foot hole in the side of the train, and fractured windows all up and down the length of the sleeper car. Inside, the walls of compartments 3 and 5 flew in, the ceiling lights went out and the door to compartment 4 was blasted across the corridor and through the windows on the other side of the train.

  Ilsa had just started reading a story about a Troll named Hugo, when the concussion knocked her off the couch and the lights went out. The door to the compartment slammed open and a breath of hot air swarmed over her. For a second she was sure the train had derailed, but the rocking and swaying continued even after her ears had stopped ringing.

  What had happened? She started to crawl to the door. Her leather boots crunched on broken glass as she crouched in the doorway, Smith and Wesson at the ready.

  The faint glow of light from outside showed her carnage where one of the compartments had been. The floor of the corridor had buckled at that point, and the windows and part of the outside wall were missing. With a shock, she realized the explosion had happened in compartment 4.

  Her first thought had to be for the child. Where is Emily? The ladies’ room was on the other side of the wreckage; Ilsa crept back, right to the edge of the broken up area. Looking down, she could see gaps in the flooring under her, and the rapid flicker of railway ties passing just feet below. Why don’t they stop the train? she wondered.

  She braced one foot on a staunch bar of iron and reached as far as she could across the gap. Her fingers wouldn’t quite touch the hanging shreds of faux wood-grain material hanging there. She had to lean well out into the gale of icy winter air, which licked over her legs, making her shiver. She swung back to safer support.

  I cannot go this way. If Emily was on the other side of the gap—and she almost certainly was—there was no way Ilsa could reach her. The thought made her curse in Low German.

  Her finely tuned senses registered the sound of the car door thudding shut behind her. The corridor broadened to the width of the car there for several feet, leaving space for the exit to the next car. Ilsa ducked down just as two elfs appeared there. The elfs were carrying an AK-47 like a bazooka. When they saw her the lead elf stopped at the corner, holding the thing on his shoulder while the one behind hoisted up the stock and tried to aim it at her.

  She fired twice. The AK-47 clattered to the floor. Ilsa raced over to snatch it up.

  The thick sliding door that separated her car from the one in front shuddered, and its small glass window shattered from the hail of bullets. They were coming for her.

  She looked toward the back of the car. Three elfs had appeared on the other side of the wreckage. Ilsa let off a burst in their direction, and they fell back into darkness.

  Coolly, she considered her options. She could try to hide in one of the other compartments; they’d pick her off from outside, and anyway, she didn’t want to endanger the people she could hear hollering inside compartments 8 and 9. If she stayed in this corridor she would be fired on from two sides, so she had to get out. Moreover, Emily was in the back section, possibly snatched by the elfs already.

  She must get there. Ilsa ran back to the gaping hole and scanned above herself. The metal there was twisted and sharp-edged, like shrapnel. She could lose fingers trying to go that way.

  That left the neck between the cars. She could get outside there, and take a ladder to the roof. But it wouldn’t be easy; the elfs were already there.

  Luckily the door was thick, and had stopped the volley of bullets they’d already put into it. As she reached the back of the car, Ilsa saw they had slid the door open several inches, and the barrels of several weapons poked out. She hit the deck as they opened fire.

  Lying one her left side, half-around the corner to the corridor, she peppered the doorway with bullets. Glass shattered above her and shots banged into t
he corner of the sleeper compartments. Sparks showered around the narrow gap and it narrowed even more. That restricts their angle of fire, she thought, ducking back around the corner.

  A bullet whizzed by from the back of the car. “Schwein!” Ilsa shrieked, firing a burst back that way. There was no more time for caution. She bounded into the open area at the car’s end and jumped right past the door. As she’d guessed, the elfs on the other side couldn’t open the door or manoeuvre the barrels of their weapons fast enough to track her. A couple of stray shots thudded into the fast-disintegrating wall of sleeper compartment 10 but she remained unscathed.

  In a flash she realized the elfs were too short to shoot through the small window in the door—but she was not. They’d started to roll the door open and a small hand with a big pistol jutted through and turned awkwardly in her direction. She kicked out and the sharp point of her tightly laced black boot knocked the pistol away. Then she stepped right up to the side of the door, jammed the AK-47 through the window at a high angle, and pulled the trigger. For good measure, she swivelled it around a few times for maximum coverage. The noise was incredible.

  The AK-47 was hot in her hands. Ilsa braced her boot on the edge of the door and kicked it open. Then she was through, firing ahead of herself.

  The neck between the cars was a diamond-patterned bridge of steel made of two semi-circles that abraded under and over one another as the two cars moved. The ceiling of heavy tarpaulin was now perforated in a dozen places. She caught a glimpse of a panicked elfish face as the last of her would-be assailants leaped off the train.

  Cowards.

  Ilsa stepped to the outside edge of the shaking, rattling platform. The only barrier between her and the rocky landscape whipping by was a single iron bar at waist height. She shivered, but there was no time to consider alternatives. She shouldered the AK-47, unclipped the metal bar and let it fall, then swung out into the gale. Her first grab for the rungs of the outside ladder failed—her second connected. Holding on for dear life as the train shot out onto a bridge above a deep ravine, she hauled herself onto the ladder, and made for the roof.

  Emily had felt the explosion and heard the subsequent gunfire while crossing between cars. It didn’t take much to realize what was happening. The toilet in the next car was vacant, and barely thinking she opened the door, flung herself inside and slammed it shut.

  It looks like I’m going to the ladies’ room after all, she thought.

  After a particularly loud burst of gunfire, she heard someone scream, “Aaii, the she-debil’s shot me!” That must mean Ilsa was all right. But what about the guys?

  Distant gunfire reached a crescendo, then ceased.

  “Wotzup?” somebody whined. “Be she dyyd?”

  “You go find out,” came a reply.

  “Hoowee, not me. Look at poor Falthrop there.”

  “I’m on the rahdio,” said a third, somewhat distraught voice. “Cain’t raisem!”

  “T’ain’t working?”

  “Just nothing! No hanswer!”

  “Golly.”

  Emily heard pattering feet. She pressed her ear harder against the door. She could hear a faint discussion, but couldn’t make out any of the words, except the word “roof.” Which didn’t tell her anything. The feet pattered by again, then she heard the heavy door between the cars open and shut.

  Silence.

  She counted to one hundred before she allowed herself to open the door a sliver. There was nobody in sight. With a sigh she eased out into the darkened corridor.

  The car ahead was a mess. Some kind of bomb had gone off and wrecked the sleepers, and there was no way she would be able to get back to the cabin she was sharing with Ilsa. Ilsa was apparently gone anyway, though heaven knew where.

  She stood indecisively. Maybe the best thing would be to lock herself in the bathroom again. As she was thinking that, she heard the sound of gunfire. This time it came from directly overhead.

  A chunk of ceiling fell and a bullet ricocheted around wildly. Emily gave a little shriek and ran for the door to the next car.

  Ilsa snarled. There were five elfs ahead of her, hiding behind strips of metal thrust up by the explosion. They were determined not to let her pass. Though blinded by the cold wind and coal smoke from the engine, her leather boots slipping on the frozen metal slats of the roof and the sixty-mile-an-hour wind threatening at any second to pitch her off onto the sharp rocks of this mountain pass, Ilsa was just as determined to get by them. She lay flat on her belly, the AK-47 held out in front of her, and slowly inched forward. Every now and then an elf would poke its head over the metal sheeting, and then she would get off a shot, and crawl another foot.

  A big-eared silhouette popped up. She aimed the AK-47 and pulled the trigger. Two shots left the barrel before the gun jammed. She threw the useless gun away.

  The elf saw her do it. It jumped up, mouthing a cry of triumph she couldn’t hear over the train noise, and ran straight at her. She could see it was waving a bayonet longer than itself. Ilsa stood up.

  As it got about ten feet away, the elf realized what it was up against. Ilsa stood, feet planted wide, the wind whipping her torn garments forward, an amazon three and a half feet taller than he was. Long streaks of soot were smeared down her arms and throat, and had outlined her eyes, making them seem larger. She bared her teeth and sprang at him.

  “Hawhee!” screamed the elf as it jumped off the train.

  Emily ran into the next car. It seemed undamaged, but all the doors to the compartments were closed. She pounded on one. “Help me!”

  Whoever was on the other side yelled “Go away!” in thickly accented English.

  Someone had terrorized these passengers; she was alone.

  Well, it wouldn’t be the first time. And at least there were no elfs here. She decided to work her way to the back. She’d seen in movies where heroes sometimes unhooked the last car of a train and coasted to a stop in it. She had a vague idea that maybe she could do the same thing, and at least escape the elfs that way. Emily was confident Ilsa’s people would find her; after all, they had helicopters and mine shafts and stuff.

  She staggered along the corridor. Huge dark shapes streamed by outside the windows—boulders, slopes of tumbled rock, pine trees. They started to go around a curve and she spotted the engine, way behind her and to the right. It threw a giant net of light ahead of it, illuminating sparkling pines with big pillows of white snow on their branches and slipping over the black rocks and curves of the hillside they were traversing. At any other time, she would have found the sight beautiful.

  But at that moment the view of the pretty trees was blotted out by a curved oval black thing that came down between her and them. It swayed a little in the air, then ducked back toward her car.

  Helicopter? That would be too good to be true.

  The lights from the train windows lit Santa’s bloated sleigh as it hove in beside her. She could see the trembling, kicking legs of the reindeer and the high curving runners; then she spotted the long whip licking back then lashing forward—

  —and there was Claus, rearing up from his seat, cryogenic wreaths of vapour guttering away from his outstretched hair, his eyes wide and glowing, mouth moving into a great gaping grin as he spotted her.

  He pulled on the reins, and the great cauldron tipped and slid straight at her window. Emily screamed and ran.

  The runners of the sleigh smashed through the window next to her. It was safety glass, but even so thousands of tiny squares and triangles sprayed past her. The whole car lurched with the contact. The runner got hung up on the window’s edge for a second, then tore free with a long screech like hundreds of fingers drawn across a blackboard. The sleigh lurched forward, coming abreast with her again. Emily dove forward, barely avoiding the curving iron bar that pressed through the glass and hooked the upright between two windows. It pried the metal free like a can opener, popping the next window out whole. A freezing hurricane blasted in at Emily.

&
nbsp; She ran back this time, but he was faster. The sleigh moved alongside her, and as Emily stopped and, whimpering, pressed her back against a locked compartment door, the Claus’ arm snaked out, and the knuckles of his long fingers cracked and popped as his hand descended on her.

  She saw him look forward then—and suddenly he snatched his hand back. A howl of outrage poured from his blue lips, shattering the remaining window of the coach, then the sleigh went straight up and disappeared.

  Seconds later, Emily found out why.

  Two more shots. They were going to have to be good ones.

  Ilsa had formulated a plan to make her move the next time a great choking gout of coal smoke enveloped their part of the train. She was now directly across the hole from the last elfs. It was something of a standoff.

  She looked behind her. Here came a long cloud of smoke. She would be facing away from the smoke while she ran, and they would have it in their faces. It might just work.

  Just as the smoke reached them, she saw something huge lift into the air directly overhead.

  It was the Claus’ sleigh. He lashed madly at the reindeer, who were hopping up over each other in an attempt to gain altitude.

  She might never have a clearer shot. Ilsa stood up and fired twice. There was a sound like a phone ringing, and ten tiny sleigh bells tinkled onto the roof around her.

  “Careful down there!” boomed a huge voice.

  The elfs on the other side of the hole stood up too, cursing and raving. Consequently, they were all on their feet when the train entered the tunnel which the engine smoke had hidden from them, and were all swept aside like the last hand of a losing card player.

  Emily heard elfish voices behind her, so she ran until she was in the next car. This one turned out to be the baggage carrier. It was dark, and full of luggage and big mail sacks. A potentially good place to hide, actually. Moving slowly, she began to look for a secure cranny.

  The mail sacks looked good. She hoisted up a couple of the less-full ones, thinking of getting in one and burying herself under the others. Let them find her then. She knew elfs; they couldn’t find a Catholic in the Vatican. Just then she heard the door behind her open.