by Fritz Galt
He hurried along. The railroad bed was littered with garbage and had the oily smell of creosote. Faces pressed against the passenger car windows as he stumbled past. Dwarfed by the two trains, he was fully aware that he was doing something contrary to the design of the station and the laws of physics.
His lungs burned from his run. He tried to calm down and think straight. He needed a clear head to face the new challenges that lay ahead. He would soon enter a dark tunnel with only the glaring headlights of oncoming locomotives to light his way.
He reached the last railcars and paused. It felt good that the two trains no longer boxed him in. He looked to one side. He could step over to the platform and leave the station as if there were no problem back on the tracks. But he couldn’t. He had a friend trapped somewhere inside that tunnel.
He filled his lungs with air. “Skeeter?” His voice disappeared quickly in the black void.
“Brad?” a voice sounded faintly from a long distance away. It was Earl!
“Where are you?”
“Just where you left me. I fell off the train.”
“Can you move?”
“Not with this ankle. I sprained it on impact. It might even be broken.”
Earl’s weak voice was then drowned out by the low rumble of an engine entering the far end of the tunnel. Was Earl in its path?
“Skeeter?” Brad shouted. But there was no answer, only the rumble echoing louder and louder.
In addition to concern for his friend, Brad began to worry about his own safety. The headlight swept toward him as the train switched tracks several times. He froze in place. Logically, the train wouldn’t switch to either track where he stood since trains were already there. But the uncertainty of the locomotive’s ultimate destination paralyzed him for several heart-stopping seconds.
He gave it four seconds to change direction and avoid rear-ending the trains beside him.
Three.
The beam shone directly in his eyes.
Two.
A whistle blared straight in his face.
One.
He squeezed his eyes shut.
The wheels rumbled closer, unbroken by the hiss of brakes. Then, at the last moment, he picked up a squeal as the wheels followed a curve in the rails.
He opened his eyes just in time to see the locomotive sidle over to his left, two tracks away. An instant later, it barreled past him propelled by the momentum of twenty heavily loaded passenger coaches. It took over a minute for the entire train to pull into the station and trundle to a halt. It took longer than that for Brad to slow down his racing heart.
“Skeeter! Are you all right?”
The chatter of passengers disembarking filled the air, and Brad couldn’t hear a thing from his friend. Frustrated, he eased away from the last car and crept into the tunnel. Light from the platforms penetrated several meters into the gloom. After that, he had to guide himself by sliding a boot alongside the nearest rail. He kept the tracks to his right and prayed the track to the left was far enough away.
Behind him, the train he had just walked past began to haul out of the station. Another train was just entering along the far right wall. That one wouldn’t pose a danger, but it did drown out all other sounds.
Brad crouched for balance and shuffled from one railroad tie to the next. All the while, he tried to tame the wild thumping in his chest. At last there was enough quiet in the enormous tunnel to call out for Earl. “Are you still there?”
“Yup,” came a pained reply.
Brad closed his eyes and let his breath out. He had imagined stumbling upon Earl’s pulverized bones and squooshed organs.
Judging from the reverberations of Earl’s voice, he had another hundred meters to go.
“Is there any way you can walk toward me?” Brad said in a half-shout.
“I tried crawling, but the rocks are too sharp.”
“Can you see anything?” Brad called.
“Can you?”
Great. He was blindly groping across train tracks in a tunnel at night in order to prevent a sarcastic wimp from scraping his knees.
Suddenly he froze mid-stride. His left boot had struck something. It was metal. Another track. The two sets of tracks that he was walking between were converging. He felt further. They were crisscrossing. He’d have to choose which pair to stick with and cross the other.
He decided to proceed straight ahead. He lifted his feet carefully over each rail. But which track went straight? The set of rails to his left continued onward to intersect another set of tracks to Brad’s right.
He chose a route and stuck with it. He just had to make sure that he was between sets of tracks, not on them. After another five meters, he was faced with a similar problem. According to the map he had constructed in his mind, there was another set of tracks traversing the current set.
“Skeeter, you there?” Once he got a fix on Earl, he could aim straighter.
This time Earl’s voice sounded from further to the right.
Crimony. Brad had been following the wrong set of tracks. He lifted his right boot and stepped over the rail. He was going strictly on instinct now, except for the headlight that appeared at the far end of the tunnel.
It was another train thundering his way. How many trains were there in Beijing anyway?
A whistle announced its arrival. Then the ground began to vibrate. The train was heading considerably closer to him than the last one. In fact, it was rapidly changing tracks. According to his calculations, it was coming straight at him.
The whistle sounded again, this time a desperate alarm of several blasts. The engineer must have seen him in his headlight.
There was no time to run. In the glare of the powerful beam, Brad tried to untangle the spaghetti of railroad tracks between the train and him. Forget it. It was far too complicated to unravel, much less figure out which way the switches were thrown. He had to look for a safe place to stand. Not between parallel rails. Not at a junction. Not wedged between two tracks.
He crouched, arms out to either side. He was caught between two converging sets of tracks. The beam met him square in the face. Which track would the train take? He would try to dodge in the other direction.
The pencil-like headlight turned into a wide spotlight. Brad could no longer make out its direction. Maybe the train would swing out of the way before it reached him. He couldn’t count on it.
The engineer could not slow down or change course. Only someone at a computerized switchboard in an office inside the station knew or could change where the train was headed.
The whistle sounded again, this time five short blasts, an urgent warning to clear the tracks. The whistle obstructed his thoughts. He was paralyzed.
Which way was the blasted thing going?
Once more, he heard the train’s wheels click across a junction. The white light became an entire wall bearing down on him.
His stance was not wide, yet his boots were tightly wedged up against the tracks on either side. Would this come down to a guess which tracks the train would take?
The ground vibrated to the point where he fought for balance. He didn’t want to trip and fall, for God’s sake. But his momentum was taking him to his right. He stepped over the rail. His legs straddled it. He picked his left foot up to gain balance and stepped fully onto the tracks to his right.
The piercing light lifted over him and away. Immense machinery roared past his left ear. The whistle changed to a lower pitch.
He crouched low and clutched the rightmost rail with both hands.
In the whoosh of air, he made out a voice. He looked up to see the engineer cussing out his window. Brad couldn’t blame the guy.
He closed his eyes. He had to drown out the noise and keep his center. The train’s massive sheets of irregularly shaped metal screamed by, centimeters from his left side. Sparks flew at him. He shielded his face and tried to hold his breath.
Each pair of wheels presented a new hazard of metal and sparks. He endured
one passing car only to brace for the next. Oddly, his thoughts transferred from his stricken buddy to the love of his life, May. If for no other reason, he had to survive for her sake.
It may have only taken a minute for the entire train to pass, but it felt like an hour. And when the last car finally squealed into the station, it left a galvanized soul in its wake. It left behind a young man with a renewed pledge to seek out Liang and end all the misery he was causing. Brad had been given a second chance at life, and there would be no peace until he eliminated Liang from the face of the earth.
He headed into the darkness with bold new resolve.
“Skeeter, where are you?” As if Earl had moved.
This time Earl’s voice came from the left, fifty meters ahead.
Brad had to make a dash for it. He had been picking his way along the tracks, which only confused him and took up valuable time.
He crouched low for balance and picked up speed. Despite stumbling here and there and the palms of his hands landing on the occasional spike or rock, he made excellent progress.
“Skeeter?”
“Brad?” Earl’s voice sounded more relieved as Brad approached.
Then it happened. Brad was no more than ten meters from his friend when his left boot encountered a soft, heavy object. His toe caught under it and Brad went sprawling forward in the pitch dark.
Before he could think, both hands shot up to cushion the fall.
The fingers of his left hand landed in a round wet hole. The sides were warm, but encircled by jagged teeth. Then his forehead landed solidly on a long object. He rolled away. The thing rolled with him until his back rested against a train track.
Another train had just entered the tunnel. Its dispersed light illuminated what was on top of Brad. Just millimeters from his face was a pair of glazed, staring eyes. He had just tripped over the corpse of his assailant, the soldier.
“Yyyy-uck!” He pulled his hand out of the guy’s mouth.
“Brad, watch out,” Earl said.
The oncoming train was following another one of those track-switching routes. Brad couldn’t tell which track it would ultimately take. He struggled out from under the limp yet heavy corpse. Blood from the man’s face and torso stuck to his hands and shirt.
“Double yuck!”
He rolled the body aside and looked up. The locomotive’s single beam fell on Earl struggling to sit up. They were directly in the train’s path.
It didn’t matter if his friend was within or between tracks. Brad scrambled toward him. Earl seemed transfixed, his rumpled hair a halo in the headlight.
The train showed no sign of slowing down. There were no brakes. There was no whistle. Perhaps the engineer wasn’t looking.
Brad ran straight at the mechanical monster. He deftly avoided the rails, the spikes and the ties. It felt like he had become one with the tracks.
The noise grew deafening, yet Brad felt an inner calm. At the last possible moment, he lunged headfirst into the light.
He grasped Earl by the shoulders and rolled him off the set of tracks. The two tumbled across rocks and steel. Brad scraped his forearms, his knees, and his face as he plowed to a stop. A second later, the train thundered past, inches from their legs. Strangely, it sounded more muffled than the previous train.
Brad closed his eyes and simply counted his blessings with each set of passing axles.
When the danger had passed, he lifted his head. His cheeks rubbed against stiff fabric. He had been safely tucked between Earl’s thighs.
He couldn’t see his friend, but he could hear the rumble of laughter. “No please. Don’t stop,” Earl protested.
Brad jerked his head back.
“Don’t stop now,” Earl cried.
“You swine!” He might have saved Earl’s life, but that didn’t mean he had to put up with Earl’s abuse.
Brad pushed back to a squatting position and his hands fell back hard on something that creaked.
Earl let out a howl of pain. “That’s where it hurts.”
“Good. Serves you right.”
Brad took his hand off of the ankle, and Earl writhed in pain.
Brad couldn’t stand to see any kind of creature, no matter how hideous, in physical pain. So he reached into the dark and found the rest of Earl’s left leg. He pulled the sock down and slid his fingers along the ankle. It felt hairy and cold. Then suddenly his fingers hit the side of Earl’s ankle. It was bloated to the size of a tennis ball. It might have been no more than a nasty sprain, but the ankle was in no condition to bear weight.
“How do we get you out of here?” He shoved Earl up to a sitting position.
“I might know a way,” Earl said between clenched teeth. “Every time a train enters the tunnel, I see a door in that wall.”
“Where?”
“Just opposite us, across six or seven pairs of tracks.”
“How about I act like a crutch?” Brad said. He ducked under Earl’s arm.
“Easy, dear.”
“Oh, shut up.”
Together they managed to make it across five more sets of tracks before another train entered the tunnel.
“Let’s make a break for it,” Brad said. He stooped low to support his small, but heavy pal.
The train was heading straight down the middle of the tunnel, exactly where he had rescued Earl.
He drove Earl forward across two more sets of tracks and into a recess in the wall, not far from the door.
In the glare of the locomotive’s headlight, Brad watched a gruesome spectacle unfold. The front wheels of the train rolled squarely over the soldier’s corpse, severing it neatly into several parts.
“What was that?” Earl said.
An occasional shower of sparks illuminated the remains of a headless, limbless torso.
“That was our buddy with the assault rifle,” Brad said. “The toothless wonder from the chairlift.”
Earl seemed stunned. “He was lying right next to me?”
“Yeah, I hope you don’t mind severing your relationship.”
Brad tried the handle of the door beside them, but his fingers were too slippery from the soldier’s saliva and blood.
“You try it.”
Earl gave it a yank and it opened at once.
“Praise Buddha,” Brad said. “You just spared us a long walk home.” Frankly, they never would have made it back down the tracks to the station without getting clobbered by a train.
He looked through the doorway with wonder. They were in a long corridor bathed in light. “We’re so outta here.” He grabbed Earl by the shoulder. They still had a long trek back to the street.
Earl paused. He looked pale as he glanced back at the limbless corpse. “Maybe he can lend us a hand.”
“Naw. He doesn’t have the guts.”
Chapter 11
Seated in his office at Gospel University, Terry Smith picked up the Atlanta Journal Constitution. “Colorado Bars Imports,” screamed the morning’s headline. It was just the kind of exposure he had wanted.
The previous afternoon, he had left Governor Stokes drugged with LSD and prepared for Dr. Yu to implant suggestions in his mind. The one-two punch had taken effect immediately, and Stokes had issued an executive order to ban all foreign imports at once. Smith checked the New York Times and Washington Post. The surprise order made front-page news there, too.
Citing vague terrorist threats, Colorado’s governor had summoned his Secretary of Transportation and asked him to close down the container importation facility at Denver International Airport.
According to the article, the order instantly set an alarming series of events in motion. The immediate effect might have seemed innocuous. Shipping companies simply tried to divert that evening’s containers to other American ports of entry.
But that was when fear set in. They could find no other ports willing to take the rerouted containers. Specifically in question were some twenty standard-sized shipping containers, the flat kind designed to fit int
o the belly of cargo planes.
“Why are they being diverted from Denver?” the director of Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport asked the Times. “I want to know what’s wrong with them before I allow them into our terminal.”
The reaction was similar in other airports. By the time the papers went to press, no airport had volunteered to take receipt of the containers, and they were on a fleet of airplanes heading back to China and Malaysia, at the expense of the shipping companies and manufacturers.
A slight hiccough in the otherwise smooth handling of cargo? Perhaps, the Post considered. But the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which ran the Customs and Border Protection agency, was stepping in to investigate.
Terry Smith set the last newspaper down with a new sense of wonder. He could picture Dr. Yu bowed over in meditation and sending the spirit guide to the drugged governor’s mind. The old man’s mental telepathy really did work.
How far could he take this thing?
After the success of his tête-à-tête with Governor Stokes, it was time to ratchet up the embargo. It was time to rendezvous with the good Governor of California.
He jabbed at one of the color keys on his computer. On the large image on the opposite wall, he selected the name of the celebrated USC wide receiver Randy Walsh, now the beloved Governor of California. Then he punched the Arrange Meeting button and his receptionist’s beautiful face appeared.
“When and where, Mr. Smith?”
“Lunch at the San Diego Yacht Club.”
“Done. And Mr. Smith, the television crew for Good Morning America is ready and waiting for you downstairs.”
He let a smile creep across his face. “I’ll be right down.”
To buff himself up, he stepped into his executive bathroom and found a full-length mirror. He jumped back at the sight. He looked like his twin brother.
But the figure he saw was no televangelist. It was a more handsome man with presidential bearing. His full head of silvery hair gave him more maturity than most presidential candidates in recent memory. And that was a good thing. The country needed to be guided by wisdom in her hour of need. And if the public wasn’t aware that it was their hour of need, it was his job to make sure they did.
