Last Train from Perdition

Five.

Lawson passed Eli Easterly and looked for a place to settle himself where he could close his eyes and try to mentally escape this confinement. They had set the ladder with Blue upon it down in the aisle between the seats, toward the rear of the car. Blue was still unconscious, a blanket supporting her head and the second tucked in around her. The bulldog conductor was standing over her, one hand braced against a seat and the other checking his pocketwatch to see how much time they’d lost. Ann sat in the seat ahead, her pistol on the slats uncocked but within quick reach. Mathias, Presco and Rebinaux sat on the other side of the aisle in varying stages of sullen resignation, though Mathias—having gotten a fearsome glimpse of something, he knew not what—kept a hand clasped over his eyes as if in terror of seeing it again, and he muttered to himself so much that his former cohorts in crime glanced at him as one might take in a pitiful wretch whose mind had crumbled.

Lawson sat down on the seat facing Eric, who had distanced himself by several rows from the others.

“Thank you,” the young man said. “I never would’ve—”

“Keep your voice down,” said Lawson, as quietly as possible over the rumble of the wheels. “What I have to say to you I don’t want anyone else hearing.”

“All right. What is it?”

“I want to know…did you ever try to get back home?”

“I couldn’t. I had no money of my own, so I couldn’t get very far even if I did get away. Mathias watched us all like a hawk and kept everything in his strongbox…and I have to tell you, we’re leaving about eight thousand dollars behind in that cabin.”

“Does Fossie know where the cabin is?”

“Maybe. It wouldn’t be hard for him to find. Why?”

“Your gang just bought the doctor a suitable office and surgery for the next person who needs it. I’ll telegraph him from Helena to let him know. You’ll of course tell me where the cabin is and where the strongbox is kept. Agreed?”

“Sure, but I wouldn’t doubt that Cantrell won’t try to find it first, knowing it’s there to be found.”

“Will he find it?”

“Not unless he pulls up the floorboards under Mathias’s cot. But he’ll have to break the box open. The key’s in Deuce’s pocket right now.”

“It won’t take us long to get to Helena,” Lawson said. “The telegraph office is right there at the station.” He leaned closer toward the young man. His senses were keen; he could smell the blood flowing through Eric’s veins. “Another thing,” he went on. “Listen to me carefully.” He paused for a few seconds to make sure he had Eric’s full attention. “In Helena you’re going to go with the girl on the hospital wagon. I’m going to give you three hundred dollars. You won’t be travelling to Cheyenne with the others. You’ll catch a train from Helena to Omaha as soon as you can and you’ll go home. Are you hearing me?”

Eric didn’t answer quickly enough. Lawson repeated with some force behind it: “Are you hearing me?”

“I am,” Eric said. He stared out the window beside him, at the darkness that spat snow against the dirty glass. The train was curving, probably going through a mountain pass. “I thank you for getting me out of there,” he said. “I will go home…but you don’t know what it’s like, living with my father. And my two brothers…both of them hung the moon, he thinks. I, on the other hand, am a maker of mud pies. I suppose he told you all about me.”

“Enough to know you’ve made some damn bad choices.”

“I didn’t choose to be born to this family. I didn’t choose to be different from my brothers. To want to live for anything but work, and stepping on people in the name of commerce and politics.” He spoke that last word as if it were a fatal disease. “To want adventure…freedom from the kind of life that’s chained them both down so they can’t take a piss without asking his permission. Oh, and they had to marry into the right families. Well, I’m made that way, Mr. Lawson. I’m made to turn my back on everything my father thinks is holy, because I’m telling you…I don’t fit in his church.”

Lawson nodded. He understood the young man’s point, but that was not why he was here doing this job. “I was paid to get you out of Perdition and aimed toward home. I’m also keeping you out of jail…possibly prison, or worse if Mathias could convince a judge you killed someone. Which I’m not sure you haven’t. But look at me and listen very closely, Eric…it’s not up to me whether you stay in Omaha, in your father’s house, or wherever. It is up to me to make certain you do at least go see your father. Then you can go and do as you please. But…you are going to Omaha, and you are going to see him. If you don’t, I’ll hear about it.” Lawson settled back against the hard slats. “I won’t like hearing that you’ve disobeyed me, after what Ann and I have done. I’ll track you from Helena if I have to, and I’ll find you. So do me the favor of time and yourself the favor of mercy, and at least let your father see his son.”

Eric kept his gaze directed out the window. He drew a long breath and released it, and from that action of resignation Lawson understood that Eric had been thinking of catching a train in Helena for anywhere but Omaha.

“I’ll go see him,” Eric said at last. “I won’t promise I’ll stay there a whole day.”

“As you please. My business with you and your father is concluded when you set eyes upon each other. I wasn’t contracted to be your guardian angel.”

“Fair enough,” the young man agreed.

Ann suddenly said, “Lawson! She’s coming around!”

At once Lawson was on his feet and walking back along the car toward where Blue lay. Ann was kneeling at her side and the conductor was standing over her. He moved aside to let Lawson kneel down. The aroma of dried blood in the packed wound hit Lawson with a force that no one else in the car could possibly understand. His face tightened. His lower jaw wanted to unhinge and the fangs to slide out from the upper. The images of destroying everyone here in a fury of insane greed wanted to further unhinge the iron door of the crypt he carried with him to protect weak humans just like these.

Blue’s eyes fluttered. She was as pallid as death, and already she looked to Lawson as she might if she were turned…and yet, if she were turned she would never need worry about lead bullets again. They might hurt, but they could never kill.

“Water,” Blue whispered.

A leather-covered canteen was offered from an age-spotted hand with crooked knuckles.

Lawson took it. He unscrewed the cap and as gently as possible put the canteen to Blue’s lips. She was able to drink just a little, but most ran down her chin. Lawson handed the canteen back. “Thank you,” he said.

“Sorry she’s in such a bad way,” said the conductor. He returned the canteen to a shelf above where he usually sat. “Which one of them fellas shot her?”

“The one who used to have a gunhand,” Ann said.

“Somebody talkin’ about me?” Rebinaux spoke up. “Hell, ain’t my fault Deuce pushed her! I weren’t aimin’ to shoot no saloon girl!”

“But you did,” the conductor answered. “I ought to come over there and knock a few teeth outta that dumb-lookin’ face.”

“Come on then, pappy!” Rebinaux started to get out of his seat. He was grinning like a pure fool but there was meanness in his mouth. “I’ll bust yore ass with one gotdamn hand!”

“Sit down.” Mathias reached up and took hold of Rebinaux’s jacket sleeve. The man’s voice was a weak ghost of what it had been at the first of the evening. “There’s no point in that, Johnny.”

Rebinaux jerked away. His cheeks had reddened and his overhanging brow seemed even lower than a few seconds before. “No point? No point? Hell, we’re all bound for Mexican neckties and we’re sittin’ here doin’ nothin’? Jesus eatin’ hominy, Deuce! You’re supposed to be lookin’ out for us! In the old days we’d storm this bunch and turn ’em guts-side out! We’d take this whole damn train over! And look at us, Keene!” he said to his other companion, trying to pull him into this fray. “We’re the saddest sacks ever sittin’ in shitty britches!” Presco responded by staring at the floorboards. “Well,” Rebinaux raved on, “you can both go all hangy-dog but at least I can knock a damn old man into next week!”

“Come on yourself, sweetpea!” The conductor smiled, though his face was also blooming red and his white eyebrows were dancing. He turned to fully face his adversary. His hands had become fists, and he planted his feet like a man who would not be moved. “One wallop from Glorious George Gantt and your head’ll be on the moon ’fore mornin’!”

“Sit down,” Mathias repeated.

“Seems we ought to clean house startin’ with that punk!” Rebinaux showed his bad green teeth at Eric Cavanaugh. “I told you we shouldn’t oughta take him on! Look what he’s brung us!”

“Sit down, Dixie,” said the vampire. He stood up and drew back his coat to show his two guns. Of course no one but Ann knew that the Colt with the grip of yellowed bone, sitting backwards in Lawson’s holster on his left side, was loaded with six silver bullets blessed with holy water by Father John Deale. The silver angels could kill a human, yes, but they were meant to penetrate the skull of a member of the Dark Society and in so doing burn the creature’s body to a fine ash. Within Lawson’s coat was a derringer that also carried two of the consecrated bullets. “Down,” he repeated, putting a hand on the pistol with the rosewood grip.

“You ain’t gonna shoot an unarmed man!” Rebinaux spat back. “You ain’t got the stones for that!”

“You and I measure courage in different ways. Ann, which ear should I take off?”

“Gentlemen,” said a hollow voice. “Please.”

Eli Easterly had risen to his feet. He came along the aisle slowly, and though the train was moving at a good clip now and the car was rocking a few degrees back and forth he kept his balance well, not needing to touch any seatback as he passed. He positioned himself between Lawson and Rebinaux. “I have no idea what’s transpired here,” he said, “but violence is never an answer.” His sad gray eyes in the gray face under the gray but carefully-combed hair were fixed upon Lawson. “You’re an intelligent man. You understand the futility of violence.”

“I understand it’s sometimes unfortunately necessary.”

“Perhaps. But I doubt it’s necessary to deprive anyone present of an ear.” He turned his head toward Rebinaux. “You should sit down, sir. God is in this place. He will protect, if you allow Him.”

“I don’t need protection! I need a damn horse and two hours head start!”

Easterly nodded. “Even so,” he said quietly.

The moment hung. Then Rebinaux made a farting sound with his mouth toward Glorious George Gantt. He said, “You can all go straight to Hell and roast your nuts! You too, lady! And you most of all, ya coward!” After making this statement to Deuce Mathias he staggered across the aisle and sat by himself on a seat toward the front.

Easterly came forward a few more paces to look down upon Blue, who was making small whimpering sounds but appeared to be for the most part unconscious again. “Wound near the heart,” he said. “She’s lost a lot of blood.”

“She has,” Lawson answered.

“Dr. Fossenhurst couldn’t remove the bullet?”

“No. We’re taking her to the hospital in Helena.”

“And these men?”

“Bound for Cheyenne. Wanted for crimes in the territory.”

“Ah. You and the young lady are the law?”

“In a way.”

A faint smile pulled at the corners of the man’s mouth, but his eyes remained cold. “I thought I recognized you for what you are on the trip up. I’ve seen many of your kind, but this is the first time I’ve met a female bounty hunter.” He gave Ann a slight nod.

“We have a job to do.” Lawson decided not to try to correct the man as to their true mission. “We intend to do it with no further violence. About Dr. Fossenhurst…are you a friend of his?”

“Not exactly. He wrote a letter to me informing me of…” The gray eyes blinked, and the faint smile was gone. “A tragedy in my family.”

“I’m very sorry, Mr. Easterly,” Lawson said, and immediately he realized what mistake the need for blood and all this aroma of gore had done to his senses.

Eli Easterly’s face remained blank. His head cocked slightly to one side, as if he were trying to puzzle out exactly what he was looking at. “I don’t recall telling you my name,” he said.

“Didn’t you?” Lawson asked, himself feeling as if his world was rapidly spinning out of control.

“No, I did not.”

“Surely you—”

“No.” Easterly’s right hand slid into his coat. It emerged again holding a small unornamented silver crucifix, which he clasped to his chest. “It’s Reverend Easterly,” he said, and Lawson felt the drawing of some sharp blade between them. Red embers of a fire had begun to ignite deep in the man’s eyes. Lawson thought He doesn’t know, but he senses—

There was sudden jolt that made Easterly stumble backward and grip the seatback beside him. The jolt brought a squall from Johnny Rebinaux. Ann staggered into Lawson, but the vampire held steady.

The train’s wheels shrieked, an ungodly sound. The timbers of the passenger car groaned as if in mortal pain.

“Christ Almighty!” Gantt hollered over the noise. He had nearly been pitched to his knees.

In struggling to keep his balance, Easterly lost the crucifix. It hit the floor with a metallic chime a few inches from Lawson’s right boot.

The train was slowing. Steam bellowed from beneath the engine and for an instant whitened out the windows. Then it had cleared and again there was just the night and the blowing snow. The train continued to lose speed, the wheels still screaming, and then…

“Why are we stopping?” Lawson asked Gantt.

“Hell if I know!” was the growled reply. “Either Tabbers or Rooster up there must be sittin’ on that brake!”

Another few seconds, and the train came to a dead standstill after a last little backward jolt and burst of steam.

“What’s this about?” Deuce Mathias was on his feet. He’d regained some of his composure and spirit, but still dared not look at the pallid and very fearsome man with the two Colts in his holster.

“Heh!” Rebinaux shouted. “Betcha we’re gettin’ robbed! There’s some mighty evil men hereabouts!” He slammed his good hand against the seat in front of him. “Deuce, we can still get out of this!”

“Shut up, Johnny!” Presco hollered in his rusty-sawblade voice. “Just shut your hole!”

“Everyone, quiet!” Lawson commanded. He saw Easterly’s crucifix on the floor. Though the sight of it made his eyes water and burn he was not so far gone that he was compelled to flee from it in shame and anguish, but it had been a very long time since he’d touched one of those. He started to reach down for it and hesitated.

Would it burn his fingers? Could he stand to touch it, even now in this early stage of the transition? He feared it, because it meant he might be discovered as something both more and less than human.

“Would you pick that up for me, please?” Easterly asked, standing a few feet away.

The vampire’s hand was still outstretched, but the truth was…he was afraid, and now he understood how the older ones would shield their eyes and their flesh from the power of this object. Why it was so—why his eyes burned at the sight and why his skin and senses shrank from it—he did not know, just as he didn’t fully understand why the silver bullets blessed with holy water could destroy the vampires so decisively. These were mysteries of the constant battle between light and darkness that he had recognized were far beyond him.

“Here,” Ann said, as she picked up the crucifix and offered it to Easterly.

The reverend took it, pressed it between both hands against his chest again, and directed his sharp-edged gaze to Lawson when he said, “Thank you kindly.”

“Stopped out here in the middle of nowhere!” Gantt fumed. He had spent a few seconds igniting a lantern from the tinderbox he carried. “Lemme go see what Tabber’s up to!” He pushed past Ann and Lawson and gave Rebinaux a disdainful glare just before he left the car. Opening the door brought in a swirl of snow and made Ann shiver and pull her coat’s collar up around her neck.

Lawson suddenly felt it.

Not the frigid cold, nor the sting of ice in the wind. Those didn’t bother him. What he felt in the air was a venomous presence, a sensation of massed power coiling itself for a strike. It seemed to curl itself around his throat, lay claws upon his shoulders and whisper a foul enticement in his ear. He felt himself shiver as Ann had, for he knew what must be true: out there, very near, were creatures of the Dark Society.

“Watch them,” he told her. “I’m going up front.”

“What is it?” she asked, sensing his tension.

“Maybe nothing,” he replied, but they both knew better.

He left the passenger car and stepped down to the ground. His boots sank in the crust of snow and ice. The wind had picked up and was blowing hard. He tied the leather chinstrap of his Stetson into place. Snow whirled around him and ice crystals stung his cheeks. It was a night fit for neither man nor beast, but Lawson figured it suited them just right.

He saw Gantt’s shape and the glow of the lantern ahead as the man approached the locomotive’s cab, and he started walking toward it. The engine was still throbbing steam. Lawson was aware of mountains on both sides of the track: huge chunks of snow-covered rock that pulsed faintly blue in the vampire’s night-vision. Boulders seemed to hang several hundred feet overhead, for the train had stopped in a narrow pass. Lawson guessed they were maybe seven or eight miles south of Perdition, and there was not a light of habitation to be seen.

As Lawson approached, Gantt was aiming his lantern upward at Tabbers and the black fireman the conductor had called Rooster.

“Go on!” Tabbers was saying. “Take a look for yourself!”

“Damn it!” Gantt had almost jumped out of his boots as he realized Lawson was standing beside him. His white hair was blown wildly about his shoulders by the wind, and he was holding onto his dark blue cap with his free hand. “Friend, I don’t like to be sneaked up on!”

“My apologies. What’s happened?”

“Track’s blocked,” said the red-bearded Viking, who was bundled up in a long brown leather coat and wore black cloth gloves. “About forty yards ahead. We nearly crashed our asses into it before we saw it. Rooster before me…the boy’s got better eyes.”

“Jesus Christ!” Gantt made a face like he wanted to spit acid. “Let’s take a gander!” He started off walking alongside the steaming locomotive and Lawson followed just behind him. They reached the front end of the engine and saw, illuminated through the snowfall by the cone of the big whale-oil headlamp, that the track was indeed blocked by a pile of boulders and smaller rocks nearly the height of a man.

“Lord lord lord,” said the conductor, as if chanting a dirge. “Look at that mess! Must’ve happened not too long ago…snow’s not piled up on the rocks yet.” He made a sucking noise through his teeth. “Well…we got pickaxes and shovels aboard. Have to put everybody to work who can. It’ll be a hell of a job. You want to go fetch ’em while I take a closer look, Mr. Lawson?”

“Don’t do that,” said the vampire.

“Pardon?”

They were here, watching. Lawson felt them, hiding in the crevices and holes, flattened against the earth, crouched amid the twisted leafless trees. They were waiting, and how long they’d been waiting here he did not know. Their web of communications was yet not fully understood by him, but he knew they tracked him, waiting for a moment just like this.

“Can this engine move in reverse?” he asked.

“It can. Or…it could, if you didn’t care that the railcars were busted into splinters. Have to decouple the cars, and that ain’t gonna happen tonight.” Gantt lifted his lantern to examine Lawson’s face. The vampire quickly averted his eyes so the lamp would pick up no gleam of red. “What do you mean, don’t do that? We’ve got to get this line cleared!”

“I mean…don’t go out there.”

“And why the hell not?”

Lawson turned his gaze upon the man, and cared not if the red glint scared the piss out of him. At that moment he wanted to.

“You won’t come back,” said Lawson.

“Huh? Are you—” And then something in Lawson’s face or voice must’ve gotten through, because Gantt lowered the lantern and stood staring toward the pile of boulders. The cruel wind blew snow into his face, like a taunt. “That girl,” Gantt said after a moment. “She’ll die if you don’t get her to Helena.” It was a statement, for there was no question about it.

“Yes,” was the answer. Lawson was beginning to think that was a terrible word.

“So then, why—”

“Walk with me back to the cab. Go on, quickly.”

Lawson waited for Gantt to go first.

As they left the front of the engine some small object came flying from the darkness with tremendous speed and shattered the glass of the headlamp. Its force was enough to take it into the fuel well. Burning whale-oil spewed out and drooled down in tendrils of blue flame upon the cowcatcher.

With that, the lamp flickered…flickered…and went dark.

“My light!” Tabbers shouted as he leaned down from the cab. “Jumpin’ Jaysus! What happened to my light?”

Lawson ignored him. There were worse things to contend with than a sightless eye. “Do you have guns?”

“What?”

“Guns. Firearms. Anything. Do you have them?”

“We…got two rifles. Why?”

“Loaded?”

“No, but—”

“Load them,” said the vampire. “Now.”