1931 The Grand Punk Railroad: Local (11 page)

At first, the passengers who’d been left behind stayed silent. After a short while, the ones who’d begun to understand the situation gradually began to clamor. None of the passengers had tried to leave the dining car yet. There might have been white suits or black suits lying in wait outside either exit.

Before long, complaints ballooned, and the cooks and bartender, who were train personnel, began to take the brunt of them.

What happened? What sort of joke is this? Where are the conductors? Let me off! Stop this train!

Fang and Jon, feeling disinclined to put up with them, retreated into the kitchen. Immigrants were roundly discriminated against in this era, and they probably understood that if they tried to handle things, it would backfire.

Even so, there was someone who turned an unjust attack on them.

“What’s the matter with this train, anyway?! Keeping a yellow monkey and a stinking Irish hick in its kitchen!”

Possibly because he’d used up all his complaints about the uproar of a few moments ago, one man began singling out Jon and Fang for grief. He was a fat, flabby old guy with a little mustache. He was far too undignified to be called “portly” or “pleasantly plump”; he was an utterly unsightly man.

Jon and Fang could hear his yells all the way back in the kitchen, but they ignored them as if they were used to it.

The man bore down even harder on a different young cook, who wasn’t sure how to deal with him.

“I paid a lot of money to ride this train! What’s with that face?! If you have a problem with me, gimme back my money!”

As his fist struck the counter, something was laid down on top of that fist. It was a stack of bills bundled together in groups of one hundred.

“Wha…?”

“Is that good enough for you?! You, uh……you nasty guy!”

“You’re the worst!”

When the man with the little mustache looked to the side, a cowboy and dancing girl were standing there, glaring daggers at him.

“Wh-who
are
you people?”

“If it’s money you want, I’ll pay you back for your tickets! That means you’re not a customer anymore! Isn’t that right, Miria?”

“Yes, he’s stealing a ride!”

Isaac and Miria raised their voices in protest against the man with the little mustache. A bit surprised by this, Jon and Fang peeked out of the kitchen.

“You fools! Do you have any idea who I am…?”

Even as he protested, the man with the duster on his lip reached out for the bundle of bills.

“
Silence!
You’ve been going on about nonsense like ‘monkeys’ and ‘hicks’ in a restaurant where people were enjoying their meals! I bet you were planning to find fault with them and extort money!”

“Ooh, what a lowlife!”

“You’re unbelievable, you money-grubbing ghoul!”

“Make like a ghoul and get back in your grave!”

Saying things that were just as unfair as the mustachioed man’s protest had been, they threw another stack of bills in his face.

“G’wan, get lost! If you don’t, then my hundred…my hundred-
million
pistols will spit fire!”

“We’ll give you lead poisoning!”

Just then, from deep in the kitchen, from a place that could never be seen from the customers’ positions, a voice spoke. It was a voice like a bear’s, low and ponderous.

“Jon! Fang! You heard them! That guy’s not a passenger or a customer of this kitchen anymore! Hurry and toss ’im out!”

On hearing this voice, which was like the roar of some ferocious beast, the mustachioed man’s pompous attitude imploded.

“Yessir, Head Cook.”

“Pain in the butt…”

Even as Jon grumbled, he and Fang picked up the struggling mustachioed man from both sides. Then, with beautiful efficiency, they went out through the car’s rear door.

At that, the ferocious beast’s voice abruptly became gentlemanly and delivered a certain announcement to the dining car:

“Now then, I’m afraid we’ve put all of you through something terribly trying! Upon our arrival, everyone present at this time will, of course, have their train fare refunded to them in full by our headquarters. In addition, you will be paid commensurate reparations, although we do not feel that this could ever be apology enough—”

The voice went on to say the most important thing:

“Now, when we are unable to communicate with the conductors’ room, we request that you think and act independently, with the goal of reaching New York alive. That is all!”

The bit he’d said at the very end there had been horrendously irresponsible, but everyone was too scared to complain. In this way, once again, quiet times returned to the dining car.

“Would you unhand me?! Filthy immigrants! You’ll soil my clothes! You’ll give me your diseases!”

As he spouted nasty comments, the man with the little mustache was turned out into the corridor. As they were about to leave, Jon lowered his stance and glared at the man. Although there was no telling when it had gotten there, his right hand gripped an ice pick.

The irate passenger had bluffed all over the place, but that one glare shut him up. Jon had once been affiliated with the Chicago underworld. Going up against the likes of such a passenger didn’t make him the least bit nervous.

“Listen up, you whiskered pig. Half of this transcontinental railroad was built by us Irish, and they treated us like slaves while we did it. And actually, they
made
us build it. Do you understand that?”

“The other half was us Chinese.”

“In other words, half of everything on these rails belongs to the Irish.”

“Add in the Chinese workers’ share, and it’s everything.”

Jon began saying something even more unfair than what the mustachioed man and Isaac had said. Neither of them had personally built the railroad, and in any case, they’d become Jacuzzi’s friends after their compatriots had chased them out.

“So, you whiskered pig, everything here is ours, including your life. Don’t you forget it.”

Smacking the mustachioed man’s cheek lightly, Jon and Fang started to go back into the dining car.

At that, possibly because he’d suddenly grown uneasy, the man’s attitude changed abruptly, and he clung to Jon slavishly.

“W-w-w-wait! Those white suits… They’re out here! Please! Let me in!”

“Don’t worry. It didn’t look like they had any stinking hicks or yellow monkeys in their group. Make friends with them. If you come in here, we’ll kill you.”

With that, the door shut without mercy.

When they entered, the passengers seemed to have regained some of their composure. A glance around showed that the three corpses had disappeared from the dining car. Possibly the other cooks had carried them out. At this point, everyone was quickly wiping the bloodstains off the floor and the walls.

As they went behind the counter, their eyes met Isaac’s and Miria’s.

“Thanks.”

Jon offered it in an undertone, and they didn’t seem to hear him.

“Hey, welcome back! I’ve gotta say, your chef sounds like a real tough guy!”

“Yes, the strongest legend!”

Isaac and Miria heaped excessive praise on the individual in the back of the kitchen.

This chef considered cuisine his top priority in life, and so, while he was cooking, he never left his post, no matter what. …To the point that there was an anecdote about how, even when a gas explosion had occurred right next him, he hadn’t abandoned his pan. Naturally, during the firefight a short while earlier, the chef had continued to stir the stew pot, all by himself.

“Still, that was one nasty customer! There’s really no excuse for making false accusations like that!”

“Yes, he was just too mean!”

“I mean, this place doesn’t stink at all, and there are no monkeys anywhere! Ye gods, how dumb does he think we are?!”

“The guy who makes fools of people is the real fool!”

As Jon heard out their proclamations, a doubt flickered inside him.

Wait… Were these guys actually protecting us, or…did they just not understand what the slang meant?

Breaking out in a cold sweat, Jon hastily canceled that thought.

“Who are those men in the white suits?”

Goose frowned over the obstacle to the operation that had suddenly presented itself.

He’d heard that there was a group of men in white suits in the second-class carriages, but he’d never imagined that his subordinates, who’d had machine guns, would be defeated. He didn’t know what sort of group they were, but it was evident that they were far from ordinary.

“In any case, temporarily call back everyone whose hands are free.”

At that order, several members withdrew, while one switched on the wireless set and attempted to contact the rear cars.

“Good Lord. First Nader and now the group in white. Should I consider this some sort of trial?”

“I can’t imagine we’ll reach it that easily, can you, Goose?”

At Spike’s question, Goose glanced at the corner of the room—where Chané was, silent, with her arms folded—and answered quietly.

“You’re right. It isn’t possible to reach Master Huey’s heights by any normal path.”

As he turned his back on Chané, Goose’s lips twisted into a smirk.

“So, hey. Ladd. What the hell is that orchestra?”

Ladd answered his friend’s question with a rapturous expression:

“A feast. I dunno anything else, and there’s absolutely no need to. Right?” he said, absently, bewildering his companions.

“Anyway, just kill them all.”

At those words, delighted cries escaped his friends. Now that Vicky was dead, there were ten group members left. They were packed like sardines in the second-class passenger compartment, even though it wasn’t a small space.

Although they had far fewer people than the orchestra, that wasn’t what they were feeling.

“It’s outta sight! We get to kill two or three apiece! Not only that, but these are relaxed guys who think they’re squarely on top!”

The delighted cries became cheers, and the second-class compartment was engulfed by their mood.

“Still, what a farce… Except for the ones in the dining car, the only people in the second-class compartments are us and those black suits.”

Three corpses lay in the room next to theirs. While Ladd was in the dining car, his friends had finished them off.

It was the three-man group from the orchestra—the Lemures—that had been sent to occupy the second-class cars.

Each had been killed in a different way. The only thing they had in common was that none had been allowed to die in the first attack.

“All right, it ain’t safe for us to be all huddled up like this, so let’s scatter. I’ll tell Lua and the other guy.”

Taking nothing but his rifle, Ladd threw open the door to the corridor.

“We’ll meet up again whenever! Just come back here whenever you think, ‘Yeah, I did good!’”

Nobody objected, and the group of white suits fanned out into the train. In order to destroy the black shadows, and to devour the train themselves.

Neither Goose and the black suits nor Ladd and the white suits had noticed it yet.

The fact that the train carried an even stranger shadow.

The one to notice that fiendish monster’s existence was the most cowardly guy on the train.