1931 The Grand Punk Railroad: Local (21 page)

As he watched them go, Jacuzzi swore in his heart that his group would successfully do what they had to do.

“What selfish, willful people, huh, Donny? I don’t know who those two are, but they’re much bigger villains than I am.”

Looking up, he spoke quietly to Donny, who stood beside him.

“Aah?”

“Yeah, this train is full of villains and hopeless thugs, us included.”

He stopped and turned back toward Isaac and Miria, just once.

“Those two are several times more villainous than I am, but I bet they’re several times better people than I am, too.”

“Mmm, Jacuzzi, you lonely?”

Without answering that question, Jacuzzi began walking again.

“Let’s go force our own selfish demands through. We might as well become the biggest villains on this train, right, Donny?”

Jacuzzi nodded firmly, agreeing with his own words. When Donny looked at his face, he realized the expression it wore was one he’d never seen before.

“Aah, Jacuzzi, you having fun.”

All cried out, Mary huddled against her mother, shivering slightly.

How much time had passed since she’d been caught? The scary woman had left the room a little while ago, but one guard with a gun was still there.

Come to think of it, what had happened to Czes? Was he all right? He might have gone back to that janitor’s closet after she’d been caught; maybe he was worrying about her. Maybe he’d already been caught and killed.

Trembling at her own imaginings, the girl buried her face in her mother’s body.

The tears that should have been dried and gone welled up again.

Having passed through the dining car and second-class carriages, five black suits ran through the lone third-class carriage.

All were armed with machine guns, and they were making straight for the conductors’ room.

“Be careful. I hear Chané and one of the white suits headed for the rear cars.”

At nearly the same moment as their leader spoke, the violent sound of shattering window glass rang out.

“What was that?”

“It came from one of the passenger compartments!”

The sound indeed seemed to have come from one of the nearby rooms.

“Where’s the unit in charge of third class?”

“They say they’ve lost contact with them, just like the freight room and the second-class compartments.”

The black suits gulped, then decided that two would stay in the car, and the remaining three would continue through to the conductors’ room check.

After they’d seen the group of three run off, the other two approached the door quietly.

A short time passed in silence, and then, as one man gave a wordless sign, the two of them kicked down the door to the room. …However.

“There’s nobody here.”

There was no one there. Only the sound of the wind streaming through the broken window glass reverberated through the compartment.

One man cautiously approached the window and used the butt of his gun to carefully knock out the shards of glass that were still in the window frame.

Once all the glass shards were removed, he stuck his head out, gun at the ready, and looked around.

When the man looked down, his gaze went fixed for a moment. Then he hastily scanned the area.

“What is it?”

“…C’mere a second. Look at this.”

Prompted by his companion, the man who’d been called over also stuck his head out the window and looked down.

“
Ugkh
…”

The object they could see dimly by moonlight and roomlight was a weirdly twisted human body.

It was tangled around the metal fittings under the car, and they couldn’t see all of it without leaning out.

However, even so, the black suits were sure it was a corpse.

The right arm and both legs had been ripped from the body. …Or rather, they looked as if they might have been chewed off. The right arm was gone from the shoulder down, and the cut surface was extraordinarily dirty.

It was likely that something they couldn’t see from here—either clothing or the left arm—was fastened to the metal fittings.

They should have been fairly used to seeing corpses, but the black suits weren’t grimacing because it was a corpse.

It was because the corpse belonged to a young child.

On a battlefield, it would have been one thing, but to think they’d have to see something like this in the United States, and on a train, at that…

Chané and Goose probably wouldn’t have been disturbed, and Ladd might actually have smiled. If Jacuzzi had seen it, he probably would have cried and screamed hard enough to send himself insane.

The boy’s body had a name.

A name that was just a little hard to pronounce. Czeslaw Meyer.

“I wonder if Czes is okay.”

Mary, who’d finally stopped crying, murmured to herself. Her mother heard her, and she answered her daughter’s question instead of empty space.

“It’s all right. I’m sure Czes, and Isaac and Miria, and Jacuzzi and all of his friends are just fine. You don’t need to worry. I’ll take all your bad dreams for you, so relax and go to sleep.”

As she spoke, Mrs. Beriam gently stroked her daughter’s head.

Tunk
Tunk
Tak-tunk

“!”

Abruptly, there was a sound at the window of the Beriams’ room.

A sound as though something hard was striking the glass.

The single guard opened the window, holding his gun in one hand.

“………?”

He looked around, but there was nothing.

He leaned out a little ways, twisting his upper body to see what was above him, and in that instant…

… a black shadow covered the center of the wide, starry sky.

“
Ngh!
”

Two sturdy boot soles touched down on the black suit’s face.

The owner of the boots got an underhanded grip on the window frame, then pushed the man’s face down with all their might.

“W-w-wait! Ah, ah-ah-ah, waaaaaaaugh
!”

The man’s body was pulled through the window, and he fell out of the train. He rolled on the gravel by the rails at incredible speed, and before long, he was swallowed up by the darkness and vanished.

The Beriams, startled by this turn of events, saw the true form of the individual who’d come in through the window.

It was a young woman in coveralls.

Come to think of it, Mrs. Beriam thought, she’d seen this young woman sitting by the window in the dining car. As she was reeling in her memories, the woman spoke to the two of them:

“You okay?”

She asked the question in a brusque tone. She was probably in her early twenties. Her coveralls had been old to begin with, and now they were discolored pitch-black by soot or something. The woman was so dirty she couldn’t even be compared to her previous self from the dining car. Yet, she continued speaking to the Beriams:

“You’re not hurt? In that case, we’re running.”

New York
Before dawn
Somewhere in Little Italy

“… Crap. I woke up too early.”

Firo looked at the clock. It was only five in the morning. Outside the window, things were still deep black. In summer it might have been different, but now, when the days were short, the starry sky was still clearly visible.

“Well, I guess it’s okay.”

Rubbing sleepy eyes, Firo headed for the apartment’s washroom.

“What’s the matter? It’s so early…”

Behind him, a young woman’s voice spoke. The voice belonged to Ennis, Firo’s roommate.

“Oh, sorry, sorry. Did I wake you?”

“No, it’s fine. I was already awake.”

“I see. That’s good. I’m just impatient for noon today, I guess.”

“Yes, I’m looking forward to seeing Isaac and Miria, too!”

As Ennis spoke happily, the corners of Firo’s lips rose a little as well.

“Yeah, I’m looking forward to that, too. Besides, Claire’s coming in on the same train.”

“That’s the childhood friend you mentioned last night, isn’t it? What sort of person are they?”

The question had been asked out of curiosity. In response, Firo thought for a little while and chose several words.

“Mm… Well, personality will be obvious when you two meet, so… For starters, Claire’s agile, with upper-body strength so good you’d never believe it from appearances.”

“An amazing athlete, then.”

“An athlete, hmm? No, Claire used to be in the circus, a long time back. If I had to say,
acrobat
fits better.”

Remembering his old friend, Firo began to smile quietly.

“Right about now, that acrobat might be doing stunts on top of the train.”

Just like an acrobat, the woman in the coveralls climbed up to the roof.

“All right, I’m going to lower a rope. Tie it around yourselves and hold on tight.”

Doing as she was told, Mrs. Beriam tied the rope around her daughter first. While she was wondering where the object had come from, her daughter was pulled up onto the roof.

Tucking her skirt up and tying it tightly, Mrs. Beriam bound herself securely with the rope when it was lowered back down.

“
Ghk
…”

Partway up, they entered a curve, and her body thumped against the train.

However, she didn’t let the chance slip past her: She set the soles of her feet against the side of the train and pulled the rope toward her with all her might.

Finally, after their short separation, the Beriams were reunited on the roof. In addition to the darkness, the soot and smoke were thick, and neither of them could make out the other’s expression well. In the midst of this, mother and daughter embraced each other tightly.

“Come on. Save the celebrating until we’re safely away from here.”

Spurred on by the woman in the coveralls, the pair began to hurry over the roof.

“Be careful. A flat-out run is better than an unsteady walk.”

“Right!”

The three of them ran to the very end of the car, then jumped, all in a rush. Mary almost lost her balance, but the woman in the coverall caught her hand, and she managed to recover.

It might actually have been fortunate that the darkness and smoke kept them from seeing the surrounding landscape. If they’d sensed the speed of the train and the height of the roof, they probably wouldn’t even have been able to stand up properly.

After they’d kept running for a short while, a gunshot rang out, half-lost in the noise of the train.

The woman in the coveralls gave a short shout.

“Get to the dining car! Once you’re past it, it’s okay to get down from the roof!”

Then the woman in the coveralls stopped in her tracks.

When the Beriams looked back, wondering what had happened, the trousers of her coveralls were split at the thigh, and a red stain was spreading across the area. In spite of herself, Mrs. Beriam almost stopped. Anticipating this, the woman in the coveralls yelled loudly:

“It’s fine! Just go!!”

Their eyes met. They illustrated the unspoken words between them with terrible clarity.

With a small, polite nod, Mrs. Beriam took her daughter’s hand and broke into a run.

The girl tried to turn back, just for an instant, but her mother’s hand pulled her along firmly, and she gave up struggling and followed.

After watching them go, the young woman turned on her heel. If possible, she would have liked to run away as well, but the wound on her leg seemed to be deeper than she’d thought. Realizing she’d be a sitting duck if she kept moving around, she decided to stand between the Beriams and the sniper.

The upper body of a sly-looking man was protruding from the gap between the cars they’d leaped over. A black sniper rifle had been set up in front of him.

Looking disappointed, Spike called out:

“Listen, do you think you could get out of the way? I can’t aim for the kid’s legs like this.”

“Somebody go up to the roof and drag that woman down. Spike, keep your gun on her.”

“Yeah, yeah. Hey, though, camping on the platform in this damn cold was worth it. I looked up right when they jumped over, so I had a great view of the young missus’s panties.”

They probably wouldn’t be able to capture the mother and daughter on the roof in time. Goose sounded sour, but Spike kept right on bantering without seeming to care.

“Watch your tongue.”

“’Scuse me. Still, you know what they say: In this world, most stuff doesn’t go according to plan.”

He ignored Spike’s words and put a question to him instead:

“By the way, was that man in the white suit really an even match for Chané?”

“I’d say yeah, probably.”

“I see…”

After a short silence, Goose spoke gravely:

“We may have to keep withdrawal in mind as we act. However, before that, if nothing else, we will execute one more plan.”

Then, lowering his voice, he gave Spike an order:

“If you see a solid opportunity, get rid of Chané.”

Help me, help me.

Why, why, why did this happen?

At first, we were supposed to go as a group of five, so I felt safe, but then—I thought there was no such thing as monsters, but then—

We split into two groups by Room Three, and my group was supposed to go on to the conductors’ room alone. At that point, I already had a bad feeling about this.

After that, when I saw our comrade’s corpse in the freight room, I wanted to cut and run so bad I could barely stand it.

And then, right after that, that guy—that white devil appeared in the room. He slit my friend’s throat before we knew what was happening!

My other friend got caught, too. I’m sure he’s already dead.

I ran away on my own. So what?! I wasn’t really on board with this plan to begin with.

Master Huey wouldn’t take hostages, and he’d never even consider killing a little kid as an example. It looked like Miss Chané knew that, too, but she obeyed Goose because she had to, in order to save Master Huey.

Besides, I know: There’s one crucial difference between Miss Chané and Goose. Miss Chané idolizes everything about Master Huey, but Goose only wants the “blessing” Master Huey talks about. Of course, most of the guys are probably like that; I’d like that blessing myself.

Nader’s group, the ones that sold us out and got killed yesterday, didn’t know about Master Huey’s body, see. Their betrayal was pretty inevitable.

But I can’t do it anymore, either. Master Huey’s one thing, but I can’t follow Goose.

To think he’s planning to dispose of Miss Chané because she’s in his way! Miss Chané, who was more devoted to Master Huey than anybody.

Dammit, dammit, dammit, I’ll just keep going and make a break for it. I’ll open the door in the conductors’ room, and when we come to a big river or something, I’ll jump.

I’ll be killed; if I stay here, I’ll be killed for sure.

Ah, this is the last freight car. Once I get through here, I’ll be at the conductors’ room.

Just as I passed by the door to the freight room, I realized that the door was standing half open.

By the time I saw a big, brown hand stretch out from it, it was too late. A huge palm covered my face.

Help me, help me. I don’t want to die yet.

He dragged me into the freight room. It’s all over. I’m gonna get killed by the big guy in front of me. This guy has to be that Rail Tracer monster.

I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die, please, please spare me

“Relax, we won’t kill you.”

The man beside the monster spoke. He had a face like a devil’s, with a tattoo on it, but he looked like an angel to me.

“In exchange, there are a few things we want you to tell us. That’s all right, isn’t it?”

In the first-class compartment that was serving as the Lemures’ temporary headquarters, the woman in the coveralls lay beside Nice and Nick. Five or six black suits surrounded them, and Goose stood at their center.

“Well, now. Our second meeting has filled my heart with delight, young lady in coveralls.”

Contrary to his words, a flame of fierce hatred blazed in Goose’s eyes.

“I’ve heard rumors. They say there’s a hitman called Vino who kills in excessively gruesome ways. When I heard about the condition of the corpses, I thought that might be the case, but… I never dreamed it’d be a woman.”