Heaven's Gate (3 page)

At length even the strength lent to them by fear is flagging and the train is almost upon them. Close enough that they can discern the red luster of Flame’s red paint work, even in the dimming light. Between every down stroke, Bob scans the silvering desert for sign of an offshoot from the main track. He almost misses the answer to his desperate prayers, due to the liquid, tears or sweat, by this time he can’t tell which, pooling in the corner of his eyes. He blinks twice before the low square shape of a junction box comes into focus, as soon as he registers what it is he is looking at, he gives an urgent yell and rushes to the front of the cart. Behind him a train whistle shrills, drowning out Brett’s complaint at having been left to pump alone and giving the struggling rig its one and only warning. Blocking out the sound of the clatter of the train’s wheels, Bob focuses on the approaching box. When the train is only a few hundred meters away, he hits the smoothed button of the track-override. Power surges through the track, mimicking the pulse used by the trains to reset the junction box. The track ahead of them shifts, clicking into position with the siding and allowing them to plunge off the main track. Only seconds after their wheels have left the exchange, the tracks click once again and the red
juggernaught
plunges by, close enough to shake their tiny cart down to its bearings.

“
Whooo
!” Brett howls his relief as the train thunders off to the west.

Clark
joins him, and even Gill punches the air in exaltation.

“Thought we were going to be
oil’n
her wheels for a moment there boss!” Brett shouts still panting

Despite himself Bob can’t help but smile. His own heart is still going a mile a minute, not least because he couldn’t shake the thought that if Flame was off her normal course it was only a matter of luck that she had stayed on the main track.

“There’s no denying that was a close one!”

“Think we’re closer to the Western than you said yesterday?” Brett asks, slightly souring Bob’s elation. “I mean if the trains are out here we can’t be too far from Limit.”

“How long have you been on the tracks, Brett?”

“Three years or so, since the farm failed, like I told you.”

“If it’s been that long, why don’t you know that predicting the trains isn’t exactly a science?”

“No offence, boss,” the ex-farmer responds hurriedly, “just hoping we might be closer to unloading this stuff than we thought, I just don’t much fancy running into another train.”

Hire old sheep hands and you deserve what you get, Bob thinks to himself ruefully.

“No offence taken, Brett, but I stand by my reading, we’ve got at least six days of hard rolling before we hit town, longer if we don’t get back on the main track, this line isn’t even on my chart.”

“Didn’t you say that was something to look out for, Boss?” Brett asks.

“If we were deeper in the wastes it would be but I can’t imagine that there is anything
unscavenged
less than a week from Limit, besides it seems to be heading in parallel with the line it’s probably only a siding.”

“Let’s hope you’re right,”
Clark
calls, looking up from his examination of the junction box on this side of the exchange. “The junction box on this side has been ruined by sand, if this isn’t a siding we’re going to have to portage back onto the main track and that’ll cost us the better part of a day on its own.”

“We’ll carry on
on
this track as long as they’re parallel.” Bob shouts back, determined not to allow such a small problem to
colour
his relief at simply being alive. True any stop in the desert was undesirable, portaging would bring a high toll in water and muscle fatigue and of course, it would leave them sitting ducks for wandering bandits, but right now he was just happy to be alive.

Ignoring their ragged breathing and the rapidly cooling sweat covering their bodies, the
cartmen
return to their
labours
, all of them too worked up with adrenaline to even suggest stopping for the night. The tack runs parallel to the main line for a while then begins a subtle creep off to the left. By the time Bob realizes that the tracks are leading him away from his hopes of rejoining the main line, he can see the roofs of several houses, framed by the last of the dying light. Even though his cart is full, the scavenger cannot help but be drawn by the promise of abandoned wealth. Not one of them looks back to notice the sand once more creeping over the tracks behind them, burying the girders again and effectively cutting off escape. It is a minor detail, easily missed in the flow of events, just as none of them notice that the mirror on top of their baggage cart had never, once, reflected the light from the train’s headlamp.

The tracks roll down into a shallow depression in which the old houses stand, their timbers dry, their white paint leprous and flaked. Broken windows reflect back the light of the cart lamps, like gaping mouths full of flashing jagged teeth. Despite the state of disrepair it is clear to all of them that this place has remained
unlooted
since its unlucky inhabitants abandoned it, untold months or even years earlier. Some of the houses are half buried, but even they have wooden doors and wooden frames in the window, that much wood on its own bespeaks all sorts of potential. Mentally Bob begins to tally the contents of his cart and consider which of the less valuable items could be left behind. Not that he wouldn’t be coming back for them; a find like this, so close to a big town, presented plenty of opportunity for a return trip and a good fat profit on it as well, if the contents of the houses were as rich as their outsides suggested.

As they get further into town, Bob notices several bullet holes in the pallid cracking plaster of the houses, he can’t help but rub his hands at the thought that some of
Leedon’s
boys had cleared the place out and forgotten to burn everything. If he could just find a few of the rarer books that had been all but consumed in the fires of the Inquisition, Bob knew he could more than pay off his rig in one fell swoop. No doubt similar thoughts are flitting through the minds of the other three men, certainly none of them are ready for the sand along side the tracks to explode and seemingly coalesce into a horde of screaming men, women and children.

Abruptly jerked from his reverie, Bob looks in confusion into a sea of hungry eyes, burning from the shadowed recesses of the gaunt, pallid faces around him; somehow each eye contrives to catch every ounce of the light thrown by the lanterns so that, if he could not see the pale outlines of their faces, he might presume that he was surrounded by the phosphorescent eyes of foxes or cats. Wordless howls break from their lips as the attackers lurch forward. Desperately the
cartmen
reach for their
sidearms
. Bob’s hand closes on the smooth bone of his own pistol handle, as he hears the roar of Brett’s revolver.

Hands grasp at him from every direction. Dear Crimson Christ! The hands on his ankles are those of a child, dragging him down into the heaving mass. Cannibalism was not unknown in the deep desert but he had just not been on his guard for it here, so close to the Union frontier. At risk of loosing his balance and being dragged down into the moaning crowd, he throws back his left hand, taking a firm grip on the rig and squeezes the trigger of the gun in his right. Behind him, Brett is screaming loud enough to call the devil and Bob knows why, when the half shattered child’s head that he had just nailed to the deck with his first shot, raises itself, slopping brains and the yellow fluid of a ruptured eye onto his boots.

Not cannibals at all! In the desert wild tales abound of demons and spirit possession, of the death cults and dark
magics
. Bob had been around long enough not to simply shrug off these tales, he’d even seen a possession or two in his time; but, his brain kept insisting, even if the child were possessed, a bullet to the head should have stopped it. According to all the stories it was just about the only thing that did. The boy in front of him laughs, as if enjoying his confusion, revealing a pair of oversized fangs as he does so. Fire flickers in his remaining eye echoed in the hungry stares of the mob, then another shot, louder than the bark of the
cartmen’s
revolvers, sounds off to Bob’s left. The rest of the boy’s head disintegrates before he can bring his fangs down on his victim. The sound of the shot echoes through the ghost town like the roar of an enraged beast, all eyes turn to regard the source of the dying thunder.

The Pilgrim sits astride his horse, at the end of what was once the town’s main street. Most of his features are obscured by a wide brimmed hat and a heavy leather coat, wild hair, white, no silver flows beneath the hat, making stark contrast with skin turned dark by the desert sun. Bob assumes the man must be a pilgrim or a prospector because they are generally the only type crazy enough to travel alone in the desert. Then again the horse, standing so calm, unfazed by the smell of gun smoke, and the hilt of a cavalry sabre at his knee, hint that he might owe more allegiance to the army than to whichever lost cause or misguided penance set pilgrims and believers roaming out on the Anvil. Maybe the truth was a little of each, there were enough fanatics in
Leedon’s
armies to man a thousand pointless quests. The gun resting across the man’s knee seems to be some kind of shot gun, though by the mess it had made of the boy at this distance, it had to be using solid slugs. Bob shudders to think what would have happened had the madman’s aim been off, even a little.

The attackers are quicker to recover from the arrival of stranger and Bob almost loses his grip on the cart, as a new hand as cold and as unrelenting as iron closes on his ankle. Out if the corner of his eye, Bob can see
Clark
go down under his attackers, bleating like a sheep in the slaughter yards. Gill bellows his outrage and wades into the fray but for once those tireless arms have met their match and he joins his brother on the ground, torn apart by the undead in their lust for blood. Bob hears the mirror in the baggage cart shatter as Bret clambers onto the pile, trying to put distance between himself and his attackers, whose presence does not register in those silver shards. In the distance the Pilgrim’s gun fires again, dropping one of the fell creatures loping from the pack to intercept him. Bob fires his own gun to less effect, pumping the trigger until it clicks hollowly, resounding on empty chambers. Another hand grasps him tearing him down onto the powdery sand beside the track, the back of his head hits the side of the cart and for a moment he blacks out.

It is pain that brings him back, the pain of two teeth plunging into the meat of his chest and sending fiery poison through his veins. Almost as soon as he is bitten, he is paralyzed, unable to move but he can feel the hollow fangs shifting, pulsing as they draw in his life’s blood. Another bite, in his thigh, then one in his wrist add to the crescendo of pain. He can hear his pulse in his ears like the pounding of hooves. Suddenly, the Pilgrim is amongst them, the cavalry sword blurring in a deadly flashing dance, the silver blade running gold and crimson in the lamplight. The unholy creatures relinquish their prizes and surge towards the madman, who hacks about himself with a strength granted only to the insane. To Bob’s watering eyes it seems that each time they are close to overwhelming him he blurs, dodging their grasping talons and gnashing teeth with an alacrity that beggars belief. Even through the filter of his overexerted perception, Bob is sure that he is right in labeling the man mad, for all the hunger that burns in his attackers’ eyes, there is a look of crazed intensity in those of the Pilgrim.

“Samuel!” A voice comes from the shadows, the word is a whisper that sounds above the screams of combat and the pounding of Bob’s fading pulse. As if given some unheard signal the remnants of the undead begin to retreat. The Pilgrim takes no heed of this apparent surrender and three more heads hit the ground before the voice can speak again,

“Don’t take it out on the children, Samuel, you will join their numbers soon enough.”

“I will never serve your damned kind again, Rydal.” The Pilgrim growls back.

“Then why else are you here?” The speaker laughs. “Let me guess, you came to save these poor unfortunates from my hungry clan, no?” The voice feigns incredulity, “could it be that you came seeking my blood?”

“I do not seek any innocent blood! I must find the Gate.” The Pilgrim answers stubbornly.

“And that just happens to mean draining me and conveniently extending your own stolen life? … how good of you, how holy.”

“Do not mock me, Rydal. I know I am damned, just as you are, but I yet seek redemption. If I must destroy you and all the firstborn to do it, then so much the better. Heaven will know it is part of my penance.”

“For nights spent with Julia, lapping new life from the blood she spared you? Or for the many deaths you caused in her service?”
 
The mocking voice continues.

“You know I had no choice in that, besides many of those deaths were as righteous as your own will be.”

“Oh indeed, even a few of the firstborn. That’s why Julia eventually met her end. It seems, though, that we shouldn’t have overlooked her pet assassin. Who could have known you would have kept hunting us, as she trained you, instead of slinking off to pay the inevitable price for your stolen years?”