Trail of Tears (29 page)

He stared out at the horizon again, peering
intently through the snow, hoping yet again that the others would
hurry. He had lit the fire in the engine already; steam engines did
not just take off when you started them up. You had to have the
furnace well heated before you could hope to generate enough power
to pull such a load. Unfortunately, every hour they waited, they
burned valuable fuel. If the others did not hurry they would not
have enough left to get out of the city, let alone the miles they
needed to get to the forest.

* * *

Emma Logan woke to intense pain in her feet.
She was so cold that her teeth ached from chattering, but it was
her feet that hurt the most. Her eyes were crusted shut and she had
to strain just to see blurs. She felt herself being pulled along in
a jerky motion and realised she was on one of the sleighs. What had
happened? She remembered walking and then falling. She remembered
struggling to rise and taking a moment to regain her strength and
then nothing. How long had she lain in the snow before someone had
found her? Why were her feet so sore?

She tried to rise but something was holding
her down. Straps, she thought suddenly. She had seen the straps
they used when she had checked on Conor. They worked like the seat
belts found on planes with a quick release clasp. She brought her
arms up and patted her body, searching for the clasp. Her gloves
were so thick it was difficult to identify what might be a metal
clasp and what was just a bundle of clothes.

She grunted in frustration and slapped her
hands back onto the bed of the sleigh.

“You see what happens when you don’t follow
your doctor’s orders?”

Emma turned her head towards the voice, but
she already knew who had spoken, despite the muffling effect of the
scarf across her mouth.

“Alright, point taken,” she sighed. “Now,
can you please let me up, Amanda?”

“You would have died in another five minutes
if Grier hadn’t tripped over you,” Amanda Reitzig admonished her
sternly but released the clasp. Emma rose to a sitting position and
rubbed at her shoulders and then winced as she moved her feet.

“I’m not surprised they’re sore,” Amanda
nodded towards Emma’s feet. “You nearly lost a few toes. You have
to take your allotted rests or you’ll drop from exhaustion or
frostbite.”

Emma nodded. “How’s Conor?”

“Still with us,” Amanda answered and Emma
snapped her head towards her friend.

“Is it that bad?”

“We lost another four in the last hour,”
Amanda’s voice cracked with the strain and the devastation of
losing her charges. “Jesus, Emma. We lost a fifteen year old boy to
the cold. No one checked on him. He snuck onto one of the sleighs
and he just fell asleep because he was too tired to walk. He didn’t
understand that walking was the only thing that was keeping him
alive.”

Her voice was muffled by the scarf, but Emma
could hear the devastation in her friend’s voice. “When was the
last time you took a rest?”

“There isn’t time,” she answered quickly and
began to leave. “You watch those feet of yours,” she warned. “I
can’t put them back on if you snap them off, you know.”

Emma watched as her friend struggled through
the drifts to the next sleigh. She hoped there was somewhere safe
and warm at the end of this journey. She wasn’t sure if any of them
could bear to find that such a forced march had been for nothing.
It had already cost them far more than they had expected, and she
wasn’t sure if any of them had any more to give. She allowed
herself to drop gingerly to the ground. Her feet hurt as she put
her weight on them but the cold quickly surrounded her and took the
pain away. She wasn’t sure that was the best thing for her but she
didn’t have much choice. They needed everyone they could get
checking on the wounded and those asleep. They had to look after
each other—now more than ever.

* * *

The first of the sleighs arrived as the
light of the day bled out like a dying corpse. Aidan Flemming
nearly missed the struggling figures as he took his last scan of
the city before going back to his office. When he saw them he felt
relief flush through him. He ran back to the train and shouted for
everyone to come out and help. They really didn’t have much time.
They had to get the people into the warm and the supplies
loaded.

People flooded out into the snow shouting
their relief and joy to the struggling figures. Flemming saw the
lead figure look up and wearily raise a hand before dropping to
their knees. People ran to the figures, taking their weight on
their shoulders and helping them back to the train. Others swarmed
over the sleighs and began pulling the supplies to the designated
areas. Flemming had planned for this moment well and people moved
efficiently to their appointed tasks.

He helped an exhausted woman to her feet and
half carried her to the train. Before him, he could see others
already stripping supplies form the sleighs and throwing them to
others who took the precious cargo into the carriages and stored
them only to reappear a moment later to take the next one. He laid
his charge on a seat next to a funnel that piped heat from the
furnace through to this first carriage. It had been Cabreezi’s idea
to pipe the heat from the furnace through to the first carriage and
it had been a good one. The heat was wasted anyway as they brought
the furnace to temperature and their frozen colleagues would
benefit greatly from a warm recovery point.

The carriage was filling up as he left to
head back. When he got out, the darkness had already fallen but a
steady stream of his people were filing back, helping the exhausted
or pulling heavily laden sleighs. By the third trip the flow had
reduced to a trickle and he had received a few reports from those
recovered enough to talk to him. The caravan of people had become
more stretched than they had planned. Delays from exhaustion and
burials had forced many to become separated from those in the rear.
At first everyone had stopped for burials, but by the third death
some of the party were too far ahead to hear the calls to halt the
caravan so they had continued on heedless of the slower moving
wounded.

The storm had caused others to slow their
advance while others had lowered their heads and forged forward
towards the warmth and safety of the train. Only half of the huge
number of people were with them now. The weaker and the wounded
were still a long way back and their very inability to move faster
might doom them all. Flemming made a decision.

“We will meet them half way,” he announced,
and a few groaned but rose to their feet. They were all in this
together; live or die, no one would be left behind.

Alan Turnbull hovered on the fringes of
Kavanagh’s meeting. It was too far to hear clearly, but he was able
to catch enough to get the gist of what they were saying. He
couldn’t afford to draw attention to himself. He had been taken in
easily enough. It hadn’t been hard to convince them as he had been
the fourth such deserter from Von Richelieu’s camp that night. It
had been easier to blend in with the other new recruits than he had
expected.

He knew that Von Richelieu was using him. He
had spent most of his life being used by someone. His father had
used him from an early age. His large frame but surprising speed
had made him a natural on the football field and his father had
used his skills to curry favour with the local businessmen. As his
skills had developed his father had used him to gain support,
mostly financial, among the teams’ business backers. His son had
match winning skills, or match losing if they didn’t support his
own mad ventures.

When he finally left school and went to
college on a scholarship it was time for the college coaches to use
him for their own advancement. When his knee gave out he had been
dumped from the team, from the school, and deposited back to a less
than pleased father who could find no further use for him.
Unfortunately there were plenty of local ‘business men’ of a
different nature who were happy to use his size to their advantage.
It had been easy to fall in with them and allow himself to be used.
He was used to it.

Von Richelieu was no different but he had
plucked Alan out of the pits and given him the power to use others
also, rather than be bled dry in the pits. For that Alan owed Von
Richelieu everything. He wasn’t naïve enough to think that Von
Richelieu had done anything out of charity or goodwill. But he had
done it and Alan liked the power he had been given. He heard talk
among the others who had abandoned Von Richelieu; they talked of
him being too old, out of date, unable to comprehend the new world.
But Alan knew different. He knew a true leader when he saw one.
Kavanagh was charismatic he had to admit; he was intelligent too
but he lacked something. Alan had seen enough powerful men in his
life and he could tell which ones were the true pinnacles of the
food chain. Von Richelieu was a survivor. A born predator. And Alan
stood a better chance of retaining his power with Von Richelieu as
his sponsor.

He heard snatches of conversation about the
pits and tried to lean in further. Were they planning an attack on
the pits? Was Kavanagh mad? Von Richelieu had far more vampires and
lots of thralls protecting the food pits. He heard someone mention
rebels and frowned. What did the escaped humans have to do with
their plan? He heard one of the vampires mention a date two days
from now and he smiled.

“Hey you,” Alan snapped his head towards the
shouted call. “It’s your turn for patrol. Get out there. The rest
of them are already gone.”

Alan nodded and left reluctantly. He did not
have enough to report back to Von Richelieu as yet, though he still
had time. He would try and glean more information when he returned
from patrol.

* * *

“Did he hear enough?” Curtis Kavanagh asked
as they watched the vampire head outside.

“If I had talked any louder Von Richelieu
would have heard me himself,” Dee Snyder laughed. “I am shocked at
how obvious that idiot was. Is Von Richelieu really that
desperate?”

“No, he’s not,” Kavanagh remarked. “And that
worries me.” Kavanagh scanned the others in the enclosure. They had
fifteen deserters now. All of whom swore allegiance to him—though
they had sworn their fealty to Von Richelieu before him so he did
not take their word at face value. He scanned the vampires he could
see and it struck him that Von Richelieu had survived many
centuries among a closed group of vampires who had remained hidden
since the dawn of time. Anyone who could survive the intrigues of
such an existence would not send an idiot to spy on him—though he
might send one who was easily identified in order to mask the real
threat.

“Shit,” Kavanagh muttered. Things just got
more complicated.

* * *

Harris saw the sleigh in the distance and
began to struggle to a faster pace.

“You won’t get there any faster, Peter.”
McAteer grabbed his arm gently. “This way you’ll be of some use
when we get there.” Harris nodded reluctantly and forced himself to
maintain the alternate jog/walk momentum that had kept them eating
the miles for the last three hours.

As they drew closer, he noticed that there
were no figures around the sleigh. Equipment and supplies still
filled the sleigh but there was no one around. What had happened?
Had one of Carter’s patrols found them already? He looked to the
snow around the abandoned sleigh for any sign of violence but the
snow was fresh and clean. He pulled at some of the coverings to
determine what had been abandoned. Gears and cogs filled the main
body of the sleigh. This machinery was crucial to building
generators in their next home but had it proven too heavy? Maybe
they had fallen too far behind the others and had decided to
abandon their load rather than be separated.

Harris couldn’t really blame them. These
people were not soldiers. They were not trained for this sort of
journey.

“I know what you’re thinking but we can’t
take it.”

Harris sighed. “I know. It’s damn tempting
though. We need this equipment.”

“We need to get to the train ahead of Carter
more though.”

Harris reluctantly moved away from the
sleigh. “Come on!” He set off at a jog. “Not far now.”

* * *

Amanda fell to the ground and raised her
hands to her face. The ice covering her gloves was cold against her
face, but she ignored it as she wiped away the tears. She saw the
figures struggling towards her. They had made it. Behind the
figures she could see the smoke of the train spiralling up into the
darkening sky. But not in time to save their latest casualty. If
only they had been able to hang on for another ten minutes she
could have saved them.

She felt hands lift her up and hug her. She
felt like pushing them away, screaming at their joy with the names
of those who had died on the way here. But she couldn’t do that. It
wasn’t their fault her patients had died. Blame the vampires. Blame
Carter. Blame God himself. Blame her for not being able to get to
yet another poor soul in time. She felt herself being lifted up and
carried and suddenly realised how tired she was. Her body ached.
Her nose was so cold she couldn’t feel it anymore. Her fingers
burned but she struggled regardless to be released. She had so many
patients to tend to. The arms holding her held her tight, ignoring
her protestations. She began to shout, demanding to be set down,
but the man ignored her.

He looked down at her and she saw that he
had the palest blue eyes. He said something and his voice was calm.
She didn’t hear what he said but his tone relaxed her and his eyes
held her captive. They were so blue, like a clear day in June. She
stopped struggling and let herself be carried. She wasn’t sure if
her eyes were unfocused or filled with tears but the skin around
the man’s face was odd...possibly scarred. The medical part of her
brain finally identified the blurring as scarring, but the rest of
her just noted the kindness. The last thing she remembered was the
soothing tones of his voice and then darkness fell from a great
height and she was asleep.