The Boundless (31 page)

“They definitely forced them off,” Will says.

“How many should be here?” Maren asks.

“I don't know. They do shifts, that's all I know. Maybe two extra firemen and an engineer.”

She nods grimly. The three people they saw tumble past the train.

Will recognizes his father's jacket hanging on a peg, and the sight of it makes his throat ache. They parted on such cold terms.

“Big fellows, these firemen, aren't they?” Maren asks. “Brogan doesn't even have a gun.”

“He has a gun, but no bullets. But they don't know that. And he's good with a knife.”

“Do they have weapons up there?” Maren asks.

Will shakes his head. “Don't know.”

Back outside, the tender rises before them like a cliff. Along the catwalk at its side there's no sign of Brogan and Mackie. They've already reached the locomotive.

Single file, he and Maren edge along the narrow walkway. It starts to snow again. As they near the locomotive, the flakes are wheeling down in thick sheets, matting the metal surfaces.

Will hangs back and leans out to peer into the locomotive's lower level. Normally a fireman would be stationed here, ready to shovel coal from the chute into the firebox—but the compartment is empty now.

He swings himself inside the open doorway, Maren close behind, and looks around. A shovel lies askew on the floor, a spill of coal beside it. He listens but can hear nothing above the titanic chugging of the pistons. Fire blazes from the open furnace. Steam hisses through the many escape valves around the boiler.

Here at the very front of the Boundless, there's an incredible sense of propulsion. The landscape flies past on all sides, and for the first time Will can look straight ahead, to the tracks that are being devoured by the locomotive as it hurtles into the mountains.

Outside the compartment, metal stairs continue up to the second fireman platform, and then upward again to the engineer's cab. Quietly Will heads up, snow driving at him, hard. He keeps his body close to the side, and when he's halfway up, he peeks into the second-level compartment. It too is empty. But overhead he hears footsteps from the engineer's cab—and shouting, though he can't make out the words.

“They've got all of them up there,” he whispers to Maren.

“Someone's coming down,” she hisses, and they both dart up inside the fireman's compartment and press themselves to the wall. Through a small window Will catches a glimpse of two firemen, their hands raised wretchedly above their heads, descending the outside stairs. They don't carry on to the lower level but head out along a narrow footboard that slants down against the boiler to the very front of the locomotive. Snow flies hard.

Following the two firemen comes Will's father, his hands also raised. Behind him is Brogan, his pistol held out. He marches them into the driving snow.

Will peeks his head out the open doorway to watch them make for the pilot—a small platform atop the cowcatcher at the locomotive's very front.

Will pulls back inside, looks frantically around the compartment for some kind of weapon. He seizes a shovel.

“Is this a plan?” Maren asks worriedly.

Before his courage fails, he steps out onto the footboard and stealthily follows Brogan, hoping the brakeman won't turn around. Scalding heat pours from the boiler's massive flank, and the noise of pistons and venting valves is almost blinding. Whirling snow turns the world black and white. Will tightens his grip on the shovel. Another twenty feet and he'll be close enough. . . .

“Hop it!” Brogan bellows at his prisoners when they've reached the pilot. “You're low enough you'll likely survive with a few busted ribs.”

“There's no bullets in the gun!” Will shouts.

“William?” his father calls out, and there's a question in his voice.

For the first time in a long time, Will remembers his painted face and dyed hair. “Pa, it's me!”

Brogan looks back at Will, but the gun's still aimed at his father.

“You sure about that, boy?” he says. “You want me to test my aim on your father, do you?”

“Mr. Dorian took all the bullets out!” Will hollers.

Brogan smirks. “A man always has extra ammo.”

“He's lying!” Will shouts, but is thinking:
What if he's telling the truth?

“Will! Get back!” his father yells.

Brogan charges up the footboard toward Will, who swings his shovel at the brakeman. He hits Brogan hard in the shoulder and knocks the gun from his hand. It clatters down the metal catwalk. But before Will can swing the shovel again, Brogan wrenches it from his grasp and slams it into his chest. The cracking pain swells to fill Will's entire body.

“Brogan!” he hears his father bellow.

Will feels the prick of a knife point against his throat, and Brogan wheels him around in a headlock. His father, pistol in his hand, stops short.

“Let him go!” James Everett yells.

“Shoot,” Brogan pants. “It ain't got no bullets.”

Will's father takes aim at Brogan's head and squeezes the trigger. Nothing.

“Now,” says Brogan, “I've killed already. I got no compunction about doing it again. You want your boy alive, you and your men hop it, and I'll let him hop it after you.”

Will feels the blade press harder against his skin. He stays very still.

“Go on!” Brogan bellows. “Or I slit his throat! All of you! Go!”

There is a lull in the driving snow, and the sky opens enough to let the sun through. Will sees the mountains rising up to the right. The air trembles. A rumbling builds above the roar of the steam engine. On the distant slopes the snow puckers and begins to slide.

“Avalanche,” he gurgles against the choking hold around his throat. “Avalanche!”

His father turns his gaze to the mountain. “Brogan, let me back to the cab!”

Will can't see Brogan's face, but he feels the twitching tension in his body. “Stay right there, Everett! Mackie's in the cab. He's doing fine.”

“You need to stop the train!” Will's father waves his arm at Mackie up in the cab. “Stop!”

To Will it doesn't feel like they're slowing much. The locomotive rounds a bend, and up ahead, five hundred yards, snow spills across the tracks and then down into a deep river gorge, spray rising as from a waterfall.

Now Will hears the shriek of the brakes, and the train slows faster—but not fast enough. They're in the snow now, deeper and deeper, the cowcatcher sending torrents of ice back at them. Dead ahead Will can see a looming wall of snow.

And then he's in the air, half stunned by the concussion that stopped the train in its tracks and yanked him off his feet. He has spun free of Brogan, everything white. He curls to protect himself, for he doesn't know how or where he'll land, but he hopes it's soft.

*   *   *

No one sees this.

At the back of the Zirkus Dante cars, Goliath paces his cage. The Boundless has finally been brought to a standstill in the driving snow. The sasquatch's nostrils flare, again and again as he breathes in a scent that is acutely familiar. It provokes in him a frenzy of restlessness. He wails up at the narrow vents. He thumps his fists against the reinforced walls.

He crouches, crushing handfuls of straw in his fists. Then he stands tall, ears straining at the faraway cry. Goliath bellows again, and when he hears a return call, it's closer.

He whirls about in his cage, thrashing against the bars, throwing himself so hard against the wall that the wood creaks.

Something thuds atop the roof of his car, and he stops and looks overhead. A second thump, then a third. Dark shapes move past outside the vents. Powerful hands thrust inside and begin to rip the wall apart. Goliath sets up a wail of jubilation as, plank by jagged plank, his view opens up: sky, mountains, and the high forests whose smell he recognized as home.

*   *   *

Snow is packed up Will's nostrils. He thrashes about, not knowing how long he was unconscious, or which way is up. He fights his way toward the light. His head breaks the surface. Gasping, he realizes that the snow isn't moving. The avalanche is over, but just. A low layer of mist still hangs over the ground. The stillness is remarkable—it feels like a force, squeezing against him. Gone is the clackety motion of the train that had come to feel natural to him over the past days. Wind shushes against his eardrums, and he hears a trill of birdsong and the distant rumble of water.

He looks about for his father, for Maren, Brogan—they too must have been thrown off the locomotive when it collided with the wall of snow.

“Help! William!”

“Pa!” Will paddles his way atop the snow, in the direction of the call—in the direction of the gorge. He remembers the snow spilling over the edge like a waterfall.

Carefully he slides down the slope, and spots his father clinging to a shrub at the edge of the precipice.

“I'm coming!” Will says. “Hold tight!”

He swims as close as he dares. “Grab hold of me!”

“You'll need to hold something first,” his father says, “or you'll get dragged over!”

Will looks around. There's a tree behind him, but it's too far for him to reach.

“We'll just have to manage it,” he says.

From the slopes comes a sound that Will first heard three years ago in these same mountains. An animal call unlike any other. It begins as a low, mournful hoot, and builds in intensity and pitch to a terrifying shriek. The voice is joined by another, and another, until it's a ghostly chorus, wafting through the snow-curtained pines.

“Will! Wait!” Maren swims toward him, caked in snow.

She grabs hold of the tree and stretches out to Will. They lock hands. Now Will can reach his father.

“Good,” his father grunts as he takes hold. Will pulls. Maren holds him tightly. James Everett scrambles and kicks, trying to get himself up over the edge. With a lurch he makes it, and they all scramble into the safety of the tree's branches.

“You're all right?” Will asks his father. There's some blood matted around his ears, but he seems otherwise unharmed.

“I'm fine. You, too?”

“Yes.”

James Everett wipes snow off his shoulders and chest. Some papers rustle in the large pocket of his overalls, and he pulls them out and carefully brushes off the melting snow. Will catches a glimpse of the hand-sewn sketchbook he gave his father three years ago.

“Don't want it getting wet,” his father says.

Will can't help smiling. Another chorus of animal sounds wafts over them. Near the buried rail bed Will sees the solitary figure of Brogan, slogging through the snow, in the direction of the locomotive.

In the mist, silhouettes appear. At first Will thinks they're people come from the Boundless to help. But he soon realizes they are too tall to be human, their shoulders too broad. They stand eerily still. Then the closest suddenly moves, hurling himself forward to land on all fours, then pushing off with its legs. It lands ten feet in front of Brogan and stands tall.

Will squints. “Is that—”

“Goliath,” breathes Maren. “He must've escaped!”

Brogan takes a few steps back, knife in hand. Goliath steps forward. Then Brogan turns clumsily and starts thrashing through the snow. Goliath overtakes him easily, pushes him deep into the snow. Will can see Brogan struggling, his hands and feet kicking up, but the sasquatch leans down, and there's a scream and then silence.

Will feels his insides flash hot and then cold. He thinks he might be sick. Goliath looks up from Brogan's body at them.

“Don't move,” Will's father says.

The other sasquatch are silent. Will can hear Goliath punch air through his nostrils. He's sure the sasquatch is looking right at him.

A gunshot cracks the air, and then another. A man in a scarlet uniform, on snowshoes, comes into sight from the direction of the train. The sasquatch disperse as quickly as dry leaves in a sudden breeze—all except Goliath. He reaches down to Brogan's body and, with a swift movement, rips his head off and spikes it on the branch of a tree. He gives a final bellow before disappearing into the forest.

And then Lieutenant Samuel Steele and two firemen are calling out to Will and his father and Maren, and unfurling ropes to help them out of the deep snow.

CLEARING THE TRACKS

“You can't arrest her!” Will protests as Lieutenant Sam Steele manacles Maren.

“By her own admission she helped rob the Boundless,” says the Mountie.

“But Mr. Dorian was forcing her!” Will insists.

“He wasn't forcing me,” Maren says quietly.

“He
was
—in a way!” Will counters, irritated that she's not helping him with his lie.

They are all in the locomotive's bunk car, shivering themselves warm around the stove. Will's father shovels in more coal and sets a kettle atop to boil. Their boots make puddles on the floor. Maren sits looking at her manacles with amused curiosity. The two firemen have laid Mackie's body out and covered it with a blanket. His neck must have been broken inside the cab, by the same impact that sent everyone else flying clear. Amazingly, the locomotive wasn't derailed when it plowed into the wall of snow. The tender, the bunk car, and the funeral car all stand on the track, unharmed.