Xeno Sapiens (44 page)

Neal McAlister stood up in the cab of the
loco. At age twenty, with a six months' pregnant wife at home, he
had remained mostly silent on his first run after eight weeks of
training in Atlanta as a fireman, a mostly useless position
perpetuated by union rules and held over from the not too distant
days when locomotives had been fired by coal. He was relegated to
the front of the train with the engineer while the brakeman and
conductor tried to catch forty winks in the caboose at the far end
of the one hundred car freight train.

His initial anxiety had been subdued by the
constant, low key thrumming of the diesel engines which were, in
reality, generators that powered the electric motors which actually
moved the locomotive. After a time the powerful, steady vibrations
became less cacophonous than soothing, but his uneasiness at being
the new guy remained.

He wasn't yet seasoned enough to have a
colorful nickname and his picture tacked up on the bulletin board
at the depot in Stella, NC. Not like the conductor, who was called
Bobo for no apparent reason that Neal had been able to figure out.
Neal's companion in the engineer's cab was an easier study. His
fleshy jowls and ruddy features lent themselves to his own
affectionate nickname of Hogjaw. The brakeman, a middle aged man
with a U of red hair and a leonine head was Hub, a simple variation
of his given name, Herbert.

They hadn't been distinctly unfriendly to
him. A little distant, a little doubtful of the new guy who came to
them from a succession of menial, low paying jobs. Railroading was
still dangerous work and the old crew weren't yet ready to believe
in the new guy until he proved himself in some fashion or another.
Neal had grimly resolved to make this work. He had more to think
about than himself.

The train had been making a steady thirty
five miles per hour on a fairly level grade for the past thirty
minutes. The snow-covered plains of the desolate landscape had been
long unscarred by buildings, electric lights, or even natural
features. All was blameless white glory, glowing heraldic blue in
the cold light of the full moon. The clatter and clank of the steel
wheels on the rails and the perpetual swaying of the freight cars
were sleepily hypnotic in the wasteland.

Neal peered out of the tiny window at the
side of the locomotive. Picked out in the brilliant beam of the
locomotive's headlight was a white on green metal sign mounted on
standard Highway department steel posts. The reflective sign glowed
with an unaccountable brightness. Drifts of snow had piled up
against the robotic legs of the sign and the occasional capricious
wind blew sprays of snow from the tops of the drifts.

Essex Pass

3 Miles.

“Best sit back down, Neal.”

Neal looked at Hogjaw. It was the first time
he had spoken in an hour. His face in the feeble bulbs of the cabin
had taken on a tense, drawn look that seemed impossible in so much
flesh. His pressure on the throttle eased and the steady thrumming
of the electric motors spun down. The cascading effect of thousands
of tons of freight avalanching behind them shook the locomotive and
Neal quickly sat down as the inertia threatened to spill his legs
from beneath him.

Hogjaw applied the brakes with an ogre's
hiss of compressed air. The train began to glide to a stately halt,
taking a full half mile to ease into motionlessness.

Hogjaw stood and wrapped himself in a heavy
coat, leaving the locomotive's massive diesel generators at a
rattling idle. He pushed past Neal and stepped off the engine, down
the steel steps of the locomotive and onto the snow covered ground
before Neal even had a chance to ask what was up. He stared out the
window, unsure whether to get up and follow, or stay put.

Hogjaw stood just off the tracks in a foot
of snow, a blue hued blob in the moonlight, blowing on his cupped
hands with hot breath that condensed into a cold mist on contact
with the subfreezing air. Neal wondered why he hadn't put on his
gloves.

Neal stood and swung around the steel pole
that connected the cab's floor to its ceiling next to the steps. As
he descended he looked toward the rear of the train and saw two
dark figures floundering through the snow toward Hogjaw.

Hogjaw gave Neal an offhand glance, equal
parts distrustful and impatient as Neal swung down into the
crunching snow. Neal ignored the look and wished only that he
hadn't left his coat on the seat of the engineer's cabin. He stood
his ground amid the hostile glances as Bobo and Hub trudged up.

As boss of the freight, it was Bobo's place
to give Neal an approving look.

“You want to get your coat, or do you want
no part of this?”

Nervous and awkward amidst these hardened,
middle aged men with bristly faces and dark, fleshy circles beneath
their eyes, Neal forced a steady reply.

“What's going on?”

Hub made a derisive, blowing sound.

“He ain't got the beans for this,” Hub said.
He looked at Neal. His expression was earnest and past
condescending. He emphasized his points by shaking a finger the
size of a Polish sausage in Neal's face.

“This is likely gonna be your first and last
trip. You best go on up in the cab and hide. Let the menfolk do
what has to be done.” There was no challenge in Hub's eyes, only
inflexible belief.

“Don't count me out yet. All I want is a
clue.”

Hub sighed heavily and only the ghost of a
look passed between the three men. Without another word Bobo opened
his satchel and began pulling out cloth wrapped bundles. Hub and
Hogjaw each took a bundle and waited. Bobo took a bundle for
himself and offered a parcel to Neal. Neal took it in slightly
trembling hands and unfolded the cloth.

The cold dampened down the smell of oil as
Neal unfolded the cloth. He knew even before he saw it that the
steel of a handgun would be glinting up at him, glistening cold
black and blue in the moon and snow-slashed night. He shook from
the cold and a new unease dried the spit from his throat. Minutes
ago he had been warm and mostly comfortable, whiling away his time
in the workaday world. Now he shivered in the cold and snow-ravaged
night only minutes later, among armed strangers who were secretive
and hostile and wouldn't tell him what was going on. He laughed
shakily.

“What's the gun for?”

“Dangerous times,” Hogjaw said hollowly.
“Dangerous places.”

Neal looked around at the white nothing.

“
Here?”

Bobo pointed ahead of them at the brightly
lit tracks slowly moving up the steep grade before perspective
narrowed them to a converging point in the distance.

“Up yonder. Essex Pass.”

Neal looked from face to face, trying to
find a trace of humor or some sign that this was an elaborate
prank. Finding neither, he stared down at the gun. A good one, a
9MM he reckoned, though he had never held or fired a gun in his
life.

“You really expect me to use this?”

“If you have to,” Bobo said.

“For what?”

“You'll see,” Hub promised. “And once you
see, you can never say. That's just the way it is. If you can't
live with that, you can leave us after the end of the run. It's
just the luck of the draw, kid. You got the short end. If you're
with us, you're with us. If you're not, just keep out of the way
and try to stay alive. Keep your trap shut about things you don't
understand.”

“Don't be so hard on the kid,” Hogjaw said.
“Hard enough times ahead tonight.”

Hub looked disgusted. “This guy's just like
old Bird Cole. He ain't never been nowhere and don't know
nothin'.”

“Take this,” Neal said, re-wrapping the gun
and handing it back to Bobo. Some bad business was up ahead. He
didn't stop to think what he had counted himself out of, only that
his knees knocked with cold and fright at the thought of some
unknown dangerous doings that were well out of his league. He kept
his eyes averted from Hub, expecting some crisp jibe at his lack of
manhood, but Hub remained silent. He had bigger fish to fry.

“Cold out here,” Bobo said. “Go on and get
back in the cabin.”

Neal climbed back up the metal stairs,
thinking that if he were a real man his booted feet would make the
metal clang. But in the cold his tread didn't even make them
squeak. He sat back down in the cab amid the mocking silence of the
stairs.

He sat on one of the thinly cushioned
benches as the men outside talked. They spoke for a few minutes,
their icy breath pluming bright and shiny in the crackling
cold.

“Whatchoo wanna put the kid up here with us
for, Bobo,” Hub complained. “He ain't gonna be worth a tin cup
bailing out a battleship.”

“Kid alone in the caboose,” Bobo mused. “A
man alone would be easy pickings. Just make sure he stays out of
the way.”

The men climbed the stairs into the loco's
cabin, the steel steps ringing out as if in a cheer.

They pushed past Neal with barely a glance.
Hogjaw took his customary position at the throttle. Bobo sat at the
left side of the cabin, staring resolutely from the window on that
side. Hub sat on the bench next to Neal. Neal sneaked a glance at
him. A tight little smile crimped Hub's face, but not one of good
humor. It was full of a deep unease. A short, tense tic jerked at
the corner of his right eye, causing him to look almost as if he
were winking. All three men had their sidearms within easy
reach.

The air brakes snapped and hissed as they
were released. There was no sound of conversation for the electric
motors to muffle as they loudly spun up. The rapid, throaty, rum,
rum, rum of the electric motors torquing up and the metallic
rattling of the diesel generators joined in screeching chorus with
the clank and crash of cast iron drawheads losing their slack and
accordioning out as the locomotive began to inch forward. Steel
wheels bit against steel rails, striking orange sparks into the
white night.

Hogjaw had the throttle pushed to maximum,
urging the behemoth forward. Against all prudence, he seemed to be
urging the metal monster to accelerate up the steep incline to
Essex Pass. The engines grumbled and complained but tried valiantly
to comply like an iron horse under his master's whip.

Rum rum rum rum.

The control panel voltage meters had danced
up to 610 volts, nosing in and out of the red, danger zone. The
already muted bulbs of the cabin burned down even more as the train
improbably gained speed up the incline. Shadowed faces became
darker and grimmer as the train snaked between the bulking
mountains straddling either side of the pass. An ominous shadow
fell over the train as the moon was wiped from the sky by the
hostile mass of the mountain.

The pass was less than a mile away now as
the train passed twenty-five miles per hour. Craggy, black rock
faces peered out from ledges of white snow drawn above them like
aged eyebrows. Some of the snow showered down in shallow spills
triggered by the vibrations of the passing train. The freight cars
swayed dangerously from side to side behind the locomotive, their
massive springs squeaking. The wheels clattered rapidly over the
expansion joints in the rails and angry sparks spat from rough
spots in the steel ribbons.

The train entered a wide bend to the left,
still accelerating. Thousands of tons of freight hastened through
the black heart of the night at forty mph, the contained kinetic
energy of a small, nuclear explosion held in check only by the thin
ribs of rails. The stink of diesel fuel and burnt ozone drifted
through the cab. The electric meters stood riveted to the far
right, past the danger zone. Neal felt the viscera-rattling
vibrations through his feet and legs and rear, so strong that a
wave of nausea gripped him.

The mountain on the right suddenly dipped
and Neal saw the faint glow of a dozen or so lights nestled down in
the dark valley. Orange light, not like electric lighting. More
like oil or kerosene lamps. Kerosene lamps shining dimly from some
tiny little village swallowed in the dark belly of the
mountains.

The train cleared the bend. Directly ahead
of them, no more than five hundred yards away, a ten foot high
barricade of flaming, creosote-soaked cross ties lay across the
tracks. Thick, roiling billows of greasy, black smoke boiled
angrily into the night. Twenty foot towers of orange and yellow
flames raged and screamed their hot fury. Oil bubbled and festered
from the cross ties while gases boiled and hissed and flared.
Within seconds the roar of the flames would be enough to drown out
the onrushing train. Thirty seconds more would take then crashing
directly into the flaming mass, yet Hogjaw hinted at no intention
of slowing down. If anything, he pushed harder on the already maxed
out hand throttle, trying to urge just a little more juice out of
the engines.

Neal gripped the rail next to the steps and
held on.

“What the hell...” he began.

“
Shut up!”
Hub snapped. “Sit down and
stay out of the way.” Hub looked tensely at Bobo.

“Ready?”

Bobo nodded.

Eyes shining with singular purpose, Hogjaw
sat steady at his post, one meaty hand on the throttle, the other
on the pistol in his lap. Bobo opened the door on the left hand
side of the cabin and stepped down onto the second step. Hub did
the same thing on the opposite side. Frigid air whistled into the
naked cabin like a hurricane, flapping the pages of the engineer's
log and flipping the brim of Hogjaw's engineer's cap up. Snow
churned into the cabin and stung Neal's eyes like icy grains of
sand.

The train churned toward the barricade,
keening through the night, motors whirring and wheels pounding. To
his right and below, Neal heard the misplaced, ululating whinny of
a horse. He snapped his head around and looked down.

Riding parallel to the train, half a dozen
riders dressed in black capes and cloaks kept pace with the
speeding train. Long snakes of tangled hair streamed out behind the
riders. Ghost white faces shone like blank bone above tangled black
beards. Eyes glinted like coal chips in black-shadowed eye sockets.
Galloping hoof beats thundered in the night.