There was sudden jolt that made Easterly stumble backward and grip the seatback beside him. The jolt brought a squall from Johnny Rebinaux. Ann staggered into Lawson, but the vampire held steady.
The train’s wheels shrieked, an ungodly sound. The timbers of the passenger car groaned as if in mortal pain.
“Christ Almighty!” Gantt hollered over the noise. He had nearly been pitched to his knees.
In struggling to keep his balance, Easterly lost the crucifix. It hit the floor with a metallic chime a few inches from Lawson’s right boot.
The train was slowing. Steam bellowed from beneath the engine and for an instant whitened out the windows. Then it had cleared and again there was just the night and the blowing snow. The train continued to lose speed, the wheels still screaming, and then…
“Why are we stopping?” Lawson asked Gantt.
“Hell if I know!” was the growled reply. “Either Tabbers or Rooster up there must be sittin’ on that brake!”
Another few seconds, and the train came to a dead standstill after a last little backward jolt and burst of steam.
“What’s this about?” Deuce Mathias was on his feet. He’d regained some of his composure and spirit, but still dared not look at the pallid and very fearsome man with the two Colts in his holster.
“Heh!” Rebinaux shouted. “Betcha we’re gettin’ robbed! There’s some mighty evil men hereabouts!” He slammed his good hand against the seat in front of him. “Deuce, we can still get out of this!”
“Shut up, Johnny!” Presco hollered in his rusty-sawblade voice. “Just shut your hole!”
“Everyone, quiet!” Lawson commanded. He saw Easterly’s crucifix on the floor. Though the sight of it made his eyes water and burn he was not so far gone that he was compelled to flee from it in shame and anguish, but it had been a very long time since he’d touched one of those. He started to reach down for it and hesitated.
Would it burn his fingers? Could he stand to touch it, even now in this early stage of the transition? He feared it, because it meant he might be discovered as something both more and less than human.
“Would you pick that up for me, please?” Easterly asked, standing a few feet away.
The vampire’s hand was still outstretched, but the truth was…he was afraid, and now he understood how the older ones would shield their eyes and their flesh from the power of this object. Why it was so—why his eyes burned at the sight and why his skin and senses shrank from it—he did not know, just as he didn’t fully understand why the silver bullets blessed with holy water could destroy the vampires so decisively. These were mysteries of the constant battle between light and darkness that he had recognized were far beyond him.
“Here,” Ann said, as she picked up the crucifix and offered it to Easterly.
The reverend took it, pressed it between both hands against his chest again, and directed his sharp-edged gaze to Lawson when he said, “Thank you kindly.”
“Stopped out here in the middle of nowhere!” Gantt fumed. He had spent a few seconds igniting a lantern from the tinderbox he carried. “Lemme go see what Tabber’s up to!” He pushed past Ann and Lawson and gave Rebinaux a disdainful glare just before he left the car. Opening the door brought in a swirl of snow and made Ann shiver and pull her coat’s collar up around her neck.
Lawson suddenly felt it.
Not the frigid cold, nor the sting of ice in the wind. Those didn’t bother him. What he felt in the air was a venomous presence, a sensation of massed power coiling itself for a strike. It seemed to curl itself around his throat, lay claws upon his shoulders and whisper a foul enticement in his ear. He felt himself shiver as Ann had, for he knew what must be true: out there, very near, were creatures of the Dark Society.
“Watch them,” he told her. “I’m going up front.”
“What is it?” she asked, sensing his tension.
“Maybe nothing,” he replied, but they both knew better.
He left the passenger car and stepped down to the ground. His boots sank in the crust of snow and ice. The wind had picked up and was blowing hard. He tied the leather chinstrap of his Stetson into place. Snow whirled around him and ice crystals stung his cheeks. It was a night fit for neither man nor beast, but Lawson figured it suited them just right.
He saw Gantt’s shape and the glow of the lantern ahead as the man approached the locomotive’s cab, and he started walking toward it. The engine was still throbbing steam. Lawson was aware of mountains on both sides of the track: huge chunks of snow-covered rock that pulsed faintly blue in the vampire’s night-vision. Boulders seemed to hang several hundred feet overhead, for the train had stopped in a narrow pass. Lawson guessed they were maybe seven or eight miles south of Perdition, and there was not a light of habitation to be seen.
As Lawson approached, Gantt was aiming his lantern upward at Tabbers and the black fireman the conductor had called Rooster.
“Go on!” Tabbers was saying. “Take a look for yourself!”
“Damn it!” Gantt had almost jumped out of his boots as he realized Lawson was standing beside him. His white hair was blown wildly about his shoulders by the wind, and he was holding onto his dark blue cap with his free hand. “Friend, I don’t like to be sneaked up on!”
“My apologies. What’s happened?”
“Track’s blocked,” said the red-bearded Viking, who was bundled up in a long brown leather coat and wore black cloth gloves. “About forty yards ahead. We nearly crashed our asses into it before we saw it. Rooster before me…the boy’s got better eyes.”
“Jesus Christ!” Gantt made a face like he wanted to spit acid. “Let’s take a gander!” He started off walking alongside the steaming locomotive and Lawson followed just behind him. They reached the front end of the engine and saw, illuminated through the snowfall by the cone of the big whale-oil headlamp, that the track was indeed blocked by a pile of boulders and smaller rocks nearly the height of a man.
“Lord lord lord,” said the conductor, as if chanting a dirge. “Look at that mess! Must’ve happened not too long ago…snow’s not piled up on the rocks yet.” He made a sucking noise through his teeth. “Well…we got pickaxes and shovels aboard. Have to put everybody to work who can. It’ll be a hell of a job. You want to go fetch ’em while I take a closer look, Mr. Lawson?”
“Don’t do that,” said the vampire.
“Pardon?”
They were here, watching. Lawson felt them, hiding in the crevices and holes, flattened against the earth, crouched amid the twisted leafless trees. They were waiting, and how long they’d been waiting here he did not know. Their web of communications was yet not fully understood by him, but he knew they tracked him, waiting for a moment just like this.
“Can this engine move in reverse?” he asked.
“It can. Or…it could, if you didn’t care that the railcars were busted into splinters. Have to decouple the cars, and that ain’t gonna happen tonight.” Gantt lifted his lantern to examine Lawson’s face. The vampire quickly averted his eyes so the lamp would pick up no gleam of red. “What do you mean, don’t do that? We’ve got to get this line cleared!”
“I mean…don’t go out there.”
“And why the hell not?”
Lawson turned his gaze upon the man, and cared not if the red glint scared the piss out of him. At that moment he wanted to.
“You won’t come back,” said Lawson.
“Huh? Are you—” And then something in Lawson’s face or voice must’ve gotten through, because Gantt lowered the lantern and stood staring toward the pile of boulders. The cruel wind blew snow into his face, like a taunt. “That girl,” Gantt said after a moment. “She’ll die if you don’t get her to Helena.” It was a statement, for there was no question about it.