Chapter 13

The sun was just starting to set across the river and the streets and the open field surrounding the ruined stadium was swarming with the devout. The army headquarters at the old Union Station was nearly empty now, with most of the senior officers having already left for the religious service. Being seen to arrive late and less than devout would be bad for their careers, and quite probably their life expectancy. Even the rank and file troops of the horde were in attendance as well, undoubtedly for the same reasons.

Clearly, the horde had a bad tendency to prey upon its own, to find and expunge any traces of weakness, at all levels. If the Witch-Finder could strike here tonight with over whelming force, he could not only remove the remaining Green Priestesses who commanded this vast flock of barbarians, but he could also purge that great army of much, if not nearly all of its senior leadership. None of the common soldier’s he’d met showed any tendency towards self-leadership ... those sorts of independent thinkers tended to be the first ones picked for sacrifice or being processed into stew meat.

Now, as the attending throngs were mostly at the stadium or nearby, in the great open field, it was time to act!

“Plague?” Amie screamed out in the senior stockade guardsman’s face. “You would send a train car load of poxed slaves into the arena, for one of the most important sacrifices ever? Why did you permit these diseased slaves to intermingle with the others? Do you want to be thrown into the pit in their place?”

“No, not at all your worship!” He cried out, cringing before the young diminutive former priestess, who was once more wearing her old green robes for her visit to the slave pit. “What shall I do?”

“Get them out of here! All of them, into the railcars, now ... fast! Look! Already at least half of the slaves are poxed! The plague spreads before our eyes!” She gasped, as if in horror.

Earlier, we had given the rescued captives from Hutton’s Commons some simple orders, and a few handy jars of red ink. Under Joshua the Tinker’s direction, they had been ‘delivered’ to the common slave pen and quickly proceeded to dot the faces of as many of the unfortunates held there with the red ink as they could in just a short time. In poor light, the resulting effect was one of the pox. The disguise wouldn’t fool a close concerted look, but Amie was doing her best to create a sense of panic amongst the pen guards. Not wanting their failure to result in their immediate sacrifice, they shouted out orders for the idling red diesel train to collect as many box cars as possible, so that all of the slaves, nearly one thousand of them now, could be securely locked up away from the pens.

Now it was time for me to act.

As the train reemerged from the freight yard, Grampy and I, with young Tania right on our heels, raced forth to it, to seek out its engineer inside. The antique diesel engine had no easy entry and we each had to climb up a ladder to get to the cab’s left side door. It was closed but not locked, and at the sight of my drawn revolver, the engineer let us enter and hold him at guard, as he slowly backed up the track to the station. I nodded that he could park the train and he set the brake, leaving the engine idling, so that the box cars could be loaded.

“You’re the demon in black, the one they call the Witch-Finder.” He calmly stated. “I have a wife ... family, and I don’t want any trouble with you ... and if you’re trying to escape, to ride this train up north, then I’ll take you, anywhere you want to go ... so long as I can get and bring my family too. On my word, we will cause you no trouble, sir!”

I could tell with my truth sense that he was being completely honest. He would take us north and guide us true, so long as his family could be saved. I was willing.

“Go, get them and come right back, but this priestess will go with you. Obey her and we shall have no quarrel. First, can that rusted heap of a steam engine be made to move ... and with haste?”

“The big old FEF in the yard? No ... she’s cold and she needs repair. She canna’ go tonight ... but her little sister, our yard switcher, can. She’s already simmering and could go on a moment’s notice. My assistant, Blake, should be in or near her now ... but you’ll not find him as eager to leave. He’s a devout one and likely to give you trouble.”

Now that was helpful advice. I found the old steam 0-6-0 switcher in the back of the yard with its attendant, who was quite unhelpful right from the start, even with a gun barrel up against his head. I told him twice what I wanted him to do, and eventually he did it ... extremely reluctantly. A bullet shot into his thigh finally managed to get his attention, but only just barely.

Grampy had by now taken a pretty good look at the loaded rail cars and he returned to us in the switcher with quite the grin on his face.

“There’s three full fertilizer hopper cars on the leftmost yard track and at least twice that many full crude oil tankers down another storage track. It will be messy and probably not an instant bang, but if we can get three of each car switched up and rolled into the arena, we could make the evening interesting, if not very memorable for them.”

Short of explosives, which we couldn’t find any, this would have to do. We almost had to shoot Blake again, to make him back-up the switcher and connect to the six railcars we wanted to take. As our new cargo train slowly rolled onto the main track and take the siding that led directly toward the arena, his reticence became even more obvious. He knew what we were planning and knew that it was his life at stake, either way. The odds were good that the bastard was plotting a way to send us all to his horde paradise with him.

The problem was, now I really needed to be elsewhere. It was almost dark and we were running out of time. Now that we were ready to roll, there were several other problems.

“Can the switch engine be disconnected from the rolling stock while the train is moving?” I asked the willing engineer, who had just returned with Tania and his family.

“No ... it’s all manual and can’t be disconnected if the consist ... that is those rail cars, are running taut. That switcher engine has a deadman’s switch too inside the cab, a late safety feature they added when it went into the museum here. You have to press against a control lever constantly or five seconds later the automatic brakes will all kick in. If you want to drive that cargo in, then someone’s going to have to drive her there, all the way until the end! Blake won’t let you do that!”

No, he wouldn’t.

Sure enough, right then I heard a gun-shot go off nearby and then a few seconds later a second one. They had come from the switcher, so this meant that Blake had probably found his nerve to try and jump Grampy and take his gun. Indeed, this was what had happened. Grampy was old, but he was wiry and mean!

“Almost got me,” Grampy laughed, sitting now in the driver’s seat of the switcher, blood obviously soaking his ragged shirt near his stomach, “scratched me a bit when the gun went off as we scrambled, but I fixed him good with the second shot.” That wound had struck the loyal fanatic higher up, almost in the chest. He was still alive, but collapsed onto the cab deck, the fight entirely out of him.

“I think he did get you, if we don’t get you some treatment pretty fast. Being old, ornery and gut-shot is not a good combination, even for you.”

“Later ... besides, I think I’m the only one who has watched how to drive this thing. Brake lever is here and the drive bar is that other one. She burns raw crude oil and I can control that to feed the firebox with those two valves over there. I can do this ... might not be pretty but I’ll get you right to where you want to be!”

Unfortunately, he was right, and I warned him about the deadman’s switch, which he’d already noticed.

“Hand’s steady on that throttle, if it’s the last thing that I do!” Grampy assured me.

We were running out of time and the gunshots had attracted some nearby attention. There were still late-comers in the streets, and a few officers had exited the station building and were now curiously looking over at the train activity.

Lorrie was still up on the station roof, now starting to pick off targets one by one, either ones standing and looking our way or running towards us. She never missed ... she did have my knack now and was taking full advantage of it. Her sniper rifle was loud and that was attracting more attention to us too, but it couldn’t be helped. As fast as she could pull back the rifle bolt, she was nailing each and every target.

Amie was still trying to funnel the throng of slaves into the open railcars. It wasn’t easy for them to climb up the iron ladder steps to reach inside, and nothing could be found nearby to reduce the height from the rail tracks up into each box car. Some of the slaves were apathetic from their ill-treatment and didn’t want to leave the temporary safety of their slave pen. A couple even cried out loudly and tried to prevent us from rescuing them! To fit a hundred people into one box car was nearly torture anyway, with the crowding forcing everyone to stand up in the press of flesh.

Amie was also supposed to be helping with perimeter control, but less than a third of the slaves had been loaded already. “Can anyone fire a gun?” She’d call out, offering out some of our seized military rifles to a few of the more knowledgeable. We didn’t expect many takers but she found a few people that said they could shoot well. When the train was loaded, she was to ride in the cab with our engineer and try and keep him and our escape train safe.

Tania now needed to help control the west side of the field and we also needed her to manually throw the rail switch from old north-south mainline through town, to send us down the west siding track that lead to the arena. She was toting her old M1 rifle, which like Lorrie, she was now an expert shot, but we hoped she wouldn’t face any trouble. I had told her to keep low and stay as much under cover as possible, until our small freight train had passed her, then she was to try and help cover our retreat, but without making herself a target.

As for me, I should have been with Grampy on the switcher, but a fresh flood of gun fire near the station was a danger too great to ignore. A group of officers that had not intended to attend the service had all come outside the station door and were starting to fire at our slaves, hitting a few. Neither Lorrie nor Amie had clear fields of fire, so that left me.

I still had my Blackhawk out and ready, and I leapt out of the switcher by the open driver’s door on the right to run charging for the station entrance, my black duster coat flying about behind me like a cape. Once I’d passed the last box car there was a small red caboose, and from that end spot I could see and start shooting down the exiting officers.

I fired away until I needed to reload, did so, and emptied the revolver a second time. Chest or head shots, every one. The entrance steps to the station were now cleared, but I didn’t want to take the risk that anyone inside possessed either an automatic weapon or something explosive. I crashed through the front glass door, not even bothering to open it, and started to fire upon anyone present. There were a good dozen to eighteen junior staffers still there and some had rifles or a sidearm but without silver bullets they couldn’t touch me and I gunned them all down.

This being the horde army headquarters, I stopped only long enough to reload a final time and quickly scan the more important looking desks for interesting maps, like ones showing their current disposition of troops. In a few minutes of searching I found a good one to take back home, and stuffed it inside my coat.

There were a few short blasts of the steam whistle on the small switcher, which I interpreted to mean, ‘get your asses moving!’ There were no enemies immediately at hand, but our activity here at the station was attracting attention from further away now. Lorrie’s rifle was still cracking away, now picking off targets closer to the arena, but if we waited much longer we could get overwhelmed.

“Amie, get those cars loaded and get further up those tracks, away from here. That train leaves in five minutes, with or without the rest of its passengers!” I screamed out, as much for the former slave’s benefit as for hers. I wanted them to load themselves into those box cars with some urgency, or risk being left behind. That helped to motivate most of the rest!

I ran for the switcher, which was still idling on a sidetrack in the main railyard and Grampy didn’t look any healthier. He’d always been a sort of grey colored man, but he usually had a reddish nose and cheeks, and now he was deathly pale.

“Never wanted to die in my sleep or in a rocking chair anyhow!” Grampy muttered, resisting my attempt to take over driving the unfamiliar engine. “Now, can I get these steel wheels, little as they are, moving? Is Tania ready at the switch yet?”