1931 The Grand Punk Railroad: Local (9 page)

At their leader’s order, the black-suited orchestra clicked their heels on the floor. The result was a truly warped, beautiful performance that echoed sharply in the first-class compartment.

“This is a ritual. A ritual to bring Master Huey back to us once more. This train is an altar, its passengers mere sacrifices. Do not forget that.”

Goose, expressionless from beginning to end, commenced the Lemures’ march.

“Let pandemonium begin. At this point in time, neither justice nor evil exist. All power is here. Once we have saved Master Huey, that power will be transformed into justice. That is the purpose of this fight. Let us swallow all the mundane passengers, the train, and the country, into ourselves.”

Then the black suits became black shadows, scattering to every car on the train.

Multiple shadows, wearing the violence known as machine guns. Three of these directed their feet toward one car.

Cheerful talk sounded in that car, and light that was brighter than the rest filtered from it. The black shadows ran, bent on turning that light the color of blood. The dining car, which held Mrs. Beriam, the maneuver’s greatest target. Its door was already right in front of the shadows.

Vicky was in a great mood.

“Fill this dining car with screams.” He’d never dreamed that such an important, pinnacle role would come to him.

Vicky, dressed in white, quietly thanked his own good luck.

To congratulate myself, maybe I’ll kill somebody first, as an example. Should I take that weird Western-wannabe couple, or the kiddies next to them, or the hot tomato by them…? Whoops, mustn’t do that, that mom and kid are the ones Ladd likes, aren’t they… But I could probably at least shoot the daughter dead a little, right? I’ll just kill her a little, just a tiny little bit; she won’t die from being a smidgen killed—

Basking in lunatic delusions, the gent looked around the train car. Several people glanced at his pure white outfit, but compared to Isaac and Miria, its impact probably wasn’t that great. They turned their eyes back to their dinners as though nothing had happened.

Speaking of weirdos, he didn’t see the magician from a little while back. He was probably in a third-class compartment.

There was just one person who made him uneasy. A woman in coveralls by the window.

That ain’t no amateur.

The woman was acutely alert, and when he turned his eyes slightly in her direction, the wariness in her eyes grew noticeably stronger. She was casually observing not only Vicky, who’d just entered the dining car, but everyone else around her as well. The instant their eyes met, Vicky was run through by the sharp light deep in her eyes.

Who the hell is this broad? She’s bein’ supercautious about
something
.

At first, it bothered him, but apparently it wasn’t anything to do with his group.

Well, like it or not, she’s about to get pulled into this.

Without letting it worry him particularly, as if he’d lost interest, he crossed to the center of the dining car.

All right, then. Shall we get this thing started?

Soundlessly, Vicky slipped the handgun from his jacket.

“Right, let’s go.”

Guns at the ready, the men in black flung the door open.

“Okay! Let’s do this!”

Drawing his piece from inside his jacket, Nick flung open the dining car’s door.

Inside the dining car, three yells went up.

Each voice carried well, and the words reached everyone in the car.

The men in black tuxedos, who’d come in through the forward door, yelled:

“Everyone on the ground!”

In their hands, they brandished machine guns.

The man in white, who’d been in the center of the dining car, shouted:

“Everybody reach for the sky!”

In his right hand, he held a shiny, copper-colored handgun.

The man in ragged clothes, who’d come in through the rear door, called:

“Hey, hey, hey! Nobody move!”

In his hand, he held a single fruit knife.

One of the passengers, dripping with cold sweat, muttered:

“Wha…What do you want us to do…?”

Surprisingly, the ones who were quickest to react to the situation were Isaac and Miria.

The pair made the two children beside them duck and cover, and then

—they dropped to the floor, stuck both their hands up, and froze, motionless.

As Ladd sauntered down the corridor, he heard gunfire from the direction of the dining car.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, he’s going at it, he’s shooting, he’s really into this…”

Heart leaping, he headed for the dining car, skipping as he went.

However, he stopped in his tracks after a second.

Following the single fire, there had come what sounded like several dozen shots in a row.

“Hmm? Machine guns?”

For a moment, his expression went tense. But, in the next instant, he’d recovered his smile and returned to frolicking. His skips were slightly lighter than they had been before.

“Well, that’s its own kind of interesting, ain’t it?”

When he reached the carriage before the dining car, a young guy who looked like a thug came running toward him from the other end of the corridor.

He was glancing back at the dining car again and again, and he dashed past Ladd without even looking at him.

“What the hell?! Nobody said a thing about this, Miz Nice!”

Screaming something along those lines, the thug ran off.

“Hot damn, hotdamnhotdamnhot
damn
, what’s up, what’s shakin’ in the dining car?! Is he killing? Getting killed? Either way, it’s seriously ‘whoa’ and ‘hold the phone’ and
damn
this is exciting, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey…”

Ladd was unable to hold still, and before he knew it, he’d broken into a run.

As he got closer to the dining car, he started to hear crying and screams from inside. What lay behind this door, heaven or hell?

When he threw open the sliding door of the entrance, he was pierced by looks from a majority of the people inside. As they gazed at Ladd, some of their eyes were pleading, others seemed to cling to hope, while still others simply despaired.

In the center of the dining car, Vicky lay facedown. His back, which should have been white, was dyed bright red with his own blood.

On the opposite side of the car were three men with machine guns. He could tell from their clothes that they were part of the orchestra.

One of the men seemed to have taken a bullet from Vicky: He was crouched down, holding his bleeding shoulder. The remaining two were brandishing their grim trench sweepers, threatening the sobbing passengers to make sure nobody made a break for it.

However, the glares of the gang of three were focused solely on the man in white who’d suddenly appeared.

Apparently, as far as Ladd was concerned, the situation had turned out to be hell.

And yet, he kept smiling.

“Eh, no help for that.”

He strode right into the middle of the car.

“I’ll just remodel a bit, make it into heaven.”

Muttering softly, he raised both hands high.

“Hang on a sec, hold it! I dunno what’s going on, but as you can see, I’m not packing anything! I’m not your enemy, so just calm down!”

Naturally, the black suits didn’t relax their guard. From his clothes, he had to be a friend of the guy who was dead in the center of the car. That was exactly what gave Ladd a chance at success.

One of the black suits approached, keeping his gun muzzle trained on him.

“You… No; who are
you people
?”

“Hey now, we’re suspicious characters, but we’re not your enemies.”

Just then, another of the men approached Ladd as well. They probably meant for one to keep the gun on him while the other restrained him.

The only one left at the end of the car was the wounded one. Even as he held his shoulder, he kept the gun in his free hand trained on the passengers, with a glare.

The instant the two approaching black suits fell into a single-file line, Ladd raised his voice in protest again.

“Look, I told you, I’m not your enemy!”

By the time the words were out of his mouth, he’d kicked the black suit’s gun up so that the muzzle pointed at the ceiling.