Where This Mystery Takes Us: Part 4 of 6
Blood smeared the window, and when Erland licked his lips, he tasted blood.
This is part four of a six-part serialized mystery story. For the first part, see Part 1.
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Erland burst after the train, and when he ran out of platform, he leapt for the dark doorway of the last car, his forelegs stretched out as far as he could reach.
Erland landed the hardwood floor of the passenger car and slid to a stop on his belly.
"Papa!" Buddy said.
Erland ran the rest of the way up the aisle. He picked up Buddy. He grasped Hedda's paw and tried to pull her from her seat.
"Come on!” Erland said. “The train is leaving! We have to go!"
A large shadow descended over him. He looked up and saw the white-furred face of the conductor.
The conductor's voice reverberated around the inside of the car. "Why is there a commotion on my train?"
Erland lowered his ears. "You must stop the train," he said, stammering.
"This is the 610 Special. There are no stops."
He let go of Hedda's paw. He gently put Buddy down beside her. He turned to the Conductor and, noting the considerable difference in their sizes, took a few steps back.
"I see the problem, sir." Erland took out his wallet from inside his coat. "Obviously a misunderstanding on my part. A harmless misunderstanding, yes? Perhaps there is something I can do to remedy the situation, sir?" There were three bills left in the wallet. Erland began to pull out one, making a show of it, smiling, not meeting the Conductor's eyes.
"I don't accept money."
He pulled out another bill.
"The amount doesn't change what I don't accept."
He wiped his face with the back of his paw and hoped that Buddy didn't notice tears welling in his eyes.
"Please, sir, there's been a terrible mistake."
"Speaking precisely,” the conductor said, “there appear to be two mistakes. First of all, I'm not a 'sir,' sir. I'm a ma'am."
"Well, of course, I—"
"And the other mistake seems to be that you're making a commotion on my train. May I see your token, sir?"
"I don't have a token... at this moment."
She grunted and folded her arms across her chest. Her uniform drew taut across her shoulders. "What do you suppose I should do with you, Mr. I-don't-have-a-token?"
"My wife and kids have been ill, you see, and I've been under a lot of stress… ma'am."
"Look around you. Every passenger has been under a lot of stress."
"To clarify my understanding," he said, weighing his words, "is this the actual 610 Special, and we're going to the City of Light? And you're The Conductor?"
"That's correct, sir." The Conductor doffed her cap. "If you don't have a token, you'll have to leave."
Erland turned to the other passengers, who were looking out the windows, looking at newspapers, looking at anything except him. A familiar situation for a Fox: surrounded by other folk and yet invisible. He considered attacking the conductor, but she would have simply swept him aside with one of her brawny paws.
He realized that the Conductor stood to the rear of the train.
The path to the front was clear.
He bolted for the other door, the one that led forward.
"Where are you going?" the Conductor said.
He paused when he reached the door. "No matter what you say this is, it's only a train. I know how trains work. They aren't run by bears alone."
He shoved the door aside and slipped into the passageway.
"Papa! Wait!" Buddy jumped down from his seat. Hedda cried out and managed to grab enough of his hoodie to stop him.
The Conductor watched the door slam shut. She tilted her cap back on her broad head, perplexed.
Hedda said, "He's been under a lot of pressure lately."
Erland shot through each car, dragging open doors, running past sleeping passengers, until he came to the first car—the baggage car—immediately behind the locomotive.
He had one thought on his mind: the Engineer. He would have to get to the cab, and then somehow convince the Engineer to stop the train.
Erland’s chest heaved. He paused to catch his breath.
If he couldn’t convince the Engineer to stop the train, then Erland resolved to take any action he could to stop the train. He was still a Fox, after all, a Fox with teeth and claws.
He shouldered open the door at the front of the baggage car. A blast of frigid air shoved him back. Fumes from the thrumming diesel-electric locomotive turned his stomach. Erland squinted against the gale and saw a walkway, dimly illuminated by lights above its guardrails, that wrapped around both sides of the locomotive.
Erland had worked on locomotives during his apprenticeship and he knew the guts of the engines as well as anyone. He could rebuild a fuel pump with his eyes closed. He'd crawled all over locomotives, and inside them, at one time or another.
He'd never done it while they were moving, though.
He looked into the narrow gap between the locomotive and the baggage car, at the blur of railroad ties as they passed under the train.
He took a deep breath, then jumped across the gap and onto the walkway.
He headed for the cab, slipping on the slick metal, body buffeted by turbulence, until he reached the cab's door.
The door handle wouldn't budge. He stretched his neck to see through the window. The cab's interior glowed from lights on the instrument panel. At first, he saw nothing. Then he noticed movement. He banged on the door. A gray squirrel came into view, carrying an insulated mug. Erland saw the instrument panel lights reflected in the shiny metal of the mug. He banged on the door again. The squirrel set down the mug on a control panel and looked at him, his nose wrinkled, incredulous.
Erland opened his wallet, fanned out the few bills against the window so the engineer could see them, and gestured with his other paw toward the door handle.
The engineer narrowed his beady eyes, dismissed Erland with a twitch of his tail, and turned to the control panel.
A gust of wind snatched the bills away. Erland whipped around in time to see them disappear into the night. He looked at his wallet, now empty. Disgusted, he threw that to the wind, too.
Erland banged on the door. He yelped at the engineer; his words were lost in the howling wind and the locomotive's deep mechanical rumble.
Erland fretted, rubbing his icy paws. "Gotta think," he said. He patted his coat pockets and remembered the multi-tool Hedda had given him. He peered at the bolt heads on the door hinges. He held the multi-tool up to the dim, bluish light from the window and pulled out the screwdriver extension. The screwdriver head and the bolt heads were slightly different, but he knew from experience that he could remove the bolts, if he carefully applied torque.
He braced himself as best he could, wedging his body into a gap between two spots where the body of the locomotive jutted outward to conform to the shape of the machinery inside. The locomotive rocked and lurched, wind blew into his eyes, and his shoes slid on the frost-slick metal. Erland almost stripped the first bolt. He left it for later and went to the next. The second bolt was loose. He felt it move.
The locomotive bucked, threw Erland against the safety rail, and knocked the multi-tool from his grasp. It arced away, flipping end over end. He saw it glitter briefly in the lights from the train until the darkness swallowed it.
"Stupid paws."
He felt something rise within him, something from the lowest part of his mind, where the darkest emotions dwell.
"Stupid skulker," he muttered.
He crawled to the door and dug frantically at the steel threshold until his paws bled. He gnawed at the solid steel door handle, growling. He broke a tooth and leapt backward. He recovered, took a few more steps back, charged the door, and slammed his forehead into the window. At first stunned by the impact, he reared and did it again.
Blood smeared the unbroken window, and when he licked his lips, he tasted blood.
Erland slumped down on the walkway and raised his head as if to ask a question. Before he could form a word, however, he stopped and stared, mouth agape, at the black featureless sky.
How far have we traveled, he thought, to have lost the stars?
He let out a long groan.
Then something lifted him into the air by the scruff of his neck.
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Check out the Behind the Story post for some background on this series.
This is great. I'm still trying to understand Erland's motives and what he knows that we don't! Totally engaged!