Hell Train (29 page)

The
Arkangel
hammered over several sets of points, the entire carriage juddering. Outside, the purple clouds began to redden with hellfire. The fir trees at the horizon appeared to have small furnaces flickering among them.

‘We’re getting close,’ said Isabella. ‘I suggest we go through the train carriage by carriage. Perhaps I’ll think of something and understand what I have to do.’

As soon as Nicholas and Isabella had left the corridor, the Conductor appeared and began opening the doors of the compartments.

‘Time for you to earn your keep,’ he told the dead passengers, forcing them to raise themselves. Slowly they stood throughout the carriage, answering his call. Farmers and foundry workers, housewives and shopkeepers, they shuffled toward the front of the train in anticipation of arrival.

‘There is only one remaining traveller left alive on board. She has a chance—the slimmest chance—of beating us. You have to make sure that she does not have time to discover how.’

The undead passengers stared at the Conductor, awaiting his command.

‘Do I have to spell it out for you?’ he shouted at them. ‘Kill her!’

‘C
AN YOU FEEL
it?’ said Isabella. ‘The train is a living thing now. Hell is calling us to eternal damnation.’

‘Thank you for that cheering thought. I don’t know whether I ever mentioned this, but I’m not a Christian. Church to me is just a hard bench, a cold arse and a dim man in a robe spouting rubbish.’

Nicholas walked unsteadily through the rushing train. In the compartments around them, the dead passengers were slowly waking, responding to the Conductor’s invocation. Nicholas realised that they were staring at him. ‘Well,’ he shouted, ‘what are you peasants looking at? Yes, I’m English, sorry if my natural superiority offends you, you brainless shit-shovelling imbeciles.’ He turned to Isabella. ‘I don’t like this, they’re waking up. I think they may mean to do us harm.’

‘We can’t fight all of them, Nicholas. I have yet to come up with a plan.’

The first of the undead reached out to Isabella. Two farmhands in smocks and straw hats attempted to paw her. Clad only in her underwear, covered in blood and slime, she was hardly in a position to fight back. Slapping their hands away angrily, she wondered what she could use to fight them off.

‘We need weapons, urgently. There are too many of them.’

‘They’re slow-witted,’ said Nicholas. ‘They shouldn’t be too hard to keep at bay.’

‘Nicholas, you can’t kill what’s already dead.’

‘We have one advantage. We have our brains. We’re still alive. And we’re getting off this bloody train.’

‘No, I’ll find a way to do it. I got you into this. It’s my fault. I’ll get you out.’

‘I don’t see what you can do. Get away from her, cabbage-breath.’ He swatted away an undead farmer’s hand as it reached for Isabella’s breast. The passengers were now filling the corridor and moving toward them.

‘I know our final destination,’ she told Nicholas. ‘There was never any question about it. We’re going into the mouth of Hell itself.’

Nicholas set his jaw. ‘We’re not going to Hell. We’re going to London. We need something to fight them off with. The soldiers. They may have died but they were never meant to be on board. You heard what the Conductor said.’ The nearest compartment housed several sleeping infantrymen. On the luggage rack above them were their officers’ rifle-cases. He swung inside and pulled two down before they had a chance to wake up. ‘Do you know how to use a gun?’

‘If the target is a rabbit.’

‘Fine. Think of them as big rabbits.’

Nicholas clapped his hands. ‘Wake up, men, we are under attack.’

The soldiers snapped to alertness. Before they could question why one of their old compatriots had taken their guns, Nicholas pulled them to their feet and showed them the advancing horde. ‘These godless creatures intend a hellish death for us. Will you help me fight them?’

‘You have my gun,’ one of the soldiers pointed out.

‘Surely there are more?’

‘Yes, of course,’ said another.

‘Then break them out.’

‘Who are we fighting?’

‘The undead. If it helps, think of them as Germans.’

The soldiers set to work without any further questions, tearing the lids from the crates in the luggage rack and pulling out rifles. The boredom and confusion of their unwarranted journey had now yielded a purpose close to any soldier’s heart: the possibility of committing acts of violence.

Armed and ready, they advanced upon the undead passengers. Then they loaded, aimed and fired.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

THE PLAN

T
HE TRAIN RACED
on through the darkness, gathering speed, its great wheels heating on the rails, sparks flying, setting fire to the forest beside the tracks. At the treeline, Isabella could see the bonfires of Hades, fast approaching. From inside the train came flashes of light as the soldiers warded off the travelling dead.

The Conductor turned to his acolytes. The soulless were a trial; they rarely concentrated on anything for more than a minute or two, and forgot what you told them even more quickly. ‘Remember,’ he shouted to the ranks of peasants, ‘there is a living soul on board the train. Keep her occupied. Let her try to hold out until we reach our final destination. You can overwhelm her allies. Go after them now and make her lose heart when she sees she is standing alone. Either way, she
must
lose.’

Among the resurrected passengers, Thomas and Miranda had joined the newly undeceased. At this early stage, they yet retained some small remnant of their former humanity, and looked about themselves in puzzlement, trying to understand what had happened.

‘This is not fair,’ Miranda said, bristling with indignation. Her wounds were truly terrible to behold. In time she would heal and bear a passing resemblance to her living self. It was the smallest recompense for being doomed to travel on board the
Arkangel
for all eternity. ‘I had high hopes for my life, and now it has been cut short.’

‘If you think life’s not fair, wait till you’ve tried living death for a while,’ said the Conductor.

‘Thomas,’ Miranda snapped at her shuffling husband. ‘Do something. Don’t just stand there.’ She studied him for the first time. ‘You look dreadful.’

Thomas caught sight of himself in the window, a blackened bubo-riddled walking corpse. He looked at Miranda, who was missing most of her face. ‘Have you seen yourself? You’re not exactly the radiant bride I married.’ he scoffed. ‘Actually, you weren’t even radiant when I married you. I’m not following his instructions.’ He pointed over at the Conductor. ‘He’s got plenty of slaves to do his dirty work. Come on.’ He grabbed her hand.

‘Where are we going?’ she asked.

‘To the restaurant car. We may be dead but we’re still English. I’d like a cup of tea. And some decent biscuits.’

N
ICHOLAS AND
I
SABELLA
stood at the head of the soldiers, who were braced across the corridor of the third carriage, firing at all who came within range, but they were fast running out of shells. Besides, the bullets did little more than knock their attackers back a few feet at a time.

‘We couldn’t alight at the stations,’ Nicholas reasoned, exploding a cowhand, ‘but what about in between them? I jumped and survived.’ He threw open the door of the train. Together, they looked down at the rushing ground.

‘We can’t jump. We’ll be dashed to pieces.’ Isabella’s rifle recoiled violently as she blasted a hole through a yokel.

‘And that would be worse than what exactly?’

‘You know we would simply be reborn on the train. There has to be something else. I think there’s another reason why there’s no end destination on the map.’

‘They wouldn’t get many passengers if they put ‘Chelmsk—Hell Express’ on their routes, would they? It’s over.’

‘No it’s not. I have a chance. I gave way to my own foolish curiosity, but I might still be able to make amends. I think I know of a way to save us. We need to find the map of the
Arkangel
’s route.’

Leaving the soldiers to hold the front line, they made their way back to the last framed corridor map and examined it. One route vanished into darkness and storms, the other appeared to lead to greener pastures. Set at the top of the map was a series of tiny sepia photographs of the Controller, the Conductor and the train.

‘The Controller has been there all along,’ said Isabella. ‘Come on. We need to search the carriages behind us.’

Nicholas followed her, intrigued.

‘Nicholas, where was the Red Countess?’

‘Why?’

‘I have to find her luggage.’

They pushed their way back to the first class suites.

‘Here.’ Isabella pulled back the red velvet drapes of the Red Countess’s stateroom and began to search through her stacked valises.

‘What are you looking for?’ asked Nicholas, puzzled.

‘Something like this.’ She removed an elegant, sequinned scarlet dress from the Red Countess’s case. ‘Cover me for a minute.’

Nicholas raised his rifle and shot a few peasants until Isabella returned. She had wiped the blood from her face, corseted herself into the gown and tied her hair up. She looked battered but radiant.

‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’ he asked.

She checked herself in the Countess’s mirror. ‘I have a plan. I need powder and lipstick.’

‘You’re not going on a date.’

‘Yes I am,’ she told him. ‘I’m going to beat the Devil.’

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

THE CONTROLLER

‘T
HERE, WHAT DO
you think?’ She stood before Nicholas, resplendently dressed in the low-cut gown of lace-edged scarlet silk, her hair neatly arranged in ringlets. She had done her best to powder her face, and had sprayed herself with the Countess’s most expensive perfume.

‘Well, I suppose you look less indecent with some clothes on, but I really don’t see the point in dressing up for your arrival in the bloody Underworld. Have you seen it out there? It’s like a scene from a medieval painting.’

‘Stay close to me, but don’t interfere, no matter what happens. I need to find the Conductor.’

With Nicholas warding off the marauding passengers, they searched the train. The Conductor was in the next carriage, and had no wish to be seen supervising his rampant acolytes, in case Isabella accused him of cheating.

‘Ah, sweet Isabella, the last to fall,’ he said cheerfully. ‘How beautiful you look. Have you come to confront me? Is that your response to the challenge?’

‘I’m not going to fight you,’ she told him. ‘You’re just a servant. And a dead one, at that. I demand to see your superior. My uncle.’

‘Ah.’ For the first time, the Conductor was stung. ‘I wondered if you would decide upon that. Of course, it would be appropriate, seeing that your own family was complicit in the building of the
Arkangel
.’

‘At first I could not recall my uncle’s face, for he left us when I was young. I could only remember him in shadow at the engine shed. You were foolish enough to put his photograph on the map.’

‘Well, I am afraid you cannot see him now. You can’t go in there without going through me. There are no exceptions, not even for family members.’

He stepped aside to provide a glimpse of the private compartment behind. Isabella looked in and recognised the corpulent Controller in the stovepipe hat from his photograph, and vague memories of family gatherings when she was very small. He was sitting in a velvet armchair, enjoying an absurdly long cigar, entirely unconcerned with the lunatic behaviour of the train’s occupants. She studied his sweat-sheened face.

She wanted to find a way across the threshold, but at the last moment her nerve had failed her. She remembered the last time she had seen him, the horror of the virgin sacrifice that had haunted her childhood. No-one had ever mentioned him again. Her father had eventually convinced himself that he had no brother, just as the town had convinced itself that there had been no train.

‘Go. Turn around and walk away.’ Angered by her hesitation, the Conductor shoved at her. ‘Silly, arrogant little girl! Look at you, parading in a noblewoman’s clothes. Did you think it would make you like her? Did you really think you could change anything?’

The Conductor gave into his anger and lashed out at her, knocking her to the floor. Yanking her to her feet, he gave her another hard crack across the face. Nicholas stepped forward to intervene, but as he did so the wound in his chest burned as if it was being pulled apart.

The Conductor slammed Isabella against the wall of the carriage, bearing down on her. ‘You have no idea how much I hate the living,’ he said. ‘You always think you can make a difference.’

The soulless had broken through the soldiers’ line of defence and were bearing down on them. Nicholas had used up all his ammunition, and had split his rifle stock on the head of a gurning farmhand. Now he looked up to see the Conductor raising his fist again. Nicholas tried to pulled him away, but it was like shifting steel. As the Conductor’s fingers closed around Isabella’s throat, he ignored the searing pain in his chest and searched for another weapon among the men he had just destroyed.

He spotted a pair of swords on the belts of two felled soldiers and pulled them free.

Isabella felt herself losing consciousness. Nicholas lunged forward and rammed the blades at the Conductor, but the pain in his chest was now so severe that he could barely see. Thrusting the sword points into the Conductor’s startled wide eyes, he felt them come out through the back of his skull, pinning him to the carriage wall.

Although he was speared clean through the sockets, the Conductor continued to thrash about. ‘Your world will burn,’ he cried. ‘Your world will burn!’

The Controller could hardly be expected to ignore the commotion outside his compartment any longer, particularly after a pair of bloody sword-tips had come through his wall. He slowly rose, tapped his cigar and came lumbering out of his cabin to see what the fuss was about.