Dreadnought (The Clockwork Century #2)

Dreadnought (The Clockwork Century #2) Page 58

“That’s madness!” cried Mrs. Butterfield, who forced her way through the crowd. “You can’t stop the train! We’ll all freeze to death out here, or those filthy Rebels will come back and finish us off!”

“It’s better than barreling forward into a trap!” the conductor cried right back at her. “I’ve given the order to throw the brakes, and preparations are being made in every car. I’ve told the porters to ready themselves—”

“Every car?” Mercy asked.

“Yes—there’s a brake on every car. There has to be. We can’t stop otherwise,” he explained hastily.

The ranger stepped up to join the conversation and said, “Two miles, is that what you said? Can we stop this snake in that kind of time?”

The conductor said, “We’re going to try,” as he spun on his heels and went barging back toward the Dreadnought, assuming that the message would find its way along the cars that were left.

“Everybody’s going to have to brace,” the captain said. “Find a spot and settle down. Help the fellows who are hurt. Someone go to the next car—you, Ranger, will you do it? Head to that next car and tell them. Pass it down.”

Horatio Korman gave him a head dip that was as good as a salute, and went for the rearward door. He was scarcely on the other side of it when the slowdown began—not in a jerk or a lurch, but with a drop in speed that made those on their feet sway, and grasp instinctively for something solid.

A shout went up from the front of the train, and a quick piping of the whistle—not a full-​blown blast, but a series of short peeps that must be some sort of signal. Then a great squeal screamed from a dozen points along the cars as the brakes were applied, and leaned on, and struggled against, and the great, terrible, foreshortened and battered train began to grind to a ghastly, troubling stop that could not possibly come fast enough.

Whatever luggage had thus far remained in the storage bins fell in a patter that bounced off heads, backs, and shoulders. People squawked; Mrs. Butterfield wailed. Mercy staggered and tried to grab the edge of a sleeper car wall in order to steady herself, but she failed and fell backwards. The captain caught her and pulled her down into the aisle, where bits of glass were still sparkling, sliding, collapsing into dust beneath boots and shoes, and cutting into hands, forearms, and knees.

“Captain,” she asked him, not shouting anymore, even over the grinding howl of metal tearing against metal and fighting for traction. She could only spit out her question in a choked gasp, but his head was close to hers, so he could hear her anyway. “What will happen, when we stop? Can we back up, and go the way we came?”

He shook his head, and his wind-​tousled hair brushed up against her ear. “I don’t know, Mrs. Lynch. I don’t know much about trains.”

After another series of notes from the whistle, the brakes were tested yet further, jammed yet harder, and pulled with another synchronized arrangement of men leaning on poles and posts. They prayed for the immense machine to slow down, end the push, and stop the forward clawing; and the Dreadnought responded.

Sluggish and huge and heavy, it weighed the commands of the brakes against the pure inertia that fought like a tiger to keep it rolling along the snow-​dusted tracks.

But down, and down, and down dropped the speed. Down, but not enough.

Mercy clambered to her feet, clutching at the captain, at the seats, at the frames of the sleeper compartments. She raised her head enough to see that the end of the pass—the immense, coal black tunnel—was right upon them, and despite all efforts to the contrary, they were going to slip right inside it—right into darkness; right into a stretch that was surely a trap.

And there was nothing to be done about it.

Nineteen

The tunnel gaped and yawned, and devoured the great train slowly—incrementally—like one snake swallowing another. The Dreadnought was not moving very fast, but it was moving with great determination and immense willpower against the frantic thrusts of the brakes; the squealing of metal against wheels against tracks against stopping mechanisms retreated until it was a dull whine that echoed in the darkness. And this darkness slipped over the train with the sharp, demarcating smoothness of a curtain lowering. As if the tunnel were a tomb or some ancient crypt, the veil of false midnight smothered the nervously chattering or whimpering voices within the passenger cars.

This tunnel, and this darkness, ate the length of the train from the engine to the second passenger car, which was now the last car.

And when the whole strand was as black as the bottom of a well, every breath was held and every heart was perched on the verge of stopping.

They waited.

All of them waited, eyes upturned and glancing about, casting from the front to the back of every car, seeking some glimmer of light or information. All of them sat in hushed and worried poses.

Everyone waited, wondering how the end was going to come.

All backs and arms and fists were clenched, ready for the explosion that would bring the tunnel down atop them, or the dynamite blast beyond the tunnel that would mark the end of their tracks.

But it never came.

And finally, in the dark, Mercy heard the voice of Cole Byron say, “Maybe they overshot us. Maybe they got too far, past the end of the tunnel. They were going awful fast; it would’ve been hard for them to stop.”

This weak hint of optimism prompted someone else—she couldn’t tell who—to say, “Maybe we hurt ’em worse than we thought. Maybe they derailed, or their engine blew.”

The train gave a small jump, and continued to roll forward under its own habit, not from any power from the boilers or the hydrogen. The engine struggled against the track, and everyone on board cringed, wondering when they’d see the light on the other side—not knowing how long the tunnel would last, or how long they could linger like this in darkness, in silence, in hideous anticipation.

As the train continued to squeeze through the compression of darkness, no one on board spoke again, even to bring up more maybes, or to offer hope, or to whisper prayers. No one asked any more questions. No one moved, except to adjust a tired knee—or lift a skirt out of the glass litterings on the floor and feel about for a more comfortable position.

Someone coughed, and someone sniffled.

One of the injured men moaned in a half-​conscious grunt of pain. Mercy hoped that whoever it was, he didn’t come around while the blackness of the tunnel crushed them all into blindness. How awful it’d be, she thought, to awaken from injury to pain and darkness, wondering if you hadn’t lived at all, but died and gone someplace underground.

Minutes passed, and then blocks of minutes. It must have added up to a mile, maybe even more. Everyone counted the distance, or tried to, but it was difficult without any light, and without the swiftly moving cliffs rushing by to gauge their progress.

Then something winked up ahead, casting a tiny sliver of light off something and into the car’s interior, but it lasted only for an instant so brief that anyone who blinked would have missed it.

Someone’s shadow moved, and another flickering light bounced off the tunnel walls. This time it left enough of a glow for Mercy to see that it was one of the porters; but their dark skins and dark uniforms and the darkness of the car’s interior made it impossible for her to guess which one until he spoke. It was then that she realized Jasper Nichols had joined his cousin in the car—when, she didn’t know for certain.

He leaned his head out the window and said, “We’re almost out. We’re going to be coming out real soon.”

But no one knew whether to cheer or to cry at that news, so everybody flinched instead, tightening inside their clothing—tightening their grips on one another, if they were so inclined. Everyone hunkered, and ducked, and made instinctive gestures to cover their heads and faces against the unknown perils that the light would reveal.

More slowly than it had consumed the train, the tunnel expelled the nearly stopped Dreadnought and its charges back into glaring sun that reflected off ice and snow to create a world of shocking brilliance.

This brilliance infected the cars as the train inched forward; but there was momentum enough to bring them all to the other side of the mountain tunnel, and there was momentum enough that the whole length of the train shuddered when it hit a fresh carpet of accumulated snow, there on the other side.

The train chugged, and sluggishly leaned forward against the fluffy white obstacle, which would have meant little to it had they been going faster. The snow accomplished what the men with the lever brakes could not.

It stopped the Dreadnought.

Anguished silence preserved the moment while people stared anxiously about. Then Jasper Nichols, who was closest to the window, leaned out from it once more and said, “Good Lord help me, but I’ll be damned.”

Captain MacGruder was the second to pull himself up and dust the glass fragments from his pants. “What is it, man?” he asked, even as he went to the window to see for himself. His motion startled the rest of the car into action. One at a time, he was joined by everyone present, or at least those who were able to haul themselves up on the seats and lean their faces into the white outdoors.

It wasn’t snowing here, on this side of Provo.

The sun beat down from directly above, uncut or dimmed by any shadows, anywhere. The air was cold enough to preserve meat, and the snow was thick enough on the ground to swallow ankles—with a crystalline crust on every surface, giving all of it a mirrorlike sheen that made the afternoon blaze all the brighter.

Hands rose to foreheads, shading squinting eyes against the unexpected light.

The captain said, “Is that them up there?”

And the lieutenant joined him, also shadowing his eyes against the glare. “It’s the Shenandoah. They passed us by a ways, it looks like.”

“Half a mile or more. More, I think,” he said.

Mercy could see it then. The back end of the Rebel vessel and the curve of its length on a track, motionless, and distant enough that it looked small.

“They didn’t blow the tracks,” she said. “They could’ve blown the tracks, but they didn’t.”