The Show’s Over
With the carriages decoupled, leaving only the engine and tender, the Gambler’s Den burst into speed, careering along the wastes. It wouldn’t be long until it hit the Sand Sea, where Franco would be impossible to follow. All he needed was enough time and escape was a certainty.
Again Franco looked back at the line of cars, which he had abandoned, and those therein. Franco told himself, repeatedly, while walking around the tender box, using the handrail for security, that it was the right decision. They would be let off with a caution at worst, denying knowledge of the breakout. After all, who would help with something like that and be apprehended so easily? No, the onus was on Franco. That’s what the court papers would say, that’s what the newswire would carry, and that’s what every wanted poster would reflect: just him and him alone.
The way things were before, before this whole ugly affair started.
Jumping off the tender platform to the engine cabin, he froze, staring at the controls that were untouched, and alarmingly unmanned. Rosso was missing from his post as was his boy; instead someone else much younger had replaced Rosso, with very visible intentions.
Misu leant against the cabin side, tear-stained and resolute. At Franco’s first step forward, she took one of own backward, holding up a revolver, stopping his advance.
‘Misu, what are you doing? Where is the damned driver?’ he asked.
Her bottom lip trembled with every sentence, the words tumbling out haphazardly.
‘They had to get off,’ she stammered correcting herself, seemingly quite surprised by this revelation. ‘I had to force them out. I didn’t want to. Believe me I didn’t want to but there’s no way out. Franco, I’m so sorry but I have to do this.’
‘No, you don’t. You really don’t.’
‘He wants the Den and he will not stop until it’s in his possession.’
‘Of course. That’s what he blackmailed you with.’
‘Did you think I would do something like this willingly?’ she cried out in protest. ‘Wilheim. You can’t stop him. He will chase and chase and chase until he chokes the life out of those against him. I spent four years at the mercy of that man. Four years! I’m not going back, do you hear? I have to do this, Franco. It’s the only way he will leave me alone! It is the only way!’
‘I’ve seen you breathe fire plenty of times before me darlin’.’ He threatened with a step, though this time she didn’t relent. ‘And in case you ain’t ever noticed, I don’t flinch. I’m going to put something to you and you best open your ears to it: I will see the Den in pieces before it’s in the hands of someone else. This is my train, do you hear? Mine. So lower your damned weapon or you’ll spring me to do something equally foolish.’
‘Don’t be stubborn! There is only one way out of this, Franco. Give me the deeds to the Den and get off. He wants the train and I have to give it to him. I don’t want to do this; I don’t want to. You know that!’
‘You want me to give you something I don’t have?’
‘Don’t toy with me. They’re in the safe; now give me the damned key!’ The gun rattled in her hands, its handle wet with perspiration.
‘The safe that’s in my private car, that’s been decoupled?’
‘You’re lying!’
‘You can look for yourself. Stick your head out of that there window and see!’
‘Go and fetch them! Right now!’
‘Listen to me: I go back there and the only thing I’ll be able to get is filled with holes.’
‘Give me the deeds!’ she repeated, her voice shrill.
‘Am I speaking to the wind here? I don’t have them! Now I get that you’re in a situation that’s more than messy so you’re not hearing correct, but I want you to understand a handful why I’m unhappy. Firstly, your lying has dragged everyone under this roof into your affairs. Complicated affairs if I need to clarify. That’s put everyone at risk. Secondly, you’ve got iron pointed in my direction, which I don’t take kindly to. But to sweetly top it all, you turned on me, Misu – not the others, but me. The moment you begun to spin half-truths to cover your backside, you threw your lot in with the ones you’re running from. And that I have a difficult time accepting. I’m not one for repeating myself so this will be the last time. Step away and drop your weapon.’
Franco stood resolute, legs bracing every rock and tremor of the train engine, watching the gun barrel in front of him wave side to side.
Misu thumbed back the hammer with a fatal click. ‘Please!’ she begged.
The Den jolted suddenly, Misu’s finger twitching out of reflex onto the trigger. The gun fired loudly and when realizing he was unharmed, Franco scrambled forward. The gun fired once more, upwards this time, punching a hole into the cabin roof. Mad with desperation, Misu’s finger pulled over and over before crashing into the system of valves and pipes that speared out from the cab. Limbs tussled and strained, thrashed and scratched against one another.
There was a shock of pressure, followed by quickening plumes erupting from the chimney. Every one of the drive wheels spun faster, the Den vibrating every second in a sudden acceleration. Misu fell aside from the force. Scrabbling to her feet, she brushed her hair from her vision and saw the various gauges before her. It was true that she was no expert in machinery, and would never pretend to know how to run the Den, but even she knew that if a needle in a gauge hit a red section, it was bad. She looked at Franco who stemmed a trickle of blood from his temple with a firm press of his hand.
But he knew. He knew what it took to keep the Gambler’s Den steady. He knew the quirks, the difficulties of regulating its pressure, everything Pappy had repeated over and over to ensure he never forgot. His brain scrambled to take in what was happening, each conclusion worse than the last.
Then he spied the heightened pressure boiler gauge. It’s needle had struck the redline some time ago. The train lurched once more in displeasure, steam expelling from open emergency valves, though not enough to control the dangerous build-up. Every facet rattled, each vibration building to tremendous, powerful shakes. With the majority of the carriages gone, there was a significant loss in weight. The speed had been building, unchecked.
Too fast, he thought. We’re going far too fast!
As the Den pounded the rails, it rode an incline down into a canyon, past thick protruding rocks and other such natural debris. It shuddered and jumped. Its boiler wheezed and strained violently, the pressure gauge tapping and slapping its enclosure in panic.
From beneath the cab, metal splintered out in tremendous bursts. The right-hand side pistons that pulled against the drive wheels broke away, the ones still connected lashing their housings with razor-sharp fragments.
The floor began to slip from Franco’s feet as the unbalanced momentum split the crank pin and axle to a front pair of wheels, forcing the frame into the tracks. Sleepers were churned upward, split in some cases. The sky was peppered with gravel.
Lumber and steel filled the air as the Gambler’s Den – now totally out of control – gouged into the ground, destroying all before it, and the further it sped, the sharper it tipped, until Franco found himself in the air.
The train slipped the tracks, pulling the connecting carriages with it as the engine fell onto its side and skidded across sand, and rock, and whatever else the Sand Sea had deposited in its lifetime.
The horrible, crunching sound filled the air with dust and smoke in one confusing mass that swept through the canyon mouth.
Franco managed to remain conscious despite being thrown into the arrangement of pipes and valves, still wedged between them, the imprints of which remained quite prominently upon his person. Every limb had to be willed into life as he rolled off, landing heavily on the cab side that the engine had been turned upon. He groaned aloud, unsure whether anything was broken, struggling to make sense of his surroundings as fireflies danced in his vision. Again he rolled, onto his front now, encouraging his blurry vision into sharpness.
Misu lay in a crumpled heap, her body quite motionless, covered with cuts and other injuries that were not visible. A gash on her forehead painted her ear and shoulder with red, its effects furthermore visible in a tangled, slick mass of black hair. It didn’t look good for her, he concluded. In fact it didn’t look good for either of them.
Franco’s nostrils picked up the stench of smoke when it had filtered out the pungent blood and sand. He was unsure as to the cause, knowing full well that it wasn’t important. The only matter of concern now was escape. He had to escape. His fingers bit into the cab window frame, dragging him along. Powerful hisses of steam infiltrated the ringing that had previously inhabited his ears, encouraging haste. Finally he reached Misu, overturning her to witness her closed, expressionless face.
* * *
Wilheim’s men had fallen back in retreat, the last remains engaged in private skirmishes with gunfire subsiding in the distance. Predictably they resisted arrest, escaping how they saw fit. Bluecoats surrounded the remaining carriages of the locomotive, with everyone inside subsequently arrested. Everybody had lowered their guns. Nobody tried to do otherwise.
Atop the ridge, Bluecoats finally made their way to overlook the canyon, surveying the crash. The engine, its tender, and accompanying carriage were contorted alongside the rails that it had jumped, sprawled out in an almighty mess. The Bluecoats had all witnessed the smoke and steam that had erupted from a far distance, spurring them on faster. The entire sight was curiously eerie.
There was silence. There was smoke. There was steam.
Then came the explosion.
Without warning, the Den’s boiler ripped from its housing, its contained pressure far beyond restraint. It exploded violently, fanning the fire-tubes outward like a hundred steel spider legs. Fire and water launched outward. Another rush of dust whipped through the canyon, a blinding, choking veil that hung in the air. The ground cratered around the wreckage of the engine and its remaining carriages, revealing the total destruction of what was once known as the Gambler’s Den.
Predictably, there was nothing to claim by either party of pursuers.