The Locomotive of Last Resort

Chapter 16: Shedding the Sick Skin

"Stand back!" Mavrik hissed, dragging Varkelion by his leather collar just as a hot jet of black, greasy bile sprayed from the structural pillar.

The liquid hissed on the deckplates, eating through the iron with a wet, bubbling growl. The smell of burning hair and hot copper filled the narrow maintenance corridor.

"That’s not hydraulic fluid," Varkelion said, his hand already on his revolver.

"It’s not," Mavrik panted. He wiped grease from his forehead, his hand shaking so hard he dropped his wrench. "It’s blood, Varkelion. Or whatever this thing uses to keep its bones together."

"The train is steel, Mavrik. It doesn't have bones."

"Look at the weld!" Mavrik pointed a trembling finger at the support beam.

The patch-plate they had welded over the hull breach three hours ago was warping. The cold-rolled steel wasn't just cracking; it was being pushed outward, peeling away like dead skin. Beneath the metal, thick, fibrous grey threads were pulsing, knotting themselves into tight, muscle-like bundles.

"The iron is rejecting the repairs," Mavrik whispered. "It’s spitting the rivets back out. I tried to hammer a brace onto the undercarriage of the trailing freight car, and the frame... it flexed. It bit the hammer right out of my hand."

"A loose plate caught your tool. Don't let your imagination run wild because the stokers are singing hymns."

"It didn't catch, Varkelion! It swallowed it! Look at the bulkhead!"

A deep, metallic groan echoed through the floorboards. It didn't sound like the usual screech of the rails. It was a wet, grinding sound, like teeth chewing on gravel. The walls of the corridor visibly contracted, the iron plating bowing inward by an inch.

"The pressure," Varkelion said, his jaw tightening. "The ballast tanks—"

"The tanks are empty!" Mavrik yelled, gripping Varkelion’s lapels. "The iron is angry! The song from the Fifth Carriage... it's changing the steel. It's making the metal hungry. If we don't decouple the trailing freight car, the infection is going to climb the spine of the train and hit the engine."

"That freight car contains half our spare parts and the emergency rations," Varkelion said, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. "We dump it, and we cut our survival window by half."

"If we don't dump it, our survival window is about thirty seconds!"

A violent shudder ripped through the floorboards. The lights in the corridor flickered, turned a sickly, bruised purple, and then died completely. In the darkness, the grey fibers in the wall glowed with a faint, bioluminescent rot.

"Conductor!" a voice screamed from the intercom speaker on the wall. It was Griss, his voice shredded by static and panic. "The rear coupling! It’s... it’s crawling! The freight car is pulling us back! We’re losing speed!"

Varkelion grabbed the receiver, ripping it off its brass hook. "Griss! Report! What do you mean, pulling us back?"

"The coupling lever is fused!" Griss screamed over a sound like tearing sheet metal. "The metal is growing over the gears! It’s like a hand, Conductor! It’s holding onto Carriage Twelve! It’s pulling us into the void—"

The line went dead with a wet, wet snap.

"We go," Varkelion said, tossing the receiver aside. "Get the plasma-cutter."

"The cutter won't work," Mavrik said, scrambling after him as Varkelion sprinted down the shaking corridor. "I told you, it feeds on heat! If you torch it, it will only grow faster!"

"Then we use the emergency charges," Varkelion growled. "Move, engineer!"

They pelted down the narrow gangways, the train tilting violently to the left. The screech of the wheels against the tracks was deafening now, a high-pitched, agonizing wail that vibrated through Varkelion's teeth. The walls on either side of them were warm to the touch, sweating a slick, oily condensation that smelled of old rot and ozone.

They burst through the heavy bulkhead door of Carriage Eleven and stepped onto the open-air coupling platform.

The wind hit them like a physical blow. The void outside was pitch-black, a churning sea of grey fog and jagged, floating crystalline shards that scraped against the train's outer hull. The tracks below them were barely visible, glowing with a faint, ghostly friction-spark.

"Look at the coupling!" Mavrik screamed over the roar of the wind.

Varkelion leaned over the safety railing.

Between Carriage Eleven and the trailing freight car, the heavy iron drawbar was gone. In its place was a massive, pulsing trunk of grey, fibrous sinew. It had swallowed the steel coupling completely, weaving itself through the heavy chains and hydraulic hoses. The mass was contracting, pulling the trailing car closer, its metal nose grinding against the rear platform of Eleven with a horrific, screeching rhythm.

"It’s eating it," Mavrik yelled, his eyes wide with horror. He pointed a flashlight down into the gap. "The freight car is dead weight, Varkelion! Its brakes are locked, but the rot is pulling it anyway! It’s dragging us down to a dead stop!"

"Where are the manual emergency release bolts?" Varkelion demanded.

"Under the main plate! But look at it—you can’t get a wrench near it!"

The grey fibers were lashing out, snapping like whips in the freezing wind. One of them caught a steel safety chain, wrapping around it and snapping the heavy links with a sickening ping.

"We have to blow the pin," Varkelion said. He reached into his heavy leather coat and pulled out a red steel canister—a dry-chemical explosive charge used for clearing track blockages.

"You'll destroy the rear platform!" Mavrik protested. "If you detonate that close to the draft gear, you'll rupture the main air brake line for the whole train!"

"If we don't detonate it, we stop," Varkelion snapped. "And you know what's waiting for us in the dark if we stop."

"Let me try to bypass the hydraulic lock first!" Mavrik scrambled toward the control box on the side of the platform, his boots slipping on the black grease coating the deck. "If I can dump the high-pressure fluid, it might freeze the tissue!"

"You have ten seconds, Mavrik!"

Mavrik ripped the cover off the hydraulic bypass panel. His hands flew over the valves, his knuckles bleeding where the cold metal bit his skin. "Come on... come on, you bastard..."

A thick, grey tendril shot out from the coupling, wrapping around Mavrik’s ankle.

"Varkelion!" Mavrik shrieked.

The tendril pulled. Mavrik’s feet slipped from under him, his head cracking against the iron deckplate. He was dragged toward the edge of the platform, toward the grinding teeth of the two cars.

Varkelion didn't hesitate. He lunged forward, drawing his heavy revolver. He fired three times into the pulsing grey cord wrapped around Mavrik's leg.

The shots boomed in the open air. The "living" metal didn't bleed; it shrieked. A high-pitched, ultrasonic whistle tore from the wound, spraying black, bitter bile across the platform. The tendril thrashed, releasing Mavrik’s leg.

Varkelion grabbed Mavrik by the collar of his grease-stained coat and dragged him back just as another bundle of grey cords slammed down where the engineer had been lying, denting the solid steel deck.

"The cutter!" Mavrik choked out, pointing to his belt. "Use the high-frequency knife! It’s cold-rolled steel! It doesn't use heat!"

Varkelion snatched the heavy, vibro-edged knife from Mavrik’s tool belt. He flicked the switch, and the blade began to hum with a high-frequency vibration that made his arm go numb.

"Get to the control cabin!" Varkelion ordered. "Prepare to gun the engine the second I give the signal! We need the momentum to break the remaining threads!"

"You can't stay down here alone! If that thing grabs you—"

"Go, Mavrik! That's an order!"

Mavrik scrambled up, his face pale, and bolted through the bulkhead door back into the safety of Carriage Eleven.

Varkelion turned back to the coupling. The grey mass was swelling, expanding like a bloated lung. It seemed to sense his presence. Several thin, whip-like filaments rose from the center, swaying in the wind like the antennae of a massive, buried insect.

He stepped onto the very edge of the shifting, grinding platform. The cold air of the void bit his face, smelling of old graves and wet iron.

He drove the vibrating blade into the center of the grey mass.

The reaction was instantaneous. The entire coupling platform buckled. The train gave a violent, sickening lurch to the right, nearly throwing Varkelion over the low rail. He held on with one hand, his fingers slipping on the greasy steel, while his other hand drove the knife deeper, sawing through the tough, fibrous cords.

The metal beneath his feet began to scream. Not the wind, not the wheels—the actual steel plates of Carriage Eleven were vibrating, weeping that black, acidic fluid.

Leave us, a voice seemed to whisper in the back of his mind. It wasn't a voice of words; it was a vibration, a low, tectonic hum that rattled his skull. We are one flesh now. The iron remembers.

"The iron is dead," Varkelion growled through gritted teeth. He twisted the knife, carving a deep, ragged gash through the main trunk of the coupling. "And so are you."

He pulled the dry-chemical explosive charge from his pocket, primed the three-second fuse, and shoved it deep into the wound he had just carved.

He turned and leaped back toward the doorway of Carriage Eleven.

As his boots cleared the threshold, he slammed his hand against the heavy pneumatic door closure. The thick steel door began to slide shut.

Through the narrowing gap, Varkelion saw the grey fibers erupt. They lunged after him, a dozen thick, pulsing tentacles slamming against the closing steel door with the sound of a sledgehammer hitting an anvil.

The door buckled, but it held.

"Mavrik! Now!" Varkelion roared into the intercom. "Full throttle!"

The explosion was a dull, heavy thump that shook the entire carriage.

The floor beneath Varkelion's feet dropped out for a fraction of a second as the train's speed suddenly surged. Through the thick glass of the observation window in the door, he watched the trailing freight car—Carriage Twelve—recede into the swirling grey fog of the void.

The severed coupling hung from the back of Carriage Eleven like a torn, bleeding stump. It thrashed weakly in the wind, then began to freeze in the bitter cold, turning into brittle, black stone before shattering into a thousand pieces that swept away into the dark.

Varkelion let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. He leaned against the bulkhead, his heart hammering against his ribs.

The door to the forward cabin slid open, and Mavrik stepped out, his face flushed with adrenaline, his hands still covered in grease and soot.

"We did it," Mavrik breathed. "The speed is picking up. We’re back up to forty knots. The drag is gone."

"We lost thirty tons of spare parts," Varkelion said coldly, sliding his knife back into his belt. "And forty percent of our fuel reserves were in that car's secondary hopper. We just cut our margin of error to zero."

"We didn't have a choice, Varkelion! If we kept that car, we would have stopped. You know what happens when we stop."

"I know," Varkelion said. He walked over to the buckled steel door, inspecting the deep dents where the grey fibers had slammed against it. "But look at this."

He pointed to the lower corner of the door.

A thin, grey thread, no thicker than a needle, was pulsing slowly in the seam between the door and the frame. It had bypassed the seal. As they watched, it burrowed into the metal of the interior wall, disappearing beneath the paint with a faint, wet hiss.

Mavrik’s face went completely white.

"It’s already inside," Mavrik whispered, his voice trembling. "It didn't start in Carriage Twelve, did it?"

Varkelion stared at the spot where the thread had vanished. He could feel the floorboards beneath his boots vibrating—not with the steady, rhythmic hum of the engine, but with a faint, irregular double-beat.

Like a heart.

"No," Varkelion said, his hand tightening on the grip of his gun. "It didn't. Get the stokers. Tell them to double the fire. We need to burn this out before it reaches the boiler."

But before Mavrik could move, the intercom on the wall crackled to life again. This time, it wasn't Griss.

It was a voice that sounded like a chorus of wet, grinding gears, speaking in a language that had no right to be heard on a train.

"The engine is already ours," the speaker hissed.

And then, from the front of the train, came the sound of the emergency brakes slamming on.