Blood on the Tracks by Barbara Nickless Page B

waited. The smells of damp earth and sage wafted up, mingling with the sharp tang of creosote from the railroad ties. A lone crow circled overhead, and I followed it with my eyes, feeling some part of me up there with it, remote and unattached, free of asshole sheriffs and nightmare memories and war-shattered vets. Free of Weight.
    “Five minutes,” the dispatcher said in my ear.
    From the south, Engine 158346 was now visible, her headlamp and ditch lights burning brightly in the clear day like a star hooked to a workhorse. She was a four-thousand-horsepower war-bonnet, twelve feet wide, fifteen tall, and weighing two hundred tons. Part of the Powder River run, she’d been built to build America.
    But she was also a danger. Flat-out, she could go sixty miles an hour. Get too close, and her slipstream would drag you under her wheels. Cross her path, and her driver would not see you. And even if he did, it would take him a mile and a half to stop.
    By then, there would be nothing human about you except your DNA.
    I could hear her now. The steady thrum of her engine, and beneath that vibrant hum, the clack of her wheels like blood thumping in iron veins. The radio burst with static as everyone down the line confirmed their position. Next to me, Clyde tensed. I resnapped his lead and pulled him close, wrapping an arm around him.
    Railroad dispatch buzzed in my ear. “One minute.”
    The tunnel vision of combat closed in, shutting out everything but the train. No smells or sights, no sound or sense of touch other than what rolled in with Engine 158346.
    Our Lady squealed over the bridge, tossing off velocity, shrieking to a halt in a way that said stopping was all wrong, that the rhythm of the tracks should never be disrupted. Her steel sides swept by like a leviathan breaching, her wheels screaming in fury. Sparks kicked up from the rails and it looked like she would sail right on past. Stopping wasn’t what she was built for.
    But, finally, heavily, she conceded. She dragged to a halt, her brakes whooshing. The air stayed up, just as Albers had promised, and Clyde and I sprang to our feet. We sprinted across the grass then bounded up the stairs and into the cab, me shouting my name as I ran so the crew wouldn’t think I was a trespasser.
    Albers was sitting in the console behind the controls, his shotgun leaning against the wall within easy reach. The brakeman, Greg Walters, sat to his left, wide-eyed and pale. Walters rose and grabbed my arm as soon as I entered the cab.
    “Who is this guy, Sydney?” he asked. “I think I saw SWAT out there.”
    “He’s just a trespasser,” I told him. “No worries. But we’re going to be cautious. I want both of you down, out of sight.”
    “What? Why?” Walters asked even as he crouched on the internal stairs leading down to the head.
    “Bullets will be flying,” Albers answered gleefully. He clearly itched to be part of the action. But when I glared, he complied with my order, hunkering near Walters on the stairs and snugging the shotgun up to his chest like a lover.
    “Don’t even think of using that,” I told him.
    I removed Clyde’s lead and gave him the order to stay with the men. Then I clambered to the top of the locomotive so that I could watch for anyone approaching.
    Atop the engine, I shaded my eyes. The wind rippled through the prairie, spreading flat and desolate to either horizon. North of me, two deputies stood in full protective gear, scanning the southern terrain where Engine 158346 cleaved the land like a zipper.
    I listened to the running commentary on my radio as the sheriff and the SWAT leader talked to their teams. Men were clearing the DPUs and the gondolas; in the pristine silence of the flatlands, the clang of their boots on rusting platforms and metal ladders echoed like rifle shots.
    The searchers found an abandoned bedroll, a paperback mystery novel, three porno mags, fifteen empty whiskey bottles, a deck of cards, and what sounded like a