The train whistle sounded, bellowing through the pass and echoing off the stone. Black smoke billowed as the train engine strained against the incline. Hawthorne dug his spurs in, pushing the Morgan faster. The horse huffed and sweated.

  Something misshapen stood on the landing platform at the rear of the train. It hovered there for a moment, seeming to watch Hawthorne getting closer and closer. And then it dropped like a sack off the train and onto the tracks.

  It thudded, bounced, came to rest half-on the rails. The distance between it and Hawthorne shrank, and when he saw what it was an icy shiver touched the base of his neck.

  It was a woman, or at least it had been at one point. Naked and ashen, blood-streaked from head to toe.

  Someone had done ... something to her, some sort of demonic surgery. She had a third leg, attached with suture wire to her left hip. At each shoulder, another arm had been sewn. With the extra limbs, she looked like a crippled spider, flopping around on the rails.

  Nearly on top of her, the Morgan reared up in fright and threw Hawthorne off. He landed hard on the tracks, tried to roll with the fall as best he could. Pain jolted through his left shoulder and the breath in his lungs expelled all at once and didn't come back.

  He felt the tracks rumbling under him, heard the horse's hooves clatter off into the woods. Heard the stitched-up thing moaning and pulling itself toward him.

  He willed himself to move but his body wouldn't respond. He struggled to draw breath into his lungs. From very close by, the thing moaned and cried and pulled itself closer.

  On his back, he managed to turn his head to look. Less than six feet away, the thing was clutching the ties with three of its four clawed hands, dragging the rest of its sallow body laboriously nearer. It gazed at him with hungry, desperate eyes. It opened its mouth. Blood dripped from broken teeth, and it wailed.

  Hawthorne rolled over onto his left side. Pain shot up his shoulder and through his torso. He ignored it, started to push himself up.

  One twisted hand gripped him by the leg. Another grabbed his gun belt, pulled closer. It smelled like blood and shit, a pungent death smell that Hawthorne knew all too well. He tried to kick away from it, but a third hand found purchase on his coat and the thing pulled itself on top of him.

  Directly over his face, dripping blood and bile, the thing moaned, "Help ... me ..."

  Hawthorne snarled, "Get off!" He shoved the thing from him and scrambled away. The thing grabbed at his legs. He kicked it in the mouth, rolled off the tracks and got to his feet.

  It had pulled his gun belt off and now held it in one hand while the other three tried to drag its body closer to him. Hawthorne took a step toward it, kicked it viciously in the face. More of its teeth broke. He kicked again, two, three times, until the bones of its face were shattered. It dropped the gun belt but kept trying to reach him, moaning the whole time.

  "Son of a bitch," Hawthorne said. He dodged in, grabbed the gun belt and pulled out the Schofield. He shot the thing four times in the face.

  It stopped moaning and wailing, rolled over onto its back. Its face was nothing but a lumpy mess of blood and bone now, but the limbs continued to twitch and jerk. The third leg clawed spasmodically at the tracks.

  Hawthorne put his belt back on and reloaded the revolver. He stared at the thing for a long moment, getting his breath back.

  He'd lost his hat in the fall, and the pale white scar on his forehead seemed to shine in the moonlight, the shape of a cross that cut down to the bridge of his nose and from temple to temple. It ached now, and he touched it half-unconsciously and then pulled his hand away.

  He glanced around for the hat, couldn't find it. He shrugged and started looking for the Morgan.

  The horse was in the woods and it shied away when he approached. But after a time, he caught the reins and mounted up. The train was still visible, moving slow through the pass.

  Hawthorne glanced again at the thing that had fallen off the train, the thing that used to be human. Its seven limbs still jerked like a spastic, and the horror and revulsion he'd felt before was gone now, replaced with an intense, burning rage.

  He spurred the horse hard and shot off after the locomotive.

  * * *

  The train was just coming out of the pass and into another cluster of pines when he gained on it. The engine wasn't yet back up to full speed. The wheels chugged hard, black smoke belched, and Hawthorne pushed the horse until he was beside the caboose.

  Slow for a train, but taxing for a horse. The animal was giving all it had, hooves pounding the dirt next to the rails, snorting with effort, its black hide slick. It had been a bad night for the Morgan.

  But it would be a worse night for someone else.

  Hawthorne drew the horse as close as he could to the caboose, about two feet to his left, switched the reins to one hand. The train was deafeningly loud. He spotted a hand-grip near where it connected to the car in front of it. He got his boots out of the stirrups and placed one foot firmly on the saddle. For three long seconds, he balanced precariously, half-standing.

  He jumped.

  The horse veered away and Hawthorne's fingers latched onto the hand-grip as the rails sped by inches below him. He pulled himself up and over to the connecting platform and drew the Schofield, crouched, took a moment to get his breath.

  He tried the door to the caboose, but it was secured from the inside. He turned his attention to the connecting car. The door there had a beveled window, and inside the car, a single gas lamp cast twisted gold light on the glass. Hawthorne pushed the door open.

  It was a passenger car, but there were no passengers. No living ones, anyway. From front to back, corpses lined the benches. Men, women, children. Most had been hacked to pieces and were missing arms or legs. Hawthorne counted twelve dead. Blood soaked the floor under his boots and splattered the walls and windows. The stench of it assailed his nostrils, like the rotting stink of Hell itself.

  The one lit gas lamp was at the front of the car, and the flickering light from it made the dead faces look as if they were grimacing. Hawthorne kicked aside a man's arm on the floor and started cautiously forward.

  He half-expected one of the corpses to grab at him as he passed, still showing some sign of unnatural life, the way the others on the track had done. But these dead were truly dead. He tread carefully through the car anyway, gun ready. At the far end, he pushed open the door and went through.

  The next car was worse, blood so thick on the floor that his boots sloshed through it like a shallow pond. Some of the dead had been altered. And discarded. He spotted a man with a second head half-sewn onto his chest. Both mouths opened and closed like drowning fish.

  Another man, a black porter, had a young white girl attached to his back. The porter crawled slowly through the blood, toward Hawthorne. The girl's arms and legs kicked uselessly, sluggishly, in the air.

  Hawthorne put a bullet in each of their heads, and the porter stopped crawling.

  There were others, men and women with various body parts removed and new ones added. Arms, legs, hands, attached to their heads or chests or hips. All still moving, still moaning and crying.

  Hawthorne had seen many monstrous things in his life. He'd seen demons and supernatural creatures and all manner of evil. But this ... it was horrifyingly surreal. He felt as if he'd stepped into a waking nightmare.

  He went through the car, kicking aside twitching corpses and random limbs.

  And in the third and last passenger car, he found the monster responsible for it all.

  A huge, bald man in a blood-stained suit stood at the far end of the car, knee-deep in the dead. He had a woman's corpse draped over a bench like a length of linen. He was carving off her head with a hacksaw.

  He looked up when Hawthorne came in, and his little eyes lit up. He opened his mouth to speak but Hawthorne didn't give him a chance—he raised his revolver and shot the big man in the chest.

  The behemoth hardly blinked. He looked down at his chest where the bullet had entered. He was already covered in so much blood that it was impossible to tell what blood was his and that of his victims. He looked back up at Hawthorne, and spoke in a thick, immature voice, "Ow. That sort of hurt."

  Hawthorne shot him again, in very nearly the same place, and the big man dropped his hacksaw, took an almost dainty step backward and grunted. There was a black valise on the bench next to him. He reached into it and pulled out a razor-thin stiletto.

  "Drop it," Hawthorne said.

  The big man ignored him and balanced the blade on his fingertips. Before Hawthorne could react, it was flying.

  He got off one shot that went wild before the stiletto cut into his forearm, stuck there. He dropped his gun, glanced briefly at the blade, and when he looked up again, the big man was barreling down on him.

  The floor shook and the windows rattled as the monster's shoes pounded toward him. Hawthorne yanked the knife out of his arm, had it in his left hand when the big man slammed into him.

  The impact knocked the breath out of Hawthorne's lungs. He went backward over a bench with the behemoth on top of him, fell against a woman with half her face removed. Her body slumped away but she stared at them with wide, blinking eyes.

  Hawthorne was on his back, blood soaking his clothes. A pair of huge fists pummeled him in the face and neck as the big man blubbered, "You can't be here! You'll ruin everything!" Hawthorne tried to roll his head with each punch, but the fists were like sledgehammers and everything was beginning to go black around the edges.

  And suddenly the big man stopped. He stared at Hawthorne and a look of bewilderment came over his round, bland face. He was transfixed by the scar on Hawthorne's forehead, the pale white shape of a cross.

  In a whiny, phlegm-choked voice, he said, "The cross ... are you God? Are you Jesus?"

  The momentary reprieve was all Hawthorne needed to recover. He said, "Shut up," and planted the stiletto in the side of the big man's neck.

  Blood arced away and the big man howled in pain. His beefy fingers went to the knife. Hawthorne punched him in the mouth, hard, and pushed him off. The big man rolled aside, trying to yank the knife out of his neck. Hawthorne pulled himself up by the back of the bench. One of the corpses grabbed at his arm. He knocked it down, stood up on wobbly legs.

  The monster had managed to pull the blade out of his neck and was getting to his feet. With one hand over his wound, he glared at Hawthorne, said, "You aren't supposed to be here, Lord. This isn't for you. You aren't supposed to be here. I don't want to make you a sacrifice, I don't want to. Don't make me, Lord."

  Hawthorne frowned, glanced around for his revolver. He spotted it lying under a bench, covered in blood. He dove for it just as the big man came at him again, this time brandishing the stiletto.

  On the floor, Hawthorne grabbed the gun, rolled over with it pointing at the monster just as the stiletto was coming down at him. He fired.

  The hammer clicked. Misfire. The cylinder was choked with blood from the floor.

  The big man roared and Hawthorne started to roll away but the blade came down in his left shoulder.

  The force of it felt like being pinned to the floor. Hawthorne gritted his teeth, fought off the wave of black that threatened to wash over him. He punched and kicked, almost blind with pain, and smashed his knuckles into the big man's nose.

  The big man made a choking noise deep in his throat. He pulled the blade out of Hawthorne's shoulder, started to come down with it again. Hawthorne grabbed the man's wrist, gripping it hard. The monster pushed down and Hawthorne held the wrist with every ounce of strength he had. The man outweighed him by at least a hundred pounds, and was clearly stronger, yet Hawthorne's will was iron.

  But the blade, very slowly, began to lower, closer and closer to Hawthorne's face. With his other fist, he punched the big man in the nose, over and over, still the blade inched its way down.

  Hawthorne jabbed his fingers into the man's eyes.

  The behemoth bellowed in pain, hands going to his face, and fell back. Hawthorne kicked his way out from under him, dragged himself a few feet away. Again, he got to his feet, felt a shimmer of dizziness blanket his head. He ignored it, took two steps toward his enemy and planted a boot in the man's throat.

  The monster's cries choked away. On hands and knees, he swiped out with the stiletto, slicing across Hawthorne's thigh.

  Hawthorne grimaced in pain, blood gushing down his leg. He stepped back, into a bench. The corpse of a man with no legs and only one arm slumped into him, moaning miserably in his ear. Hawthorne shoved the thing away, struggled to get back up.

  The big man had crawled to the other side of the car. He stood up, weaving on his feet. His eyes red and bleeding from Hawthorne's fingers.

  They faced each other across the length of the train car.

  The big man said, "You ... you aren't Jesus."

  "No kidding."

  "But that cross on your head. Is it meant to mock? Are you the Devil?"

  "No," Hawthorne said. "But the Devil is a friend of mine. Says he misses you. Wants me to send you along, pronto."

  The big man breathed hard, shook his head. A sly smile spread across his face. He said, "You're no friend of my master. You have no friends. I can tell."

  "Your master?"

  He nodded. "Everything I do, I do for him. He's given me this power, this power to alter and create. It's all to glorify his name. Do you understand? I have the dark touch of imagination. I can make new, twisted things out of the rubbish of the old."

  "New, twisted things," Hawthorne said. "I reckon you're twisted enough already."

  "Of course I am! Do you think the master would assign work this important, this ... sacred ... to someone who didn't understand the twisted path? And I know I'm bound for Hell and torment when I'm done. I know that. But it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make. Why doesn't anyone understand sacrifice? So selfish. Everyone is so selfish."

  "The Devil tells you to do this," Hawthorne said.

  "Yes! You do understand! He talks to me. He whispers in my ear. Can you see him? Please, tell me you can see him. Here, perched on my shoulder."

  The big man looked lovingly at his left shoulder, as if there was something there, something that meant the world to him.

  Blood was pouring from Hawthorne's leg and forearm and shoulder, and it was getting harder to stand. For a moment, he could almost see it on the man's shoulder, almost. A chittering, ugly rodent with matted fur and red eyes. But it faded away.

  He said, "There's nothing on your shoulder. You're a delusional maniac. And you need to die."

  "There's nothing delusional about the things you've seen this night," the man said, grinning like a spoiled, satisfied child. "You've seen the work I've done. You can't tell me I'm a madman."

  "Whatever the case, it ends here and now."

  The man said, "No, I'm afraid not. Whether you are God or the Devil, you are rubbish now. You are an ingredient."

  The man fished into his valise again, came out with a machete. The steel gleamed gold in the gas lamp. He moved toward Hawthorne, roaring.

  Behind Hawthorne, a gun boomed once, echoing through the car, nearly rupturing his ear drums. The big man screeched in pain, dropped the machete and clutched his hand.

  Hawthorne turned, saw a man standing there behind a veil of gun smoke, his face twisted with fear. He still pointed the gun at the monster but didn't fire again.

  Hawthorne knew him. He had a wanted poster in his coat pocket with the man's face on it.

  He grabbed the gun away from Bill Cobb, who didn't try to stop him, and turned his attention back to the big man, who was howling and trying to stop the flow of blood from his shattered hand.

  Hawthorne shook his head. The monster took two bullets to the chest and hardly blinked, but a bullet in the hand and he was falling to pieces.

  He took the three paces calmly, placed the barrel against the monster's head, and pulled the trigger.

  The big man fell, but he wasn't dead. Hawthorne pumped another bullet into his head, shattering bone, and brain matter painted the floor along with all the blood. The big man twitched, even with half his face gone.

  "Sonofabitch," Hawthorne said.

  He picked up the machete, took a deep breath, and lopped off the big man's head.

  That did the trick.

  Weak now with blood loss, Hawthorne dropped the machete and turned back to Cobb, who stood there in shock.

  "Where'd you come from?"

  Cobb stared in horror at the corpses all around. They finally stopped moving and moaning—the big man's death meant their death. He said, "I ... I was in the caboose. I locked myself in. It was ... it was horrible. A nightmare. Jesus God, it was the most horrible thing I've ever seen. When I saw you go into that passenger car, I worked up the courage to come out. Thought maybe it was safe then."

  "Where's your wife?"

  Cobb finally looked at Hawthorne. "My ... my wife?"

  "Bette Cobb. Where is she?"

  "Mister, how do you know—"

  "Where?"

  Cobb sighed, motioned with his head toward the woman at the other end of the car, the one who's head the big man had been sawing off. He said, "There. There's my Bette. I couldn't save her."

  "You left her here while you ran off to hide."

  "No, mister, it wasn't like that, I swear! I tried to save her, I really did! But I—"

  "And Bette's sister, in Carson City. You killed her."

  "How do you know that? Jesus Christ, who are you? I swear, I didn't—"

  Hawthorne raised the gun and pointed it at Cobb. He said, "I'm here to kill you, Bill Cobb."

  Cobb began backing up, hands in the air. "Christ, no. Mister, don't. Not after all this. Please ... I ... I helped you just now! I saved your life! You owe me."

  Hawthorne considered for a moment, then said, "I reckon you're right. I do owe you."

  Cobb breathed a sigh of relief. "Oh, thank God!"

  Hawthorne pulled the hammer back. "I'll make it quick."

 

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