Molly and I had taken the opportunity to fall back to the rear door. I looked down the length of the carriage, at the army of blood-red men striding through the debris of dead guards, with flames and smoke at their backs as fire consumed the whole back half of the restaurant car. They were still coming for me, relentless and implacable, like demons out of Hell.
“Well,” said Molly, just a bit breathlessly, “I think we know now just who it was killed all those people at the Department of Uncanny. Men who can’t be stopped, with inhuman brute strength, who don’t use weapons . . . Fits the bill, don’t you think?”
“Undoubtedly,” I said. “They killed all those people, looking for the Lazarus Stone. And they killed my grandfather. No mercy for these bastards, Molly.”
“I have no problem with the sentiment,” said Molly, “But I have to say . . . I really don’t see how we can stop people who won’t stay dead when you kill them!”
“The ones I threw out the window didn’t come back,” I said. “So let’s concentrate on the one tactic we know works. I mean, they’ve got to run out of numbers eventually. Haven’t they?”
“Do you want the truth, or a comforting lie?” said Molly.
“Convince me,” I said.
“This is a great idea!” said Molly. “I love it!”
We strode forward, laid hands on the first blood-red men we came to, and went to work. They had strength, but we had the element of surprise. I had my armour, and Molly had her magical protections. We picked the blood-red men up and tossed them out the carriage windows, one after the other. Half a dozen of them went flailing through the air, and out into the Siberian winter, before they even knew what was happening. But after that the blood-red men stuck close together, making it harder for us. And even as we thinned out the ranks, more and more of them came charging through that open doorway, appearing out of the smoke and flames as fresh reinforcements.
There had to be a dimensional Door back there somewhere. It was the only answer that made sense.
It was getting harder to see what I was doing. Half the carriage was on fire, with flames sweeping forward in sudden rushes, while thick black smoke hung heavily on the air. Molly’s face was flushed, and wet with sweat, I hoped just from the growing heat. The blood-red men kept throwing themselves forward, clinging stubbornly to my arms and shoulders, trying to drag me down by sheer force. I straightened my legs and stiffened my back, and would not fall. Molly was forced back behind me again, using me as a shield. I crushed skulls with my golden fists, and threw men away, but they just swarmed all over me with nightmare tenacity. More of them had caught on fire from the surroundings, but it didn’t slow them down.
We had to retreat; we had no choice. There were just too many of them, filling their end of the carriage, and forcing their way forward as more appeared. I backed away, step by step, with Molly behind me, until we slammed up against the rear door. I yelled for her to open the door, and then we both backed quickly through it. I slammed the door in the face of the blood-red men, and crushed the lock with my golden hand. Molly worked a quick spell to fuse the wood of the door with its surrounding frame. And then we both backed away some more. The door bucked and shuddered, and then tore apart as the blood-red men smashed right through it.
The other passengers, who’d thought they were safe from the madness, were shouting and screaming, running down the aisle to the far door and the next carriage on. Others retreated into the separate compartments, pulled the shades down, and locked the doors. Like that would help. One man stood his ground in the aisle, defiantly pointing a gun at the blood-red men coming through the broken door. His hand was shaking as he opened fire, and he barely missed Molly and me as we squeezed quickly past him. He soon ran out of bullets, but instead of doing the sensible thing and running with the rest, he just stood there and fumbled in his pockets for more ammunition. I grabbed at his arm to haul him along with me, but he just jerked his arm free and went back to his reloading. Molly was some way down the aisle, yelling to me, so I left him to it.
I caught up with Molly at the far end of the carriage. I hauled the door open and Molly darted through. I looked back just in time to see the blood-red men fall on the man who wouldn’t run. They surged forward, into the face of his bullets, uncaring and unaffected, even as he fired into them at point-blank range. They pulled him down and trampled him underfoot, and moved on. He didn’t scream for long. The blood-red men smashed in all the doors of the compartments they passed, and killed everyone they found. Again, the screams didn’t last long.
I retreated through the door, and locked it. There was nothing else I could do. I hurried down the new aisle with Molly at my side, and we soon caught up with the retreating passengers, packed so tight now that they filled the aisle and blocked the way to the next door. They shoved and fought each other blindly, in their need to get away. The blood-red men burst in the door and fell into the new carriage, bringing with them the last dying screams of slaughtered men and women, and the thick coppery smell of freshly spilled blood.
“I don’t think they intend to leave any witnesses,” I said to Molly. “I can’t let this go on. These people are dying because of us. Innocent bystanders. Just by being here, we’re endangering these people.”
“Well, what do you suggest?” Molly said roughly, her flushed face dripping with sweat. She was so exhausted she could barely hold herself up,
“I suggest we save as many as we can,” I said. “We can’t win this fight. There are too many attackers, and they won’t stay dead. Which is cheating, in my book. So, if we’re going to protect the other passengers, we need to lead the enemy away from them.”
I turned to the door in the carriage wall at my left, and kicked it open. My armoured boot sent the door flying out of its frame, and it went bouncing down the track behind us. Through the open gap, the featureless snow-covered landscape rushed by. I stuck my head out the gap, took a good look around, and then looked back at Molly.
“I saw we take the fight upstairs. Care to follow me up?”
“Oh hell,” said Molly. “Why not?”
I stepped out into the blasting wind, swung around, and clambered up the side of the heavily rocking carriage. The train’s jolting motions did their best to throw me off, but I grew sharp golden spurs on the palms of my gloves, and sank them deep into the wood of the carriage wall. It took me only a few moments to climb up onto the roof, stand up, and look around me. My armour kept me balanced as I took in the view. Snow and more snow, under an empty blue-grey sky. One of the back carriages was now completely consumed by fire, burning fiercely. Thick black smoke billowed up, snapped back in long dark threads by the racing wind. The flames were already spreading to the carriages on either side. Apparently sprinkler systems hadn’t been thought traditional.
Molly flew up to join me on the roof, soaring elegantly through the air. She landed hard beside me, as the last of her levitation magic ran out. She grabbed one of my arms to steady herself, and then quickly let go. She was shuddering hard in the bitter cold and the blasting wind. She was trying to maintain a layer of warmth around her, but it was already breaking down. Her magics were running out. But she wouldn’t say anything, so I couldn’t. It wasn’t as though there was anything I could do. Except stand between her and the worst of the blasting air, as a windbreak. She nodded briefly, appreciatively, but she was still shivering.
The blood-red men came climbing up both sides of the carriage, hauling themselves up by brute strength, quickly and without grace, punching holes in the outer walls to make climbing aids. Apparently untroubled by the rocking motion of the train, or the freezing wind. More of them burst out through the carriage windows, and out the doors at both ends. I moved quickly back and forth, kicking their hands away as they reached the roof, but there were just too many of them, and I couldn’t be everywhere at once. Molly tried to blast them away with sudden bursts of storm wind, but with her magics failing, her winds were quickly blown away and dispersed by the existing wind. All too soon there were thirty, forty blood-red men assembled on top of the carriage roof, with still more climbing up the sides.