Mikel, under the impression that Viktor was responsible for the whistle, stumbled onto the tracks to cross and put a decent scare into the tourists. His feet felt their way across the iron bars and loose stones. Under the cover of his coat, his hidden face was snickering with glee at the terror of the women.
“Mikel!” Misha shouted. “No! No! Go back!”
But Mikel stepped over the tracks, onwards to where he heard the gasps. His sight was obscured by the cloth fabric that covered his head to effectively resemble a headless man. Viktor stepped out from the deserted ticket office and raced towards the group. At the sight of another silhouette, the whole family scampered, screaming, for the safety of the VW. Viktor was in fact trying to alert his two friends that he was not responsible for what was happening. He leapt onto the tracks to push the unsuspecting Mikel to the other side, but he misjudged the velocity of the anomalous manifestation.
Misha watched in horror as the locomotive crushed his friends, killing them instantly and leaving nothing behind but a sickening scarlet mess of bone and flesh. His large blue eyes froze in place, as did his gaping jaw. Shocked beyond cogency, he beheld the train dissipate into thin air. Only the screams of the American women rivaled the fading whistle of the murderous machine, as Misha’s mind took leave of its senses.
2
The Virgin of Balmoral
“Now you listen, boy, I will not allow you to walk through that door until you turn out yer pockets! I have had enough of fake fuckers acting like real wally’s and prancing ‘round here, calling themselves K-squad. Over my dead body!” Seamus warned. His red face was shivering as he laid down the law to the man trying to leave. “K-squad is not for losers. Aye?”
The group of robust, furious men standing behind Seamus agreed in a roar of affirmation.
Aye!
Seamus pinched one eye and snarled, “Now! Fucking now!”
The pretty brunette folded her arms and sighed impatiently, “Jesus, Sam, just show them the goods already.”
Sam turned and looked at her in horror. “In front of you and the ladies here? I don’t think so, Nina.”
“I’ve seen it,” she scoffed, looking the other way, nonetheless.
Sam Cleave, journalistic elite and prominent local celebrity, had been reduced to a blushing schoolboy. Regardless of his rugged good looks and fearless attitude, compared to the K-squad of Balmoral, he was nothing but a prepubescent altar boy with a complex.
“Empty yer pockets,” Seamus sneered. His skinny face was crowned with a knitted hat he wore on the sea during fishing hours, and his breath smelled like tobacco and cheese, rounded off by flat beer.
Sam bit the bullet, or else he would never be admitted to the Balmoral Arms. He lifted his kilt, revealing his bare kit to the panel of brutes that called the pub home. For a moment, they stood in judgment
Sam whimpered, “It is cold, lads.”
“Wrinkled is what it is!” Seamus bellowed in jest, leading the choir of patrons in a deafening cheer. They opened the door to the establishment, allowing Nina and the other ladies to enter first, before ushering the handsome Sam through with pats on the back. Nina grimaced at the embarrassment he endured and winked, “Happy birthday, Sam.”
“Ta,” he sighed and happily received the kiss she delivered on his right eye. The latter had been a ritual between the two, even from before they were former lovers. He kept his eyes closed a while after she pulled away, savoring the flashbacks.
“Give the man a drink, for Christ’s sake!” one of the pub men shouted, pointing at Sam.
“I take it the K-squad stands for kilt-wearing?” Nina guessed, regarding the flocking collection of crude Scots and their various tartans.
Sam took a swig of his first Guinness. “Actually, the ‘K’ is for knob. Don’t ask.”
“Do not need to,” she replied, putting the neck of her beer bottle to her deep maroon lips.
“Seamus is old school, as you can tell,” Sam appended. “He is a traditionalist. No skivies under a kilt.”
“Of course,” she smiled. “So, how cold is it, then?”
Sam laughed and ignored her teasing. He was secretly ecstatic that Nina was with him on his birthday. Sam would never admit it, but he was elated that she survived the horrendous injuries she suffered during their last expedition to New Zealand. Had it not been for Purdue’s foresight, she would have perished, and Sam did not know if he would ever survive another woman he loved, dying. She was beyond precious to him, even as a platonic friend. At least she still allowed him to flirt with her, which kept his hopes up for a possible future rekindling of what they once had.
“Have you heard from Purdue?” he asked suddenly, as if trying to get past the obligatory inquiry.
“He is still in hospital,” she reported.
“I thought he was given a clean bill by Dr. Lamar,” Sam frowned.
“Aye, he was. Took him time to recover from the basic medical treatment, and now he is proceeding with the next stage,” she said.
“Next stage?” Sam asked.
“They are preparing him for some corrective surgery,” she answered. “You cannot blame the man. I mean, what happened to him left some ugly scars. And since he has the money…”
“I agree. I would have done the same,” Sam nodded. “That man is made of steel, I tell ya.”
“Why do you say that?” she smiled.
Sam shrugged and exhaled, thinking of their mutual friend’s resilience. “Dunno. I reckon the wounds heal and the plastic surgery restores, but Christ, the mental torment of that day, Nina.”
“You are too right, love,” she responded with an equal amount of concern. “He would never admit it, but I think Purdue’s mind must endure unfathomable nightmares at what happened to him down in the Lost City. Jesus.”
“Tough as nails, that bugger,” Sam shook his head in admiration for Purdue. He raised his bottle and looked Nina in the eye. “To Purdue… may the sun never scorch him and the snakes find his wrath.”
“Amen!” Nina echoed, clinking her bottle against Sam’s. “To Purdue!”
Most of the rowdy crowd in the Balmoral Arms did not hear Sam and Nina’s toast, but there were some who heard — and knew the meaning of the chosen phrases. Unbeknownst to the celebrating duo, a silent figure observed them from the far side of the pub. The strong built man who watched them drank coffee, not alcohol. His hidden eyes glaring in secret at the two people he has taken weeks to track down. Tonight things will change, he thought as he watched them laughing and drinking.
All he needed was to wait long enough, so that their libation would efficiently render them less than sharp enough to react. All he needed was five minutes alone with Sam Cleave. No sooner had he wondered when the opportunity would present itself, when Sam laboriously came off his stool.
In a comical way, the famous investigative journalist clutched the edge of the bar, whipping his kilt down for fear of his buttocks finding the lens of one of the patrons’ cell phones. It had happened before to his mortified surprise, when he was photographed in the same kit, atop an unstable plastic fair table at the Highland Festival a few years back. Wrongful footing and an unfortunate flip of his kilt soon had him voted sexiest Scotsman in 2012, by the Ladies’ Auxiliary Military Corps in Edinburgh.
He crept carefully toward the obscured doors to the right side of the bar, marked ‘Hens’ and ‘Cocks’, heading hesitantly for the applicable door. Nina watched him with great amusement, ready to rush to his aid, should he confuse the two genders in a moment of inebriate semantics. In the rowdiness of the crowd, the elevated volume of the footie on the big wall-mounted flat screen played a soundtrack to culture and tradition. Nina took it all in. After having being in New Zealand the past month, she was homesick for the Old Town and the tartans.