Thinking of Chili Pepper reminded her of her conversation with Alton. The Kryskills had connections with the tengu; otherwise Alton wouldn’t know where Jin Wong was or how to get hold of him. The elves trusted the tengu because they belonged to Tinker. Alton could get a message to Windwolf through the tengu.
One bar appeared in her phone’s signal indicator.
She tapped Alton’s number. “Come on! Go through!”
Alton answered his phone with, “Who’s this?”
“It’s me, Law!” she whispered.
“Lawrie? Did you find Oilcan? Where is he?”
“Shut up and listen! The oni have control of one of the passenger trains.”
“What? Say again?”
She risked talking louder. “The oni captured a passenger train! They have an inbound train.”
There was a pause and she was afraid she’d lost her signal. After a moment, Alton said, “Roger that.”
“Get a hold of Windwolf and the elves. They have to get to Station Square.”
“Say…” The line went choppy. “Lawrie? Windwolf needs to go where? Union Station?”
She peeked around the tree toward the sidling. There were no oni in sight. She spoke louder. “Oktoberfest! Station Square!”
“South Side?”
“Yes! The oni are going to attack the festival!”
“Say…”
Her phone went silent. “Shitshitshitshit.” The signal indicator was blank. She turned in a circle, trying to pick up a signal again. Nothing.
Hopefully Alton had gotten enough to do something. She swept her phone in a circle. She should call Usagi and the others and tell them to go home—
There was a loud metal clank from the direction of the siding. Law jerked around. The engine seemed louder than before. The air brakes hissed loudly as they released.
The oni were leaving!
Law took off running. Usagi and the kids! Ellen! Trixie! They would all be caught in the gunfire. If Alton didn’t understand the message—if he wasn’t connected as tightly with the tengu as she thought—if he wasn’t the man she thought he was…
The consequences were sickening.
At the edge of the forest, Bare Snow caught her. She jerked Law to a halt still deep in the shadows. “Wait! They’ll see you!”
The train was pulling away.
“We have to stop it!” Law whispered fiercely. She tried to tug free.
Bare Snow tightened her hold on Law’s wrist. “They will kill you if they see you!”
“I have to try!”
“You will fail.” Bare Snow was frustratingly calm. “I could hide from a thousand eyes, but you cannot. It would only take one oni with a gun and I’d be alone. I would not be able to kill them all and I cannot stop the train without you. We must find another way.”
“There isn’t another way!” Law wanted to shout, but locked her jaw against it. Bare Snow didn’t know anything about trains. It was impossible to leap onto a train once it was up to speed unless you were moving at the same speed. The track bed was too wide to jump from a vehicle on the service road. Law could drive the Dodge onto the tracks, but the ties would make jumping from the hood to the back of the train iffy as hell. There was also the question of who was going to be driving while Law jumped. The same reason she could get the Dodge onto the tracks also meant it could easily go back off. Bare Snow knew the mechanics of driving but still constantly stalled the Dodge.
How else could they catch the train? Law tried to recall everything her grandfather told her about the tracks east of the city. There wasn’t another siding until the split of the rails just before Station Square and that was too close to the crowd. If they derailed the train there, it could go flying into the Hooters parking lot.
There was the supply terminal. During Shutdown, barges on the Monongahela River offloaded rail supplies at Charleroi. Since there wasn’t a service road for most of the tracks eastward, the railroad had a fleet of maintenance vehicles that could travel on the rails.
“We could get one of the hi-rails.” Law turned toward the Dodge. “It’s a pickup truck that can be driven either on the highway or tracks. The railroad has some Land Cruisers that have conversion kits mounted on them. They’re also automatics with cruise control.”
“They have what?” Bare Snow released her hold on Law.
“It will stay at the same speed by itself. You don’t need to keep your foot on the gas. There should be at least one Land Cruiser at the terminal.”
Once they had the hi-rail, they could ambush the train.
“Here it comes.” Law gripped the wheel of the hi-rail.
She couldn’t actually see the engine; they’d decided to hide the Land Cruiser behind the Charleroi Water Filtration Plant. The low red-brick building stretched for several hundred feet beside the tracks. Traveling at sixty miles per hour, the train had triggered the crossing on the next block. The automatic system clanged as it lowered its gate, blocking an intersection that most likely no one had used for years.
Bare Snow was on the long flat rooftop of the water filtration plant. She had Law’s compound bow with her. Once upon a time, Law had cringed over how much money she had sunk into the top-of-the-line weapon. Now she considered it worth every penny.
The engine roared past Law’s hiding space. She braced herself, foot on the brake, counting cars as they flashed past the filtration plant’s driveway. “One. Two. Three.” They were still too far out to pick up a cell signal in the river valley. She wished there had been time to break into the terminal building proper and use the landline. She was counting on Alton to act as backup when really she had no clue if he could. Did he get hold of Jin Wong? Did the tengu spiritual leader convince Windwolf to go to Station Square? Had anyone thought to disperse the crowds? Was Usagi still there with all the children? Usagi had promised the half-elves that they could stay until dusk which was still hours away. “Nine. Ten. Eleven.” She gripped the wheel tightly. Over the whine and ringing of the steel wheels on steel track, she could make out Bare Snow’s running footsteps.
The open car flashed past. There were bodies sprawled on the tents, arrows standing out like exclamation points. One warrior stood in the very back, bringing up his rifle as if he’d just become aware of the death around him. There was a whisper of bowstring and he fell. Did he shout a warning before dying? Would there be a welcoming party when they tried scrambling onto the train?
The Land Cruiser dipped slightly as Bare Snow landed on the roof. She slid into the open passenger window. “Go!”
Law raced the hi-rail down the block, keeping just out of sight of the oni in the last passenger car. They reached the crossing just as the gate came up. She hit the conversion switch. The Land Cruiser’s AI took control of the steering wheel, found the tracks, positioned the SUV, and lowered the steel wheels into place. It only took twenty seconds but it seemed forever.
“Go! Go! They’re getting away!” Bare Snow cried.
“We’ll catch them!” Law hit the gas the moment she felt the car raise up, lifting the regular wheels off the ground. “We can go faster than them.”
They caught up to the train in two minutes. Law eased up until the Land Cruiser’s bumper was as close as she dared bring it to the train. “Get across and I’ll follow.”
A minute later, Bare Snow’s blue hair scarf appeared on the back of the train. Tied to one of the tent poles, it fluttered in the wind. Law set the cruise control. She shouldered a backpack of tools and opened her door. The track bed was a blur of motion under the Land Cruiser.