Chapter 1 #2
Kyle swallowed, suddenly uncertain. He hadn’t considered that anyone would ever believe that he was anything but the victim here. But now he looked at the situation from the conductor’s point of view and he could see how it might seem.
“I can explain,” Kyle began.
“Yes, I’ll bet you can,” the conductor said. “Arrest him and the other two.”
Redhead and Tall took off running, and two of the guards set off after them.
Kyle shook his head. “Where do they think they can run?” he asked. “They’re on a train. Not a lot of options, are there?”
The conductor sighed. “No, but you’d be amazed how often some poor fool tries it. So, let’s you and me go and have a little chat.”
Before Kyle could get another word out, the conductor had him by the arm and was frog-marching him down the corridor.
As they passed the woman Kyle had helped earlier, she looked surprised to see him in custody, but she only shook her head and went on her way.
They continued in the direction of the engine, where Kyle had been headed in the first place, and stopped in a car where the staff stayed and all the administration that a journey across the country could demand was done. The conductor had an office here that was hardly larger than a broom closet.
Kyle was deposited in a seat and the conductor sat opposite him.
“I am Mr. Chaney, conductor of this fine engine. And you are?” he asked, taking a book from a pile at his elbow. He opened it to a new page and slotted some carbon paper between two pages.
“My name is Kyle Marks.”
Mr. Chaney picked up his pen from its holder on his desk and dipped it in an ink bottle. Then he wrote Kyle’s name on the paper.
“So, what happened?” Mr. Chaney asked.
Sitting back in the chair in the very cramped office that smelled of smoke and paper, Kyle told the story of how he’d been minding his own business when he was jumped by two ruffians.
“Could I see your ticket stub?” Mr. Chaney asked.
“It’s in my suitcase,” Kyle said. “I have the key right here. We can go and get it.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes!”
“Tell me again how you bested two men,” Mr. Chaney asked, frowning as though he couldn’t recall what Kyle had said not two moments ago.
Kyle explained about his lucky throw and how the shock of it had caused Tall to loosen his grip.
“Then it was all just a matter of aiming a kick at Tall’s shins, which was easy, and he let me go,” Kyle said, smiling.
He waited while the conductor scribbled his notes.
“So, can I go? Only my friends will be expecting me in the dining car soon, and they cause all kinds of trouble when they have a mind to.”
“Is that so?” Mr. Chaney asked, looking amused. “All kinds of trouble, hey? Well, not on my train!”
Kyle swallowed. Perhaps that had been the wrong word choice. And how was being a generally lucky man suddenly so very unlucky on this train?
Mr. Chaney was a plump man with glistening jowls and a receding hairline.
He had a mustache that curled onto his cheeks, and he clearly took great pride in it.
His navy blue uniform was neatly pressed and didn’t have so much as a speck of dust on it, and all his brass buttons shone.
It was obvious he was not a man to be trifled with.
“Look,” Kyle said, trying not to sound combative despite his running low on patience. “Could you just tell me what I supposedly did wrong? I was just trying to defend myself and my property from two robbers.”
“A likely story,” Mr. Chaney said with a shake of his head. “And what proof do you have that you weren’t robbing them?”
For a moment, Kyle stared at the man uncomprehendingly. “That I wasn’t robbing them?” he asked slowly. This had to be the first time he’d ever been accused of something like that. “I don’t know. How would one prove?—”
He got no further.
There was a sound like a bullhorn, and Mr. Chaney’s expression changed from accusatory to surprised to downright concerned in a matter of seconds. He shot to his feet a lot faster than Kyle thought the man could move and hurried to his door.
Just as he reached it, there came the disconcerting sound of metal grinding on metal as the train let out a high-pitched scream. And then the world jerked. Kyle was thrown into the desk and was only able to catch himself at the last moment as he sprawled across the conductor’s paperwork.
Then came the lurching.
Something was wrong, that was obvious, but what it was, Kyle wasn’t sure of. All he knew was that a mighty force was pinning him to the desk, flattening him into it as the train slid every which way, all the while making that terrible grinding, screaming sound.
Mr. Chaney was still stuck in the doorway. Something huge banged into them and sent the conductor flying. He landed on Kyle’s chair, falling backward over the armrest and almost landing on top of Kyle when the train lurched once more and dislodged the conductor in the direction of his desk.
There was another boom and another and then a horrible ripping noise as though metal was being stripped from its moorings. Things fell all around them, crashing to the floor with noise almost as deafening as the train’s screeching.
They were sliding in the other direction now, and the floor had taken on a strange downward angle. But how could that be? How could there be a down on a railway track? It made no sense.
“Oh no,” the conductor said. “Oh no.”
“What?” Kyle asked.
He never got his answer as the floor continued to tip until Kyle and the conductor were thrown along with the furniture onto what had been, until recently, a wall.
And then came the boom of an explosion and things rattled.
A golden hot fireball raced by the window, searing everything in its path, and bits of metal clanged and ricocheted off surfaces around them.
Kyle gripped Mr. Chaney’s arm. “What is going on?” he demanded.
“I believe we’ve crashed,” the conductor said in a surprisingly calm tone.
Then the slipping and falling sensation began again.