Chapter Nine
"At the back of the train, many discoveries and introductions are made"
Near Accident, Maryland
Wednesday 30th December 1931
21:30
Allen had been having a perfectly reasonable conversation with Zarc Drago when suddenly the radio in his suite crackled to life, a voice coming through at a volume that was almost deafening.
"THEY'RE GONE! IT GOT THEM! WE NEED HELP DOWN HERE! HELP!"
Before Allen could reached the radio, Sayaka got there first, purple dress swishing in an arc across the room as she hurried to answer the call.
"Noro, what's going on down there?" she asked "Is it the white suits?"
The only response she got with an ear-piercing scream, then silence.
The boy in coveralls, meanwhile, had finally succeeded in crawling along the bottom of the train to the freight cars, after an unfortunate miscalculation had set him to the first-class carriage instead.
He didn't know what was up with all these white suits and black suits and girls with knives, but he did know he wanted no part in it. Hiding out in the freight cars seemed to be the way to go.
He paused when he saw that one of the freight cars had their side-door open. They were supposed to be closed before departure. Did that mean someone was already in there? Someone sympathetic to his plight, or an enemy?
He got his answer not a second later.
Something, for he could only describe it as something, leant out of the open door, a screaming and thrashing man held by the collar with one hand. Without a pause for thought, the thing lowered the man down until his legs touched the track below.
The boy didn't want to see this. He'd seen the horrific injuries that occurred to people who fell from trains at this speed.
For a gut-churning few seconds, he heard that sound of true, unimaginable pain crawling up the man in black's throat as well as the sound of bones crunching and blood splattering against the carriages. Then, silence. Only the sound of the wheels thundering again the track.
The boy opened his eyes just in time to see the man in black being thrown back into the freight car, clearly deceased and now missing his legs. Then he and the thing that had just killed the man locked eyes – it had eyes? It was alive? A living thing then? – neither willing to look away or blink.
Finally, the urge to blink was too great for the boy, and he let his eyes shut.
When the opened again, the blood-covered thing was just inches from his face.
It then parted its lips – lips too? Almost human then – and muttered something that sent shivers down the boy's spine.
He screamed with horror and scrambled away under the carriages again as fast as he could so.
Mercifully, the thing didn't follow him.
Ray and Reira had now reached the third-class carriages. They anxiously looked for a place to hide, but the rooms here were much smaller than in first-class and most of them were occupied.
Ray finally had an idea as she opened one of the doors and found it was home to a broom cupboard, rather than a suite.
"Here you go" she gently pushed Reira in "You hide here. I'll hide in one of the wardrobes in the suites."
"But, Ray-" was all he managed to get out in reply.
"Don't worry, I'll be fine" Ray reassured him, pushing down on his head until he was crouching in the cupboard amongst the mops "Just stay quiet, and don't let them catch you."
The door closed, and he heard the sound of her running footsteps down the hall.
He waited a few seconds to make sure the coast was clear, then opened the door a crack and peeked out into the corridor. No sign of Ray.
'Good' he thought 'She's safe for now. Time to find those white suit guys.'
Near Bellegrove, Maryland
Wednesday 30th December 1931
23:30
Yuzu, in Yuya's opinion, was even more concerned about the safety of that bomb than he was. How long did it require to check on the thing? It certainly didn't help that they were only one carriage away from the mess in the caboose, and Yuya swore he heard screaming on three difference occasions, even if Noburu assured him it was just the wind racing past the train.
Finally, they were ready to go searching for Meiru.
Easier said than done.
They'd travelled all the way up to the dining car and found it empty. The only thing Michio could tell them was that Meiru had burst in with a knife at the same time as four hijackers.
"HIJACKERS?!" Yuya yelped before the others could shush him "WE'RE BEING HIJACKED AND THERE'S A RAIL TRACER?!"
"Rail Tracer" Michio scoffed "Poppycock. No such thing as a Rail Tracer."
Yuya then proceeded to try and tell him about the conductors in the caboose, but Yuzu hands got to his mouth first. She didn't think it was good idea to announce to the already on-edge dining car that the men who was supposed to be raising the alarm and rescuing them were dead.
"You said she headed toward second-class?" Yuzu checked. Michio nodded "Well we came from that direction, and we didn't see her."
"So she may be hiding in one of the carriages?" Noburu suggested.
"We should go check" Yuzu decided.
"Zarc and Ray and Reira are gone" Yuya noticed.
"Ray and Reira went running off the same way you did" Michio told them "The black suits took Zarc back to first-class."
"Oh no! I hope they're not doing horrible things to him in there!" Yuya stressed.
"Yugo and Rin are gone too" Yuzu pointed out.
"They went looking for you two" Michio explained "I haven't seen them since."
That just wound Yuya up even more, until Yuzu and Gongenzaka pulled him out of the dining car to look for Meiru.
They'd tried every empty room in second-class and were now checking third-class.
"I don't understand why she'd hide" Yuya told them for the thousandth time "She knew we were in the caboose, just there. Why would she hide just a few carriages away?"
"Maybe she saw something that made her hide?" Noburu suggested, trying another door handle. Locked.
"Like the Rail Tracer?!" Yuya suggested, voice high-pitched again.
"There may not be a Rail Tracer" Yuzu pointed out, opening another door. A broom cupboard – also empty "The conductors could've been killed by one of the white suits."
As she tried another handle, she heard a shout from inside the room.
"Boss! Is that you?!"
"She's in here!" Yuzu declared, throwing open the door.
As she predicted, in the centre of the small suite was Meiru, hands and ankles bound together with rope.
"Oh thank god! I thought you'd never find me!" she breathed a sigh of relief and Noburu rushed to remove the ropes "Assholes took my knife and everything!"
"What happened to you?" Noburu questioned.
"I was coming to find you" Meiru told him "I guess you've heard what happened up in the dining car by now. I was running along when someone grabbed me and tied me up in here. Some dude in a black suit. A little while later he brings in a blonde girl in white, all tied up as well. Just as I'm beginning to wonder what kind of party this is, another girl in white comes bursting in and attacks the guy with a knife. He goes running and she releases the other girl, said something about telling Yuri all of this, I think? Then the bitch leaves me in here – says she has no reason to release me!" She lowered her voice into a sarcastic Chicago accent "'Why? What would I get out of it? If you were a man at least I could get a kiss. But you're a girl. So you can stay right here. It's your fate to die right here.'" Meiru switched back to her regular voice, clearly annoyed. "God, what a creep! What's the girl version of a pervert?"
"What were you even doing, running into the dining car with a knife, anyway?" Yuzu questioned.
Meiru face went pink and she looked away. "Just a…misunderstanding."
"You're done" Noburu announced, ropes falling away as he helped the much smaller girl to her feet "Let's go. We don't want to be here if your friends in white and black come back."
"Great!" Meiru declared "Where are we going?"
"Freight car" Yuzu told her as they switched to the next carriage "We'll wait in there with the package. Then we can decide what to do about the others."
"The others?" Meiru blinked "Like who?"
"The senator's family are missing" Yuzu confirmed.
"And Yugo and Rin are looking for us, but we haven't seen them" Yuya pointed out.
"Er…guys?" Noburu stopped dead in his tracks "I don't think the freight hold is that safe anymore."
He pointed down the corridor of the freight car they were in, just one away from the car that held the bomb.
There was a steady pool of blood trickling from under the door.
Back in the third-class carriage the group had just left from, Ray was crouched in a small wardrobe, knees tucked up to her chest to fit inside. She had one arm wrapped around her legs to keep them still, the other clamped over her mouth to keep it shut. She took steady breaths through her nose, trying her best not to make a sound.
She wasn't entirley sure what time it was or how long she'd been crouched there; the clock in the room was just outside the wardrobe, but she was too afraid to peek out and look at it.
Occasionally she heard footsteps moving along the corridor outside. She hadn't heard anything from Reira though, so he was probably still safe.
Good, Reiji would never forgive her for putting this brother in the middle of this mess.
This was, after all, all her fault. All these people had surely only attacked the train because she was on it. All these people scared and dead, all because of her and Zarc.
'Zarc!' her brain snapped back to her husband, who she'd been trying her best not to think about 'God I hope they haven't hurt him because of me! I would know if they did, right? RIGHT?!'
In her panic, her knee jolted and forced the door of the wardrobe open. It reached its maximum range and then slammed shut again with an audible bang.
Frozen in horror, Ray could only sit there and pray that no one had heard the door slam.
Footsteps echoed in the corridor.
The door handle shook, as if someone was testing it. They would soon find it locked.
Would they try to break in? Or assume someone innocent was inside?
She knew there was only one thing she could do. As soon as they forced the door, leap from the wardrobe and tackle them. She almost certainly wouldn't win the fight, but it might by her a few seconds to get away.
She heard the latch break under someone's weight and sprung into action.
She tumbled to the floor on top of someone and immediately tried to spring to her feet to run. But the person she had tackled grabbed her arm, forcing her to turn it into punch instead.
For a few seconds they grappled on the floor, Ray fighting to get away, the person who had caught up to her fighting to keep her down. Finally the person who had grabbed her used his larger weight to pin her down, but Ray still gave him all the hell she could. No one was going to kill her, or her baby, tonight,
"Stop struggling you-" whatever insult he intended to call her was cut off, as the sound of something slicing echoed through the room.
The man went limp onto top of Ray. She shrieked with horror and pushed him off her, scooting up against the wall to get as far away from him as possible.
Looking down at the man, she could see he was clearly dead. Red was blooming from the back of his neck and starting to stain his white jacket.
She hadn't done that? Had she?
The click of heels on the floor finally alerted her both to the fact she had been rescued, and to the fact her rescuer was still in the room.
Look up, she met the eyes of a lady with dark hair in a black dress, coolly staring back at her like what had just happened was as significant as swatting a fly. Ray was about to thank her, when she saw the knife in the lady's hand.
The knife dripping with blood.
Ray was not ashamed to say she screamed like a little girl.
One carriage down in the freight car, Yuya and his gang had their eyes fixed on the ruby stain crawling its way under the door to their left ahead of them.
Just before Yuya could made any more frightened comments about the Rail Tracer coming to get them, the door that the blood was crawling under opened, now streaking the elixir of life all over the carpet. What stepped out after it though, was clearly human. A man in a white suit to be exact. A man in white suit flanked by two women in white dresses would be even more exact.
"That's them!" declared Meiru, pointing at the women "Those are the girls that left me in there!"
One of the girls, the one with blonde hair, looked at them dismissively. "Oh, it's you. Looks like your little friends came for you after all."
Other two people in white now looked at the group, the man's eyes twinkling in recognition. Yuya realised, with not a small amount of horror, that it was the same man in white that he'd ran into in the second-class corridor on his mad dash to the conductors' cab. Only, he was fairly certain at that time, that the man in question wasn't splattered with blood.
"Yes, that's definitely him" the dark-haired woman at his shoulder nodded.
"I knew it!" the man declared, unfolding a piece of paper from his pocket "I knew I'd seen that tattoo before!"
He turned the paper for Yuya to see, and he was even more horrified to see his own face looking back at him on a wanted poster. Now all he could do was pray that this group weren't affiliated with the Kurosakis or Fusers in any way.
"You really get around kid!" the man admitted "I mean, if you're appearing in Serena's society rags and all."
"They're not society rags" the dark-haired woman, Serena presumably, sighed with a roll of her eyes.
"I mean, you've been a very bad boy, Yuya Sakaki" the man declared, reading from the paper as he strode towards Yuya and his group "Breaking and entering, supply and distribution of illegal alcohol, possession of explosives without a permit, all those robberies and allegedly – this is the best part!" He looked over his shoulder at the girls "Allegedly burning down the Kurosaki family's home!" He tut-tutted, waggling a finger like a disappointed parent. "What would your parents say?"
All of Yuya's group flinched and looked at the boy in question at the final remark.
Yuya grounded his teeth together until he felt calm enough to answer the question. "I wouldn't be asking questions about what my parents would think of me, when you're standing in front of me, covered in blood."
"Oh, I was the favourite child – Serena was told she had to step up the homicidal urges" the man commented, folding up the piece of paper to put in his pocket again "See, my name is Yuri Polyma. I suppose you've heard of my family, or at least who they're affiliated with."
Yuya's mouth went dry. The Polymas. Eastern-European family, known as head enforcers for the Fusers – the roughest, meanest group of producers and sellers of alcohol in Chicago.
The same group that had put the bounty on Yuya's head.
"I can tell by your reaction you know who I am, which begs the question" Yuri's face went from playful to downright nasty in a second "Just who the hell do you think you are kid?! And what the hell do you think you're doing on my train?!"
Yuya wanted to crawl up into a little ball and roll all the way back to Chicago. But remembering what Yuri had said about his parents gave him just enough strength to stand his ground.
"Well, no matter" Yuri's face went back to playful "Because we're going to hold this train for ransom. And then we're going to kill half to the passengers."
"Just half?" Serena raised an eyebrow.
"Well, ok, all of them" Yuri shrugged like it wasn't much of a difference to him "But not you, of course. The Fusers want you alive. So you'll be around to see all your little friends die! Isn't that wonderful?" He now turned to the rest of the group. "Of course, you could always jump from the train now if you don't want to die by my hand later. But that's not nearly as fun."
"Dibs on the ginger runt" Serena declared, arms folded and looking impatient by the whole delay.
"You shut your mouth, lady!" Meiru declared.
Of course, she called her something far worse than a lady at this point, folks. We could all probably take a stab at what the particular insult was, but that would probably require a higher rating than this story is currently sitting at.
"So you're the one who did all of this" Yuya finally managed out "You're the one who killed the conductors!"
"Huh?" Yuri's face again turned away from playfulness, but now to confusion "The conductors are dead?" He bowed his head for a second. When it rose again, it appeared to have a sorrowful look on it. Mocking or genuine, Yuya wasn't sure of. "That is a shame. A real shame. Come on, girls. Let's go see the poor dead conductor."
He immediately seemed to forget that Yuya's group existed, turning on his heel and marching past the girls in white towards the caboose.
"We're just leaving them?" the blonde girl seemed incredulous; but when Serena didn't give an alternate order, she instead scoffed and headed after Yuri.
Serena looked over at Yuya's group, surveying them with calculating green eyes.
"Don't expect things to go in your favour next time we meet" she warned them.
"What makes you think we'll be meeting again?" Yuzu, no longer intimidated by Yuri, finally raised her chin and glared at Serena defiantly.
Serena paused, then shrugged. "I don't know. I'm sure we'll make time for each other eventually."
She began to walk towards the exit after her brother, but stopped and turned back to them before she reached the far door.
"By the way," she added "You were wrong. We didn't kill the conductor. And we didn't cause that mess in there either. Good luck."
She sent them a small wave before stepping out of sight.
"Yeah right" Meiru scoffed "No way we should believe a word of what they're saying!"
"You're just going to let them walk off like that?" Noburu looked at Yuya, a little concerned "After what they said…"
"They're not the priority now" Yuya cut him off, walking over to the bloody door that was slightly ajar, but not enough that he could see inside it "For now, we have to take there of this."
With a deep breath and a shaking hand, with everyone's eyes on him, Yuya slowly cracked open the door.