“Not sure.” Luca watched the slow spread of the crimson smoke. Its behaviour was perfectly natural, fronds undulating and twisting about on the currents of air. Nothing directed it, no malicious energistic pressure, yet wherever it spread chaos ensued. He took time to make the appalling connection; even telling himself Spanton would delve as low as it was possible to go, he found it hard to credit such depravity.
“Gas,” he said, dumbfounded. “That’s not smoke. The bastard’s using gas!”
Machine guns and rifles opened fire from every slot cut into the train’s armoured sides. With the defenders distracted, bullets were able to slice nonchalantly through the rosy air. The front rank of townsfolk were punched backwards as bullets hammered into their flak jackets. Abruptly, there was no more pink air. The human survival instinct was too strong, everyone concentrated on saving themselves.
“Blow it back at them!” Luca bellowed across the commotion. The train was only a few hundred yards away now, pistons growling furiously as it slid remorselessly along the track towards him. He flung his hands out and shoved at the air.
Marcella followed suit. “Do it,” she shouted at the closest townsfolk. “Push!”
They began to imitate her, sending out a stream of energistic power to repel the air and with it the deadly gas. The idea spread fast among the defenders, becoming real as soon as it was thought of. They didn’t need to act, only to think.
Air began to move, groaning over the station walls as it sped above the rails, its speed increasing steadily. The pillars of smoke began to bend away from their craters, breaking into tufts which slid away towards the approaching train. Leaves and twigs from the macerated hedges were picked up and carried along by the wind. They broke harmlessly against the black iron prow of the train, fluffing round it in an agitated slipstream.
Luca yelled in wordless exultation, adding the air from his lungs to the torrent surging past his body. It had risen to gale force, pushing at him. He linked arms with his neighbours, and together they rooted themselves in the ground. Unity of purpose had returned, bringing them an unchallenged mastery of the air. Now the flow had begun, they started to shape it, narrowing its force to howl vengefully against the train. Hanging baskets along the platforms swung up parallel to the ground, tugging frantically at their brackets.
The train slowed, braked by the awesome force of the horizontal tornado hurled against it. Steam from its stack and leaky junctions was ripped away to join the hurtling streamers of lethal gas. The marauders couldn’t keep their rifles steady; the wind tore at them, twisting and shaking until they threatened to wrench free. Cannon barrels were pushed out of alignment. They’d already stopped firing.
All of the defenders were contributing their will to the raging wind now; directing it square against the train and bringing it to a shuddering halt a hundred yards from the station. Then they upped the force; adrenaline glee providing further inspiration. The iron beast rocked, the weight of its thick cladding counting for nothing.
“We can do it,” Luca cried, his words ripped away by the supernatural wind. “Keep going.” It was a prospect shared by all, encouraged by the first creaking motion of the great engine’s frame.
The marauders inside turned their own energistic power to anchoring themselves. They didn’t have the numbers to win any trial of strength.
Lumps of granite from the rail track collided against the train. The rails themselves were torn up to smash against the engine, wrapping themselves around the boiler.
One set of wheels along the side of the engine left the ground. For a moment the machine hung poised on the remaining wheels as those inside strove to counter the toppling motion. But the defending townsfolk refused to release the maelstrom they’d created, and the metal bogies buckled. The engine crashed onto its side, twisting the carriage directly behind it through ninety degrees.
If it had been a natural derailment, that would have been the end of it. In this case, the townsfolk kept on pushing. The engine flipped again, pointing its crushed bogies directly into the sky. Vicious jets of steam poured out of the broken pistons, only to be dissolved by the gale. Again the engine turned as the hurricane clawed at its black flanks, trawling the remaining carriages along. Its momentum was picking up now, turning the motion into a continuous roll. The links between the carriages snapped apart. They scattered across the fields, bulldozing through any trees that got in their way and skidding down into ditches where they came to a jarring halt.
The engine just kept on rolling, impelled by the wind and thoughts of its intended victims. Eventually the boiler broke open, severing the big machine’s spine. A cloud of steam exploded out from the huge rent, vanishing quickly into the caterwauling sky to be replaced by an avalanche of debris. Fragments of very modern-looking machinery tumbled down over the ruined land. All illusion of the steam-powered colossi had expired, leaving one of the Norfolk Railway Company’s ordinary eight-wheel tractor units buried in the soil.
With the wind stilled, Luca left Marcella to organize medic parties for the defenders who’d succumbed to the gas. Even now, a dangerous chemical stink prowled around the shell craters. Those who claimed knowledge of such matters said it could be a type of phosphor, or possibly chlorine, maybe something even worse. The names they gave it didn’t bother Luca, only the intent behind it. He’d walked along the row of casualties, grimacing at the protruding eyes that wept tears of salty water and blood in equal quantities; tried to speak reassuring words over the terrible hacking coughs.
After that, there could be no doubt what had to be done.
He’d gathered a small band of estate workers to accompany him. Remembering his first encounter with Spanton, he headed over the fields to the wrecked engine.
Metal sheets of some kind had indeed been welded over the tractor unit’s body. Not iron after all, just some lightweight construction material; a framework easily moulded into thick armour in the mind of the beholder. They’d suffered considerably from the sheer brutality of the wind. Some of the cannon barrels had broken off, while the remainder were mangled. The main body of the unit had bent itself into a lazy V, with the forward end wedged down into the ground.
Luca walked round to the cab. It had crumpled badly, sides bowing inwards and roof concave, reducing the space inside to less than that of a wardrobe. He crouched down and peered through the crooked window slit.
Bruce Spanton stared back at him. His body was trapped between various chunks of metal and warped piping that had sprung from the walls. Blood from his crushed legs and arm mingled with oil and muddy soil. His face was the pale grey of shock victims, with different features than before. The wraparound sunglasses had been discarded along with the swept-back hair; no illusion remained.
“Thank Christ,” he gasped. “Get me outta here, man. It’s all I can do to stop my fucking legs from dropping off.”
“I thought I’d find you in here,” Luca replied equitably.
“So you found me. So I’ll give you a fucking medal. Just get me out. These walls all got smashed to shit in the rumble. It hurts so bad I can’t even switch off the pain like usual.”
“A rumble? Is that what this was?”
“What are you trying to pull!” Spanton screamed. He stopped, grimacing wildly from the pain which his outburst triggered. “All right, okay. You won. You’re the king of the hill. Now bend some of this metal away.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s what ?”
“We won, you lose. It’s over?”
“What do you fucking think, dickhead?”
“Ah. I get it. You walk off into the sunset and never come back. That’s it. The end. No hard feelings. Everything turned out okay, and you’ll just slaughter some other bunch of people with poison gas. Maybe a smaller town, who won’t be able to fight back. Well great. Absolutely fabulous. That’s why I came out to help this town. So you could have your rumble and turn your back on us.”