CHAPTER SEVEN
The squad marched onwards. The sun had been beating down on them relentlessly for hours, but was now getting precariously low in the sky, and it was becoming all too obvious that the weary men had very little time left. Charlie was well ahead, scanning the region, urgently searching for some kind of salvation. A distance behind him the men solemnly walked, no one uttering a word. Charlie would like to think it was because they were wisely conserving their energy, but he knew better. They were unhappy. And not because they were hungry or tired, or even because they were being hunted down and picked off by a pack of rabid dogs. It was because of Billy. Naturally, all eyes were flickering on and off the intruding young man, who was keeping himself to himself, scuffing his boots along the ground like a told-off schoolboy as he went, whilst playing with his hair constantly. He paid them no attention. But then:
‘I see something,’ called out Charlie.
He ran ahead towards a glimmering object way off in the distance. Exhausted and bruised, Charlie still managed to move at quite a speed, and it wasn’t long before he was upon his goal. Skidding himself to a halt he couldn’t help but smile. For at his feet lay a welcomed set of train tracks. He booted them several times just to reassure himself they weren’t an hallucination. They weren’t! They ran as far as the eye could see in both directions, disappearing on the edges of the flat empty horizon. Charlie licked his finger and stuck it in the air, finding the direction of the wind. He was animatedly muttering calculations under his breath, looking up and down the tracks with great attention, even putting his ear to the things! At long last his men caught up with him.
‘Great. You found train tracks,’ remarked Yankee, sarcastic and peeved.
‘Woop-dee-doo,’ added Doodle, sounding unmistakeably depressed with the find.
‘Someone give me a pair of binoculars,’ ordered Charlie, ignoring the brothers.
One of the soldiers passed him a muddy and damaged pair, which he keenly snatched. Carefully focusing them, he looked south along the length of the tracks - but the added magnification revealed nothing new. But never to be disheartened easily, he immediately looked the other way, hopeful - and what luck! There it was.
‘Bingo,’ he whispered to himself, throwing the binoculars back at their owner. ‘Follow me,’ he ordered the squad.
He burst into a run, swift and raring to go, chasing the tracks north. The squad followed as instructed, moving as fast as they could, but still not able to keep up with him. Very quickly the reason behind Charlie’s excitement came into sight. There before them all on the tracks up ahead, lay a train, sitting idle. It consisted of little more than the steam engine and a single passenger carriage, and the locomotive itself looked busted and worn, but it was a welcome surprise for the group.
‘You gotta be kidding me,’ yapped Yankee in delight.
‘Woop-dee-do,’ sung Doodle, infinitely more excited this time.
Arriving a fair few feet from the train, Charlie held up his hand and the squad stopped, falling into complete silence. They came in close to their Captain, all taking a knee and awaiting further instructions.
‘This should be easy. But we best be safe than sorry. Yankee, Doodle, check the passenger carriage is clear,’ he ordered, in barely a whisper.
Knowing all too well what needed to be done, the brothers moved in, pistols in hand and ready for action. They advanced on the carriage, splitting up and moving stealthily along either side of the thing, keeping their heads beneath the line of windows. They promptly reached the doorways. Sneaking a peek round its corners the brothers locked eyes, and silently mouthed a count down from three in unison. With pistols raised and fingers on the triggers, they entered - but fortune was in their favour. The carriage was utterly deserted. Nothing remained other than some damaged benches, piles of boxes and torn up curtains. Yankee slid one of the windows open and squeezed his head out, giving Charlie the all-clear.
Charlie ran forward, alone, heading towards the steam engine. It was a big black piece of machinery, chunky, heavy, with a sinister and sharp look to it. With no dilly-dallying he charged on board, into the cabin, prepared to strike. But like the passenger carriage it was abandoned, and a total shambles.
‘Clear,’ he called out, holstering his pistol.
The rest of the men headed towards the passenger carriage, a spring in their step. They bundled inside and collapsed on its comparatively comfy seats. Specks edged his way through the rather mannish group, timid and uncomfortable with their general lack of manners. Finally finding himself an empty seat he perched on it, removed his glasses, let out a long and painful sigh and relaxed.
‘Specks, get up here,’ called out Charlie from the cabin.
The men all looked to Specks and laughed, pointing fingers at the geek and bombarding him with good natured jibes and jeers. Putting his glasses back on in a huff, he left the comparative comfort of the carriage and joined Charlie in the steam engine. The cabin was dark and dirty, blackened with soot, and had quite obviously been smashed to pieces by someone. In the middle of the cabin stood his Captain, who was pointing at what appeared to be nothing more than a conglomeration of metal, piled high on the floor.
‘Tell me you can fix that,’ said Charlie.
Specks leaned in for a better look, and for a while he picked up pieces of metal, studied them, then put them back down again.
‘Well,’ pushed Charlie, after a fair amount of time.
‘Sir,’ he answered, clearing his throat nervously. ‘With respect… I am a scientist. I organise experiments, I dissect things and I reach conclusions. I am not a mechanic. I cannot build automobiles, or assemble motorized apparatus of this magnitude. It is simply not my field of expertise. I don’t even know what I’m looking at.’
Charlie didn’t like that. ‘Boys,’ he shouted out, abruptly, causing Specks to jump a little. In spite of their easily heard complaints, within mere moments the rest of the squad had piled into the cabin, squashing themselves in shoulder to shoulder. ‘Anyone know how to fix this thing?’ Charlie asked the room.
The men mumbled, joked, complained and even threw the occasional sarcastic comment to each other, but no one said yes. It didn’t look good. However:
‘I can fix it,’ came an indifferent voice from behind them all.
The men separated and looked outside. There stood Billy, turning his gaze from them to the horizon, looking as if he couldn’t care less about their predicament. He kicked his boots into the ground and played with his tie, casually taking his time and making the men wait. It was irritating.
‘You can?’ asked Charlie.
After a good long while Billy pulled himself inside the cabin, and pushed his way through the men, purposefully barging one or two as he moved. He nonchalantly perused the heap of metal at his feet, before inspecting the rest of the cabin. With a smug look on his face he picked up a few of the pieces and started to put them together like a simple jigsaw puzzle.
‘There is plenty of coal, and the chamber itself is good to go,’ began Billy. ‘But someone has disabled the running gear connections, mangled part of the injectors, messed up the pressure gauges and basically turned this cabin into a right old fiasco! There’s a whole lot of other stuff that is straightforward enough for me to repair, but too complicated for the likes of you lot to even begin to understand.’ The men gritted their teeth, eager to bite back.
‘You seem to know an awful lot about trains,’ remarked Charlie.
‘What can I say? I’m brilliant!’ replied Billy, as if there was nothing arrogant in his self-proclamation. ‘I can fix anything,’ he boasted, passing Charlie the reassembled metal work. ‘Yep. Looks like someone sabotaged this. But they didn’t do a particularly good job.’
‘I know. It was me,’ answered Charlie. The men stared at him in shock. He felt a need to defend his actions. ‘What? I was on a recon mission a few months back. The Nazis were taking a group of Jewish families to a concentration camp. And I was sent in to stop them. Once my
job was done I couldn’t leave the enemy’s stronghold intact! Any of you would have done the same.’
The men muttered in accord. Billy approached Charlie, apparently not caring for his defence.
‘Tell you what. If I do fix it, and if I get us out of here…’ began Billy, fiddling with Charlie’s uniform like an embarrassing father straightening up his son’s suit before his first ever date. ‘I’ll get us down the tracks… away from whatever the heck it is you lot are running from…’ The men watched in astonishment as their Captain allowed the insult. ‘And at the first safe spot we get to, the first sign of friendly territory… you let me go. I go my own way. No questions asked. And no negotiations.’
Billy finished playing with the Captain’s uniform and stepped back, a self-satisfied look etched across his face, as he waited for a response. He had them over a barrel, and they all knew it. Charlie thought for a moment, weighing up his options - but he already knew there was no other alternative. He could see in his peripheral vision that his men were slack-jawed and less than happy with this. Left to their own devices he knew any one of them would kill the young man where he stood, based purely on his attitude problem.
‘Yes,’ Charlie answered, reluctantly.
‘Give me your word,’ demanded Billy, going face to face with the Captain.
‘I give you my word.’
Charlie held out his hand, an offering of promise. But Billy only sneered at it before turning his back on the man. The squad literally gasped in surprise at the audacity.
‘Now, if you wouldn’t mind,’ said Billy. ‘I need some room to work.’
Charlie was angry - fuming in fact. He had just been snubbed by an overconfident, egotistical, borderline schizophrenic, jumped-up crazy man, in front of all his men to boot! But he was running out of time - he needed to get them to safety. He composed himself before addressing them all.
‘Right boys,’ he began, swallowing the insolence, slapping his hands together and smiling at the squad. ‘Get in the back carriage. Block the windows. Block the doors. Rip up anything and everything you can. Make that place as impenetrable as humanly possible. It’s going to be your safe-haven.’
‘Or your tomb,’ muttered Billy, under his breath.
Charlie tried to ignore the comment. He bit his lip, holding himself back from doing something he might later regret.
‘Specks. Take stock of our ammo. Let me know what we have. Let me know what we don’t have. And have a hunt round. You might find a few things that could come in handy. See if you can create one or two surprises for our guests when they arrive.’
‘Yes, sir,’ replied the geek.
‘What are you gonna do, Captain?’ asked Yankee and Doodle in unison.
‘Me?’ he looked to all his men, who were looking a little concerned about the situation - a great deal was resting on mere hope, more so than usual at least. ‘I’m going to keep an eye on young Billy here,’ he said, tapping the young man somewhat forcefully on the head. ‘See if we can get this heap moving whilst we all still have our limbs attached. I don’t know about you lot, but I don’t intend on being on tonight’s buffet!’ The men chuckled, courteously nodding to their Captain. ‘Well, go on then. What are you all still doing here? Get a move on. There’s work to be done!’ he finished.
Snapping to it, the squad got on their way. The men jumped out of the cabin and headed for the passenger carriage. There was little time to waste. One way or another - things ended tonight.