Stephen (ed.) - The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 18

The door to the staff toilet was open and Arnold stood with a fire-axe. He had smashed through the mirror. Mrs Nickles was behind him. And Harry Cutley. Richard kicked himself for not thinking of that, but hadn’t known there was a door beyond the mirrored partition.

Arnold raised the axe and Richard knew the Gecko had its hook in him, had been reeling him in like trout. Mrs Nickles shouted something. They hadn’t come in response to the SOS.

Now, in addition to the runaway train, he had an axe-wielding madman to deal with.

Richard dashed back to the cabin. Arnold leaped across the coupling, treading on his dead colleague, and followed.

The conductor was the full Gecko now. Richard had a razor against an axe.

He pulled the first lever that came to hand. Instinct paid off. A burst of steam pushed Arnold back, knocking him to his knees. Richard kicked at the axe-head and wrenched the weapon out of the conductor’s hands. He took hold of the man’s throat and held up his fist, enjoying the look of inhuman panic – the Gecko in terror! – in Arnold’s eyes, then clipped him smartly, bang on the button. This time, fortune was with him. The Gecko’s light went out. Arnold slumped in Richard’s grip, blood creeping from his nose.

Mrs Nickles had followed Arnold. She clung to the hand-rail.

“It’s Donald,” she shouted. “Donald McRidley. I didn’t recognise the blighter without ’is ’air. ’E were a ruddy woman about his blessed beautiful ’air when ’e were the Shaggin’ Scot, an’ now e’s a bald-bonced old git.”

Arnold’s – Donald’s! – eyes fluttered open.

So, he wasn’t a navvy. Or not any more. He was back on his train. Unable to get away, Richard supposed. No wonder.

“Driver,” he shouted. “Bring in the Streak!”

“Passengers aren’t allowed in this part of the train, sir,” he mumbled. “It’s against regulations. The company can’t be held responsible for accidents.”

Richard saw the red glint, the Gecko creeping back. He slapped McRidley, hard. The eyes were clear for a moment.

“Time to stop the train,” he told the man. “Do your duty, at last. Redeem your name.”

“Do it for Else, ducks,” said Mrs Nickles, cooing in McRidley’s ear. “Do it for poor Nick. For the LSI-bloody-R.”

McRidley broke free of the pair of them.

As if sleepwalking in a hurry, mind somewhere else, he pulled levers, rolled wheels, tapped gauges.

The station was dead ahead, sunlight flashing on its glass roof.

Wheels screamed on rails. Vanessa tooted the whistle, happily.

Harry was with them now, arm in a makeshift sling, hair awry. Every boy wanted to be in the cabin of a steam train.

They all had to hang onto something as McRidley braced himself.

Sparks showered the platform, startling an early-morning porter. The buffers loomed.

They did not crash. But there was a heavy jolt.

IX

Donald McRidley, Arnold the Conductor, was dead. When the train stopped, so did he – like grandfather and the clock in the song.

3473-S was decoupled now and shunted into a siding. The Gecko was still nestled in there, but its conduit to the train, to the passengers, was cut. Richard thought it might have been the communication cord, which had to be unhooked – but the monster had also been tied to the lifeline of the once-disgraced, now-redeemed driver.

“’E were a ’handsome devil,” commented Mrs Nickles, putting her teeth back in. “Loved ’is train more than any girl, though.”

Harry was on the telephone to Edwin Winthrop. He said the entity was in captivity, but Richard knew the Gecko was dying. As the fire went out in 3473’s belly, the monster gasped its last. A bad beast, Danny had called it. The iron shell would just be a trophy. They should hang the cow-catcher in the Diogenes Club.

The decoy couriers were gone, off to the NATO base. Mrs Sweet was marching down to the baggage car, where a surprise awaited. The terrifying vicar looked even more ghastly in the light of day. Richard had brushed past the man several times, mind open for any ill-omen, to convince himself the Gecko wasn’t sneaking off in this vessel to work its evil anew.

Police and ambulances were on their way. Edwin would have words in ears, to account for Danny, Annette and the crewmen, not to mention general damage. Richard found Annette rolled under a table, and carried her to her compartment, where he laid her out on her bed, over her night-gown, eyes closed.

A straight-backed American civilian, with teeth like Burt Lancaster and a chin-dent like Kirk Douglas, scouted along the platform.

“Buddy, have you seen a parcel?” he said. “For Coates?”

Richard tried to answer, but no words came.

The American looked further, walking past Vanessa.

Portnacreirann

The train finally came, as Richard finished telling the story.

They had been up all night. Cold Saturday dawn had broken.

Now, they sat in a carriage, not a compartment. Fred settled in, but Richard was restless.

“I used to love trains,” he said. “Even after my Ghost Train ride. It was a nice way to travel. You had time and ease, to read or talk or look out the window. Now, it’s all strikes and delays. This might as well be a motor-coach. She hates trains, you know. Mrs Thatcher. To her, anyone who travels on public transport is a failure, beneath contempt. She’s going to bleed the railways. It’ll be horrid. Like so much else.”

Fred still had questions.

“So, guv, who is Vanessa?”

Richard shrugged. “Vanessa is Vanessa, Fred. Like me, she’s no real memory of who she was, if she was anyone. In my case, there was a war, a decade of chaos. It was easy to get misplaced, left out of the records. With her . . . well, it shouldn’t have been possible. Someone dropped her off at Euston with a label round her neck. A woman, she thought, but not her mother. Surely, she couldn’t be a stray, she must belong to someone?”

“What about that Coates bloke? The Yank at Portnacreirann.”

“That wasn’t ‘Lieutenant Commander Alexander Coates, RN’, That was a Colonel Christopher Conner, SAC ‘Coates’ wasn’t an alias or a code – just a name on a label. Winthrop made enquiries. The only ‘Alexander Coates’ even remotely in the Navy was a 14-year-old sea-scout. We looked into the system of couriering the Go-Codes. The Americans had only given us the cover story even when they’d wanted help, so we threw a bit of a sulk. They eventually admitted – and this is how strange defence policy is – that they had, as they said, ‘contracted out’. Hired a private firm to make delivery, not telling them what was being carried. The firm turned out to be a phone in an empty room with six weeks’ rent in arrears. Maybe some semi-crook was hauling kids out of orphanages and bundling them up to Scotland under official cover, then selling them on or disposing of them. We’ll never know and, in the end, it was beside the point.”

“You adopted Vanessa?”

“No. No one adopted her, unless you count the Diogenes Club.”

“Does she have a surname?”

“Not really. Where it’s absolutely necessary, it’s ‘Kaye’. Catriona took an interest, as she did in me. Without her, we’d be complete freaks.”

Fred kept quiet on that one.

“What about the Gecko? Harry Cutley?”

“The Gecko died, if it could be said to have lived. When 3473-S turned into cold scrap iron, it was gone. Puff. Harry poked around with his instruments before giving up. For a year or two, another old steamer pulled the Scotch Streak. Then it went diesel. Harry dropped out in 1967. Went to Nepal. And I became the Most Valued Member. There’s a ceremony. Very arcane. Like the Masons. You know most of what’s happened since.”