Chapter Twenty-Four
The Beginning of the Shooting War
After less than three hours of climbing through the foothills, The Cordwainer started down a small grade into the old logging community of Johnson City. It was a ghost town, very much like Pottersville, but it was obvious that Johnson City had never experienced the prosperity that Pottersville had once enjoyed. It was self-evidently a working class community, now long forgotten and abandoned, another victim of global overheating. With the tree canopy so precious – the only natural check on man-made carbon output – logging was one of the first industries to be regulated, marginalized, and finally made downright illegal.
No mega-gauge rail line serviced Johnson City, and with every means of self sufficiency removed, the town must have quickly died. There was no sign of human habitation as we rolled through the outlying structures. Nature was quickly reclaiming Johnson City, with brambles and trees tearing down the small, compact cottages and the rusting, forgotten logging equipment.
We were alone in Johnson City, or so we thought. We had no qualms about rolling through the center of town as the sun hung high in the sky. There'd be no crowd waiting to watch our passing here, like back in Shadrach. We steamed casually on. We thought we'd be alone in Johnson City, right before the first shot rang out through the warm air.
I was resting in the caboose, with the table down, attempting to rest my head, when the first shot echoed through the trees. Fluky was with me. Mitty was at the controls. It seems that he'd shown himself, the day I was in and out of consciousness, as quite adept at piloting The Cordwainer. We'd never credited Mitty with ownership of a pair of particularly keen eyes, but he had almost a sixth sense for the lay of the track ahead. Fluky said they'd avoided a pair of derailments the day before simply because Mitty had been at the controls, and he was more than happy to let Mitty sit at the controls.
When the shooting started, Mitty instantly cut off all the power. The Cordwainer came rolling to a halt, on a slight downward grade, as another shot rang out. Fluky and I plainly heard the ricochet from the prow of the train and leapt to our feet. We met Mitty scrambling back along the running boards, half ducked down for cover.
“What the hell?” Fluky yelled forward.
“Black car!” Mitty yelled back. “Parked on the tracks!”
I risked poking my head up over the top of the hopper cars and strained to look towards the horizon. Sure enough, not two hundred yards down the grade, at what possibly amounted to the center of Johnson City, was the second black car, parked across the tracks, with two dark figures hiding behind it for cover. A third shot rang out and I saw the muzzle flash over the hood of the car. They were shooting at us with handguns. It was extreme range, but I heard the terrifying whiz of the bullet pass through the air above me.
They were shooting at us!
“When'd this become a shootin' war?” Fluky asked, ducking as the bullet whizzed by.
It was my fault, I realized; I'd fired the first shot. All right, it'd been a dud, but the evidence was there. Of course, they wouldn't be asking any more questions, taking any prisoners, not after we'd started shooting at our perusers back in Shadrach. No one had been hurt, but they wouldn't be taking any chances.
Another shot and another ricochet off the HTP tank at the nose of The Cordwainer. The HTP! If a bullet punctured that tank... I had first-hand experience with a BLEVE already, and wasn't eager to be in the vicinity of another.
“We got to back it up!” I yelled.
“Back it up? Dang thing ain't got no reverse!” Fluky yelled at me. For the first time the overconfidence we had shown during the whole affair hit home. No reverse. Of course not, why would we want to ever go backwards – back to Boot Hill?
“If a bullet punctures that fuel tank!” I yelled. “If they get a lucky shot and hit a fuel line!”
“I know, I know!” Fluky yelled back.
“Perhaps we should execute 'Protocol Ohm's Law'!” Mitty yelled to Fluky, ignoring me.
“Hell!”
“What's 'Protocol Ohm's Law'?” I asked, looking between Fluky and Mitty.
“Nothin',” Fluky shook his head.
“It seems befitting!” Mitty added.
“Oh, hell!”
“If you two have an idea...” A shot rang out, we all ducked.
“Ah, the tartarhead is gonna get us all killed!” Fluky bellowed, but he was fiddling with the cover of the hopper car he was holding onto the side of.
“What are we doing?” I asked as I tried to help.
“Get the covers off,” he said. “Get in. On top of the boots. Don't touch anythin' metal.”
We slid the cover off each hopper car and Mitty and I climbed in amongst the boots. The shooting continued intermittently, occasional shots plinking off something metal. Fluky moved up to the cockpit of the train, keeping low and out of the line of fire. He opened up a cowling on the engine, fiddled around inside for a few seconds as shots skipped off the engine around him, then he was up in the cockpit at the controls. The second he had the train moving, he leapt from the cockpit and landed in the center of the closest hopper car, in amongst the shoes.
The Cordwainer was rolling forward, towards where the black car sat parked on the tracks. We kept our heads down as the shooting intensified and Fluky rolled closer. We weren't moving fast, perhaps two or three miles an hour. Fluky must have barely turned the potentiometer. There was a crescendo of gunshots as the train rolled up to the road block, only halting for the Concession men to reload. The Cordwainer ran directly into the side of the black car – at limited speed, but with great mass – and pushed the car along the tracks for a few feet. But it was all too heavy for the train to push too far and the whole mass of steel came grinding to a halt.
Whatever “Protocol Ohm's Law” was it must have failed. Perhaps if Fluky had gotten more of a run up. But using the HTP tanker as battering ram would have been insanity. As it was, only the cow catcher at the prow of the train had hit the parked car. Now we were sitting ducks, hidden down in the hoppers full of boots. All the Concession goons had to do was climb aboard and shoot us like fish in a barrel.
I peeked over the rim of my hopper as the first of the Concession men came out from behind cover. There seemed to be three of them in their black suits, holding automatic handguns, training them along the length of The Cordwainer. The first man cautiously came up beside the cockpit of the engine, covering it with his gun. When he found it empty, he shifted his handgun to his other hand and reached out for the small ladder that brought you from ground level up to the running boards of the train.
He grabbed hold of the ladder and stopped.
I couldn't quite make out why he had paused and a second Concession man came up beside him. The second man gave the first a few words of encouragement, then gave his friend a helpful push up onto the ladder. Instantly, the second man froze to the spot. I raised my head up for a better look, unsure what was happening. From my new vantage point I could see the two men locked together, shaking slightly in place. I placed a hand on the edge of the hopper car, to lean out, and got a solid electric shock from the metal of the hopper car. The whole train was electrified!
I was so surprised by the shock that I almost missed what happened next. A third Concession man come around the other side of The Cordwainer. He was distracted by the behavior of his comrades and caught off guard when Mitty let out a banshee yell from within his hopper. It was a blood curdling scream, like the onrush of a berserker. Mitty jumped to his feet and leapt into the air above the third Concession man. The poor Concession man had only a second to react in shock – nowhere near enough time to raise his gun – before Mitty came crashing down, more projectile than combatant, onto his target.
Fluky jumped forward, animal-like, and landed on his thick-soled boots on the roof of the cockpit. With a swift kick he dislodged the two Concession men from their frozen positions. They crumpled in a heap to the ground. Fluky jumped down, ready to st
rike, but his two targets were already incapacitated.
It was the fourth Concession man that surprised us.
Luckily, after seeing the fate of his friends, the fourth Concession man decided that it was time to beat a retreat. He was hidden away behind the wheel of the black car as the action had unfolded around him. He fired the engine of the black car to life and slammed the car into gear. It squealed out, laying a track of rubber on the cement, as I jumped down from my hopper car. I scooped up the handgun dropped by the man Mitty had literally flattened and I raised it, pointing after the escaping car. If I'd understood the safety, perhaps I'd have gotten a shot off, but by the time I had the lever on the side pushed down, the black car was already swerving wildly onto the dirt of the rural highway, heading east.
So that was “Protocol Ohm's Law”. One more thing no one had bothered to tell me about. Fluky had had the idea and discussed it with Mitty. The risk of igniting the HTP was a real possibility, he'd realized, so he'd shelved the whole idea. Mitty, it seems, had not. With The Cordwainer running on rubber tires and the crossbars being tipped in rubber to prevent wear, it was almost totally insulated from ground. It wasn't a half bad idea, apart from the fact that it could have blown us all to kingdom come.
The two electrocuted Concession men were unconscious but still very much alive. The one Mitty had flattened was in worse shape; it looked like Mitty had quite seriously broken his leg. He was conscious and very unhappy, but I kept his gun pointed at him and let him cuss at us while we got The Cordwainer ready for the rails again. One of the front wheels had derailed when we'd hit the car, so we cranked it up and pulled it back on the track. We took their guns and extra magazines and left the Concession men beside the track as we continued to steam off through Johnson City. We figured their fourth companion would be back soon enough with the cavalry, whoever that would be, and they'd be picked up.
It was a better deal, we were sure, than they would have given us.