Baccano! - Volume 3 - Chapter 3

PROLOGUE VIII

THE RAIL TRACER

Late that night, in the conductors’ room, the young conductor and the older conductor were idly shooting the breeze.

“Oh, you don’t know that one? The story about the Rail Tracer, the ‘one who follows the shadow of the rails’?”

Of all ghost stories, this one was a particular favorite of the young conductor’s. This was because, although he was apparently no good at telling ghost stories, it managed to leave a terror with an unpleasant aftertaste, no matter who told it.

When he’d tried it on Jon the bartender the other day, Jon had just said “Hogwash” and left it at that. What sort of reaction would he get out of the older man?

“Well, it’s a real simple story, you see? It’s about this monster that chases trains under the cover of moonless nights.”

“A monster?”

“Right. It merges with the darkness and takes lots of different shapes, and little by little, it closes in on the train. It might be a wolf, or mist, or a train exactly like the one you’re on, or a big man with no eyes, or tens of thousands of eyeballs… Anyway, it looks like all sorts of things, and it chases after you on the rails.”

“What happens if it catches up?”

“That’s the thing: At first, nobody notices it’s caught up. Gradually, though, everybody realizes that something strange is going on.”

“Why?”

“People. They disappear. It starts at the back of the train, little by little, one by one… And finally, everybody’s gone, and then it’s like the train itself never existed.”

When he’d heard that much, the old conductor asked a perfectly natural question:

“Then how does the story get passed on?”

The young conductor had been expecting this question, and he answered it without turning a hair:

“Well, obviously, it’s because some trains have survived.”

“How?”

“Wait for it. I’m coming to that. See, there’s more to the story.”

Looking as if he was having fun, he began to tell the crux of the story:

“If you tell this story on a train, it comes. The Rail Tracer heads straight for that train!”

The moment he said that, the other conductor’s expression shifted into disgust.

Whoops. I might’ve sounded a little too cheerful there, he thought, but he couldn’t stop now.

“But there’s a way to keep it from coming. Just one!”

“Wait a second. It’s time.”

Saying this, the older conductor lit the lamps that sent a signal to the engine room.

And I was just getting to the good part, too…

Fidgeting because he wanted to hurry and get on with the story, the young conductor watched the other man work with sharp, intense eyes.

They spent enough money on this train. You’d think they could’ve set up a wireless between here and the engine room, the young conductor thought, but on seeing the lights that shone on either side of the car, he changed his mind. This train had been built with an emphasis on form and atmosphere, rather than function. To a bystander, even this practical signal probably served to illuminate the sculptured sides of the train. It was just the sort of gimmick you’d expect a nouveau riche company to come up with. And, since he was being employed by that nouveau riche company, there was no point in complaining. The young conductor smiled wryly, sighing over his position.

Just then, the older conductor finished his task, and, beaming, the young conductor began to tell the rest of his story.

“Uh, sorry. So, to be saved, you ”

“Oh, wait, hold on. Hearing the answer first would be boring, wouldn’t it? I know a similar story; why don’t I tell that one first?”

That sounded intriguing. The young conductor was nuts about stories like these, so he was raring to hear the other man’s tale.

“So we’ll trade ways to be saved at the end, right? Sure, that sounds like fun.”

At those words, the older conductor looked at him, and his eyes were strange. Those eyes almost seemed to hold a mixture of scorn and pity. It did concern the younger conductor a bit, but hearing the new ghost story took priority.

“Well, it’s a real common, simple story. It’s a story about Lemures… Ghosts who were so terrified of death that they became ghosts while they were still alive.”

“Wha—? …Uh-huh…”

“But the ghosts had a great leader. The leader tried to dye the things they feared with their own color, in order to bring them back to life. However, the United States of America was afraid of the dead coming back to life! And, would you believe it, the fools tried to shut the ghosts’ leader up inside a grave!”

The content of the conversation didn’t really make sense to the less-experienced railman, but anger had gradually begun to fill the face and tone of the speaker. The young conductor felt something race down his spine.

“Uh, um, mister?”

“And so. The remaining ghosts had an idea. They thought they’d take more than a hundred people hostage—including a senator’s family—and demand the release of their leader. If the incident were made public, the country would never accept the terrorists’ demands. For that reason, the negotiations would be carried out in utter secrecy by a detached force. They wouldn’t be given time to make a calm decision. They’d only have until the train reached New York!”

“A senator… You don’t mean Senator Beriam, do you? Wait, no, you can’t— Do you mean this train? Hey, what’s going on? Explain yourself!”

Realizing that the bad feeling he’d gotten had been right on the mark, the young conductor slowly backed away from the older man.

“Explain? But I am explaining, right now. To be honest, I never thought my cover of ‘conductor’ would prove useful at a time like this. In any case, when this train reaches New York, it will be transformed into a moving fortress for the Lemures! Afterward, using the hostages as a shield, we’ll take our leave somewhere along the transcontinental railroad. The police can’t possibly watch all the routes at once.”

“Wh-who’s the leader?”

Asking an awfully coolheaded question, the young conductor took another step backward. However, the train wasn’t very big, and at that point, his back bumped into the wall.

“Our great Master Huey will be interviewed by the New York Department of Justice tomorrow. For that very reason, this train was chosen to become a sacrifice for our leader!”

On hearing this, the young conductor asked his senior colleague a question. He was still oddly calm.

He’d heard the word Lemures before. If he remembered right, the terrorist group whose leader had been arrested just the other day had called themselves the Lemures.

“…Why are you telling me this?” he asked the older man.

He’d thought he’d started to tell a simple scary story, but he’d stumbled into a terror that was far more real than any ghost tale.

The middle-aged conductor, Goose’s subordinate, kept talking to the young conductor:

“Master Huey is merciful. I merely emulate him. Knowing the reason for your death as you die: You’re very lucky.”

Then, taking a gun from inside his coat, he wrapped up his story:

“Now then, regarding the all-important method of salvation… ‘Everyone who heard this story died immediately. There wasn’t a single way to be saved’!”

As his story ended, he took aim at the young conductor’s nose and fired.

…But no bullet was fired.

“Wha…?”

A numbing pain ran through the middle-aged conductor’s hand. The finger that should have squeezed the trigger pulled vainly at empty space. The gun bounded up into the air, then fell right into the young conductor’s hand.

In the instant the older man had pulled the trigger, the young conductor had kicked the gun up, moving only his leg. Because the old conductor hadn’t seen his upper body move at all, he had been entirely unable to predict the attack.

Having acquired the handgun, the young conductor shoved its muzzle into the forehead of his senior—the terrorist.

“Sure there’s a way to be saved—just kill them before they kill you.”

The young man who stood there had a presence completely different from the person he’d been a moment before.

The middle-aged conductor shuddered. It wasn’t because he was afraid of the gun; no, it was because of the eyes of the man who had it trained on him. They weren’t the eyes of the young man who’d been innocently telling ghost stories. They were eyes that swallowed everything—eyes that destroyed everything. Dark and deep, with a hard glitter to them.

Their color seemed to hold a mixture of hatred and pity and scorn, and it was all turned on him. Black flames, shining fiercely, as if all the light were turned toward the inside of his eyeballs… That was what his eyes were like. Just what sort of life did someone have to live to end up with eyes like those?

Even as the middle-aged conductor trembled at that thought, he realized they looked a lot like the eyes of his fanatical comrade, Chané.

However, frankly, that didn’t matter one bit. Either way, if nothing changed, he was going to get killed. That alone was a fact he understood clearly.

“Wa-wait, please wait, Claire.”

“No.”

With that, the young conductor—Claire Stanfield—began to squeeze the gun’s trigger.

He depressed it slowly, as if enjoying the time before he dealt death.

During that interval, there was enough time to run or counterattack. However, Claire’s eyes wouldn’t allow it. It felt to the victim, though, that if he tried something like that, it would invite results more painful than death.

For just a moment, the finger paused.

“Oh, right. Here’s the rest of my story. To keep the Rail Tracer from coming, you have to believe this story, and if he’s already there, you have to get away from him until the sun rises… Although it’s too late now.”

The ingenuous way he’d talked up until a moment before was gone. He spoke dispassionately, in a tone that was rough and endlessly cold, like blades of ice.

“The Rail Tracer will definitely appear for you people. This gunshot will wake him. Your death will wake him.”

He began to squeeze the trigger again. At that point, finally, the middle-aged conductor opened his mouth to scream. He raised his hands to resist.

…But it was all too late.

“Die, sacrifice.”

A gunshot.

The sound traveled along the rails, echoing sharply…

Traveling far…

Very, very far away…

A spray of deep-crimson blood spattered over the wall in the narrow conductors’ room.

In almost the same moment, the door opened.

“What the hell?”

When someone spoke behind Claire and he turned, a conductor was standing there, his eyes round.

He wore the special Flying Pussyfoot conductor’s uniform, whose basic color was white.

“Who are you?” Claire asked the man. His face was expressionless.

There should only be two conductors on this train: me, and the guy I just killed… Come to think of it, what was this middle-aged conductor’s name, anyway?

As he was thinking these things, the man in white waved both hands and said:

“Easy, easy, put that dangerous thing away, please. I’m not your enemy.”

The man smiled brightly as he spoke. Quietly, Claire turned the gun on him.

“Like I could trust a guy who isn’t panicking in a situation like this? Tell me who you are and what you want.”

With that reasonable statement, he began to put pressure on the trigger.

“Wow. Busted already?”

Promptly changing his tone, the fake conductor warped his lips into a smirk. On seeing it, for some reason, Claire threw the gun to the floor.

The fake conductor watched this, looking mystified. Possibly because he hadn’t yet made eye contact with Claire, his expression still held absolute confidence.

“What’s the deal, huh?”

Confident wasn’t quite the word for Claire’s answer. It sounded more like a fragment of routine conversation.

“You seem like the type who wouldn’t tell the truth if all I did was turn a gun on you, so I’m going to torture you a little.”

Upon hearing that, the fake conductor burst out laughing.

“You’re gonna what?! Torture, he says! What era are you from, huh?”

Ignoring the cackling man, Claire released the lock on the door that led to the outside. When he opened it, a cold wind blew in, searing its way into his body.

“C’mon, pal, what’re you doing? I mean, I’m tickled you threw your piece away for me, but…”

Smirking, the fake conductor raised his voice, putting a hand into his jacket.

“Even if you’re unarmed, I’ve got a gun— Huh?”

But Claire had vanished.

It had looked as if he’d walked right out the open door and fallen off the train, but that had to have been his imagination…right?

Drawing his weapon, the fake conductor slowly approached the door.

Leaning out slightly, he pointed the handgun to his left and right, but up ahead was the side of the train, and to the rear was a dark, receding landscape, and that was all.

Was he still inside, then? He hastily turned back around, and in that instant, something tremendously strong yanked the cuffs of his trousers backward.

“ !”

In spite of himself, he pitched over, falling forward, but the force didn’t ease up. It kept pulling the fake conductor out.

“Waugh, wah-wah-waaah-AAAaaaaAh!”

Even from his prone position, he managed to turn his head to look back, and then he saw something unbelievable.

The sleeves of the conductor’s uniform had sprouted from below the open door, and their ends had latched onto his legs.

Th-the conductor? That’s nuts! He’s down there?! How—?!

As he was thinking this, his body was dragged outside all at once. The cold wind rushed past him, and he felt himself fall a short distance.

In the instant he thought, I’m falling, his body stopped with a jolt in midair.

The next thing the impersonator knew, Claire had him in a full nelson hold.

“??????—!”

The man was confused. He couldn’t even imagine what was happening, or how.

Claire had his legs hooked around the metal fittings under the car and was holding the phony with his free-hanging upper half.

From this completely crazy position, he was gradually lowering the other man toward the ground.

In the midst of a roar that combined the sound of the moving train and the wind, Claire murmured in the man’s ear:

“All right, I’m going to ask you again… Who are you?”

The fake conductor had regained enough presence of mind to be able to respond, but as a result, he refused to just tell him the answer. He began to struggle, trying to point the gun in his right hand behind him.

“Too bad.”

The man’s body lurched, tipping down, and his right arm made contact with the ground.

“Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”

The shock and pain were far greater than what he’d imagined. He tried to raise his hand, but Claire was holding his arm, and he wouldn’t let him up.

The gun in his right hand was knocked away in the blink of an eye…along with his hand, up to the wrist.

“Who are you?”

The question came again, but the man only screamed in pain.

Claire lowered his body, pressing his arm to the ground again.

By the time the fake conductor’s right arm was gone up to the shoulder, Claire had gotten him to tell him everything about himself.

He said his name was Dune and that he was a member of the Russo Family. More accurately, he was a direct subordinate of Ladd Russo, and part of a faction that had broken off from the Russo Family that very day.

In addition, he told him Ladd’s group was planning to hijack this train, kill half the passengers, and then crash the train into the station.

On reflex, Claire doubted their sanity, but apparently, sanity for this guy Ladd was the equivalent of insanity for ordinary people.

First, they’d throw the bodies of the passengers they’d killed onto the tracks; a “collector” who wasn’t on the train would inform the railway company, and in the hours before the train arrived in New York, they’d squeeze as much money as possible out of the company.

Then they’d stop the train at a designated spot, meet up with the collector—who would arrive by car—and make their getaway. When they did, Ladd would probably kill all the passengers who’d seen their faces.

And, in order to take over the conductors’ room, Dune had gone out of his way to wear a fake conductor’s uniform.

“Why would you do that? It’s pointless. If you just wanted to get control of the train, all you had to do was shoot us. There’s no need to wear a uniform and pass yourself off as one of us.”

As he answered Claire’s question, Dune smiled; it was as if the prolonged exposure to extreme pain had fried the connections between his nerves.

However, what was truly worthy of disgust lay in what he said.

“Heh, heh-heh, heh. It’s atmosphere, fella, atmosphere! Ladd loves games like that. Dressing like a conductor puts you in the right mood, and when I walk around the train later, the passengers will look at me with hope in their eyes. He says he likes killing ’em right after that—after their hope. I’m partial to it myself. Hee-hee, hee, hee-hee-hee-hee-hee…”

In response to the man’s answer, Claire fell silent for a little while. Then, quietly, he spoke. The brutal color that had been in his eyes a moment ago was fading, and their former color was returning. However, those eyes seemed to hold a slight unease, and as Claire continued his interrogation, his expression clouded.

“How did you get those clothes so you could create this ‘atmosphere’ of yours? Those are Flying Pussyfoot exclusives. Only a few people have them.”

“Hee, hee-hee. I picked ’em up at the station this morning! I got ’em from the conductor who got off this train when it pulled into Chicago and you got on! A pale guy with short hair!”

Tony. The face of the fellow conductor whose duties he’d taken over that afternoon rose in Claire’s mind. He was a cheerful Italian conductor, and he’d taught Claire the ABCs of the job.

“What…did you do with him?”

“Hee-hee, he’s probably feeding the rats in the Chicago sewers right about now!”

After blurting this out all at once, Dune realized it was something he should never have said.

The pain was keeping his brain from working, and he’d forgotten he was in a desperate situation.

“H-h-hang on, I lied!”

It was already too late. Claire’s right hand was on the back of Dune’s head. His eyes were filled with something even deadlier than before, and the bearing he’d worn, that of a conductor, had vanished completely.

With enormous strength stabilizing his head, Dune’s body—along with Claire’s upper body—was approaching the ground.

“Wa-wa-wait! You just killed a conductor yourself! What the hell are you?!”

Even at that protest, the force didn’t let up. Claire only lowered his body slowly toward the ground. The afterimages made the gravel ballast look as if it was flowing like a river. At the speed this train was traveling at, if you scraped something against that gravel, it would turn into an excellent grater. He’d already proved this using Dune’s arm.

In the interval before his nose touched the ground, Dune listened to Claire’s long murmur:

“Me? I’m Claire Stanfield… Or ‘Vino.’ That might be easier for you mafia types to recognize.”

Vino! I’ve heard of that! I’ve heard of him! He’s a hitman who does jobs all around the States, and he picked up the nickname “Vino” because his kills are messy, and there’s always a ton of blood left behind after he does a job. Who’d have thought he was really a conductor?! No wonder he does jobs all over the place… But honestly, I couldn’t care less about that, help me, let me go— Oh shit, shitshitshitshit—

“But it’s different now.”

Different whatever who cares just save me I’m begging you savgyaugalflaryuleuryeruru

rururururrrrrrrr

His face reached the ground, and in almost the same moment, Dune lost his sight, his consciousness, and his life.

Pulling the corpse back up, Claire tossed it into the middle of the conductors’ room. His victim’s blood had sprayed over him, dyeing his clothes bright red.

The corpse’s head was twisted at an impossible angle, and its face and right arm had been completely ground off. The cut surfaces were extremely dirty and gruesome. If someone who didn’t know any better saw this corpse, they’d probably think its face and arm had been chewed off…by some cruel, brutal monster far outside the realm of humanity.

Claire didn’t try to wipe off the blood that had splashed over half his face. Instead, he used his fingers to draw red stripes below his eyes.

In a way, he might have meant it as a ritual, a prelude to what he was about to do.

Quietly, to himself, Claire murmured the rest of the words Dune hadn’t been able to hear:

“—To you, I’m a monster. A monster who’s going to devour all of you.”

He looked up into empty space and grinned.

“Starting now, as far as you and this train are concerned—I’m the Rail Tracer.”