Fortune Favors (26 page)

Joe cocked his head sideways. “Somethin’ more?”

“You knew about all this. You had the diaries, you knew about the Fountain and even the map. So why are you here?”

“Well...” Joe let the word hang in the air for several seconds. “The truth is, I'm kind of scared of that Fountain. It don't seem natural, somehow.”

“And old age and death are natural?”

“Everybody gets old and everybody dies. Ain't nobody that never died, not even him.” He gestured to the casket. “What did he accomplish with all those extra years?”

Joe frowned, as if he had meant to say something else but couldn’t find the words. “Living like that...how is it any different than getting addicted to a drug? You live for the next fix, you keep it a secret and don’t share because you’re afraid that if you do, it won’t be special no more.”

“So, eternal life just leads to misery?” Kismet didn’t mean for the question to sound rhetorical, and quickly added: “What about Candace? Wouldn’t you like to spend a few more years with her? And not just as an old woman, but young and full of energy? Wouldn’t the world be a better place if the oldest and wisest of us had a few more years?”

“Mr. Kismet, I think that if folks learn about the Fountain, there's going to be plenty of misery for everyone. Powerful people will control it. And poor folks...black folks...they’ll just be in the way in a world where everyone lives forever.”

The argument surprised Kismet, not in the least because of how difficult it was to refute. “Everyone has something to give, Joe, something worth preserving.”

“I don't think so. If you want to go find it, that's you business. Me and Candace are going to stay where we belong.”

Kismet looked at King thoughtfully. “And this is where you really belong? Are you sure of that?”

“More than you might think, Mr. Kismet.” Joe smiled sadly. “If I could talk you out of looking for it I would. I think when you find it, we’ll all be in a world of hurt.”

TWELVE

Annie Crane hugged her arms around her chest and squeezed her eyes shut, but try as she might, she could not convince herself that she was somewhere else. Somewhere she wasn’t buried under tons of earth.

Claustrophobia
, she thought.
An irrational fear of being trapped in an enclosed space, and I’ve got it. How am I only learning this now?

Right up to the moment when she had plunged into that dark hole, Annie would have believed that she wasn’t afraid of anything. She was Al Higgins’ girl. She could shoot as well as any man she knew, was an expert rock-climber, flew paragliders and jumped out of airplanes...oh, there were still a lot of things on her bucket list—scary things—but not a one of them filled her with the kind of overwhelming primal terror she felt now.

Of course, now that she thought about it, there were a few things that had never held much appeal. Her dad had invited her to go caving once or twice, but the timing had never been good. Or had she just found excuses to avoid doing something that scared her more than she realized?

“Annie!” Her father’s voice was a welcome intrusion on her private hell. “Let’s go, girl. Time to get moving.”

If ‘moving’ meant getting out of this living tomb, she was all for it.

With the eagerness of someone trying to escape a snake pit, she scrambled up the ladder. Just knowing that she wasn’t underground anymore was a marginal relief, but the cramped little cube of cut stone in which she found herself wasn’t much better, particularly when she realized what function it served.

Kismet stood with his face pressed to the door of the crypt, a door which she now saw was open just a crack. He turned back to the rest of them after a moment. “Let’s go.”

Annie didn’t resist as her father bustled her forward, through the door which Kismet threw open to the night. If anything, she fairly ran to get through it.

The transition from tomb to open air was like a resurrection, but her euphoria was fleeting. She caught a whiff of smoke on the wind, and spied flashes of light—the beams of electric torches—crisscrossing the air above the endless sea of grave markers, and realized that, while they had escaped her underground nightmare, the danger which had prompted them to seek refuge in the tunnel was far from past. Leeds’ white robed goons were still looking for them.

Kismet tugged on her arm, pointing toward a maze of larger vaults that were clustered together near the crypt they had just exited. “This way.”

As she started to run behind him, a backward glance revealed that the crypt door was closed again, and the couple from the house—Joe and Candace—weren’t with them. She wanted to ask about this, but it was clear from their haste that questions and explanations would have to wait.

* * *

Joe descended the ladder and found Candace waiting patiently at the end of the tunnel.

“So you just sent them on their way?” she asked, a faintly accusatory tone in her voice.

“Didn’t seem like they’d have it any other way,” he answered. “Sooner they’re gone, the sooner we can get back to normal.”

“Normal,” Candace scoffed. “It’s done, Joe. There ain’t no going back to what was, and you know it.”

Joe leaned against the ladder and hung his head. She was right, of course. Oh, they could wait down here as long as it took; the hooligans in white robes—whether they were Klansmen or just a few rowdies using the sheets to misdirect suspicion, he didn’t know—probably wouldn’t linger until sunrise, especially if they caught the scent of Kismet and his companions. But what then? Their home was destroyed, and with it, the life they had so carefully constructed for themselves.

Candace moved to stand next to him, but said nothing. Joe intuited that something more was troubling her, and he thought he knew what it was. “You think I should have told them everything, don't you?”

“They saved us,” she replied, without directly answering him.

“I told them where to find what they’re looking for.”

“Yes.”

He could tell from her tone that she was holding back. “Then what's the matter? That Kismet fellow knows what he's doing. They'll be fine.”

“They need to know the truth.”

Joe sighed. Maybe she was right; maybe Kismet did deserve to know everything. But the Fountain had a way of keeping its own secret; who was he to interfere?

* * *

They managed to get as far as the edge of the cemetery before they were noticed.

As they clambered over the fence that marked the border, Kismet heard distant shouts and saw flashlight beams playing along the tree line, seeking them out, and knew that now it would be a race.

He’d briefed Higgins and Annie on the plan as they had darted between the headstones. If they got separated in the darkness, they would find each other again at the rail line Joe had told him about. Now, as they started running headlong, no longer making an effort to conceal their movements, he would have to trust them to make that rendezvous.

The sparse woods offered some concealment, but there was little doubt that Leeds’ men were giving chase. When he glanced back, he could see their flashlights through the boughs. They had a good lead, maybe it would be enough. But as the minutes passed, ticked out by the pounding of his heart and the rhythm of his breathing, he heard an ominous sound in the distance and knew that fate had thrown a monkey wrench into the gears of his plan. A low rumble and the squeal and clatter of steel wheels on iron rails...there was a train on the line.

At least it will be easy to find
, he thought.

As he broke out of the woods, he caught his first glimpse of the train. He could make out the squared-off silhouettes of box cars, or maybe shipping containers, as well as tankers, and flatbed cars with unusual shapes secured to them. It stretched in both directions as far as he could see, at least a mile long, moving south, away from the heart of the city at what seemed like a glacial pace. They could still follow the rail line back to the city, but if their pursuers caught up to them, there would be nowhere to go, not while that serpentine behemoth blocked the way.

Maybe
...

He glimpsed Annie emerging from the woods behind him. She seemed rejuvenated after her paralyzing and unexpected bout of claustrophobia in the tunnel. Her breathing was steady, as if the desperate flight through the woods had been no more challenging than a jog to the corner store. Her father trotted out a few seconds later, panting just a little, but clearly still in fighting shape. Kismet noted with some satisfaction that the old Gurkha still had his Kimber rifle, now slung across his back. He waved, urging them to join him as he started running again, slower now so they could catch up, and headed straight for the train.

He paused at the edge of the raised gravel rail bed and beckoned them close. The ground rumbled beneath his feet as thousands of tons of steel rolled by just a few yards away.

He pointed up at the line of cars. Higgins seemed to grasp what he was silently suggesting, for a look of disbelief twisted his visage. “Mate, you are not bloody serious.”

Annie’s gaze switched between them until she too seemed to understand. “Oh.”

“I think we can do this,” he shouted back. “It’s not going that fast; maybe only twenty miles an hour.”

It was a guess, but a good one. Out in open country, a train might cruise along at fifty or sixty miles per hour, but here, close to populated areas with a lot of road crossings, trains had to observe speed limits just like automobiles.

Okay, it might be more like thirty miles per hour
, he decided, but didn’t voice this aloud. “We can do this,” he repeated. “It’s our best chance. We hop this train and get off a few miles down the line. They won’t have a clue where we are.”

Higgins glanced at his daughter, and then nodded with only the barest hint of reservation. Annie was a little more reticent with her assent, but Kismet was pleased and a little surprised at how quickly they accepted his crazy plan. He realized it was probably because they had no idea just how dangerous what they were about to do really was.

There wasn’t time to work out the finer points. They would have to run alongside the train, as fast as they could manage, pick out a good handhold as the cars passed by, grab on and pull themselves up. An Olympic sprinter, running all out, could easily reach twenty miles an hour and sustain that pace for a few hundred meters. None of them were in that kind of shape, but with adrenaline pumping, he didn’t doubt that they could come close, at least for a minute or so. The train would be moving at about five to ten miles an hour faster, so grabbing on would, in theory, be a little like reaching out from a standstill and snaring someone running by.

Higgins went first, with Annie only a few steps behind him. Kismet too started running along, giving the others a little bit of room. He paid scant attention to their progress, keeping his focus on the task at hand. Further complicating matters was the fact that in order to reach the train, they would have to dart up the sloping side of the rail bed at the last minute, effectively running right at the lumbering train as it moved by. A stumble or an error in judgment of even a few degrees, and they might very well be crushed to death or sliced in half beneath the clattering wheels.

He caught a glimpse of Higgins making his move. The old Gurkha found a previously untapped vein of energy and dashed up the rail bed to grasp the front edge of a flatcar as it rolled by. His grip was fierce enough that the train pulled him off his feet, and for a moment, he was dragged along, his boots bouncing off the gravel, but then with a superhuman heave, he hauled himself up onto the platform where he immediately rolled onto his belly and reached out with both hands to his daughter.

Annie made it look easy. Her lithe form and the vigor of her youth enabled her to almost match the pace of the train for a few seconds, long enough to catch her father’s hands. He lifted her onto the flatcar with the grace of a ballet dancer lifting a ballerina over his head, and then they were gone, whisked from Kismet’s line of sight as the train rolled on.

He quickened his pace, lowering his head as he broke into a full sprint along the base of the rail bed. A container car, with no easy handholds, passed him by, moving almost twice as fast as he. He kept running, biding his time. A second container car passed, and then another.

Not good.

He glanced over his shoulder, afraid that he might be running out of train, but positioned as he was, he just couldn’t tell. Then he saw his chance; a flatbed with some kind of vehicle or large machine was coming up next. As its front corner passed him, he charged up the gravel slope and reached out.

In that moment, the sheer lunacy of what he was doing hit him like a physical blow. He’d done some crazy things in his life, sometimes without any kind of safety net, but this time it felt different. Maybe it was because he was running, exerting himself to the physical limit at a time when he most needed his judgment to be pitch perfect. The exacting nature of what he was attempting filled him with uncertainty, a dread reminder of just how precise his timing would have to be, right at a moment when he most needed to be sure of himself. The thunderous passage of the train car right beside him didn’t help his focus any.

Then his outstretched hand felt something that wasn’t smooth unyielding metal. It was a heavy nylon web belt, one of the tension straps that held the flatbed’s cargo in place. He curled his fingers around it...

And was yanked off his feet.

For an instant, he panicked, struggling to gain his footing while at the same time trying to keep his legs from being swept under the car. In desperation, he flung his other hand up to grasp the strap, even as his feet started to drag and bounce along the gravel slope.

Damn it
, he thought.
Now I’m screwed
.

He dared not let go, but how long could he endure the punishing assault of being dragged by the train. He had to pull himself up, but was he strong enough?

He flexed his biceps, pulling with all his might, but almost immediately, something like liquid fire began to burn in his muscles and he felt them start to fail. In desperation he kicked at the ground moving beneath his feet, trying to propel himself up, just a few inches...