Seven Out of Hell (3 page)

Forrest was taken by surprise at the invitation, unable to conjure up an instant plan to get them out of their predicament. But, as the men looked at him expectantly, he cracked a crooked-toothed grin, “What’s up, Captain? Running out of ideas?”

Hedges shook his head and shot a glance along and then back down the track. “Just time, Sergeant,” he answered.

The men, resting from the onerous task of feeding logs to the fire, glanced suspiciously out at the countryside through which the locomotive was speeding. The wasteland of denuded pine woods and fallow cotton fields in the vicinity of the prison camp had been left behind. Now they were amid a rolling wilderness of untilled meadows and gentle hills covered with cypress and pine in which the railroad was the sole sign of man’s encroachment upon nature. It looked tranquil in the warm morning sunlight, but foremost in each man’s mind was the knowledge that Georgia was enemy territory.

“You reckon they’ll come after us?” Seward asked of anybody who cared to answer.

“You see any goodwill committee waving us off, lunkhead?” Scott yelled.

“She’s goin’ fit to bust her boiler now,” the engineer put in nervously, his gaze glued to the steam gauge as the needle crept towards the danger mark.

Hedges peered ahead, narrowing his eyes against the slipstream pressure. “I don’t see any telegraph line?”

The engineer shook his head. “Ain’t one across this stretch of country, Mister Captain, sir.”

“So we just gotta worry about the guys behind us,” Scott drawled, and grinned at Rhett. “All of us ’cepting Rhett, of course.”

The comment raised strained smiles on the faces of some of the men. Rhett was a blatant fag.

Hedges did not react to the humor as he leaned across in front of the engineer, who leapt away in fear. The Captain’s fist clenched around the control level and eased it away from full throttle. The straining locomotive continued to race along the track at its maximum speed and then began to slow down.

“Wrong way!” the engineer yelled anxiously.

“Forrest!” Hedges snarled, applying the brakes to decrease the headlong rush even more.

“Captain?”

“Casey Jones has anything more to say, put him in the firebox. Head first.”

Forrest grinned at the wide-eyed engineer and the rotund little man let out a gasp and pressed himself back against the side of the cab.

The wheels intermittently screeched and showered sparks as Hedges applied and released the brakes and, when the locomotive rounded a curve at the foot of a hillock and plunged through a cutting in a cypress grove, he shut off the steam completely and hauled hard on the lever. With an angry hissing and a drawn-out, high-pitched shriek of protest, the locomotive slithered to a halt.

The men looked nervously into the trees on either side and then back to where the gleaming rails went from sight around the hillock.

“We forgot to bring the picnic hamper,” Rhett muttered in his cultured New England tones.

“I heard roasted Rebel’s good to eat,” Seward answered, grinning evilly at the quivering engineer, whose round eyes implored Hedges to give him protection.

He was about to proclaim his lack of support for the Confederate cause, but as he saw the impassive expression on the Captain’s face, he recalled the warning.

“Ain’t lunchtime yet,” Hedges said evenly, watching the black wood smoke that continued to belch from the inverted cone of the funnel. “How’d we kill that, Casey? You can talk now.”

The engineer had to fight a lump back down from his throat. “You gotta damp it down,” he finally croaked.

“Wrong,” Hedges answered.
“You
gotta damp it down. Do it.”

The man moved forward to comply and the troopers eyed Hedges expectantly.

“End of the line, uh Captain?” Bell asked.

Hedges nodded curtly. “Forrest: take Seward, Douglas and Bell into the trees on the right. Scott and Rhett, over to the left.”

The troopers complied without question, Forrest holding back only long enough to take down the sledge hammer from its brackets at the side of the cab. Hedges glanced to left and right, seeing the thick foliage sway back into place after the men had plunged into the trees.

Steam had ceased to hiss from the piston valves and the plume of smoke was noticeably losing its density. The sweating engineer worked frantically to complete his task. He was awesomely aware of the hard-faced Captain towering above him.

“You gonna kill me, Mister Captain, sir?” he blurted out when he could take the tense silence no longer.

“You do anything except run a locomotive and gab?” Hedges snarled.

“Please, I gotta wife and six young’uns,” the engineer implored as the final veil of smoke rose and disintegrated in the hot, unmoving air.

“Too much screwing don’t guarantee a man a long life,” Hedges responded coldly. “Into the trees, Casey.”

As the man climbed down from the footplate on the side indicated by Hedges, his mind raced, seeking a reason that might keep him alive. “I know Georgia like the back of my hand!” he blurted out as Hedges shoved him between the trees where Scott and Rhett had gone from sight.

The two troopers were crouched in a patch of flattened undergrowth. Hedges checked that the spot offered a view of the stationary locomotive through a tracery of screening leaves and nodded his satisfaction.

Rhett’s vapidly handsome face was run with the sweat of fear. “What if there’s a whole trainload of them, Captain?” he whispered.

“He’s chicken again, Captain,” Scott said scornfully.

“So he ought to know not to count them before they hatch,” Hedges replied curtly, then raised his voice. “Forrest?”

“Yeah?” came an answering call from the other side of the locomotive.

“I figure just as many as they can get aboard a loco. Won’t want it slowed down by any cars.”

“If the Rebs are that smart,” Forrest called back.

“Move as soon as it hits.”

“You bet.”

“You want any prisoners, Cap?” Seward yelled.

“Crazy lunkhead,” Forrest snarled, loud enough to carry across the railroad, avoiding the necessity for Hedges to respond.

Silence settled upon the sunlit grove and was maintained for several minutes as the men crouched in their respective groups on each side of the deserted locomotive. But then their breathing quickened and became loud as straining ears picked up the distant rumble of an approaching locomotive.

“Sounds like a Camelback,” the engineer whispered, airing his knowledge.

“Any cars?” Hedges rasped, his hand flashing to the back of his neck and drawing the open razor.

Fear leapt across the round face, then the man leaned forward, concentrating upon the expanding volume of sound, certain his life depended upon giving the correct estimate.

“Come on, come on,” Hedges urged, his hooded eyes boring into those of the engineer as the track began to hum with the vibration of the approaching locomotive.

The man shook his head. “Not a one,” he shouted above the thud of racing pistons.

“Be here when we get back,” Hedges snapped and stood up.

Scott and Rhett sprang to their feet behind him.

The engineer had called it correctly. The ungainly looking Camelback roared around the curve unencumbered by cars. Two grey clad infantrymen clung to the front, two more above the tanks on each side and there were half a dozen crowded on the footplate with the two crewmen.

The hillock had obscured the stationary locomotive until there was less than four hundred feet before impact. And this was not enough. The braking wheels locked and scalding steam gushed from outlets. The Union troopers could see every line of desperate horror inscribed upon the faces of the Rebels, but the full throated screams were swamped by the clamorous din of the slithering locomotive as it raced towards the inevitable collision.

Two men hurled themselves from the footplate, to be smashed against the ends of the ties, their broken bodies tumbling like rag dolls along the sides of the track.

Then the shattering impact came.

As Scott raced from cover to snatch up the carbines dropped by the dead men, the Camelback crunched into the rear of the empty locomotive. The cabin of the stationary loco crumpled as if it were made of cardboard a moment before the force of the crash sent the engine forward, to topple sideways off the track.

The Camelback started to rear like a crazed horse, its crushed front end glistening with the moist red pulp which was all that remained of the two Rebels who had been clinging there. Then it seemed to be trying to right itself, the leading wheels dipping for the tracks. But the rails had been buckled and the wheels sheered into the ties.

Men were flung from the footplate, their screams of agony driven into silence by the harsh grinding of metal against metal. Hot cinders from the firebox and scalding steam from a broken valve spewed out after the men, exploding their clothes into flames and searing the skin from their faces.

The Camelback teetered on the brink, then slammed over on to its side, squelching the gore from the two Rebels clinging to the tank: catapulting the two from the other side to a crushing death against inanimate tree trunks.

All movement of both locomotives was finished in seconds but the angry death rattle of escaping steam continued to hiss from the Camelback as the Union troopers broke from cover to search for undamaged weapons and supplies of ammunition. The engineer ignored them, staring in stunned silence at the jagged and crumpled metal of the wreckage - like a man paying his last respects to dead colleagues.

A glance was enough to convince Hedges that no one had survived the wreck, but Forrest circled the Camelback with a fixed grin of evil on his face and the sledge hammer swinging easily in one hand. But as he stared down at each broken body and found no movement the light of hate in his pig-like eyes became dulled by frustration. The stink and the humiliation of Andersonville was still clinging to him and the need for revenge was a broiling fury inside him.

As he stared down into the blackened face of the final victim and caught the sickly sweet odor of burned flesh, the rage exploded. His ear-splitting bellow drew all eyes in his direction. Then he grasped the sledge hammer in both hands, raised it high and pounded it downwards.

The hammer head thudded home in the area of the man’s nose and sank deep into the flesh of his face. Blood and bone fragments splashed upwards.

“We only have to kill them once, Sarge,” Douglas yelled.

Forrest drew in a deep breath and let it out as a long sigh. Then he shot an expectant glance towards Hedges.

“Andersonville’s still there, Forrest,” the Captain said softly.

Forrest nodded and hurled the hammer at the overturned Camelback. “But I ain’t in it no more, Captain.”

“And it ain’t in you, either?”

“Right.”

The men finished gathering up enough serviceable weapons to arm each with a rifle and a revolver - Spencers and Colts - and a supply of ammunition.

The engineer watched the men, terror at his own fate
replacing the horror of the carnage.

“Ain’t a decent uniform among ’em, sir,” Scott reported after circling the wreck. “All either ripped to shreds or soaked in blood.”

Hedges acknowledged this with a shake of his head and slitted his eyes to look up at the sun. He pointed towards the brow of the hillock. “Due north’s that way,” he declared flatly. “Which is the way we’ll go. Casey, you’ll lead us -» and tell me what’s up ahead every time I ask you.”

The engineer bobbed his head and wiped sweat from his forehead. “Yes, sir, Mister Captain.”

“First off we need a place not too far from here where we can rest up ’till dark.”

“An’ get somethin’ to eat?” Bell suggested.

“What you want, a goddamn hotel?” Forrest snarled at him.

“Man’s gotta eat to live,” Bell said in a whining tone.

“Breathing’s more important,” Hedges put in. “Let’s move out before the Rebs start to get anxious and we get more company.”

The group circled the wrecked locomotives, now silent and mournful with their attendant scattering of broken and twisted bodies. They moved into the trees and started up the slope in ranks of two, led by Hedges and the engineer.

“What a way to ruin a railroad,” Rhett murmured as he took a final look back at the scene of the smash. “Just as I was starting to feel like a real railroad man.”

“You ain’t lost the chance, Bob,” Scott replied with an obscene leer. “Maybe the Captain will let you have Casey Jones when he’s through with him.”

“You know I didn’t mean…,” Rhett began to respond.

“Cut out the yakking,” Hedges hissed.

Scott winked at the fag and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Guess wartime ain’t a gaytime.”

*****

A RED glow showed behind the windows of the big house as the engineer spotted the horse carcass blocking the track and clamped on the brakes. Edge, Alvin and Beth watched the sparks flying from the locked wheels, then glanced across the plaza as the drunken old-timer came down off the stoop and made ungainly haste towards the bank.