It stepped firmly through the heavy exhaust plume, then walked slowly atop the boiler, avoiding the steam pressure dome and the sand dome. The wind jostling the thick coat, the wide-brimmed hat steady on its head, and its eyes hidden from sight but for a faint hint of red below the rim of the hat.
Breaking from his fixation, Karl frantically fumbled in the toolbox under his seat and pulled out a worn revolver. He held the gun at head level and pointed at the ceiling of the cab. The bearded man’s eyes were wide as he waited for the creature to open the access hatch and drop into the cab.
Heavy steps came from the roof, then stopped. Karl cocked the revolver with a click that seemed insanely loud in the cab of a moving locomotive.
“My God,” Silas breathed softly, while he and Karl watched thick white frost form on the edges of the hatch. It spread quickly across the steel ceiling to the wood liner of the cab sides. The windows iced over as the men watched in amazement, their breath blowing whiter in the cab as the air grew bitter. They could feel heavy air pressing down on them; the hiss and moan of the locomotive losing strength fading from their hearing as if cotton were being stuffed into their ears.
The cold was more than a physical sensation; it was a malevolent thought pressing down upon the men in oppressive detail; crushing any idea of existence out of their minds as Silas slipped from his seat and Karl fought for breath.
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The cold was so great Karl wondered how the fire in the boiler could still flare. With pained and shaking arms, he reached out and used the butt of the gun to knock the firebox door lock off, then opened the doors.
Blessed heat flooded the cab and revived the men, Silas rising from the floor of the cab where he had fallen.
Looking up, Karl saw icicles hanging from the hatch combing. The creature moved on the roof, two drumming of hardened boots on the cold steel. One icicle fell to the cab floor, shattering between Karl and Silas, spraying in hundreds of pieces that did not melt. Unable to resist the urge, Silas reached out and picked up a sliver of ice, only to gasp and throw the ice back to the floor.
The gasp seemed to draw a reaction from the creature; with three quick steps, it left the roof of the cab and landed on the coal pile of the tender with a crash of loose rock.
Turning to the rear of the cab, both men looked at the canvas. The rough cloth was no longer moving in the wind. The tarp glistened with a solid sheet of ice.
Coal rattled as the creature moved away from the cab and gained the metal deck of the tender water tank.
“No,” Karl gasped, then flung himself at the frozen tarp, beating it free of the floor and forcing under the stiff material to the rear deck of the locomotive.
The cold stole the breath from his lungs as Karl glimpsed the figure climbing to the roof of the rattler behind the tender. How the hell it had walked the length of the locomotive to the tender and still been capable of climbing to the top of a freight car? Karl wanted to scream at the impossibility of what he had seen.
The thing was walking to the caboose. Karl had to warn John.
Throwing himself to the floor of the shaking train, Karl forced his way under the tarp, then stood and pulled on the train’s whistle; the emergency code of three sharp blasts. It sounded like the desperate cry of a child lost in the thick of a winter storm. It sounded like a cry for help from the hopeless.