Chapter 29 - Breaching the Dark
The caboose door slammed shut. Clara stood in the cab beside Nathaniel, her hand bracing Willa against the iron bulkhead as the little girl clutched Clara's skirts.
Nathaniel seized the brass lever of the cylinder cocks, pulling it back with a violent jerk. With a deafening *CHOOOOSH*, two plumes of boiling steam erupted from the front cylinders, scouring the tracks with scalding white fog.
He leaned into the long iron throttle, hauling it toward his chest.
The *Iron Mule* screamed.
Its four drive wheels spun wildly against the rusted, ice-coated rails, throwing showers of brilliant orange sparks into the black tunnel. The iron chassis shuddered violently, the entire cab rattling so hard that Clara’s teeth clicked together.
For three terrifying seconds, the train did not move. It simply shrieked in place, its wheels grinding grooves into the ancient iron track, while behind them in the tunnel, the shouts of the approaching cavalry vanguard became audible over the hiss of steam.
"There they are! Fire! Fire at the boiler!"
Carbine slugs began spattering against the iron tender, ringing like mad bells. One round ricocheted off the cab frame, clipping Nathaniel’s shoulder and tearing a strip of red through his wool shirt. He didn't even flinch. He hauled the sander valve wide open.
A stream of dry crushed sand poured from the domes onto the rails beneath the spinning wheels.
The iron tires bit.
With a bone-shattering *CLACK-CLANK*, the slack went out of the couplings. The *Iron Mule* lurched forward like an enraged bull. The wooden cars behind it groaned in protest, and then the entire train surged into the darkness, gathering momentum down the slight two-percent grade of the timber tunnel.
"More wood!" Nathaniel roared over the deafening clatter of the driving rods. "Feed her, Clara! Don't let the fire drop!"
Clara threw open the heavy firebox door, the blinding orange glare washing over her face. Ignoring the blistering heat that threatened to singe her eyebrows, she heaved pitch-soaked logs into the white-hot heart of the firebox, one after another, slamming the heavy iron door shut between each throw.
The engine gained speed. Ten miles per hour. Twenty.
The narrow walls of the Sector Four drift blurred past the cab windows—a dizzying smear of black granite, rotting timber frames, and weeping mineral seams. The sound inside the confined stone tunnel was overwhelming—a roaring, mechanical monster careening through the bowels of the mountain.
Ahead, at the end of the long straightaway, Clara saw it.
It wasn't light. It was a massive, cross-braced timber bulkhead—the exterior snow-doors that sealed the eastern portal of the mountain against fifty-foot winter drifts. They were bolted from the inside with twelve-inch iron bars, reinforced to withstand the weight of an avalanche.
"Nathaniel!" Clara screamed, pointing through the cracked glass of the cab. "The snow gates! They’re barred!"
Nathaniel looked at the solid wall of oak and iron approaching at thirty miles per hour. He looked down at the steam gauge—now pinned at sixty pounds, the safety valve shrieking a high, continuous jet of boiling white into the dark.
He did not reach for the brake.
He reached for the throttle, and he pulled it all the way to the last notch on the quadrant.
"Brace yourselves!" Nathaniel roared, throwing his body over Clara and Willa, pinning them into the corner behind the heavy steel coal bunker.
The *Iron Mule* hit the timber gates like an artillery shell.
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The crash was monumental. Massive oak beams shattered into clouds of flying splinters. The heavy iron reinforcing bars snapped with sounds like rifle cracks. For a split second, darkness fought light—and then, in an explosion of white snow, broken wood, and screaming iron, the locomotive burst through the side of the mountain into the blinding, freezing daylight of the eastern slope.
***
