Chapter 61 - The Iron Leviathan
Sterling’s grin widened into a death mask. "The Governor didn't send a wire to stop me, Clara. He sent a wire to confirm the track was clear for *The Iron Leviathan*."
Deep beneath their feet, through hundreds of feet of solid granite, a faint, rhythmic vibration began to hum. It was subtle at first—a distant trembling that rattled the loose gravel around their boots—but it grew with terrifying rapidity.
It wasn't an avalanche. It wasn't the sound of falling water.
It was the heavy, piston-driven thunder of a high-tonnage locomotive roaring through the lower canyon at full throttle.
"Caleb!" Clara’s voice was sharp with sudden horror. "Devil’s Gate trestle... Toby said the switch was thrown, but the main line—"
"The main line runs straight through the lower depot," Caleb whispered, the blood draining from his face. "Straight into the center of Township Nine."
"Drop the gun, Lieutenant!" Clara shouted, her twin revolvers locking onto the young officer. "Drop it now!"
The young lieutenant looked at Sterling, looked at the trembling dynamite crates, and suddenly threw his revolver into the dirt, turning and sprinting toward the mine entrance in blind terror.
Sterling didn't even look at him. His wild, bloodshot eyes remained fixed on Caleb. "You spent ten years fighting ghosts, Caleb Blackwood. But the machine doesn't care about your vengeance. It crushes everything."
With a savage snarl, Sterling dropped the burning match toward the white fuse.
Caleb fired.
The Winchester roared in the enclosed cavern, the concussive blast deafening. The heavy lead slug caught Sterling in the shoulder, spinning him backward into the shale, the match tumbling from his fingers and sizzling out against a puddle of wet mine water inches from the powder.
Caleb didn't stop to verify the wound. He seized Clara’s arm. "Run!"
They burst out of the adit into the biting mountain gale just as the distant canyon below lit up with an unnatural, blinding glare.
Down in the gorge, sweeping through the whiteout of the snowstorm like a mechanical demon, was a train unlike anything Caleb had ever seen. It was not a timber-hauler or a passenger engine.
It was an ironclad siege train.
Plated in three-inch riveted boiler steel, its cowcatcher shaped like a massive steel wedge designed to plow through blockades, the locomotive shoved through the snowdrifts without slowing. Mounted on the flatcars behind the engine were two revolving Gatling gun turrets, their multi-barreled muzzles already swiveling toward the lights of Township Nine.
And hanging from the side of the cab, his gloved hand resting on the throttle, stood a man whose silhouette Caleb knew better than his own reflection.
The man lifted a lantern, illuminating his face through the falling snow.
It was Arthur Thornton.
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Arthur’s face was mangled, half-crushed by the wreckage of the parlor car at Devil’s Chasm, bound in bloody linen—but his one visible eye burned with a cold, triumphant hatred as he looked up toward the high ridge.
The train whistle shrieked—a piercing, mechanical scream that echoed through every canyon in Black Ridge—and from the forward turret of the armored train, the first Gatling gun opened fire.
