Knight's Late Train Read online

  I wasn’t so sure. Rillie was my railroad expert on hand, but I knew Doc. My father would have left a clearer message, if he’d had time. Besides, I didn’t know whoever it was who scratched the words “We’re OK!” into the paint, I just knew it wasn’t my father.

  Doc has a lot of pet peeves. Since I was a little boy, one of the things he always insisted on I do was to always spell out “okay” and never write it like he claimed was an abbreviation — OK. He’d said that the American missionaries working with the Choctaw Indians back in the early settler days had borrowed the word from those Native American’s language. Their word “okeh” meaning it is so, was made into our word okay, meaning all right. Doc’s always been kind of funny about that sort of thing — people changing old practices, just to shorten them for no good reason. Laziness, he’d say, Just to save two damn letters like it cost ‘em to buy consonants and vowels!

  “I’m cold!” Rillie said, hugging herself. Her nose was red. “We don’t need to see any more, do we?”

  I nodded. “Let’s get back.”

  When we stepped out of the cab, the wind blasted, nearly shoving us off our feet. No matter what direction we would be heading, being in the air during these kinds of gusts was not an option.

  I elevated my voice and told her, “Can’t fly in this. We’ll have to sit it out.”

  I was surprised when she smiled. She took my gloved hand, and we braved the wind past the locos. After trudging through fifty yards of mid-thigh snow, we made it back to the chopper.

  Once safely inside, we had terrific seats to watch the snow and wind, and the wind and snow, and more snow and wind.

  “Reminds me of my first TV,” I told Rillie. “I’ll fire up the engine and turn on the heaters.”

  “No, we have to conserve our fuel, don’t we?”

  “We have half a tank. We can probably run the engine with the rotor disengaged for nearly an hour without the risk of running out of fuel before we make it back to Slaughterhouse.”

  “But what if we have an emergency? What if we have to divert or run a rescue?”

  “I’d say this is an emergency. It’s ten degrees out there, and we could be here for anywhere between an hour to all night before it lets up. I don’t want to operate the electric heaters for more than ten minutes without the engine and generator running.”

  “So don’t.”

  “Rillie, the coats will keep us warm for a while, but if we’re not moving, hypothermia could be a serious problem.”

  She leaned over the console and drew close, her eyes lazy, lips moistened, her cheeks red. “So we can move as much as you want.” She kissed me, and I kissed back. Her kiss was very nice. We held it for an extended moment, and then she pulled back long enough to check my eyes. Hers were wide and bright blue — her nostrils flaring with desire. She dove back in hungrily.

  I reciprocated, trying to forget what Rillie said about her and my father having an affair. I didn’t want to think about that: the rubber girl tying herself in knots; Big Deal in a clown suit, balancing a ball on the end of his nose while butt-ramming his aunt — and the bearded midgets … damn it — if these freak-circus mental pictures kept getting worse, I’d have to scratch my eyes out.

  I did my best to wipe those disturbing images from my mind and considered what I was about to be involved with. Smokey had said a commitment wouldn’t be fair, but I’d agreed to “keep checking back” with her. I intended to do that, once my father was found, and he was safe and sound.

  Rillie pulled back again. “You were a Marine, you know cold-weather survival.” She reached behind her seat and pulled out a thin Mylar blanket. “I think we need to take off our coats and clothes and get under this. Just in case we work up a sweat. We don’t want to be wearing wet garments. We’ll use the reflective blanket and our body heat to keep us warm.”

  She pulled the thin-plastic, cold-weather blanket over us up to our necks. Then she started undressing … me.

  I told you that I was a dog. Most women seem attracted to me for some unknown reason. With me, women tend to cross a line they normally wouldn’t with most other men. It’s a gift — it’s a curse. Damn it, it’s so difficult being me!

  I began undressing her.

  Chapter 6

  Wilde Ride

  It took a full thirty seconds to tear off our coats, boots and clothes. Once we did, her embrace was cool at first, as she straddled me — my concern initially on the cyclic control, or “stick,” that I was straddling. But her body warmed quickly. When I felt her spine relax, nearly melting in my arms, I knew I was about to have the helicopter ride of my life — without leaving the ground.

  The wind’s forceful blustering was nothing compared to Rillie Bee Wilde’s love-making. Even though I was sure we were on firm, but snow-covered ground, the helo’s rocking made me think we were about to go over a cliff. I got the image of a child’s propeller stick lodged in my mind, and I wondered if the friction on my own personal E Z stick wouldn’t be enough to cause the rotor above us to spin.

  After we both finally climaxed, I noticed an ache in my pelvis near the pubic bone from the constant hammering she’d given me. Then she attacked my mouth and face with her lips, and I had to reluctantly turn away to catch my breath.

  Rillie laughed. “Wow!” she said. “Your kiss, your hands, your touch, your hard body — you move just the right way. And you’re so-o big and hard. You are incredible!”

  I wanted to say, which stick were you riding, lady! But I wasn’t about to call her a liar. Still, it had been Rillie Bee Wilde’s movement that made the town hall bells ring in my brain and my groin sore. I was mostly just sitting there.

  “Promise me!” she said, still grinning, the index finger of one hand on my lips, the other hand with a firm but caring hold on my manhood.

  I didn’t care for the question — if she didn’t like my answer, a strong squeeze would light up my pain receptors and send me through the roof and into the rotor hub. “Promise you what?”

  “That we’ll do it again.”

  “Okay,” I said, not minding that promise. “Now?”

  “Oh, you bet, now — but I mean to promise that we’ll also do it again starting from thirty-thousand feet, auto-gyroing until we finish — or hit the ground, whichever comes first!”

  I realized she was talking about autorotation — letting the big main rotor free spin without the help of the engine to propel it. The helicopter drops, but its descent is slowed drastically — enough to make a somewhat survivable landing. It can be a dangerous and very tricky maneuver, especially if it’s a completely uncontrolled descent with the tail rotor disengaged as well.

  “Promise!” she said and squeezed my most prized and very private possessions.

  “Sex under pressure to perform might not trip my trigger.”

  “I’ll risk it.”

  She fell into me and started to mouth my face and neck again. Then she slipped off and went undercover, moving her kisses down my body — an awkward position for her, having to move back to the copilot’s seat.

  My little slugger hadn’t left the batter’s box since the last inning of sex. And when Rillie began her trip down to home plate The Babe started taking practice swings.

  “Rillie. Bee. Wilde,” I reflected.

  “Hmm-hmm,” she answered, her mouth and tongue busy doing something more pleasant than merely forming words.

  The heat our bodies had produced made the use of the Mylar blanket not only unnecessary but uncomfortable. Rillie and I threw it off in unison. She turned her lovely backside to me, facing the storm with her hands on the frosted copilot side window. I slipped into the batter’s box and got ready to put one over the center field wall.

  Rillie seemed to be the exhibitionist type. For now, no wolf, bear or bobcat could see us through the blowing snow and frost-covered windscreens. But I wondered if she wouldn’t have enjoyed making love from behind the helo’s large windows on the White House lawn — with the President, his full
staff and family looking on.

  After five minutes at the come-from-behind position, my strawberry blonde copilot was already on her third trip around the bases, and I was finally about to hit an in-the-park homerun. I was sure Rillie would call me safe at the plate — when something smacked into the co-pilot side window in front of her.

  Both of us startled, I reached for Big Deal’s gun with my right hand and grabbed my love bat with the other.

  A man’s eyes came into view from the outside. With a little scrapping, the guy’s full face appeared. Although desperate to find my father, on this particular occasion, I was relieved it was not him.

  “It’s Specks!” Rillie said.

  She covered herself with the blanket, leaving me with our pile of clothes. Without looking, I grabbed the first piece of clothing my hand came across and covered my manhood while reaching over Rillie for the door.

  The wind was … let’s say … brisk, when the door opened. My little ball-player had forgotten all about the game and dove for the dugout.

  Uncomfortable on a number of levels, I climbed over Rillie and stepped outside with only the clothing I’d grabbed to cover my crotch.

  Specks had fallen and was on the ground trying to get up. He was probably suffering from hypothermia, and possibly shock, as well as frost bite.

  I opened the back door of the helo and helped him in. Man, was my ass cold. I’m telling you; you don’t really know what cold is until you’ve had seventy-mile-per-hour, ten-degree wind whistling between your butt cheeks. As they say in the Windy City when the icy wind howls; The Hawk is out tonight!

  “We’re here to rescue you, Specks.”

  The man took several panting breaths, while lifting thick-lensed eye-glasses out of his pocket and putting them in place. They bugged his eyes. He looked me up and down, still too out of breath for words, but his eyes rested on my makeshift loincloth.

  I looked down and realized I’d grabbed Rillie’s bra to cover with.

  “Sorry … to … interrupt,” he said, and his glasses frosted over in the next second.

  Wanting to thaw the frost off my own snowballs, I closed the back compartment door, then returned to the front copilot’s side of the chopper and climbed over Rillie. She didn’t even try to suppress her amusement. I handed back her bra, and she got handsy with me while I straddled her to get to the pilot’s seat. At least her hands were a lot warmer than my half-frozen and nearly ingrown middle member.

  Rillie turned in her seat to look through the open bulkhead behind us into the back passenger compartment. “You okay, Specks?”

  “Yeah, I’m okay. Now. But I’d rather you don’t let him come back here anymore.” He wiped his glasses. “When I saw this helli-copter, I thought I was dreaming, though. Then, I was sure it was a damn nightmare when your nudist pilot leaps out at me with a bra over his privates.”

  I fired up the helicopter, flipped on the electric heaters and passed the heat reflecting blanket back to him. “How are your hands and feet? Can you take off your gloves and boots?”

  “Yeah. I think I can. But that’s as far as I’m going!” He frowned. Then he said, “Been camped out in the last loco. The heater worked up until a couple of hours ago before it died. Don’t think I got none of that frost bite.” He frowned at me again. “Who the hell are you?”

  “I’m E Z Knight, Specks. Where’s my father?”

  “E Z Knight? Are you Ethan?”

  I’d forgotten that my father was the only one who still called me by my given first name. My dad insisted on it. He said he hadn’t considered people might call me E Z when he and my mother came up with Ethan Zachariah, using both my grandfathers’ first names.

  “Yes,” I told Specks. “I’m Ethan. Remember me? Used to ride the local out of Newton with you and my dad.” I smiled at him. “Where’s Doc?”

  He took off his glasses and cleaned them again, then wiped his eyes. As he explained Rillie and I got dressed. “Hell if I know. He’d been actin’ funny ever since he got a phone call and we went into dark territory. Don’t have a clue of what the call was about. Then, yesterday morning, we was coming down the Mule Train spur toward Gold Miner’s Bend at the main line, and he spotted the local. Started getting’ real mad and saying we had to stop it. Next thing you know, he ordered me to jump from the snow-blower going fifty miles an hour. Jumped into the blizzard, I did. Dislocated my shoulder, twisted my ankle — lucky I wasn’t killed. Damn fool, Doc. Threatened me with a ball-peen hammer, then had to be some kind of hero and ram the local train.” He looked at me. “I got down here as quick as I could after the explosion, but I wasn’t moving too fast in the deep snow, being all banged up like I was. It was about an hour and a half by the time I got here, and they’d already left. Guess Doc went with them, because he scratched a note inside the cab — said we was okay … bullshit! I wasn’t okay. Damn that Doc!”

  “What happened? Why would he ram the train?”

  “To stop the damn thing. He had it in his mind that some so-and-so doe-mess-tick terrorists was gonna run that train into Denver and light it up. It’s pulling several LP gas tankers and a couple a loaded chlorine gas cars, too. He said it would kill 100,000 people. Just went completely nuts — even said something ‘bout ‘it ain’t Betty Crocker’.”

  “What?”

  “Hell if I know. Said to tell you and you’d understand.”

  “That I’d understand Betty Crocker?”

  “Yep. Said to tell you-all he loved you and your sister, his Mary and your kids, too.”

  “Okay, just relax for now,” I told him passing back a box of PowerBars. “We’ll talk more later. Drink some water and eat one of those energy bars.”

  “Okay,” he said. After a moment of thought, he added, “You sure have changed. Didn’t turn out like I would have expected.”

  It had been over thirty years since I’d seen Specks. Of course I’d changed. Then I realized his comment probably had something to do with me being naked.

  After getting dressed, Rillie climbed into the back to make sure Specks was okay. She made him drink water again, but he said he’d had plenty to eat from some canned goods he’d had with him. The old engineer had fared pretty well after being out in the ten-degree weather for so long. Still, he seemed to become a bit lethargic.

  I was checking the wind speed on the copter’s anemometer when I heard a thump and I turned back to Rillie and Specks. “What was that?”

  “I don’t know. He just stiffened, hit his head against the side window and passed out.”

  As she checked his pulse at his throat, I looked through the opening into the back at the man’s face. It seemed even paler than before.

  “Pulse is real light,” she said.

  “Shit,” I told her. “He’s in shock. We’re liable to lose him if he doesn’t get medical attention soon.”

  “But I was just talking with him,” Rillie said. “What happened?”

  “His mind and body have been through considerable trauma over the past couple of days. He was probably running on pure adrenaline when he saw the chopper. Now he’s on empty and his body’s shutting down to conserve what life he’s got left.”

  I looked through our defrosted windscreens and then checked the anemometer again. The sky appeared relatively clear except for blowing surface snow, and the wind had dropped to fifty miles per hour, once again and seemed less gusty.

  “Keep him warm,” I said. “We’re getting out of here!”

  Chapter 7

  Flight of the Rillie Bee

  5:00 PM MST, Gold Miner’s Bend, CWE Railroad main line

  I was thankful for the rotor deicer on our helicopter. Within seconds of turning it on, the ice sloughed off the blades.

  We took off and climbed to fifteen thousand feet. At that altitude, the wind had settled enough to make flying manageable. Still, our most direct route to Slaughterhouse was due east, and the cyclonic wind was now pushing back at us as the massive storm settled toward the south. And we’
d have to fight more snow and ice — the real killer for any aircraft — should we head back into the storm.

  We were equal distance from Slaughterhouse Yards and Crested Butte, probably a hundred miles. None of our cell phones could get a signal, and all I got on the chopper’s radio was static. We didn’t have much choice but to skirt the heaviest wind toward the storm’s center by moving with it to the southeast. The storm had made our destination choice for us: we were heading straight for Crested Butte.

  There were sure to be hospitals and emergency centers aplenty along either route, but there was something about all this craziness that bothered me. Instincts told me I was doing the right thing for both my father and for Specks — and possibly for Mary and the kids, as well.

  “We’re taking Specks to Doc’s,” I told Rillie. “With the strength of this storm and communications minimal, I don’t have any idea where else to take him. We’re about forty-five minutes out. Mary used to be an ER nurse. She should be able to help us with him.”

  “Yeah,” Rillie said. “I already know how wonderful Mary is.”

  “Sorry. I think it’s best. I’m worried something might be going on at the B & B. Mary and the kids might be in trouble.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I’m pretty sure this whole mess is more involved than Doc doing the disappearing act. He’s not missing on his own accord — it’s due to more sinister reasons, I’m positive. Besides, between Specks and John Sites we might be able to piece this all together.”

  It was a silent trip to Doc’s B & B. The entire way, I heard no radio chatter, and cell phone service remained dead. Rillie seemed deep in thought and quiet, as well.

  With her in the back keeping Specks warm, on the outside of the reflective blanket this time, I piloted and navigated. The wind had eased considerably, and the sky before us was clear and dry, making the job a lot easier. Still there were very few ground lights. It was almost as if Colorado was in a blackout. Very odd.

  We came up on my father’s place quicker than I’d expected, not having to fight a mean crosswind. The sky had cleared, but I couldn’t see many lights in the distance. It was as if power was down in Crested Butte, as well as Mount Crested Butte, the ski resort, both about five miles away. Even this late at night, when there was snow, normally, there was nightlife.