The Redcreek Run

Rails deep into a cursed land

Wheels shriek in the desert gloom as a lone engineer flees the darkness spreading across the desert. With trembling hands, he forces his locomotive’s throttle to full power, but the blackening sky overcomes the landscape and swallows his effort to escape. Stranded in the desolate darkness, he must face the hungry, bloody teeth that awaken in the long night of this cursed land.

Joe had always been drawn to the railroad. The blazing blur of smoke as a locomotive heaved a line of cars along the tracks, the concussion of steel on steel, and the rumbling of the engines captivated him. He was lured by the smell of railroad ties and diesel, and the might of a hundred cars rolling to the horizon on two strips of iron. But this morning, even despite his admiration of the rails, Joe yawned.

“I thought I’d find you here, Joe.”

He turned and recognized Frank, the chief engineer. He scrambled to his feet and shook hands with the big man, one of his favorite instructors. Frank didn’t smile.

“You’re looking a little tired. Studied all night, did you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, congratulations. It looks like your studies paid off. You’re now our newest engineer.” Frank gave him a couple of heavy pats on the back. He looked away and rubbed the folds near the sides of his mouth. “Not too tired to drive your first train, are you, Joe?”

“I’m actually wide awake, sir.”

A flicker of a grimace disturbed Frank’s lips and disappeared. He sighed and said, “Well, all right. Follow me.”

They climbed off the platform and onto the yard. Blackened ties and rails stretched in parallel lines for miles. Hundreds of rusted rail cars lay beneath the gray sky, waiting to be hooked up and pulled to their destinations. Yard engines shunted boxcars through switches. Workers inspecting bogies and machinery flashed quick glances as the pair passed.

Frank and Joe neared a train headed by a lone locomotive. The engine idled, slowly emitting diesel haze into the air. Empty flatcars followed in a line for an eighth of a mile, and a solitary tanker car was coupled to the train’s very end.

“Joe, we’re all glad you completed your training and passed the exam ahead of schedule. Thanks for going the extra mile.”

Joe smiled, barely able to keep his eyes off the train.

“You’re my most promising new operator,” Frank continued, “but it’s up to you to make this decision. We need an engineer to drive this train out to a place in the desert. Alone.”

“I’m ready, Sir,” Joe said, putting his hands into his pockets and trying to keep still. “But these cars all look empty.”

“The tanker car at the rear has got your only cargo. The empty flatcars are just to keep an open space.”

“Because there’s hazardous material in that tanker?”

“Something like that, Joe. Something like that.” Frank remembered the early days when a couple of buckets had been enough. Now it required a tankerful.

“I’m driving solo?” Joe grinned. To be assigned a HAZMAT cargo on his first mission, he must have aced his tests.

Frank frowned for a long moment and diverted his eyes. He stared at the oil-soaked ground and said, “I usually send a mentor, an experienced engineer, with a new hire, especially on a first trip. I’m sorry I can’t do that for you this time, Joe.” They had all lost their nerve.

“Where do I take it, boss?”

“Joe, I’m putting you on the Redcreek run.”

“Redcreek,” Joe repeated. It didn’t sound so bad.

“You’ll drive this train out to marker 346. There’s an old manual switch there. Change it and reverse onto the turnout. Reset the switch and go out the rest of the way, in reverse the whole stretch to Redcreek. That’s where you’ll de-couple the tanker and come back home.”

“Leave it out in the desert, sir? Why?”

“It’ll be a lonely run,” Frank said as he led Joe to the ladder. “There’s no other traffic on those tracks, but you’ll be back before dark.”

“I’ll do my best, Frank,” Joe called from the engine’s platform. He frowned and asked again, “Sir, but why leave-”

“Have a good trip, Joe. You’ll be back before dark.”

“I see, sir.” He accepted Frank’s ambiguity. Joe guessed that there were always subtleties intentionally left unmentioned in training. The answers would come with experience. He smiled at his seasoned instructor. “Joining the railroad has been my dream since I was a kid.”

“There’s the radio if anything comes up, and I just stocked the emergency kit myself. But everything will be fine. See you this evening, Joe.”

“Yes, sir.”

Frank looked for a moment at the young man on the platform. Before he gave himself a chance to change his mind, he cleared his throat and walked away. Joe went inside.

His recent training was helpful as he looked over the gauges and noted the settings. He smiled as he touched the metal throttle handle protruding from the panel. It was solid and old-fashioned, the only anachronism among the modern controls. Joe’s dream was coming true all around him.

The signals blinked green just before noon. Joe blew the horn, and despite his trembling hands, smoothly eased the train through the yard. The tracks merged and straightened on their path to the desert, and Joe gave it more throttle. Power surged to the rails, and the engine steadily led the row of flatcars, and the lone tanker car, in tow behind him. Twin steel ribbons shimmered above the rapid progression of ties. Desert wind raced as the engine heaved and the cars clacked. Joe savored it all.

Marker 346 appeared in just over an hour. The sign was restless in the wind and the numerals were streaked with rust. Joe eased past, stopping only after the last car cleared the switch. He whistled as he walked beside his train, admiring the sturdiness of the rolling stock. At the end, the tanker rested heavily on the rails. Joe felt a chill as he moved through its shadow.

The switch was stiff. Joe put some weight against it, but it hardly moved. He took a breath, braced his feet against the gravel, and strained and yanked until his arms trembled. Sweat wet his forehead and armpits, and his hands came away from the handle orange-red with rust. It wouldn’t budge.

He retrieved an oil can and some tools from the locomotive and worked under the sun, tinkering with the mechanism. Bolts squealed and shed scabs of corrosion as Joe worked to free the linkage. Eventually he was able to force the switch with a few determined heaves.

He reversed his train onto the turnout, manhandled the switch back into its normal position, and continued in reverse toward Redcreek. After several miles the rails became dull and rusted. Tumbleweeds and brush began to crowd between the ties and scrape along the bottom of his train. The way seemed abandoned, and Joe cautiously reduced his speed.

Joe peered beyond the distant tanker, carefully scanning for hazards as his engine pushed the row of cars down the aged tracks. The train rounded a bend, and an obstruction came into view. Joe approached slowly, squinting into the distance. A scattered mound of debris seemed to cover the tracks. Joe went out to investigate.

The tanker loomed behind him as he frowned at the dusty mass piled on the tracks. To the sides lay only desolation, no trails by which anyone could have delivered so much old junk. It was heaped to the height of his shoulders, a blockage of crumbling wooden planks and wheels. Tattered canvas quivered in the breeze. Rust ran in stains from nail holes and metal hoops. Joe cursed and returned to the locomotive.

“Dispatch, this is Joe, over,” he called on the radio. There was no reply through the whispering static. “Dispatch, Frank, if you can hear me, there’s a barrier of garbage on these tracks to Redcreek. It’ll take me a while to clear. Request assistance.” After a few minutes with no reply, Joe sighed, put on a pair of work gloves, and set out to clear the tracks.

Sweat dripped from his face as he dragged armfuls of sun-bleached axe handles, picks, and corroded shovel blades into the brush. There were oil lamps and boots, empty wooden crates and stacks of dented tin pans; Joe tossed all of it aside. His back ached as he bent to gather up what looked like a pair of antique wagon wheels. Suddenly he spun to look at the tanker. He searched the dark framework around the cylindrical tank and the lengthening shadows beneath its wheels. It hulked silently as he stared. Nothing was there.

He returned to work, occasionally glancing over his shoulder at the train behind him. Eventually he noticed that the sun had slowly dimmed from yellow to orange, so he began to rush, tossing the garbage aside without looking up. When a voice spoke behind him, he jumped.

“You ain’t gonna make Redcreek before dark, son, so why’nt you just head home?”

Joe whirled. The man leaned a shoulder on the tanker with his hands in the pockets of his dusty trousers. Under his suspenders, dull stripes and dirt adorned his work shirt. He wore the type of hat that Joe had seen in old photos. Joe asked, “Excuse me?”

“Just head back. Ain’t nothing in Redcreek for you.”

“Sir,” Joe frowned and pointed to the mess that remained on the tracks, “Did you put this here?”

“Mighta. ‘Fore you put them tracks through it.”

Joe frowned and went back to work, keeping an eye on the stranger. He handled the trash with renewed, angry energy. He told the man, “This will be reported.”

“So we both been warned. Sure y’won’t quit?”

“I’m sure,” Joe grumbled as he shoved a stack of warped planks into the brush.

The stranger approached. Joe stood aside and watched as he grabbed an armload of desiccated leather straps and hurled them into the desert. Together they cleared the remaining material from the rails. Joe dusted off his hands and turned to thank the stranger, but the man was gone.

Joe called out into the empty countryside, but not even an echo answered from the desolation. Several times he looked up and down the scrub that bordered the tracks. All of the antique garbage he had thrown there, an hour’s work, had vanished as well. The soundless weight of the parched landscape confirmed that he was eerily alone. He retreated back to the engine and continued uneasily toward Redcreek.

The train crawled and rocked on the increasingly irregular tracks. The sun lowered and spread red fingers across the sky, and Joe wondered how much further to his destination. It would be impossible to continue in reverse after dark. Briefly the radio static cleared enough for him to recognize Frank’s voice. Joe replied into the microphone, “Well, Sir, I had a couple of delays and I’m just getting to Redcreek now.”

“You’re still at Redcreek? No. Joe, it’s after sunset.”

“Yes, sir, but the switch was rusted up, and then there was a pile on the tracks-”

“Joe, you need to get out of there right now.”

“All right, but I still haven’t uncoupled the tanker. It’ll just take me a few-”

“Forget the tanker. We can drop it later. Get out of there right now.” His voice was distant, his fading words hopeless against the isolation that Joe felt growing around him. “And hurry, Joe. It’s after sunset. You can’t be out there after dark. Oh, god. Hurry!”

“Sir? I’m losing you. Hello, Frank? Can you repeat?”

“Radio’s going out…if anything…just stay inside, Joe. Don’t go out there…”

“Frank?” Joe called. He swallowed as the dark shapes of the desert drifted past. “Frank?”

Joe stopped the train and fumbled with the headlights. Silent emptiness lined the illuminated tracks with shadows. The train lurched when he switched from reverse to forward. He tried to feel comforted because he had just passed this way, but beneath the looming darkness nothing seemed familiar. The engine’s vibrations grew nervous as Joe increased speed. To the sides, miles of desert accelerated past in blackness.

In the fringe of his headlight beams, Joe saw a disquieting figure in the winding shadows. A little girl standing there as the lights flashed, staring at him like a statue. Even though they glimmered for only a moment, he felt her eyes. They weren’t a child’s eyes, but were flattened across her face like the eyes of a fish. Peering into the blindness that breezed past on either side, he felt them watching him from the dark.

He adjusted the throttle and slowly gained speed. Wheels occasionally shrieked in the blackness as they ground on the overgrown tracks. He gulped, unable to ignore the sensation that he had passed into an unnatural place guarded by the ghost image of a child with the eyes of a monster. He pushed the big lever a little more, and the thick brambles growing through the ties cracked and splintered as the locomotive urged forward. He thought of those eyes again, staring now from somewhere behind him. He adjusted the throttle to full power.

The sky pressed with thickening gloom that obscured the tracks. When the engine faltered for a moment and trembled unevenly through the floor and windshield, Joe’s stomach tightened. He leaned on the handle to make sure it was still at maximum.

The engine sputtered again, longer this time. Joe checked the gauges and found no indication of trouble, but his train continued to struggle and slow. He hastily consulted his manuals and applied all of his knowledge and training. Still the train lost speed and staggered on the pitted tracks. Joe switched to secondary systems and emergency circuits, but nothing helped. The wheels screeched painfully to a stop, and the scream of seizing metal echoed from terrain invisible in the blackness.

Sweat beaded on Joe’s brow as he tried to restart the engine. The headlights flickered and dimmed. When he paused to allow the starter to cool, the headlights brightened and revealed a motionless figure in the distance, a quarter of a mile away. The little girl.

Joe mashed the starter button until his hand trembled. It cranked more slowly this time. Again the engine didn’t start, and when the lights brightened they weren’t as bright as before. Now the child was only two hundred yards away, as still as a sculpture standing among the tumbleweeds. Joe could see her ghost-gray skin and plain dress. In the failing lights, her fish eyes glistened yellow. They didn’t stare at the headlights, but directly at him. Joe could feel it.

He jammed the button down, and in the next minute ground away the last of the batteries. The starter slowed until it faded into silence. The quiet rang in Joe’s ears. Dead steel ticked as diesel fumes crept through seams in the bulkheads. The lights were as dim as ever, but they were bright enough to illuminate the creature standing beside the locomotive, staring up into the engineer’s platform.

Those huge eyes gaped. Like flat, wet patches, they covered half of the child’s gray face. Blood vessels pulsed around the irises.

Joe held his breath and recalled Frank’s static-filled words, “Don’t go out there…”

Suddenly the child was gone. Joe cupped his hands around his face and looked out the window into the desert. No child stood in the waning lights. Had he imagined it? Exhausted from so many hours spent studying, taking the engineer’s test, and making this difficult first trip, had he dreamt those monstrous eyes? If his fear came only from his exhaustion, was there a child outside who needed his help?

He doubted that anyone would hear him, but he snatched the radio and called, “Dispatch, this is Joe on the Redcreek run. I’ve had an engine failure. Request assistance.”

The static hissed and murmured, unchanging.

“Dispatch, if you can hear me, I think someone is outside. A small child, I believe. I may go out to assist if possible.”

Joe swept a flashlight beam across the nearby brush. Nothing. His grogginess was gone, and his mind felt clear. He was sure now that he had imagined the evil he had sensed. If he hadn’t imagined the child standing in the desert, then he must have imagined those grotesque eyes. He considered Frank’s warning, but these circumstances were different, beyond the usual realm of the chief engineer’s responsibility and experience. What if there was a lost child in this desert that needed his help? And where was the stranger he had met earlier?

Hesitantly, Joe ventured onto the platform and down the ladder. The gravel ballast crunched under his feet, despite the thick knots of weeds dead between the stones. He called hello and followed the spot of his flashlight. No reflective eyes stared from the blackness. He swung his light and called out as he hiked along the line of flat cars. When the tanker came within range of his light a red shape blurred across the top of its cylindrical frame. Joe hollered, but there was no response. He shuffled to the end of his train.

The desert glowed red all around him. He blinked in the sudden change of color. A thick stream of red flowed from the tanker’s open hatch, and the beam of his flashlight reflected the redness onto the surrounding desert, painting everything in glistening crimson. Joe nearly choked on the iron sourness. Blood.

A heavy gurgling pounded through the metal tank, and a stream of gore erupted from the fill valve onto the wheels, rails, and weeds. It splashed Joe’s clothes and ran in a squirming, glossy stream, like a giant red snake slithering into the desert’s shadows. He lifted his light and the yellow shimmer of many eyes stared from a huddle of hideous children drinking the mud-caked blood in the dark.

Gravel crunched and splashed beside him. Joe whirled to see the little girl three feet away. Blood covered her and ran in cold red fingers over her unblinking fish eyes. Her mouth opened, and crowded shards of broken porcelain teeth flashed red and white among shimmers of drool. Her gray tongue licked and bled down her beast’s chin. Two more children joined her, their throbbing flat eyes wide and hungry, their mouths ringed with red. Joe ran.

The dying lights of his locomotive glowed in the distance. He could hear the beasts behind him, their teeth grinding and gnashing as they gave chase. Gasping, Joe scrambled up the ladder and locked himself inside the engineer’s platform.

They were immediately at the windows. Their faces pressed against the glass, eyes stretching and rubbing, tongues smearing red. Joe longed for a weapon — a fire axe, a crescent wrench, anything. More of them pressed against the windows, blocking any view outside. Their faces and bloody eyes distorted impossibly, spreading across the glass like rubber. Their jagged teeth ground and scraped. Joe could hear the windows giving way.

He hunkered on the floor of his engine. Yellow fish eyes stared from every window. Beneath a control panel he glimpsed the rumpled shape of the emergency kit, the one Frank had stocked just that morning. He snatched it and tore it open. A hundred bulbs of garlic tumbled out, surrounding him. The children screeched on glass and metal, pressing closer. A book with a gilded crucifix remained in the kit — a bible. Joe withdrew it and hugged it tight, like a shield.

The door burst open in a rain of glass shards, and Joe jumped in terror. He struck his head on the heavy throttle lever and his vision flashed in agony. He tried to scramble to his feet but collapsed with painful vertigo as his strength left him and blood ran down his face. The children were inside. Their cold, vacant eyes stared at the blood flowing on his cheek. Joe’s feet and hands became numb as the monsters advanced, their spikey teeth grating and slopping red drool onto the floor. Struggling to move his body, to do anything, Joe lost consciousness.

A long, steady weight pressed on his chest. It wasn’t crushing, but it was uncomfortable, pressing down on him for all of the hours of the night. He tried to shift it, but it held fast. Redness glowed everywhere, and his tongue was thick and greasy in his mouth. He opened his eyes to the blinding brightness of the morning sun. It was tainted with red as it passed through the crust on the windows.

Sensation returned to his fingers. They were painfully stiff and his fingernails hurt. Bits of cardboard and leather were painfully wedged under them. He saw that he had gouged the bible’s cover as he held it to himself through the night, but had left the gilded cross untouched.

Bulbs of garlic were scattered in a circular mess, and on the periphery they were scorched. Beyond them, smeared in thick clots of blood and broken glass on the floor of his engineer’s platform, were a mass of small footprints.

He struggled to his feet, nearly falling as his head pounded and his vision dimmed. Groaning and waiting for the world to stop spinning, he carefully felt the painful spot on his head. His fingers returned sticky with caked blood. Head-crushing sounds of birds chirping came from outside, where the desert gleamed in the day’s early heat.

Experimentally, Joe tried the starter. The engine shuddered, and Joe held his breath as it grumbled to life. He exhaled after it continued idling steadily. The throttle handle was tacky with partially dried blood and matted with strands of his hair, but the train responded and began to creep along the overgrown tracks. He studied the scene at the end of his train. The weeds and gravel ballast were trampled and black where the blood had flowed in the darkness. The tanker glistened with a little remaining wetness as it left the rotting patch behind. Joe headed back to the station.

Hours later, Frank stood waiting in the rail yard. Dust puffed from the ground as the train’s air brakes engaged and the engine settled into silence. The ruined platform door scraped over broken glass, and a few bulbs of burned garlic rolled onto the ground as Joe emerged.

“You went outside, didn’t you?”

Joe looked at the chief engineer until the older man spoke again.

“When I was fresh out of training, just like you, Joe, we found a crew dead in their train, blood sucked dry, their faces and hands chewed.” Frank’s hair drifted in tangles, and dark circles bordered his eyes. He shrugged dismally. “That’s when we started feeding them, the children in the dark, to keep them away from all of our desert routes. A couple of buckets is all it used to take. Now when we start seeing them watching the trains after dark, we leave a car full of blood out there on the abandoned Redcreek mine turnout. The next day we bring it back empty.”

Joe climbed down and waited for Frank to continue.

“We’ve all made the Redcreek run, Joe. You’ll never have to do it again, I promise.”

Joe looked at his train. Workers with hoses and brushes were nearly finished with the tanker. The last of the gore ran off in pink foamy lumps. He tried to recall yesterday’s thrill, the ties streaming by, the clatter of the wheels on the rails, the controls at his fingertips. He couldn’t, not without an echo of teeth screeching on glass and steel.

“Joe, I’m sorry.” Frank held out his hands. “No one could’ve known. It was just chance that you got caught out there at night.”

Joe wasn’t so sure. He remembered the frozen switch, the ancient pile that blocked the tracks, and the stranger that visited him. Questions boiled in his mind as he turned and walked away, and he didn’t know if he ever wanted the answers. Frank called after him.

“Yes, take a break and come back in a couple of days, Joe. You’re the best in your class, we could use you.”

Joe kept walking.

Cover Design by N. Herd

3D scene and render by F.P. Wilson

Video trailer for “The Redcreek Run”:
https://youtu.be/uLPPIFg1CSE