Saint Oswald by Jay Bonansinga (motivational novels .txt) 📕

Over the space of a single instant, Oswald’s brain swims with all the possibilities. The herky-jerky ride could have something to do with the set-up. But who was being set up? Was it Felson? Or was it Oswald? And why spook the passengers? Why tip off the civilians?

Oswald gets halfway to the connecting door when the train shudders sideways.

The shift in gravity tosses Oswald against the seat backs, then sends him tumbling to the floor. With a gasp, he lands on his ass, two of his stitches snapping, his flak vest pinching his injured ribs, the pain stabbing his side, as a chorus of yelps rises up from the other passengers. Some of them are trying to stand up now, or reaching for the overhead luggage rail.

“The hell is going on?!” barks the businessman.

“Something’s wrong,” says the nun, hugging her armrest for dear life.

The train shivers and speeds up again, the steel wheels shrieking outside. Oswald climbs to his feet and uses the headrests as hand-holds to steady himself as he struggles against the g-forces toward the connecting door. “Stay in your seats!” he calls out to the others, taking charge for no good reason.

He reaches the metal hatch at the front of the car when the train shudders again.

Freddie “Forty-Five”—feigning slumber and trying to figure out what to do—grips his cut-down pistol-grip 12-gauge bazooka under the newspaper, the shotgun loaded for rhinoceros with thousand-grain armor-piercing shells, when the train rocks suddenly to the left, nearly throwing him out of his seat.

This time, it feels as though the whole goddamn thing is going off the rails. The passenger cabin groans and creaks as the metal wheels howl outside, levitating off the rails and then banging back down on the track with a spectacular thud.

Freddie slams against the window, the paper sliding off him.

An old lady’s voice pierces the air. “Sweet Christ, we’re gonna crash!”

Ducking down behind the seat, hiding the shotgun under the seat back, Freddie Felson silently curses that stupid, idiotic fucking retard Mark Ferri for fucking this thing up. What was the old man thinking?

And what is Freddie supposed to do now? They told him to wait until Michigan City before he made any moves—but this is ridiculous!

He peers over the headrest in front of him, and sees the Indian at the front of the car, pressing his fat face against the porthole window in the hatch.

What the hell is that fat-body doing? Is he trying to get off the train? It looks like he’s trying to run. The son of a bitch is trying to run. If he gets away, the don is going to have Freddie’s pancreas for lunch with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.

Freddie carefully, slowly, gently pumps a shell into the shotgun’s breach.

Then he makes his move.

36.

“JESUS CHRIST ON A HALF SHELL, KID—WHATTYA DOIN’?! WHATTYA DOIN’?!”

The old engineer cries out in the flickering darkness of the cab.

“It’s so—it’s like—so beautiful—it’s like time travel,” Marky-Mark babbles, hunched over the console like a drunken mad scientist, yanking levers and randomly playing Whack-a-Mole with all the pretty buttons. The drugs are peaking, the speeding train coursing through a kaleidoscope of blurring signal lights and passing Salvador Dali trees.

“Pull back on that red stick!” the old man implores in a steel-wool rasp, his voice full of holy hell as the gravitational forces throw his brittle bones back against the iron bulwark.

He bangs his ass against the riveted conduit and sees stars and then claws at the pipes for purchase.

Marky drools on the console, shoving the throttle all the way forward. The engine roars and the walls of the cabin shiver and groan. The needles on the console are climbing past a hundred and change. “I can see my mother’s womb! I can see it! My mom’s womb!”

Old Charlie McDaw makes one last desperate lunge for the kid’s arm.

“NO!”

Marky shoves him off without even looking. At that precise moment, the train jerks violently, and the old man tumbles backward, this time smacking the back of his skull on the iron entrails of the power plant.

McDaw collapses, sliding down the wall—down, down, down—and out for the count.

Gerbil sees the dick with the shotgun get out of his seat right as the train bucks and surges with the force of a gigantic angry bull getting spurred. Some of the luggage spills out of the bin, cracking open on the aisle floor.

Screams fill the air as Gerbil sucks in a sphincter-tightening breath and death-grips her armrest.

The prick with the cannon tumbles against the opposite seat and nearly drops the weapon, but somehow he stays on his feet, struggling to hold onto seat backs as he inches his way toward the front of the car.

None of the other passengers have noticed the gunman yet. They’re too busy screaming or holding onto anything nailed down as the train pitches and yaws faster and faster and faster, the wind whistling now through the vents, the wheels singing metallic arias on the rails.

Oswald is up there at the fore-hatch, madly trying to jiggle the handle open.

Tearing the veil from her face, Gerbil grabs the opposite armrest and pulls herself into the aisle. The g-forces are pressing down on her now like she’s in a wind tunnel, the muffled shrieking steel-on-steel noise beneath her rising through the undercarriage.

She frantically searches for something to use as a weapon as the other passengers start to figure things out.

“OH MY GOD, NO!” yowls one hysterical voice.

“HE’S GOT A GUN! HE’S GOT A GUN!” cries another.

Gerbil spies something metallic shining on the floor and lunges for it.

The train lurches. One of the windows cracks down the middle. Gerbil gets her hands on metal object at the exact moment Oswald’s voice rings out, penetrating the din.

“EVERYBODY DOWN ON THE FLOOR!”

Bracing himself against a metal hand-hold, Oswald watches Freddie “Forty-Five” Felson coming down the aisle with the elephant gun, looking like Ward Bond in Wagon Train.

“Git