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

Other passengers are peering out from behind seats and fallen luggage.

“I WANT EVERYBODY TO DO EXACTLY WHAT I SAY! IF YOU WANT TO GET OFF THIS FUCKING TRAIN ALIVE! DO WHAT I SAY! YOU UNDERSTAND?!”

Nobody says anything. The car groans and rumbles, and sparks lick the windows.

“ANSWER ME!” Oswald raises the muzzle of the shotgun, pumps it once, and then squeezes the trigger.

The blast lights up the car, the shell tearing through the ceiling like a fist punching a hole in the metal, the noise making Oswald’s ears hum. Wind whistles through the hole like a teakettle.

“ANSWER ME!” he screams again, his voice garbled and hoarse.

“Okay, yes, we understand!” The shrill voice of the businessman, who is on his hands and knees on the floor three seats away, barely pierces the clamor.

“I WANT EVERYBODY IN THE ASILE NOW! I WANT EVERYBODY TO LOCK HANDS! GOT THAT?! LOCK HANDS!”

No answer.

The train jerks and shudders, the centripetal force like an elephant standing on Oswald’s shoulders. He raises the shotgun again, and he pumps another shell into the breach. “I SAID I WANT—!!”

“Okay!—okay!” The businessman crawls out into the aisle, struggling to his feet. His suit is off, his sweat-drenched shirtsleeves rolled up. “Sister, c’mon—do what he says—please!”

One by one, the others—the nun, the old lady with the cane, the acne-scarred kid in Navy whites—crawl out of hiding. They each rise up on wobbling knees in the aisle with horror-stricken eyes bulging and mouths working soundlessly like they desperately want to press PAUSE on this movie but they can’t figure out how to operate the remote control. The flickering light illuminates the four terrified faces awaiting further orders.

Oswald reaches down to Gerbil and unceremoniously yanks her to her feet. “Let’s go, c’mon! We don’t have time fuck around!”

She gets up with a grunt. “Once again I save your fat ass and you’re giving me shit.”

“Bullshit! I saved your fucking ass this time!” He drags her down the aisle, banging into seat backs, heading toward the aft-hatch, which leads into the next car. “Everybody lock hands and follow me!”

Gerbil lets out an exasperated sigh and grabs the businessman’s clammy hand.

“C’mon, people, hurry!” Oswald yanks Gerbil toward the hatch.

“That is so typical of you to think that,” Gerbil complains as she stumbles along. Behind her, the businessman is clasping hands with the nun, and the nun is clutching the sailor’s hand, and the sailor is grabbing for the palsied, arthritic hand of the old woman.

Gerbil feels the drag of feeble joints and arthritic hips behind her as she staggers along behind Oswald, still whining, “After I risk my fucking life once again!”

“Is it my fault you followed me?!” Oswald reaches the aft hatch and slams the butt of the shotgun down on the metal lever. The door gives a couple of inches, a whistling rush of air streaming through the gap. “I told you to buzz off, and what do you do?”

Gerbil steadies herself against the jamb. “That asshole was going to blow your head off!”

“Can we talk about this later?!” Oswald shoves the door open with his boot, and then pulls Gerbil and the others across the noisy, greasy, wind-swept parapet.

38.

Screaming along the high plateau of Highway 212, Dalessandro has Navigator’s pedal to the floor and his huge hands welded to the steering wheel. In his peripheral vision he can see the runaway train plunging down a long forested grade a quarter mile away, closing in on the Michigan border, a cold silver ice pick of light cutting a swath through the Duneland Beach State Park. “No way, sorry no, not after three fucking years,” Dalessandro is muttering as he fixes his sights on the train.

“Whattya doin’, Jimmy?” The question comes from the strained voice of the man sitting next to him in the front passenger seat, but it’s not really a question, it’s more rhetorical, more of a plea.

Jack Morelli is the practical brother, the thoughtful one, and right now he is chewing his lip with nervous tension at the prospects of chasing a goddamned Amtrak train across the state line.

“Not after three fucking years,” Dalessandro mumbles, spying a lonely crossroad dead ahead, a narrow tractor trail into the woods, visible in the wash of the Navigator’s high-beams. Dalessandro’s temples pulse with rage in the dim green light of the dashboard.

“Jimmy, don’t do this to me.”

“Shut up, Jacky!” The voice calls out from the back, full of amped-up bravado. Jilly Morelli, the volatile brother, is buzzing on Benzadrine and cough syrup—his secret cocktail of choice—and now he’s like a high-spirited racehorse banging against the gate. “He’s gonna git her done!—Git her DONE, CUCUMBER!—GIT HER DONE!”

“Jimmy, don’t do this.” Jack Morelli is staring bug-eyed at the oncoming turn-off, absently reaching for his seat belt, tugging it across his chest. “Jimmy, c’mon—”

“GIT HER DONE!!”

Dalessandro yanks the wheel, and the Navigator lurches into a skid.

“WHOOOOOOO—HHHOOOOOOOOOO!!”

Dalessandro puts the spur to the gas, and the engine roars, and the SUV plunges down the narrow dirt road.

“JIMMMMMMEEEEEEEEE!!”

For a wild instant it feels as though they just fell off the edge of the world.

Pine boughs and branches churn against the windshield, and the chassis threatens to crack apart amid the thundering, booming vibrations, and Jack Morelli has to wedge himself between the front seat and the dash for fear of cracking his head against the side window. The engine churns and roars as the SUV descends the wooded decline, mowing down saplings, banging over boulders.

Through it all, Dalessandro keeps his hands riveted to the steering wheel, his baleful, watery stare locked on the distant silver beam of the train cutting through the forest preserve a couple hundred yards away.

A minute later, the Navigator bursts through a wall of foliage and careens across a scabrous clearing.

The headlights illuminate a narrow access road of pea-gravel running along the rails, and Dalessandro yanks the wheel toward it.

The SUV fishtails wildly as it seeks traction on the gravel, throwing a wake of noxious dust and