The Engineer 2: Back on Track By Twisted Zero
Chapter 2:
With seemingly no trouble at all, Tin backed his car out of the ditch and onto the road, right beside Streak's car. He gave us a slow glance, then threw his car into drive and straightened out in front of us, leading the way back to Tino's house. It was a quiet drive.
We got back to the house at what felt like a fraction of the time it took to get to the Valley. Bluestreak parked right behind Tin and we all got out at the same time. As Tin got out, he turned and gave Bluestreak the same slow, foreboding look he'd given us when we left the Valley. Then, without a word, he led the way into Tino's house.
Effortlessly, Tin made his way across the driveway, up the three porch steps and past the scattering of kids on the porch. He then disappeared into the swarm of party goers. The four of us followed him in, but lost sight of him almost immediately. Then, seconds later, I received a startling hand clamping down upon my right shoulder. I jumped a bit and snapped to my right. It was Tin.
"Come on," was all he said.
I followed without hesitation. He led us to a door which opened at his slightest touch. Inside, it was calm and quiet; a fair respite from the rest of the surroundings. We entered, and saw a very blitzed Derrek sitting on the couch against the far wall, as well as a tipsy looking Sheila in the chair at the end of the couch.
"Sit down," said Tin, as emotionless and commanding as before. Obviously, we obeyed. We'd never seen Tin like this. We all took our seats around the room except for Tin, who remained standing, with his left hand on his hip and his right hand against a bookshelf, helping him to to support his leaning body. He looked at no one, but kept his eyes closed and his head aimed at the floor.
Derrek wiped his hand down his face, trying to stay focused. "So, what's the big deal?" he asked, groggily.
"They went to Salk Valley," Tin said, quietly.
"What?" asked Derrek, out of bewilderment. "What the fuck for?"
"He's back, Derrek," Tin said, not really answering the question. Derrek stopped for a moment, looking at the group of us and then to Tin, then back to us and settling on Tin once more.
"I know. You went to get them," said Derrek, his mind trying to keep up. He knew he was missing something.
"No, Derrek," said Tin, getting flustered. He raised his head up and looked directly at Derrek. "Haley is back."
"But--" started Derrek, but then it struck him and he sat straight up, staring right at Tin. "Oh," he said, softly. "Oh, fuck."
"Yeah," said Tin, flopping into the chair behind him. "That's what I said."
"Where's Becky?" asked Bluestreak. Derrek put a hand on his forehead, snapping back to reality and trying to think.
"Uhh, she's upstairs, borrowing a bedroom for the night," he informed. "Had a bit much," he added.
"That's cool," said Streak. "At least we know where she is."
"W-wait--" Derrek stuttered, "Whattaya mean he's back? Father Breaker sealed him up -- in 'is grave!"
"Yeah, I know, Derrek," said Tin, "But y'know what? This is the guy that hits cars with trains and doesn't set the gas on fire, so I don't really think any of us are in any position to try to rationalize how he came back. Hell, we don't know how he showed up the last time!"
"Yeah, the bastard's been dead since sixty-eight," I interjected, "What's another seven months?" My little comment must not have been the best thing to add, because at that point there was a lull in the conversation that mae for an excrutiating silence.
"Well, if nothing else," started Paul, taking a ten second pause before continuing, "There are five of us...and only one of him. At least we have him outnumbered."
"You mean six of us," corrected Sheila, but Derrek turned to her fast as lightning.
"You don't wanna go there, girl," he said. "There is no way you're having any part in this."
"The hell I'm not!" was her response, but even then, it was melded with Tin's frustrated interjection.
"Any part in what?!" he asked, loudly.
"Whattaya think, Tyren?" asked Derrek, an irked tone in his voice. "We stopped him before, we'll do it again."
"/'We'/ didn't stop him the /first/ time, Derrek," corrected Tin, holding his hands inward, pointing them towards himself. "That was Father Breaker. All /we/ did was distract the bastard."
"You're right," said Bluestreak, disrupting what was becoming a heated discussion. Tin and Derrek both looked at him quickly and started to say something, but Streak put his hands up and said "Hey!" in order to hush them. "You're right: we didn't stop him. But Neither did Sheila's dad. Floyd said the last thing the Engineer said before he was sucked back into his hole was 'you're doing it wrong'. Appearantly, he was telling the truth."
Again, the room was stunned into silence. After about five solid minutes, Tin looked up at Bluestreak and said the most heroic thing I've ever heard him utter:
"What do we do?"
1:30am, and a checkered cab style taxi pulls up to the tracks on Floogle Street. This was no Checker Cab, however; this was neon green, and instead of a band of black and white checkers along its side, there ran a stream of purple and orange polka dots. Yes, the Polka-Dot Cab Co. was an intentional "alternative" to the Checker Cab brand, but it was also a cool lookin' car.
Anyway, the bars are down and the lights are flashing, so Aaron pulled his car to a stop about seven feet away. He'd just picked up a customer of about 23 years at the gentleman's club known as The Treasure Trove. Thankfully, the guy's friends knew enough not to let him drive.
"You said Heklin Street, right?" asked Aaron, looking in the rear view mirror. He had a bit of a smirk on his face as the man answered with a slurred "Yeeeaah...two fiffffteen."
"I'll have ya--" started Aaron, but something in front of him caught his eye. He looked ahead and saw, as if it were an image on one frame of a movie reel, the figure of a man standing on the tracks flash before him. At first, he dismissed it, assuming his mind was playing tricks on him. But, as he started to relax and finish what he was saying, it happened again. This time, his eyes had been kept ahead of him, and the smirk, along with all thoughts of messing with the drunk's head, had vanished completely.
The signs by the road, along with the cab's antenna, wavered a bit. Then came the voice, deep and clear, but almost hidden amongst the breeze. Like a whisper, but louder.
"Caaaabbiiiie...." it said. It was followed by the sound of the train that was coming down the tracks, then almost instantly, the whistle blew twice. The sound got louder, and the figure flashed on the tracks again, this time for half a second. The voice called again, clearer, but melding a bit with the rising volume of the clattering on the tracks. Aaron, not sure of his senses, squinted a bit and leaned over the steering wheel, staring at the area above the tracks and listening as hard as he could. The light from the train engine was just now in front of him and as it appeared, so did the figure, this time clear as day.
"Miss me?" he asked of the driver, for the instant that he was in the beam cast by the engine's headlight. This was enough of a jolt to send Aaron leaping back against his seat, his jaw falling open. Then, as the train sped by, he was given true reason to be afraid. Between the cars, as they would pass where the figure had been standing, the figure could still be seen, this time glowing in a dim, greyish light. As if that weren't enough, as the train continued passing through the man, he began to slowly step forward, edging his way closer until he had stepped out of the train's path and off the tracks completely. The only thing standing between he and Aaron's cab was the lowered signal bar.
Aaron was petrified.
"Talk about your bad luck," said the Engineer.
I shuffled through the crowd and found Tin at one of the coolers in the living room, holding a bottle nearly vertical, bottom-side up.
"Hey," I said, lightly grabbing his elbow and getting him to turn and look at me before lowering the bottle and giving and refreshed "ahh". "Are you sure you should be drinkin' like that?" I asked. He looked at the beer in his hand.
"Nope," he said, looking back at me. "But I may not get another chance to, so I figure why not live it up tonight, huh?"
Haley was now standing no more than a foot in front of the car, his glow gone, being replaced with a dark solidity.
"You know what they say, Sluggo," he started, raising his hands up to his head level, but holding them out, kinda like a Frankenstein monster, "A murderer never forgets." And with that, he slammed his hands down on the sides of the hood of the taxi, crushing his handprints into it. Aaron gave a yelp as the vehicle shook from the force of the blow. The guy in the back was also paying attention now.
With a decent amount of ease, the Engineer slide the car about eight feet into the other lane. Then, with a twinkle in his eye, he heaved the car the other way, whipping it off the road. He watched as it slid off the road and into the trees that bordered it. With a loud crunch, the passenger side wash smashed. Without much thought at all, Aaron kicked it in reverse and backed away from the tracks and back onto the street at near top speed. Once the car settled into place, he took in the scene before him; the train that was blasting by had an odd air about it -- a bluish tint, almost. Haley remained standing where he had been, but was laughing so hard he couldn't keep his eyes on the cab.
Without really knowing why, or even paying too much attention to his actions, Aaron threw the car into second gear and floored it. Right about the time he was three feet ahead of the Engineer, Haley stopped laughing long enough to stand perfectly still, staring at the impending hit. His face, what was left of it, dropped into an "Oh, shit" expression, but even if he'd actually said the words, the sound of the ghost train combined with the roaring taxi would have drowned them out ten fold. An instant after seeing the incoming car, Haley was smashed to the ground. The contact, the angle and the force of the blow was enough to lift the car about two feet off the street, allowing it to sail swiftly through the air, as well as through the train, and then land with a reasonable slam on the other side of the tracks.
"What the fuck was that, man??" askd the terrified customer.
"You do not wanna know," Aaron told him, checking his rear view mirror as they quickly drove away. The train was still going, but Haley stepped through it, as if following the cab, but stopped short after just stepping off the tracks. The cabouse of the train came and went, following the rest into the woods and disappearing. The look on Haley's face was grim enough to cause Aaron to step up the speed a bit.
After about five minutes of a perfectly comfortable silence, aside from the fear that had setled in the car, Aaron dropped the guy off at 215 Heklin street. The guy got out and went to the driver door, getting his wallet out.
"H-how much?" he asked, stammering both from the alcohol but equally as much from the night's event.
"Uh...Eight seventy-five," said Aaron. The guy gave him a five dollar bill and four ones.
"There," he said, then as Aaron put the car in drive, he grabbed his arm to stop him. Aaron looked up at him. "This is for probably savin' my life, man," he added, handing Aaron two fifty dollar bills. Before Aaron could refuse it, the guy interrupted. "Don't argue, man. I owe ya a lot more th'n that. Y-you ever need anythin'...you come see me. And that's not the drunk talkin', neither."
"Th...thanks," said Aaron, still shaken from the encounter, but also not certain what to make of the guy's offer. "I'll see ya around," he finished. The guy said the same, and Aaron drove back to the station as well as he could; calmer, of course, than his escape route.
It was about eleven a.m. when I woke up. I opened my left eye and saw the back of Tin's head. We were both lying face-down, and my left arm was draped across his back. I bent my arm at the elbow and started lightly and slowly playing with his hair. I can't really say I remember much after Streak and I helped Derrek into one of the empty bedrooms and laid him on the bed. But, seeing as how neither Tin nor I had our shirts on, I assumed the mood of the evening had improved.
I looked around at as much of the ceiling and wall that I could see without moving and made the mental note that I also didn't remember which of the spare rooms we'd taken. Or if we'd even asked. I wasn't hungover, which was good. But I was also too awake to even hope to go back to sleep. That, and the sunlight that came in through the three windows on the wall that I faced was enough to keep me from returning to my slumber. Not that that was entirely bad. I was more than happy to continue petting my boyfriend's head.
After a few minutes, he made some weird noise between a grumble and a purr, and I couldn't help but smile. Of course, after such a cute little sound, there was no way I could stop.
"What time is it?" he asked. Of course, his voice was all deep and tired, plus he was muffled from mumbling it into the pillow, so it took me a sec to decypher what he'd said.
"I dunno," I said, "And I don't really care."
"I have to go to work today," he mubmled, with a slight tone of disappointment. I grunted a bit as I sat up, placing my back against the headboard, and looked at the clock on the wall opposite the one I'd been staring at.
"It's almost twelve," I said, letting my eyes linger at the clock before bringing them back to him.
"I hate time," he said, "Besides, I'm comfy."
"That may be," I said, patting his back, "But you're the one who has the job. That means you have to get up."
In some unofficial form of language, Tin grumbled into the pillow as a response to my comment, and Bluestreak came walking into the room, fully dressed and not seeming at all hindered by last night's antics. He brought with him two steaming cups of something, most likely tea.
"Ah, you're up," he said.
"Nope, just awake," I said. Bluestreak then handed the cup in his left hand to Tino, who'd been sitting in the chair by the door. When I saw him, I gave startled yelp, getting two alerted looks from Tino and Bluestreak, and a muffled "Hush" from Tin.
"What?" asked Tin, as if he didn't know.
"How long have you been there??" I asked, still recovering from the surprise.
"I dunno...an hour?" he offered. This was crazy.
"An hour?!" I asked, more shocked than before.
"I was waiting for you, but Tino got up and found me, so I told him to wait here and said I'd get us both a cup of tea," said Bluestreak. "Besides, I needed to stretch my legs."
"Are there actually people in the room with us?" asked Tin, who still hadn;t moved since he woke up.
"Yes," I said, rubbing my temples.
"Am I naked?" he asked. I lifted the sheet to check, then put it back the way it was.
"Yes," I said, dropping my arms to rest on the blanket that covered my legs.
"I figured that," said Tin, in a defeated tone.
"We'll leave you two alone," smiled Bluestreak. "We'll be downstairs when you're ready." He and Tino, who I swear was cracking up, took their drinks and left the room, closing the door behind them. We met them downstairs about five minutes later. They were in the living room, along with Paul.
"Where's Derrek?" I asked.
"Taking the girls home," said Bluestreak, sipping his tea. "He's got a bit of a headache, but he's good to drive."
"I gotta go," said Tin, quickly adding, "I got work this afternoon."
"So what's the plan for today?" asked Tino, looking between Bluestreak and Tin.
"For what? I just told you, I've got work today."
"Well..." started Tino, but Streak put a hand up to silence him. Tin grabbed his jacket and pulled the keys out.
"I'll see you tonight?" he asked me.
"You know where I live," I said. He kissed me on the cheek and left, skipping down the porch steps and hopping into his car before the front door swung shut. Tino looked at me with a crooked smile, like he was trying to hide it. I couldn't help but smile, though I tried to hide it. "What?" I asked, as innocently as I could. He started cracking up again, so I just said "Shut up," and let my smile flow.
Halfway between dropping Becky off at her house and taking Sheila back to hers, Derrek had to cross a set of train tracks. Without really thinking about it, since the the signals were unactive, he went right on through. But just as he felt his back tires bounce from crossing the rails, the truck jerked again, this time stopping entirely. Derrek and Sheila both looked back and saw the head and shoulders of one Michael Haley, sneering at them.
"Oh, shit!!" yelled Derrek, but Sheila just dropped her jaw in shock. Derrek floored the gas, but the Engineer's grip on the truck's bumper was tight enough not only to crumple his handprints into it, but also to hold the truck where it was. "Fuck, fuck, fuck!!!" Derrek shouted, panicking more with every second of immobility.
"Shhhhheilaaaaa...." came the familiar echoed whisper. The Engineer's mouth didn't move, but the name was repeated, in that windy, almost undiscernable voice.
"Don't listen!" shouted Derrek, "Don't listen to him!!" He threw the truck into first gear and slammed the gas, getting more speed from the back tires and causing the truck to sway side to side. Sheila covered her ears and looked back at the ghost. A smile slowly developed as well as it could on his half-rotten face.
"Come on back, Sheila," he growled, "I miss ya, baby."
"Fucker!" Derrek shouted, in angry protest to Haley's invitation. He threw the truck in reverse and gunned the engine, causing the same amount of force upon the rear tires, which had already begun smoking. Unfortunately, the truck still didn't do any more than waver side to side. The Engineer just laughed.
"Heh heh heh.... Come on, Baby. I need ya," he said, in a psuedo-seductive voice. His eyes were locked with hers, in an almost hypnotic sense. Sheila slowly lowered her hands from her ears and the look of panic left her face.
"What are you doing?!" Derrek asked in a panic, but no response was given. Sheila started to open the door, all the while keeping eye contact with Haley. "What -- Mother FUCKer!!" Derrek shouted, "That's it!" With that, Derrek put the truck in park and got out of the truck, slamming the door shut. He walked right up to Haley and without a word, he threw a knockout punch and swung his fist straight through Haley's head as if it were a hologram. Haley, who'd been keeping strict eye contact with Sheila looked down to Derrek with a very cocky air about him.
"What...was that?" he snarled. Derrek just glared at him.
"You want my girlfriend?" Derrek asked, scowling at Haley. "You gotta go through me."
"HA HA HAAAaaaa!!" the Engineer laughed, then went deathly serious. "That's not such a bad idea, Tough Guy." With that, he let go of the truck and Sheila stopped trying to get out of it. Derrek backwalked a few steps as Haley stepped off of the tracks and became solid. "Where you goin', little man?" asked the ghost. "You said you wanted a piece, right?"
"Come on, dead boy," said Derrek, "I have FAR too much of a hangover to put up with your shit right now, so bring it on!"
The Engineer chuckled again, but before he could say "O.K.," Derrek threw another right hook like nobody's business and clocked the Engineer enough to swiftly change the angle of his head and lay him out on the street. At that, Derrek jumped back in the truck. Haley stood up right as Derrek threw the truck into drive and took off.
"So, that's how it's gonna be, huh?" he asked, mostly to himself, as he watched the vehicle speed away. "I guess I'll have resort to more 'effective' means." He then stepped back onto the rails and vanished.
Stay tuned for the next exciting edition of "The Engineer 2: Back on Track"!