Chapter 156
The clouds above still hung ominously. Clumped together, they dyed the sky entirely in ashen hues and exuded a sticky humidity. Wilson sat leaning quietly against the wall, like dying embers in a fireplace that had reached the end of its life. The damp air swept over him without hindrance from wall or ceiling.
Commonly known as the Hound, Sean Morrison was panting heavily above Wilson. Morrison was equally covered in blood. Guns that had spent all their ammunition were rolling around on the floor over there. Morrison let the club he had been holding drop beside the gun he had discarded.
The passenger car was still silent, with intermittent groans and suppressed sobs drifting out. Several people who had tried to help Wilson had been injured.
The situation had truly grown serious. Therefore, it was all the more right to finish this properly.
Morrison searched his waist for a spare backup pistol. But damn it, he must have dropped it somewhere along the way.
Still, it was fine. Morrison looked toward the passenger car he would have to pass through again. The people would no longer dare to rush at him. Having seen what became of those who had managed to work up courage, they would all the more hold their breath and lie low.
The train had shortened like an ant snapped in half at the waist. I need to deal with what’s left immediately and go to the engineer. The moment he thought this and turned his body—
Bang! A bullet flew toward him along with the sound, missing its mark.
At the far end, a single silhouette stood guarding the door of the passenger car. The culprit of that pathetic aim was standing right there. Was it that young master? How fickle—he had expected as much, but it was already far too late to change his mind now.
Morrison confidently approached the silhouette that had lowered both hands and was fumbling as though trying to reload. With large strides—steps befitting his tall frame—he quickly closed the distance.
From up close, he saw it was wearing a dress.
A woman with disheveled hair, wearing a green dress stained here and there with dark brown, was looking straight at Morrison as he strode toward her. She clutched the reloaded gun in both hands again and raised it toward the approaching man.
She didn’t shoot.
Three meters. Two meters.
One meter.
She didn’t shoot even as he drew closer.
Then, only when Morrison was right before her did she fire the second shot into his torso.
No matter how hard she had practiced, her marksmanship remained at a beginner’s level. Look at how terribly the first shot had missed. So she had waited for the target to get this close. Then, aim or whatever—she could hit like this just by pulling the trigger.
Morrison, who had seemed merely of average build, now looked as large as a house to her. He flinched for an instant from the gunshot’s recoil, but at the same time reached out and seized Sasha’s throat.
Even with a gaping hole in his torso, he put strength into the hand gripping Sasha’s throat as if determined that she, if no one else, had to die. It was the moment when the mutter Isaac had once mumbled to her—that people do not die easily—suddenly came back to her.
His words had been right.
It was truly grotesque.
“Did you kill Grayson?”
Morrison asked, sneering coldly at Sasha as she thrashed. His eyes shone. Unlike earlier, when he had appeared indifferent, a strange madness now swirled in his eyes.
The man seemed excited. Now, in a different sense, his attention had become fixed solely on Sasha.
“I didn’t hear a shot. Did you fire both rounds at me? Hm?”
“……”
It was more agonizing than being unable to breathe. Would her neck bone snap and kill her like this? However, Morrison was strangling her neck with carefully controlled strength, like a beast toying with its prey.
Step by step, her body was pushed back. Seen up close, blood was pouring not just from the hole in his torso but from everywhere, yet even as he was dying like that…… to be toyed with so powerlessly. She had already known the difference in primal strength, but that was separate from the revulsion surging within her.
Her eyeballs throbbed as if they would burst from the increased pressure, and regardless of her will, her mind flickered hazily.
“Who taught you something like that?”
The dying man spat blood and asked with a wet hiss.
The train was still running, and the coupling between the passenger car and the freight car was right before them.
And then—thud. Someone ran up and shoved Morrison’s back with all their might.
The house-sized man before her swayed. Like a stone thrown into a glass already covered in cracks, he collapsed in an instant. However, as the hand strangling her released, it flailed in the air once as if determined to take her with him after all, when a small hand shot out and pushed him completely away again.
“Aaargh!”
With a single scream, the man fell. He was sucked under the relentlessly running train.
A horrific sound of flesh and bone being crushed in an instant rang out.
Another hand shot out from inside and grabbed Sasha, pulling her in. They tumbled to the floor together. The chest against her back was soft and narrow. The nameless woman held Sasha in her arms and panted roughly.
As though she had been pulled from the water just before drowning, Sasha gasped for the breath that had been blocked, spitting out tears and saliva together. Looking down at what had pooled thickly on the floor, then raising her head, she saw a small back standing in front of them, blocking their way. It was Miss Iver.
Even though they knew he was already dead, they looked down beneath the train as if afraid that horrible man might crawl back up.
The train did not stop and continued running.
There were many injured. Since some were immediately between life and death, the train did not stop and ran on to the next station. People brought Wilson inside, somehow tried to staunch the bleeding from his tattered body, and continually whispered for him not to lose consciousness.
It was fortunate that there was a nurse among the passengers. While people were flustered and sniffling, the elderly woman calmly stepped forward and attended to Wilson.
Wilson looked up at Sasha with a bandage hastily wrapped around his head. There was barely any focus left in his eyes. When Sasha crouched before him, he opened his mouth and mumbled something. The words were blurred between labored breaths. Yet Sasha felt she could understand what he was trying to say.
He was apologizing to Sasha.
“Come this way.”
Miss Iver approached, helped Sasha up, and led her elsewhere. Sasha let her. Her legs had lost all strength and she couldn’t walk on her own, so she simply entrusted herself to the small woman’s body.
“……It hurts so much.”
Sasha, who had been clenching her teeth as if they would break, spoke in a whisper. Her left arm, which had been shot, was fortunately intact. No, should this even be called “intact”? Anyway, at least it hadn’t been severed below the arm.
“It suddenly hurts so much.”
Sasha burst into sobs like a child, belatedly. The elderly woman, who had been administering a narcotic painkiller to Wilson, looked at Sasha with pity and spoke.
“Your body is only now relaxing, poor young miss.”
Miss Iver silently embraced Sasha and kissed her forehead.
Fortunately, she didn’t say anything like telling her not to close her eyes, as they had been doing with Wilson. Perhaps to Sasha, that seemed to be the only way to push away the pain, even if just barely.
When she buried her face in Miss Iver’s embrace, the dried blood inside her ear made a crack, splitting sound. Sasha closed her eyes just like that.
＊＊＊
The train station was already filled with people. Ordinary citizens were unable to enter, pacing anxiously outside without knowing the cause of the sudden access restriction.
Soon the train stopped, and passengers began disembarking one by one. The passengers all wore vacant expressions as though their minds had wandered elsewhere, but the moment they saw the police officers in black uniforms waiting for them, they finally seemed relieved.
Wilson, loaded on a stretcher, was moved out first. He would be taken straight to the hospital. Sasha was moved next, cradled in a man’s arms.
Only then did the engineer emerge. The young engineer, who had continued operating the train without stopping even with gunshots ringing behind him, was pale, and the moment a police officer approached and spoke to him, he curled up and vomited everything he had eaten.
Jeffrey Grayson sat hiding in a corner of the freight car, holding his breath. A woman had been getting off the train but sat down and burst into sobs, and an elderly gentleman lifted her up and was seen speaking to the approaching police.
The howling sounds heard here and there soon began to subside. Only then did Jeffrey slowly head toward the exit.
The flesh inside his palms was scraped raw from gripping the box to hold on, and it stung painfully. Jeffrey staggered out. His groin was soaked, and the stench of urine reeked.
And the moment he finally set foot on the ground, the surroundings fell silent.
Everyone was looking at him.
“……I, I……”
Jeffrey raised both hands to the sides of his face. With a hollow laugh as though truly wronged, and simultaneously with tears welling in his eyes, he spoke.
“……I’m…… a v-victim too……”