Death Kit Read Online Free PDF Page A

discovers the wall still some ten feet away. The tunnel has two wide-gauge tracks; Diddy steps onto the empty track. Turning right. Using the dim light to illuminate a small spot ahead of his softly polished shoes, starts toward the front of the train. Tired, terribly tired. Keep going. No time to give in to fatigue. For a while, he hears only the slurred sound of his own steps on the firm tunnel ground. But after passing half a dozen cars, begins to hear something else: hard, evenly spaced sounds like the blows of an ax. It was toward that sound that Diddy was heading.
    â€œHey there!” he calls out.
    Sounds in the tunnel are slightly deadened. An echo effect.
    Though he’s keeping to the center of the vacant track, Diddy senses that he is drifting to the right. Halts his march. He probes at the space between two coaches with his small light; discovers that the forward coach lies at a slight angle to the one behind. The same for the next space between two coaches. And the next. So the track isn’t straight, the tunnel itself is curved; which means that the train’s heavy body, stalled, lay arched within the tunnel’s sheath, bent systematically at each of its iron joints. Does this make matters more difficult? The emergency more grave? As Diddy follows the curving track, the sounds become louder and he sees a source of light. Continuing. The tunnel brightens.
    Destination achieved. Panting, Diddy stands alongside the vast greasy forward wheel of the engine. Just ahead of the train is a swarthy man wearing cleated boots, denim overalls, undershirt. And a light strapped to his brow, like a doctor or miner; which supplements the stronger lighting furnished by a row of five bulbs stuck in a short board and suspended from an iron hook in the tunnel wall. The man is indeed wielding an ax, slamming it into a barrier about four feet high that straddles the track. A kind of wall made of heavy boards nailed together. Braced by or anchored to several crossties set diagonally against the wall.
    â€œJesus, who the hell put that up?” Diddy the Companionable. Relieved. The barrier has a makeshift look. And it was wood, not stone.
    The man stoops. Picks up another tool, a sledgehammer, from a large wooden box lying on the ground.
    One of the ties is under attack. The tie jumps as the man hits it with the sledgehammer. Gradually it’s coming loose. Strange sonorities. Then the man lays down the hammer, pulls a crowbar from the box of tools, and begins a different sound, continuous and higher pitched. “How’s it coming?” Diddy asks. Appears to be going well. One by one, the thick diagonal supports are yielding.
    The workman pauses. Perhaps he hasn’t heard Diddy. A change of pace. Using the massive hammer (now), he’s attacking the wall itself, sending up a haze of dust. Clearly the shuddering barrier isn’t impregnable.
    â€œIs that the obstruction? I mean, is that all there is?” Diddy almost alongside him (now), near enough to catch the familiar sweat smell that flows from the man’s body, his faintly alcoholic breath. Just watches for another moment, tasting the grit in his own mouth.
    â€œWouldn’t it go faster if you got someone to help you?” The workman either grunted or made no answer. Stolidly, efficiently, he just keeps slamming his hammer into the low wall. Not just neatly dismembering it, but breaking off ragged splintery hunks of wood. Whenever a big enough piece has come away, the workman adds it to an already sizable stack in a niche in the tunnel wall on his left.
    Diddy troubled. “Listen, I’m talking to you.”
    The man goes on hammering. Then he shoves the hammer into the box, and takes up the ax again. Diddy has backed a few feet away from him, is trying to figure out what he’s doing. Like a miner, he thinks. The damned train has barged into a mine. Something slides along the edge of Diddy’s mind, a presentiment of awful