Pandemonium by Warren Fahy Read Free Book Online Page B

into a waiting Range Rover that drove them to an empty train stopped on the tracks between stations in the field near the airstrip.
    They climbed into the last car, and Maxim disappeared again, going forward and leaving them in the caboose. The train proceeded to pass every station along the way without stopping for the next two hours as it snaked into the mountainous highlands that stacked up against what they deduced was the northern horizon.
    Geoffrey and Nell sat upright in the uncomfortable seat of the empty antique train car as they observed the tumultuous landscape piling higher and higher around them until a man finally entered the train through the forward vestibule. He was middle-aged, lithe, and well groomed with elegantly cropped silver hair that matched his expensive dove-gray suit. His sunken face and hollow eyes reminded Geoffrey of Boris Karloff. Maxim entered behind him. “Let me introduce you to my right hand. This is Galia Sokolof. Galia, these are the scientists.”
    Galia smiled. His cadaverous eyes brightened as he clasped both their hands. “I am so happy you decided to come. It is so very nice to meet you. Now, if you’ll excuse us both for a while longer.” He and Maxim departed to the front of the train car and spoke to each other in rapid Russian.
    “God, I hope we’re not crazy, honey,” Geoffrey whispered.
    “Oh, we’re crazy,” Nell said. “But that’s why I married you, darling.” She squeezed his hand.
    9:16 A.M.
    At last, after a long and circuitous haul up mountain grades past peaks, lakes, rivers, and gorges, the train reached a village named Gursk and exhaled an expulsion of steam as if announcing the town’s name. To the left of the tracks, Geoffrey saw a row of shops and restaurants boarded up along the bank of a rushing blue river. To the right, a majestic mountain rose over the town, its peak flashing the sun’s rays like a pyramid’s capstone. Rusted mining equipment, teetering conveyors, mountains of tailings, and hundreds of dilapidated barracks swathed the foothills of the mighty peak.
    The town was a curdled mix of well-preserved ancient and run-down modern buildings, with half-timbered façades next to cinder blocks and tin roofs.
    “ This is Maxim Dragolovich’s city?” Nell whispered.
    “Oh, we are definitely crazy, sweetheart.…”
    9:21 A.M.
    They arrived at the train station of Gursk, which blocked off their view of the city and the mountain to the north as they came to a hissing stop. The station was one of those patronized buildings in third-world countries that leap out of their surroundings with fraudulent promise, a chunk of propaganda dropped in like a leaflet from a bomber. The cracked concrete roof was supported by a dramatic colonnade of cement columns with alcoves along a back wall displaying Russian revolutionaries, now chipped and sprayed with graffiti. The bronze lampposts were dark as molasses, their glass domes shattered. The ceiling had dripped rivers of rust across the cracked marble platform.
    As they stepped off the train, Maxim waved his arm cheerfully. “This way!”
    They followed east along the platform. Nell and Geoffrey could not see anyone inhabiting the town in either direction and wondered if it was abandoned. They breathed the cold fresh air as the chill of apprehension froze into a panic.
    Maxim and Galia led them to the east end of the platform, where the roof was missing and heavy pillars reached skeletal hands of rebar into the azure sky. There they turned at a railed-in stairway that descended in the opposite direction. Urging Nell and Geoffrey on, they went down the stairs, at the bottom of which was a steel hatch facing north. Galia produced a key and turned it in the door. Then he cranked a wheel like the ones on submarine hatches, and the stubborn hinges shrieked as he pushed the door open.
    Inside, Maxim pulled down a large switch on the wall, and halogen lamps hanging from the ceiling flared to life over what