The Glory Train by Robert Williams

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I didn't like the sound of his laugh one bit. Ol'Samuel sounded like someone my Momma would call "touched" and my Daddy would call "crazier than a shit-house rat." I started to feel like I'd made one doozy of a wrong decision.

"What cargo is that?" I asked.

"Open the door behind you and see!" Samuel said. "You'll need to know it very well and very soon!"

I did as he told me. The door opened on a long car filled with wooden crates.

I jumped when Samuel's big hand came down on my shoulder.

"You see all those long metal tubes in that crate?" he said, pointing. "Those are guns that launch exploding missiles. Macarthur could've used those when he burned the shantytowns, eh boy?"

I knew what he was talking about. A bunch of veterans of the Great War had marched on Washington demanding their rightful benefits, and that scoundrel Hoover had sent Macarthur to burn the shantytowns they set up at the Capitol. How my Daddy had cussed when he heard about it!

"Look here, Just Joe," Samuel said. "You see those vials? I've sealed death in those vials like a genie in a bottle. But this genie's name is smallpox, the very disease infecting the blankets we gave the red Indians, that plagued them so very well."

I knew that affliction. My Momma always cried whenever she spoke of the disease that took her sister.

"But here is my pride and joy," Samuel said, pointing to a crate in the middle of the car. "My masterpiece. I call this weapon the Adam bomb, but this Adam's bride is the eve of destruction! With this one bomb, I can destroy an entire city! How's that for glory?"

I couldn't hear no more of this. "Mister, you never said anything about killing people. I don't want no part of this. Let me off this train!"

"You're not going anywhere, Just Joe."

His hand got tight on my shoulder, and he pushed me into the car holding his awful glories.

"I haven't even told you about your job yet. Look, here's your workmates!"

He threw back the lid of another crate, and inside I saw men's bodies piled up like cordwood. They all had skin gray as the dead's and a hissing metal contraption latched on their faces.

"Don't fear, wandering boy," Samuel said. "They're not dead, just sleeping. When I need them to wake, they will. And when I need them to kill for me, or die for me, they'll do that too. And so will you."

He reached inside his coat pocket and pulled out a doctor's needle filled with awful-looking green stuff, and his hand squeezed my shoulder so hard it hurt. I started screaming, and Samuel clamped his hand over my face, cutting off my breath. Then he turned my head around so my neck showed, you know, so he could stick me there with his needle, and the next thing I knew I had my Daddy's pocketknife in my hand. I slammed it down into Samuel's leg.

Samuel roared like a devil, but he let me go. I took off running. He started lurching after me, but he tripped over the lid of the crate on the floor. He fell onto the needle, and he didn't get back up. As I crept back to him, I saw his skin turn as gray as those bodies in the crate.

Not wasting any time, I ran up front to the controls of this God-awful train.