Blog

Chapter 3: The Approaching Leviathan

Vance reached the concrete drainage grate, dropping heavily to his knees on the freezing, jagged track ballast. The wind howled furiously around him, whipping sharp crystals of snow into his eyes.

The gap between the heavy concrete ties was barely six inches wide, dropping straight down into a deep, vertical maintenance shaft that connected to the main culvert pipe far below the winter frost line.

Vance unclipped his heavy, high-powered tactical LED flashlight from his chest harness. He clicked it on, the blinding white beam cutting a sharp cylinder through the gloom, and aimed it straight down into the narrow, icy abyss.

He had to squint against the harsh glare reflecting off the blue ice lining the walls of the shaft. The hole went straight down for at least eight feet. At the very bottom, resting on a pile of frozen debris and dead pine needles, was the raw ribeye steak.

And huddled directly next to the steak, shivering so weakly it was barely perceptible to the human eye, was a tiny, fur-covered shape.

It was a puppy.

It couldn’t have been more than six weeks old. It was a miniature, perfect replica of the German Shepherd above, but its eyes were barely open, and its oversized puppy coat was matted with freezing mud and ice. The puppy was hopelessly, entirely trapped at the bottom of the slick, vertical concrete shaft, completely incapable of climbing out.

The adult dog had been systematically dropping whatever pathetic scraps of food he could scavenge down this hole for two weeks, keeping the puppy alive against impossible, lethal odds.

Suddenly, a sound cut through the howl of the wind that made Vance’s blood run completely cold.

Hooooooooooonk.

It was the deep, resonant, earth-shattering blast of a freight train horn.

Vance snapped his head up, looking east. Two miles down the track, emerging from the sharp curve of the mountain pass, was the blinding, oscillating triple-headlight array of a massive BNSF cargo train. It was moving fast, carrying thousands of tons of steel, timber, and commercial freight.

If that train passed over this specific section of track, the resulting vibration and the sheer volume of displaced, compacted snow would bury the grate completely. The puppy would suffocate and freeze to death in the dark, and Vance wouldn’t be able to safely extract it.

Vance didn’t hesitate. He grabbed the heavy emergency radio clipped to his shoulder harness, his thumb mashing the transmission button.

“Dispatch, this is Unit 4-Calder! Emergency! Emergency! Halt all westbound traffic on Sector Nine! I have an obstruction on the main line! I repeat, halt the westbound freight immediately!”

Heavy static hissed through the radio, followed a second later by the panicked, urgent voice of the Seattle dispatcher.

“Unit 4, copy your emergency. Transmitting emergency halt code to BNSF 4094 now. Stand by!”

Vance stood up, pulling a thick, red emergency magnesium flare from his tactical pocket. He cracked the cap against the striker. The flare ignited instantly in a blinding, hissing shower of brilliant red sparks and thick crimson smoke. He held it high above his head, waving it aggressively in wide arcs in the falling snow to catch the engineer’s eye through the blizzard.

The massive freight train was a mile away. Then half a mile.

The horrific, deafening screech of metal on metal pierced the valley. The engineer had seen the red smoke and received the radio command. The train’s massive pneumatic air brakes engaged simultaneously across a mile of cars, sending bright orange sparks flying from the steel wheels as thousands of tons of forward momentum fought violently against the friction.

The train ground to a halting, agonizing, groaning stop barely two hundred yards from where Vance stood on the tracks.

The silence that followed the screeching brakes was deafening, broken only by the low, idle rumble of the train’s massive diesel engines and the relentless howling of the alpine wind.

Vance dropped the hissing flare into a snowbank. He keyed his radio again, his heart hammering against his ribs.

“Dispatch, the train is halted. I need an emergency track rescue crew out here immediately. Bring gasoline concrete saws, heavy pry bars, and thermal blankets. We have a live extraction under the rails.”

Chapter 4: The Diamond Saws

For the next two hours, Sector Nine became a chaotic, highly focused theater of desperation.

The emergency track crew arrived in a convoy of specialized utility trucks, their amber light bars strobing against the whiteout conditions. When Vance explained exactly what was trapped down the hole, there was absolutely zero hesitation. These were hardened, rugged mountain men who spent their lives fighting the elements, but not a single one of them complained about the freezing temperatures, the blizzard, or the millions of dollars in delayed freight schedules.

They immediately set up heavy halogen work lights on tripods, illuminating the snowy tracks in harsh, brilliant white light that turned the night into day.

The gap between the concrete ties was far too narrow for a human arm to reach down eight feet, and the concrete ties themselves weighed over eight hundred pounds each. They couldn’t simply be lifted by human strength, and bringing specialized railway cranes up the mountain pass would take hours they didn’t have. The arctic front had arrived, and the temperature was plummeting rapidly.

“We have to cut the tie,” Vance ordered, pointing to the edge of the concrete block securing the steel rail. “Bring up the diamond saws. Let’s move!”

The roar of two-stroke, gasoline-powered concrete saws shattered the peace of the valley. Sparks flew like a Fourth of July fireworks display as the massive, diamond-tipped circular blades bit fiercely into the heavy, steel-reinforced concrete. Industrial water hoses were sprayed directly over the spinning blades to keep them from overheating and shattering, the water instantly turning to freezing slush the moment it hit the sub-zero air.

Vance was on his knees the entire time, ignoring the freezing slush soaking through his heavy work pants. His face hovered inches near the gap, shining his tactical flashlight down into the abyss to monitor the puppy.

“Hold on, little one,” Vance kept whispering into the dark, projecting as much warmth as he could over the deafening roar of the saws. “We’re coming down for you. Just hold on.”

At the edge of the dark treeline, illuminated faintly by the harsh glare of the halogen work lights, the adult German Shepherd paced frantically back and forth in the deep snow. The noise of the industrial saws and the shouting men must have been utterly terrifying to his feral instincts, but his protective, paternal bond anchored him securely to the spot. He flatly refused to abandon his puppy. He watched the men tear into the earth with a desperate, whining anxiety, his ears pinned back against the storm.

It took forty-five agonizing, grueling minutes of continuous cutting to sever a triangular section out of the massive concrete tie without destabilizing the steel rail above it.

“Pry it!” Vance yelled, tossing the heavy saw aside into a snowbank.

Three massive track workers jammed heavy, six-foot steel pry bars into the newly cut groove. They strained against the immense weight, the veins bulging in their necks, their breath pluming in thick white clouds in the freezing air.

With a sickening, grinding, cracking sound, the massive chunk of reinforced concrete shifted, then lifted up and out, creating a jagged opening just barely wide enough for a grown man’s shoulders to pass through.

(Click ‘Next’ to continue)