Free The Builders by Daniel Polansky Page A

say, his optimism was short-lived. Through the glass door separating the two carriages the conductor saw the badger continue forward, Harold forced awake by his heavy footfalls, coming up from his seat to say something. And then Harold was back in his seat and in a deeper slumber than he had theretofore been enjoying, courtesy of the badger’s backhand.
    At that moment the conductor did the bravest thing he had ever done in his life, which was to run screaming toward the front of the train. When he reached the guarded carriage he banged on the door until the peephole slid open. The conductor did not know the rat inside—the conductor had never before tried to enter the front carriage, had never even acknowledged its existence. That was against the rules, and the conductor, in case you had somehow missed the point by now, was the sort of creature who liked following them.
    “They’re coming!” he yelled.
    “Who?”
    The conductor moved aside swiftly, allowing the rat to get a view of the troupe of creatures following in his wake. The conductor himself did not bother to turn around, and to judge by the sudden doubling of the circumference of the rat’s eyes, it was just as well that he did not.
    The door flew open. The conductor bolted through. The door slammed shut.
    The conductor had hoped that inside would be a dozen soldiers in full battle gear, or maybe a couple of hedgehogs with heavy artillery. So fear followed closely upon the heels of disappointment when he discovered that the impregnable fortress attached to the front of his train was crewed by two rats who looked barely out of their litter, holding their rifles gingerly and giving off a very distinct smell of terror.
    “What do we do now?” one of them asked. The other rat, the rat who had been looking through the peephole and had seen the badger, didn’t say anything.
    Needless to say, this was not the reaction that the shrew had anticipated. But he surprised himself, as he had several times so far that day, with his sangfroid, with his mental fortitude, with his keen sense of battlefield tactics. “We keep the door shut,” he answered.
    The rats nodded in unison. The conductor could hear the rumbling of the badger and his companions from the other carriage and tensed himself for the inevitable blows—blows that did not come.
    Gathering up his nerve, the conductor opened the peephole and looked out. Behind the door he could see the opossum and the badger standing around, neither looking particularly agitated. “This is double-reinforced steel!” yelled the conductor, trying to cover his fear. “You’ll never break it down!”
    The Badger scratched at the thick fur of his head awhile before answering. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”
    “I am?”
    It was then that the conductor felt air blowing in through an open window, which gave him a brief moment of happiness, because it was a hot day after all, and the wind cool, but this was followed quickly by a much more potent sense of despair.
    “Keep the door shut,” said a thickly accented voice from behind him. “That is a fine plan. That is the sort of plan a fellow ought to be proud to have come up with.”

Chapter 34: The Loot
    Bonsoir opened the reinforced-steel door and the Captain came through an instant later, stepping over the corpses with unstudied disinterest. A partition had been erected two-thirds of the way down the compartment, and the mouse stopped at the entrance to it, nodding at Cinnabar behind him. The Dragon slid the gate sideways with his usual extraordinary celerity, and before it banged against the frame he had both revolvers out, ready for whatever was waiting for them.
    A moment passed. Cinnabar holstered his guns.
    Bonsoir came in behind him, rolling a cigarette. “This is an unfortunate surprise,” he said, slipping his tobacco pouch underneath his beret before lighting his smoke with a match struck off his boot.
    “I guess this changes things,” Cinnabar said.
    The