TB II Excerpt #1

This is the first part of chapter one. Santascoy’s run-in with the train. Let’s get right into the action!


Rounding the corner of the tracks, Noman Santascoy knew the freight train would barrel into him. He screamed as the monstrous locomotive slammed head on into his Velocipede.

The power of the train shoved the front end of his single rider railbike up and off the tracks, forcing him into a wheelie. Then the Velocipede shot up in the air, hovering over Santascoy for an agonizing moment as his body smashed onto the tracks, his back landing painfully on the left rail. His ride followed him down, falling directly on top of him. Pain erupted in his legs, chest, head.

In the blink of an eye, the locomotive struck the Pirate King. Pain cascaded through his entire body as the engine’s cowcatcher pushed him up and off the tracks.

As he and his ride tumbled down the grassy embankment, the crumpled machine hit a rock, forcing it in a different direction from Santascoy’s mangled body.

Coming to rest in the dry, weed-filled valley, the remnants of the Velocipede smoked off in the distance. Santascoy groaned as he landed face down in the tall grass. The locomotive, seemingly oblivious to the mayhem it left it its wake, continued to roll south. It headed rapidly down the line until the ambient sounds of nature engulfed its repetitive echo.

Everything hurt the Pirate King so intensely that he could not pinpoint any specific pain points. Santascoy knew the train had badly damaged one of his legs. Blood from a dozen wounds seeped onto the ground around him, but his leg felt numb, absent.

When he heard one of the Trachsel brothers yelling for the other, he fought the urge to succumb to unconsciousness. They were coming his way, to see if the he still had life in his broken body. If they found him alive, he would surely spend his life in prison. No, he raged internally, that must not happen!

“There,” Benjamin ‘Jam’ Trachsel yelled from somewhere seemingly far away. Everything felt so distant, like a dream world, or more accurately an anguish-filled nightmare.

When he felt the ground around him move and heard the crinkle of grass near his head, he knew they stood directly above him. “That’s a lot of blood,” Jackson ‘Jax’ Trachsel said, his voice faint.

Jam wedged his foot under Santascoy’s body. The Pirate leader steeled himself, forcing his eyes wide open with a pained grimace on his face as Jam forcefully rolled him to his back. Santascoy knew he could not hold this expression long, but he had to try.

The air assaulted Santascoy’s face and the light screamed at his brain to shut his eyes, but he commanded them to remain open, for just a moment longer. He stared at nothing, thought about nothing.

When he heard Jackson turn and vomit into a bush, Santascoy had to stifle a smile. Jam turned away from the body to comfort his brother, saying softly, “The King of the Track Pirates. He lived and died by the train.”

Only after the brothers turned and walked back up to the tracks did Santascoy allow the all-encompassing pain to overtake him and force him into unconsciousness.