The guard patrol had established a hasty roadblock at the narrow intersection where Sump Road intersected the high tram overhead frame.
Four heavy, four-wheeled freight carts had been dragged across the tracks and overturned. Their iron-banded axles pointed upward into the fog like defensive chevaux-de-frise. Behind the carts knelt six Survey constables in blue woolen coats, their short-barreled cavalry carbines rested across the timber frames, their leather visors pulled low against the freezing drizzle.
They fired in an uncoordinated, ragged volley.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
Four lead balls slammed into the front oak support posts of the flatcar with the impact of sledgehammers, punching through the four-inch timber baulks and throwing jagged, deadly splinters across the deck.
One ball struck the bilge of the third fever cask, shearing the zinc-coated iron hoop and releasing a second jet of steaming, healing animal fat that coated the front deck in hot, frothing grease. A second ball passed through the empty air where the hunter had been standing a second earlier, clipping the collar of its coat before ricocheting off an iron support post with a high-pitched whine.
The flatcar didn’t slow down.
Three tons of iron, seasoned white oak, and two hundred gallons of heavy fuel moving down a five-percent grade possessed a moving heavy rush that four overturned wooden carts couldn’t arrest.
