Dead Iron: The Age of Steam

by Devon Monk

  The Madders’ gun was charging, but its gears worked slower than last time.

  The house wouldn’t stand long. No, if she was to get the child to a doctor, to his family, she’d have to run now, before the roof came down and buried them both.

  Mae rushed to Elbert, who was still as death, his eyes glossy red and staring at the rafters. Gone out of his head with fear.

  Something slammed onto the roof and rolled like a boulder down the shingles. The windows rattled, and claws scraped against glass and pane.

  “We need to go, Elbert.” She wrapped him up in the blanket, tucking it tight around him as if he were a babe instead of a small boy. “I’m going to take you home to your mama and pa now.”

  He stirred to that, blinked, and started crying again.

  “There, now, bear up just a bit longer.” Mae gathered useful things into her satchel and pockets. Her tatting shuttle, an extra blanket, water, flint and steel. Around her waist she strapped one of Jeb’s work belts, buckled with pockets of leather that held tools. She slid her skinning knife onto that, then fastened her bonnet tight under her chin. She took a kerchief and folded it over the child’s head, trying to stanch the bleeding.

  His head wound was grim. Over the kerchief, she tied a woolen hat she had knit. It was too big for the boy, but it would help absorb the blood and keep his head warm from the night.

  The wind and the Strange pushed, rested, then shoved at the house so hard, she threw her arms out to the side as the foundation shifted.

  Mae scooped up the boy, and, thank the heavens, he wrapped his arms around her neck and held on. The shotgun was ready, no longer humming, the needle on the gauge cocked hard to the right. Mae opened the back door, quiet as could be. The Strange was still out front, rattling the shutters. Mae ran to where Prudence was sheltered beneath the eave of the shed, her eyes rolling with fear.

  Mae set the boy on the shed floor, took up the saddle, and geared Prudence as quickly as her shaking hands could manage. She ran back to the boy, Prudence in tow, and hoisted Elbert up onto the mule, swinging up behind him. She tucked him tight against her, one arm over his chest to hold him close, and still let her reach rein and stirrup. Mae rested the rifle across the saddle horn.

  She pressed her heels to old Prudence’s side. “Get up now.”

  Prudence didn’t need urging. From round the back of the shed, Mae set her off at a gallop toward town, up the rise in the hill, then down the drop of the tree-filled gully. Once through that edge of forest, she’d go straightway to Hallelujah.

  She didn’t want to enter that forest again, but the boy didn’t have any time to spare. He was fever hot, as if coals lay beneath his skin.

  Prudence shied at the edge of the forest.

  “Go on, get,” Mae said, putting her heels to her again.

  Prudence locked her legs and refused to take even a step forward into the shifting shadows.

  The boy whimpered, squirmed with pain.

  Mae turned Prudence in a circle, and the mule, thinking she was headed back to the shed, finally lifted her feet. Then Mae dug her heels in again, spurring Prudence into a trot, straight into the forest.

  The wind howled, wailed. She heard the crack of a treetop breaking high above her. Old Prudence ran as if ghosts and goblins were on her heels. It was all that Mae could do to keep her on the trail to the town.

  Trees flew by as Prudence galloped. Mae held tight to the boy, sparing a glance down at him just once.

  He smiled, his small white teeth sharp and feral, his eyes too wide, too dark, too hungry in a face that was no longer sweet.

  Then he attacked.

  Mae screamed as he sprang up and bit her shoulder. She shoved at him, but he clung tight, fingers digging at her eyes, tearing her hair. He kicked the gun off the saddle and laughed. Even with all her strength, Mae Lindson could not hold him off as he sank his teeth deep into her neck.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Jeb Lindson knew how to fight. He had lived by wits first and fists second for most all his life. He knew how to tamp his temper too, when a fight weren’t never going to go his way. And he knew when the odds were against a man, sometimes that was when the mettle of a man was made.

  Jeb wasn’t the sort of man to give up easily. Jeb wasn’t the sort of man to give up at all.

  But even an undead man with inhuman strength could see when he was outnumbered.

  The tickers had surrounded him. Instead of attacking all at once like he thought they’d do, they’d taken their turn, deciding which monstrous metal beast would strike him. The small, fast matics had done him the most damage.

  Matics, tickers, did not have the brains or reasoning of a man. But these tickers, these devil toys, carried vials of glim in their heads. Glim gave things power and unholy strength. And Jeb was sure it was that which made these matics clever.

  They wanted him dead—he knew the truth of that. But they seemed to have put some consideration into how to kill him. Near as Jeb could figure, they wanted to kill him slowly, wear him down, then chop him up for good.

  He still had the boulder at his back. The ground round in front of him was littered with scrap metal.

  Jeb swung the scythelike arm of the first matic he’d taken down. The blade was strong and sharp. Strong enough and sharp enough to cleave through six metal torsos of six metal monsters. Strong enough and sharp enough to smash through skull casings and pop rivets, so Jeb could suck out the sweet glim in their brains.

  But they had done damage to him; that was plain sure. Jeb didn’t so much hurt, even though he had cuts and gouges and hunks of missing flesh. He was wearing down, picked apart, broke apart. Soon he wouldn’t be much left but a bag of bones.

  A new ticker faced off in front of him. It was near the size of a man, body and head made of mahogany casing over brass and iron. Water filled what looked like a wooden keg on its back, and brass pipes fitted around from that pack into its belly. From the smell of it, it was powered by wood, not coal. Its four legs were all piston and spring. When it bent, it launched up and bounced from boulder top to boulder top, grappling hold with two retractable clamps at the ends of arms.

  Jeb watched it bounce back and forth between the rocks, puzzling out how it might be strung so he’d know how to unstring it. It finally landed in front of him with the strangled-siren sound of pistons thunking and pumping.

  Every ticker that had come at him had a way to be unmade, a weakness. There was a pile of twisted, dead matics behind him. He’d figured the jugular of every one of them. Cut through pipes, torn off valves, jammed vents, and ripped appendages and torsos apart. Didn’t matter to him how to take one apart, just so much as he got it done.

  This one, with the springs where legs and joints should be, was the hardest yet. Quick and wicked, it was near enough height to Jeb, but when it landed on its feet, rocks crushed to dust.

  Heavy, then. Like a steam hammer.

  Jeb watched it squat, the cow-sized head swiveling up to pour green light in his face. He didn’t know how many more tickers waited to attack back in the scrub. Maybe two. Maybe two dozen. There was still steam in the night, rising in wisps of clouds like thin lines of campfires, stovepipes, chimneys, rising in a wide half circle in front of him. Were there less tickers now? Were there less glowing green eyes, burning orange furnaces, glints of copper, silver, and steel in the night?

  Hard to tell. Made no never mind. One at a time, by and by, he’d break them down, drink their glim, and leave nothing but metal bones and cold ash to show for it.

  Spring feet clattered, like a chain somewhere inside it was pulling gears, winding tighter, tighter.

  Jeb shifted his grip on the ticker arm he kept tight by his side, the length of which tucked between his arm and rib. He’d lost the other matic’s arm he had also used as a weapon. But he still had the hanging rope, and held it by the end, letting the weighted noose dangle from his fingertips.

  He tipped his chin to his chest, set his feet wide, and waited for
the matic to attack.

  The chain rattled louder, then paused, as if the ticker in front of him was holding a breath. The matic leaped.

  Jeb swung the rope. The matic was up so high, it was as if it had wings.

  The rope missed. But the matic did not. It landed against Jeb, long arms wrapped around him, pincers snapping for his neck.

  Jeb roared as the heat from the matic burned through his clothes. His arms were strapped down tight. And the ticker squeezed tighter.

  Jeb worked to think this through. Drawing a thought up through the fog in his head was hard as pulling roots out of parched soil. He had to break the matic’s hold. Had to break it before it burned him up and cut his head off.

  Jeb took a deep breath, then exhaled all a sudden and dropped the weapon out from between his arm and ribs. It was a sliver of room, the smallest space. But the matic’s arms were ratcheted as tight as the workings inside it would allow. Jeb had a thought the matic hadn’t been built for holding a man. It was just built for killing a man.

  That small stretch of space was enough for him to pull his arm down. He twisted. Pulled one arm free as the ticker huffed and mandibles sharp as saw blades snicked and snacked at his face.

  Jeb got cut, more than once, but he didn’t care how much he bled so long as there was freedom at the end of it. With his free hand he grabbed hold of the matic’s arm and wrenched it out of the socket.

  The matic squealed. Steam and heat burst out of the hole in its side. A hole that revealed pipes and gears. The matic rolled its hand, trying to catch at Jeb’s clothes, his flesh, and draw him in close.

  Jeb beat the thing with its own arm, clanking away like a man pounding down a railroad spike. It squealed and squalled, bit and tore.

  Jeb kept beating. Nothing but anger driving his arm that fell again and again like a pile driver. Nothing but anger driving him to keep going, keep killing, keep living so he could find his Mae. So he could kill LeFel.

  Didn’t matter how much the matic tore into him. Didn’t matter the burns, didn’t matter the chunk of ear lying on the ground, the three fingers he was now missing. Anger mattered. And anger got the job done.

  It took a while, maybe a full five or ten minutes, before Jeb realized the matic had stopped moving. By and by he came to realize he’d been pounding away on the ticker, pulverizing it into a shredded pile of metal and wood. Water dribbled out over the mess of it, water dark with ash and oil.

  All of it going cold.

  Jeb raised the arm one last time, but the ticker was undone, unstrung. He straightened and felt the ground beneath his feet sway. He was tired. Sore tired. But there were more tickers in the shadows waiting to crush his bones.

  He looked up, through the water and blood and bits of flesh that hung wrong-ways on his face. He looked up to see how many enemies he had left to kill.

  The shadows were quiet. Silent. The wind was quiet. He didn’t see any smoke rising. He didn’t see any white plumes in the night, no glow of eye, no glitter of iron.

  But he did not drop his weapons. Did not drop the rope that he still clutched in one hand.

  The dragonfly wings in his chest beat hard, scraping against the silver bars of its cage.

  And then the shadows were pierced by two red eyes, each as big around as Jeb’s head. Jeb held very still, waiting for this new death.

  The eyes disappeared, opened again, closer this time, disappeared again.

  Dying made it hard on his reasoning faculties. But Jeb finally caught on to it. They weren’t eyes of one beast coming to get him. Moonlight scuffed over the iron hulls of two huge round balls, each the size of a horse, but twice as wide. They dragged thick links of chains behind them.

  And just as Jeb got his arms up to hit them, fight them, destroy them, the chains whipped out and chomped shackles down round his wrists, metal cuffs with teeth that bit straight through his bones. The matic balls whipped past him, yanking to one side of the boulder at his back, near enough to try to rip his arms clean out of their sockets. Jeb dug in his heels and yelled, leaning forward with all his weight, with all his anger, on one bad leg and a broken ankle. The matics rolled to a stop behind him, knocking together like uncoupled railcars hitting head-on.

  Jeb held fast, stretched so far forward he was near flat above the ground, as he strained to keep his arms in his sockets.

  The matics whirred, clanked. Two heavy hisses of steam dampened the air. They weren’t pulling nearly as hard, and Jeb pushed his feet until he was standing straight again. He refused to step back toward them, but he did look over his shoulder.

  The tickers had opened up at the bottom, and pushed out sets of wheels that were wrapped in a continuous track linked together and looped around like a belt.

  Jeb pulled on the shackles, trying to break the chain between him and the matics. He was uncommonly strong. But the chains held fast.

  A clank and puff of steam, and the tracks were rolling. Backward.

  Jeb’s feet dug in tight, then slipped. He leaned against the pull, but the tickers rolled slowly, inexorably around the boulder he had kept at his back, and backward still. Dragging him, inch by inch, to his death.

  There was a cliff just a short ways back. And that was where the tickers were aiming.

  Jeb pushed harder, the dragonfly wings in his chest buzzing at the strain. He lifted one foot, paused to keep his balance as ground gave way beneath his other foot, then took a single step forward. His left arm slipped its socket and he yelled again.

  The matics strained against him, like to take his arm off. But Jeb lifted his other foot, and took another step. The matics didn’t stop. They dragged him backward, tracks pulling harder, faster than he could outwalk them. Then a sharp tug yanked on his arms and he couldn’t hear the tickers grinding dirt no more.

  For good reason. Jeb Lindson felt the ground give way as he was pulled by the tickers over the cliff’s edge, and down to his death.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Cedar Hunt paused on the leeward side of the ridge. The wind stirred, an unnatural gust in the otherwise still night. He crouched low, offering no silhouette against the darkness, his ears flat against his skull. He had lost control of the beast and left at least one cow dead before he had regained his hold over his need to kill. Now he followed the scent of the Strange and the boy. It had led him beyond town to this forest in a gully near the witch’s house.

  Something Strange pushed the wind, pulled the wind. Something unnatural rode the night.

  He sorted the scents. Oil, death. Something more. Blood, flesh gone to rot, and the hot, burning stink of green wood scorched by fire.

  And the boy. Somewhere in those scents was the boy. The boy’s blood.

  Cedar’s heart beat faster. That was what he had gone out into the night for. He tightened his hold on the beast, even as the blood hunger rose up his throat.

  He had found the boy. And now he would save him.

  Cedar ran, taking the quiet ways, the hidden ways, the ways of predator and prey. It didn’t take long for the wild rising wind to bring him more scents. Mr. Shunt, the rail man’s creature, was out in this night.

  And Wil.

  Cedar stopped, pulling his head back and up. The hunger surged, blinding his senses with the painful need for blood—Strange blood.

  No. He pushed against the beast, pushed against the hunger, and inhaled the scents again. Could he believe, could he trust, what his nose told him was true? He sniffed the wind, catching the telltale scent of his brother, the texture of the living Wil.

  Wil, who had always been laughing.

  Wil, who had always been trusting.

  Wil, who had died at the beast’s fang and claw, his fang and claw.

  Cedar stuck his nose as high in the air as he could. Too many scents in that wind. Too many glints and hints of creatures, both living and dead. Wil. The bit of the world, the scent, that was uniquely Wil was there; he was certain of it. And it was not an old trail.

  Wil was near the scen
t of the boy’s blood. They might be somewhere near each other. Not that it would have mattered. Cedar ran. Not for the boy he had promised to save. Not for the Holder he had promised to hunt. Not for the Strange the gods had cursed him to kill.

  Cedar ran to find the brother who had been dead all these long years.

  He was wild with that thought, that fear, that hope. Wil. Alive. Wil. Here. Wil. In this land, on this soil. Wil.

  Instinct whispered trap and caution and death, but Cedar was getting better at silencing the voice, smothering it. He would find Wil, find this scent of him and follow it into the fires of hell if need be. He would find his brother.

  Brush rushed past, limbs whipped and lashed, the sharp fear of prey, large and small, lifted on the wind, carried by pounding heart, hoof, and paw, as Cedar ran through field, hill, and valley, even his great speed too slow for his racing thoughts.

  And then the wind shifted, bringing with it the heavy stink of the Strange. Of old blood and dark metals. Of broken things strung with pain.

  Of Mae Lindson. The witch. The beautiful golden-haired widow who stirred his heart in ways he could not admit even to himself. Her scents, her terror, and, more than that, her pain thick on the air, stronger than the boy’s scent, stronger than the scent of his brother.

  Cedar slowed, instinct finally winning over desperation. He’d go carefully into this place of death, tread softly, and kill swiftly.

  Kill, the beast echoed.

  The widow Lindson’s house was near enough he could smell the fire from her hearth and the sweet spice from her herb garden. He peered through the night. Should he cross the field to her house?

  No, the scent of Mae, of the boy, of his brother, came from the stand of trees.

  Cedar slipped beneath the sheltering boughs, immersing in the deeper darkness.

  Ahead, he heard a mule bray and a woman scream. Ahead, he heard the growl of a wolf. A male—his brother.

  Wil.