Vacant Graves

by Christopher Beats

  On a more mundane level, I studied my reflection in the polished brass belly of the furnace. Luckily, most of the damage was superficial. My shoulder ached something fierce, but I could tell he hadn’t broken anything because I could move my arm. As for my face, well, I might not get first place in a beauty contest, but my jaw worked and I could see okay. My nose might’ve been broken, but that would be nothing new. If I got a nickel every time some scrag broke my nose, I could’ve bought Moira a house in the Hamptons.

  “So where to next?” Phoebe sounded like we were at Coney Island instead of a lunatic-savant’s laboratory.

  I produced the key to the vault-door and handed her several cartridges. She reloaded the pistol while I stuck a kerchief under my nostrils and tried to ignore the pain. After a dab, I had most of the blood off my chin and mouth, though my mustache was still hopelessly sticky.

  “We’ll call on the miners, I suppose. I think we can report with confidence what happened to ol’ Paddy.” One job finished anyway.

  We started cautiously into the boiler room. I didn’t expect trouble from Lichfield—not immediately, anyway. He was paying good money for Mr. Harriman to do his violence for him. I expected the Hounds to be after us, but not right away. The Magnate would have to find them and tell them first.

  By then I hoped to be in hiding.

  When we came out of the fake mansion, we heard gunshots echo off the ridge line. We could see movement down in Liuttsburg. There appeared to be some event at the factory.

  “What do you think is going on?”

  “Not our problem.” I motioned her toward Liuttsville.

  We gave the hospital a wide berth and cut through a small copse of trees. The burned-out husk of a farmhouse stood in their center, a reminder that these valleys and slopes had once produced rye for whiskey instead of coal for factories.

  Phoebe stopped and shook her head. “Looks like the house I grew up in.”

  I urged her to keep moving.

  “That old man,” Phoebe said. “The one that spat when he talked about Sherman. Was he saying that Sherman—a Union general—did this, and not Lee?”

  We came out of the trees so that Liuttsville unfolded before us, colored red by the fire.

  “Ayep. Let’s keep moving.”

  “That doesn’t sound right. Why would Sherman burn Yankee farms?

  I sighed. “Look—it’s complicated.”

  “You got something else you want to talk about?”

  I dabbed my nose and was gratified to discover that no fresh blood came off on the kerchief. “Gettysburg was bad.”

  “Everyone knows that.”

  I ignored her, pausing to catch my breath. I still felt energetic, despite the pummeling I’d received, but I also felt a little dizzy, as if my brain hadn’t gotten enough oxygen. I wondered what effect Victor’s throttling had had on the elixir flowing through my veins.

  Phoebe was staring at me expectantly as I gathered my thoughts.

  “Johnny Reb and the limeys tore us apart. We knew they were coming, so we dug in. The idea was to keep them busy till Sherman got there with reinforcements. He’d been in command of the troops in Kentucky.” I shook my head. “With the allies cracking open Pennsylvania like an egg, Kentucky didn’t seem very important, so his forces were summoned east.”

  “But Sherman was too late.”

  “Yeah. We kept the bastards busy for days with our ditches and our guns, but the limeys...” I scowled. “The limeys had ways to break a trench. So they broke us—showing off their fancy machines in the process—and we ran. Sherman wouldn’t give up, though. He came to fight, not to run.

  “While the Brits used us for target practice, Sherman wheeled his army around and tore up rail lines, poisoned wells and burned or stole every ear of corn between here and Pittsburgh.”

  “But why?”

  “To gremlin their advance. Without a rail, you gotta haul everything on your back or in carts. Without corn, you gotta bring in your grits by mule.”

  “Did it work?”

  “Did they take Philly? Did they take the coal mines?”

  “No,” she said confidently. “They didn’t. They met us at Halifax before it came to that.”

  “Scorched earth, they call it. You mess everything up so bad that the enemy can’t use it. Too bad it was summer when they came. It would’ve worked better in the winter. Pennsylvania in winter can be as brutal as Russia.” I grinned. “It woulda tasted good—seeing Johnny Reb lose his toes to frostbite.”

  She gave me a doubtful expression, as if dismemberment wasn’t all that funny. Clearly she’d never spent any time getting shot at by those bastards.

  “So Sherman’s a hero?”

  “To some. But you gotta remember—we lost, and that stings. Some folks say, what good is scorched earth? When the end came, we had to clean up the damage from the British and Sherman. Lotta folks didn’t see the point.”

  “But Sherman gave us a bargaining chip, right? He made the war harder on them.”

  I nodded, trying not to look impressed. She had a better grasp of causation than I’d expect in a woman, especially one as young as her.

  “I say he’s a hero then.”

  “That’s fine, but don’t say it too loud. If it was your house he burned, you might not think that. Plenty of these factory workers and miners had their own farms before the war. Now those farms are ash and they gotta wander from job to job, buying food from the company store with company script, slaves in all but name.”

  “But that ain’t Sherman’s fault—it’s Liutt’s. Or Lichfield’s. Whatever he calls himself.”

  “Oh, they figure Sherman and the Magnates can share. No shortage of blame when you lose a war like that.”

  Phoebe lapsed into thoughtful silence. “But why tie them around trees?” she asked.

  I laughed. “If you bend a rail in two, it’s easy to fix. I think you just have to heat it up and bend it back. If you wrap it around a tree like a bowtie, however...”

  “It’s ruined forever.”

  “Yeah.”

  We could see the road now. I trudged across a foul stream, oily waters rolling over my ankles, and grabbed Phoebe’s waist to hoist her over. She winced at my touch.

  “You okay?”

  “I think that monster broke some ribs.”

  Her breath was shallow and pained as we made our way up onto the path. After a few steps, her breathing came more naturally. I watched her sideways. I tried not to think about the fact there wasn’t a doctor around we could trust.

  Any worries about Phoebe’s health vanished when I looked back at the factory town.

  A long red snake slithered through Liuttsburg into the valley.

  “Oh no,” I whispered.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “What?”

  I pointed.

  She turned. Her eyes widened as she realized where the fire was going. “It hasn’t cleared the town yet—maybe the factory workers will put it out before it gets here.”

  “The factory workers have a different agenda.” They had a strike to worry about and murderous hardheads in rolling steam forts. I’d be surprised if the factory folks noticed the fire at all. Hell, they might’ve started it. I wasn’t going to tell Phoebe that, though.

  We turned and ran for Liuttsville, screaming.

  By the time I reached the first shack, several miners were there, fresh off their shifts. The whites of their terrifi
ed eyes were visible in their blackened faces.

  There was no need to explain the situation. A hue-and-cry rumbled across the camp. Within seconds, the muddy lanes were abuzz with half-dressed workers and wives and children. Somehow, without foremen or supervisors, the mining folk organized themselves into brigades.

  One group headed down slope to throw up a hasty dike. In this case, the dike would serve as a firebreak rather than a dam. Meanwhile, a second group charged up slope to the mine, presumably to choke the creek at the source. A third contingent—mostly womenfolk and children—started filling every possible container. This was for the horrifying but genuine possibility that the fire might escape the stream and light the camp. Every bucket in the valley was carried to their well. They dragged out bathtubs and horse troughs, too. I even saw pots and pans getting carried by sleepy-eyed toddlers.

  I was a city boy, to be sure, but I was also a former soldier. People might think that a soldier’s primary weapon is his rifle, but that ain’t true. His shovel is just as important. I didn’t have to explain that to the miners, though. All I had to do is show them I had two empty hands. Someone chucked a digger my way and pointed to the first team. I left my overcoat on a handy tree stump and rolled up my sleeves.

  No one had to explain the stakes. I’d read history. During the Crimean War, things got desperate for the czar. That bearded Cossack was never a very conscientious ruler to begin with. That only got worse during the war. With half his fleet at the bottom of the Black Sea and the British using Sebastopol for artillery practice, worker safety was not a high priority. No surprise then that one of his coal mines caught fire.

  The Crimean War was twenty years ago. Two decades had gone by and those hellish mines were still burning, burning like somebody trapped the goddamn sun underground, and there was no end in sight.

  In that case, they had changed the maps. There were parts of the Russian Empire that a man just didn’t go, not unless he wanted to choke and die. They say that a black pall settled over the place thicker than London fog.

  Now I saw the same thing about to happen to Pennsylvania. Only this time, instead of third-rate Russian bituminous, the fuel would be high-grade anthracite.

  I realized somewhat belatedly that Phoebe was gone. I glanced around and hoped vaguely that she was carrying buckets with the women.

  The fire-snake crept closer. It cleared Liuttsburg and began the long climb through the empty black slope between towns. Under other circumstances, it would have been beautiful, an impossibly bright scarlet cutting smoothly through the dark valley, like an artist putting a brush to fresh canvas.

  We viciously attacked the banks of the creek as if the dirt were an enemy, though in this case, it was an ally. I didn’t know much about dike-building—I suspected they didn’t either—so I just followed their lead.

  It wasn’t long before sweat was rolling down my neck and dampening my collar, despite the fact it was so cold our breath puffed visibly from our throats like a hundred small steam engines. I shrugged off my waistcoat and dug harder.

  The fire crept closer.

  The fumes hit us before the flames did. They were awful to smell, like the river’s burnt reek only stronger—this fire was drinking the runoff from the mines, after all. A few minutes after that choking smell hit us like a sucker-punch, the back of my throat went dry and started burning. Before long, my eyes teared up. A different sort of dike formed inside my nose.

  I coughed and sputtered but kept digging.

  A muddy pond was forming to one side of our makeshift dam. A frothy trickle still managed to ooze through. I was uncertain if it was enough to carry the fire. The miners kept working, so apparently they thought it was.

  I didn’t see any reason to argue.

  We could see lanterns bobbing above us near the mines, but the water coming down the hill was just as strong as when we started. I found myself wondering if the fire would shut the mines. I doubted it. Liutt/Lichfield probably got happy when he saw dead miners—it was more meat to experiment on.

  Maybe I’m just jaded.

  Even the management came down to help. Some wore nightclothes. Others had on their stiff white collars. Officially, the mine was still in operation. In the twisted logic of the Magnates, it made sense—why shut the mine down when there were several brigades of off-duty workers fighting the fire for free? It wasn’t as if they were punching their time cards en route to the conflagration. I doubted management would comp them just because they were saving Liutt’s property. Magnates didn’t get rich by playing fair.

  My thoughts were interrupted when the sky started spinning. I turned to ask the man beside me if his sky were spinning, but nothing came out. I didn’t have the breath to form words.

  Before I knew it, the earth below was rushing up to meet me.

  Fortunately for me, a collapsed man is old hat to miners. Miners are as skilled with a makeshift stretcher as the most battle-hardened soldier. By the time my eyes fluttered open, I was swaying hammocklike between the capable hands of six grimy kobolds.

  I tried to draw breath but couldn’t. Panic should have set in, like when you’re swimming and you can’t get to the surface fast enough. Only it didn’t. A strange sort of calm took hold of me as I jostled along.

  I thought of my friends who’d died at Gettysburg. If my lungs killed me, I would join them, another casualty of Southern greed and ambition. The sentiment pleased me somehow, as if my death would have meaning.

  I must’ve been delirious. Honor and glory are fine for eighteen-year-old grunts but they’re downright foolish in a detective. If I’d learned anything since the war, it’s that death never has meaning.

  The afterlife was more painful than I expected. My chest felt like it was full of rusty nails and ground glass. I wondered if the Devil made me bring my lungs down to hell with me. Was he going to make me bring all the unpleasant baggage of my life, like all the debt I had incurred when Moira iced those Pinkertons? It was hell, after all.

  It wouldn’t have surprised me if Ol’ Scratch made me pay it all—plus interest. The bastard probably had reciprocity with the Magnates.

  The familiar lilt of Gaelic cut like a sunbeam through my dark visions.

  A pale face swam into focus. Her eyes were red, maybe from the vapors but more likely from crying. She was tenderly cleaning the soot and dirt from my brow. For one disconcerting moment, I confused her with my mother. That notion vanished as my wits came back.

  Ma was gone. After she found me a bride, she followed Pa to the grave, confident Moira would be a tender wife to me.

  So much for deathbed wishes.

  The woman over me had soft hands, like she was used to caring for wounded men. I glanced around and recognized the shack: this was Paddy O’Neal’s, which meant this was Paddy O’Neal’s widow. Small wonder she had a gentle touch. She’d probably tended enough sick children and injured miners to fill a tenement. It also explained why she’d been crying—she’d buried at least half those people, including a husband.

  “Phoebe,” I croaked, remembering the girl.

  Mrs. O’Neal leaned so close my mustache brushed her ear. “What?”

  “Phoebe. She might be helping...with the buckets. We gotta find her—bad men are after us. Very bad men.”

  I didn’t need to explain any further. She nodded beneath her black shawl and ordered one of her brood to run and find my prodigal chit. The older children were all gone, but she still had her youngest cubs to act as me
ssengers.

  The big river fire painted the sky. There was no way to tell if the creek fire had stopped. I tried to ask Mrs. O’Neal but she busied herself with something on the other side of the room. The small space between us was more than my voice could cover, so I lay helpless and gasping instead.

  “How is he?”

  The voice was deep, with a familiar resonance. The voice of a leader.

  For a moment, I thought it was MacCallard standing over me, his face covered in soot.

  “What’re you doing here, MacCallard?”

  “Heard you helped my boys out, Mr. Schist.” The voice sounded like MacCallard’s, but the cadence was different.

  “Mack?” I suddenly realized that underneath all that soot was the leader of the Negro Miner’s Benevolent Association.

  “Hope you aren’t charging us your hourly rate just to dig.” The big man laughed.

  I coughed and tried to talk. He leaned closer to hear my response.

  “I know where Paddy’s body went,” I croaked. “Liutt’s cutting ’em up for science.”

  “What?” He lifted me partway off the bed so he could look me in the eye. “What did you just say?”

  Mrs. O’Neal glanced over at us with alarm.

  “Dr. Lichfield—Liutt—they’re the same guy. It’s all a ruse.”

  The miner laid me back down and stood. He turned to Mrs. O’Neal and asked her to take the children outside for a moment. She hesitated, then did as asked.

  He knelt by the bedside and studied my face.

  I sucked in a deep breath and sat up. The world spun wildly. “They’re the same man. Lichfield or Liutt. The man’s a Technocrat, a savant. He’s been taking the bodies so he can experiment on them.”

  Mack turned away and muttered quietly to himself. After a moment he snapped out of his reverie with a shake of his head. “That doctor always felt...off to me.”

  “I can’t say for sure, but I’m guessing he inherited his fortune. Most Magnates worship greenbacks, not science, so I doubt he came by this money through business. The carriage company is probably just a front for his anatomical research.”