I dropped the rifle and ran around to the door, pushing my truncheon up my right sleeve and held the pistol by its midsection as if I were surrendering.
With a breath and a prayer, I knocked.
The voices inside went silent.
The door opened. It was a hardhead. “What the fuck?” he asked.
“Here to surrender,” I said, stepping into the blissful warmth of the room. “You guys win.”
“Mr. Schist!” Phoebe squeaked.
“Hi Phoebe,” I said, smiling at her. “The jig is up.”
She shook her head in horror. “No, get out...”
“You want to surrender?” one of the detectives asked in disbelief. “To Stanny Slash?”
The men in toppers grinned at their fortune.
“Oh, you know,” I explained. “I thought I would talk things over with him. He’s a reasonable enough fellow, isn’t he?”
“He’s a regular Solomon,” one of the scrags said, grinning.
“Regular Solomon,” a tall goon chortled.
The Harrimen stared at me as if I were a lunatic.
“So here I am, gonna surrender.” I stepped forward and slowly put the gun on the table. “I thought it would be best if I were to explain things to him. You know, eye to eye.” I stared at Phoebe when I said this.
Phoebe stared back, uncomprehending.
“It’s easier to talk sense to a man when you look him in the eye.”
“Whatever, friend,” a goon said. “Since you surrendered, maybe Stanny will cut your balls off after you’re dead instead of before.”
“Cut your balls off,” the tall one repeated stupidly.
The others laughed.
I winked at Phoebe and slid the gun to her.
It ground over the wood loudly. Every man in the room watched it slide down the table as if in a daze. It came to a stop in front of Phoebe. Her arms were at her side.
I jerked my arm so the truncheon slid into my palm, telescoped it, and broke the tall scrag’s nose before he even knew what hit him.
The others jumped into action, forgetting the gun. Their attention was on me—the madman with a brass baton.
I danced around so the bleeding thug made a human shield.
“Why aren’t you laughing now, motherfucker?” I snarled, hammering his face into mush. The doctor’s serum gave me such speed that the truncheon was a brass blur.
He stumbled back, weeping, and the others circled me.
Since I hadn’t shot anyone and we were in a small room, nobody drew their gun. The Harrimen had their own batons, after all, and the thugs had knives. One could hardly expect Stanny’s boys to use firearms.
Before anyone could exact revenge, though, the pistol roared from the other side of the table. The cranium of a scrag exploded into a shower of blood and skull-bits.
The other five turned as a man, mouths agape, as Phoebe took aim.
Next was the man in the filterhelm. The glass of his eyepiece shattered and he went down without a word.
Men started shouting and rushing. Before they could reach Phoebe, I was on them from behind, bashing them with my sleek brass club.
My ears started ringing. The gunshots came so loud and so fast that I couldn’t differentiate them anymore. She emptied all six shots in a blink.
When the smoke cleared, there were six dead men—and I wasn’t one of ‘em. Phoebe stood across the table with her smoking pistol, face white as a sheet.
Before I could so much as compliment her, she dashed across the room and jumped. She wrapped her small arms around my neck and pressed herself hard onto me. The gun was hot against my neck.
“Mr. Schist!” she squeaked.
It occurred to me that the poor girl had just gunned down half a dozen men. Some sort of consolation was in order. I patted her back awkwardly and tried to push her off.
“By the Maker,” she whispered into my ear. “You were right, Mr. Schist. I can’t take care of myself.”
I gingerly extricated myself and looked at the massacre. “None of us can, Phoebe.”
Chapter Nineteen
I stepped over one of the bodies and picked up a mug of coffee. It was still warm.
Phoebe stared in fresh horror as I scanned the outside, drinking my purloined coffee.
The night was quiet. It had been less than fifteen minutes since I’d iced the sharpshooters. The watchtowers were opposite the front gate where all the action was, so it was possible the missing sentries wouldn’t be noticed until check-in. The Harrimen were also, in my experience, rather sloppy, so a missed check-in might not start a general alarm. Not immediately, anyway.
“None of these are Mr. Stanislaus, are they?”
I shook my head and turned back to examine the room. “A man like Stanislaus doesn’t fetch prisoners.”
A bandolier of rifle cartridges hung over the back of a chair. I slung it over my shoulder and went back to the table, still sipping my beverage.
“How can you drink that right now?”
“It’d be a sin to waste hot coffee on a night like this.”
She shook her head, unable to speak.
I shrugged and pocketed a box of forty-fives for the bogus Colt. Lucky thing Mr. Harriman wasn’t stingy with bullets. There was enough lying around to outfit an army.
I donned a pair of Harriman-issue gloves and looked glumly at a filterhelm. If I were to escort her out, I’d need to wear one.
When I glanced up again, Phoebe was staring at the man she shot in the eye. “He recognized me immediately. As if he knew me.”
The corpse’s helmet had come partly off when he hit the floor. I could make out the curve of his chin. It looked familiar.
“Did you see his face?” I asked.
“No. Do you think it’s—”
“Doesn’t matter who it is,” I said briskly. I turned away from the dead man and finished the coffee in a single hot quaff. My gut burned pleasantly.
I circled the room, chose the shortest corpse of the lot and tore his greatcoat free. I threw it over Phoebe’s shoulders. It swallowed her diminutive frame completely, dragging on the floor behind her.
“I can’t go out like this,” she complained.
“You’ll want it once the shooting starts.”
“It’s heavy.”
“So are bustles. Pretend it’s a new fashion.”
“Not all girls care about fashion, Mr. Schist.”
“You’re right,” I said with a chuckle. “Some like guns.”
She smiled and left the coat on.
I handed her my billycock. “Keep that safe. It’s my favorite hat.”
She gingerly put it on. Between the overlarge coat and the man’s bowler, she looked like a child playing dress-up.
I didn’t laugh, though, because of what I had to do next. I turned back to the filterhelm, took a deep breath, and pulled it over my head. It was dark in there, even with the large glass eye-holes. I had expected my breath to reverberate loudly, but it didn’t. There was wool cushioning on the inside so that it fit snugly in place. This dampened noise, of course. The reduced hearing and limited vision made me nervous.
“Can you see okay?” Phoebe asked, stepping into my vision.
Somehow, she looked distant.
“It doesn’t feel right,” I told her.
She reached past my field of vision and adjusted something.
“Better?”
I tried to nod but discovered I
couldn’t. “Yeah.”
Her nimble fingers went to my chin and tightened several straps. She stepped back and admired her handiwork. “I think that’s right.”
With a shrug, I opened the door and stepped outside. The air was still. The helm was blissfully warm and, for the first time in days, I didn’t smell the river-fire.
Phoebe paused to take a pistol from a dead man.
“Leave it,” I told her. “I got something for you.”
The chit dropped the pistol and stepped closer. I handed her the sharpshooter’s rifle I’d stashed outside.
“A Krag-Petersson repeater!”
“Keenest shot I’ve ever handled,” I said, handing her the ammunition I had requisitioned.
She checked the breech and loaded it to capacity with quick smooth movements.
“This should even the odds a bit,” she said, beaming.
I almost pitied the hardheads now. Phoebe was deadly enough with my peashooter. A rifle would make her like the Angel of Death among the Assyrians.
We made for the gate. Even wearing a coat, there was no mistaking Phoebe for a hardhead, so I carried the rifle loosely on my left shoulder, as if it were mine. She hovered at my elbow, ready to snatch it at the first sign of trouble.
As we approached the iron gates, we could see Stanny’s carriage idling there. The coachman with the topper waited at its flank. He was hunched by the boiler for warmth, scratching his ass with that riding crop he carried. The passenger windows reflected black and gray. There was no way to tell if Stanny was in there or not.
The lanky coachman would know Phoebe for sure. Shooting him was out of the question, though. There were two sentry towers above the front gate. Their binocs flashed red in the river-light as they scanned the town. We might be able to handle Stanny if he were there, given our armaments, but there was no way we could handle two sharpshooting teams in an elevated position.
There was also the steam fort to consider. It was positioned across the quadrangle with a contingent of Harrimen orbiting it. I didn’t relish the prospect of crossing the open square with that monster watching us.
“Front door’s out,” I said, turning crisply.
“Is there a back way?” Phoebe asked.
“Dunno.”
“How’d you get in?”
“Over the wall,” I said.
She looked up at the twenty feet of stone and shook her head. “I can’t climb that.”
“You may not have a choice.”
“How?” she asked.
I glanced at her awkwardly. This wouldn’t be easy. Not in a skirt. The dull gray factory uniform had no bustle, but it was still designed under an ethos of modesty. The fabric swept all the way down to the toe of her shoes.
“We’ll have to take your skirt off,” I said with a sigh.
Her eyes widened. “You want me to climb over that thing...in my petticoat?”
“You can’t very well ride me like a mahout,” I snapped. I could carry her if I had to, but I couldn’t jump with her on my back.
“What’s a mahout?”
“Never mind. There’s got to be another exit.”
We crossed the yard under the glass-eyed stare of the rifles. We rounded the factory wing again and started toward the rear of the grounds. The door to the breakroom was an open gash of orange in the gray drear of the yard.
“Did you leave that open?” I asked, feeling a cold knot in my stomach.
She shook her head.
I grabbed her by the hand and ran sideways along the brick wall as fast as my legs could carry me. We stumbled but got up again. The filterhelm gave me tunnel vision.
The whistles started. Signal whistles—the alarm was raised.
“What do we do now?”
I handed her the rifle and put the bandolier over her head. It reminded me queerly of a suffragette’s sash. If more suffragettes wore a sash like that, they’d have the vote already.
Pistol drawn, I led her back toward the sentry post I’d used to get in.
We were almost there when I heard more shouts.
Ahead of us. Followed by more whistles.
“They found the dead men,” I whispered.
“Did you say something? I can’t hear a blessed word you say through that thing.”
I pushed us flat against the sooty wall. “Yeah, well, imagine being inside the damned thing,” I complained loudly. “Are they coming?”
“I don’t think they’ve seen us yet.”
“We can’t go out the way I came. They found the dead men.” I looked around.
“I thought the first alarm was because they found the dead men.”
“No, no. I mean they found the dead men from before. The first few I killed.”
“Before?”
I tried to nod and failed. “Yeah, before.”
“I thought you climbed over the wall.”
I shrugged. “It got complicated.”
“So how many people have you—have we—killed tonight?”
I didn’t answer. It was a high number. Surrender was out.
“So we gotta fight now?” Phoebe asked in a shaky voice.
“Not unless they see us.”
Someone lit a spotlight in one of the towers. It roved the filthy snow like the yellow stare of some malevolent Cyclops.
My heart pounded. Men were shouting in all directions. Clearly, they weren’t as sloppy as I thought. They were quickly and efficiently cutting off all modes of escape. They had a containment plan and, from the alacrity of its deployment, they’d practiced it frequently.
They were used to keeping people in.
“This place really is a prison,” I grunted.
Phoebe didn’t hear me. She was watching the spotlight creep across the snow toward us. After a moment’s thought, she raised the rifle, paused, and fired.
The yellow spotlight lolled drunkenly out of control.
“Over there!” someone shouted.
A whistle blew.
Phoebe ejected the spent casing with a smooth motion and brought the rifle back up to her shoulder. “Think fast, Mr. Schist,” she said, taking aim.
The factory wing behind us was several stories tall, a hundred yards wide and full of noisy machinery. It was the perfect place to hide while I made a plan.
I led Phoebe back to the double doors. They were chained shut. The chains were far too heavy for my brass truncheon or my pistol. The door handles, however, were steel affixed to wood.
I thrust my baton between the wood and handle, then levered hard.
Phoebe was firing. I wasn’t sure if she was killing men or just trying to scare them. Whatever she was doing, though, it bought me time. The steel bent, groaned, and finally came loose in a shower of splinters and nails. The chain and handles fell to the ground in a heap.
I threw open the doors and, grabbing Phoebe by the shoulder, dragged her inside. We slammed them shut and looked around at the quiet factory floor.
“We’re trapped,” she breathed.
“We’re out of the open,” I corrected her. “Maybe we can hide with the workers.”
The workers, meanwhile, trudged past as if we weren’t there. There was no interior light to speak of, so the only illumination was the ruddy glow from the windows, bisected by the bars outside.
“Hi, there,” I called to the nearest worker.
He stopped and turned to face me. He had a peculiar tilt to his head as if he’d survived a horrible
neck injury.
“Things’re ugly out there...” I started to say.
Before I could formulate an explanation, though, a man shouted at us from above. “What are you doing?”
I looked up and saw a hardhead on a catwalk overhead. He had a shotgun in one hand and a long prod in the other. “You’ll let them out!” he cried in a panic.
The worker with the strange head started toward me, his feet dragging the ground as he walked.
The guard raised his shotgun and took aim, but the girl was faster. She swung the rifle up and put one in his chest. His armored greatcoat was useless against the powerful Krag-Petersson. He jerked and fell off the catwalk. The prod he was holding clattered down beside him, followed by his shotgun.
“He was gonna shoot that man,” Phoebe said indignantly. “It’s all right, mister, we stopped him.”
The worker didn’t seem to hear. He just kept slouching toward me.
After a moment, the guard started screaming and tried to get up, but he’d broken something in the fall. His limbs were so crooked they were painful to look at.
“Oh, no,” Phoebe whispered. “He’s still alive...”
“Bodies are more resilient than you’d think.”
The pitiful screams echoed through the building, yet the worker kept coming at us as if he were deaf.
“Do something, Mr. Schist.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“I don’t know...help him!”
“You were the one who shot him,” I pointed out. “Why did you shoot him if you didn’t want him dead?”
“That’s just it—I wanted him dead—not like this.”
“Well, what do you want me to do?”
“Something!” she howled, looking away.
I’ll admit, it was a pathetic sight. The guard kept trying to move, but each motion was causing greater injury.
“Stop moving,” I told him. “You’re hurting yourself.”
That’s when I saw that he was scared. So scared his injuries didn’t matter. He wasn’t afraid of us, though. He was afraid of the workers.
The worker was so intent on me that he almost tripped over the dying hardhead. He looked down, as if noticing him for the first time, and bent over. He took the broken man by the shoulders and dashed his head against the smooth concrete.
Vacant Graves Page 24