Vacant Graves

by Christopher Beats

  Stanny kept coming, razors flashing like gold in the firelight. He didn’t seem to care that his driver was about to run us down. His attacks came at me sideways, awkward to avoid. He slashed my tattered coat sleeve into ribbons. Trickles of blood oozed down my elbow. I needed space. A man with a knife can kill a gunman, provided the gunman never has space or a clear shot.

  Stanislaus knew it, too. He didn’t seem to walk at me so much as ooze like a sidewinder. It was impossible to tell where he’d be the next time I fired. As if that wasn’t bad enough, I couldn’t tell where Phoebe was, so a missed shot was more than a lost opportunity—it could mean a dead girl.

  The wind roared across the carriage front. It was almost on me now.

  I pivoted in the mud, keeping Stanny between me and the coach. It worked. The coachman had to swerve suddenly to avoid hitting his boss. I can’t say I blame him. If Stanislaus killed one of his employees for letting us escape, I can’t imagine what he’d do to one who ran him over.

  The steamer slid wildly nearby, spraying me with muck. It hit my eyes and I found myself wishing I’d kept the filterhelm.

  I fired head-level, figuring that even if Phoebe was on her feet, she was too short for it, and wiped the mud from my eyes as I kept backpedaling. I fully expected him to lay me open while I was blinded, but when I looked up, I wasn’t dead.

  Stanislaus had instincts like a tiger. Somehow, he knew that Phoebe was on her feet without even a backward glance. One of his arms flicked the razor behind him in a downward arc.

  She screamed and dropped her rifle. She’d been trying to raise it when he sliced her wrist open like an apple. The Krag-Petersson went barrel-first into the sucking mud. She gripped her wrist with her other hand and stepped out of knife-range. The front of her smock was dark with blood.

  I badly wanted to help her but I saw movement on my right. One of Stanny’s goons was coming at me, waving some kind of club. I turned and raised the .45.

  It was the coachman. It wasn’t a club he was holding, but the riding crop. His eyes widened and he stopped mid-charge, looking for cover.

  There wasn’t any, though. Granted, a riding crop isn’t very deadly, but I put one through his forehead anyway. I couldn’t have him lurking around behind me. He jerked and fell in the mud. His topper sailed down to settle on his chest like it was a funeral.

  That left two bullets for Stanny, but I didn’t get the chance. In the time it took me to snuff his driver, Stanny was on me again, this time from behind. His arms went out and over like he was going to hug me.

  He brought his razors down to slit my throat in a double-attack. I didn’t have time to do anything but parry one with my pistol-barrel and catch the other with my gloved left hand. A glove might normally have stopped a knife—but not Stanny’s. I’d heard rumors that he spent hours every day sharpening them, to the point of fanaticism.

  Evidently those weren’t rumors.

  An arc of pain sliced along my palm. The flesh gave way to the bone and my glove flooded with hot blood.

  I gave him a vicious backward head-butt and felt him stagger away.

  There was no time for hesitation. I bolted away and turned in midstride to shoot him. He was on me, though, his broken nose gushing blood. It ran into the corners of his immaculate white teeth so that he grinned like a devil.

  I aimed for those teeth but the shots went wide, grazing his cheek. I was a fair aim, but it’s not easy to plug a man at full tilt. I vaguely hoped the miss didn’t hit Phoebe. I was out of bullets. I threw the gun at him, hard, and drew my baton with my other hand.

  Stanislaus grunted when the missile hit him but didn’t break stride. He just kept grinning his mad grin, razors out on either side like tiny steel wings.

  An explosion rattled the buildings around us. The last shards of glass still clinging to the panes fell and shattered. Even from this side of town, we could hear the whine of those iron gates crashing to the bricks. Mack hadn’t stopped the union in time. He was probably dead. Or maybe they didn’t believe him because he was a miner and a negro. Either way, Carnegie’s steel might stand up to monsters, but not dynamite.

  The reanimants were loose.

  “We gotta run, Stanny.”

  “Run all you want. I run faster.” He punctuated his statement by slashing the air between us.

  “I mean both of us. Hell just got loose.”

  “Try something else. That trick isn’t going to work.” He must’ve thought I meant the battle.

  “I got other tricks,” I said, suddenly stopping. I flicked my baton, telescoped it, and knocked his left-hand razor back.

  I couldn’t follow up with an attack, however, because his right-hand razor snapped up with the alacrity of a mousetrap. My instincts were honed enough that I dodged it. By the time I recovered, though, the left-hand was back in position, slashing wildly.

  My opening was gone. Though the razors looked relatively small, they seemed freakishly large once he got them moving. I’d handled scrags with a single blade before, but never one with two, and never one who moved so damn fast. All the normal maneuvers seemed to fail.

  I retreated, parrying some and dodging others. My truncheon flew in front of me, almost of its own accord. The attacks came so quickly that my arms responded faster than I could think. A primitive survival instinct—honed by battle—took over my body. I couldn’t tell if it was just training or the blue serum which made me respond so quickly. Steel blades screeched on brass. He tried a feint, cutting high and flicking low, trying to dismember my fingers, but somehow, I sensed the trick and angled my baton to catch the swipe.

  The .22 was tucked in my money belt under layers of winter clothing. I’d be dead before I had my shirt up.

  I had my derringer, but I couldn’t reach it. Every ounce of attention was on defense.

  We maneuvered down the street from the original ambush. I stopped backpedaling and tried to circle. Stanny knew better than to let me. He kept dashing around at my back, forcing me to turn like a big slow dog fighting a terrier.

  A building loomed behind him with an open gaping window. Gritting my teeth, I caught one razor with my baton and body-checked him. He was all offense and probably didn’t think I was capable of attack, so he didn’t see it coming.

  I didn’t catch both razors, though. The second came down at my face. I pushed Stanny up and into the window. His legs went out from under him and he fell back onto the glass-covered interior.

  The blade caught my cheek and went up into my ear. I ignored the cut, dropped my truncheon, and calmly drew the derringer.

  Before the scrag could get back on his feet, I leaned into the window and put both shots in his chest.

  He grunted and rolled over. Blood oozed over the glass around him.

  “Say ‘hello’ to the doctor for me,” I said. He was probably the only human alive who Lichfield’s process would improve.

  I picked up the baton and turned back to Phoebe.

  She struggled to remain standing. Even at this distance, I could see she was covered in blood. I started running. Somehow, she mustered enough energy to scream.

  “Down!” she cried, raising the rifle.

  I fell flat on my face without question. Glass shards bit into my cheeks.

  The rifle boomed. She must’ve been clearing the barrel while we fought.

  When I looked up, Stanislaus was lying halfway out a doorway. He was bleeding from the derringer hits but they hadn’t killed him. The crazy
bastard had summoned enough energy to stagger quietly out the door for one last try at my back. The rifle hadn’t killed him, either—he was staring at me and whispering something, angry no doubt that his body wouldn’t respond to his infernal will.

  He wasn’t getting up again, not with that rifle cartridge in him, but then I’d thought the same thing about the derringer bullets. I searched for the bogus Colt, keeping an eye on him, found it and reloaded.

  “Confessing your sins?”

  He shook his head and smiled, showing me his middle finger.

  It was exactly how I expected a man like that to die.

  I put two bullets in his head, which made five in all. That seemed to be the magic number, because he stopped moving after that.

  It was a mercy, killing him like that, more than he ever gave his girls. Or his scrags, for that matter. He deserved to bleed out slowly. I couldn’t risk his survival, though, no matter how long the odds.

  When I looked back to Phoebe, she collapsed again. I dashed up the street. She was sprawled beside the still-smoking Krag-Petersson. Her skin was ash-gray, though not from soot.

  I examined her wounds as best I could in the bad light. The cut on her neck wasn’t very deep. There was a lot of blood, but it seemed superficial. Contra-intuitively, it was the cut on her wrist that worried me. The damn thing wouldn’t stop bleeding. I wrapped a kerchief around it and applied pressure. The rag was sodden with blood faster than I could spit.

  “Damn it.”

  Phoebe’s eyes fluttered open. “Know a good doctor?”

  I bit my lip.

  “Don’t let him—don’t let him get me, Mr. Schist. Throw me in the river if you have to.”

  I swallowed and looked around. There wasn’t a soul in sight. I considered going to the unionists, but decided against it. MacCallard had bought guns, not medics. There was no help there.

  There was only one place to take her, but neither of us wanted to go. What was more, at the rate she was bleeding, I could never get her there in time. Not carrying her, anyway.

  Then I saw Stanny’s carriage.

  I tied the tourniquet as best I could and hoisted Phoebe over my shoulder, using the rifle like a cane. I put Phoebe onto the black cushions inside and jumped into the driver’s seat up top.

  I hoped she didn’t slip off while I couldn’t see her. It would’ve been a damn shame if she died alone in Stanny’s carriage after all we’d been through.

  With the rifle next to me, I examined the controls. I’d never driven a steam carriage before—or, for that matter, the kind with horses—but I figured it wouldn’t be hard. It had a compass and a pressure gauge to my left and a bevy of levers to my right. From what I’d seen of steam-hansoms, I figured that one lever must be a brake, another a directional stick, and another a release for the valve. I wasn’t sure what the others did.

  They felt differently when I pulled on them. Two did nothing. The third one produced a hiss behind me and I could feel pistons vibrating below. We started to move.

  The directional stick was tricky. I went thirty yards before I discovered that I should point the opposite direction of where I wanted to go, like the rudder on a boat. I pointed one way and it went another, smashing us into a storefront. I realized then what the fourth lever must do—it changed the gears so that the vehicle could run in reverse.

  I opened up the valve but the wheels didn’t move, as though they were stuck on something. Holding my breath, I kept easing open the valve until I gave it all the steam there was. The coach rocketed backward so fast I nearly fell off. We didn’t stop until we were planted rear-first into a shop on the opposite side of the street.

  “Just getting the hang of it,” I told myself. This was harder than I thought. Verhalen had always extolled the virtues of machinery, claiming that a good machine was far less temperamental than a horse. I would’ve given anything right now for a couple of nags, no matter how temperamental.

  I careened us back into the street. My heart jumped as we nearly overturned, but I somehow managed to keep us upright and moving. At first, I kept the velocity low, until I got a feel for the steering. When I thought of all the blood Phoebe lost, I threw open the valve and let fly.

  The sagging tenements shot by in a blur. The wind howled in my ears, knocking my bowler off. I caught it, planted it hard on my head, and looked up again. My eyes burned and I wished I’d stolen the goggles off the dead coachman. I suddenly understood why all coachmen wore balaclavas and goggles.

  The hospital loomed over the town, silent and forgotten. Neither side was in a hurry to bring their wounded here, not with the issue undecided. MacCallard had probably forbidden the unionists to go there anyway, given what he knew about Liutt stealing bodies.

  I wondered then if the union tried to catch the doctor. They probably had, but it seemed unlikely they had succeeded. If MacCallard had snatched Liutt, the battle would never have started. Lichfield was in hiding now for sure. The union probably wouldn’t hassle the nurses or staff, so there was a fair chance that the equipment I needed would be there, plus the hands to use it.

  The hill was a problem. At first, I didn’t give it enough steam and we actually started rolling backward. I wasn’t sure what to do. The change in angle rattled the coal and ashes around, choking the fire. The brass gauge said we were losing steam.

  We were backsliding when it occurred to me to throw the brake on. The wheels locked and I crawled to the engine. I didn’t see a shovel so I grabbed a handful of hot ash with my gloved hand and pulled it clear. I threw fistful after fistful into the mud until all that was left were a few orange coals.

  I was about to grab some fresh anthracite when I noticed my glove was on fire. I shook it off, blew on my angry red fingers and started shoveling coal into the firebox bare-handed.

  The burns were worth it. Seconds later, the needle on the gauge went hot. I gave her all the steam she wanted. The pistons pumped like a horny buck and we rocketed upward. I didn’t bother to follow the path, blasting through shrubbery and tearing up the hospital’s lawn.

  I yanked the brake hard when we came up to the front doors. The wheels locked up and suddenly we were sliding through the mud toward the door. I wanted to scream a warning but my voice caught in my throat. Once we hit the brick stairs, though, the brakes started to find a purchase. The coach jumped up the steps and ground to a halt just outside the front doors.

  Luckily, no one had been standing there, or I would’ve run them over.

  I jumped down, threw open the door and found Phoebe still alive, though barely.

  “That was some trip,” she whispered.

  “Better than a Darke County hayride?”

  Her eyes fluttered shut and I slapped her. She didn’t move. I carried her inside in a fireman’s lift and yelled for a nurse.

  “She’s lost a lot of blood,” I cried when one came. “She needs CCS.”

  The nurse took one look at her and waved me into the critical wing. By the time we reached it, an orderly had gotten Lichfield’s machine. He put a green vial into the top as we laid Phoebe down on the bed beside it.

  “This is bad,” the nurse said, shaking her head. “If only the doctor were here...”

  “It’s better he ain’t here,” I said grimly. “You’ll do fine.”

  “We can’t—this needs a doctor’s touch.”

  “The hell it does,” I said. “I’ve seen guys on the battlefield sew up worse. You don’t need a damn diploma to fix a wound lik
e that. You need a steady hand.”

  The nurse tightened her lips and said nothing.

  “I’ll do it,” an orderly said. “I’ll sew her up.”

  I glanced at him. We were about the same age, but that wasn’t how I knew he’d been in the war. I knew because of his eyes. He had the thousand-yard stare as soon as I mentioned the war.

  The orderly slowly nodded. “I’ve done it before.”

  The nurses exchanged a look of disapproval but said nothing.

  “We need to re-sanguinate now,” I reminded them. “I’ll volunteer for that.”

  A nurse shook her head and waved at the blood on me. “How much of that is yours?”

  “You can’t spare any right now,” another added.

  “Are you going to volunteer?” I asked them hard.

  They were silence. None of them would look me in the face. Can’t say I blame them, after the job Stanny did there.

  “Hook up the machine,” I ordered, rolling up my sleeve.

  They did as they were asked. I looked at the machine and wondered if it would kill me. I’d lost a lot of blood the past few days. I’d given some to Koberman. Stanny took even more out of my hand and face.

  The nurse renewed her objection to my blood-charity, but I ignored her. The tube went into my wrist and the machine started pumping. The noise was startlingly similar to the throbbing of the reanimant’s hearts. Phoebe’s eyes shot open, full of terror, but I grabbed her hand.

  “It isn’t them,” I whispered. “You’re safe.”

  Half of that was true anyway.

  I couldn’t be sure if she understood. She gripped my hand hard and closed her eyes. Her grip was strong—strong as she was. I began to think she wasn’t going to die. Before long, my eyes were drooping as well.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  When I opened my eyes, Dr. Lichfield was standing over me. My first instinct was to attack, but I swallowed it down.