by Jim Beard
Cabot scanned the building’s length, then its height, which extended to five stories of near-black brick, dark windows, and a huge, oddly hulking structure that encompassed the majority of its top; he could not divine its use or purpose through the choking fog.
He turned to his comrade. “Munitions. I smell a foundry.”
Valiantine stared at the building without blinking. “I concur.”
Cabot appeared to think for a moment. “Their armament. The cannons. They mean to—good Lord.”
“Yes,” Valiantine nodded, grimacing underneath his moustache, “I follow your reasoning and again agree. They mean to lay waste to something. Again.”
The lieutenant began to walk. Pushing open a rickety gate, he moved through it like an automaton, his eyes never leaving the building before him. Cabot followed.
“The city? Philadelphia?”
“No. I would say not. They’ve just had their plot to kill the President foiled. They will be quite put out. No, they have bigger prey in mind, I’d wager.”
Valiantine strode across the cobblestones and the weeds, heading for a large doorway set into the side of the factory. His steps were unsure, though he did not falter in his headlong movement.
“Washington, then,” Cabot offered soberly. “Damn them, but it has to be the capital.”
The lieutenant stopped and glanced over his shoulder at his partner with deadened eyes.
“Yes.”
“Putting a halt to it won’t be easy,” Cabot said, standing at Valiantine’s side, shoulder to shoulder. “They’ll have numbers on their side, their soldiers, and weapons. They’re desperate, as we’ve said. But they’re no fools.”
The younger agent looked down at his partner’s arm, frowning.
“Valiantine, your hand. It’s trembling.”
“Nonsense.”
“No, in fact, your quirks are worse than before.”
“Quirks?”
Cabot sighed. “Yes, you’re riddled with them. Your... drives, your compulsions; call them what you will, but they’re overtaking you. Perhaps it’s wise if we—”
“No,” Valiantine said. “We move now, while we have them within our grasp.”
He spun on Cabot, his face reddened and angry. “I’m sick to death of the hunt. Sick of chasing these phantoms.” He pointed up at the building. “We go in there now, together, and put an end to it. Or I go in there alone and execute my duty.”
“Of course,” Cabot said quietly, yet firmly, extending a hand. “Together. There is no other way, you blasted idiot.”
“There is another way, you know.”
The two agents spun around to see a figure step out of the fog and toward them: Awanai the bandit.
Though the air around them was murky, Valiantine could discern the distinct muzzle of a Colt pointed in their direction.
“Should never have given you that hooch in Indiana, Michael,” the man said, shaking his head. “Now you think yourself attached to me.”
Valiantine stared coldly at the figure he’d run across through several states, but said nothing.
“Pistols, gentlemen,” Awanai ordered with a minute twitch of his own weapon. “Let’s have them.”
The bandit looked as he had before, but there was a look of unease about him; the lieutenant guessed all was not well in the airship circle.
He and Cabot offered their pistols, but Awanai motioned to drop the guns on the ground. He instructed the agents to slide the weapons toward him with their feet.
“You believe you can keep us both from advancing on you?” Cabot asked.
The bandit’s countenance hardened. “Why don’t we just find out then, boy?” he replied, raising his Colt, cocking it, and pointing it directly at the Treasury agent’s head.
“Why did you kill Andrew Carnavon?” Valiantine asked. “And why are you here, now?”
Without taking his eyes off Cabot, Awanai offered a sly grin on his Oriental face. “Heh. Ol’ Barnaby said you wanted answers, but he’s never big on supplying them.”
“You’re not like the others,” Cabot opined.
“No, no I’m not,” the bandit said, lowering the pistol to his waist, but still covering both men. He smiled. “I’m smarter than them. I brought them here. They wouldn’t be here, on your world, if not for me.”
Valiantine squeezed his eyes shut, wagging his head slightly. “Scarborough said that, too: ‘your world.’” He popped his eyes open again. “What the devil do you mean by that? You told me you were born in Indiana, in Manitou. And what have you done with Mr. Perklee?”
Awanai furrowed his brow. “Hmm, I’d given you two more credit than I needed to. Thought you’d... but no, I can see I was wrong. Ah, well, there’s no harm now in telling you that we’re not from here, if Barnaby took no care in hiding it. And Perklee? Alive and well, yet under lock and key. He’s still got quite a brain underneath all that drunkenness. He’s still important to me.”
“The vapors, the gas,” Cabot said. “From your ‘world,’ I surmise? And a kind of power source?”
The bandit looked upon the younger agent as if seeing him for the first time, or in a new light. He scrutinized Cabot’s face.
“Yes, and from yours, too, but we took care of that. Can’t have you following us into the heavens. The loss of Carnavon knocks you from that path just fine.
“And by the way, I call it ‘vox.’”
“You’re murderers,” Valiantine seethed, doubling his fists. “Cold-blooded killers. The deaths in Detroit alone will see you rot in Hell—”
“You didn’t care much for my beasties, did you, Agent Cabot?” the bandit said, ignoring Valiantine.
At that particular moment, a band struck up a tune, unseen, but distinct in its surreal orchestration.
“Lieutenant Valiantine’s correct, sir,” Cabot said to Awanai. “A berth in Hell awaits you, and I shall see you there.”
The scuffle, when it came, surprised them all.
Looking back on it later, Valiantine insisted it wasn’t that the combatants were unaware of the coming fracas, but that each one had underestimated his opponent.
Cabot lashed out in deliberate fury, not unlike his attack on Superintendent Gallows. The lieutenant saw the shock on Awanai’s face; the man had expected a reaction, but not the ferocity of it.
Valiantine hoped he and his partner would once again act in unspoken, unplanned tandem, but Cabot’s lightning fast assault took him unaware. His guess was the younger man himself would never have expected the strength of his own actions.
The bandit’s pistol discharged. Valiantine saw a spray of red around Cabot, who grunted in pain. He dove to the ground for his own weapon, but Awanai fell backward under Cabot’s fists and his booted foot kicked the pistol across the cobblestones and out of quick reach. The lieutenant could not see Cabot’s firearm in the fog.
Awanai’s vicious curses cut through the air, but quickly changed to howls of pain. Valiantine leapt for the bandit’s legs, hoping to knock him completely to the ground, but the melee was too chaotic for him to gain purchase.
He tumbled back onto his haunches, trying to make sense of the scrapping. Cabot was a demon released from a bottle; Valiantine worried for the young man’s soul.
In the blink of an eye, the Colt appeared in Cabot’s hand. Blood dripped from the side of his face where the bandit’s bullet had torn across it. He pointed the weapon at Awanai. Valiantine bellowed for him to stop.
“For them,” Cabot said, and squeezed the trigger.
The bullet entered the bandit’s left eye and exited just behind his ear. The body spasmed, sprawling onto the cobblestones like the dead weight it now was.
Valiantine looked down at the pooling blood underneath Awanai’s head, the man’s one intact eye staring without life up into the foggy sky.
“So many questions,” the lieutenant whispered to himself.
Glancing away from the corpse, he saw Cabot walking toward the doors of the building.
“The answers lie within, Valiantine. Come on. We have more work to do.”
Valiantine, feeling very, very weary, retrieved his pistol and followed him inside the factory.
On the ground floor, they found furnaces and metalworks. Factory men, engrossed in their tasks, did not notice the two agents. The workers fashioned cannon shells, apparently, though the munitions looked odd, not at all like what Valiantine was used to seeing.
The thought of cannons made him twitch even more. He fought with himself, biting his lip until it bled and beating one fist against his leg, slowly and rhythmically.
Finding a stairwell, they stealthily ascended it. The upper floors of the building were almost empty, save for the strains of music that still wafted about. Valiantine couldn’t place the tune, so focused was he on quelling his compulsion to straighten, to clean, to put things to right.
On what they believed to be the top floor of the factory, the stairwell ended in a large, barren room. Massive wood supports extended from floor to ceiling, but otherwise the area was empty; no furniture, and no people.
Across from the agents, was a normal-sized wooden door, set into a wall that appeared somewhat newer than those around it.
The music seemed to be coming from behind the door.
Cabot opened his mouth to speak. Valiantine raised one hand, stilling him.
“No, don’t tell me what Yankee Bligh had to say about doors. Just open the blasted thing.”
Cabot smiled, but that made him wince from the gunshot wound on his cheek.
“Valiantine, damn you,” he said, placing a hand on his partner’s shoulder, “I wasn’t going to say any such thing.”
“Nonsense,” Valiantine replied, stepping toward the door and gripping his pistol tightly. “You can’t help it; it’s a compulsion.”
Reaching out for the latch, he realized his quirks had quieted; he was in action, moving forward and not looking back.
Behind the door was a wooden staircase. They mounted it and arrived at another door at its top. There, they heard the music very clearly.
Opening the door carefully, albeit not slowly, the two agents looked out into another large room. Covered from floor to ceiling in rich, wood paneling of exquisite craftsmanship, Valiantine was immediately struck by the dichotomy between the chamber and the grimy factory below.
The room was occupied by several people, all of them dressed not unlike those in the Luray tower. In one corner, a musical group consisting of horns, violins, cellos, and a few other assorted instruments sat, playing as the people milled about the space.
Valiantine noticed charts on the walls, as well as maps of the United States and one of Mexico. Nearby sat a large table at which four people pored over a map of what looked to be, from the lieutenant’s vantage point, Washington, D.C. Standing silently at attention along the walls, were men dressed like soldiers, clutching rifles.
The room spoke to him, two words only: nerve center.
In the middle of it all stood Gallows, looking none the worse for wear, save for skin nearly the color of milk. Again, Valiantine drew a comparison to the coins’ loss of color and detail.
Even more eye-opening, the man’s bruises were almost completely healed.
“Well, what was it, Carnavon?” Gallows said, not immediately glancing up from the papers he was in the middle of inspecting. “We have—”
“He’s dead,” said Valiantine.
Gallows looked up and into the faces of the two agents.
“Damn and blast,” he wheezed. “Unbelievable.”
“Yes,” a voice rumbled from off to one side. “But it really shouldn’t come as much surprise to us, these two.”
Barnaby Scarborough shut a door behind him, one through which he had just come. Beside him stood Major Wellington. Both men wore the best poker faces Valiantine had ever seen; if they were startled at all by the agents’ appearance in their midst, they hid it well.
“The worst thing we ever did to ourselves,” Wellington told his fellows, “was to not kill them when we had ample opportunity.”
“No,” Valiantine said, finding his voice. “The worst thing you ever did to yourselves was putting us together in the first place.”
“I can see that now.” Scarborough grunted. “Seize them,” he ordered his soldiers, and the black-clad men left their posts to advance on the two agents.
Not waiting to be approached, Valiantine put a bullet in the head of the nearest of them.
The other soldiers paused, looked back to their commanders. The Trio glanced at each other, then back to the intruders.
Scarborough scowled, his neutral expression cracking. “All right, Lieutenant! All right for the moment. Damn Carnavon and his inability to stay in one place for any sizeable amount of time...”
The Executive Director scowled all the more. After a moment’s reflection, he spoke.
“Ah, well. Gentlemen, to our compatriot.” He bowed his head and raised one hand. The band stopped playing. “Inventor, architect, explorer, visionary, a singular man in all respects. We owe him much, and I shall mourn him.”
It was difficult for Valiantine to credit the demonstration, as surreal and dream-like as it was. He sensed sadness, yes, and resignation in the words, but also a small spike of thrill that Awanai—the Trio referred to him as “Carnavon” as if it were his real name—was no more. Why did it seem like they were moving in slow-motion? Perhaps, he told himself, the gas, the “vox” the bandit referred to, is making them lethargic, somehow. And, as their lack of security indicates, sloppy.
In a flash of insight, he guessed the constant music might exist to stir them, to keep these strange people alert.
“Are you finished?” he asked the Trio, repressing his musing. “Because you’re going to answer our questions now.”
One of the soldiers lifted his rifle. Cabot shot him down in the wink of an eye.
The Trio did not respond. Valiantine continued.
“How many airships are there?”
Silence.
“The coins?”
Scarborough chuckled low in his throat, mockingly. “Altered upon our arrival, as all of our metals were, seemingly. We did not realize it at first.”
“Who is hunting you?”
“Why, our enemies, of course,” the big man replied. “Yours, too, unfortunately for your world.”
“Dammit,” Cabot spat, “what does that mean? Where are you from?”
The Trio shifted, coming together in a single line, shoulder to shoulder, as if one massive figure.
“Elsewhere,” Wellington said, his face deadpan, but his eyes dancing.
“Talk!” Valiantine shouted at the top of his lungs. “God damn you, talk!”
He raised his pistol and felled an approaching soldier, then another and another. Someone screamed, but he kept on shooting. Return fire from somewhere in the room splintered the wood paneling behind him, the bullets tearing past him, ripping at his coat and hair. At last, he thought, I’ve prompted them into some action...
“Up and out!” he heard Scarborough bellow above the din.
The room began to vibrate, the motion coming from deep within its wall. Underneath their feet, the floor danced, or seemed to.
“Vox release!” a voice yelled. Gas issued forth from the walls or ceiling, Valiantine couldn’t tell which. He recognized it instantly as the vapor from the meteor. Items began to float toward the ceiling; he swore he saw boots and bodies lifting up from the floor.
As if to deny him the vision, the people in the room ran away from its center, reaching for doors, disappearing from view. The Trio was already gone.
Cabot shoved Valiantine out the door through which they entered the room. Though sorely desiring nothing more than to get his hands around Scarborough’s throat, the lieutenant saw the sense in flight; he felt the effect of the vapors immediately and knew there was little they could do to fight it.
“They’re destroying the building!” Cabot shouted as they ran. “And us wi
th it!”
They tumbled down the stairs and into the empty fifth floor of the factory. Not pausing in their flight, the two men flew down the stairwell, trying to reach the building’s main doors.
Around them, the entire structure shook and swayed, its bricks and beams vibrating as if made from paper.
They shouted warnings to the men in the foundry, but saw the metalworks were already abandoned. One giant bowl of molten, liquid metal began to tip as they watched, spilling its glowing contents out onto the surrounding floor and work stations, setting everything ablaze.
Valiantine and Cabot tore open the factory’s doors and ran outside, hacking and coughing from the thick air they’d just left.
Loud, echoing booms exploded in their ears. Pieces of wood fell about them, narrowly missing their heads and limbs. Attempting to put some distance between themselves and the building, they finally turned to witness the structure’s great, darkened windows shatter in a spray of glass and metal.
Looking up, Valiantine saw the top of the factory separate from the lower section and rise into the sky.
“Valiantine...” Cabot said, stumbling backward.
“Good God, Cabot!” the lieutenant shouted. “We were inside it! We were inside the thing!”
The giant wooden airship hung in the air over the crumbling building for only the span of a heartbeat or two. Turning in space, it floated over the edge of the factory’s roof and toward the two agents.
Before he could yell to Cabot to run, it was upon them.
The great, wide hull dipped down and blanketed the space immediately above their heads, blocking out what little sun could be seen. In almost complete shadow now, Valiantine looked all around searching for sanctuary from the sure death that came at them from above.
Trees. His brain registered trees. His fingers brushed at Cabot’s sleeve, but he did not solidly connect as he wished to. Something in his brain told him his partner was also moving, so he continued to run, imagining the airship to be inches from his head.