by Sean Little
The other two wolves loped into town, lowering their heads and crashing into wagons and carts along the sides of the road. Wood splintered and flew like shrapnel. People were scrambling for the relative safety of their homes.
Clarke picked himself up from the ground and turned to watch the wolves rampaging through town. “How are they being controlled? If we can find that source, we can stop them.”
From a hiding place crouching behind a pair of rain barrels Tesla said, “Sound. We know Enwright likes sound. It must be subsonic or super-sonic transmission. That is the only solution that makes sense to me.”
“How does that work?” said Bobbins.
“A machine transmits a signal to the creatures without wires, like Marconi’s machine.”
“Where, though? Where would he keep it?” said Clarke.
“Somewhere high. The higher the better,” said Tesla.
“There.” Dolly Shaw pointed. Clarke followed her finger. The highest point in town was the belfry of the old stone church.
Of course. If Paschal was Enwright, where else would the command system be? The machines were built in the caves by a mechanical genius. The man who conceived of the machines was a genius in the field of sound and sonic communications. With the immense power of the nethercrystal behind them, it seemed right that it would have taken him two or three years to build and power the machines in secret.
The wolves were tearing up the carts and ripping doors from hinges. They were too wide to fit through doorways, so that was the only saving grace. As long as the integrity of the doorframes held, the people inside buildings would be safe.
“Get the rest of the people inside!” Clarke shouted. “I’m going for the tower.”
Bobbins scooped up a stick-thin little girl and tucked her under an arm like a rugby ball. “You heard the man,” he yelled. “Everyone inside!”
Clarke lowered his head and sprinted for the church. He blocked out the sound of the mech-wolves destroying the main street. He blocked out the shouts and screams of a city full of scared people. When he reached the church, the double-doors that led to the narthex were locked, but three solid shots of ramming his shoulder into them cracked the frame and burst them wide open. The door to the cupola was just to the left, a tiny door leading to a thin, rickety ladder screwed into the wall. Clarke jockeyed the ladder as fast as he could, propelling upward in leaps and bounds. At the top of the ladder was a small wooden landing that transitioned to another short ladder into the belfry. Three large metal bells hung silently, cords leading from their edges to the landing below. The sound they made rang for miles across the mountains and meadows. The unenviable task of ringing the bells on Sunday morning would surely make the man responsible for it deaf in a matter of months.
In the cupola, Clarke saw nothing but the bells. The screams from the street continued, carrying to the belfry. The panic and the fear made time stretch. Every moment was an eternity. Ten seconds of frantic searching revealed a single board with loose nails. Clarke pried his fingers between the boards and popped the offending board loose. Several large, black boxes wrapped with wires and tubes coursing with ethereal blue gel were in a hidden recess. Clarke grabbed the first one, pulled it out of its hiding spot. He couldn’t open it. His first instinct was to just chuck it over the side of the belfry and let four stories’ worth of gravity do the job for him, but just as he was about to release it, he remembered the nethercrystal. Would it explode? If it did, given what Tesla had said about it, it would certainly level the church with him in it, maybe even more.
Clarke stuck his head out of the wide arch of the belfry window and called to Tesla. “I can’t open the box.”
“Cut the wires with a knife!” Tesla called back. Even though the Serb was yelling, it still came out flat and monotone.
Clarke drew his Bowie knife and slid the blade between the metal frame and the tightly wrapped wires. With a twist of the knife and flick of his wrist, the thick blade severed every connection on one side. He repeated the motion on the other side of the box. Goo oozed out over his hands, chest, and legs like thick blood. He pulled another box and did the same, and then another. Five boxes in total.
Clarke looked out the belfry window to the street. The two mech-wolves that had been tearing about the town were now standing perfectly still, construct statues no longer a threat to anyone.
Bobbins gave Clarke a big thumbs-up from the middle of the street. His broad smile was luminous. “Well done! I knew you were the right man for the job, Mr. Clarke!”
Clarke gave Bobbins a wave. “Just happy to help.” He rested for a moment on the lip of the belfry window. He felt as though something of a weight had been taken off him. It felt good to help the town. It felt good to stop those beasts. It felt good to remove that horrible fear force from the town so that the villagers could get back to their lives. In another day, children would be playing in the streets and the forests, making up for lost time. Men would be getting out to the fields to save what crops they could. Deliveries to nearby villages could be traded. The town would survive the winter. The people would keep surviving. This was a good thing. He had actually helped people. For a moment, Clarke actually felt a strange, settling sense of peace, a feeling that had been missing from his life for far too long.
And then the church exploded.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A Good Old-Fashioned Chase
The moment the first charge detonated, Clarke had a passing thought. For most people it would be some form of panic or hopelessness, but for Nicodemus Clarke, it was something along the lines of, Again, really? The fact that he was no stranger to being caught up in explosions, building collapses, and near-death experiences made him wish to greatly rethink his life choices.
The charges were set in a line, first the altar, then the nave, and then the narthex. The charges were small meant to collapse and burn the church, and the church alone. The first explosion shuddered through the building and the far end began to collapse. The boards in the belfry rumbled and began to loosen.
Staying in the belfry and trying to ride the debris down would get him killed because the bells would crush him. Clarke’s only option was to jump. He was four stories in the air—the same height he was the night that Bobbins rescued him from the roof back in Philadelphia. It was too far to fall, he knew. At the very least, he’d probably break either his legs or his ankles even in a best-case scenario. He didn’t have any other option, though. The bell tower began to collapse around him. Without hesitation, Clarke planted a foot on the edge of the cupola housing and threw himself into the air as hard as he could. There was a split-second of freefall and terror, and then the shockwave of the explosion caught him and pitched him across the street, spinning him like a penny.
Clarke slammed into the edge of the two-story, squared-off false front of the store across from the church. He slid backward and fell onto the awning, bounced off that, and fell flat on his back onto the ground. He groaned before he could stop himself. Everything in his body hurt. Why was falling so much easier on the young than the old? He thought he should be better at it by now; he’d had a lot of practice.
Thick, white smoke poured from the wreckage of the church. Flames were quickly claiming what boards remained. People were screaming commands, running to try to put out flames with buckets of rainwater and shovels full of dirt and snow.
“I saw what you did,” Tesla was standing over Clarke. “You are lucky to be alive.”
“Are we certain that I am?”
“I believe so,” said Tesla. After a pause he added, “I could do further examination if you are unsure, but I feel confident in suggesting that you have not passed. Not yet, at least.”
“Well, that’s good. I’d hate to half-ass something like dying.”
There was a new round of panicked shrieks and screams from the crowd. A two-horse team dragging a coach behind it wheeled out of the smoke and the flames. At the raised driver’s seat, Brother Paschal, in brown robes with w
ild hair, was holding the reins, using a whip to urge his team to go faster.
“We gotta stop him,” said Clarke. He pushed himself off the ground, despite most of the nerve-endings in his back telling him to continue lying on the ground. “We need a coach, a horse—something!”
As if summoned by magic, a horse and flatbed wagon came rolling out of the smoke. Csupo, looking a little rough for wear, was driving. Behind him sat the missing villagers.
“Perfect timing,” Clarke said. “Csupo! You have saved the day. Get those people off! I need your wagon!”
Clarke pulled himself into the wagon seat as Csupo got down, telling the rest of the townsfolk to dismount, as well. Bobbins leapt onto the wagon behind him. Clarke raised an eyebrow at him. “You coming, m’lord?”
“Are you joking, m’boy? I wouldn’t miss this for a formal tea with the Queen! Go, Mr. Clarke! Go!”
Clarke looked through the smoke and caught sight of Dolly Shaw. She was already swinging herself onto the back of a horse a few dozen yards down the street. Without waiting for Clarke, she dug her heels into the animal and shot down the road after Paschal’s wagon, no saddle, no bridle, riding hellbent for leather with her hair trailing behind her. At that very second, Clarke felt he could have proposed marriage.
“Andrei, Csupo—help Nicky get things fixed here!” Bobbins called.
“Nikola.”
Bobbins ignored Tesla’s correction. “Get a fire brigade going! Put out the fires before they spread!” Andrei nodded and immediately began shouting orders to people in Romanian. People began to help wherever they could; even the elderly and the very young were scrambling for buckets and shovels.
Clarke slapped the reins on the back of the carthorse and it leapt to service. The wagon was rickety, but it was a hay-wagon, built to be light but strong. The horse dragged the wagon down the road in pursuit.
Paschal’s wagon was making good time, but there was a limited amount of roads in the mountains. Trying to go off-road would be a death sentence for the horses due to the rocky, uneven ground, darkness, and trees. He was confined to the main roads, and that helped them make good time. Also, the coach Paschal was driving was at least twice as heavy as the hay-wagon. Even though the coach had better shock-springs, the hay-wagon could fly over the terrain, provided its occupants didn’t mind holding on for dear life while their teeth rattled out of their heads.
Clarke had never minded a little teeth rattling. Behind him, crouching low and hanging onto the wooden seat, Bobbins was howling with laughter. “This takes me back!” he yelled over the wind and the rattle of the wagon wheels. “It’s almost like chariot races! I just need a large mace to knock my opponent from his wagon or a stout spear to jam into his wheels!”
“That’s not a bad idea,” said Clarke. “If only we had a stout stick.”
“That’s where you come in, my dear Mr. Clarke.”
“I can’t fit between the spokes of a cart wheel.”
“No, but I’m sure you’ll figure something out when we catch up to him! That’s what I pay you for!”
The hay-wagon was light, but rickety. It was built to hold half a field’s worth of hay, if necessary, and be pulled by a well-trained, plodding, sedate team of plow horses, or a well-muscled draught horse. However, it lacked the springs and supports of a solid passenger coach. At speed, it was pure abuse on the body. The horse pulling the wagon was a tough little work mare. She was stout and thick, and pulled like the devil was behind her. Despite the wagon’s liabilities and an extra passenger, the heavy coach that Paschal was driving was meant for a four-horse team, and the little mare was making good time at catching it.
Shaw, bareback and without a bridle, was behind the coach and to the right, just out of Paschal’s sight line. He knew she was there, though. He was swerving the coach from side to side, trying to bump her or run her off the road. Shaw compensated every time, guiding the horse out of harm’s way with an expert hand. She was a gifted rider.
The coach was committed to the main road, though. It couldn’t make a sharp turn without slowing down considerably. A turn at speed would flip it. The sides of the road were lined with trees and large rocks. Too much over the rough ground could crack a
“This is such fun!” said Bobbins. “I haven’t been in a good old-fashioned wagon chase for quite some time. Ever been in a zeppelin chase, Mr. Clarke? Dreadfully boring until something starts on fire. This here is the sort of chase that has that danger potential that the body needs every now and then to remind it that it is alive!”
“Take the reins,” said Clarke. Bobbins stepped over the seat, grabbing the leather straps from Clarke as Clarke spun to the side and around behind the seat. “Get us close.”
“Look! I’m driving my own wagon like a peasant! I wish the gang from Oxford could see me now.” Bobbins slapped the reins against the back of the mare and guided her to the right.
Clarke moved to the edge of the wagon, readying to leap to the coach. He’d jumped onto a coach many times. There were really only two things to fear when trying to make the transition from one vehicle to a coach: The first being failing to land a handhold and falling beneath the wheels of the coach. Painful, yes—but, usually non-fatal. The second fear was that while he was dangling from the metal tie-rail at the top of the coach, someone inside the coach would open fire with a revolver, or worse—a shotgun. That was usually not very painful, at least not that anyone reported because as far as Clarke knew, everyone who caught a gut-full of lead in a stage jump was dead before he could report any discomfort or other ills. You had to hope that if there was someone inside the coach, they were either unarmed or a lousy shot.
Clarke waited until the coach was starting to drift toward the wagon, and he leapt without hesitation. That was another big key: Hesitation kills people. Commit fully or don’t jump. He grabbed the tie-rail with his right hand, but missed it with his left. He dangled for a moment, grabbing at the windows of the coach for support. It wasn’t the most graceful wagon-to-coach transfer he’d ever done, but it worked. He braced himself for a hot blast of lead, but none came. Clarke hauled himself to the roof of the coach and started moving toward Paschal.
The barrel of a sawed-off shotgun, a slim, black lupara, peered over Paschal’s shoulder. Instead of the standard fiery blast of lead, this gun shot a blinding flash of blue-and-pink light. A Pinker. Clarke hated those. Those were weapons that appeared toward the end of the Civil War after the world’s “geniuses” decided that killing each other with lead shot and cannon-fire wasn’t enough. They were nasty weapons, apt to burn half your body to a crisp while leaving the other half alive enough to know it. As soon as the barrels appeared, Clarke instinctively threw himself before the Pinker could reduce him to ash. He was unscathed, but the speed of the coach rolled him off the back. Only a mad, desperate grab for the tie-rail kept him from hitting the ground. He clung to the rail, dangling off the back of the coach.
Dolly Shaw pulled her revolver from the waistband of her pants and spurred her horse to move even with the driver’s seat. She fired twice, but even at the relatively close range, the motion of the horse and the coach allowed Paschal to duck and not be struck. The friar retaliated by swinging the coach hard to the right, forcing Shaw to slow her horse or be run off the road.
Bobbins slammed the wagon into the coach, forcing it into the rough rocks on the side of the road. There was a loud crunching of wood and metal as the coach bounced hard off some larger rocks. Paschal lost his balance, grabbing hard at the rail on the side of the driver’s chair. The sawed-off fell into the footwell, rattling off the sides of the wooden box.
Clarke pulled himself back to the roof of the cart. With one hand on the tie-rail for support and balance, he started crawling across the top. The thin wooden roof was meant to carry weight, but large trunks and boxes—not a fully-grown man putting the majority of his weight in small, select areas. The thin layer of wood flexed under Clarke’s weight making a loud, worrisome creaking noise.
“Not really,” Clarke said. “It’s one of my faults.”
“Please leave me be. I don’t want anyone to be hurt.”
“Can’t do that,” Clarke replied. “We need answers. We know about the nethercrystal.”
“I’m not him,” said Paschal. “Enwright. That’s not me. You’re after the wrong man.”
“If you’re not Enwright, then you at least know enough about him to tell me what I want to know,” said Clarke.
“I’m not going to stop,” said Paschal.
“You’ll stop when I tell you to stop.” Clarke slid his legs over the edge of the coach to the driver seat. Paschal shoved him hard and he lost his balance, sliding toward the side. To compensate, Clarke lunged forward, toward the horses. This was another old trick. The wooden tongue of the coach rode between the horses suspended by stout leather straps well stitched with canvas threads. It could be stood on easily with the horses providing support on either side. It worked for a time, if you didn’t mind jostling a bit. Clarke pulled his knife and started carving through the leather of the harnesses. His Bowie knife was always well honed. The leather was tough, but the knife was making quick work.
“Stop that!” said Paschal. He started rooting in the footwell for the sawed-off. When he got it, he cracked it open, slipped two more large blue shells into the barrels, and snapped it shut again.
When Clarke heard it snap shut, he knew he had to be ready to dive. Paschal pointed the weapon at him and Clarke let himself drop between the horses to the ground. There was a roar when the gun went off and the Pinker splintered the wooden tongue with a burst of fire, cutting it in half. The flames ripped clean through the rest of the harness, panicking the horses, too.