The iron horse crashed into the door, shattering it.
Colonel Tye disappeared into the darkness cast by the shadows within the house. He rolled off the iron horse and then scrambled toward the frame where the door once stood. He could hear howls, screams and the pounding of hooves behind him.
He sprinted out of the house and up the road toward the bodies of his comrades and the hussars.
A massive explosion rocked the battlefield and knocked Tye onto his face. He got to his knees and crawled toward the hussar he gutted earlier. He snatched open the chasm he rent in the hussar’s belly and then crawled inside. He quickly gathered entrails from the ground and pulled them inside with him. He then pressed down on the slit, closing it the best he could.
A yellow haze rose from the rubble that was once the house. Carried by the wind, the thick mist floated across the battlefield. As it traveled over the corpses, they blistered. A moment later the flesh turned into mush and melted off the sinew and bone.
The cloud was a carnivorous predator, ravenous for meat and consuming all in its wake.
Five
June, 1778
Tye sat next to Ngozi, chuckling at Talako and Barbey as a crowd of small children climbed all over them, demanding that Talako teach them to wrestle, or that Barbey give them a ride on his back.
“You picked the perfect locale,” Ngozi said. “Madagascar is lovely at this time of year.”
“You sold me on the place,” Tye said. “After we finish building the winding station, we can get up in the air again. There are a few places on the mainland I would like to visit – Kemet; Luongo; Oyo.”
“We have to move carefully in Oyo,” Ngozi said. “British slavers visit regularly and in abundance. King George has issued a two hundred-pound reward for the return of each soldier in the Black Brigade, with an additional six hundred pounds for your arrest and return. A slaver would do well to add us to his cargo.”
“Someone should put an end to the slave trade in Africa,” Tye said.
“Tye…you promised our days of fighting battles were over,” Ngozi said. “And you promised me a go at a normal life.”
Barbey zoomed past their table with three overjoyed children clinging to his back.
“Well, normal for us,” she said.
“I know, I know,” Tye sighed. “Forget I mentioned it.
“Wait, you’re giving up that easily?” Ngozi said. “No trying to convince me?”
“No,” Tye replied.
Ngozi’s eyes narrowed. “You’re up to something.”
“No, I’m not,” Tye said.
Ngozi leaned forward in her chair. “Alright; look…promise me marriage and two children afterward and I’m in.”
Tye beamed. “Fine.”
“A boy and girl.”
“Fine.”
“Alright, then,” Ngozi said.
Tye leapt to his feet.
“Black Brigade!” He called. “Gather around, brothers…we have a mission!
AN OMNIBUS RIDE IN SCARLET
Nat Turner
The warm stolid air in the old rickety red omnibus stank strongly of absinthe and vomit. The gears and weights that ran the bus clicked and whirred, straining against the tremendous combined weight of its sixteen passengers.
To one such as her, the smell was far worse to her than to inferior human nostrils. Her heightened senses had come in handy many times in the past, even saving her from destruction on the one occasion when the hunters had come creeping, sneakily slithering their way into her home, but on other occasions, like tonight, she would give her wisdom teeth (after all, they served no purpose now) for a set of nose plugs.
She’d purposely sat at the back of the Omnibus so she could scan the travelers seated within. Unfortunately, this also meant that she was seated among all the drunks and the burps, grunts, farts and profanities that erupted from them, as well as the various odors – or “oh, dears,” as she called them – they brought.
Normally, she would travel in style – by carriage, or by the new, spring-powered dirigibles that were all the craze, but on leaving New York and her bloody trail behind her, she feared that the hunters would once more come looking in another attempt to banish her accursed soul back to the Abyss.
The Abyss awaits every life stealing, immortal horror, bent on causing chaos, death and destruction. The Abyss is patient and always gets what it wants, but only if you’re careless; careless enough, that is, to get yourself killed. While oblivion is inevitable, the pleasures of feasting on humanity outweigh the bitter and agonizing end.
She planned on remaining untoten – undead – for as long as possible. To do this, she had to keep a low profile some of the time, especially when her killings brought curious eyes, seeking the cause of the many deaths. I should really flee this country for a while, she thought. She had relocated many times but the prospect of setting up coffin somewhere else abroad vexed her. Creating fresh aliases and finding new places to live was dirty and mundane. She hated it. Besides, a little risk kept her sharp and stopped her from becoming overconfident in her approach. So, instead, she decided to take a simple trip down south, taking a carriage from Manhattan to Southampton County, Virginia and then jumping on an omnibus that would take her to a small town called Jerusalem. The village was a small hamlet of approximately 175 people, with only three stores, one saddler, one carriage maker, two hotels, two attorneys and two physicians. It was.located nine and a half miles away from the omnibus station. This was where she had one of her many safe-houses, places to lay low when the heat was on.
It had actually been several months since she’d last devoured a human, draining his spirit through his veins. She had killed last night, however.
She thought she was safe, hunting in the shadows of the trees of Bowling Green Park in Manhattan, at the end of Broadway. She had tailed a man wandering home whom she guessed, from the look of him, to be nothing more than a lonely middle aged man – an easy kill! It turned out the man was a master and teacher of Savate, a French martial art that uses the hands and feet as weapons, combining elements of boxing with graceful kicking techniques. And although her inhuman strength and speed eventually proved too much for him, the kill lasted far longer than she had estimated. By the time she’d ripped open his chest with a powerful strike from her clawed hands, a young couple, romancing the night away in the bushes nearby, were alerted to the man’s shouts and she had to leave, unfed, before the two lovers got too close and witnessed her malformed state. Of course, she could have killed the two of them as well, but that would undoubtedly set suspicion levels soaring, and suspicious killings could easily bring a hunter snooping.
That was not an option.
From early on in her untoten life, she learned that hunters should be avoided at all costs. Within the first few days of being reborn as one of the undead, the vampire who made her had told her many tales of how hunters used sneaky, underhanded, dirty tricks and tactics to destroy vampires. He told her many horrible stories of careless vampires he’d known that had been destroyed by the bedraggled rabble. He even told her horror stories involving a hunter that some of the more superstitious vampires thought to be true. They were nothing more than stories used to scare young vampires who thought themselves unable to be harmed by mere mortals. The one known as “Nat Turner” was rumored to be able to track and kill a vampire by means that were unbelievably fantastic, bizarre and impossible.
In the last twenty four hours, a terrible hunger had grown inside her; a hunger that demanded to be sated. She found that such hunger interfered with her thoughts, and though it didn’t make her clumsy or slow, it instead turned her more animalistic in nature and aggression. In such a mood, she might simply rip out the throat of some passer-by and not give a care about who might witness the act.
The trouble with leaving too many slain victims, or worse still, witnesses, was that more attention would be drawn, and with such attention, hunters always followed. What she needed right now was a lo
wlife – a down and out fellow that no one would miss; someone weak and feeble. She had at first considered an elderly victim. These were easy to come by and even easier to kill and dispose of. But she did not like the taste of old folks. Their blood was bitter, with a hint of cottage cheese and mothballs. Even in a desperate situation like this, she would not stray higher than a sixty year old.
Composing herself, she began to scan the omnibus for a potential meal. Her eyes slyly scanned back and forth, weighing up each potential victim. Eventually, she settled on a young woman that she guessed to be in her mid twenties. The young woman sat in the middle of the Omnibus, chatting away with the man sitting beside her.
Using her superior hearing, the vampire listened as the woman ranted. It appeared that the man beside the young woman was her boyfriend, Kevin, who, according to the woman, was nothing more than a lowlife, cheating scumbag who was not worth bothering with. The vampiress smiled as she heard the woman’s teary voice tell Kevin that she was not coming home tonight as the thought of sleeping in the same bed as a slimy, sniveling, poor excuse for a worm, let alone man, did not appeal to her. Instead she was going to spend the night at her mother’s house. Perfect, the vampiress thought. She prepared to make her move and introduce herself to the young woman, perhaps by asking her if she was alright and sympathizing with her predicament. The omnibus slowed down.
####
Having finished a run for Samuel – Master Samuel, his enslaved Africans called him – Leroy now waited patiently in the cold dark night at the omnibus stop. He hated riding the omnibus. Being a Black man, he was not supposed to ride the vehicle at all, but his so-called owner was powerful, so he was allowed to ride in the omnibus’ undercarriage…with the luggage.
The omnibus stopped. The driver, whose name he did not know, but whose stone-mask face had leered at him many times, nodded.
“How do, suh?” Leroy said, forcing a smile.
The driver nodded again.
Leroy yanked on a handle on the exterior frame of the bus and a horizontal door slid upward, exposing several trunks and leather bags. He squatted and then stuffed his lean frame into the undercarriage. He pulled the door down behind him and was cast into darkness.
After several minutes, the omnibus still had not moved.
Suddenly, the panel door slid upward. The driver squatted before him. He was smiling.
“Forgive me, sir,” the driver said. “You can ride inside the bus.”
Leroy poked his head out of the undercarriage and studied his surroundings, ensuring no mob waited on the road with a noose. Certain of his safety, he slid out of the undercarriage, hopped to his feet and followed the driver onto the omnibus.
The Omnibus was packed. No one seemed to notice him, though. The sole Black man on a “Whites Only” omnibus? He shrugged and scanned the vehicle for an empty seat.
Luckily, he spotted one in the middle of the omnibus, next to an elderly man with dead eyes that rolled around in their sockets. Good, the old man was blind. He should be okay and be able to avoid any unwanted confrontation as long as he kept his head down.
He shuffled to his seat and sat down, staring at the floor.
The omnibus pulled off again.
There wasn’t much to see on the floor, just scuffed wood, but it didn’t matter, he kept his gaze downward. He just had to remain as indiscreet and as quiet as possible. This way, with any luck, no one would bother him.
As the omnibus continued on, the noise of the rabble mixed with the slow ticks, clicks, whirs and hums of the clockwork engine began to melt into one another within Leroy’s head. The aches and pains of a long day’s work were massaged by the omnibus’ slow, rocking gait. Leroy’s eyelids fluttered and then closed as sleepiness overcame him and he drifted off into his wild and troubled dreams.
“Hello there”, said a sweet singing voice that made Leroy suddenly jump awake from his short-lived slumber.
“You from around here, are you?” continued the voice.
Leroy, now fully awake, realized that someone had come and sat by him while he slept. The blind man was gone and, somehow, this person had scooted by him and taken the window seat without rousing him.
The voice, he quickly noted, belonged to a woman – a young WHITE woman. This was bad. A Black man, on a “Whites Only” omnibus, sitting next to a white woman? He couldn’t shrug this off.
“I um…sorry, what? I mean yes. Yes, I live in Jerusalem!” Leroy said, turning to the young woman. A dark haired woman, dressed in a long, full, conical skirt with large, “leg of mutton” sleeves, a narrow, low waist – achieved through corseting – and lace coverings, draped over her shoulders, smiled back at him.
The girl introduced herself as Claudia and told him that she too was traveling to Jerusalem. She then went on to tell him that she had just come from up North. As she spoke to him it became clear that the she was pleasant and charming and also seemed genuinely interested in him, and before he knew it, he found himself enjoying the conversation.
His brow furrowed as he scanned her emotions, but he detected no lie, no underhanded trick, no scheme thought up by the woman to trap him.
After talking for a few minutes about her life, she suddenly said to him: “Anyway, that’s enough about me. Tell me about yourself.
“To tell the truth, there’s not much to really tell,” Leroy said. “I deliver messages, pick up packages and shop for my master. And that’s about it, really.”
“Come on Leroy”, she said with a wink and a smile. “There must be more to you than that. What excites you? What’s inside the man sitting beside me? There must be more to you than just work. You’re more than just some slave boy!”
Leroy gave a nod. “Well, I do have a few hobbies”.
“I’m intrigued,” Claudia said. “Tell me.”
“Well I…I’m interested in the supernatural,” he said.”
“You mean ghosts?” Claudia asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” Leroy replied. “Ghosts, monsters, creatures from the black depths of the sea and from the blacker depths of space, people with extraordinary abilities and magic artifacts. I’m interested in it all.”
“Interesting,” she said. “Tell me more.”
“There are things out there”, he said. “Things that walk our world, things we don’t understand, things we were never meant to understand. In the last fifteen years, I’ve made it my personal mission to collect the things, oddities and curiosities that we were never meant to see”.
“So you’re telling me you know of monsters and the like,” she said, with not a trace of sarcasm in her voice. “This is fascinating, Leroy! And what’s more, you’ve been collecting the evidence. Building up a menagerie of proof. Incredible! Tell me more!”
“I’ll tell you everything I know,” he replied.
####
The vampire listened with faked interest as her prey ranted on. Claudia May Broaddus, you’ve really gone and picked a right one this time, she thought. The man was Black, a little intelligent, it seemed, but also a bit crazy – all slaves were at least a little crazy, she reckoned. They were, after all, away from home, abused, and robbed of their culture – enough to drive anyone mad.
When Leroy was done talking about life on the plantation and the things that go bump in the night, Claudia put on her “Wow…how fascinating”-look once more.
“Just this morning”, Leroy said, shaking his head and laughing. “Just after Pearline had served Massa his breakfast and slipped me the extra biscuit, A knock came at Massa’s door. This scruffy looking man, who goes by the name of Lyman, tried to sell Massa something in a dirty brown carrier-bag that he called the Great Discarnate Fundament of the Undead Lord and Savior.”
“What?” Claudia said, forcing a chuckle. She was tempted to release her glamour on the passengers and driver and watch them tear Leroy apart for daring to “sneak” onto and “defile” their omnibus, but she so wanted to drink his spirit, so she kept everyone enthralled as she listened.
Leroy leaned toward Claudia. He lowered his voice to a whisper, as if he was going to share something even crazier than what he was already telling her. “Benjamin Franklin created a giant lightning rod, but this rod was built of materials that would attract power from the realm of spirit. He drove the rod into the head of a huge stone that sat in Pennsylvania’s town square. A stone that was to be sculpted into a statue of General George Washington. The Founding Fathers fasted for a fortnight and then prayed around the stone for a day and a half and, lo and behold, a bolt of red lightning came down from the heavens and struck the giant stone. The big rock became soft, like clay. It whirled and folded in upon itself. A few minutes later, a one hundred foot tall Jesus Christ stood where the giant stone once was. Big Jesus plodded toward the demons, eager to do battle with the monsters. Things went well at first, with the giant Jesus demolishing the monsters with his big holy fists of power. However, after each fight, giant Jesus got weaker and weaker, until, by the time only one terrible monster remained, giant Jesus was barely able to stand on his two mighty divine legs. And this final monster, who was the biggest and most powerful of the bunch, attacked Big Jesus, all claws and fangs.”
Claudia could not believe what she was hearing. As a vampire, she knew there were powerful spirits the Christians foolishly mistook as demons – she had even been called a demon or a devil once or twice – but giant Jesus? She was going to savor consuming Leroy; he was certainly a rarity in this land of dullards.
“A terrible battle ensued,” Leroy went on. “But in the end, the monster was killed, and giant Jesus stood triumphant, his brilliant holy eyes shining with the light of the sun as the Founding Fathers fell to their knees and gave praise. Alas though, giant Jesus had been dealt a mortal wound and died the next day as the Colonies celebrated the fact that no more horrid monsters would eat them! For three days and three nights the celebrations went on, but on the fourth day, a new terrible menace arose to once more threaten the Colonies. Giant Jesus had come back to life, though now one of the undead…and he was hungry for brains!”
Rococoa Page 28