Crack. The sound of splintering wood made both men turn back to the door.
“Someone’s awfully determined to get in here,” Drostan said. “And they’re going to succeed in a few minutes.”
“We can slow them down, give ourselves some cover,” Sheffield said. “Grab one end of the table.”
Together, Drostan and Sheffield pushed the heavy autopsy cart in front of the door with the corpse still in place, chest splayed wide open.
“Help me with this,” Sheffield said, gesturing toward two other carts. “If we turn them on their sides, we can get behind them. These are solid steel.”
Drostan and Sheffield managed to get the two carts overturned just as the door gave way. The click and hum of gears accompanied a stench like an abattoir in the summer heat.
Three hideous creatures barreled through the doorway. Once, they might have been men. Now they were nightmares, animated by clockwork. Their skin was mottled, the color of deep bruises and spoiled meat. Clockwork mechanisms stiffly animated their joints, visible on jaws, fingers, wrists, and glimpsed beneath their tattered clothing. Benny’s fierce barking trailed off into a frightened howl, and he bolted for the back room.
“What are those things?” Sheffield asked, eyes wide with fear.
“Nothing good,” Drostan replied.
As one of the creatures raised his hand to strike, Drostan could see where it had been impaled by a splinter from the shattered door. The clockwork corpses care nothing for pain or damage to themselves, Drostan reminded himself. Another of the mechanized cadavers shoved aside the autopsy table blocking the doorway as if it were nothing.
“These tables aren’t going to slow them down for long,” Drostan muttered. “We’re going to have to fight them.”
“I’m a coroner, not a cop,” Sheffield protested.
“You’re going to be a dead coroner if we don’t do something. Maybe if we raise enough of a racket, some of your jailer friends across the street will come to see what’s going on.”
Sheffield tightened his grip on his claw-hammer and bone saw. Drostan popped up from cover and squeezed off three shots in quick succession. The bullets struck their targets, driving the creatures back a pace. One of the clockwork cadavers was struck square in the chest, blowing a spray of dead flesh out the exit wound.
For a moment, the clockwork assassins halted. And then, with the relentless click and hum of the mechanisms that drove them, they renewed their advance, strange glass eyes oriented on Drostan and Sheffield.
Drostan got off three more shots. “I need to reload! Hold them off!” He ducked for the cover of a heavy autopsy table, and Sheffield stood, pale with terror, a white-knuckled grip on the tools in his hands.
“Get back!” Sheffield said, giving a warning swing with the hammer he used to open up the skulls of corpses. His bone saw rattled in the other hand. But the dead kept coming, the taut skin of their bloated faces registering neither anger nor fear.
Drostan stood and put a bullet through the forehead of the first clockwork monster. The creature’s head snapped back and he reeled. Drostan fired again, and his bullet entered the eye socket of the second monster, shattering the glass eye and blowing away the back of the thing’s skull, filling the morgue with the smell of gunpowder and formaldehyde. Drostan fired once more, and his bullet destroyed the third attacker’s face, smashing the nose, flattening the cheekbones as the sinus cavities collapsed, and sending a shower of rotted skin, matted hair and decomposing brain matter to foul the operatory.
“They’re not slowing down!” Sheffield shouted, his voice high with panic. The lead corpse was almost to the barricade. He swung with his hammer and winced when it hit with full force against the creature’s outstretched right arm, shattering bone. The monster never slowed its steps, although its damaged arm hung at an unnatural angle, bent between the wrist and elbow.
“Use the claw!” Drostan shouted, squeezing off three more shots, targeting the zombies’ eyes. He shot out the remaining glass eye of one of the creatures, and took the top off the head of the one whose nose his last shot had destroyed. For once, the monsters hesitated.
“I think you’ve stopped them!” Sheffield cried. Nearly in unison, the abominations slowly pivoted, seeming to focus on the sound of Sheffield’s voice.
“They can still hear us,” Drostan replied. “Separate. Take them on however you can. No one’s riding to the rescue. We’ve got to do this ourselves.”
One of the zombies remained oriented on Sheffield, but the other two had turned to focus on the sound of Drostan’s voice.
“Damn,” he muttered as the creatures walked mechanically into the table barrier. The table stopped their advance for only a moment; then the zombies clawed at it until they had dragged it out of the way.
Sheffield backed up against a table of morgue tools. Abandoning the bone saw as too cumbersome, the coroner grabbed a crowbar-like tool used for prying open rib cages. Armed with the hammer in one hand—claw-first—and the tine end of the crowbar in the other, he grimaced as he swung at his attacker with his full strength.
The crowbar dug into the dead flesh of the clockwork zombie’s shoulder, opening a gash bone-deep. The hammer smashed against fragile finger bones, crushing them. Still the creature came.
“Go back to the devil who spawned you!” Sheffield shouted as he put his full strength into a swing that caught the zombie in the neck with the crowbar, ripping the head from the body. As the twitching corpse sank to the ground, Sheffield kept on pounding, sending chunks of rotten flesh flying.
Drostan backed up as far as he could go until he found himself up against a set of metal shelves. Bottles and jars clanked a warning as he jostled them.
No time to reload. He jammed his gun in his belt and reached behind him, grabbing whatever came to hand. He threw the first bottle behind the zombies, buying himself time as they paused at the sound. Drostan pelted the two approaching zombies with heavy glass jars filled with formaldehyde and discolored, gelatinous organs preserved for study.
“That’s evidence!” Sheffield objected.
Drostan hurled jar after jar. Glass shattered, shards stuck out like porcupine quills, lodged in dead skin, and the stinking chemicals bathed the zombies, fouling the air so that Drostan thought he might reel from the smell. Still they came, undeterred.
Bits of clockwork zombies splattered the operatory’s tiled walls and cement floor, covering every surface with decomposed flesh and organs. Drostan and Sheffield had backed up as far as they could go. One of the monsters lay twitching on the ground, headless, its body still bucking and jerking, hands scrabbling against the tile.
“Stay back!” Drostan shouted as he grabbed for a box of safety matches. Sure that it was better to act than debate consequences, he struck a match and tossed it at the formaldehyde-soaked mechanized corpses.
“Are you nuts?” Sheffield shouted.
The roar of flames cut off Drostan’s response. The two creatures nearest them went up like torches, flailing and moaning, blundering around the room as the flames rose from their clothing and hair. One of them veered close enough for Sheffield to swing his crowbar again, knocking the flaming head from its shoulders. The severed head rolled, igniting the fluid on the floor, and the first downed clockwork burst into flames.
Drostan grabbed a set of rib cutters, long-handled jointed blades like pruning shears, and got them around the third zombie’s neck. He jerked the handles together, severing the head from the shoulders.
Three decapitated clockwork corpses lay on the floor, flames guttering in the pools of chemical solution as the zombies shuddered and went still.
“Stay clear of them,” Drostan said, choking on the noxious smoke. “We don’t know if the bodies can still move.”
He swung the rib cutters at two of the windows, shattering the glass to let in air and clear the heavy black smoke. He was heaving for breath between the smoke and the heavy smell of formaldehyde.
“Where the hell ar
e the cops?” Sheffield demanded, looking around his ruined operatory. A fine layer of soot covered the formerly pristine white tiles. Puddles of foul liquid muddied the floor.
“Makes you wonder,” Drostan said, toeing one of the cindered corpses out of the way with distaste.
“My morgue,” Sheffield groaned, looking around at the wreckage. He shook his head. “It’s going to take forever to put things back.” He eyed the empty shelves, where Drostan had grabbed jars and bottles to hurl at the zombies. “And you’ve just compromised a dozen investigations.”
Sheffield came around from behind the battered table and poked one of the charred zombies with his crowbar. It lay still, but he glared at it mistrustfully.
“Cover me,” he said to Drostan. “I want to get a better look at those gears.”
The attacker was headless, with a gunshot wound through its chest, and dead to start with, so the absurdity of Sheffield’s request did not escape Drostan, but he bit back a remark and reloaded, leveling his gun at what remained of the clockwork corpse.
The clockwork joints were still visible, though scorched by the fire. Sheffield sat on his haunches, using the claw end of his skull hammer to pry the mechanism loose.
“Crude, but effective,” he muttered. “What I’d really like to know is how they tied the gears in with the joints and muscles.” He probed some more at the dead thing, heedless of the smell. “And I wonder, how were they being controlled?”
“I’m still wondering why all the noise and gunshots down here didn’t have any guards heading down here at a run,” Drostan said.
A nasty suspicion was forming in his mind, but before he could put his thoughts into words, a uniformed cop came to the door.
“You’re late!” Sheffield snapped, rising to his feet. “Where the hell have you been? We were attacked!”
The cop glanced around the ruined morgue, paid scant attention to the charred bodies on the floor, and fixed his gaze on Drostan. His expression hardened. “I’m here to arrest one Drostan Fletcher, on suspicion of conspiracy.”
Sheffield gaped. “Did you not hear a word I just said? Fletcher and I were attacked!”
The Oligarchy would have the means to create abominable machines like the clockwork zombies, Drostan thought as his suspicions grew. They might have been afraid Sheffield knew something, too. That’s why we didn’t get any help.
“I have a warrant for Fletcher’s arrest,” the cop said, and one hand fell to the butt of the gun in his holster. “I’d suggest you come along peacefully.”
Drostan had not voiced his suspicions aloud, but he saw the skepticism in Sheffield’s eyes change to anger. The cop took a step toward them, drawing his gun, and Drostan raised his hands in surrender. Sheffield slipped behind the cop. With one swift movement, he brought the blunt end of the skull hammer down in a glancing blow behind the cop’s ear, and the man dropped like a stone.
“Get out of here, Drostan. Someone’s setting you up.” Sheffield said as he knelt by the fallen officer and checked for a pulse. “He’ll be out for a while, but you need to hurry.”
Before Drostan could make a move toward the door, they heard voices and the sound of running feet.
“Hide!” Sheffield hissed.
Drostan looked wildly around him, seeing nowhere in the chaos of the operatory to go. He took a step towards the back room. “Here,” Sheffield said, stepping around the downed cop and the charred zombies to lead Drostan toward the body drawers.
“Get in,” he ordered, yanking one of the slabs open. “It’s cold, but there’s air, and I’ll let you out again once they’re gone. Hurry!”
Drostan forced down his fear as he climbed onto the slab. The stone was cold, and the air coming from the bank of mortuary drawers was icy. Sheffield had once told him that the city bought a huge amount of block ice to keep the drawers chilled. Drostan had barely laid down when Sheffield shoved the drawer shut, sealing him in the dark.
Terror seized him. The drawer was slightly wider across than Drostan’s shoulders and a little longer than he was tall, and there was about six inches of open space between his face and the ceiling. Claustrophobia made him desperate to sit up, stretch out, take in great lungfuls of breath. Rationality forced him to remain still, breathe shallowly and stay quiet.
Drostan could hear muffled voices on the other side of the drawer. Sheffield sounded like he was arguing with someone. Footsteps grew louder, and Drostan gripped his gun, unsure of just how well he could get off a shot if someone suddenly opened his drawer.
“We’d better have a look inside those drawers,” an unfamiliar voice said.
“Suit yourselves,” Sheffield replied. “That’s where we keep the smallpox cases.” There was a few seconds’ silence, then, “Nasty thing, smallpox. Real easy to catch if you’re not immune to it, like I am.”
“Maybe... we can take your word for it that the drawers haven’t been disturbed,” the voice replied, sounding less certain than before.
To Drostan’s relief, the steps receded. More muffled voices sounded in the distance, and some banging and scraping. He wondered whether Sheffield had gotten the cops to help him turn the tables back over and remove the charred remains. He heard a few more minutes of talking, then silence.
To keep himself from giving in to full-blown panic, Drostan forced himself to think through the case. At Catherine Desmet’s request, he had drawn a map that showed the killer making its way up the Monongahela River from near Vestaburg toward larger communities—and more prey. He doubted it was a coincidence that Vestaburg was the closest town to the Vesta Nine mine.
The deaths along the rivers had been nobodies, unimportant to anyone in a position of power; the Night Hag had chosen victims unlikely to be mourned. Smart behavior for a predator, he thought. And if more miners than usual had died lately from problems with the mines, that was regrettable, but of no consequence to anyone important.
But Thomas Desmet had been somebody. Desmet hadn’t been killed by the Night Hag, but he had been killed by magic. We must be getting close, he thought. The more people are trying to kill us, the more likely it is that we’re making someone nervous.
Someone had sent the clockwork cadavers after him after he’d ignored the warning. Maybe that someone would have been happy to have Sheffield silenced as well. The cop had paid no attention to the headless, charred bodies and the war zone of the operatory, and focused solely on arresting Drostan—for conspiracy. Conspiracy to do what? Against whom? Drostan had no desire to give himself over to custody to find out.
Obviously someone in power thought he was dangerous. What do I know that is so important?
The morgue was silent. What if the cops arrested Sheffield? What if he isn’t coming back for me?
Drostan’s heart pounded, and he choked back a scream. He felt around the confines of the mortuary drawer. Steel on the sides and top, granite beneath him. He stretched, touching the front of the drawer with his toes. Drostan had no idea how much time had passed, but already the cold was beginning to make him shiver.
If I don’t suffocate, or starve to death, I’ll die of cold.
He thrust his hands against the top of the drawer, trying to push against the surface to slide the drawer out. The heavy granite slab beneath him did not move. No one had expected the drawer’s occupant to need to leave.
Maybe hiding in a morgue might not have been a smart idea for someone able to see and hear ghosts.
Drostan could hear the buzz of dead voices. Most were heavy with the accents of their native languages: German, Polish, Hungarian, and Italian, though there were others. Nearly all were male.
Drostan focused his attention on the voices, if only to blunt his own claustrophobia; their stirring was unusual. Thankfully, the dead were silent most of the time. It seemed the appearance of the clockwork zombies and the imprisonment of a living man inside a body drawer was enough to rouse the spirits from their half-sleep.
“What do you know about clockwork corpses and the N
ight Hag?” Drostan asked in a whisper. “I can hear you. Tell me.”
For a moment, the voices grew silent. Drostan was acutely aware that he was the stranger here, in the land of the dead. The spirits were deciding whether or not to trust him, even though they were beyond the reach of consequences. Or perhaps, he thought, fear of creatures like the Night Hag lasted even after death.
“There are things in the dark,” a man’s voice said, thick with a Welsh lilt. “Deep in the mines. Creatures that ought not be let loose.”
“How did they get loose?” Drostan murmured.
“Dig, they told us,” another man answered in an Irish brogue. “Deeper. Always deeper. For their coal. And now, for other things. To make them rich. And if we die, no matter. There are more where we came from. But now, what’s gotten loose will kill them too, kill everyone.”
“They said you died of bad air, blackdamp.”
“They lied.”
“What about the clockwork corpses?” The image of those mechanized abominations would haunt Drostan’s sleep for years.
“Not all of us got out,” a man with a Polish accent replied. “We were sent here. The lucky ones. They took some of the bodies. Don’t know where. Maybe to experiment.”
If the spirits of the mining dead had followed their corpses to the morgue, Drostan did not want to think about the ghosts of the clockwork zombies being aware enough to know what had happened to their human shells.
“What about the boilers that blew?” Drostan asked. Questioning the ghosts was helping him hang onto his sanity in the close, cold dark.
“Evil things are loose,” replied a ghost, his consonants clipped and guttural, like his German native tongue. “They feed on death, on blood. And no one knows how to lock them up.”
The ghosts seemed to lose interest in the conversation and gradually drew farther away. In the silence, Drostan was left alone with the darkness, and the walls of the mortuary drawer seemed to close in around him until he thought he might scream and begin to tear at the steel.
Just as Drostan thought he could not contain his panic any longer, footsteps sounded outside the drawers. The drawer jerked open, and light and air flooded in. Drostan blinked, trying to determine whether his savior was friend or foe, and he raised his pistol.
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