The Mammoth Book of Steampunk

by Sean Wallace

Telltale pinpricks of white, laid out patternless on the dark sprawl.

  Not so many as usual, though. Only a few, here and there. Haphazard and lost-looking, as if they were simply the remainder – the hardy leftovers after a storm, the ones which had not gone out quite yet. There was a feebleness to them, or so Walter thought as he gazed out and over and down. He used his elbow to wipe away the dirt on the glass screen as if it might be hiding something. But no. No more lights revealed themselves, and the existing flickers of white did not brighten.

  Walter reached for his satchel and slung it over his chest, where he could feel the weight of his brother’s Colt bumping up against his ribs.

  He set himself a course for Reluctance. He was out of hydrogen and sinking anyway; and it was either set down in relative civilization – where nothing might be wrong, after all – or drop like a feather into the desert dust alone with the coyotes, cactus and cougars. If he had to wait for sunrise somewhere, better to do it down in an almost-town he knew well enough to navigate.

  There were only a few lights, yes.

  But no flashes of firearms, and no bonfires of pillage or some hostile victory. He could see nothing and no one, nobody walking or running. Nobody dead, either, he realized when the Majestic swayed down close enough to give him a dim view of the dirt streets with their clapboard sidewalks.

  Nobody at all.

  He licked at his lower lip and gave it a bite, then he pulled out the Colt and began to load it, sure and steady, counting to six and counting out six more bullets for each of the two pockets on his vest.

  Could be, he was overreacting. Could be, Reluctance had gone bust real quick, or there’d been a dust storm, or a twister, or any number of other natural and unpleasant events that could drive a thrown-together town into darkness. Could be, people were digging themselves out now, even as he wondered about it. Maybe something had made them sick. Cholera, or typhoid. He’d seen it wipe out towns and troops before.

  His gut didn’t buy it.

  He didn’t like it, how he couldn’t assume the best and he didn’t have any idea what the worst might be.

  And still, as the Majestic came in for a landing. No bodies.

  That was the thing. Nobody down there, including the dead.

  He picked up his cane off the dirigible’s floor and tested the weight of it. It was a good cane, solid enough to bring down a big man or a small wildcat, push come to shove. He set it across his knees.

  The Majestic drooped down swiftly, but Walter was in control. He’d landed in the dark before and it was tricky, but it didn’t scare him much. It made him cautious, sure. A man would be a fool to be incautious when piloting a half-ton craft into a facility with enough flammable gas to move a fleet. All things being ready and bright, and all it took was a wrongly placed spark – just a graze of metal on metal, the screech of one thing against another, or a single cigarette fallen from a lip – and the whole town would be reduced to matchsticks. Everybody knew it, and everybody lived with it. Just like everybody knew that flying post was a dangerous job, and a bunch of the boys who flew never made it home, just like going to war.

  Walter sniffed, one nostril arching up high and dropping down again. He set his jaw, pulled the back drag chute, flipped the switch to give himself some light on the ship’s underbelly, and spun the Majestic like a girl at a dance. He dropped her down onto the wooden platform with a big red X painted to mark the spot, and she shuddered to silence in the middle of the circle cast by her undercarriage light.

  With one hand he popped the anchor chain lever, and with the other he reached for the door handle as he listened to that chain unspool outside.

  Outside it was as dark as his overhead survey had implied. And although the light of the undercarriage was nearly the only light, Walter reached up underneath the craft and pulled the snuffing cover down over its flaring white wick. He took hold of the nearest anchor chain and dragged it over to the pipework docks. Ordinarily he’d check to make sure he was on the right pad, clipping his craft to the correct slot before checking in with the station agent.

  But no one greeted him. No one rushed up with a ream of paperwork for signing and sealing.

  A block away a light burned; and beyond that, another gleamed somewhere farther away. Between those barely seen orbs and the lifting height of a half-full moon, Walter could see well enough to spy another ship nearby. It was affixed to a port on the hydrogen generators, but sagging hard enough that it surely wasn’t filled or ready to fly.

  Except for the warm buzz of the gas machines standing by, Walter heard absolutely nothing. No bustling of suppertime seekers roaming through the narrow streets, flowing toward Bad Albert’s place, or wandering to Mama Rico’s. The pipe-dock workers were gone, and so were the managers and agents.

  No horses, either. No shuffling of saddles or stirrups, of bits or clomping iron shoes.

  Inside the Majestic an oil lantern was affixed to the wall behind the pilot’s seat. Walter grunted, leaning on his cane. He pulled out the lamp, but hesitated to light it.

  He held a match up, ready to strike it on the side of the deflated ship, but he didn’t. The silence held its breath and told him to wait. It spoke like a battlefield before an order is given.

  That’s what stopped him. Not the thought of all that hydrogen, but the singular sensation that somewhere, on some other side, enemies were crouching – waiting for a shot. It froze him, one hand and one match held aloft, his cane leaning against the dirigible and his satchel hanging from his shoulder, pressing at the spot where his neck curved to meet his collarbone.

  Under the lazily rolling moon and alone in the mobile gas works that had become the less mobile semi-settlement of Reluctance, Walter put the match away, and set the lantern on the ground beside his ship.

  He could see. A little. And given the circumstances, he liked that better than being seen.

  His leg ached, but then again, it always ached. Too heavy by half and not nearly as mobile as the army had promised it’d be, the steel and leather contraption tugged against his knee as if it were a drowning man; and for a tiny flickering moment the old ghost pains tickled down to his toes, even though the toes were long gone, blown away on a battlefield in Virginia.

  He held still until the sensation passed, wondering bleakly if it would ever go away for good, and suspecting that it wouldn’t.

  “All right,” he whispered, and it was cold enough to see the words. When had it gotten so cold? How did the desert always do that, cook and then freeze? “We’ll move the mail.”

  Damn straight we will.

  Walter reached into the Majestic’s tiny hold and pulled out the three bags he’d been carrying as cargo. Each bag was the size of his good leg, and as heavy as his bad one. When they were all three removed from the ship he peered dubiously at the other craft across the landing pad – the one attached to the gas pipes, but empty.

  He considered his options.

  No other ships lurked anywhere close, so he could either seize that unknown hunk of metal and canvas or stay there by himself in the dead outpost.

  Hoisting one bag over his shoulder and counter-balancing with his cane, he did his best to cross the landing quietly; but his metal foot dropped each step with a hard, loud clank – even though the leather sole at the bottom of the thing was brand new.

  He leaned the bag of mail up against the ship and caught his breath, lost more to fear than exertion. Then he moved the mail bag aside to reveal the first two stenciled letters of the ship’s name, and reading the whole he whispered, “Sweet Marie”.

  Two more mail bags, each moved with all the stealth he could muster. Each one more cumbersome than the last, and each one straining his bum leg harder. But he moved them. He opened the back bin of the Sweet Marie and stuffed them into her cargo hold. Every grunt was loud in the desert emptiness and every heaving shove would’ve sent ol’ Stanley into conniptions, had he been there.

  Too much noise. Got to keep your head down.

&n
bsp; Walter breathed as he leaned on the bin to make it shut. It closed with a click. “This ain’t the war. Not out here.”

  Just like me, you carry it with you.

  Something.

  What?

  A gusting. A hoarse, lonely sound that barked and disappeared.

  He leaned against the bin and listened hard, waiting for that noise to come again.

  The Sweet Marie had been primed and she was ready to fill, but no one had switched on the generators. She sank so low she almost tipped over, now that the mail sacks had loaded down her back end.

  Walter McMullin did not know how hydrogen worked exactly, but he’d seen the filling process performed enough times to copy it.

  The generators took the form of two tanks, each one mounted atop a standard-issue army wagon. These tanks were made of reinforced wood and lined with copper, and atop each tank was a hinged metal plate that could be opened and closed in order to dump metal shavings into the sulfuric acid inside. At the end, opposite the filler plate, an escape pipe was attached to a long rubber hose, to which the Sweet Marie was ultimately affixed.

  There were several sets of filters for the hydrogen to pass through before it reached the ship’s tank, and the process was frankly none too quick. Even little ships like these mail runners could take a couple of hours to become airworthy.

  Walter did not like the idea of spending a couple of hours alone in Reluctance. He was even less charmed by the idea of spending all night alone in Reluctance, so he found himself a crate of big glass bottles filled with acid, and with a great struggle he poured them down through the copper funnels atop the tanks. Shortly thereafter he located the metal filings; he scooped them up with the big tin cup and dumped them in.

  He turned the valves to open the filters and threw the switch to start the generators stirring and bubbling, vibrating the carts to make the acid and the metal stir and separate into hydrogen more quickly.

  It made a god-awful amount of noise.

  The rubber hose, stamped “Goodyear’s Rubber, Belting and Packing Company of Philadelphia”, did a little twitch. Sweet Marie’s tank gave a soft, plaintive squeal as the first hydrogen spilled through, giving her the smallest bit of lift.

  But she’d need more. Lots more.

  There.

  Another one.

  A sighing grunt, gasped and then gone as quickly as it’d burst through the night.

  Walter whirled as fast as his leg would let him, using it as a pivot. He moved like a compass pinned to a map. He held his cane out, pointing at nothing.

  But the sound. Again. And again. Another wheeze and gust.

  At this point, Walter was gut-swimmingly certain that it was coming from more than one place. Partway between a snore and a cough, with a consumptive rattle. Coming from everywhere, and nowhere. Coming from the dark.

  Up against the Sweet Marie he backed.

  He jumped, startled by a new sound, a familiar one. Footsteps, slow and laborious. Someone was walking toward him, out of the black alleys that surrounded the landing. Nearing the ladder to the refueling platform. And whoever this visitor was, he was joined by someone else – approaching the edge near the parked Majestic.

  And a third somebody. Walter was pretty sure of a third, moving up from the shadows.

  Not one single thing about this moment, this shuddering instant alone – but not alone – felt right or good to Walter McMullin. He still couldn’t see anyone, though he could hear plenty. Whoever they were, lurking in the background … they weren’t being quiet. They weren’t sneaking, and that was something, wasn’t it?

  Why would they sneak, if they know they have you?

  Reaching into his belt, he pulled out the Colt and held it with both hands. His back remained braced against the slowly filling replacement ship. He thought about crying out in greeting, just in case – but he thought of the dead cows, and his desperate eyes spotted no new lights, and the sound of incoming feet and the intermittent groaning told him that no, this was no overreaction. This was good common sense, staying low with your back against something firm and your weapon out. That’s what you did, right before a fight. If you could.

  He drew back the gun’s hammer and waited.

  Lumbering up the ladder as if drunk, the first head rose into view.

  Walter should’ve been relieved.

  He knew that head – it belonged to Gibbs Higley, the afternoon station manager. But he wasn’t relieved. Not at all. Because it wasn’t Gibbs, not anymore. He could see that at a glance, even without the gaslamps that lit up a few blocks, far away.

  Something was very, very wrong with Gibbs Higley.

  The man drew nearer, shuffling in an exploratory fashion, sniffing the air like a dog. He was missing an ear. His skin looked like boiled lye. One of his eyes was ruined somehow, wet and gelatinous, and sliding down his cheek.

  “Higley?” Walter croaked.

  Higley didn’t respond. He only moaned and shuffled faster, homing in on Walter and raising the moan to a cry that was more of a horrible keening.

  To Walter’s terror, the keening was answered. It came bouncing back from corner to corner, all around the open landing area, and the footsteps that had been slowly incoming shifted gears, moving faster.

  Maybe he should’ve thought about it. Maybe he should’ve tried again, tried to wake Higley up, shake some sense into him. There must’ve been something he could’ve done, other than lifting the Colt and putting a bullet through the man’s solitary good eye.

  But that’s what he did.

  Against a desert backdrop of dust-covered silence the footsteps and coughing grunts and the buzzing patter of the generators had seemed loud enough; but the Colt was something else entirely, fire and smoke and a kick against his elbows, and a lingering whiff of gunpowder curling and dissolving.

  Gibbs Higley fell off the landing, flopping like a rag doll.

  Walter rushed as fast as he could to the ladder and kicked it away – marooning himself on the landing island, five or six feet above street level. Then he dragged himself back to Sweet Marie and resumed his defensive position, the only one he had. “That was easy,” he muttered, almost frantic to reassure himself.

  One down. More to go. You’re a good shot, but you’re standing next to the gas. Surrounded by it, almost.

  He breathed. “I need to think.”

  You need to run.

  “I need the Sweet Marie. Won’t get far without her.”

  Hands appeared at the edge of the lifted landing pad. Gray hands, hands without enough fingers.

  Left to right he swung his head, seeking some out. Knowing he didn’t have enough bullets for whatever this was – knowing it as sure as he knew he’d die if any of those hands caught him. Plague, is what it was. Nothing he’d ever seen before, but goddamn Gibbs Higley had been sick, hadn’t he?

  “Gotta hold the landing pad,” he said through gritted teeth.

  No. You gotta let ’em take it – but that don’t mean you gotta let ’em keep it.

  He swung his head again, side to side, and spotted only more hands – moving like a sea of clapping, an audience of death, pulling toward the lifted landing spot. He wished he had a light, and then he remembered that he did have one – he just hadn’t lit it. One wobbly dash back to the Majestic and he had the lantern in his hand again, thinking “to hell with it – to hell with us” and striking a match. What did it matter? They already knew where he was. That much was obvious from the rising wail that now rang from every quarter. Faces were leaning up now, lurching and lifting on elbows, rising and grabbing for purchase on the platform and soon they were going to find it.

  Look.

  “Where?” he asked the ghost of a memory, trying to avoid a full-blown panic. Panic never got anybody anywhere but dead. It got Stanley dead. On the far side of a broken, folded fence along a line that couldn’t have been held, not with a thousand Stanleys.

  Ah. Above the hydrogen tanks, and behind them. A ladder in the back corne
r of the overhang that covered them.

  He glanced at the Sweet Marie and then his eyes swept the platform, where a woman was rising up onto the wooden deck – drawing herself up on her elbows. She’d be there soon, right there with him. When she looked up at him her mouth opened and she shouted, and blood or bile – something dark – spilled over her teeth to splash down on the boards.

  Whatever it was, he didn’t want it. He drew up the Colt, aimed carefully, and fired. She fell back.

  The ladder behind the hydrogen tanks must lead to the roof of the overhang. Would the thin metal roof hold him?

  Any port in a storm.

  He scurried past the clamoring hands and scooted, still hauling that dead-weight foot, beneath the overhang and to the ladder. Scaling it required him to set the cane aside, and he wouldn’t do that, so he stuck it in his mouth where it stretched his cheeks and jaw until they ached with the strain. But it was that or leave it, or leave the lantern – which he held by the hot, uncomfortable means of shoving his wrist through the carrying loop. When it swung back and forth with his motion, it burned the cuff of his shirt and seared warmly against his chest.

  So he climbed, good foot up with a grunt of effort, bad foot up with a grunt of pain, both grunts issued around the cane in his mouth. When he reached the top he jogged his neck to shift the cane so it’d fit through the square opening in the corrugated roof. He slipped, his heavy foot dragging him to a stop with an ear-splitting scrape.

  He’d have to step softly.

  From this vantage point, holding up the quivering black lantern, he could see all of it, and he understood everything and nothing simultaneously. He watched the mostly men and sometimes women of Reluctance stagger and wail, shambling hideously from corners and corridors, from alleys and basements, from broken-windowed stores and stables and saloons and the one whorehouse. They did not pour but they dripped and congealed down the uncobbled streets torn rough and rocky by horses’ hooves and the wheels of coaches and carts.

  It couldn’t have been more than a hundred ragged bodies slinking forward, gagging on their own fluids and chasing toward the light he held over his head, over the town of Reluctance.