Bodacious Creed: a Steampunk Zombie Western (The Adventures of Bodacious Creed Book 1)

by Jonathan Fesmire

  Nelsen looked at him with a long frown. “Nothing we haven’t gone over a dozen times.”

  “He’s bound to make an appearance soon. He's too restless, too much of a troublemaker. He can't hold out for long.”

  “Maybe it's the leg wound,” said Nelsen. “You've got great aim, and you shot him good.”

  As McClary read over a page, his hand rested on a payment ledger. For those sixteen or so men helping, the money earned would be but a stipend, but Creed wished they could help more. Perhaps he could donate some of his own salary.

  “We have unconfirmed sightings,” McClary said, “and a dozen mismatching descriptions of Blake. Anyone who can afford a paper should know exactly what he looks like.”

  Creed shook his head. “People don’t always make a lot of sense. I’ve got some notes to take, then my meeting with the madam.”

  “Don’t get your hopes up. She’s not a working dove anymore.” McClary put one page down and grabbed another.

  Creed ignored the comment and retrieved a few sheets of paper, a pen, and ink from Nelsen’s desk. He considered typing his notes, but they amounted to little. He could write them quickly enough. Ten years ago, there had been no electric lights and no steam generators, aside from train and steamboat engines, and no typewriters.

  The fireworks, banging and popping like guns, ended about twenty minutes after they started. Creed continued to work and at last checked his pocket watch. Ten minutes to nine, it read, which meant time to ride to the restaurant to meet Anna Boyd.

  He set his notes aside and went to the front door. “I will see you fellas in the morning.”

  “You watch out for her,” Nelsen said.

  “Why's that?”

  “She's a prostitute, why else?”

  “Former,” said McClary. “Don’t you listen? She runs a fine establishment. You go ahead, James. Let her pay her respects to you. You've earned it.”

  Creed tipped his hat and stepped outside.

  Streetlamps lit the road like early twilight, and a chill drifted in from the ocean. It would take Creed just a few minutes astride Johann to reach the restaurant, across the San Lorenzo River. If the madam had already arrived, he felt sure she could wait.

  Just as Creed began riding up Center street, behind him came a deafening boom. Another firework? It couldn’t be. Too loud.

  Creed looked back and gasped in horror.

  Flames licked at the station window. Smoke rose as the fire danced along the edge of the roof. On the breeze rose a smell like burned bananas. Johann reared back and Creed held tight to the reins.

  “Down!” he called. Johann staggered and the marshal leaped from its back. He swatted his steed’s behind. “Go!” Johann was loyal like a good dog and he knew they'd find each other.

  Creed thought he might be able to enter the building and pull the other marshals free. He dashed toward the door when another explosion thundered inside. Fire erupted across the roof. Creed hoped his jacket would protect him long enough to save both men.

  In a second he flew up the porch. The door handle burned his flesh. Inside, his breath quickly became ragged. Heat rippled across his face and dried his throat.

  McClary lay in the doorway to Nelsen's office. Creed stepped back. The fire was thick around the man's crisping body. No, Creed thought, around the halves of his body. McClary’s midsection was gone, and his upper torso and legs burned. It seemed he had pounced on a stick of dynamite.

  Nelsen lay by the desk, shirt and pants on fire, but possibly alive. Creed lifted his friend and backed him out the door and down the stairs. He dragged him a good ninety feet into the road, removed his own coat, and squelched the flames on his friend.

  Creed glanced up at a cacophony of cries. From windows above, and in front of nearby buildings, Santa Cruzans stared, faces aghast.

  The fire spread fast over the outside of the federal marshal post. “Hold on, partner,” Creed said to Nelsen and rushed to free the horses. A breeze blew smoke into the street, but he could still make out the suffering animals, bucking in fear.

  “You shot me, you son of a bitch!” came a shout.

  Creed drew a pistol and wheeled toward the voice of Corwin Blake.

  The outlaw strode through the haziness and fired.

  Creed shot back, but pain flared in his chest, and his own bullet went wild. He fell, scarcely noticing how hard his coccyx hit the packed earth. The marshal rolled to his side and tried to aim steadily, but his hands burned and his arm shook.

  Blake turned to Nelsen, who had risen to his knees. Nelsen pointed his gun. Two shots banged and splatter left the back of Nelsen’s head. He tumbled, knees still bent.

  Creed’s scream came out nearly silent as he fired over and over, all shots speeding past Blake’s head. The outlaw sauntered forward with a wicked smile. His gun cracked and Creed's right shoulder jerked back. A second shot tore across his cheek.

  A high voice shouted “No!” It seemed so faint that as he toppled back, Creed wondered if it came from the afterlife. Perhaps his wife, calling him home.

  Somehow, as Blake turned and ran, Creed still lived. A silhouette in the smoke, Blake unhitched Nelsen’s horse, mounted, and rode northward.

  From somewhere behind the blazing post rode a large man on a chestnut steed, black coat streaming behind him, a metal ball at his horse's side glistening red with the flames.

  To the screams of the crowd, U.S. Marshal James “Bodacious” Creed died.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Anna intentionally missed the fireworks. As she had promised, seven of the women in her employ attended, and she suspected that most of them would return with men to bed. She had felt too nervous all day to work in her laboratory, so spent every hour in the saloon talking up the girls to various gentlemen and serving at the bar.

  As she dressed for her meeting with Creed, the tingling in her belly fell somewhere between butterflies and piranhas. She donned a pleasant cornflower blue dress, and Jonny tightened her corset. She brushed her hair for a good fifteen minutes, her curls bouncing back, then washed off her makeup.

  Would Creed even show up for their meeting? She bit her lower lip and paced between the door and her vanity. Of course he would. Right? She took one more look in her mirror and figured she appeared as presentable as she ever would. Tonight, she would see her father.

  Could she tell him? Should she? He was sharp. What if he guessed? She set the thought aside, went to the bar, poured and downed a jigger of single malt scotch, and went out the front door of Amber Doves without paying the girls or customers any mind.

  Anna retrieved Espiritu and in a few minutes arrived at El Cuarto Trasero. She hitched her spooky horse and gave it a hug around the neck, then entered the restaurant.

  The foyer smelled of steak, rice, and had an underlying hint of perfume. The head waiter showed her to a table through the low din of talk. She checked her pocket watch, tucked away in a hidden pocket beside her Deringer. It was just eight forty-five. What would she do for fifteen grueling minutes?

  She ordered a bottle of merlot and her mind went back to her parentage. Creed would guess who she was, surely. If she kept it to herself, he might feel manipulated. His loss had caused so much confusion in her own life.

  When Anna was growing up, her uncle kept a locked box, about six inches wide by four inches tall and deep, high in his closet. A shame for Emilio Boyd, she supposed, that he underestimated her intelligence. She had seen him playing with the key, twirling it in his fingers on days he read the paper. So, Anna had memorized its shape and fashioned her own copy from an oaken twig.

  Anna had been ten, keen to learn all sorts of secrets. She stood on a stool, pulled the box down, and set it on his bed. As she opened it, her belly tingled and a thrill ran up her spine. Uncle Emilio was at the ranch supervising the other cowboys, and Aunt Loretta was out back in their own garden, tending the potatoes, tomatoes, and squash.

  Did he have a stash of money? No. The girl lifted the lid and found fold
ed newspaper clippings. She spent as much time as she dared, about ten minutes, unfolding them and reading. The most important one she found, the one that made her heart race, recalled her mother’s death. Anna knew the house had caught fire while she was playing alone in the woods. She had snuck out, at six years old, while her mother napped, wood popping in the fireplace.

  The report read otherwise. It announced that two bodies had been found, her mothers, and her own.

  An obvious lie! Uncle Emilio had found Anna in the woods and taken her home. She had stayed at his place until after her mother’s funeral, which she had missed, then she, her uncle, and her aunt had moved. According to them, without a wife, James Creed couldn’t raise her alone, so he had asked them to take care of her.

  They had changed her name, they said, because dangerous men were after her father, and they had to keep her safe.

  Yet the clippings told another story. She even found two obituaries, one for Josephina Creed, and one for Laura Ann Creed.

  The head waiter returned with the bottle, breaking her out of her reverie. As he poured a partial glass for her to taste, she heard the explosion.

  Immediately, Anna knew it was no firework. She ran past tables, knocking over plates and silverware, and out the front door. She swiftly unhitched Espiritu and leaped astride. Her steed carried her along Soquel Avenue, across the river, down Lincoln Street, then turned onto Center, where strangers had begun to scream.

  A pillar of fire rose from two blocks away. The federal marshal building. Then came a second roaring blast.

  She heard two gun shots, a pause, then two more. “No! Oh no!” She kicked against Espiritu’s side and the horse went another block. When it saw flames rising from the marshal post it slowed, then backed away.

  A man lay dead in the street, knees up. Another struggled to lift his gun, and she recognized him. She wasn't sure how she could at this distance, with just the light of the fire illuminating one side of his face, but she knew that silhouette. It was Creed.

  A small, skinny man strode toward him. Creed’s gun flared—Anna counted five shots—then the other fired twice.

  “No!” Anna screamed.

  Citizens poured out of the buildings to stare, some brandishing their own guns. The small man undid one of the horses and galloped off to the screams of the onlookers. Then, there was Rob Cantrell, El Tiburón, riding from the other side of the street after the killer.

  Anna dropped to the ground and ran her fastest to reach Creed. She knelt beside him, shock giving way to bawling. Blood covered his chest. The muscles in his right shoulder looked ragged under his torn shirt. She didn't have to check his pulse or his breathing to know he was dead.

  Her father, murdered in front of her. She held onto him, jerking with sobs, face buried in his neck, his blood covering her cheek and hands. “Dad... Daddy?”

  The past no longer mattered. This was James Creed, her father, who had played guitar and sung to her when she was little and let her stay up later than her mother would have liked, just because they were laughing at one story or another. In her arms lay a man who understood her secret code. He had adored her, and he would never have abandoned her if he’d known she lived.

  Her nose and eyes ran, and still, Anna held on until someone put a hand on her shoulder.

  She turned with a look of rage. How could anyone interrupt her? Who dared?

  Marshal Walton Bateman stood behind her with wide eyes. “Ah, Miss Boyd. What in God's name—”

  “This is your fault!” She rose and shoved the marshal back. “Couldn't bother to help, could you? Now Corwin Blake has murdered again! Murdered a good man!” She pointed to the other body. “Good men! Fuck you, Bateman! Go be lazy somewhere else. Santa Cruz doesn't need you!”

  Hands grabbed both her arms from behind as Bateman took a few steps out of Anna’s reach. She tried to wrench free but whoever had grabbed her held tight. She glanced into Lonzo Rivera’s frowning face.

  “Son of a bitch!” he screamed. Someone came up between them and looked into her eyes with no fear or pity, just compassion. In her anger, it took a split second for her to recognize Jonny. Lonzo’s hands released and Anna threw her arms around her partner. After a moment, Bateman walked past to finally do his job.

  Anna had every right to consider herself strong. She'd survived the loss of her mother and father, and though her uncle and his wife treated her well enough, they had lied. The Boyds, never having trusted Creed, had kidnapped her. When she confronted them at fifteen, they had told her the truth, as they saw it. They had taken her for her own safety. Creed lived a dangerous life, making him a dangerous man.

  Emilio and Loretta Boyd were wrong, of course. James Creed had never been a danger to Anna. The Boyds had used their strong Quaker beliefs about abstaining from violence as an excuse, but Anna wondered if Jesus ever condoned kidnapping.

  At sixteen she had left. No one paid attention to her ideas on engineering because she was a young woman. She had managed to travel across the country for a year, at times passing for a boy, helping to repair all sorts of machinery in mining towns, and eventually made it to the West Coast. Specifically, she had arrived in Santa Cruz. Money spent, and with nowhere to turn, she had gone to work for Madam Fullerton.

  For that, she considered herself lucky. Fullerton had taken her under her wing, in a sense, and most of her clients were gentlemanly enough, in and out of bed. The one time a man had tried to hit her, Anna had ducked, then punched him in the nose before running from the room, and Fullerton had barred him from the parlor.

  Fullerton could have been kinder. She took most of the girls' earnings, and if she didn't like a woman in her employment, that dove might find Fullerton less responsive should a john get angry.

  At six in the morning on July fifth, Anna and Jonny stood in the front room at the local mortuary, run and owned by Pat Crowder. The elderly mortician stood a good five inches taller than Anna. His gray hair and mutton chops framed a long face.

  Just minutes ago, Anna had banged on the door until Crowder came down from his apartment and answered. His generally kind face now wore a scowl. It seemed she had crossed a line. No help for that.

  Barefoot, Crowder padded across the hardwood floor and opened the curtains letting the morning light shine off a dozen or so coffins on display. The room smelled of various woods, and faintly of formaldehyde.

  “I'm here about Marshal Creed.” Anna had cried half the night in Jonny’s arms, and she wondered what the mortician thought of her red eyes.

  Crowder nodded and his gaze softened. “It's tragic. I understand you were close with him somehow?” So, word had spread about her display the night before, or Crowder had been there, watching them by the light of the blazing building.

  Anna gazed into his eyes. “Have you embalmed him yet?”

  “He's been on ice. In a cold drawer, you understand, and so has Marshal Nelsen. The embalming and preparation of the body will be today. Funeral’s scheduled for tomorrow evening.” Crowder held his hands clasped at his belly.

  “Preparation?” Anna asked. “They don't plan on an open casket, do they? I don't want anyone seeing him like that!”

  “None for Creed, no, but there will be for Nelsen.”

  Anna looked at Jonny as worry filled her, then back to the mortician. “But his head—”

  “Nothing I can’t fix.”

  “Don't—” Anna cleared her throat. “Don't embalm Marshal Creed.”

  The mortician tapped his fingers on a black coffin. “Why? He was a Baptist, wasn't he? They embalm, like most.”

  “Will it make any difference in the burial? Will it matter when he's in the ground?”

  “No. You must understand, though, it's part of what the government is paying for. The Marshal Service already sent a wire. The two marshals stationed in Monterey are coming up, due to get here tomorrow afternoon. It's what they expect.”

  Anna figured it would come to this. She could tell Crowder that Creed was her father,
and as kin, she should have some say in the matter. Still, she couldn't predict the repercussions of that revelation. Or, she could try a tactic likely to prove more effective.

  “You could use some real lighting in here. Still using oil lamps, right?”

  “Got some natural light coming in the windows during the day.”

  “Some ambient light. No doubt it helps. You have one of Morgan’s Electric Funeral Parlor Cold Storage units, is that right?”

  “Oh yes. That cost me more than I’d like to say.”

  “Of course,” Anna said. “I can see how that would take priority over lighting. I'd want to improve further.”

  “Miss Boyd, while I appreciate your business advice, I'm getting by—”

  Anna removed a pouch from her hip and pulled out a handful of coins. “Two hundred? Three? No, you really want to get ahead.” She dropped the coins back in, untied the pouch, and put it in his hand. “Here's five hundred dollars.”

  Crowder stared at it, then peeked inside. Anna figured it was more than he'd seen at once in his entire life and would pay for new lighting ten times over. The battle in his mind showed on his face, but in the end, he slipped the pouch into his pocket.

  “Well, no one will know the difference, anyway,” Crowder said. “No open casket. No need to even work with the body until we move him to the coffin. You must have a very good reason for this, Miss Anna.”

  “If you guess it, I trust you'll keep quiet. Now, can we see him? Alone?”

  Crowder gave a hard blink but absentmindedly patted his pocket, then led them to the morgue.

  Anna held her breath as he slid out a metal drawer. There lay Creed’s body, covered in a white sheet. Crowder pushed it aside. He had at least cleaned him up. Aside from the tear across his cheek and the hole through his upper left trapezius, there was no blood.

  Crowder nodded to them and headed to the display room. His footfalls ascended the stairs then clomped in the apartment above.

  “The device,” Anna said, and Jonny reached into his tool pouch on his belt. He almost always had this on, whether working in the lab or relaxing in the saloon. Today though, he carried a healing unit and surgical supplies.