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

by Jonathan Fesmire

  It crashed to the earth and its momentum carried it forward another five feet, crunching foliage and churning up dust until it stopped next to Creed.

  Anna ran to the men. Jonny still knelt holding the pistol, staring at the fallen automaton. As Anna checked her father’s head, Jonny put the gun back in its holster, then went to Lucky.

  To her relief, Creed’s mechanical parts seemed unharmed, but something had turned the head unit off. Its ether power would keep his brain vital, but his consciousness would cease. She moved aside the covering plate and flipped the lever to turn it on. Creed’s eyes blinked and shut, and he resumed breathing.

  Anna snapped the cover back in place, then patted his pale cheeks. “Wake up,” she said, yet he remained out. She tried shaking him, and yelling, and even resorted to a slap in the face, but Creed remained unconscious.

  It was no time to panic, Anna decided. They simply had to bring him home.

  Once Anna determined that Espiritu had a large bruise in the right hindquarter, but no broken bones, she and Jonny lifted Creed onto her horse's back and used a length of rope to tie him there. She reactivated Lucky, pleased with the quality of her steely. Her automaton limped, and its left arm hung from its socket like that of a marionette. It had several dents along its chest, back, and head plates, but given the circumstances, she felt grateful it could walk at all.

  She thought about taking the larger steely with them but feared that the rider she had spotted might return any moment with others. Instead, she retrieved a screwdriver from her tool belt and, within two minutes, held its brain circuitry in her hand. The case, about the size of her fist, slipped easily into one of her spare pouches on her belt.

  Lucky held Espiritu's reins while Anna climbed onto Jonny's horse behind him, and they made their way back to town.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  On Thursday, August third, the one weekday Rob Cantrell allowed himself an extra hour in the morning to relax, someone knocked on his door at six thirty. Cantrell lay dressed on the bed, reading a letter from his wife and daughter that had arrived the day before. Though he had read it twice already, he looked at the door in annoyance, smelled the pages, which hinted at his wife's Jasmine perfume, and put the letter beside him.

  Cantrell let the visitor continue knocking as he pulled on his boots then raised the shade higher. The fog hung low on the street, and he suspected it would burn off soon. Satisfied he had made the unwelcome party in the hall wait long enough, he held a pistol behind his back with his right hand and opened the door with his left.

  The man standing in the hallway wore a black derby on his head of tightly combed brown hair. He had his arms crossed over a white shirt and black vest, his bow tie tight, and as he gazed up at Cantrell he stroked his own shaven chin. The bounty hunter noticed bulges in each of the stranger’s front pants pockets, but no guns.

  “I have a proposition for El Tiburón,” said the stranger.

  Cantrell stood aside and the man strolled past him to the window, bringing with him the scent of lavender soap.

  The man clasped his hands behind his back. “Did you know that Bodacious Creed was nearly caught last night?”

  “I hadn't heard that.” Cantrell sat in the room's only chair. “Do you know by whom?”

  “I'm not at liberty to say.” The man’s voice had a cultured quality, each syllable enunciated.

  “Of course you're not. What do you want?”

  “My associate used some new technology. It's funny, really. He lifted a prototype from his employer and provided it to me. My men made it do what he requested, to be able to track Creed and shut off the machinery that keeps the marshal's brain working.”

  “He used a switch to knock Creed out?” Cantrell asked. “Without touching him?”

  “Yes.” The shorter man removed a nearly flat, oval device from his vest pocket and tossed it to the bounty hunter. Cantrell caught it and looked it over. “Sadly,” the stranger continued, “the tracker stopped working. I think it needs refinement. That, or she hasn't reactivated the dead man yet.”

  “She?” Cantrell asked, looking over the machine he had just caught. In a recess, it contained a switch, nothing more.

  “Right, you wouldn't know,” the man said.

  Cantrell frowned. “Why don't you turn around and tell me your name.”

  With a chuckle, the man turned. “Maxwell Gregg. You can call me 'Sir.'“

  “Right, Max. She who?”

  “I'm sure you're familiar with The House of Amber Doves. A well-respected business.” Gregg gave a half smile.

  “I've eaten there.”

  “Why wouldn’t you?” Gregg replied. Cantrell couldn't tell if the man intended any innuendo. “What you don't know—what few know, really—is that she's also an incredibly accomplished inventor.”

  “Again, she?”

  “The madam.”

  “Well. Who could doubt that?” Cantrell set the device on the table and stared back at Gregg.

  “Have you ever noticed,” said Gregg with a sideways smile, “that there's always a fire going in the saloon, in that great big fire place?”

  Cantrell nodded. “In the back dining room, away from the noise of the main saloon. It's slow burning wood and is there for looks. When it's hot outside the heat gets diverted upward.”

  “Oh, it's for show, but not only in the way you think. Beneath the building is a blacksmith's forge and there's often smoke, black smoke, rising from that. I’ve been told it goes through a series of tubes that redirect it to the top of the chimney stack outside. Now, that wouldn't look right if there was no fire going in the hearth, would it?”

  “I see,” Cantrell said, now certain that Gregg was lying. “I have never, ever heard any blacksmith pounding in there.”

  “You know they don't always have to slam the hammer hard.” Gregg shook his head. “Even so, you'd expect someone to hear something, and for rumors to get started. Unless the basement had something to block the sound. Insulation, or sound dampening technology, maybe. You would be stunned if you knew how far it's come along in the last few years. Morgan's Mechanicals isn't selling everything its engineers have invented, not yet.” Gregg sat on the bed and smoothed the top blanket. “My colleague and I want to know what makes Creed work.”

  “You expect me to capture him for you?”

  Gregg looked out the window. “How was a dead man brought back to life like Christ from his tomb? Clearly machinery, not God, but how does it work?”

  “Why do you need to know?”

  “That's my business,” Gregg said. “My colleague, fellow conspirator, whatever you'd like to call him, he nearly had Creed until Anna Boyd stopped him. It's clear to us that she brought Creed back from the dead.”

  Cantrell stood and paced to the window. “She's a brothel madam. Nice lady too. I've met her. A head for business, no doubt. But you want me to believe she can bring the dead back to life? Absurd.”

  “She's much more than you think, and we suspect she has more than a small smithy underground. There’s a full laboratory under that bordello.”

  “You need to go.” Cantrell opened the door. All he had wanted that morning was some peace, and this liar had arrived to waste his time instead.

  As he stood, Gregg pulled a pouch from his coat pocket. He looked about to drop it on the bed but instead held it toward the bounty hunter.

  Cantrell snatched it and looked inside five golden eagle coins. One hundred dollars could go a long way. “All right. Tell me the rest of your story.” He shut the door.

  As Gregg related the rest, Cantrell held tightly to the pouch. Gregg claimed that Boyd had improved steam engines, invented steely brain circuitry and that she worked in secret for Miles Morgan. Cantrell sensed trouble from Gregg, but as he looked past the man at the letter from his daughter, lying on the bed, he tried to put that out of his mind. He needed to support his family.

  “If anyone can capture Creed, it's you. Still, I don't recommend you try to apprehend hi
m in her lab. This,” said Gregg, taking something from a pants pocket, “is the tracker. It should allow you to find him.” The device resembled a fist-sized compass. He stood and set it on the table. “This is distance, and this is direction. When it lights up, you'll know he's been activated.”

  “Anything else?”

  “A steely brain I own has gone missing. I believe Boyd took it. I'll pay you two-hundred dollars to retrieve that alone. For Creed, two-thousand.”

  “All right,” Cantrell said. “I'll do what I can.”

  Gregg nodded. “When you have him, I'll know, and I'll come see you. While I don't recommend trying to capture Creed in the laboratory, the steely brain is likely down there, or at least in Boyd's bedroom. Did you know it's possible to retrieve images from a steely's memories?”

  “You don't want her getting that from your steely,” said Cantrell.

  “I do not. Which reminds me. This switch,” he said, pulling yet another contraption from a pocket, “is calibrated for most automatons. I used it the other night and it worked perfectly. She has a blacksmith unit in the laboratory.”

  “The hypothetical lab.”

  “It's real, a steely down there is real. My colleague tells me that Miles Morgan gave her two units last Christmas, the two in the saloon she calls Lucky and Dixie. Another, who at the time was also working at Morgan’s Automatons, informed me that prior to that, rumor had it he gave her another, one that nobody sees. That could be complete shit, but, we’ll see.” Gregg went to the door and stood in the frame. “You'll find a door or trapdoor in her room, I believe. No doubt you can pick the lock. Then use that to deactivate the steelies, grab the brain unit, and get out.”

  “Why don't I just deactivate Creed as well?”

  “If he's in the lab, get out. Save the first machine I gave you for when you can track him elsewhere. I'll see you soon.” Gregg flicked the brim of his hat and strode away without offering his hand.

  Cantrell locked the door, then sat back on the bed, the tracker in one hand, the device to turn off steelies in the other, the one to turn off Creed's head machinery on the table. He doubted they could work at a distance, but of course, he doubted everything Gregg said.

  To many, Creed was a hero. Dead or alive, James Creed was protecting people in Santa Cruz. It wouldn't be right to turn him over to a man as slippery as Maxwell Gregg. Cantrell still hoped to get the reward for Corwin Blake and figured the pint-sized killer was somewhere in town. To that end, he thought it might be better to work with Creed rather than against him.

  For the two-hundred dollars, though, money his wife and daughter needed, he might have to bend his principles and get the steely brain unit.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  It took from August third until the seventh to finish the work on Creed's mechanical parts. Anna didn't want anyone tracking or deactivating him again, so she kept him unconscious. The table straps delivered a steady flow of ether energy to keep his tissues from deteriorating, and his mechanical heart beat steadily.

  Jonny completed work on the steely tracker. Anna studied his improvements and wrote the instructions for pairing it to any given steely. After noon on August sixth, she had brought it to Miles Morgan who seemed satisfied after testing it on several steelies he had delivered to his office.

  As she returned to town, she noticed a new wanted poster outside Smullen’s Stables and Livery. In big letters, it read “Wanted, James Creed.” Below that was his picture, a drawing that depicted him with black eyes and scar on his cheek far more ragged than the real one. The last lines read, “$1,000 Reward! Notify the U.S. Marshal Service.”

  Busy as she had been with fixing her father, Anna hadn’t spent any time in the saloon or reading the newspaper, so had missed the news around town. She rode to Center Street and verified that there, completely built and painted white and brown, was the new federal marshal post. Why did they want Creed? In the last few weeks, he had done more than all of Bateman’s deputies combined. They should have been welcoming him back into their ranks.

  Back in the laboratory, she created a new part for Creed’s head unit. This contrivance masked the vibration of the ether rod inside, dampening and randomly altering any outgoing signal, making it impossible to track.

  “Ready?” Anna asked Jonny the evening of August seventh, when she had bolted the last bit of plating to Creed’s head unit. “I don't know how he'll react when we wake him. Do you think he'll be himself, or wild again?”

  Jonny gazed off the way he did when thinking, but Anna had already decided to go forward. Keeping her father strapped down longer than necessary could destroy any trust he had in her. She undid the buckles and pulled free the straps binding him, flipped the small lever in the head unit, and returned the cover.

  Creed opened his steel eyes and looked at the couple. “Miss Boyd. Jonny.”

  Anna rushed to her desk. “Here's a new set of clothes, just like those you were wearing. I've got those too but I don't dare get them washed. We don't want questions.”

  “Thank you. I had more in my pack.”

  “We didn’t see that.”

  “Ah,” Creed answered. The blanket covering his crotch fell and Anna looked away as he pulled up the black denims.

  “Jonny, are you tired?” Anna glanced at her partner. The darkness under his eyes said he was. Like her, he had put in long hours and slept little over the last few days. “Go get some sleep. I've got this.”

  Jonny looked behind him at Zero, then trudged up the stairs as Creed finished dressing. At the forge, the large steely pounded a new chest plate for Lucky.

  “Zero, work on the wires. Stop pounding for now.” Anna walked to the other end of the room, where the air came in cool through vents in the ceiling. Creed slipped his second boot over a thick sock, put on his hat, then followed her.

  “I need you to know that the only reason I kept you down here before was for your safety.” Anna crossed her arms.

  “And yours, I reckon,” Creed said. Anna felt a tinge of pride hearing his fluent speech. He had made progress since his escape.

  Despite the ragged scar across his cheek, his off-white skin, and the darkness around his eyes, he looked handsome to her. He looked like her dad. “What do you think when you look in the mirror?”

  “I don’t like it.” Creed kept his gaze on her.

  The tension that Anna didn’t realize she had in her belly faded, and she uncrossed her arms. It seemed she understood Creed, at least a bit. When she was a child, he had always groomed himself in the morning with beard trimmed and hair combed. Her mother often complimented his good looks.

  Even before Creed's note for them to meet, when Anna heard about him wearing a black bandana over the lower half of his face, she had given Zero a technical drawing and a job.

  “I have a gift for you.” Anna knew she seemed distracted, but she couldn’t help wondering what her father would think. She strode across the room to where Zero threaded wires into Lucky's body. Anna opened a cabinet, withdrew something that glinted under the Tesla bulbs, and put it behind her back.

  She walked back to her father demurely and handed it to him.

  Creed took the mask.

  “It's silver-plated steel,” Anna said, “so it's strong.” The mask was all hard edges, made to cover his nose with sloping plates from under his eyes to beneath his chin. It had holes for his nostrils. The flat bars over the mouth area resembled a prison or the grill on a train. Two leather straps dangled from it along the back edge, meant to go around his head, one at eye level, one where the jaw curved. Anna had designed them to fit perfectly over and under Creed’s ears.

  Creed took off his hat and handed it to Anna. Without a word, he strapped the mask on, tightening the leather through buckles on the back. He then looked directly at her.

  An odd pain filled Anna, a mix of sadness, love, and pride. Tears welled up in her eyes. “It suits you.” She swallowed a sob. “You look...”

  “Like what?” Creed asked. />
  She placed his hat back on his head and smiled, more tears coming. “Like an angel.”

  Even under the mask, she saw his bright smile.

  “To me, at least. I think outlaws will be terrified.” Anna's hands trembled. “Well, I need to sit down.”

  She took two chairs from against the wall and scooted one to her father. As Zero worked on Lucky, a faint clanking coming from the other end of the laboratory, Creed and Anna sat facing each other.

  “You wanted to talk a few days ago, before the attack. I guess that got postponed. It’s the seventh now.”

  “Four days? She’ll be worried.”

  “Who will?” Anna asked. Did her father have another contact?

  Creed tapped his knee. “Why did you bring me back?”

  Anna had thought long about this and answered immediately. “I hate people who hurt the innocent, and you've always been a champion of the downtrodden. You’ve even helped free a few men you arrested when you found evidence of their innocence.”

  “Have I?”

  “You don’t remember?”

  “Not much.”

  “You know why I run a brothel? Working girls aren’t always treated the best, even though men out here would likely go crazy if they couldn’t be with a beautiful woman from time to time. I’m richer than God, as they say, because I perfected the modern steam engine and made intelligent automatons possible. That’s not bragging, just fact. I can even bring back the dead.

  “I used to be a dove myself, so now one of the best things I can do is make the lives of these women a little brighter.”

  “You think we’re alike?” Creed asked.

  “In some ways.” Anna realized her trembling had ceased. “You were after Corwin Blake, and he killed you. I couldn’t let that stand.”

  “I recall that, a little. What else do you know about me, from before? Do you have other newspaper clippings?”

  “I have many.” Anna wondered if he suspected their relationship. If he didn’t realize she was his daughter, she wanted to keep it that way for the time being. Creed had been through enough in the last month. Strong emotions might overwhelm him in his resurrected state. “I’ve followed your career. You’re fair, and just. People everywhere felt a little safer when you were around. You can read the clippings if you like.”