Bits of dead flesh and twisted clockwork mechanisms rained down on the street, filling the night air with the smell of a charnel house. For a moment, everything was quiet. Jacob climbed to his feet, righting his steam bike, which was still running.
A low growl made Jacob pivot as the lone remaining clockwork cur sprang, teeth bared, a garbled mechanical growl coming from its dead throat, malice in its glass eyes.
It never saw the steam bike coming. Jacob let go of the handlebars and the bike lurched forward, knocking the zombie cur out of the way with enough force that it did not rise.
A plume of dark smoke rose from the ruins of the corpse horse carriage. For a moment, the street was still.
Jacob reached in his satchel and pulled out a department beacon. He planted it near the wreckage and clicked it on. The Department would have to see to clean up – no telling what stories the locals would tell if they saw the carnage in the light of day. That’s when Jacob heard the clicking coming from the receiver pinned to his collar. Three short blips, three longer clicks, three short blips.
“Mitch is in trouble,” he said. “Time to go.”
Drostan threw his bicycle in the carriage and swung up to ride beside Hans. Jacob took off on the steam bike, adjusting his steering for the damage the machine had suffered in the fight.
Mitch also had the aether wave transmitter. The range was limited, and Adam hadn’t worked out all of the flaws yet, but the closer Jacob got to Congeliere’s Manchester shop and home, the more often he could pick up a few words. Enough to know Mitch had been caught.
“… you were sniffing around at the Coroner’s office…” a voice said. Jacob was still too far away to hear clearly, but this voice sounded nasal and whiny.
“… should have finished the job at the cemetery. Your friends are already dead” The second voice was low, heavy with a German accent.
“… just playing a prank—” Whatever Mitch was going to say was cut off with a resounding crack that sounded like a fist hitting bone.
“Federal agent… needs to disappear…” The third voice sounded unruffled, as if whatever was going on was all in a day’s work. It was his calm efficiency that chilled Jacob to the core.
“… making a mistake—” Again, Mitch was silenced with a bone-jarring thud that made Jacob wince and tighten his grip on the handlebars of the bike. He had opened the bike’s throttle up to its maximum speed, but the way the conversation was going, it might not be fast enough to get him there in time.
The steam bike hissed and rumbled over the uneven paving stones of the New Pittsburgh streets, jarring Jacob’s teeth together and assuring him he would ache in every bone and sinew. He fairly flew across the Seventh Street Bridge and headed for Ridge Avenue, hunched over his bike with Hans and Drostan hot on his heels.
“… just the beginning…,” the man with the German accent said, from what Jacob could pick up over the wind roaring in his ears and the sound of the steam bike.
“… limitless army of the dead…,” the whiny-voiced man added.
“… valuable cannon-fodder…” the confident man said with a coldness that stoked Jacob’s anger.
That was the motive behind the scheme Tumblety, Brunrichter, and Congeliere had cooked up, Jacob thought. Corpse shock troops, drawn from military and civilian dead. Cheap labor for mines and mills that needed no pay, food or shelter, unable to protest even the most brutal conditions.
“… you’ll make a valuable addition,” the German man said. A shot rang out at close range to the transmitter, and after that, all Jacob heard was static.
That would have been me, if I’d have fit in the box, Jacob thought, feeling as if the bottom had dropped out of his stomach. They shot Mitch. Shit.
A few blocks from the house, Jacob pulled over to the side of the street and Hans pulled the carriage up beside him. He told them what he had heard, omitting what he feared. From the look on Drostan’s face, he guessed they put the pieces together for themselves.
“Odds are good they’re in the basement,” Jacob said. “I’ll need a diversion to go in after them.”
“I’ll handle it,” Hans said.
“I’ll come with you,” Drostan volunteered. “You’re going to need back-up.” He had retrieved one of the extra sawed-off shotguns Hans had stocked in the carriage. Jacob did the same, reloading his revolver as well.
“What’s the plan?” Drostan asked.
“Ride the steam bike at full speed into the back door and hit the ground shooting,” Jacob replied.
“No, seriously,” Drostan said. “What’s the plan?”
When Jacob just stared at him, Drostan cursed fluently, his Scottish burr becoming much more pronounced. “You’ve been hanging about with Mitch Storm too much, if you think that’s a plan,” he said.
“Got a better one?”
Drostan sighed. “No. Come on. We’ve got work to do.”
Hans took the carriage around to the front of the house on Ridge Avenue. Jacob took the steam bike around to the back, and Drostan stood on the other side of the alley.
“What’s the signal?” Drostan asked.
A high-pitched whistle split the air, followed by the thud of metal against wood and seconds later, the front of the Congeliere house exploded with a Ketchum grenade.
“That.” Jacob revved the bike and ran it at full speed at the wooden basement door. Its tires jumped the small doorstep, and then it splintered the door, landing on the brick floor without the benefit of the two concrete steps. The impact threw Jacob forward, and as he struggled to keep his seat and his grip, his palm hit the Gatling gun button.
It was no longer stuck.
The bike’s magazine was small in comparison to a full-size Gatling gun, but it shot off a hundred rounds in a matter of seconds.
By the time the shooting was done, Jacob stood with the shotgun in one hand and the revolver in the other. Drostan was behind him, similarly armed.
It was a good thing. The clockwork zombies hit them hard.
Waxy, embalmed skin hung in shreds from the mechanized corpses’ emaciated bodies. The Gatling gun’s bullets had torn into bone and joint, but the undead creatures lurched forward, a human shield between Jacob and their makers.
The blast from Jacob’s shotgun blew away most of the closest zombie’s head. Drostan’s shot followed a second later, tearing a hole in the second zombie’s chest big enough to fit his fist through.
Jacob caught a glimpse of the room through the firefight. Five metal autopsy tables filled half of the room, along with an embalmer’s tank. On one of the tables lay a woman’s severed head, and on another, the body from which the head had come. Other bodies lay in various stages of ‘enhancement’, with steel pins protruding from bone and joint or clockwork mechanisms in the process of being fused with flesh and sinew. A rack of surgical and mortuary instruments hung against one wall. Floor to ceiling shelves held row upon row of glass containers filled with dusky fluid, preserved pieces of once-living things.
Smoke wafted down from the main house, much of which was no longer there, thanks to Hans. Glowing embers straggled through the air like shooting stars. At least four of the clockwork zombies lay in pieces on the floor, ones that had borne the brunt of the Gatling gun’s punishment.
“Where’s Mitch?” Jacob demanded. He brought his revolver to bear on the survivors of the blast.
Three men were crowded against the far end of the room, and Jacob matched them to the voices he had heard. He guessed the tall man with blond hair and hawk-like Aryan features to be Brunrichter. Congeliere, the ambitious embalmer, was likely to be the scholarly-looking dark-haired man in the white coat slumped against the wall, a bullet hole between his sightless eyes. That left Tumblety, who was easy to recognize with his huge moustache. Epaulettes and brass buttons gave his tailored jacket a quasi-military flair Jacob was willing to bet the charlatan doctor had earned as much as his bogus medical degree.
On the left side of the room, bloodied and sti
ll, he saw Mitch. Mitch lay with his hands behind his back, and from his torn clothes and the blood, it looked as if his captors had worked him over.
“You’ve ruined everything!” Brunrichter snarled. He levelled his Smith and Wesson at Jacob in the same instant Jacob drew down on him.
Jacob dodged to one side, avoiding the bullet, but it sent his aim wild. His shot hit one of the big glass specimen jars, shattering it and sending a cascade of foul-smelling formaldehyde into the room.
A third shot rang out from the left side of the room, clipping Brunrichter in the arm. Jacob saw Mitch out of the corner of his eye, one arm flung wide, holding a Derringer he had somehow managed to conceal from his captors. At just that moment, Drostan lobbed a handful of lit firecrackers into the room and took a shot at Brunrichter.
Jacob remembered one of the few things he knew about chemistry.
Formaldehyde is flammable.
The right side of the basement exploded in a shower of broken glass. Bits of preserved and pickled human organs rained down on them along with burning embers from overhead. The beams holding up the ceiling groaned as one of the upstairs walls collapsed. Smoke filled the basement, choking them and making it nearly impossible to see.
With a deafening crack, the ceiling at the opposite end of the basement collapsed, falling in a torrent of burning wood and debris between Jacob and the clockwork zombie masters.
“Cover me!” Jacob shouted. “I’m going after Mitch.”
Choking and wheezing from the smoke, Jacob lumbered toward where he had last seen his partner. Mitch was trying to get to his feet, hobbled by the stout rope that bound his ankles.
“Thank me later,” Jacob muttered, grabbing Mitch by the waist and heaving him over his shoulder. Mitch was dead weight, one arm still fastened behind him. Eyes streaming tears from the acrid smoke, lungs protesting the stench of chemicals and decomposing corpses, Jacob hurled himself through the doorway with Drostan following a heartbeat later.
They had barely reached the alley before the entire house went up with a bang.
The explosion rocked the ground under their feet and shattered windows in nearby houses. Dogs howled and babies screamed. The blast threw Jacob to his knees, knocking Mitch from his grasp to roll several times before ending in the gutter on the far side of the street. Drostan staggered but did not fall, backing away from the house, his gun still trained on the conflagration.
“What about Tumblety and the others?” Drostan asked in a strangled voice.
Jacob ignored his bloodied knees and bruised palms, managing to get to his feet. “I lost sight of them after the ceiling came down,” he said, coughing and choking on his words. “But if they’re still in there, they’re toast.” He stared at the Congeliere house as it burned. Not much was going to be left except for a charred crater.
“I could use a hand.” Mitch’s voice was strained and gravelly, but he still managed to sound impudent.
Jacob sighed and drew out a knife from a sheath on his belt. He righted Mitch to sit on the curb, then cut the rope around his ankles and freed his left arm. One eye was swelling shut, and half of Mitch’s face was purpling with a bruise. He had a split lip and a broken nose, and it looked as if he had taken a beating. Jacob guessed that the sound he heard on the transmitter was the bullet that had grazed Mitch’s arm.
“You’ve looked better,” Jacob observed.
“You took your sweet time.”
“We ran into complications on the way,” Drostan said, still warily watching the flaming wreckage, his gun fixed on the ruins.
“Complications!” Mitch croaked. “I was trapped in an ever-lovin’ coffin and attacked by mad scientists and zombies.”
“Stand in line,” Jacob said drily. “We got chased by hell hounds and Dracula’s coachman.”
“I know the cops in this part of town,” Drostan said, still keeping a wary eye on the flames. “We’d better be gone when they get here.”
Hans brought the carriage around, emerging from the billowing smoke like a dark avenging angel. “I trust the distraction was sufficient?” he asked as Jacob and Drostan helped Mitch into the carriage.
“Not exactly subtle, but it did the trick,” Jacob said. “Thanks.”
Hans managed a crooked smile. “If you’ll pardon my saying, sir. I had a stake in this fight. What had been done to those creatures made a mockery of what Mr. Farber did for me. I couldn’t stand for it.”
Jacob nodded. “You and me both, Hans. Now get us out of here, before we all end up in the clink. That fire should keep the cops at bay until our boys show up.”
“Capital idea, sir.”
Mitch stared at the burning remnants of the house on Ridge Avenue. “Do you think they’re dead?” he asked.
“Congeliere is. One of us put a bullet between his eyes,” Jacob replied, pretending not to notice that Mitch was shaking.
“What about the others?”
Jacob guessed that the horrors Mitch had seen, and how close he had come to joining Brunrichter’s army of clockwork zombies, would haunt Mitch’s dreams for a long time. He heard the unspoken need for certainty, for vengeance, and for a closed case. But that confirmation was something Jacob couldn’t give.
“Presumed dead,” Jacob said. “The Department may find evidence in the wreckage. Maybe not.”
“Nobody could survive a fire like that,” Mitch said as the carriage turned the corner and headed in the opposite direction of the clanging fire bells.
They had given New Pittsburgh’s firemen a busy night, Jacob thought. Give us a few more hours, and we’ll burn down the whole damn place.
“Not if they were in the blaze, no.” Drostan was watching Mitch with a look that said he knew something about combat shock. “But they’re both slippery, and they’ve stayed alive and out of jail by being hard to catch. If they had a secret exit, and time to get to it—”
“If they come back, we’ll be ready for them,” Jacob said. “And hey, you’ll probably get a commendation for bravery out of this—or at least, a few of the black marks taken off your record.”
A shadow of Mitch’s rakish grin spread across his face. “Think so? Just make sure to tell them, I got in that shot with one hand tied behind my back.”
# END #
If you want more about Mitch, Jacob and the Department of Supernatural Investigation, read our new steampunk novel, Iron & Blood, now available in print and ebook on Kindle/Kobo/Nook. Learn more about Gail, Larry and our books at www.JakeDesmet.com.
© 2015 Gail Z. Martin and Larry N. Martin. All rights reserved. Excerpt used by permission.
Table of Contents
Contents
Title
Special Thanks
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Appearances
About the Author
Also by John G. Hartness
BONUS -
Hell on Heels - A Quincy Harker, Demon Hunter Novella Page 12