by Al Ewing
The clock was still ticking.
He could either go into the burning building for a third time to rescue the screaming, agonised boy he had left behind, or he could perform resuscitation on one of the children with him. Most of the boy's flesh was charred and blistered, the larger part of his skin burned away. He was a ruin. But the girl was hardly marked. Evidently she had simply inhaled too much smoke. But if he didn't get her breathing again immediately-
With that thought, El Sombra condemned the boy above him to death by fire.
Leaning down, surrounded by chaos, he began to breathe for the girl. He had let down too many during those five minutes, but the clock was still ticking. He still had the power to claw back a life, one more life stolen from the jaws of death. In the distance he heard the sound of clanking metal wings somewhere above the roar of the flames and the howls of the crowd, but he did not stop. Let them come. Leaning back, he began to compress her chest. One more life. That wasn't much, was it? Not very much at all.
Above him, the screaming finally died. He gritted his teeth as his arms pushed, bullying her heart into beating again. Then he leant down to inflate her lungs. Again. Again. She must breathe. She had to breathe.
She would not breathe.
Alexis Eisenberg stood at the window of the humble hovel overlooking the schoolhouse and watched as the masked man tried to resuscitate the girl. Hopefully he would fail - it would set the capstone on what had, all in all, been a very good night indeed. He took a sip of brandy from his hip flask, smiled, and remembered how it had all started.
He had known about the 'education program' for some weeks now. It was something he had permitted to continue. Oh, he could have gone in - crushed the whole enterprise under an iron fist, carted the ringleaders off to the Palace Of Beautiful Thoughts, perhaps shot the children in the street as an example. It would have been a perfectly good way of dealing with the symptoms, but it would not have cured the underlying disease; this idea the lower orders had that they knew what was best for their spawn.
He could shoot one hundred people, but that would only create one hundred martyrs. The cycle would have begun over again quickly enough. The only way to really squash these little rebellions was to make them collapse of their own accord. Have the people understand that the system was there to protect them, and that to move against it would only result in harm coming to those they loved.
And so he had planted a very small, very potent incendiary device.
It would be explained away as an accidental fire, caused by a candle tipping over. He had already begun planting the seeds of that conclusion, using his spies among the workers to amend the rumours that were circulating. And the results had been better than he could possibly have dreamed.
El Sombra knew who the power was now. Any rebellious elements would be dealt with. Not by the wingmen, but by the people themselves, who were all too eager to savage each other in the name of safety. His clumsy attempts to bring the people together under the banner of Old Pasito were doomed to failure. There was no Pasito anymore. Pasito had been a town of friends and good fellowship - but Aldea was a place of strangers and mistrust. And that made it easy to control.
And deep down, all that was nothing compared to one great triumph - Alexis had hurt the masked man. Where was his laugh now? He had seen innocents burn to death. He had, Alexis was certain, killed at least one child to save it from pain.
Later, Alexis would consult with Master Minus, the expert in mental distress, and find out how deeply he had managed to wound his enemy. For now, he simply watched. The girl was still not breathing, and his wingmen were getting closer. It would be the cherry on the icing if El Sombra had to let her die to save his own skin, or better, be shot dead as he fruitlessly tried to restart her heart.
Alexis stroked his fingertip lightly over the scar on his cheek and leant forward, grinning like a jackal, to watch.
As the clank and creak of wings filled the sky, El Sombra stood, cradling the little body in his arms. Time had run out.
"Move, all of you! Follow me!" He yelled it at the top of his lungs, but the crowd did not seem to hear. A couple of the battered rioters broke off from their fighting to look at him as he ran for the nearest alley, but most kept up their war without even turning around.
Running into the shadows of the alley, El Sombra heard the storm of creaking wings thunder over the burning schoolhouse. Something was shouted in German: An order to stop fighting or face the consequences. Before the sentence had finished it was drowned out by the clatter of machine-gun fire. More lives he had failed to save.
And then, in El Sombra's arms, the little girl coughed softly. Her name was Graciela and her parents were sitting in their dwelling and sobbing as they heard the shots ring out. They had lost all hope.
Graciela began to breathe gently, in and out, and despite himself, the man behind the mask smiled.
He did not smile as he ran his fingers over the burst blisters on the soles of his feet. He had failed the people when they needed him most. He had allowed three children and an old woman to die and run while others were gunned down. He had had no choice in any of this, it was true, and he had done the best he could in the situation.
But all the same, he had failed.
He had spent a great deal of time learning everything he needed to know to conduct a one-man war against his enemies - and virtually no time learning how to help his friends. Oh, he knew resuscitation, and the treatment of wounds, but he had had no idea that the people of the town were trying, against all hope, to give their children an understanding of a life beyond slavery and despair. Earlier, he had moaned to father Santiago like a cretin that there was no resistance. Father Santiago effectively lived in a cave - of course there would be pockets of resistance that would spring up without his knowledge. It would not have taken much effort for El Sombra to find out about them, and yet he had blithely carried on down his own path, like a train on a track, unable to deviate for an instant. He had amassed an arsenal of guns and ammunition for the people to enact his personal vengeance, but had not bothered himself with bringing them hope.
He had been a fool.
He looked towards the town and then stood and began walking in the opposite direction. He could not return to the priest's shack just yet. He did not need a bed or home-cooked food. He needed the desert, and heat, and solitude. He needed to think.
Things would have to change.
Alexis leant back in his bed and smiled. He had suspected it for a long time, but seeing his enemy's face lit by the firelight, seeing that look of grief and shame and horror... there could be no mistake.
Alexis knew who El Sombra really was.
In the morning, he would discuss his suspicion with Master Minus. Together they would work out a plan of attack, something to run parallel with his father's bumbling attempts to have him killed. Something to succeed where Herr Generaloberst had failed. He turned on his side and thought about children, burning in a furnace of flaming timber.
He slept like a baby.
CHAPTER FIVE
Zinnsoldat
Seven days later and the dawn was breaking. Jesus Santiago watched the desert sun slowly rising over the dust and the rock, turning both a bloody orange. He was taking a chance - he knew that leaving his basement was not to be taken lightly. His occasional trips to the town for information were risky enough. But to stand outside his home doing nothing - making both it and him a target for any desert patrol that might venture out of its usual pattern - well, that was sheer foolishness.
And yet, the sunrise was very beautiful.
Since El Sombra had come to the town, Jesus had found it easier to take joy in the small things. It was as though he'd brought hope itself back with him from the grave. Things that had been so easily forgotten in the name of survival - laughter, courage, defiance - found themselves embodied in him. Since the fire at the schoolhouse, Jesus had seen little of the masked man, but the reports still came to him of curfew-breakers
saved from death, of soldiers and wingmen cursing lost shipments of ammunition. His friend had been busy - but his self-imposed task was now a private penance, it seemed, for imagined sins.
Jesus hoped the penance was over soon. He missed his friend.
There was movement behind him on the roof of the shack, and then the sound of a body hitting the dirt. Jesus turned to see El Sombra crouched, cat-like, the dust still swirling around the soles of his bare feet, his sword gripped in his hand. He smiled at the eyes behind the mask, and said the first thing that came into his head.
"They're going to kill you."
El Sombra looked up from his egg, tearing off a piece of the white with his fingertips. "That was a very pessimistic way to greet a friend, amigo."
Jesus shrugged, smiling as he leant back in his chair, a glass of good whisky in his hand. "I only repeat what I hear. I'd have told you sooner, but you've been in the desert for days, you know? Did what happened at the schoolhouse hit you that hard?"
El Sombra scowled. "What do you think?"
Jesus hung his head. "It's my fault. I should have known what Verdad and the others were doing. If I'd kept you informed, you could have..."
El Sombra shook his head. "No, it wasn't you. It's in the past now. Besides, I haven't been sitting around crying like a schoolboy. I've been waylaying as many foot patrols as I can - trying to starve their supply routes. It's like chess - they have six or seven routes, but they all need to go through shade at some point. If they march their men through the open desert all the way, their men die. But if I try and take them out in the open desert, their snipers are more likely to draw a bead on me before I get to them - so I die. So I have to guess where they're going and then find a shady patch along the way to hide in until they come. It's a science, my friend, but I'm getting much better at it."
"I hate to say it, but... that isn't like chess in the slightest."
"Well, I've never played chess. The important thing, amigo, is I'm starting to put a dent in their supplies again. Crippling their Engine was a good idea, but I forgot that if generals have a problem, they throw human lives at it until it goes away."
"So they're using their soldiers as packhorses, marching them through the desert laden down with their guns and medicine?"
"And the strong drink. Don't forget the strong drink."
"They must be killing a dozen every trip."
The masked man shook his head. "They've shipped in trolleys infused with their special metal. If you kick an empty one, it floats into the air and keeps going for a mile or more. They're expensive and difficult to make, so I do that a lot. A similar principle to the wings - designed to lighten the load enough to make carrying it across the desert a little less impossible."
"So I suppose you're killing a dozen every trip instead?"
"One thing the Ultimate Reich is not short of is human lives, amigo. What were you saying about them killing me?"
Jesus sat down, leaning back in his chair. "The soldiers are making noises about dealing with you once and for all. After what happened at the schoolhouse, you've become a much more sympathetic figure to the people. It's just a shame you weren't around to capitalise on it, you know? Anyway, they have something cooked up that's apparently going to get rid of you once and for all... something called Der Zinnsoldat."
El Sombra's eyes widened. Jesus frowned. "Does that ring any bells?"
The masked man shook his head. "Zinnsoldat is bastardese for 'Tin Soldier'. It's not a name that strikes fear into my heart, amigo, put it that way."
Jesus tapped his fingertips together gently, watching as El Sombra finished his egg and used a hunk of bread to mop up the remains of the yolk. The priest murmured a few halting, guttural syllables.
El Sombra frowned. "What the hell was that?"
"I was speaking English. It roughly translates as 'what does a name mean? A rose with a different name would have the same sweet smell'. A famous quotation from Shakespeare, who Djego would certainly have known all about."
El Sombra winced at the name, then growled, tearing into the bread with his teeth. "Let's keep him out of this."
"Look, I wouldn't be telling you about this if they were just saying they were going to kill you, you know? They say that every day. This is a lot more serious, my friend... more sinister. Whatever this Tin Soldier does, it's going to be bad. Keep your eyes peeled."
El Sombra nodded. "It's nothing, amigo. You worry too much. Listen, as long as I'm here, I have something I need to ask you. There are things I need to know in this town before I can be truly effective here. For example, there's a house near the centre of the town with all the upstairs windows covered in some kind of canvas. I need to know more about it."
Jesus nodded. "The House Without Windows? You know as much as I do. Master Plus lives there and for some reason he keeps the upper floor blocked off like that - that's everything. It's one of those secrets it isn't healthy to learn, you know?"
The masked man smiled. "Then I'll have to find out first hand."
As the sunrise hit the Red Dome, it seemed to wash the General's office in a sea of blood. As he looked out through the tinted windows, the sun seemed a boiling mass of fire, a pitiless red eye belonging to a terrifying monster, opening slowly onto the town and bathing it in a gaze that turned it to stone. He couldn't help but smile slightly at that idea, the great weathered face cracking a little. He turned to look at his imposing guest and let out a soft chuckle. There was such a monster stalking Aldea today, and he had its leash in his hand.
There was a knock.
The General grinned. "Come in, Master Plus. Come in and meet our new toy."
The door opened, and the fat man shuffled in, keeping his eyes lowered, as the General knew he would. Eisenberg said nothing, waiting with his arms folded for the little fat man's eyes to rise and take in the sight of his new friend. Slowly, Master Plus lifted his head - and then took two stumbling steps back, a gasp torn from the depths of his throat, sweat beading on his brow.
It was the reaction General Eisenberg had been hoping for. "Be careful, Mein Herr. You will give yourself a heart attack."
Master Plus said nothing, only panted, clutching his chest and regaining his feet, his eyes bulging.
Eisenberg smiled. "Master Plus, may I present to you - Der Zinnsoldat."
It was ten feet tall, and shaped roughly like a man.
The posture, however, was closer to that of a gorilla - presumably to allow it to fit into smaller spaces, such as the office. The two massive paws, like industrial diggers, clutched and flexed, metal joints squeaking as the network of hydraulic pipes that ran like creepers up and down the forearms hissed menacingly. It had no head, as such, but there was an approximation of a face in its chest, comprised of a pair of massive iron doors, locked shut, with small horizontal slits which glowed orange with the heat of the coals behind. Occasionally a bright ember would drop to the carpet, as though the creature was drooling in anticipation of the kill, and glow for a terrifying moment before dying away. Above the furnace apparatus were a pair of vents, which some enterprising engineer had fashioned into the semblance of eyes, giving it an expression of cold and merciless calculation. On the monster's back, there was a large metal dome, like the shell of some hideous beetle, and rising from this were six metal pipes, for the purpose of letting off and circulating steam within the massive robot, and a chimney that belched the occasional puff of tar-black smoke into the air as it moved. Underneath the shell could be heard a series of clicks and rattles, a constant ticking of clockwork that sounded like nothing so much as an army of devouring insects on the march, as the beast emotionlessly processed its latest directives. The final touch, rising from one shoulder, was a small hydraulic chamber, decorated with the swastika, like a brand to show ownership - or a tattoo to show allegiance.
It moved slowly, leaning forward and staring at Master Plus as though measuring the trembling fat man as a threat. The grabbers closed shut, forming into massive crushing clubs.
The slowness of its gait was even more terrible, for it gave the impression that the monster was only storing its power, that any moment it might spring forward with the speed of a striking cobra, and crush the head of the fat man between its metal hands, popping the skull like a boil.
It radiated power, menace, and a cold mechanical contempt for all that could not be represented in numbers and statistics. It was the representation of all that the Ultimate Reich was and all it planned - the icy dominion of inhuman efficiency over the soul of man.
Eisenberg smiled, running his hand gently over the metal shoulder of the immense machine. "Isnt it wonderful? Berlin has only six of these. We're very lucky to be allowed to borrow one. I hope you realise how highly the Führer values this experiment."
Master Plus swallowed hard and took a faltering step closer. "What... what in heaven's name is it?"
Eisenberg looked over at the fat man, smiling. "It is a machine in the shape of man, Mein Herr. Or rather, in the shape of an assassin. This wonderful creation will solve a certain masked problem that afflicts us both; disrupting work, stealing valuable supplies, committing murder with impunity."
Master Plus swallowed gently. "El Sombra."
Eisenberg's cold grey eyes narrowed. "I do not need to be reminded of his alias, Master Plus."
The fat man looked at the floor. "My deepest apologies, Generaloberst, I did not mean..."
"Why has there been no salute yet from you, dog? Forgotten your place here already? Heil Hitler!" It was barked like a drill sergeant. Master Plus shuddered and snapped back a salute, almost crying.
"Heil Hitler!"
The General smiled and nodded. "That's better. It wouldn't do to make the wrong impression on my friend here... would it?" The immense robot hissed like a cobra, a cloud of steam filling the room as it moved forward a step, the grabbers creaking and flexing. It was all that Master Plus could do not to soil himself then and there. Eisenberg chuckled.