39 – GOIN' OVER THE TOP
They climbed up the scrapyard wall, slow and steady. There were many footholds, but many more places to lose your footing. The wall shifted and shook as they went, and they were never entirely certain that a mechanical arm wouldn't reach out from it to grab them—or push them off.
When they reached the summit, and glanced back down at Oddcopper, who circled the clearing sullenly, they got a bird's eye view of much of the Rust Valley. It was quite a sight. Those winding walls went on for what looked like miles. Some said the Clockwork Commune had made themselves a town from the junk. They'd done more than that. They'd made a sprawling city. Hell, Nox might've even called it an empire. But there was only one Iron Empire in Altadas. Someone had to go. Nox wasn't entirely sure who it'd be.
“You still hell-bent on searchin' all that?” Nox asked Laura.
“You would,” she replied, “if it was your mama.”
“I suppose I would.”
“But,” Laura said, “maybe we won't find her.”
“Sometimes you don't.” Nox had spent many years in searches of his own, to the point that he'd almost given up. Yet even then, a part of him pushed him on. It was the same part that urged him to survive. Some people lived to live, but he lived for vengeance. Even now, with vengeance had, that part of him wanted more. You'll never be satisfied, he thought to himself, a message for Laura, and a message for himself.
Then his eyes caught the glint of something far off. From the wall tops, he could see Porridge's copter, still parked, only a few scrapyard streets away. He only hoped that Porridge had that urge to survive as strong as he did.
“We're close to gettin' outta here,” Nox said, pointing to the copter.
“What is it?” Luke asked. From this far off, it looked like a heap of junk, almost blending into the background. Up close, it didn't look a whole lot better.
Laura perked up. “Could that be—?”
“No,” Nox said, knowing what she meant. It ain't your mama. God knows where she is. Why, maybe he don't know either. He was thankful for the privacy of thoughts. You got to voice the ugly truth without ever forcing good folk to hear it. But bad folk? Well, he'd have no problem forcing them.
“It's a friend,” Nox added. “And a way out. We just need to get there.”
“We need to get down first,” Luke said, peering down the steep slope. “It's dark down there.”
It was. It was like the shadows had gathered around the iron prison. Who knew what hid inside them.
“Well then,” Nox said. “Ain't it lucky I brought the light.”
He struck his shoulder pad, which fired the newly-restored mechanical owl out into the sky. It hovered above the cloud of darkness for a moment, flapping its wings. Then its eyes lit up, revealing a horde of constructs assembled below.
While Luke and Laura gasped at the sight, the Coilhunter leapt into action. He threw himself off the edge, firing a grappling hook towards the owl. It latched on, and he swung across the area, firing a rifle with his other hand. He barely even needed to aim. Everywhere below, he had a shot.
Then, as he cleared a little opening in the centre of the horde, and as the owl struggled to support his weight, he snapped the wire and landed with a thud amidst the ravenous constructs. They turned to him and raised their blades and saws and bits of rusted metal. He turned to them and raised his guns.
He fired, just as the first of them leapt at him, letting his metal-piercing bullets tear through their mechanical innards, breaking the chains of cogs and springs, strewing apart their assembled hearts. He didn't wait for them to stumble or fall. He turned his rifles on the next, like the hands of a steady clock, even as he ended the ticks and tocks of the leaping constructs around him. Everything was the bang of guns and the clash of metal. Nox threw aside the emptied rifles, not even bothering to reload them. He just pulled another pre-loaded one from his back, and then two at a time. He was just as sure a shot with both hands. But like a clock, he only had two hands, and he couldn't point at every number. As some went down in front of him, others leapt up behind him, stabbing and slashing at the nape of his neck. There was armour there, but he wasn't the only one with armour-piercing weapons. Some of them had saws built into their arms which could slice through plating as if it were butter.
That was when Laura's practised shots came in. She didn't go all guns blazing like Nox did. She couldn't. She only had one gun. Instead, she took it slow and steady, lining up each shot, holding it in her line of sight until she was certain she had the kill. That was how she did it back at the ranch when the bandits came. That was how half of those bandits wound up dead. If she hadn't run out of bullets, she might've got the rest of them too.
So, now she didn't waste a shot. Just as a saw clipped the Coilhunter's armour, she blasted that construct apart, careful not to pierce Nox instead. Luke tried to follow suit, eyeing up a shot for a long time like Laura, but he never pulled the trigger. If you were facing bandits, that might've been all you needed. A deterrent. But the constructs didn't fear bullets like men did. They craved the metal, even if it left them dead.
By the end of it, which came swifter for the constructs than even the Coilhunter expected, the ground was more cluttered than ever. Sometimes you couldn't even tell those heaps of scrap were once living things—or if maybe they were still living. It was a lot cleaner than Nox's usual gunfights. The ground was littered with oil and cogs instead of blood and guts.
The kids climbed down as quick as they could, with Laura taking more care, and Luke jumping off about five feet from the bottom. The boy dusted himself off and checked that he still had his satchel. Normally in the Rust Valley you had to check if you still had your legs. There was time for that yet.
“We've gotta be quick,” Nox said. They were so close to the copter, but the winding passages meant they had to travel farther away before they could get there. Sometimes to get to safety you had to move closer to danger.
“What about Oddcopper?” Luke asked. “He can't climb.”
“We have to leave him.”
“Why?”
“He can't climb.”
“But they'll kill him.”
“They'll kill us.”
It hadn't quite dawned on Nox that Laura was awfully quiet. She hadn't condemned the little rolling construct. She hadn't urged them on or offered to fight the good fight. Instead, her face grew slowly ashen, and her eyes grew wide. When Nox finally noticed it, he turned to see where she was staring.
There, in the distance, half covered in shadow, was a woman, surrounded by many different constructs of all shapes and sizes. She didn't look like a prisoner. She didn't look like prey.
Luke gasped when he saw her.
“Mama.”
40 – MAMA
You could tell she was their mama. She had their same thick, sun-bleached hair. She had that same roundness in her face. She even had that same look of sorrow in her deep blue eyes. She was their mama all right. But the Coilhunter knew that right now, she was also something else.
Luke tried to run to her, letting himself be reeled in by the heart. But Nox held out his arm, blocking the kid's advance. The boy looked up at him, but Nox kept his eyes on the woman across the way, that woman surrounded by so many constructs that it almost looked like she had joined the Commune. They say looks can be deceiving, but sometimes things are just what they seem.
“Luke!” the woman cried, clutching the sides of her dress. “Laura!”
Nox could feel Luke trying to press forward, so he pressed back. Laura didn't try at all. Though she'd came looking for her mama, she'd likely found it wasn't to come running into her arms. It was so she could tell her face to face what she felt deep inside. It wasn't wisdom that held her back. It was anger.
“Wait,” Nox said quietly, as Luke struggled with his arm. The boy would have dug his nails in if the Coilhunter wasn't wearing armour. Right now, Nox was thinking that maybe they all needed shields.
“W
here were you?” Laura shouted across. The distance between them was just far enough to play a game of fifty paces. There was no brush between, no rolling tumbleweeds. Just those two opposing forces, ready to sling their tongues.
“I was here,” her mother said, stating the obvious. Nox knew what Laura really meant: why did you go? She'd heard the first answer her mother gave all those months ago, that tale about research and science. That explained where she was going. It didn't explain why she left.
“You left us,” Laura said. Nox could hear the anger in her voice, tempered by tears. The Wild North would dry those up soon enough, leaving just the anger. It did it to the best of them. The worst of them already came dried up.
“I had to find out.” Her mother seemed quite earnest, almost pleading as she spoke. She didn't have to say it with her words. She said it with her eyes. Please believe me.
“Well?” Nox asked. “What did ya find?” He let the grit gather in his throat, where there were none of his own tears clogging the way. He let his voice rattle off like gunfire. He let the black smoke explode out of his mask, as if his whole body was now a smoking gun.
The mother looked at him, with her own questions in her eyes. She no doubt wondered who he was. He had an answer for that. I'm the one who picked up the pieces after you left. The Wild North was full of broken families, but most mothers who were gone didn't leave willingly. They left at the end of the barrel of a gun. But her? She had a choice.
“What did you find?” Laura asked. If she wouldn't answer the Coilhunter, she'd have to answer her.
“They're just like us,” her mother said.
Nox humphed. “You mean they abandon their young?”
The woman had too many tears in her eyes to give him a fiery glare. He might've even pitied her, were it not for his gut reminding him where they were, and for his eyes reminding him of all those constructs surrounding her, not moving an inch, not flaying the skin off her like they did to everyone else.
“I had to know,” she said. People in the Wild North weren't known for their conviction. The criminals flipped from one gang to another, offing the leader to gain favour in the next, until they ended up in the way of someone else. The rest of the folk paid protection money to any gang that came their way, until they eventually ended up paying both sides. There wasn't room for conviction there, just like there wasn't room for law. But Nox'd make room.
“So?” Nox asked. “Did you find that key to perpetual motion?”
“No,” she replied. “I found somethin' better.”
“What'd you find?”
“I found out how to merge metal and flesh.”
Then something advanced from the shadows behind her, and Nox was quick to pull out a gun. But he didn't fire. It wasn't quite the shock that held him back, or the fact that he saw a man there, with parts of him replaced with machinery. It was what Luke said.
“Papa.”
41 – PAPA
Luke didn't try to run to his father. Only part of that creature standing across the way was his papa. The other part—or the other parts—were something else. They weren't just scrapyard metal. They were as living as he was. He was a collection of pieces, as good as any other member of the Clockwork Commune.
“What did you do?” Laura asked, struggling with the words.
“I made a miracle,” her mother said.
An abomination, Nox thought. He would've said it out loud, but wanted to save the kids from hearing it. He would've liked to save them from seeing it too.
Their papa's left arm was entirely replaced from the shoulder down, ending in a three-finger clamp. His jaw was iron, and part of his ribcage was ripped out, with metal plating soldered straight into the skin. His right foot was gone, ending in a piece of iron girder. Clearly he was a work in progress. Maybe there'd be nothing of him left by the time she was done.
“You're a monster,” Luke blurted. Maybe he also only meant to think it. Or maybe he meant those words for his mama. You could have all your human parts and still be one.
“Don't say that, Luke,” his papa said. A tear rolled down his cheek, straight onto his iron jaw. Maybe there was still a human heart in him after all.
“This is our next step,” his mama said. “Our evolution.”
“I thought evolution was what happened in nature,” Nox said. “Ain't nothin' natural about this.”
“We made them,” she replied. “Years ago now. Doctor Ailswee Barnaby. A brilliant man.” She kind of twitched as she spoke, but there weren't any cogs or pistons moving her. “But now it's come full circle. They can make us. Life making life, making life.”
Nox didn't know about that. He knew about death much better. Didn't matter if you were made of metal or flesh. It came for you just as good. Maybe, in that way, there wasn't much of a difference. But right now he could see a difference. He could see she was crazy.
“We were gonna come back,” she said, looking to her kids now, clenching her hands together as if it were a long-held prayer. “We'd come back. We wouldn't just keep this gift to ourselves. We'd share it with you too.”
Nox's fingers clenched his gun a little tighter. Her words were like someone else drawing a gun. It was one thing them making monsters of themselves, but her eyes were on Luke and Laura now. Nox swore silently to himself that her hands wouldn't be on them too.
“You're crazy,” Nox said.
“That's what they said about all advances in science. Don't you think people look at you and your gadgets and your monowheel, and don't you think they think you're crazy too?”
And maybe they did, and maybe she thought that she was just making the world a better place, just like him. But she'd already hurt her kids. He wasn't going to let her do it again.
The father was silent, the obedient lapdog. There were enough of those at the sides of the mad and the menacing, helping them achieve their evil end. You didn't have to be the one who pulled the trigger. You just had to be silent while it was happening. Silence was an inexhaustible ammunition, held by good people too.
Nox saw Luke looking over at Laura, a desperate plea for what to do. Maybe he wanted her to tell him that it was okay, that those two monsters across the way were still their parents, that they could all go back to playing happy family. But it'd just be playing. That boy had learnt well the damage that lies could do.
“Won't you come with us?” his mama asked. She must've noticed his glance to his sister, spotted that little moment of doubt, and leapt on it like a predator. She was so quick to ditch her kids, and just as quick to scoop them back up. They'd be just another set of bodies in her experiments.
“They ain't goin' nowhere,” Nox said, placing a firm hand on Luke's shoulder, keeping the other clutching his gun.
Their mama didn't look at him. She bypassed him entirely, setting her pleading, preying eyes on her little boy and girl, looking back and forth between them. She played their hearts like Nox played his guitar. You could almost hear the twang.
But Luke and Laura replied with a silence of a different kind. It wasn't the silence of obedience or acquiescence, or of looking the other way. It was the silence of defiance, even if it was so terribly hard to defy.
The constructs took a small, almost imperceptible step forward. Nox saw it, making a small, almost imperceptible adjustment to his gun. Mama and papa weren't going to take no for an answer. They were going to have their family back, or they were going to discipline them.
“Back off,” Nox said. “Don't let this get ugly. Don't you think they've seen enough?”
“We want them to see the way. This is the only way.”
Nox knew that wasn't true. He raised the pistol. “I know another.”
The glares were intense. The tears were gone in their mama's eyes. Now there was just the fire, like the periodic flames that dotted the ruins of the Rust Valley. Their papa stared blankly, like an empty vessel. Yet when the constructs took a step forward, he did too.
Nox kept his eyes on them, and kept h
is gun on them too. He took a deep breath, letting the smoke filter out slowly. He spoke the next words slow and quiet, just high enough for the kids to hear them.
“Run.”
42 – RUN
The children ran, but so did the constructs that surrounded their parents. They leapt out in force and number, too many for the Coilhunter's bullets. He gunned them down, not one by one, but in twos and threes, until bullet casings clattered off the ground as quickly as his scrapyard foes. He backed away with each blast, stealing another second, giving them all to the trigger.
And then, far behind, where he could barely hear the frantic footfalls of Luke and Laura, he heard a mighty crash. He turned his head just enough to see, keeping his guns pointed forward. His eyes went wide at the sight of the scrapyard wall they had previously been imprisoned in bursting apart. Out of the debris came the Iron Gunslinger, more patchwork than ever, with new eyes that settled on the panicked children that stood in shock before it.
So Nox ran too. Not away from danger, but straight into it. He ran for the children, and for this undying foe, knowing well that he could not replace his own limbs or eyes, and did not bleed oil. But then neither could Luke or Laura, so long as Nox kept them away from their parents' experiments.
One of the Iron Gunslinger's legs was pinned inside the wall, but it was tall and vast, and could swipe with its mighty arms. Debris still rained down from its entrance, but for every piece that landed, it threw another up into the air, launching flattened vehicles towards the Coilhunter as it raced across. Nox dodged one, then rolled out of the way of another, with the weight of his armour almost toppling him as he got back to his feet. He stumbled on, grimacing as a landship turret struck his leg, then grunting as he tripped over a tyre that skidded towards his feet.
Then the rain of debris stopped, and he watched as the Iron Gunslinger scooped up Laura in one mighty fist and shoved her into an opening in the scrap wall, sealing the entrance with the hull of a burnt-out truck. As Luke tried to stop it and free his sister, it snatched him up. The boy shouted and flailed and squirmed, but the hands grew tighter around his waist. Nox skidded to a halt, pulling his rifle from his back. This was it, he knew. The last gun. The last shots. He could almost hear the last, fleeting breaths of Luke to match.
Rustkiller - A Science Fiction Western Adventure (The Coilhunter Chronicles Book 2) Page 12