The Flux Engine

by Dan Willis

  Solomon pulled a lever protruding from the wall and suddenly the floor under John dropped away. He felt himself falling, then abruptly slammed into the soft sand of a dune. With a grunt and a stifled moan, Hickok landed beside him.

  Above them, Professor Solomon stared down through the open trap door in the bottom of his airship.

  “So long, boys,” he yelled as the vessel began to gain altitude. “Look on the bright side. Once one of you starts leaking, the scent of blood might draw in a Shredder or two. That way you won’t have to die of thirst.”

  The sight of the climbing airship suddenly went red and John leaned forward, blinking furiously. A drop of red blood spattered into the sand, forming a clump of hardened red in the thirsty sand. He felt another drop of liquid running down his cheek and soon another clump of red joined the first.

  He was bleeding from his eyes.

  Chapter 22

  The Valley of the Shadow of Death

  “Oh, Builder,” John covered his eyes with his hands as if that would stop the process that was changing his body, infecting him, turning him into a leaker.

  “Calm down, John.” Hickok’s voice was even but John could hear the urgency beneath it. “You need to stay calm.”

  “Or what?” he yelled, jumping to his feet. “I’ll die quicker?”

  “No!” Hickok shouted at him in a voice that was not to be ignored.

  John slumped forward, dropping to his knees in the scrubby grass and sand of the New Georgia plains.

  “Bleeding from the eyes isn’t a leaker symptom,” Hickok said. “Leakers bleed from their skin. Whatever’s happening, it’s probably a side effect of that sludge Solomon injected you with.”

  “What if I really am becoming a leaker?” John said, wincing against the ongoing pain popping up randomly throughout his body.

  “You’re not going to become a leaker,” Hickok said with absolute confidence.

  Something in the enforcer’s voice buoyed John’s spirits and he looked up. Hickok sat cross-legged on the ground with his handcuffed hands still behind him. He was slumped slightly to the left, favoring that side.

  “What makes you so sure?”

  Hickok smiled.

  “You notice how I’m not sweating and bleeding like you?”

  John nodded. Apart from his broken ribs, Hickok didn’t look particularly bothered by anything.

  “I’m pretty much immune to infection and disease in general,” he said. “It’s because of the elixir Doc Terminus makes for me. As long as I take it, I don’t have to worry about getting sick.”

  “How will that help me?”

  Hickok looked at the sun, hanging high in the sky. John guessed it was a little after noon.

  “Solomon said the stuff he injected you with takes time to work. I reckon if we get back to the Rose before the sun goes down, you’ll still have a chance. If you take the elixir, it should stop the transformation.”

  “How can it stop what’s already started?” John asked, a fresh rivulet of blood running down his cheek.

  Hickok struggled, trying to stand, but he paled as his weight came onto his injured left side and he sank back into the sand and scrub grass. “Give me a hand up, John.”

  John stood and grabbed Hickok by the right hand, pulling him to a standing position. The enforcer winced but gave no other sign of discomfort as he rose.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” John said. “How will this elixir of yours cure me?”

  “It might not,” Hickok admitted, striding through the sparse tufts of grass to the top of a sandy hillock. “But we’ll never know if we don’t get back to town.” He swept his eyes over the terrain, looking back, away from the direction Solomon’s airship had gone.

  John watched, not seeing any difference in the unending stretch of rolling desert prairie. Rolling hills of sandy soil and stubby grass were broken up occasionally by flat patches of broken hardpan and even the occasional scrub tree. As he looked, the vast barren wasteland disoriented him and after a minute or two he wasn’t sure which way the airship had gone.

  “That way,” Hickok said, pointing off in what seemed to John to be a random direction, then he started off, taking long strides through the brown grass. “I figure Solomon dropped us at least five miles from town. The ground’s pretty flat, so we should be able to make it if we don’t run into trouble.”

  A sudden thought occurred to John and he patted the pocket of his waistcoat. The smooth round shape of Robi’s compass was there and he smiled, hurrying to catch up.

  “Sylvia will be on her way to find us,” he said, falling into step beside Hickok.

  “Even if she knows we’re missing, she won’t know where we are unless she followed Solomon’s airship,” Hickok said. “If she did that, she’d be here by now.” He shook his head. “She’s not looking for us; she knows that the best thing she can do is stay put and wait for us to come to her.”

  “But she does know where we are,” John said. “Thanks to Robi.”

  “What’s she got to do with this?”

  “She’s on board the Desert Rose,” John said. “Sylvia let her aboard and helped her hide.”

  A look of disbelief washed over Hickok’s face, quickly replaced by astonishment, then surety.

  “Why you … you …”

  “She’ll come and get us,” John said with absolute certainty. “If she isn’t already on her way here.”

  “And just how is that light-fingered girl going to find us out here in the middle of nowhere?” Hickok asked. “She doesn’t know where we are any better than Sylvia does.”

  John thrust his hand into the pocket of his vest in a gesture of triumph and pulled out a small, round, smooth rock. His astonishment was complete and he stopped in his tracks. He checked his pockets again, but knew it was a futile gesture; the compass was gone. The rock must have gotten in his pocket when he rolled down the hill after Solomon tossed him out of the airship.

  “It’s gone,” he said, panic returning to his voice. “Robi gave me a sympathetic crystal in case we got separated but it’s gone.”

  Frantic, he looked back in the direction they had been walking, but there was no way to tell where they’d started. The compass must have fallen out of his pocket when he jumped on the Tommy, or maybe when he fell off. It could be anywhere, back at the flux works or in Solomon’s airship. Maybe he left it in his cabin back on the Rose.

  Wherever it was, it wasn’t going to be leading Robi to their rescue.

  “We’re not done yet,” Hickok said, nudging John into motion with his good shoulder. “We just need to keep walking.”

  “You still haven’t told me about Paragon Elixir.”

  Hickok sighed and nodded.

  “Paragon Elixir is a kind of Jekyll serum. It makes me strong and faster than a normal man,” he said. “It makes my muscles dense and my skin tough so I can withstand being shot and the bullets don’t penetrate.”

  “Doesn’t that hurt?” John asked.

  “Immensely, but it beats the alternative. It also renders me immune to diseases.”

  “What’s the catch?”

  Hickok gave John a wry smile and then nodded.

  “The Prophet said you were a smart one,” he said. “If you drink even one drop of Paragon Elixir, you’re addicted for life. If you take the elixir, it will change you; if you take it soon, you won’t become a leaker. The downside is that you’ll have to have a draught of the elixir every month for the rest of your life.”

  They walked on, up and down the rolling hillocks, through the prairie grass and across the open patches of flat hardpan. Hickok had presented John with a cure, a way out. Now he wouldn’t become a leaker, but what would he become? Doc Terminus would have to make elixir for him for the rest of his life. What price would he have to pay for that?

  “There’s more you aren’t telling me,” he said at last. “Isn’t there?”

  Hickok chuckled.

  “If you take the Paragon Elixir, you won�
��t become a leaker,” he said. “But you will become a Paragon. That kind of power can’t just be given to anyone, John. If you drink, you’re in. You’re one of us, an enforcer for the Prophet.”

  “He’s the one that pays Doc Terminus?

  Hickok nodded.

  John didn’t want to become a leaker, that was certain. But if he took the proffered escape, he’d be beholden to the Prophet and Doc Terminus for the rest of his life. They seemed to be good men, but what did he really know about them? And what about the Prophet’s mysterious partner, the one Solomon had mentioned?

  He’d seen opium addicts in withdrawal; it wasn’t pretty. Withdrawal from something as powerful as Paragon Elixir was likely to be fatal. If John took it, he would have to do whatever the Prophet told him to do, no better than a slave.

  Does it matter?

  He had to find his mother, and he wasn’t going to be able to do it as a leaker. Still, the Paragon Elixir must be an incredibly powerful alchemical serum. There was no telling what it would do to him; maybe he wouldn’t be able to hear crystals anymore. How would he find his mother then?

  John shook his head to clear it. This thinking wasn’t getting him anywhere. The only way he was going to be able to act for himself in the future was to take Hickok’s proffered escape now. He took a deep breath and made his decision.

  “Let’s hurry,” he said, picking up his pace. “I want to make sure we get back in time for the elixir to work.”

  Hickok nodded and lengthened his stride easily to match John.

  “We could use your little girlfriend about now,” he grumbled, twisting his wrists in a vain effort to get his handcuffs off.

  “I’m sorry,” John said, contrite. “I had a chance to shoot Solomon but I … I hesitated. If I’d just … shot him in the leg or something, he wouldn’t have captured me and we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

  Hickok nodded sagely.

  “Killing a man isn’t something to take lightly, John, and you’ve had to face it twice. The first time, you didn’t think, you just reacted. This time, you’d had plenty of time to think about it. That’s why you hesitated when the moment finally came.”

  “I guess I’m not really cut out to be an enforcer.”

  “Don’t get ahead of yourself.” Hickok chuckled. “Now you’ve seen the consequences of hesitating and you’ve lived to tell the tale. Next time, you might have a completely different reaction.”

  John’s stomach soured at the thought of there being a next time. Unfortunately, he was absolutely certain that, once he became a Paragon, there would be many “next times.”

  Terrific.

  The sun beat down on them, and it became harder and harder for John just to put one foot in front of the other. Occasionally a lizard or scorpion would scuttle out of their way, but there were no other signs of life as the sun crawled across the sky, sinking inexorably toward the horizon.

  John’s throat burned and his breath came in gasps. The air was like something from a furnace and it burned his lungs as he struggled on. The tears of blood that had run down his face for an hour dried up; now he’d give anything to be able to moisten his eyes.

  Finally, after what seemed like days, they crested a little hill and he could see a clump of trees standing in the distance. Trees meant shade, but more importantly, water.

  Of their own volition, John’s feet turned toward the trees, but Hickok stepped in front of him.

  “Not that way,” he said. “Shredders hunt in places like that.”

  John groaned but turned his feet back to follow Wild Bill. He desperately wanted to sit under a tree, even for a moment, not to mention having a drink, but the thought of a Shredder lying in wait gave him chills, even under the burning sun.

  Maybe I died somewhere back there and this is Hell.

  “Wait,” Hickok said, stopping so suddenly that John ran into him. He grunted in pain as John stepped back from his cuffed hands and broken ribs.

  John tried to ask why they were stopping, but he could only croak out an unintelligible sound.

  “Do you hear something?” Hickok asked, somehow divining John’s meaning.

  The sound of his own heartbeat and ragged breathing sounded in John’s ears, making it impossible to hear anything.

  “Do you know anything about sword fighting?” Hickok asked. There was a note of urgency, almost fear, in the enforcer’s voice that John had never heard before.

  He focused his mind and his ears started working again.

  Floating across the heat distortions of the hardpan and scrub grass, John could hear a scraping, grinding noise, like a gearbox that was out of oil. The sound had a haunting, ethereal quality to it, as if it weren’t actually real.

  “Take my sword,” Hickok said, turning his hips so John could see the short-bladed weapon still hanging from his hip. Apparently Professor Solomon didn’t consider a handcuffed man with a sword as a threat.

  John did as he was told and pulled the heavy weapon free of its sheath. The handle was some hardwood wrapped with leather and stained dark with what John felt certain was blood. He held the weapon loose in his hand, pointing the tip down and away from Hickok. It felt a lot heavier than it looked and while John felt certain he could use it to keep someone at bay for a while, he doubted he could attack with it for more than a few minutes.

  The strange noise rose from a mechanical screech to a haunting wail, as if he could hear the souls of the damned pleading for release. It sent shivers up his spine.

  Yep, I’m dead and this is Hell.

  “What is that?”

  “Scrapstalkers,” Hickok said, scrambling up to the top of a small hillock.

  The name turned John’s blood to ice water. Scrapstalkers were the big brothers of the scraproaches. Formed from hundreds of the little creatures glomming together, Scrapstalkers were basically human in shape, but the resemblance ended there. Scrapstalkers hated everything living, killing anyone or anything they could catch. No one knew how they existed, what strange force had given them life. It had happened when the Alliance set off Franklin’s Doomsday weapon. Something in that blast of unimaginable destruction had turned random scraps of metal into living things. Franklin was the most brilliant Architect to walk the planet and yet this seemed beyond even him. More like magic than science.

  John gripped the sword till his knuckles turned white. It wasn’t an ideal weapon, but it was something. The only defense against a Scrapstalker was to scatter their parts by smashing them apart with a club or blasting them apart with a shattergun.

  “There’s two coming in from the west,” Hickok said, sliding back down the hillock of brown grass. “Those two want to be seen.”

  “Is that bad?” John asked.

  Hickok nodded his head. “I’ve dealt with them before. Those two want to scare us, get us running right into an ambush.”

  The chill that had run up John’s spine spread out over his skin, leaving gooseflesh in its wake. The eerie wailing sound seemed to be everywhere now.

  “Feel up to running?” Hickok asked.

  John nodded.

  “Follow me and stay low,” he said. “Stalkers aren’t that smart, so if we run in a direction they don’t expect, they might lose our trail.”

  John nodded again and Hickok set off at a ground-eating trot, bent as low as his broken ribs would allow. Taking a deep breath, John followed, darting through the low grass along the side of a small hill. Hickok led him through low spots and beside the rolling hillocks in an effort to screen their passage from the two SScrapstalkers behind them. John wasn’t sure what would happen if they met one of the others as the pack tried to close in on them.

  He got his answer as they rounded a small rise. A vaguely human creature was heading in the direction he and Hickok had been going, crouched and moving on all fours. It had a bulky body made up of spinning gears and disjointed scraps of metal. Each limb was long and malformed, some longer than others or with joints in varying places. In the fading light, John c
ould clearly see the razor-like fingers that clung to the ends of its arms.

  If John and Hickok had been surprised to see the SScrapstalker, it was shocked to see them. It hissed a grinding screech of surprise and scuttled away from their sudden appearance. The Scrapstalker had a head and something vaguely resembling a face, with two eyes that glowed red and a long, thin metal mouth like the beak of a predator bird. After the instant of surprise, its red eyes burned in its metal head and it rose up on its legs and charged.

  Hickok moved at the same instant, rushing forward as if he were trying to bowl the creature over. John had never seen a SScrapstalker but he doubted Hickok had enough mass to oppose the creature. At the last possible second before the two titans collided, Hickok turned his body aside, thrusting out his leg as the Scrapstalker went by. Its awkward shaped legs collided with Hickok’s outstretched foot and the monster went tumbling into the dirt at John’s feet.

  “Smash its arms,” the enforcer yelled.

  Startled out of his paralysis, John swung the short sword with all his force. It struck the Scrapstalker’s flailing arm near the elbow. At the moment the blade made contact it rang like a bell and passed through the arm. Dozens of tiny bits that had made up the Scrapstalker’s arm were sent flying, arcing through the air, falling to pieces the moment they were no longer connected to their host.

  Without hesitation, John reversed his stroke, taking the monster’s other arm off at the shoulder as it rolled toward him. This time the shower of parts landed in the dirt by the creature’s side. It reversed its roll, bringing its body into contact with its scattered bits. John watched in horror as they seemed to come to life, rolling, wiggling, and crawling up the Scrapstalker’s body and reforming his arm.

  “Watch out.”

  John jumped back as Hickok suddenly sat on the creature. It opened its mouth to rend his back with its razor-like beak but Hickok had been waiting for that. Without hesitation, he thrust the chain connecting his handcuffs into the creature’s mouth. As it bit down, there was the sound of tearing metal and Hickok’s hands were free.