The Mammoth Book of Dieselpunk

by Sean Wallace

  I glance over at Alma, and she’s staring over at me with sad eyes.

  “What happened?” she asks.

  “You know what happened,” I shrug. “Airships were invented, and the railway shut down. You think I don’t like airships, you should have heard Grandad go off on them. Ever see an old man swearing up at the sky? It was like he was telling the almighty himself to go dry up.”

  Alma chuckles. We walk across the street, and she gestures for me to follow her down the road.

  “I’ve got a big family,” I say. “A lot of cousins, aunts, uncles. An older brother and sister. Both my parents. But when it was time to read out Grandad’s will . . . he left Jules to me. The entire time I knew him he was telling me stories of the railways and the mines, it left me star struck. And then he just . . . out of all of his children and grandchildren, he gave her to me. She hadn’t been used in decades – she was in such a state of disrepair my parents said the most I’d get from her would be selling her for scrap metal. But I swore I’d get her running again. Restore her to her glory. Make sure she could do what she was made to do. Make my grandad proud.”

  I look down at the ground and kick a pebble, watching it roll across a road stained with shadows from above.

  “And I lost her,” I sigh.

  “It’s not your fault, Lloyd,” Alma says. “You gotta know that.”

  “I do. It’s just . . . it’s just . . . I’m all balled up. I don’t know what to do now. What comes next? I feel lost,” I say.

  Alma nods, and quietly, she takes a hand off the handle of her parasol and points to a large warehouse.

  “We’re here,” she says.

  “We were going somewhere?” I ask. “What is this?”

  “Never been here before? It’s the warehouse for the shop. I figured my brothers would have taken you here when we were kids, although it didn’t fill out like this until after they got their ships. I need to pick up some new inventory for the showroom. Come on,” Alma says.

  She pulls a key out of her pocket and starts to walk over to the large doors.

  “Get a wiggle on! I don’t have all day!” she shouts at me.

  I follow her up and step inside the warehouse with her. It’s huge inside – large Conestoga wagons left over from the great migration West, giant boulders of petrified wood, a small cluster of life-size soldier statues from some far off land.

  “I didn’t know you had so much stuff,” I whistled.

  “You’re telling me. Father’s trading has gotten out of hand as of late. One more shipload and we’ll have to get a second warehouse,” Alma says.

  She motions for me to follow her before she disappears behind a row of shelves. I roll my eyes and take off after her, twisting through the shelving units.

  “Back here!” she yells.

  I sigh and duck around another shelf, and come out next to Alma, who’s grinning at me like a mad woman.

  “. . . What?” I ask.

  Alma pushes me out from behind the shelf, into the middle of the warehouse.

  And I swear I feel my heart stop beating.

  Standing in the middle of the room, in titanic, faded glory, is a drill.

  She’s the size of a cable car – one of the few special drills commissioned for the Pacific Railway. Her hull is golden, and she’s got black, stylized paneling that twists up and down her sides, overlapping across her hood. I float over to her hull and walk along her side, mesmerized by the interlacing golden stars that splash across her.

  I know that pattern.

  “This is the Star Garnet,” I say in awe. “This is the leading drill from the Railways.”

  “Now that’s a Prospector who knows his drills. You can see how she’d be a bit too big to display in the shop?” Alma says slyly, walking up behind me.

  I open and close my mouth. I can’t believe this.

  This can’t be happening.

  “You look like a goldfish,” Alma chuckles.

  “How?” I ask, turning to her. “How did you get this?”

  “One of Father’s business associates found it abandoned in a landfill out in Utah, Father was visiting her and he saw it on display in her garden, gathering weeds. Took some big trading to get it – and moving it out here was no picnic either. But I think it was worth it. What do you think?”

  I look down the length of her. She’s faded and stained, covered in dents and rust, but I can see through all that, down to the foundation. Down to who she used to be in those old pictures my grandad would show me, in all her magnificence. And she’s something spectacular.

  “I think she’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life,” I say.

  Alma laughs and smacks me on the back.

  “Good! I know Jules was a different kind of drill, so it stands to reason it might take longer to fix this one up. Father will be available to meet with you this Saturday to talk about what parts you’ll be needing . . .”

  “. . . What?”

  I turn around and look at Alma.

  “The parts you’ll need. You know. To fix it,” she says.

  “Fix it?” I stutter. “You mean . . . you’re . . . you’re giving this to me?”

  Alma laughs again, and gestures for me to follow her over to a cabinet.

  “Think of it more as a . . . partnership. You help us fix it up, you run it, you keep half of the payoff. Now I know half doesn’t have as good ring to it as owning your own drill . . . but she is a big drill, she should pick up a lot more and at a faster rate too,” Alma says, clearly pleased.

  I stare at her, and back at the drill. The Star Garnet.

  “I . . . I can’t believe this Alma. I think I may be dreaming,” I say.

  “I could pinch you if you want.”

  “This is too good of you. Of your family. Why?” I ask. “Why are you doing this for me? You’re all sitting pretty with Around the World Curios and your brothers’ ships, why spend money on something like this? You don’t need it.”

  Alma looks at me amused and shakes her head. She reaches into the cabinet, pulls out a bottle, and blows some dust off of it.

  Scotch.

  “What’s your favorite thing about drilling, Lloyd?” Alma asks. “I know it isn’t about the gold or the dough. I’ve seen the look in your eyes. There’s something else down there in the dirt for you. But what?”

  She looks into my eyes, and I feel naked. I feel like she’s penetrating my soul, staring deep down inside me with those wild brown eyes.

  And I hope she never looks away.

  “It’s the freedom,” I say. “Being able to go anywhere, no air traffic control, no random searches, no being told you can’t drink or being forced to dock whenever you’re told. Just . . . going wherever you want, whatever direction you want, miles away from anyone who wants to control you.”

  “That’s respectable,” Alma nods. “For me, it’s about the adventure. The thrill of the unexpected. Sometimes there are restrictions for it, rules you gotta follow, but I don’t mind standing in a line to get to the main attraction. See, I’ve got this thirst for the unknown, and I’m willing to do whatever I can to find it. Fly. Dig. Sail. Drive. Walk. Sit around in a store full of treasures from all corners of the globe all day long and see who walks through my door.”

  She winks at me, and I can feel my cheeks flushing.

  “So those are my terms, Prospector. Fix this drill for me, and take me on an adventure. Think you can do that?” she asks.

  I look at her, her mischievous crooked grin, her wild brown eyes, and unyielding spirit. That look. It could make a dead man’s heart start up again.

  “Alma, baby, for this, I’ll mine out every diamond in the United States for you. I’ll pull out every last inch of gold and buy you a coat made of clouds, hell, I’ll break all the stars out of the sky and make you a pearl necklace out of them,” I say.

  “Mighty swell of you,” she laughs. “But I’d rather go mining for fossils. I think that’s more interesting.”
>
  She holds up her glass, and I raise mine in return.

  “To freedom and adventure,” she says.

  “. . . To expanding our horizons,” I say. “And to wherever the future takes us.”

  Thief of Hearts

  Trent Hergenrader

  The man called Hieronymus Dismas, Grandmaster Thief of People’s Granada, stood alongside his compatriots inside the rundown Taberna Fin del Mundo, all staring mutely into the depths of their beer mugs as they listened to the radio announcer writhing in orgiastic delight as the bastards from Madrid stroked in yet another goal.

  “Five-two! In the eighty-third minute, Jesus Alonso!” The announcer’s voice crackled through the speaker, the words echoing off the tile walls. “The power, the precision, the grace. They make it look so easy. Even Generalísimo Franco is on his feet, applauding in the royal box. Real Madrid five, Granada two!”

  Someone to his left muttered to the barkeep to switch the damn thing off but Hieronymus and the others quickly shouted him down. Six years ago to the day he and his Republican brothers had gathered in this very bar to listen and mourn as the fascists trumpeted the news of their final victory in the nation’s civil war. He and his comrades had withstood the ignominy of defeat in stony silence that day, so surely they could handle their team getting stuffed in a stupid sporting contest. Football is not life, Hieronymus told himself.

  And yet he could not deny football had given life back to them in the aftermath of the war. The season after league play resumed, tiny Granada CF won promotion to the first division where they enjoyed rubbing elbows with their moneybags neighbors from Valencia, Sevilla and Barcelona. For four proud seasons, Granada CF had avoided relegation, refusing to budge from their spot at the aristocrats’ table. More importantly, in that time they had not once but twice beaten the dictator’s golden boys of Real Madrid. On those drunken nights, the streets were awash with wine and celebration, as working-class folks allowed themselves – even if only just for a moment – to forget the wounds of the recent past, to soak in the pleasures of the present, and to muster enough courage to believe in the future again. Hieronymus knew it was the football team’s fighting spirit that had helped restore the dignity to the city’s downtrodden.

  But Granada CF’s run in the top flight looked to be ending after tonight’s humbling loss in the capital. From the start, the season had seemed like a battle against inevitability. To Hieronymus it felt altogether too much like the beginning of 1938, the year that saw the end of the war. While the French and Soviets presented the Republicans with outmoded guns and an arsenal of empty promises, the Germans and Italians conferred their Nationalist friends infinitely more valuable gifts. Combat dirigibles firebombed the Basques around the clock and automaton soldiers that needed no food, shelter, or rest, laid siege to Barcelona, while clockwork gendarmeries suppressed any revolutionary rabble in provincial backwaters like Córdoba and Granada. When Catalonia finally folded, the rest of the world turned its back on Spain to focus on the next European war that, unbeknownst to them, would soon overrun the globe.

  Of course, the man called Hieronymus had been living a civil war from birth. As a child of the streets and of uncertain parentage, he changed names more often than his clothes during the thin years of his youth, foraging the gutters for food, sleeping in alleys, begging with gypsies beneath the noses of the sneering bourgeoisie. As a student of the streets he became one with the city. The twisting maze of alleyways in the Moorish quarter was etched in his memory, and he knew the names of each family in the working class sections of town. When the civil war broke out, he found work as a runner between Republican outposts. His good looks, sharp mind and wry wit won him many friends, and before long they placed a gun in his hands. Unlike other young fighters who either deserted or fell asleep at their posts, he fought with distinction, executing any order – even those of the most brutal nature – without hesitation or question. The Republicans meant to exact retribution for every Nationalist crime, which led to an escalating contest of atrocities. He became a monster more than once on those grim nights, shedding whatever name he bore after he committed the deeds, as if abandoning the name would grant him absolution. And he did it all unflinchingly in the name of his comrades and their noble cause. For an all-devouring war that pitted brother against brother, it had given him a family who rewarded his sanguinary devotion with unconditional love.

  Sadly for them, the resistance in Granada did not last long. Isolated from their comrades in arms in Madrid and Barcelona, the Republican revolution in Granada was soon quelled and the city came under Nationalist control, allowing Franco to turn his attention north. The will drained from the movement as fighter after fighter traded resistance for acquiescence, though they would buy little safety with that cold coin. All looked lost in those dark days. But it was against that backdrop of blackest night that his star had risen.

  For it was then that the revolutionaries discovered his talent for stealing.

  He enjoyed flaunting the skills he had perfected in his youth. He ran night-time raids through the Nationalist encampments, where loose cash and sensitive military documents were drawn to his fleet fingers as if by magnetic attraction. His comrades dubbed him Hieronymus Dismas to commemorate his artistry in robbery, and granted him the honorific Grandmaster Thief of People’s Granada. They even held a ceremony bestowing on him a key to the city, all done in mockery of the ridiculous system of titles and offices used by the country’s nobility. Hieronymus dedicated his life to being a gadfly, an irritant, an agitator who tasked himself with reminding those in power that while the war had been settled in Granada, the Republican spirit would never die. It was a dangerous game, teasing the Black Squads into chasing shadows, but the last remaining revolutionaries in the city loved him dearly for it. He sold the stolen goods and information to the highest bidders and purchased guns, bombs and ammunition to fuel their guerilla warfare. In retaliation, the Guardia Civil swept through the old town tracking down most of the rebels who were too proud or too stupid to realize they were beaten. They abducted most of his comrades, riddled them with bullets and dumped the bodies in the choked ravines outside the city limits, like so much trash.

  Yet Hieronymus continued stealing. He turned his attention from the military to the aristocracy, breaking into their homes after dismantling their expensive Swiss security systems, with their polished brass gears and long golden chains. After looting as much as he could carry, he would paint the names of his fallen brothers on the bedroom ceiling in goat’s blood, letting the thick red ink drip down onto the pillows. With no further use for weapons in Granada, he then directed funds to the last Republican holdouts in Spain; and after they too had fallen, he sent guns and bullets to any outpost on the continent who could put them to good use. He again began to use many names in a never-ending shell game to throw off the authorities, but the name Hieronymus – the only name he had not taken but had been given – he kept close to his chest. Now only a handful of his most trusted brothers knew him by that secret name; the others were all long dead.

  The speakers in the Fin del Mundo squelched, bringing him back to the present as the football announcer’s voice rose in excitement as he described the action. “Huete to Berrida, Berrida to Rafa and back to Berrida. Madrid on the attack with space on the wing. Out to Ipina, who centers . . . GOAL MADRID! The cross to Jesus Alonso at the back post, who nods in his third goal on the night, the sixth for the Madrid. Astounding! Goals in the first, eighty-third and eighty-fifth minutes for Jesus Alonso.”

  The mood in the bar soured further and the curses turned angry. A drunkard smashed his mug in the fireplace. “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,” Hieronymus cried above the din. “That guy’s always on the end of a cross.”

  The blasphemous joke won him a round of grudging laughter before he raised his mug and declared a toast to their brave comrades who had fought bravely but fell in Madrid. He drained his drink and made his way to the toilet on wobbling legs. As he relieved himself, h
e rested his forehead against the cool wall to keep the room from spinning. As he buttoned up his trousers, he felt a sudden sting of intuition and his fingers froze. The tavern had gone impossibly quiet. No clinking of glasses, no chatter of conversation. The crowd wouldn’t have filed out into the streets yet; they’d stay late into the night recounting their grim stories of football and war, drinking to their shared sorrows.

  “The players take a victory lap, applauding the crowd,” the football announcer’s voice echoed from the barroom, distant as if in a dream. Hieronymus swallowed. The closet in which he stood had no other door, no window, no air shaft. Nowhere to escape. Nowhere to hide.

  The bathroom door hinges shrieked as Hieronymus emerged. Those in the bar stood as a forest of frozen men, their arms stiff, their pinched faces drained of color. The cheers from Madrid crackled over the speakers before the radio snapped off. Hieronymus crouched, took a long sidestep, and spied a half-dozen black clad figures, their beaten copper faces gleaming beneath their military berets. Each pointed a short-barreled shotgun.

  “Hieronymus Dismas,” a strident mechanical voice blared.

  He straightened and raised his hands without a word. Not a second later he heard the swish of a truncheon end with an audible crack as it landed behind his ear, and the bar disappeared.

  When Hieronymus opened his eyes, the rush of pain was immediate and overwhelming. Through the waves of agony, he mentally congratulated his captor on the ingenious nature of the torture. Hieronymus hung nude in the center of a spotlight in a darkened room, suspended horizontally by millions of threads, each of which was attached to an individual hair on his body, tugging his flesh into jagged peaks. The length of his legs, under his arms, on his toe knuckles, the nape of his neck, his eyebrows, between his legs. A chill breeze wafted over him and he twitched, initiating an ecstasy of pain as the millions of threads tightened and retracted to keep maximal tension on every hair without tearing a single follicle from his skin.