The Mammoth Book of Dieselpunk

by Sean Wallace

  Outside, the soldiers had already burst open the gate and climbed the path to the palace. They found dozens of servants leaving through the main door, hands on their heads.

  Joana said goodbye to Dom Pedro III. With her heart pounding, she took the baby from the wet nurse’s lap. The child was crying. She pulled the tiny copy of the old Emperor against her chest and walked to the throne.

  “What are you doing?” asked Bernardes, his arms held up like a pedestrian surprised by a thief.

  “I’m taking the Prince away from here. But I need help.” She fit the key in a discreet elevation on the throne’s backrest. With a crack, the imperial chair slid to one side, revealing a passage.

  A warning shot hit the wall above her head.

  “Get away from there,” growled the megaphone. Joana shrunk back.

  The guard looked at her, then at the baby. He drew his pistol.

  “Go,” he said. He turned and unloaded the weapon against the gyroplane. The aircraft retreated some meters, a spotlight blown.

  “Thanks,” responded Joana, diving into the passageway. She still had time to see the door close down before the throne slid back. She descended a ladder as fast as she could with only one free hand. She tried not to think about shots and death.

  The descent was longer than she imagined.

  She reached a dark chamber, probably contiguous with the generator that fed the Palace, judging by the electric buzz she heard. There was a corridor there. She followed it, her back bent to not hit her head on the low roof. Small lamps lit up when she passed.

  The corridor was also longer than she expected.

  She calculated walking for fifteen or twenty minutes before reaching a wall of wet bricks with a cross hanging on it. Apparently, the exit was a hatch just above her head. With some difficulty, she opened the rusty iron and climbed into a miniscule room. The only door was locked by a device composed of three bolts and a cylinder. The ring was the key. She put it in the cylinder, turned it. The door opened.

  The moon’s yellowish halo had begun to overpower the clouds. She tried to figure out where she was. She had just left a hut, concrete on the inside and slats on the outside, embedded in a hillside, after crossing almost two thousand meters underground. Ahead, a deck rose above the rocks to the sea. Anyone looking down from the road railing behind her would see nothing more than a fisherman’s shed.

  Joana walked to the edge of the deck. Where there should have been a motorboat waiting for the Emperor, only waves licking the rocks. She descended to the narrow strip of sand that ringed the beach up to a mangrove swamp. She didn’t know what to do, nor where to go, the baby’s sharp sobbing boring into her ears. She was scared. She didn’t have much time to think on it, however: an HS-4 gyroplane passed, flying low, toward the water.

  Joana ran as fast as she could. She plunged into the swamp. Her feet sank in the mud. She held the baby with one hand, while she released the safety on the Tokarev with the other. The gyroplane flew over the mazelike vegetation, forcing her to crawl through a tangle of roots. Flightlight beams passed nearby.

  The baby began bawling again. She pulled him close to her face, softly begging him not to cry, please, or they would both die. By a miracle, he went quiet, watching her with big, blue eyes. Joana was going to smile, but a sudden glare descended on her, forcing her to flee. The sea appeared among the jumbled branches.

  There was nowhere to go.

  Resigned, she stopped running.

  Just before the gyroplane backed off and disappeared behind the road, she saw a figure leap from it to the mud, then lift itself heavily. There was a star on its chest. Sheriff’s star, cowboy hat. Rubber gloves reached almost to his elbows, and served as insulation from the electric rifle he pointed in her direction.

  Joana raised the Tokarev, but wasn’t fast enough. A ray traversed her chest, knocking her backward into the mud. The blood spread quickly. Everything became cold, except the baby, suddenly irradiating heat like the sun.

  Poor baby.

  The star grew in her field of vision. She remembered a character from an adventure supplement, what was his name? He used a white shirt, red tights, blue underpants, a mask over his eyes. Mysterious and handsome.

  Democrata, that was his name.

  The rifle in her face wasn’t as scary as the growing sound of accumulating electricity. She hated getting shocked.

  Jeronimo Trovao hit the star dead center with his N12. The American reeled back, but didn’t fall. Part of the uniform’s cloth disappeared, revealing reinforced ceramic plating. Killer, Jeronimo said to himself. He knew that man would raise the weapon and explode his head in the next second if he didn’t take advantage of this chance. He raised the sight a little and shot again. A mixture of sparks and something like blood exploded from the American’s neck. He fell to his knees, then to one side.

  Easier than Jeronimo had expected. He needed to get out of there before the gyroplane’s occupants realized what had happened. He bent down near the woman. A river of blood sprouted from her chest and mouth. He recognized her. Jeronimo could hear a low whistle when she tried to breathe. Even in agony, she didn’t release the child which sobbed in her arm. She grabbed Jeronimo’s shirt and tried to say something. All that came out was a gurgle.

  Take the Emperor, Dream-Man, said the Saint, her blue veil whipping like it were alive.

  “I can’t do that,” said Jeronimo.

  He’ll die if you leave him here. One more death on your long list. A death that will never stop tormenting you. A death that will bring other deaths. Save him, he will show you the way. Don’t kill the boy, Dream-Man.

  Don’t kill the boy. The sentence deadened his thoughts. She had harassed him for so long, brought him to this place. Don’t kill the boy.

  Joana no longer breathed. Her eyes were glassy. Jeronimo took the baby from her hands. The poor kid was soaked, his little lips purple. He trembled with cold.

  Dream-man, screamed the Saint.

  Jeronimo hardly had time to lift his head. Thirteen’s boot met his nose and threw him three meters, where the mud disappeared below the sea water. His vision blurred, the swamp whirled. The baby was no longer in his arms. He could hear its cries nearby, mixed with the Saint’s hysterical chatter warning him of something. I know, he wanted to say, but the American was already on top of him, holding him by the collar.

  “I’ll kill you with my own hands, monkey,” he said, a voice speaking in English and sounding like a badly tuned radio. He was so close that Jeronimo could feel the warm liquid which ran from its open neck drip on his skin. It wasn’t blood. It was oil. The American wasn’t all meat, after all. He thought of spitting in the foreigner’s face, like the heroes did in those magazines his son adored. But there was no hero there, and all he could do was close his eyes and try to endure the blows that battered his face. One, two, three, seven, ten of them in sequence, overpowering like a sledgehammer.

  Then the slow drowning began.

  Iron hands forced his head under.

  The air painfully leaving his chest. The lungs becoming like bricks. The Saint’s voice filtered by the water.

  Time to die, he thought.

  Not yet.

  Later, all that Deuteronomio Trovao remembered was closing his eyes and pulling the trigger until his fingers hurt and the ammunition ran out. And he also remembered someone saying: I’ll guide your hand.

  There were nine shots and a lot of luck.

  Thirteen staggered, disoriented, the remote receptor destroyed by the bullets. Unable to receive commands from his Controller, he tumbled into the mud.

  Nomio searched for the voice’s owner. Standing near a crying baby, a tall man faced him. White shirt with a big star on the chest, red tights, blue underwear, a mask over his eyes. That was Democrata, his favorite hero. In the middle of the mud, speaking with him. His favorite hero. He rubbed his eyes. He was still there.

  You need to get your father and the kid before those men arrive, Democrata said
, pointing to the far away road. Or things are going to get complicated.

  Nomio took the baby into his arms.

  “Help me take them to the boat.”

  You can’t go back to the boat. The helicopter would be on you before you made it thirty meters.You’d be turned into a sifter.

  “So, what do I do?”

  Calm down. I’ll lead you down a completely new path.

  “Who are you talking to?” grunted Jeronimo. He looked like a drunk trying not to fall.

  “To Mr Democrata.”

  “Who’s Mr Democrata?”

  “He’s right here, Dad. By my side. He’s going to show us the way to escape.”

  Jeronimo supported himself on the roots. He looked around, then at his son. Nomio held the baby in his arms, the pistol stuffed into his belt, just above the water. There was no one beside him.

  When he finally understood, Jeronimo Trovao burst out laughing. It was his form of panic.

  Epilogue

  General Vargas listened to opera.

  It was as if his music spread around the world.

  He closed his eyes to appreciate the violins.

  Then came the oboes, the bassoons, the machine guns downing integralists and alliance members by the dozens.

  A chorus of angelic voices.

  Upriver, a boat motor. The baby had finally calmed down, rolled up in the blanket that had once covered the rifle. Jeronimo Trovao and his son sat in silence for a long time, on their way to oblivion in a lost town in rural wherever. The killer and his boys.

  Cymbals, drums, trombones. The night was dying.

  The first orange spots began to appear in the lower part of the sky, spilling over the aircraft carrier which maneuvered in the bay. The admiral had received congratulations from his president, satisfied with the results obtained in the field tests. Despite the damage suffered by the Thirteen prototype, luckily recovered in time, remote-controlled soldiers had proven themselves viable. Far from there, however, sitting on their skull and bone thrones in an obscure Yale University building, the true rulers of the United States of America wanted much more.

  In some place of time, space, or memory, Saint Anthony awoke to confront the demons of the Desert.

  Blood and Gold

  Erin M. Hartshorn

  The dragon, Rashall, clung to the skeleton that would be the Chrysler Building and gazed toward the port, his eyesight bringing everything into sharp focus as though it were mere wingspans away. Stevedores and dockhands labored, offloading the casks and crates full of contraband alcohol under the watchful gaze of the well-paid policeman, there solely to ensure no one took the bootlegged items except those who had actually paid for them.

  A voice raised in a panicked scream from a nearby street, and Rashall swung his head. His eyes took a moment to refocus. By the time he saw the woman, her body lay on the street, blood across her chest. His feet released from the girders, and he dove at the body, his wings folded back against his trunk, an arrow fired without a bow.

  Closer, he unfurled his wings to brake his momentum. He alit softly to the street, sheltering the woman beneath his chest. Her hat had fallen from her head, and blood speckled the pearls on her neck. Her perfume mixed with the grime of the streets and the tang of her spilled blood. He raised a claw and touched it to her chest, letting the red liquid wick up into his reservoir. If he were human, he might feel guilt at hastening her death, but he had no room for such an emotion.

  He could do nothing for her, but she could help him, for just a short while.

  A whistle sounded close by, its shriek rising over jazz notes from a hidden club, and one of his ears twitched in response. It was time to go. He gathered his legs beneath him and bounded up the side of the buildings. No flight, not yet, but soon – he’d need more blood to fuel that. The police would not look up, however; he was safe.

  Another night, another bit of life snatched from oblivion. He’d been living on borrowed time since February, when he left Chicago. The other dragons had come too close that time. Three months now of being on the run, with no safe house on the horizon, no one to turn to. Even Lillie was dead now – not in Chicago, but out of the country, dead of old age. His one pet who had never failed him, and now he had no time to take another such. Just as well. He’d always outlived his pets, but she – she had been special.

  He rippled his black scales. What was wrong with him? This was no time to indulge in nostalgia, not if he wanted to survive. He spared a glance for the scene below. The flatfoot whose arrival had necessitated Rashall’s departure now blew his whistle again, summoning aid from the dark streets. Other footsteps rushed toward him, and a Black Mariah, not that there was anyone to lock up. Whoever the woman had been, the police cared. All the more reason for him not to be on the scene.

  Slithering to the top of the building, he slipped onto the warm rooftop, grateful that the night was not yet hot enough for the building’s residents to come up in an attempt to escape the heat in their apartments. He would wait here until the excitement died below, and then he would seek shelter before dawn. Somewhere to hide without fear of machine guns and alcohol.

  Blood – he needed more. Gold would be better, and since the end of the Great War, it had been easier than ever to obtain here in the States. Still it was rarer to come across than blood, which there was in plenty, and both the police and the bootleggers only too willing to spill more. That, indeed, had been why he had fled; if anything, there had been too much blood in Chicago, enough to make the other dragons look for him there. They had seen his hand in the mobs.

  That was what he truly feared, not discovery by humans. But if humans found him, word would reach dragons soon enough. Thus, he hid from all sight.

  He still needed a plan. Snatching what he could kept him alive, barely, but what he needed was sustainable life, somewhere to live – and enough gold to live on. That was why he was in New York. With High Society and the Jazz Age, people living high, there were riches to be had. Maybe, just maybe, the warmth and pulse of the dead woman’s blood would stir his mind and enable him to think more than an hour into the future, past finding somewhere to hide from the daylight gaze of humans once more.

  A quiet thought nudged him, telling him he should find the woman’s murderer. Not even her pearls had been taken – there was money and blood behind this death, a warning to someone for stepping on another operation’s toes. A severe warning – the one she was close to had to have ignored more subtle menace. The one who had ordered this death had money, could get Rashall gold.

  Or perhaps he should find out who she was, who was being warned off. He wouldn’t be getting this warning if he weren’t a threat, and the next step was obviously the man’s own death. He might pay well, in bullion and coins, to avoid that fate.

  Who would pay him more? Again, he missed having a pet, someone to look at this incident and tell him about the people involved, tell him who had more to give him. He would sleep on the question, let the sun warm his body, stir him, and when night came once more, listen near to the great jazz clubs or to laughter and gossip coming from the Upper East Side high-rises, the places where the rich looked down on the rest of the world.

  Satisfied that he knew what he was doing, the dragon sought a familiar resting place, the roof patch between a stairwell and an abandoned rooftop pigeon coop. Very few places looked down on this roof, and those that did – well, the workers on Chrysler’s new building were too busy riveting steel to pay attention to a lump of rubbish somewhere else. He jumped up and over, moving swiftly and surely to his accustomed spot.

  On the edge of the rooftop, he paused. The faint scent of blood tickled at him, mixed with the woman’s perfume. She was not here, could not be, but her killer – ah, yes, he might be, and with the bloody knife still on him, as strong as it smelled. Rashall needed to learn more. He slid forward, a sinuous shadow surrounding the pigeon coop.

  The man inside the coop did not smell of beer or whiskey, and the only tobacco smoke
on him clung to his clothes, not his breath. In fact, other than the smell of blood and perfume, the man was clean. That much the dragon could tell before he even saw the man.

  But cleanliness implied a home, somewhere to go, and a hand behind him who wasn’t just after deniability. Why come here, then?

  Even huddled in the far corner of the coop, with the shadow of the roof over him, the man was clear to the dragon’s sight. His clothes were more informal than his victim’s – suspenders, no jacket, not even a tie. However, he clearly had access to some money, as his fedora and wristwatch were new. As to why he’d hidden here, that, too, was clear to the dragon’s sight: four scratches across his left cheek, no doubt left by the dead woman. If any beat cop saw that, the man would be taken in right away, at least now that the woman had been found. If she hadn’t screamed, if he could have hid her body away in an alley, he could’ve walked down the street without a care, knowing that the only comments he’d get were on the appropriate punishment of the dame who’d done that to him.

  “Why did you do it?”

  The man startled, banging his head against the wall, then leaned forward, peering intently to see who was speaking. He said nothing.

  Rashall moved closer, out of the shadow of the stairwell, where the moonlight would glint off his scales. He repeated his question. “Why did you kill her?”

  If a disembodied voice had spooked the man, seeing the dragon terrified him. He paled and shrank back into the corner as if he could disappear. Still he said nothing.

  For a brief moment, Rashall considered draining the man of blood. It would be enough to power flight for a short distance. The woman’s blood came to his rescue, reminding him that was short-term thinking. He could use this man, this puppet, to get him more, to let him be free of pursuit.

  The man, however, didn’t need to know the dragon wouldn’t kill him.

  Surging forward, Rashall laid one claw on the side of the man’s neck. “Why?”

  The man’s voice quavered. “It wasn’t personal or nothing. It was just a job. I didn’t know you wanted her safe.”