Tesla's Revenge

by Renee Sebastian

  Then the rope seemed to rock a little, in a gently swaying motion. I kept my attention glued to the dark waters streaming over the edge, pushing the threat of the revenants into the background of my thoughts.

  Suddenly, I saw a dark head of hair emerging out of water. Dorian's head cleared first, followed by Jeremy's fairer one. They both gasped for breath breaking through the surface.

  Dorian looked unaffected, even though he bore Jeremy piggyback. Jeremy's waist had been looped over with the remaining end of the rope, giving him a bloated appearance in the moonlight. Dorian reached the railing support made of Magsteel and I grabbed his arm. Together, I helped him swing his body with Jeremy over the rope handrail and onto the bridge. I grabbed Jeremy first and frisked him for broken bones. Satisfied that he didn’t have any, I knelt down and hugged him hard. We eyed each other and he nodded while beaming a huge, gapped smile from ear to ear. Somehow, he'd lost a tooth in the madness. I hoped it wasn't a permanent one.

  I stood and then looked Dorian over head to toe, and I was shocked by what I saw. His clothes were soaked through, but his hair was bone dry. Dorian pulled at a strategic end of the knot and the entire rope tying Jeremy to him, unraveled. I boldly walked over to Dorian and touched his hair. He stood stoically with a frown for a few moments, until my gaze drifted over his face.

  In the poor light, it should have been difficult to tell if he had pores, let alone the beardless factor, but I could have sworn he had none. But before he allowed me a closer examination, he leaned into me and spoke in my ear, “Miss Darling, I believe we have more pressing matters at hand,” and then he swept a hand toward the five zombies blocking our path to the emergency exit.

  I decided he was correct, for now, and yelled in an annoyed manner, “Jasper Jackson is the Necromancer!”

  Tesla leaned over to us and proclaimed, in a told you so fashion, “The whole cabinet is corrupted!”

  I thought to myself that this was all the more reason to get Jeremy to his uncle for training and not in some state-run or Estonian school.

  I surveyed the zombies and then judging by the strange updrafts coming from the black imbroglio below us that my darts would not strike true. No sense in wasting them, so I took out my Westinghouse and Dorian withdrew his sword. I took the lead.

  Dorian touched my shoulder and hollered at me over my shoulder, “I can take these!”

  I yelled to him back over my shoulder, “I can't take them all with my gun, but only if I can electrify the cement, with the wood still underfoot for us. It should make the pickings easy!” He didn't try and stop me again.

  When I reached the end of the bridge, to my dismay, they spread apart further the closer we approached. My plan would have been a good one if they stayed huddled at the end together. One did remain blocking our path, so I flipped off the safety of my gun, took aim on the cement, and discharged its electrical charge.

  The ground lit up with the eerie, electric spider web effect and the first zombie that took the brunt of it began shaking, electrocuted. His brown hair stood up unnaturally from his scalp, and its limp flesh turned dark before my eyes. It would be a while before I ate roasted pig again.

  Of course, what it did not do was lie down for an eternal rest. Dorian nudged me to the side and his glorious sword glowed red in the moonlight. I watched as he beheaded the monstrosity shaking before me. Its blood was so congealed that it didn’t even splatter from the strike.

  The others froze in their spots for a few moments and then resumed their nervous ambulations. Dorian then went to the right where three of them stood before our escape path near the mouth of the tunnel. The other one tried to round off behind us to try to surprise us. My gun hadn’t had a chance to charge back up yet. Tesla and Jeremy stayed behind on the bridge. I motioned for them to stay put, and Jeremy nodded his head.

  Dorian was surrounded, but the undead closing in around him didn’t hinder his movements, as he swiftly dispatched limb after limb. No blood that he spilled found purchase on his coat. Either the residual mist diluted everything before it met the cement or his sword simply absorbed it. I was betting on the latter.

  I faced down my lone adversary and was dismayed to find it used to be a woman. She was dressed in men's clothing. She had long, dark tendrils escaping from a sloppy bun. There was not enough charge left in the Westinghouse to use yet, but even if I did have enough, I wouldn't want to risk electrocuting both of us on the cement platform we were now standing on, what with all the wetness there was under foot.

  I took out one of my Johnson's and leveled my aim at the one that was trying to sneak up on me. Then the creature lunged. I was forced to roll to the right, glad that I had the foresight to leave my bag on the bridge. I landed on my back and sighted it again. It was about to land on me. It was dreadfully fast for a simple zombie.

  Then I saw it.

  I saw a red sheen slide over its eyes for the briefest of moments and then it was gone. What the devil was that? What else did life have to throw my way this night? I was regretting ever getting out of bed that fateful day that S.O.A.R. contacted me.

  I redirected my aim and just before it landed on me, I shot it right through an eye. Orbital fluid sprayed over me, but the thing kept going. I rolled to my left and stood up. It changed its direction mid-fall, as if pulled by a puppet master's strings, impossible for humans to do normally. Then she lunged again for me. I removed my stilettos just in time and jammed one into each ear. She screamed a piercing cry and then I saw blackened teeth snap at me. Smoke erupted from the holes after I removed the knives. I needed to reevaluate my technique.

  I adjusted my arms to forty-five degrees so that when I struck the second time, I waited until she rammed me. I then shoved one of my knives through her brain cavity, while the other went through her heart. Finally, she slumped against me. She was a ripe one too, so when she slid off my knives, I wanted to pinch my nose as I wiped my blades off on her clothing.

  She was some bloody hybrid revenant. Now where the hell was Dorian, and how in the hell was he dealing with three of them at one time?

  Chapter 19

  The Baron

  “Men of power are the very men who have the least amount the power over their lives.”

  -Mrs. Edison, “Wives: The True Power Behind Husbands,” 2213.

  From Dorian's Journal of Memorable Quotes to Live By

  It was well enough that he was still alive, but not well enough that he had only dispatched one of the three. The other two, while missing various parts of their arms, still had their feet and teeth. They began circling him with a predator's grace.

  I returned to the foot of the bridge and retrieved my Widow. As long as they were distracted by Dorian, maybe I could approach close enough so that the weird drafts would not impact my aim. I decided to risk a puff. I inserted the black dart in the chamber.

  I centered, aimed, and waited for the perfect shot. Dorian was a thing of deadly grace as he parried and moulineted. Just after he appeled with his foot, distracting them momentarily, I huffed a strong breath though my shaft. The dart ran true and the zombie stammered, fell over, and started convulsing. Bizarre. It should have been a nearly immediate death.

  Dorian took immediate advantage of the last one and beheaded him without pause. The revenant collapsed into a pile of bones and flesh with little blood to spill. They were all old zombies then. Then he delivered the finishing blow to the one still convulsing, killing it in one fell swoop. It finally laid still in a true death sleep.

  Dorian nodded to me and checked the bodies for anything useful, but found nothing. I repacked my blow dart and motioned for Jeremy and Tesla to follow us. Tesla looked annoyed. Nothing new there. Then he made a hand motion above Jeremy's head that led me to believe that we needed to detonate the last bomb. If he had set the last bomb, then theoretically the detonator could explode the last one separately.

  I caught up to Dorian en route to the cave and asked, “Shouldn't we detonate the last bomb?”


  He paused and said, “I don't know if the boy even had the presence of mind to set the stick after the initial explosion. If he did it, then I say let him do it. He deserves something for nearly dying back there.”

  Jeremy had turned something in my heart, so I agreed with Dorian on this point. Maybe he reminded me of my brothers Michael or John, now long dead. But whatever it was, I agreed that he should be the only one to push the button.

  I turned back to Jeremy who had caught up to us and I motioned for him to come closer. I spoke loudly in his ear. “I am happy you survived. Your mother would have sent some bot to eviscerate me should anything have happened to you.”

  He smiled and nodded his head. Then he said, “She wouldn't have stopped at just cuttin' ya’ open, and she would've clubbed me real bad in turn, if'n she knew what I had just done.”

  I didn’t think she was going to win the Mother of the Year award. I then asked, “Do you still have the detonator?”

  He continued smiling and said, “I do.”

  “That's great!” I gave him a sly look and then asked, “Did you perchance set the last stick?”

  “I didn't want my life to be for nothing, so I did what I saw you do. I just fiddled with the detonator and then set the stick, just like you showed me... just in case.”

  “Why don't you go ahead and detonate it when we reach the tunnel opening?”

  “On one condition.”

  Uh oh and here I thought I was doing him the favor. I didn't like conditions, especially when I could have just as easily taken the detonator from him by force, but I had to respect him for asking whatever he had in mind.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Teach me how to use your knives.”

  I considered his request. I just didn't know how to do what he wanted in the time we had left. Before you could use the stilettos, he needed to master throwing knives. I could buy him a training pair when we arrived in Rochester. “How about I buy you some throwing knives, instead? I just don't have enough time to teach you the stilettos. You can practice them on your own between lessons from your uncle.” Everyone should be able to defend themselves, no matter what their age.

  Jeremy considered and nodded. Then he asked me, “Will ya' come back for a visit sometimes?”

  “Jeremy, I don't think your uncle would like that very much, and truthfully, I am not sure I will even be on the continent for much longer.” Before he could ask me about that, I added, “And no, I can't tell you where I am going.”

  He gave me a twisted frown, as if he had just eaten some bad wasabi. Then I could have sworn I heard him say, “We'll see about that,” but it was hard to tell since the water was still quite loud even this far inland. What I could hear clearly was, “May as well have some fun, ma’am, heck yeah I'll detonate it.”

  Dorian waited for us at the tunnel opening. When we arrived at the opening to the cave, Jeremy withdrew the detonator from his coat pocket. Then with a dramatic flair of his arms and an evil grin across his face, he pushed the button. That was it for the Niagara Falls. Turned out that one stick was quite important, because once that one blew, what was left of the waterfall and its cement platform disappeared in front of our eyes. With a last awestruck and satisfied feeling, we sought refuge in the caves. After all, it really was too dark to see the full magnificence and spectacle of the event.

  There wasn't any electricity servicing the escape route, but Dorian surprised me and withdrew his blade. A red luminescence shone out of his sword as he led the way through the path.

  I cocked an eyebrow and he whispered, “Seems that it has fed well tonight.”

  “Lucky for us,” Tesla whispered.

  The roar of the water became muted with the tons of rocks we were putting between us and it, but we still needed to be quieter, because Jasper could have been anywhere in this tunnel. The echo of us talking over the mumbling of the water outside created an eerie effect. We had better keep our wits about us.

  Since it was a service entrance, it may have started off as a natural formation, but it was obvious that it was mainly man made now. The walkway was of uniform width and even better, it was of an upright and walkable height, but only just barely. I noticed that Dorian had to walk with his head slightly tilted. Occasionally, the path would open up into a small room, but the path was always obvious. While it may have been plain to see where to go, the trek was still dangerous, since I found myself slipping several times across the slick floors, wet from the humid air quality. I kept grabbing blackened stalactites to counter balance myself. Certainly many others had done this very same thing since their discoloration must have come from the oils in their skin.

  After a relatively uneventful fifteen minutes, the exit door revealed itself to us.

  Tesla whispered, “What if there is a trap beyond the door?”

  Dorian leaned in and placed his ear to the door. We waited.

  After a while, Jeremy fidgeted and finally said, “Wishin' there was some kind of dead animal in here for me to commandeer.”

  I whispered back, “With you there.”

  Dorian shushed us and resumed his listening. After an eternity or perhaps only ten minutes, Dorian proclaimed, “No one is in the immediate vicinity. Let's make haste and depart for Rochester immediately.”

  Once he threw the door open, a conundrum met us. No Necromancer, but Jasper and Mr. Chatham both had taken two of the four horses that had been delivered for us by the Estonians, leaving us only two Hanoverian horses for us to share.

  Dorian quickly took the stallion, before Tesla could choose his mount. Without giving me a choice, Dorian rounded back behind me and swept me up in front of him. I clutched my bag and situated it in my lap. It was considerably lighter without the explosives. I reached in and felt the oiled skin protecting my book, and I unconsciously settled against Dorian in satisfaction. The Falls had fallen and even though we were probably not going to catch up to the Necromancer anytime soon, I was all right with that.

  Tesla and Jeremy shared the mare and by the time we had been riding for five minutes, I saw that Jeremy was already nodding off, while sitting directly behind a rather irritated Tesla.

  I asked Dorian, “Do you know how to get to Rochester from here?” He was in the driver seat, so to speak, and I knew he had a penchant for getting lost.

  He seemed indifferent at first, since he stared straight ahead and kept his posture very erect, but eventually answered, “Check the map. I'm too busy checking our environment for hidden traps and Jasper Jackson to bother with navigation, as well.” I smiled. So he didn't want Tesla to know his most obvious, albeit rather important, fault.

  I reached into my bag, now attached to the saddle horn, for the maps and located our approximate location. I said, “If we stay at it all night on this road, then we might just make it by dawn.”

  “Done.”

  ···•Ͽ Ѡ Ͼ•···

  We made it to Rochester, but the dawn didn't greet us, since the sky was heavy with rain. I supposed that it had to rain in the country for the food to grow, but I would have appreciated a little bit of sunlight before we entered the city, which had its own unnatural, heavy clouds hugging the tops of the buildings of the business district.

  The security was much more lax here than in Niagara and we simply had to show our identification papers, albeit the false ones provided by the Estonians, and then sign our names in the city registry. I inserted my resplug and picked up a complimentary city grid sheet before we left the office.

  Using the map, I found the road that Jeremy's uncle, Toby Earlmann, had a house on. With some difficulty, we found stables for the horses and then set out on foot to the man's house. Best to go on foot in this city, because I took note of several posters plastered onto random businesses advertising for H.H. meetings. It appeared there was a strong presence supporting Humanity for the Horses, also known as Happy Horses.

  We hadn’t seen a live horse since we entered the city besides our own. The man who took ours eyed us wit
h suspicion. I thought his feed and seed, stable business was a cover for a gambling den and more than likely, we wouldn't ever see those horses again. He was probably checking the serial numbers right now on the horseshoes for possible theft. Knowing the Estonians, they probably were.

  We passed by an all-night pawn store called the Pauper's Pawn. As it was too early in the morning for a more reputable arms store, we decided to stop there. Besides, reputable was not what I was going for here. I told Dorian and Tesla that I owed Jeremy some knives and that this would only take a second. They decided to wait around the corner to look less conspicuous.

  I tested the front door, found it was locked and the lights were off. So, I walked over to the side window, which had a little light shining in a half circle down on the road under it. Sitting inside the window was a man of apparent short stature sitting on a tall stool. He wore a greasy striped shirt and a bowler hat. My guess was that it probably hid a balding head.

  I said, “Good evening, sir.”

  “Nothing good about it,” he said and then he turned his head, coughed up some sputum, and spat it into a spittoon out of view, or at least I hoped there was a spittoon.

  “Do you have items to sell?” I asked.

  “Yep and we also take bets, if your of a mind.”

  “No thanks. I am looking for a set of throwing knives.”

  “Why I do indeed have some. Real economical, too. Let me go fetch 'em.”

  He brought down the metal gate, barring the window from the outside and I waited.

  He came back shortly, opened the grate, and said, “Here we go. One set of throwing knives for ya'. Silver-plated, over steel. Ten gold pieces.” Then he showed me the set.

  I replied, “Let me pick one of them up, please.”

  I heard the click of a gun barrel and he shoved one at me. I slowly picked it up and then balanced it on my fingers. Next, I scanned down the line of the edge and checked for sharpness. “Not of very a good caliber, are they? Do you have anything better?”