Gears of a Mad God: A Steampunk Lovecraft Adventure

by Brent Nichols

  Chapter 5 – Flight

  Their progress down Wharf Street was painfully slow. Jane was crying, her eyes screwed shut, only moving forward because Colleen was pushing on her back. Parker was getting worse, barely walking, Carter and Rick taking most of his weight. Colleen glanced backward and couldn’t see the cultists, but then she caught the slap of shoes on pavement. The cultists were gaining.

  Smith trotted ahead, examining vehicles parked along the street. He tried doors and peered in windows, and Colleen felt a surge of hope. If Smith could get a car started, they might still escape with their lives.

  A light came on in front of a warehouse, a door swung open, and a figure appeared, a burly older man in the uniform of a night watchman. He stared at them, and Carter lifted his pistol and said, "Best you stay off the street."

  The watchman nodded, stepped back inside, and closed the door.

  A car started behind them, and Colleen looked back, excited. If someone came driving up the street, they could flag the car down, beg for a ride-

  Another engine started, and Rick swore. "They've got wheels," he said. "Looks like we're done for."

  As if in answer, an engine roared into life ahead of them. A pickup truck came rolling backward down the street, Smith leaning out the driver's side window. He stopped in front of them and everyone clambered into the back.

  Headlights flooded the street as a couple of cars bore down on them. The truck roared forward, but their pursuers were very close. Jane retreated to a front corner of the truck box, sitting with her arms clutching her knees. Parker lay sprawled on the floor of the box, moaning, sliding back and forth when the truck swerved or turned. Colleen knelt by his side and tried to keep him still.

  Carter and Rick crouched at the back of the truck, checking their guns. Colleen caught snatches of their conversation. They were nearly out of ammunition.

  Maggie knelt beside Parker and took his hand. Her eyes were bright with fear, but her voice was calm as she murmured, "Hang in there, David. It will all be over soon. You'll be fine."

  They raced through the dark streets of Victoria, their pursuers always close behind. From time to time a shot rang out from the cars behind them. No one returned fire.

  They reached the outskirts of the city. Colleen could see the dark expanse of the ocean on the right, with the shipyards of Esquimalt shining in the distance. On the left the occasional building flashed past, then darkness. There would be no more innocent bystanders to be hurt by a stray bullet, but no witnesses, no help, if the cultists caught up with them.

  The truck raced through the darkness, and Colleen could do nothing but clutch Parker's jacket and pray that no bullet would hit them. She shot worried glances at Jane, who was staring into space, her eyes unseeing. There was nothing she could do for Jane, though. She thought about trying to check Parker's bandages, but the truck was lurching and bouncing so much, she didn't think she could do anything even if his bandages had come loose.

  The image of her workshop in Toronto flashed through her mind, and she wished for home with an intensity that startled her. She felt as if she would do anything to be back home with Roland's arms around her. He symbolized everything she'd lost, safety and family, a sense of security.

  The truck swerved, pressing her against the side of the box, and suddenly they were bouncing along on much rougher track. They passed a tree so close she heard branches whipping against the side of the truck.

  Rick looked past the cab and said, "Oh, damn it!" Then he dropped to his knees, reaching out to brace himself, and cried, "Dead end!"

  A moment later everyone lurched as Smith hit the brakes and brought the truck around in a tight turn. They stopped, gears clashed below them, and the truck lurched back.

  The cars with the cultists were coming in fast, Colleen heard the skid of tires as they braked, and the truck lurched into motion. It looked like the truck and the cars were going to crash head-on, and Colleen did her best to brace herself and Parker. Then one car went past on her left, close enough that she could have reached out and slapped the roof as it went by. On her right there came a squeal of metal as they brushed the other car in passing.

  A shot rang out, she heard the impact against the truck's fender, and Rick leaned out and fired into the nearest car. Then the truck went bouncing back up the track, with the two cars backing and filling behind them as they turned around.

  All too soon the cars were turned around and following, their headlights bouncing crazily as they raced up the track. The truck turned back onto a paved road, picking up speed, but the cars were soon closing the gap.

  Soon a dark green sedan was right behind them, nearly hitting their back bumper. The sedan edged to the right and accelerated, and the truck swerved right, keeping them from pulling alongside. Then they came to a curve, the road broadened, and the sedan slipped into place beside the truck.

  Rick and Carter went to the right side of the truck, looking down on the car roof, trying to line up a shot on the driver. They didn't seem to notice when the other car, a blue coupe, started to gain ground.

  Colleen left Parker's side and moved to the tailgate. A figure was crawling through the passenger-side window of the coupe. When skirts suddenly billowed in the wind she realized it was a woman. The woman stood on the running board, one hand clutching the door of the coupe, the other hand clutching a pistol. The coupe accelerated.

  The woman was wild-eyed, her face demented, her hair streaming behind her. Her attention was fixed on something near ground level. When she levelled the pistol, Colleen realized she was planning to shoot the truck's rear tire.

  Colleen felt a moment of paralyzing terror, which ended when she noticed something in her pocket digging into her hip. It was the pistol she had captured on the ship. She drew the pistol out, her hands moving almost unconsciously. It was a simple enough mechanical device, and she'd picked up the basics automatically, watching the others use their guns. Draw the hammer, watch the cylinder rotate as the hammer clicked into place.

  The coupe was very close. The woman was crouching on the running board, her arm extended, her gun very close to the tire. Colleen pointed her pistol at the woman's face.

  The woman looked up. Colleen recognized her; it was the woman who had ordered her killed in Chinatown. She stared into the muzzle of Colleen's pistol for a long moment, and she smiled. Then she ignored Colleen and turned her attention back to the truck tire.

  Colleen experienced a brief torrent of thoughts, an agonized certainty that she couldn't do what she needed to do, a sharp awareness that Jane and Maggie and Rick and Carter and Parker and Smith were all going to die if that tire blew, and above all a realization that she had no more than an instant, there was simply no time to think about this, no time to wrestle with the morality of taking a life. There was only time to pull the trigger.

  The impact of the gun against her hand shocked her. She was dimly aware that the pistol was pointing at the sky, but her horrified attention was taken by the woman she'd shot. There was a sound, a horrible noise of wet, reverberating impact that came to her clear as birdsong even over the echoing blast of the shot. She saw exactly what the bullet did to the woman's head, squeezed her eyes shut far too late to save herself from that image.

  She still had her eyes closed when a hand closed over hers and gentle fingers tugged the pistol from her grasp. She opened her eyes and saw Rick, his face sympathetic, tucking the pistol in his waistband.

  Her eyes went to the road. The sedan was slewed across the road fifty feet behind them, and the coupe was stopped behind it. The truck, though, was bouncing and shaking as if they were driving over railroad ties.

  "They hit our tire," Rick said. "We're going to have to hoof it."

  A black despair washed over Colleen. She'd done something that was going to haunt her for the rest of her life, and the truck had lost a tire anyway.

  The bouncing and lurching got worse until f
inally the truck slid into the ditch. Carter opened the tailgate, then joined Rick in lifting Parker out. Colleen moved to Jane's side, but Jane surprised her by standing unaided. "I can walk," Jane said, and climbed to the ground.

  Smith led them across the road and into a row of trees. "This is where we'll make our stand," he said grimly. Carter and Rick set Parker on the ground. Then the three able-bodied men each chose a tree to hide behind, knelt, and waited.

  Maggie knelt beside Parker, examining his bandages. Colleen found herself with nothing to do. She looked around. There were stripes of cloud in the sky, but in the gaps she could see the cold, bright blaze of countless stars. They shone brighter than she'd seen them in years. The light and pollution of Toronto didn't allow for starry nights like this.

  She stared upward, shivered, and was filled with a yearning to somehow survive this night. She wanted more from life, more starry nights, more wonderful evenings with Roland, more of everything that life had to offer. She didn't want to die by the side of a road in British Columbia, unarmed and helpless as the cult closed in.

  She lowered her gaze and looked around her. Was that a darker shape on the ground ahead of her? She stared at what was essentially a black rectangle against a nearly-black background, unsure of what she was seeing.

  The others were waiting, silent. Somewhere beyond the trees the cultists were closing in. There was nothing Colleen could do to help, so she walked forward into the darkness. With every step the dark rectangle became more distinct.

  A shot rang out behind her. She turned, couldn't see anything. There were no more shots, and finally she turned back to the dark rectangle. She kept walking, and finally made out the outline of a small wooden shack.

  She couldn't see the water, but she heard the lap of waves on rock. The building before her was right on the water's edge. In fact, when she reached it she found that it extended into the water. She tried the door. It didn't budge.

  If this was a boathouse, though, it would be open from the water side. There could be a boat, and that might mean escape. She went to the side of the building, clambered blindly down a sloping shelf of rock, and splashed into the water. She waded outward, gasping with the cold. The ground fell away sharply, and soon she was swimming, following the wall of the building.

  The seaward side of the building was wide open. It was a boathouse, all right. Colleen swam inside and pulled herself up onto a wooden platform inside. Her fingers fumbled along the walls, found a switch, and flipped it on. Light filled the boathouse.

  There was one boat, a long rowboat with a couple of oars in the bottom. It would be a slow escape, but the night was dark enough that they would be safe from gunfire once they were a dozen feet from shore.

  The door could be unlocked from the inside. She flung it open, and a long rectangle of light spilled across the ground. She ran up the slope toward the trees. Arriving out of breath, she called out, "There's a boat," and dropped to her knees beside Maggie. Parker looked terrible, but he grinned at her. Colleen said, "This is going to hurt, Parker," and grabbed the fabric of the shoulder of his jacket. Maggie gave her a dubious look, then grabbed the other shoulder. They set off toward the boathouse, dragging Parker, Jane trailing behind them.

  Shots rang out from the tree line behind them. The men were covering their retreat. Colleen ignored the burning in her muscles, the fire in her lungs, and concentrated on dragging Parker as fast as she could. They reached the boathouse, manoeuvred their way through the doorway, and managed to get Parker into the bottom of the boat.

  He let out a low groan, and Maggie said, "Oh, stop being such a baby! We did all the work."

  Jane stood just inside the doorway looking uncertain and lost. Colleen climbed out of the boat, snapped, "Get in!" to Jane, and untied the rope at the prow. Then she moved to the doorway.

  Two men were running down the slope. She recognized Carter, running in the rectangle of light from the doorway. She couldn't see who the other man was.

  Shots rang out at the tree line, and Carter looked back. Then he stopped and turned, and took a single step back toward the trees. Rick reached him then, stopping him. Colleen heard the sound of a shot, saw a flash of red near the trees, heard the whack of a bullet striking the boathouse. Realizing the men were dangerously well-lit, she flicked off the lights.

  Carter, his voice hoarse, panted, "Dirk's still up there!"

  "You can't save him." There was pain in Rick's voice. "If you go charging up there, then he's died for nothing."

  Carter tried to push past Rick. The tall Mountie grabbed Carter's shoulders, hauled him back, and sent him stumbling toward the boathouse.

  Colleen turned her back, knelt beside the boat, and gave it a push. As the boat drifted out she jumped aboard. Maggie had the oars in place, and the two women took an oar each, ready to pull.

  Carter and Rick came barreling into the boathouse. The boat was a foot past the edge of the boathouse now. They ran, jumped, and the boat rocked wildly as they landed. Parker cried out as Rick landed on his legs. Water splashed over the gunwales and both men crouched, stabilizing the boat. Colleen and Maggie pulled hard on the oars and the boat moved swiftly across the dark water.

  She couldn't see the cultists as they swarmed into the boathouse, but she heard their excited voices echoing against the walls. Then a muzzle flash lit the boathouse for an instant as someone fired into the darkness. She caught a quick glimpse of half a dozen people crowded together. There were several more shots, all of them wild. Colleen and Maggie rowed for their lives, and soon the boathouse vanished in the darkness of the shore.

  "I didn't know," Carter murmured. "I didn't know he was staying. The last thing he said was, 'Let's go!' Then he stayed behind to hold them off."

  No one replied as the boat moved deeper into the darkness.