Gears of a Mad God: A Steampunk Lovecraft Adventure

by Brent Nichols

  Part of her felt devastated to see him go, but she felt more than a little relief, too. He could be a real pain, she saw, when he didn't get his way.

  Fear for her friends overrode every other concern, though. Later she could patch things up with Roland, or try to, or not bother. In the meantime, innocent lives hung in the balance.

  She finally found a fishing boat that was docked waiting for her nets to be repaired. She haggled briefly with the captain, hampered by not knowing what a charter should cost, and by her own sense of urgency. She wrote him a cheque and came on board.

  They set out immediately. None of the crew was on board. The captain sat at the wheel, staring placidly at the horizon, showing no interest in conversation. Colleen took a seat at the prow, stared toward Victoria, and willed the boat to move faster.

  They arrived after dark, well after the ferry. Colleen dashed ashore, looked in vain for a taxi, and ran to the Empress Hotel.

  No one was in. She left messages for every member of the team, then took a taxi to the hospital. Jane had checked out. There were different cops outside of Parker's room, a pair of stern broad-shouldered men with cold eyes and hard faces. They refused to let her past, and a nurse nearly as intimidating told her in no uncertain terms that visiting hours were over.

  Colleen left the hospital, sick with worry. Parker was safe enough, but where were the others? She trudged back to the hotel, hoping against hope that they had returned.

  They had not. Colleen stared around the elegant lobby. It was past midnight. Where would they go, in the dead of night? If the cult had them, where would the cult have taken them? They no longer had a ship. Where else could they be?

  She caught another taxi, wincing at the money she was spending. She directed the driver to the outskirts of the city and had him stop under a streetlight a block from her destination.

  The driver peered out his window at the surrounding darkness. "Are you sure, Miss? I don't like to leave a lady alone in a place like this. Are you sure I can't take you to your door?"

  "I'll be fine," she told him. "Right here is good."

  She crept up to the warehouse on foot, keeping to the shadows, placing each foot carefully so that no rock was sent rolling, no stick broke underfoot. There was a faint glow through the dirty windows. Someone had left a light on inside.

  The front door would be her entry of last resort. Instead, she slipped around to the back, hoping to find an unlatched window. Instead she found broken windows and a back door that had been smashed open.

  She crept to a window and peeked over the sill, seeing nothing but darkness and shadow. A sound came to her, though, a drawn-out groan, like a man in great pain trying hard not to cry out, and failing.

  Colleen moved to the back door, which hung swaying from one hinge. The door frame was a splintered mess. She stared into the darkness beyond, her thoughts racing, fear and prudence warring with concern for her friends. She told herself that the sensible thing to do was flee, run back to town, summon a squad of police. But that would take hours, and what would the team members go through in the meantime?

  Another pain-filled groan came echoing through the window, and Colleen abandoned her inner debate, took a deep breath, and stepped through the shattered doorway.

  She found herself in a shadowed space behind a mass of rusted, filthy machinery. Nothing moved. No one was watching the doorway.

  She crept forward, watching where she put her feet, careful not to let detritus or broken glass crunch under her shoes. She inched her way to where the mass of machinery ended and peeked around the corner.

  The boiler loomed before her, several tool cabinets beside it. Beyond that would be the main workshop area. Colleen crept forward, keeping the cabinets between her and the open area beyond.

  She paused to examine a set of wrenches hanging from hooks on a cabinet door. The biggest wrench caught her eye, a massive steel tool longer than her arm. She lifted it down, holding it two-handed, feeling its comforting weight.

  She crept up to the last cabinet, knelt, leaned down so her head was just above the floor, and peeked around the corner.

  A cowboy loitered near the front door, thumbs hooked in a wide leather gunbelt, right hand close to a holstered pistol. Three more cowboys, similarly armed, sat on crates and smoked cigarettes. The round-faced Englishman in the business suit paced back and forth in the middle of the room, one fingertip absently rubbing at his absurd little mustache.

  Beyond him, four people stood with their backs to the rusted machinery that ran the length of the room. Rick was nearest to her. His face was swollen and bruised. Blood from his nose was caked around his mouth and chin. His shirt was in tatters, revealing a blood-stained white undershirt. Fury shone from his features. The muscles of his arms and chest were taut with rage.

  His hands were behind his back, and Colleen saw ropes at his ankles. He was tied to the machinery behind him.

  Next to Rick was Maggie. Her eyes were black, and swollen so badly she might not have been able to see. She was pressing herself against the machinery behind her, cringing back from the Englishman.

  The shadows grew deeper past Maggie, but Colleen could make out Carter's familiar outline. He was sagging against the metal behind him, his head hanging, his shoulders slumped. Beyond Carter was another shape, shrouded in darkness. Colleen couldn't see who it was.

  The Englishman stopped pacing and stepped close to Carter. His dapper suit and refined accent stood in sharp contrast to the sordid scene. "Your courage is commendable, but pointless," he snapped. "You will tell me everything. That is a certainty. The only question is, how much of you will remain when I am done?"

  Colleen shrank back, thinking furiously. She was badly outnumbered, and there might be two more cowboys, along with God only knew what other cultists, close by. She had to do something, but what?

  Her eyes kept straying to the boiler. Steam had always been her friend. It had saved her on the Arcadia, given her a weapon. Could she use it now? She couldn't see how.

  She stepped back, and her foot came down on a loose bit of metal. It grated under her shoe, and she froze.

  The Englishman's voice continued without pause, a string of threats and invective. There was no other sound. She hadn't been heard.

  There was no other sound. That was the problem. She couldn't act without drawing attention to herself. Every footstep might draw the gunmen to her. She eyed the boiler and the gears and pulleys attached to it, and made her decision. She would fill the workshop with noise and movement and smoke, and send the cowboys rushing in every direction trying to find her. Then she would find a way to reach her friends.

  Lighting a boiler in dead silence with hands that shook with tension proved to be quite a challenge. There was a stack of newspapers beside the firebox, along with kindling and a hopper full of coal. Colleen eased her wrench to the floor and set to work.

  The loudest sound she made was when she finally struck a match. She timed it poorly, dragging the match head across the side of the box just as the Englishman paused in his diatribe. The match flared to life in her hand, and she cupped it, listening, hoping desperately to hear the man resume his rant.

  Silence, except for the hiss of the match in her fingers. She pushed the match under the twists of newspaper she'd prepared, picked up her wrench, and darted into a gap between the boiler and a cabinet. She swung the cabinet door wide, hiding herself, and waited.

  The soft scuff of boot heels came to her straining ears. She held her breath and tightened her grip on the wrench. It was maddeningly difficult to judge distance or direction when all you heard was the occasional brush of leather on concrete. She stared at the cabinet door inches in front of her face, wondering if her feet showed underneath, wondering how many men were just on the other side of it.

  Fingers appeared on the top edge of the door, she lifted the wrench, the door swayed away, and she foun
d herself staring into the astonished face of a man in a brown Stetson. She swung the wrench like her life depended on it, and connected with the side of his head. He flew backward, a pistol dropped from his hand and clattered across the floor, and he landed on his back, his arms and legs splayed wide.

  Colleen scanned the room. No one else was in sight. That wouldn't last long, though, not with the noise she was making. She put down her wrench, scooped up the fallen pistol, and knelt to grab a huge knife the cowboy had sheathed at his waist.

  He was unconscious, his face peaceful despite a welt rising on the side of his head. Colleen thought of Maggie's black eyes and drove a kick into his ribs.

  "Jed?" The Englishman's voice was sharp with impatience. "What's going on?"

  They would be coming in moments. Colleen looked in the firebox, saw the kindling burning fairly well, and yanked open the chute from the coal hopper. Her little fire was quickly buried in coal. It would catch or it would go out; there was nothing she could do about it now. She fled deeper into the building.

  Sounds of pursuit came quickly. She heard men blundering in the shadows and calling to each other. Colleen crept through narrow gaps in the machinery or dropped to her hands and knees, crawling awkwardly with a gun in one hand and a knife in the other, keeping out of sight.

  She worked her way back toward the prisoners. From her hands and knees she had a whole new perspective on the former factory's mechanical setup. A gearbox near the boiler turned a spindle as thick as her leg, which ran down the center of the factory floor. Production machinery had been connected to the spindle. It was that line of machines that the prisoners were now tied to.

  The spindle itself was mounted about two feet above the floor, with a filthy crawl space underneath. Colleen, aware that she was ruining her second dress in two days, wormed her way into the crawl space and inched her way along.

  Mostly she was in near-darkness. To her left she could see a stretch of floor and the back wall of the warehouse. To her right were the machines the spindle had once powered. Each time legs appeared to her left she froze, counting on the dirt on her arms and legs to help her blend into the dirty crawl space. When the legs disappeared she resumed crawling.

  Small gaps opened up to her right from time to time, giving her brief glimpses into the main workshop area. She usually saw the Englishman pacing back and forth with a pistol in his hand. Then she came to a gap, peered through, and saw a trouser-covered leg with rope wrapped around the ankles.

  She scanned the open floor to her left. No one was in sight. She worked her way out of the crawl space, straightened up, cracked her neck, and tried to peer through the mass of machinery before her.

  She could see the back and side of a man's head. It was the shadowy fourth prisoner. She stared at him, and his head turned, putting the side of his face in the light. Colleen gasped. It was Smith, battered but alive.

  She tucked the pistol into her pocket. It was a very large pistol, with a long barrel, so she rammed the gun deeper into the pocket until the barrel tore through the lining. She could feel cold steel against her leg, but the pistol felt fairly secure. She climbed onto a rusted safety guard and wriggled forward, toward Smith. She worked her head and shoulder past a pipe and found that she could see his hands, bound behind his back, his arms around a metal clamp. She stretched out her right hand, the cowboy's knife stretching toward the ropes on Smith's wrists.

  "Leave him." Carter's whisper was so faint she thought she'd imagined it. He was still staring at the floor, ignoring her. "Free me. Not him."

  She hung there, frozen with indecision, and finally wriggled her way back until her feet were once again on the floor. She moved along the bank of machinery. When she judged she was behind Carter she started the process again, trying to clamber over the machinery without making a sound.

  She found she could see the Englishman. Once, he stopped pacing and stared right at her, and she froze. Then he resumed pacing, and Colleen continued worming her way forward.

  Pipes and metal tracks dug into her shoulders and back. She never did see Carter's hands. She ended up sprawled across a bench behind him, her legs poking in the air somewhere behind her. He was the only thing keeping her from the Englishman's view. She could see Carter's shoulders, and she put the knife against his sleeve and traced his arm downward, navigating by touch.

  She knew she'd hit the rope when her knife met resistance. Her arm was bent awkwardly over the edge of the bench, her hand completely out of sight, as she set to work sawing back and forth. Her arm scraped the edge of the bench, and the Englishman's pacing suddenly stopped.

  Colleen crouched motionless, unable to see the Englishman, unable to do anything but hold herself still. Then Carter moved his hands up and down, sawing the rope against her knife. She stayed frozen, letting him do the work, as the Englishman's pacing resumed.

  Finally Carter's shoulders moved as the rope parted. He kept his arms behind him, but his hands came up, fumbling blindly for the knife. Colleen put the knife into his hand, then wormed her hand back, wriggled the pistol out of her pocket, and put it in his other hand.

  Boots thumped on the floor to the right, and the Englishman stopped pacing. Colleen heard one of the cowboys reporting. He had a slow Texas drawl, and he described how they were searching, how they weren't finding anything. Colleen took advantage of the distraction to work her way backward and get her feet on the floor.