Gears of a Mad God: A Steampunk Lovecraft Adventure

by Brent Nichols

  Chapter 9 - Daylight

  The claustrophobic crawl space seemed infinitely worse without a gun and a knife. She actually moved much faster, now that her hands were free and she didn't have to worry about accidental metallic clanks, but she felt horribly vulnerable.

  Soon she found herself peering around a chunk of rusted machinery into the open area with the boiler and tool cabinets. She could hear a faint hiss of air being drawn into the fire box. The fire was burning well, then. She squinted at the pressure gauge. It was dirty and at least twenty feet away, but she thought the needle was pretty far over.

  A man stood in the middle of the floor with a pistol in his hand. He was a cowboy, Stetson pushed back on his head, with long graying mustaches that curved around a cruel mouth. His face was in profile. If Colleen moved, he would spot her instantly.

  Someone moaned, and the cowboy turned away from her. The man she'd hit with the wrench lay by the far wall, and the armed cowboy walked toward him. Colleen rose, looking around, knowing that if she tried to come up behind him he would likely hear her footsteps. She needed noise, confusion.

  There was a metal casing near her, the main gearbox for the factory floor. A massive red handle stuck up from the top of it. Colleen calculated her options. The gearbox itself would provide cover, if she could pull the handle quickly enough.

  She shot a glance at the cowboy, who still had his back turned, and darted to the gearbox. She grabbed the red handle and heaved.

  Nothing happened.

  Cursing under her breath, she wrapped both hands around the end of the handle, brought her feet up, braced them against the side of the gearbox, and pulled for all she was worth.

  For an awful moment the handle refused to budge. Then, with a squeal of metal, the handle dropped six inches and the factory machinery came to life.

  The cowboy spun at the first metallic screech, and Colleen was keenly aware that she was in plain sight. But things were moving all over the room. Gears turned, belts and chains quivered, dust came billowing down from tracks in the ceiling, and the man stared, trying to look in every direction at once. When his head turned for an instant, Colleen let go of the handle and dropped out of sight behind the gearbox.

  Two gunshots rang out behind her. Either the Englishman was shooting the prisoners, or Carter had shot the Englishman. The cowboy ran past Colleen, and she rose from her hiding place.

  Another shot echoed through the warehouse, and she ducked involuntarily. She wasn't about to rush empty-handed into a gunfight, so she turned to the boiler instead. She poured in more coal from the hopper and checked the water level. The water was good. The pressure level was decent, and climbing. She opened the air vent on the firebox and considered her next move.

  Her gaze went to the man on the floor by the wall, the cowboy she'd knocked out. He was still unconscious, and she thought about smothering him as he lay there. She didn't doubt that he'd do the same to her, but she knew she couldn't kill him in cold blood. She needed to focus on the task at hand, which was drawing the cultists away from her friends.

  Clumps of dust-clogged spider web drifted down around her, and she turned her gaze to the ceiling far above her. She hadn't really noticed just how much of the factory's machinery was ceiling-mounted. There was a large structure beside the boiler, with a slowly-turning vertical shaft surrounded by a zig-zag metal staircase. It gave her the rudiments of an idea.

  Several toolboxes littered the workbenches around her. She grabbed the biggest toolbox she could see, grunting at the weight, and headed for the staircase. She ran up the stairs, not caring about the noise she made, and someone fired at her from below, the bullet knocking rust from the steps above her.

  She found a platform she could huddle on just below ceiling level. She was mostly surrounded by machinery, enough iron and brass to deflect a bullet.

  She heard a shot, and a ricochet that sounded dangerously close. She couldn't see the shooter, or where the bullet had hit. She decided he was shooting wildly, hoping to get lucky, and pushed him from her mind.

  She opened her toolbox. The top tray was filled with screwdrivers, pliers, and small wrenches. She pulled the tray out and set it aside. Underneath was a jumble of wrenches and a couple of hammers, and she smiled. She had missiles now. Anyone trying to follow her up the stairs was going to have a hard time of it.

  She scanned the machinery around her. Some of it was in motion. The big vertical shaft connected to a gearbox which in turn moved a flat metal chain. The chain rested in a track that ran the length of the building, a couple of feet below the corrugated iron of the ceiling.

  There was a second gearbox beside the first one, and a second metal chain. The rod that should have connected the two gearboxes was missing, though. That meant the second gearbox was pure raw materials. Colleen grabbed a screwdriver and set to work.

  She removed the casing and set it aside, and looked over the gears inside. She used a hammer and screwdriver to knock a cotter pin loose, and set to work prying loose a gear that had to be a foot and a half wide.

  She caught a flash of light from the corner of her eye as a shot rang out and a bullet spanged against metal. Colleen shrank back, then peered over the edge of her platform. A cowboy stood below her, aiming his pistol carefully, and she flinched back.

  She looked up. A circle of light glowed on the ceiling above her. The last bullet had punched through the ceiling, and she could see the lightening sky beyond. She measured the distance. He had missed her by a good four feet. She shrugged and decided to keep working.

  The next shot was closer, the one after that even closer. He was firing every five seconds or so, so she kept working for another four seconds and flinched back. A bullet banged off of the gearbox and she leaned back in, grabbed the big gear in both hands, and pulled it off of the shaft.

  She sank back, holding the brass circle in her lap. It was more than two inches thick, heavy enough to crush bones. She shouted, "Come and get me! I'm ready for you!"

  She peered over the edge of the platform, and the man below snapped a shot at her. Then he broke the pistol open, spilling cartridge casings on the floor, and started reloading from the loops on his belt. He was looking down at the gun in his hand, and Colleen saw her opportunity. He was too far out to hit with the big gear, so she picked up a wrench and let fly.

  It was going to fall short, she knew it as soon as the wrench left her fingers. It landed with a clatter at his feet, bouncing up to hit his shins, and he jumped, dropping the cartridge he'd been loading. He looked up, just in time to take her next wrench in the face.

  He swore, scrambling backward and crashing into the equipment behind him. He dropped his pistol, clapped a hand to his mouth, then scrambled forward to scoop up his the gun. She could see blood leaking between his fingers as he gave her a glare and retreated behind some machinery.

  The staircase creaked below her. Her plan was working. Someone was coming up the steps. Colleen picked up her biggest hammer and leaned over the far side of the platform. From here she could look down on a section of staircase fifteen feet below. A cowboy stepped into view, gun in hand. He was bareheaded, watching above him, and he spotted Colleen immediately and pulled back out of sight.

  She heard him moving up the staircase. From the rustle of his steps and the creak of metal she could pretty much count each step of the staircase as he advanced. He reached the landing directly beneath her, and she smiled. He assumed that if she couldn't see him, he was safe. After all, bullets travelled in practically straight lines.

  Hammers, though, didn't behave like bullets. She waited for the creak of the next step, then leaned out and lobbed her hammer inward. She threw blindly, but she knew exactly where he was, and she heard the hammer slam into flesh before clattering against metal. He grunted, and she heard him fall, then get back up. He swore, and the gun blasted three times.

  Colleen let out an involuntary shri
ek and cringed back as jagged holes appeared in her platform. She smelled dust and gun smoke and fear, and she looked down, wondering how close those shots had come.

  A chunk was missing from the toe of her shoe. She stared, filled with a sense of unreality. A ragged half-circle was gone from the end of her shoe, and she blinked, wondering how the bullet had missed her toes. Then she saw the wet gleam of fresh blood and knew that the bullet hadn't missed. There was no pain, not yet, but the tip of her middle toe was gone. She saw a white gleam in the redness, the bone of her toe, and squeezed her eyes shut as the warehouse started to spin around her.

  The sound of stealthy footsteps snapped her out of her shock. There would be time later to swoon like a dime-novel damsel. Right now she was still in mortal peril.

  She picked up the huge brass gear, adrenalin giving her strength, and looked at the staircase below her. She tried to figure out which step he would be on, but she had lost track, and she was still having trouble focusing. Her ears rang from the gunshots, and the subtle scuff of footsteps seemed distant, directionless. She made her best guess. He would be half way up that section of the staircase, about four feet below the landing. That would put the top of his head about eight feet below her and four feet out, right about... there.

  She gathered herself, swinging the gear back, and as she swept forward, the cowboy sprang into view on the landing below her. The pistol came to bear on her, she felt her stomach lurch with the sure knowledge that she was going to die, and she tried to change the trajectory of the gear in mid-throw.

  The gear left her hands, the pistol went off, she saw sparks fly as the bullet hit the spinning disk, and she saw that the gear was going to miss him. But his eyes went wide with panic and he tried to dodge back down the stairs. With only a split second to react he made the wrong choice and dove into the path of the gear. It slammed into his chest, knocking him backward, and he hit the railing behind him. The railing broke with a screech and he tumbled into space, the pistol spinning away as he fell.

  "You couldn't have dropped the pistol up here," Colleen grumbled, dropping to a sitting position on her platform. The strength seemed to leave her limbs, and a sudden wave of agony from her toe filled her eyes with tears. She drew her knees to her chest, wrapped her arms around her legs, and let the tears flow.

  Footsteps scuffed the concrete floor far below, and she lifted her head. A cowboy, his hand still clapped over his bleeding mouth, glared up at her, his face filled with hate. He lifted his pistol, taking careful aim, and she heard the thunder of a shot. The cowboy twitched, and two more shots rang out, somewhere behind him. He dropped his pistol, started to turn, and collapsed to the floor.

  Colleen closed her eyes and murmured, "Thank God." Someone else was still alive. It hadn't all been for nothing.

  A voice spoke directly below her, a clipped British accent in a voice dark with malice. "You win this round, little girl. But it doesn't matter. We'll find Tanathos first. We'll be waiting when you get there. We'll kill you all. And then He will come."

  Footsteps rustled across the floor. Then the squeak of hinges, and silence. He was gone.

  # # #

  She stayed on the platform until Carter came looking for her. She climbed down to join him, and the two of them made a circuit of the warehouse, checking that all the cultists were gone. They tied up the unconscious man and went back into the main workshop area.

  There were two dead cowboys on the floor, and Colleen grimaced as she stepped over a man's outflung legs. Maggie and Rick sat with their backs against the wall, pistols in their hands. Smith was still tied to the machinery, and Colleen stared at him, confused. She took a cautious step toward him, and Carter murmured, "Don't get too close."

  Smith stared at her for a long moment without speaking. Then he said, "Cut me loose." When she hesitated, the veneer of sanity abruptly dropped away. His eyes opened wide until she could see the whites all the way around, his lips peeled back to expose his gums, he strained against his ropes until tendons stood out in his neck, and he screamed, "CUT ME LOOSE! Cut me! Cut me! He's coming! He'll take us all! It's too late, it's been too late for a hundred years, cut me, cut me now, cut me."

  His voice subsided to a low mutter and he sagged in his bonds. Colleen drew away, aghast. Behind her, Carter said, "Maybe something can be done for him. We're certainly going to try. The Dirk I know is in there somewhere. I think. We'll help him if we can."

  Rick left to summon police and an ambulance. Carter and Colleen joined Maggie against the wall. Maggie squinted through the bruising around her eyes and said, "Thanks for coming for us, Colleen."

  Carter rubbed his bristling mustache. His bowler hat was missing, and Colleen could see sweat glisten on a balding spot on the top of his head. He said, "I guess you'll be going back to Toronto now?"

  "No."

  "No?" His eyebrows rose.

  She shook her head. "The Englishman's still out there, and I got his attention, not in a good way. I don't think I'll be safe back home. Not for a long time."

  "What will you do, then? We could send you into hiding, like we did with Jane."

  "Actually, I think I'd rather help you find Tanathos." She glanced at Smith. "These scum are more dangerous even than I realized. I don't think I can just walk away. Not when I can help."

  Carter nodded. "Well, I appreciate the sentiment, but we still have no idea who Tanathos is, much less where to find him."

  "It's a place," Colleen told him. "Not a person. The Englishman told me that on his way out. And I think I figured out what that picture was, the one my uncle burned. I think it's a map."

  Carter frowned, staring into space. "A map. You could be right. That could have been a coastline, maybe with a river down the middle. If we go through enough charts and atlases, I bet we could figure out where it is." His gaze switched to her face. "Maybe you can be helpful, at that."

  Maggie snorted. "Look around you, Phil. Did you really need more convincing?"

  He grinned, then turned serious. "Well, we do have an opening for a Canadian liaison to the team. I suppose you could be a candidate. You've seen what can happen, though. Are you sure you want the job?"

  Colleen closed her eyes briefly, thinking of the life she could still have back in Toronto. But she thought of a little house in Calgary as well, and the life that Smith could have had, and she nodded. "I'm sure."

  Carter's eyes searched her face. At last he nodded. "Welcome to the team. Next stop, Tanathos."

  # # #

  Author Notes

  Thanks for reading. I'd love to hear your comments. Go to SteamPunch.com to leave me a note or to learn about other stories. I can be reached by email at brentn@netscape.net.

  Colleen's adventures continue in Dark Island, available now.