Steampunked

by Joe R. Lansdale

  This indirect reference to the Dark Rider settled down on them suddenly, and the need for fresh air, wood, and water was eclipsed by a wave of fear. Just a wave. It passed over them and was tucked away. They had grown used to fear. When you hunted the Dark Rider and his boys, you had to learn to put fear on the back burner. You thought about it too much, you’d never breathe night air again. With the Dark Rider, fear and horror were a constant.

  Beadle looked at the nearly full moon and wondered if the Dark Rider was looking up at it too. Beadle had sworn to get the Dark Rider. It’s what he was being paid for, he and his team. He had formed Steam Man and Company a year back, and during that time he had killed many of the Dark Rider’s ape boys, his minions as Beadle liked to call them, and his employers had been very happy, even giving him the honorary title of Captain. But he hadn’t gotten the Dark Rider. There was the real deal. And the big money. The reward for the Dark Rider was phenomenal. And Beadle wanted the bastard, reward or not. He thought of him all the time. He wrote dime novels based on his team’s exploits, stretching the truth only slightly. He had made a silent vow to pursue the Dark Rider to the ends of the Earth.

  As Beadle looked at the moon, he saw the last of the white steam that was issuing from the steam man’s tall, conical hat float across the sky, blurring it, and then the steam dissipated.

  “Let’s finish,” Beadle said.

  *****

  They made numerous trips with their bags of water, but soon they were famished. Then, leaving John Feather once again to guard Steam, they gathered wood. That accomplished, they took tools from inside the steam man, chopped and sawed the wood and hauled it inside with the water.

  As Beadle had expected, the furnaces had cooled. They were lucky they had been able to find water. They might have had to spend a long night in Steam with little to drink until the morning, when it was safe. This way, they could be more comfortable. Even baths could be taken.

  “Do you think the Dark Rider is near?” Beadle asked John Feather as they stacked the wood inside the steam man.

  “He is always near, and always far away,” John Feather said.

  This was one of the Indian’s odd answers that disturbed Beadle. He knew if he asked John Feather to decipher it, he would merely give him another hard-to-understand remark. It was best to consider the answer given, or just discard it. When John Feather was in this kind of mood, there was no reasoning with him.

  Beadle decided to answer his own question, which actually had been foolish, sprung out of fear and the need for something to say. The truth was obvious: they couldn’t be too far away from the Dark Rider. Just the day before, they had passed through the burnt and reeking remains of a village with a hundred inhabitants or so with stakes rammed up their asses. Even cats and dogs and three parakeets had been crucified. It was the Dark Rider’s calling card. Therefore, he could not be far away. And he always fled to this part of the world, amongst the thick, dark woods with its bad things, near the place where the sky was most ripped and you could see into it and view all manner of strange and terrifying things not seen elsewhere.

  Beadle pulled up Steam’s ass flap and locked it for the night with bolt and key. While the wood burned and the water heated, they ate a cold supper of beef jerky and hardtack and washed it down with water, then each retired to his own devices. Beadle had wanted to read, but the kerosene lamps made the place smoky and uncomfortable, even with the steam man’s vents. After first usage of the lamps and a miserable night of smoke and kerosene stink, they had decided to withhold from using them. He could, of course, read by candlelight, but he found this uncomfortable and only resorted to this when he was absolutely bored out of his mind.

  He did, however, light a candle and put it in a candle hat and used the ladder to descend into one of the steam man’s legs, past the machinery that made it walk, and into the foot where he found a can of oil.

  Steam had been well-oiled the night before, but it never hurt to do it again. There was always a fear of rusty devices, gritty gears, a metal rod gone bad. And considering who they were hunting, it wouldn’t do to have Steam play out.

  When he finished there, he went throughout the steam man with his candle hat and his can of oil, dripping the liquid into all of its parts. He paid special attention to the backup controls in the trunk of the steam man. If the head controls failed, these, though simpler, cruder, could manage the machine’s basic movements.

  After a time the water was heated, and they drew straws for who bathed first, as the others would have the same water. Beadle lucked out. He got naked and climbed in the tub at the top of Steam’s head. He set the timer. He had fifteen minutes before the next bather had a shot at the suds, and he greatly enjoyed every minute of his time.

  *****

  Deep in the woods, outside his compound, hanging about for lack of anything else to do, the Dark Rider, alias the Time Traveler, alias many other names, turned his face to the moon as he jerked his dick and thought of blood. At his climax he gave up blood and sperm in thick, waddy ropes that splattered on the leaf mold and the body of the dog. He imagined the dog a woman, but it had been days since he had had a woman, tasted a soft throat and sweet blood. He would have settled for a man or child, an old person, but none had been available. Just the dog, and it had been a gamey wild dog at that. Still, feeding on anything made him horny, which was both a blessing and a curse.

  Finished, he made the mistake of haste, caught a hunk of dick in his zipper and cursed. The others, who had been patiently waiting for the Dark Rider to finish, said nothing. You didn’t laugh at the Dark Rider, not even if he caught his dick in a zipper. Laugh at him, you might find your face on the other side of your head.

  The Dark Rider worked for a while, managed his whang free, put it in his pants and zipped up, looked around for anyone with a smile on their face. Most of his minions, as the dime novels written by his nemesis, Beadle, called them, were looking about, as if expecting someone.

  In a way they were. Beadle and his regulators, and that infernal tin man.

  When the Dark Rider was certain he was fixed, he nodded to his flunkies, and they waddled forward to take the dog and to lick the blood and sperm on the ground. The toadies began to fight amongst themselves, tearing at the dog, rolling and thrashing about in a hungry fury, ripping at the meat, scattering fur, spewing what blood was left in the critter.

  After waiting for a while, the Dark Rider became bored. He took hold of one of the apes and threw him on the ground and pulled his britches down. He took out his dong again and ass fucked the beast. It wasn’t very pleasant, and he grew angry at himself for resorting to such entertainment, but he went ahead and did it anyway. Consummated, he snapped the animal’s neck and gave him to the others as a gift. Some of the ape men fucked the corpse, but pretty soon they were eating it. The dog just hadn’t been enough.

  The Dark Rider thought about what he had done. If he kept popping the necks of these little beasts, pretty soon he might have to gather wood for the impalement stakes himself. He’d have to go easier on them. They were not limitless. It was too big a pain to get others.

  *****

  When they had all bathed and the water was run out of the tub and down the pipes and out what served as Steam’s penis-a tube with a flap over it-they settled in for the night, secure in the giant man.

  Beadle, in his hammock at the top of Steam’s head, dreamed pleasantly at first of a lost love, but then the dream changed, and the Dark Rider came into it. He was dressed, as always, in dark pants and shirt, high black boots, wide black hat, and long black cape. His eyes were flaming sockets, his teeth white as snow, sharp as sin. In the dream, the Dark Rider took Beadle’s love, Matilda of the long, blonde hair and sleek, rich body, and carried her away.

  Beadle awoke in a sweat. It was a dream too real.

  Matilda. Sucked dry of blood, and then, for the sport of it, impaled through the vagina, left for the heat, bugs, and birds. That had been the beginning for Beadle. The b
eginning of Steam and Company, his hunt for the Dark Rider. His vow to pursue him to the ends of the Earth.

  *****

  (2)

  In the Bad Country

  The next morning, early, just as light was tearing back the black curtain, they worked the bellows inside the steam man and made the furnace hotter. The steam man began to chug, cough, sput, and rock with indigestion. They cranked him up and worked the gears and twisted the faucets and checked the valves. When the steam man’s belly was volcanic, they climbed into their chairs, at their controls, Beadle in the command seat.

  “Let’s do it,” Beadle said, and he pulled a gear, twisted a faucet, and took hold of the throttle. The steam man began to walk. He went down the riverbank with a clank and into the river with a splash. The water rose up to his waist, and though there was resistance, and Beadle had to give him nearly full throttle, Steam waded the river and stepped up on the bank. The step would have been a climb for a man.

  Now the woods were before the steam man. These woods were the known domain of the Dark Rider, and only a few had ever been this far and returned alive. The survivors told of not only the dark woods, but of the wild creatures there, and of the Dark Rider and his white apes, and beyond the forest, a great rip in the sky. Perhaps the biggest rip there was. A rip so big and wide you could see not only creatures inside it, but stars, and at times, a strange sun, blurred and running like a busted egg yolk. Beadle wondered if the Dark Rider would run again. That was his strategy. Hit and run and hide. But would he run from here, his own stronghold? Would he be prepared to stand and fight? Or would he go to ground, hide and wait them out?

  The good thing was they had the day on their side, but even during the day, the Dark Rider had his protection.

  It was best not to think about it, Beadle decided. It was best to push on, take it as it came, play it as it laid.

  *****

  Deep down in the cool, damp ground, the Dark Rider lay wrapped in clear plastic hauled from one of many possible futures, plastic used to keep dirt off his clothes.

  The grave was deep. Twenty feet. It had been dug by the ape men, or as they were more properly known, the Moorlocks. A sheet of lumber had been placed over the top of the grave to keep out stray strands of daylight.

  Nearby, in underground catacombs, the Moorlocks rested. Unlike him they were not destroyed by light, just made uncomfortable. It was their eyes; they were like moles, only not really blind, just light sensitive. He had tried building sunglasses for them from pieces of stained glass and wire framing, but the daylight still affected them. Beneath their white fur, their pink skin was highly sensitive. He had taught them to sew shirts and pants, make shoes from skins, but the sun burned right through their clothes. They had abandoned shoes, shirts, and glasses, but they still wore the pants. Something about the pants appealed to the Moorlocks. Maybe they liked the confinement of trousers better than letting their hammers swing, their snatches grab dust.

  As the Dark Rider lay there, hiding from the light, he began to cry. How in God’s name … No, fuck God. God had put him here. Surely it was God. Fate. Whatever. But the bottom line was still … Why?

  Once upon a time, though which time he was uncertain, he had been an inventor and had traveled the ages via machine. A time machine.

  Then there had been the dimensional juncture.

  If he could but do that moment over he would not be what he had become. Sometimes, it was almost as if his old self had never been, and there had always been what he was now, the Dark Rider.

  And Weena. How he missed her. She had been the most wonderful moment of his life.

  Once upon a time, he had lived as an Englishman in the year 1895, wherever that now existed, if it existed. He had been an inventor, and the result of this invention was a machine that traveled through time.

  Oh, but he had been noble. Saw himself as a hero. He traveled to the far future where he discovered a world of soft, simple people who lived above ground, were supplied goods by the machinery of the Moorlocks below ground. And they, without wishing to, supplied the Moorlocks with a food source. Themselves.

  These simple people were called the Eloi.

  While in this future, he met a beautiful and simple Eloi maiden named Weena. He made love to her, and came to love her. She was stolen by the Moorlocks, and after a desperate but futile battle to find and rescue her, he was forced to escape in the time machine. But he had pushed the gear forward, went farther into the future, to a world with a near burned-out sun, populated by crablike creatures and a dull, dead ocean.

  He returned then to his own time to tell his tale. But he was not believed when he explained that there were four dimensions, not three. Length, width, depth … and time.

  Returning to the era of the Eloi, he discovered Weena had escaped from the Moorlocks, and he decided then and there to become the champion of the Eloi, and within a short time he had taught the mild-mannered people how to do for themselves. He traveled through time and brought to the Eloi animals that no longer existed in their future. He taught them to raise meat and vegetables. He taught them how to fight the Moorlocks.

  It was a great time, ten years he judged it.

  But then he discovered on one of his exploratory journeys through time that there was a fifth dimension. It existed alongside the others; a place where time took different routes, numerous routes.

  Somehow, by his travel he had opened some kind of wormhole in time, and now it had all run together and its very fabric had begun to rip. It was believed in this time that the rips had been caused by squid-like invaders in saucers, but in fact, they were the result of his blunders through the Swiss cheese holes of time.

  Returning to the Eloi and Weena, he discovered, through his dimensional traveling, he had not only screwed up time and crosshatched it and connected it in spots and disconnected it in others, but he had also contracted some strange malady.

  He craved blood. He was like a vampire. He had to have blood to survive.

  Weena stood by him, and he made the Moorlocks his prey. He discovered other side effects of the dimensional plague. He had tremendous strength, speed, and agility and a constant erection.

  But there was a great sourness in him, and soon he began to change. Even when he did not want to change, he changed. Day became repellant, and he found that he enjoyed being amongst the bodies of the dead Moorlocks that he fed on. He liked the smell of death, of rotting meat.

  Weena tried to help him, make him whole again. But there was nothing she could do. And in a moment of anger, he struck her and killed her. It was the final straw. Gloom and doom and the desire to hold destruction in his hand overwhelmed him. He fell in love with the horrors.

  Only the memory of Weena remained clean. He had her body mummified in the deep sands beyond the garden world of the Eloi, and he had her placed in a coffin made of oak and maple. Then he buried it in one of the great gardens and a tree was planted to mark it.

  Time took the tree and the garden, and now there was just the dirt and her mummified remains, and even that, eventually, his former joy, and now his nemesis, time, would take.

  He had made an old museum his home. It housed the wares of many centuries. It was unique. It was a ruined palace of green porcelain, fronted by a giant sphinx that had been some sort of monument. Below the museum, beneath the sphinx, and other sites, were the Moorlocks’ tunnels and their machines. Machines that had ground out simple goods for the Eloi.

  He became their king, and in time, the Eloi became their food again. And his.

  The machines roared below ground once more.

  The Eloi quivered again.

  And then came the rip.

  *****

  Time lies tight between, within, and behind dimensional curtains, and these curtains are strong and not easy to tear, but somehow, presumed the Dark Rider, his machine had violated the structures of time, and by its presence, its traveling through, it had torn this fabric and other times had slipped into the world of the
Eloi and the Moorlocks, slipped in so subtly that a new time was created with a past and a present and a possible future. There was not only a shift in time, but in space, and the Wild West of America collided with a Steam Age where inventors from his own time, who had never made such inventions, were suddenly now building steam ships and flying ships and submarines. Time and space were all a jumble.

  The disease in him would not kill him. It just made him live on and on with a burning need to kill, maim, and destroy. Perhaps his disease was merely one that all mankind bore in its genes. A disease buried deep in the minds of every human being, dormant in some, active in others, but in him, not buried at all.

  Was he not merely a natural device, a plague, helping to monitor a corner(s) of the universe? Was he not nature’s way of saying: I’d like to destroy all this and start over? Just take this Petri dish and wash it off and disinfect it?

  The Dark Rider liked to believe he was the ultimate in Darwinism, and that he was merely doing what needed to be done with a world of losers. Instead of combating evil, did it not make more sense to merely be evil so that mankind could go back to what it had originally been?

  Nothing.

  *****

  The sun was scorching again, and inside the steam man it was hotter than the day before. Beadle and his companions sweated profusely, worked the steam man forward with their levers and valves. Steam tore at trees with his great metal hands, uprooting them, tossing them aside, making a path through the forest as they went in search of the Dark Rider’s lair, which though not entirely known, was suspected to lie somewhere within, or on the other side of, the great forest.

  As the hot day wore on, and more trees were ripped and tossed, a road began to appear through the great forest. Inside the steam man it was hotter yet as Hamner and John Feather tossed logs into the furnace and worked the bellows and stoked the flames that chewed at the wood and boiled the vast tank of water and produced the steam that gave power to the steam man’s working parts.