The Smoke had become a greedy and crooked world, but this was a stable Cerval believed he could cleanse.
“I shall endeavour to change it, or I shall die trying. What do you think Thor? Are you with me?”
“Whatever you say, Cervie.” Thorsten was a boy of very, very few words and it would be easy to think that he was nothing more than an oversized idiot whose only possible contribution in life was physical; but his problem was not one of base intelligence. It was a disconnect between his eyes and the Broca area of his brain. Quite simply, Thorsten could not read and even when with painful difficulty he managed, phonetically, to grasp the word on the page, it meant nothing to him. Yet in every other way, his intelligence scored astronomically high. He was a savant and sometimes clairvoyant.
Then and always, he was Cerval’s best friend.
Now, five years later, this giant, Cerval’s first Incorruptible recruit, lay dying in the hackney.
The vehicle was state-of-the art. Cerval had modified it personally, spending many workshop hours taking it to the extreme that steam power could reach. The newer electric vehicles, the few of them that were starting to be seen on The Smoke’s streets, were faster in short bursts but high speed ate up their battery power and drastically curtailed their anyway short range.
Cerval’s hackney – all the Incorruptibles’ vehicles – could out-run anything on the road, even cop karts and Silencio limousines, and now Cerval cranked the steam control valves wide open, switched the boiler to forced air and pushed the vehicle perilously to its absolute maximum speed. The speed itself wasn’t the most dangerous problem. Road holding. That was the critical factor. Solid rubber-clad cast-iron wheels and greasy urban streets were a potentially fatal combination.
Speed and power weren’t this hackney’s only features. When Cerval first planned the Incorruptibles’ campaign, he knew he’d face ruthless opposition; that killing and injury would be inevitable. Money being no object, he furnished all their vehicles with medical equipment and supplies that went beyond First Aid and encompassed even the black arts of resuscitation. Most of the equipment was designed by Doctor Pedro Robledo Efrain, though he relied heavily on the Frankensteins’ extensive knowledge of human systems.
When Cerval had first revealed himself to Efrain, that genius had described how the invisible and often lethal force of electricidad could actually restore life. His explanation and its details did not surprise Cerval. Hadn’t his own ancestor harnessed the power of lightning to animate the body he and Igor had stitched together?
Cerval had agreed to Efrain’s installation of his prototype Electro-Vida-Suscitator in all Incorruptible vehicles, and at the vigilantes’ anonymous headquarters in The Smoke. The installation was only completed a week ago. Cerval gloomily realized that Thorsten was going to be a part of its proof of concept.
He risked a look over his shoulder, into the passenger compartment.
Evangeline was tending the giant, and in no doubt that he was dying despite the heroic strength and resilience of his heart and mind. She had him attached to saline and plasma drips. She applied, checked and changed blood-staunching bandages. She dabbed his lips with distilled water. His mighty body was punctured with so many bullet holes that it resembled a join-the-dots puzzle, his face was as grey as weathered wood. He was breathing only in shallow, convulsive gasps.
“How’s he doing?” shouted Cerval, swerving from lane to lane while keeping an eye open for traffic police.
“Not good,” said Evangeline. “I reckon he’s got about five minutes. Ten at the most.”
“I doubt we’ll make it. Not in this traffic.”
“We’ve got to, Cerval. We can’t lose Thorsten. It’d be the end of the Incorruptibles.”
At this point, Cerval didn’t care about the survival of the Incorruptibles. He just wanted to see his friend smile once more.
Further back, Shelley Mary sliced through the traffic, peering into the gloom, hoping for a glimpse of Cerval’s distinctive vehicle. She was forced to slow by an oblivious tuk-tuk that bumbled into her path. Then the foul-smelling tuk-tuk stalled and Shelley Mary was stopped dead.
She slammed her black-gauntleted hands down onto her machine’s handlebars.
Fuck!
The nearest driver looked across at her disapprovingly, but quickly looked away when he saw her expression.
Up ahead, Cerval spotted stationary traffic and the armoured black karts that meant only one thing – police. An accident? An arrest? For a brief moment, Cerval thought it might be a roadblock, the traffic police receiving orders from the Silencios: stop Cerval Franks. But he was fairly certain that the news of their escape from the Silencio ambush couldn’t have been transmitted to the cops that fast, even by Super-Oxygenator runners if they had been on the scene. And, apart from Shelley Mary, no one knew that he was the Incorruptibles’ leader.
Regardless, traffic jam, accident or roadblock, any delay would be fatal to Thorsten.
Cerval swung the tiller savagely and the hackney yawed through ninety degrees, two wheels lifting off the road. It almost obliterated an old fellow in a puffing billy bath chair, and then skidded into the Emergency Only Track. Supposedly dedicated to Fire and Ambulance, the E. O. T. had become the cops’ personal freeway, enabling them to speed from one side of The Smoke to the other to repress civil unrest, to go through the motions of investigation, or ensure they were on time for tea.
The hackney’s violent manoeuvre forced an anguished groan from Thorsten.
“We’re losing him!” shouted Evangeline. “Cerval! He’s going! He’s going!”
“Use the Vida!” Cerval shouted back.
“No! I can’t! It’s too risky! What if it kills him?” Even as she said it, she answered her own question: he’s dying anyway.
“We have nothing to lose!”
She had never heard the usually ice-cool Cerval so distraught. Now she reached across Thorsten’s body, fumbled with the catch of a locker and opened it. Within were two mitten-like pads made of a spongy material, connected to long, heavy coiled cables. She slipped a pad onto each hand, flipped the power switch and heard the ominous hum of the system’s capacitator building to maximum discharge. Blood draining from her face, whole body shaking, Evangeline slammed the pads down onto Thorsten’s bloodied chest.
A blinding flash of red light filled the hackney. An explosion that sounded like a shotgun blast. A violent sizzling. The horrible stink of burning hair and flesh.
Some way back, Shelley Mary saw the flash.
She thought she recognized the silhouette of the hackney but, if not, at least it was something to aim for. A drama. A possible story. She twisted the Arielectro’s throttle and the combo sped forward, a moment later side-swiping the puffing billy bath chair that Cerval had almost taken out. The old man piloting it decided that the time had come to turn in his driver’s licence.
The Vida’s effect on Thorsten was instantaneous, horrific, and miraculous.
The big man bucked upwards as if yanked by invisible strings, his eyes opening, whites rolling back. He made a noise like a pig in an abattoir, dropped back to the mattress, uttered a deep, rasping breath. Then another. And another. He was alive.
For the moment.
Cerval powered past the site of the accident, barely registering the mangled wreckage of hackneys and jitneys, the flattened tuk-tuk that caused the pile-up, and a spreading pool of blood.
Barely seconds after he passed the crash site, the sound of a furious steam siren; and a cop kart detached itself from the scrum, accelerated in pursuit of Cerval. Under most circumstances, Cerval’s hackney would outrun even the most powerful police steamer but he’d been operating valves wide open for a while. He’d been too focussed on escaping the Carboy area, on Thorsten, on the traffic, on keeping the hackney upright, to reload the furnace. Now steam pressure was dropping fast.
Shelley Mary began to catch up. As civilians swung their vehicles away from the screaming-siren police karts chasing Cerv
al, she steered the Arielectro through the traffic gaps which opened, oblivious to the curses of those she overtook. She couldn’t get a good look at the hackney the cops were chasing, but was increasingly certain it was Cerval’s and this time she wasn’t going to lose him.
“Get out of the fucking way!” she screamed at a jitney. Its driver, stoker and all its passengers glared at her.
Has it become illegal to swear on the highway? she wondered. Probably. Every day, something new was being policed.
Though she’d managed to follow the hackney up onto the freeway, she was still way behind, reduced to creeping along by the accident-delayed traffic queues. She contemplated using the emergency lane, but a quick glance around revealed yet another cop kart.
Shelley Mary pulled off her helmet and goggles, shook her hair free. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the police driver’s mouth open slightly. It was just too easy.
Beyond the highway accident, back on The Smoke’s crowded urban streets, the police steamer was catching up to Cerval’s hackney. Where Cerval had to battle his way forward, the cop kart’s shrieking steam whistle caused other traffic to hurriedly pull over, giving it a clear run.
Cerval checked his rear view in the dashboard-mounted seebackroscope. He saw the cops’ steam kart bearing down on a handful of jitneys that scuttled out of its way like frightened crabs. He was in trouble, no doubt about it. Once they got close enough, the police would open fire, probably with heavy-duty weaponry. Although his hackney was protected back and front, the armour-plating probably wasn’t enough to withstand the latest police firepower. Somehow, he had to stop them before they could stop him.
The traffic was starting to thin, and Cerval realised why. They were approaching Harlesdon Marshes, one of The Smoke’s most deprived neighbourhoods, where owning a hackney or jitney, or a vehicle of any kind, was beyond the reach of most of the UnderGrunt population.
An idea started to formulate in Cerval’s mind, and he wrenched the tiller to steer the hackney into the very heart of the Marshes. The News Of The Smoke habitually referred to it as The War Zone.
Still cradling Thorsten's head, Evangeline glanced out of one of the hackney’s observation slits, the small glass rectangles protected by curlicued wrought-iron bars. She saw a row of soot-blackened terraced dwellings, some of which seemed to have simply given up the struggle and fallen down, so the ruins looked like bad teeth in a rotting jaw. In front of the dwellings were small gaggles of older UnderGrunts. Bent, defeated creatures. Their drab, filthy clothing camouflaged them against the grubby backdrop of the buildings.
These oldsters were long-time victims of The Smoke’s economics, many of them without work for decades. But the younger generation of UnderGrunts hadn’t quite sunk into the same apathy. Now Evangeline could see groups of them, little wolf-packs, eyes shifting back and forth as they looked for new victims. She shouted to Cerval:
“We’re in The War Zone!’
“I know. Don’t worry, I know what I’m doing.’
Cerval glanced in the seebackroscope and saw that, as his steam pressure dropped even further, the cops were getting dangerously close. Looking ahead again, he saw a particularly large group of youths, their attention held by a game of dice. As they milled about, punching the air, shouting in victory or loss, Cerval wrenched savagely on the tiller and drove straight at them.
At the last moment, a boy at the back the crowd, too short and scrawny to bag a place at the front of the action, saw the hackney coming.
“Fuckkkk!” he screamed, with enough urgency to cause the others to look up. They saw a custom-painted hackney looming over them, steam belching from its stacks. With cries and imprecations they leapt out of its way, but one boy was not quick enough. Apparently less worried about his safety than the handful of money on the ground, he hesitated, and tried to scoop it up.
The hackney did swerve at the last moment but still it struck him a glancing blow that sent him spinning into a group of refuse bins. Rarely collected, they overflowed with stinking detritus, which now cascaded down on the boy. As pain and rage hit him simultaneously, he started to yell, his cries reinforced by an aggressive howling from the crowd which quickly surrounded the hackney.
“What the fuck, Cerval? Why did you do that? They’re going to lynch us!”
“No, they’re not.”
Beneath the armour-plating front and rear, Cerval had lined the hackney with an underskin made from the latest flame-retardant composite, AzBestus. Although it couldn’t hold out against cop artillery, the machine would resist attack from any kind of hand weapon, flame thrower or improvised bomb. A mob, however angry, could try to breach it for an hour without success, and it would take more than these malnourished youths to lift it off its wheels and capsize it. Nonetheless, they flailed and screamed, inflamed by the obvious luxury of the vehicle and the presumed wealth of its occupants.
Then they saw the police steamer. The cry went up.
“Cochons!”
The cop kart had followed Cerval into the War Zone, but had pulled up when the two officers within had seen the enraged crowd surrounding his vehicle. Traffic Enforcer Wills and Traffic Enforcer Emms were armed and, provided they were supported by a platoon or two of uniformed and armed colleagues, sufficiently trained to confront UnderGrunts. But now they were alone, overwhelmingly outnumbered, and with no readily available back-up.
Wills was about to turn the kart round and make for civilization when the ‘cochons!’ cry went up. He saw the crowd, several dozen strong, racing down the pock-marked road towards them.
“Oh shit!’ said Emms. ‘Get us out of here, for fuck’s sake!”
“What do you think I’m trying to do?” said Wills, heaving frantically at the tiller, scrambling to get the unwieldy vehicle turned round. The crowd rushed on, their united voices audible now, a savage ululation that the Traffic Enforcers could hear even through the reinforced glass of their cabin. Panicking, Emms shovelled anthracite into the furnace, screamed at Wills:
“Never mind turning, back up, back up!” Wills slammed the machine into reverse, bore down on the throttle, and the heavy machine started to roll backwards, gathering speed as the furnace hungrily devoured the new batch of fuel.
The crowd came on but it looked as though they were going to be disappointed again.
Slowly but surely, the kart pulled away, zigzagging a little as Wills tried to keep it on course while peering into the seebackroscope. But then it hit a patch of cobbles. Even worse, a patch of cobbles awash with human waste, the result of a two-month old sewage leak. The solid rubber tyres immediately lost purchase, spraying shit around like a garden sprinkler. Wills continued to wrestle with the controls of the vehicle. It swerved from side to side, wheels spinning, showering the front-runners.
A dismayed, disgusted cry went up, followed by a roar of incoherent rage. Wills yanked at the tiller, slammed the throttle, but too late. The crowd was upon them.
The Smoke’s elite law enforcement squads were equipped with armoured vehicles but the Traffic Enforcers’ karts were designed for utility, mainly for keeping cowed prisoners in; they weren’t usually called on to keep a blood-craving mob out. These Marshians had been enraged by the expensive, customized hackney that had side-swiped one of their number. They were frustrated by their inability to penetrate its defences. They were humiliated by being showered with shit.
An irresistible wave of collective rage galvanized them. A rock smashed through the TE kart’s side window. A hand snaked inside the cabin, reaching for the door catch. Emms lashed at the hand with his baton, but too late. The door was open. More hands reached in. Wills and Emms were dragged out and within seconds stomped to a bloody pulp, the crowd screaming rage and glee.
Evangeline permitted herself only the quickest glance backwards as Cerval pulled round and accelerated away, back towards the highway. She looked down at Thorsten, who was ashen grey, breathing shallowly, but still alive.
“Drive!” she whispered ur
gently as Cerval operated the controls with manic intensity. “Drive like you’ve never driven before.”
oOo
5
“FUCKASSPISSCUNTBISCUIT!”
Alaina Presley Cullington looked mildly reprovingly at her twin brother Ricardo, not because four of the five words he’d just uttered weren’t used in polite society but because he was allowing himself to spin out into the nervous state that made him utter them. He had been born a Babbler, and when he was Babbling he had no control over either his words or the nervous tics which distorted his face and racked his body.
Alaina sighed, watching as Ricardo paced up and down agitatedly, his fingers entwining convulsively, his mouth twisting into a grimace every few seconds. She was as worried as her brother but the Babbler gene did not affect her as it did her twin.
Cerval, Evangeline and Thorsten had been gone far longer than planned, which almost certainly meant something had gone wrong, but Alaina remained as outwardly calm and serene as her brother was nervous and twitchy. Besides, born first, moments before Ricardo, Alaina believed it was her job to make sure – as far as she could – that her brother kept out of trouble.
She decided to go up to the roof of the Incorruptibles’ building – from the outside, no different to any other in the row of shabby brownstones in which it was embedded. Sometimes, depending on the wind direction, the air up there was purer. Soothing. Also, from that vantage point, she’d be able to see when Cerval, Evangeline and Thorsten entered the area. She didn’t really want to think about the possibility that they may not be returning. She’d cross that bridge if she came to it.
The Incorruptibles (Book One, Frankenstein Vigilante): Frankenstein Vigilante: The Steampunk Series (Frankenstein Vigilante. The Steampunk Series.) Page 3
