Dead Handsome

by Laura Strickland

  “That bottle the lass promised.”

  Clara glanced at Ruella, who winked. “I just happen to have a small measure, here, of gin.” She drew a bottle from the pocket of her coat. “Now, Tim, start talking.”

  ****

  The saw, unlike any Liam could have imagined in his worst nightmares, proved to be mechanized and steam-powered. Charles brought it in his metal hands and fired it up with a roar that sounded like the whine of a giant hornet.

  “Take his scalp first,” Mason insisted, “but try to do as little damage as possible. I’m eager to see what happens when we harvest the vitals from a live subject.”

  Fagan went abruptly silent, either with fear or because he’d passed out, as the buzzing tool approached his head.

  Liam, knowing he had only seconds to save the lad, began to sweat. “Wait!”

  “The second Mick speaks!” Mason said, and held up a hand. Charles paused with the whirling blade of the saw mere inches from the top of Brandon’s head.

  “You’ll kill him.”

  “Inevitably, but not right away. A man can survive scalping. You’d be surprised—will be surprised—at what a man can survive.”

  “Best to be careful, though,” Liam gasped. “You don’t want to waste him. And I’m not convinced you’re as skilled at this sort of thing as you claim.”

  59, still standing by, turned its head and followed the conversation. It—as much as Brendan—was Liam’s reason for talking.

  “That’s a ridiculous statement,” Mason snapped.

  “But if you’re so miraculously good at all this, why not give him new, real hands?” Liam jerked his head at Charles. “Why not give yourself a real eye? Then you could go out into the world without frightening children.”

  That seemed to snag all Mason’s attention. He gestured at Charles, who lowered the saw, and swung round to face Liam.

  “You think I want to be like other men? You think I want to associate with the scum that fills this city, garbage like yourself, like that used to be?” Wildly, he indicated 59. “People are ignorant. You should understand that, bog-jumper, for your kind are the most ignorant of the lot, fit only for drinking, fighting, and spawning more like yourselves under the auspices of your church. I am superior. I needn’t hide that superiority beneath a harvested skin. And I certainly wouldn’t contaminate myself by placing one of your eyes in my head.”

  Deliberately, Liam looked at the steam unit. “You see what he thinks of us, lad. Shameful, that. What are you going to do about it?”

  Mason appeared momentarily taken aback; then a smirk twisted his lips. “Don’t bother, Mick. They’re completely loyal to me.”

  “Are they, then? Even though you don’t bother to hide how you despise them?”

  “I do not despise it, I despise you. This unit is a brilliant piece of work.”

  “Despite the fact that it’s a lowly Irish Mick bog-jumper?”

  “It is not, not any longer. Portions of it were merely harvested from criminals better dead.”

  “Irishmen.”

  Brendan was aware and following the conversation now, staring at Liam, his eyes painfully wide.

  “You said yourself,” Liam pressed, half his attention on the unit, “they carry the essence of real men. Irishmen.”

  Mason’s single, dark eye glowed; the mechanical fitting in the other socket adjusted wildly. He said to Charles, “I’ve changed my mind. Bring that saw over here; we’ll start on this one.”

  ****

  “Can’t see inside,” Fred grunted. “Windows are all painted over.”

  The five of them huddled in a clump, concealed by shadows and the cold mist that rose from the water, and regarded the warehouse. A brick structure, its walls perhaps thirty feet high, it seemed to waver before Clara’s eyes in time with her heartbeat. If Liam were there, she wanted to rush in impetuously but dared not.

  “Steam units,” Woodrow muttered. So there were—two of them on patrol, fine, big, new-looking machines.

  “Whatever’s here wants guarding,” Ruella whispered. “We need a look inside.”

  “I will go.” Dax rattled and puffed as he rolled forward. “No one will suspect me.”

  Clara and the others stared at him. Could a steamie show initiative? Courage?

  “No, hold on.” Fred put out a hand. “I have a better idea. Woodrow and I will get in a scrap and distract those two. The rest of you try to sneak inside.”

  Deliberately, he handed the pistol to Ruella and said to his friend, “Come on.”

  “All right,” Woodrow agreed, “but watch out for my nuts. Last time we did this, you planted your knee square on ’em.”

  “Sorry about that.” Fred raised his voice. “You dirty, filthy cheat! You took my money! Give it back!”

  As easily as that, a fight erupted. The two lads, hollering and swearing most convincingly, rolled and scrapped together, kicking and pushing, out from the cover of the shadows.

  Clara stared in amazement. Through the fog that hung in the air like a chilly blanket, the boys thrashed and bellowed. Ruella seized Clara’s arm and urged her through the dark perimeter toward the building. Dax rattled behind, his clatter well covered by the fracas.

  The two steamies on patrol reacted immediately to the erupting brawl and moved in the boys’ direction.

  Clara took a deep breath and reached for the handle on the tall door. She didn’t know what lay within, but at this point she was willing to brave whatever she must.

  “Miss, let me.” Dax barred her way. Half-started, she looked into his metal face. The eyes, mere depressions in the polished surface, should have revealed no emotion. But she saw determination there, and a certain measure of gallantry.

  Her hand dropped from the handle. “Very well.”

  Dax pushed against the door. Behind them, the lads were howling like two tigers in their death throes, keeping the guards distracted.

  The door resisted—locked or barred from the inside. Dax pushed harder and made a sound surprisingly like a grunt. Steam poured through the joints at his neck and shoulders, and his chest creaked alarmingly. He pushed still harder, and his elbows jittered.

  The door flew inward, and the three of them stumbled through.

  “Shut it quick,” Ruella gasped, “before they notice.”

  “The lads—” Clara protested.

  “They can take care of themselves.”

  “Dax”—Clara laid a hand on the steamie’s arm—“please keep a watch for Fred and Woodrow.”

  Dax slipped back out even as Clara raised amazed eyes to survey the interior of the warehouse. Large, high-ceilinged, and blindingly bright, it contained absolutely no one. Steam billowed from a large plant some eighty feet distant, and equipment lay everywhere, very little of which she could identify.

  “No one here?” Ruella asked in a whisper.

  As if in answer, a bellow came from beyond the great furnace, quickly followed by a high, angry whine like that of the drill Clara’s father had sometimes used on his patients’ teeth.

  “That’s young Fagan’s voice,” Ruella declared, and took off down the room at a heavy gallop.

  Clara followed and, seeing Ruella take the pistol firmly in hand as she rounded the furnace, prepared herself for anything.

  But not for what she saw.

  The space beyond the furnace had been partitioned. A gray wall equipped with doors faced Clara as she skidded to a halt, leaving a space about thirty by twenty feet, brightly lit.

  “Well, now,” Ruella gasped, her eyes bulging, “there’s a sight you don’t see every day, innit?”

  Too true. For Liam and a young man—Fagan?—both stark naked, were strapped to metal tables, while three men stood over them, one with a whirring, whining tool in his hands.

  Clara gulped and stared. In his mechanical hands.

  She screamed, and everything froze as five faces turned toward her. The buzzing tool swung and wavered, mere inches from Liam’s head.

  “St
op right there,” Ruella croaked, “or I’ll shoot!”

  They’d already stopped, but Clara felt it a moot point. Her gaze reached for Liam’s and his for her, as a drowning man for rescue. The breath surged in her lungs.

  Ruella said, “Put the contraption down.”

  It did seem the most pertinent point. The thing whirred above Liam’s ear, ready to bite. The man who held it—he with the horrific metal hands and, Clara now saw, livid steam burns—stared and sneered, and one of the other two whirled to confront them.

  He had long, black hair and only one eye. The other—but Clara’s mind stuttered over it, refusing to accept the truth.

  What monstrous place was this?

  “Put it down,” Ruella commanded again, and raised the pistol in unsteady hands. “I will shoot!”

  “Take care of them, 59,” the black-haired man ordered.

  The third man—the most ordinary looking of the lot—moved to obey.

  “Don’t do it, lad,” Liam gasped. “Don’t abet the enemy.”

  The tall man with the auburn hair hesitated. He looked at Liam, and Clara felt something pass between the two of them.

  “I am not your enemy,” the black-haired man keened. “I’m your creator, and you will obey me! Damn it, I didn’t construct you to have free will.”

  “Maybe not,” Liam retorted from flat on his back. “But neither do I think you constructed all the Irish out of him.”

  Created? Clara blinked at the auburn-haired man and then blinked again. He couldn’t be an automaton, if that was what the word implied. But was he entirely human? Her stomach wobbled.

  “Bloody hell!” Ruella gasped, tumbling to the truth at the same instant as Clara. The pistol shook so badly she almost dropped it.

  “So!” The black-haired man seized the terrible tool from the other’s mechanical hands and glared at the steamie hybrid. “You have loyalties I didn’t manage to bleed out, do you? Well, my friend, that’s the trouble with being human: loyalty can so easily be used against you.”

  And he thrust the whirring machine at Liam’s head.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Several things happened at once. Liam jerked his head as far across the table as he could, given the strap across his chest. The blade of the saw hit the metal table and spewed sparks. Clara screamed, a crash came from beyond the furnace, and the gun went off, knocking Ruella back a step. The mechanical man—Liam corrected himself—the mechanical Irishman gave a sound like a factory whistle marking the end of a shift.

  Mason swore and whirled toward 59, the saw still in his hand. It skittered across the steel of the table top beside Liam’s ear, and then 59 tackled Mason, and they both went down.

  The doors in the gray wall at the rear of the warehouse opened, and Liam, still breathless at his near-miss, blinked and stared. A small army of what could only be others like 59 emerged.

  They looked very like a stout company of Irishmen, tall and hearty, for the most part, all wearing human eyes, hair, and skin. Had they come in response to 59’s terrible battle cry? Or did they answer the demands of their creators?

  If the latter proved true then he, Brendan, Clara, and Ruella were all lost.

  Ah—and what was this? From around the furnace raced Fred and Woodrow, looking like they’d just been in a fierce fight. Fred raced to Ruella and took the pistol from her hands.

  “Stop right there! Everybody stop!” Charles, too, had a weapon in his hands, one such as Liam had never seen. Long and black, with a twisted muzzle, it looked like nothing so much as an overgrown licorice stick.

  The melee ground to a gradual halt. Liam could only assume Mason and 59 still grappled together on the floor, for he could not see them. Nor could he see Clara, and his heart seized in his chest. Had she been hit by Ruella’s shot? Had she fallen?

  Charles pointed his weapon at Brandon’s head. “Anyone moves, and he dies.” Contradicting his own instructions, he added to Fred, “Drop the weapon.”

  “Do it, lad,” Ruella begged.

  With a grunt, eyes fixed on Charles’s hands, Fred obeyed.

  “Now, 59, get up. Obey me!” Charles roared when 59 did not immediately comply. “Or this piece of Irish meat dies.”

  The automatons standing in a line shifted uneasily. Liam tried to count them, but they wavered too badly before his eyes.

  59 arose slowly and stood balanced like a dancer, all his attention on Charles.

  Charles hollered, “Help your master up.”

  59 stiffened. He threw back his head and spoke in a deep voice. “I am an Irishman. I have no master.”

  Liam wanted to shout in pure delight at that, but Charles’s face darkened with anger.

  “You,” said Charles, clearly enraged, “are an amalgamation of the parts from which you were made—the fact that most of them came from Irish corpses is purely incidental.”

  “You call murder incidental?” Liam croaked. “Look at them, man! Haul up your partner and make him look also. These aren’t your creations. They’re your victims!”

  For an instant the great, echoing room went still. Then Liam’s ear caught a faint hum—no, a rumble—no, a roaring moan. It came from the throats of all the hybrid steamies at once, up from the fires in their bellies, through their steam chambers, to their throats.

  “Murder,” said one.

  “Murder.”

  “Murder.”

  The word repeated again and again. A hand grasped the edge of Liam’s table and Mason pulled himself up. He had no attention for Liam, though, and stared at the ring of metal and flesh that surrounded him.

  “Stand down!” he commanded.

  “Murder, murder, murder.” It became an accusation, like a rising tide, mobile and restless.

  Mason shrank toward Charles, his eye adjusting frantically.

  Another hand appeared, this time on the other side of Liam’s table—fingers he recognized and knew right well. Clara scrambled up until she could touch him. Her fingers closed on his bare shoulder, and he felt his breath come easier.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” he whispered at her.

  “Yes, I should.” Her eyes were all for the circle of automatons, but her love flooded Liam as she concluded, “Because you are.”

  “Drop the weapon,” 59 told Charles. He gestured at Brandon. “He, like this other man, is our brother. If you harm him, we shall tear you limb from limb.”

  “And maybe,” said the tallest of the lot, who had flaming red hair, “even if you don’t.”

  Charles jerked the black gun round and aimed it at 59. “Perhaps I’ll just shoot you, instead.”

  “No, Charles!” Mason cried. “They’re too valuable. We’ve worked too hard, for too long—”

  He got no further. Charles’s finger spasmed on the trigger of the weapon. What looked like a beam of fire took 59 square in the chest and knocked him over backward. Before Charles could even attempt to shoot again, the circle of automatons closed on him and formed a knot between the two tables, absorbing Mason as they came.

  “Damn, damn, damn!” Clara struggled with the metallic straps that held Liam to the table, finding them stiff and difficult. The one across his chest suddenly came loose, and then that which bound his arms. He seized her head and pressed it into his neck.

  “Don’t look,” he bade her.

  But neither of them had to look. The sounds of tearing flesh conveyed exactly what took place on the warehouse floor.

  ****

  “So,” Liam said, marveling over it, “Nancy and I were never married? She was my brother’s wife?”

  “Yes,” Clara assured him with considerable satisfaction. “Which means our marriage is perfectly legal, and we’ve successfully spiked my grandfather’s guns. Everyone under this roof is safe.”

  They sat in the parlor of the house on Virginia Street with Georgina and Theodore, Fred and Woodrow, and Brendan and Ruella, sharing a drink. Theodore and Georgina had needed to be filled in on just what had occurred at the warehouse.
A certain amount of disbelief needed to be overcome, even among those who had been at the Cuttery. Liam, like the others, could scarcely assimilate what he had seen.

  Like a mad dream it all seemed, and had been ever since Clara breathed life into him. He quivered at that thought and threaded his fingers through hers still more securely. She perched on the arm of the chair in which he sat, virtually in his lap. He wanted her even closer, needed to go upstairs with her so badly he shook with it. But first this stout company had to talk through the horror they had shared.

  “And what about Dax?” Tears flooded Georgina’s eyes as she looked at Fred and Woodrow. “You say he sacrificed himself?”

  Fred raised the glass he held to his lips before he replied. No one had objected when the two lads requested a small measure of whiskey—they’d earned a man’s portion this night.

  “We’d never have got past those guards if he hadn’t come back looking for us,” Fred said. “I’ve never seen steam units as advanced as those two, and I’ve worked on my share. They were miles beyond Dax, yet he threw himself to them the way a mama cat throws itself to the dogs.”

  “Impossible to claim steamies aren’t capable of loyalty,” Clara said fiercely. “That’s the mistake those horrible men made, isn’t it? Mason and Charles, you called them. But oh, I could weep for Dax.”

  “Don’t, miss,” Fred hastened to assure her. “I think Woodrow and I can rebuild him, maybe put in a few improvements of our own.”

  Clara raised her eyes to the lads. “But will he still be Dax?”

  “I don’t think we can doubt that, given what we’ve seen this night.”

  “What will happen to those super-units in the warehouse?” Fred wanted to know. “They’re not really steamies, are they? But they’re not quite men.”

  Fagan, whose hand rested on Ruella’s knee, spoke. “That will be a decision for the powers that be, won’t it? For now, they’ve been taken into custody for their own safety. I know what I’d like to see happen—they should be offered jobs on the police force. I’m thinking an all-Irish division.”

  “A fine idea, that.” Liam quirked an eyebrow at the lad who had now become more than a friend. “I’d be willing to join that force meself, if I weren’t such a reprobate.”