Bodacious Creed: a Steampunk Zombie Western (The Adventures of Bodacious Creed Book 1)

by Jonathan Fesmire

  “They've been working on that at Morgan's, but haven't solved it. You're talking about sending signals without wires. Without that a tracker can't possibly work,” Anna said.

  At his desk, Jonny turned to the last page of the Santa Cruz Sentinel newspaper for July twenty-fifth and passed it to Anna. She read the title, Commanding Automatons from a Distance, and the article. Though Anna generally kept informed about advancements at Morgan's companies, she hadn't spoken to him in weeks.

  According to the newspaper, Nicola Tesla, whom Morgan had recruited in Europe years before, had discovered something new. After inventing the light bulb, Tesla had gone on to work with Anna on the electrical activity that made steely brains work with her circuitry.

  It seemed that Tesla had discovered how to send signals without wires.

  The announcement stated that steely owners could soon buy a device to track their automatons within a six-mile radius. Perhaps Anna could get ahold of a prototype and modify it to detect a mechanically-enhanced human brain.

  Creed lumbered through the forest after nightfall, with hazy recollections of the previous night and day. As the morning sun rose, he had headed east, into the forest, where he climbed a redwood and hid atop a thick branch. Leaning against the trunk, he cradled his head in his hands. When he had fled Anna Boyd’s laboratory, his instinct had been to protect the endangered. The light of the sun reminded him that he had died, and the dead didn’t save people. The dead remained in their graves.

  No wonder most of the people he had encountered looked at him with wide, terrified eyes. Now, running fingers along the metal attached to his head, he felt flooded with sadness. It filled his chest and throat. He belonged underground.

  Still, one woman had looked at him with awe, even admiration.

  Leaning back, Creed removed his bandana and shoved it in a coat pocket, then closed his eyes and slept. He awoke to the hoots of an owl, and a star-dappled sky beyond the highest branches and leaves. When he looked down, he remembered another woman. Hadn’t he visited her in the woods before his death? Yes, and she lived in a cabin nearby. Closing his eyes, he concentrated. Another man had gone with him, her husband. Ned, was it? No, Ben.

  Creed stuffed his gloves in a coat pocket and climbed down the trunk from his high perch, digging fingers into cracks in the rough bark as he went from one branch to the next. When he reached the bottom, his fingers bled from scrapes and cuts, but he simply put his gloves back on.

  He marched through the woods, lamplight shining from behind the curtains of each cabin he passed. The woman's home was nearby and somewhat secluded, but if he frightened her and she screamed, someone would likely come armed. The air smelled of wood fires, and smoke rose from chimneys.

  Creed glimpsed the cottage, with its log exterior, first beyond the trees. When he stepped into the clearing the sight tugged at his memory. The interior was one large room, half serving as living area and bedroom, the other as kitchen and dining room. Two steps led to the porch. He and Ben, who must have been a friend, or a fellow marshal, had ridden here on horseback and hitched their steeds to a post near the front of the house. If he went around back, Creed knew he would find a small garden with plants like tomatoes, spearmint, and spinach.

  A figure sauntered past a window, the shadow cast across slate blue curtains. His right hand dropped to his hip, but he left his gun alone. Seconds later, the back door groaned open. Creed walked around the building just in time to see the woman step into a broad outhouse.

  Her name came to him. Heidi.

  Gazing at the stars he tried his mind for a surname, but nothing came to him. However, he remembered the previous night and looking down one street to the frame of a new building. He had worked in that spot with her husband. Yes, and he had died there, along with Ben. A marshal, then. The newspaper clippings Anna had read him covered his first year in the U.S. Marshal Service only and included no one named Ben or Heidi.

  He waited in the darkness, and though he saw no color at night, everything looked sharp, like an expertly rendered charcoal drawing. During the day, he had seen vibrant colors in the forest. Despite the haze in his memory, his vision and hearing were keener than in life.

  Heidi left the outhouse, shut the door, and strode back to the cabin, a rifle strapped across her back. She pointed the light of her hand torch along her path and this gave a hint of color to Creed’s vision as it skimmed along the forest floor.

  Creed stepped toward her, grass crackling under his boots. Heidi whirled and pointed the torchlight in his eyes. He looked to the side, knowing his face might frighten her with the rough scar on his cheek and metal attached to his head.

  Heidi dropped the torch and swung the rifle into her hands. In less than a second, she had it propped against her shoulder and gazed through the sight, the barrel pointed at his head. Either she didn’t recognize him, or she did and rejected him as something less than human.

  Creed tried to say her name but it came out like a dry moan.

  “Whoever you are, you had best get. I'm not afraid to put a round in your head.” Heidi cocked the rifle.

  He knew she meant it, but he had to get her to listen. Before he decided what to do he darted forward as though by instinct. Heidi fired, but Creed had moved to the side. He pulled the rifle from her grip and tossed it aside.

  She dashed up the porch and Creed resisted restraining her. Though he scarcely remembered her, she had to recognize him.

  Creed glimpsed the hand torch spinning toward him and a split second later it cracked against his head. He staggered back from the first real pain he had felt since the nightmares before Anna had awakened him.

  “Heidi, dammit.” He bent forward, one hand on his knee, one on his forehead. When he glanced up she stood in the doorway, lamp light wavering behind her. To his steely eyes, she was a black and white drawing gazing out from a pastel room. She eased the door closer to her. In her left hand, she held a pistol, probably a Colt.

  Creed lifted the hand torch and considered shining on his face from below, but had a recollection of sitting at a campfire with friends, or family, the firelight cast spooky shadows up their faces. Instead, he held it above his head before shining it at himself. After a second of near-whiteness, his eyes adjusted.

  “It can't be you,” she said.

  “My name is James Creed. I'm a United States marshal. I don't know why I'm here.”

  “You're a ghost or a demon! Be gone from here! I don't want—”

  “You know I don't believe in such things.”

  Heidi opened the door a few inches more, revealing a revolver in her right hand. “Toss me the torch, and drop your guns.”

  Creed did as she requested. The pistols landed at his feet, and he stepped back a good fifteen feet.

  Heidi knelt, gun still trained on him, and picked up the torch. She ran it up his body to his face, where it lingered for nearly a minute. Creed’s chest felt weightless, and he realized something. He loved Heidi.

  She approached, light and pistol pointed at him and stopped just a foot away. When Creed touched her cheek, she didn’t flinch. Instead, she closed her eyes and rested her face against his palm.

  “James,” she whispered.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “What's the date?”

  Creed sat at the kitchen table, the lantern in its center casting a long shadow from his cup of tea. Shadows filled the cabin, from the bedroom to the dining room and kitchen, spreading like demons fleeing from that central light. Heidi had no Tesla bulbs installed, but she did have a mechanical icebox with its own small power generator, attached to the side of the house, just outside the kitchen window, occasionally letting free a puff of steam. She had removed two cold chicken breasts from within, put them in a skillet with butter, lit the stove, and covered the cooking meat. Carrots and shallots sat on the counter.

  “It’s July twenty-fifth.”

  Creed closed his eyes to think. “The Centennial. Twenty-one days ago.” His voice sounded h
oarse, but the tea, brewed with the spearmint Heidi grew in the garden, blended with a spoonful of honey, soothed his throat as he drank. The steam rising from the cup told him the water was hot, but it felt lukewarm.

  “Twenty-one,” he whispered, trying to remember that day. He had seen another man shot. Yes, he had dragged the man from a burning building. The marshal’s post? It had to be. The man, Bennett, had been Heidi’s husband, and now she lived alone.

  Creed wanted to know exactly what had happened, but as Heidi sliced the carrots into disks, he thought this a bad time to discuss it. Ben must have been his friend, but he sensed Heidi meant more to him than a friend’s wife should.

  Those twenty-one days meant Anna had kept him in her laboratory for nearly three weeks. She had likely stolen his body from his grave shortly after his funeral.

  The topic of Anna seemed another to avoid with Heidi. When he had left the night before, Creed had realized it was a saloon with parlor girls, which meant, most likely, a bordello. His instinct told him that Heidi might disapprove of prostitution.

  Heidi finished dicing the shallots and added them to the meat cooking in the skillet. She picked a wooden spatula that hung against the wall and held it ready.

  “Why am I here?” Creed asked.

  Heidi looked back at him quizzically. “In Santa Cruz? You came after a wanted man. A killer called Corwin Blake.”

  “Blake.” Creed shut his steely eyes. “Short fellow, blond hair. Arrogant.”

  “That's him. I’ve got a drawing somewhere.” Heidi went to the night table beside the bed and pulled a piece of paper out from beneath a pile of books. She handed it to Creed.

  The wanted poster had a drawing of an expressionless man with stubble, mustache, unkempt hair, and a few pimples on his forehead. Across the top, the text read, “Wanted for 11 Murders,” and across the bottom, “Corwin Blake, Age 19, 5’3”, $2500 Reward.”

  Creed began to speak and found his voice rough, so he took a long sip of tea. “Two thousand five hundred. That’s a lot.”

  “Yes, a fortune. He's that dangerous. He killed…” Heidi’s voice trailed off. “Well, you, and... and my Ben. Bert McClary, too. Then again, you're dangerous as well.”

  They remained quiet while Heidi finished cooking, and Creed contemplated her words. At last, she scooped the food onto a ceramic plate with the spatula and set it on the table before him, then placed a knife and fork beside it. She poured Creed more tea as he sliced into one of the chicken breasts. When he took his first bite, she sat across from him.

  “You came here to arrest Blake for burglary and murder.” Heidi took a sip from Creed's cup. “Crime's gotten worse, despite more deputies. Blake's attack on the law, I think it made the criminals braver, and I think Blake’s fled town.”

  “Could be.” Having murdered several marshals, Blake may have considered his work in Santa Cruz done. Creed sliced a bit of chicken and popped it into his mouth. He thought it needed more spices, but knew his sense of taste had dulled, too. “Still,” he said, stabbing carrot slices with his fork, “I reckon he's got other business here.”

  “You think he’s a problem that means to stay?” Heidi considered Creeds eyes then glanced down. “With you here, he’s in for a rude awakening.”

  “Every outlaw in town knows about me by now.”

  “How, though? How did you come back? Those metal parts. Did Morgan’s Automatons do that?” She wrung her hands.

  “What are Morgan's Automatons?”

  “How much have you forgotten?” Heidi asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  She sat back in her chair, legs crossed. “It’s the company that makes steelies, and it has factories here in Santa Cruz.”

  Creed then recalled Anna saying the company name to Jonny. She wanted to keep Creed a secret from them. Before he ate more, Creed shook salt and pepper over his food.

  “So, not Morgan’s Automatons?” asked Heidi.

  Creed had eaten about half the plate and felt full, so he pushed it aside. “Sorry, my appetite’s different.” He stared across the room and drank his tea.

  “Well,” said Heidi, “you didn't do this to yourself.”

  “What else do you know about my life?”

  She sighed and shrugged. “You joined the U.S. Marshal Service about seventeen years ago, after serving as a local marshal in Virginia. You once told me you lost your wife and daughter in a fire.”

  Creed winced. Even without specific memories coming forward, he felt the truth in his gut.

  “We were, well, friends, when you and Bennett started working together before Ben and I were ever married.” She looked down at her hands. “Then you moved to San Francisco, to work for the service there. Ben and I moved here a couple of years back. I had no idea we’d ever see you again.”

  Eyes closed, Creed pressed the heels of his palms to his forehead. “I can’t listen to any more right now. Too much to think about.” In addition, Heidi looked upset, staring at her hands as she worked them together, frown lines deepening around her lips.

  “Well, then I’ll get ready for bed. Keep your eyes shut while I dress.” He did and heard her moving to the bedroom. “You might want to sleep, too.”

  “I slept all day,” he said, “but I'll try.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  At about eight in the morning on July twenty-sixth, fog still covering the town, Anna rode Espiritu west along Cabrillo Highway out of the more densely populated area of Santa Cruz. To the south, buildings gave way to grass and beach, to the north, more plains and golden, tree-lined hills. Mostly lumberjacks and factory workers lived that way. Three and a half miles from The House of Amber Doves, Anna came to the Morgan’s Automatons factory.

  Three sets of wide double-doors were open to let the morning breeze cool busy workers on the assembly line. They connected parts and sent them on to automatons that verified the work and bolted pieces together. At the other end of the facility, tubes carried molten steel and deposited it in molds, overseen by automatons like Zero.

  Anna rode to the executive building, next to the guest office, and used her key to enter. Inside the foyer, two sets of curving stairs led to the office of Miles Morgan. She ascended the polished mahogany steps and opened Morgan’s door. Morgan’s assistant sat at her Sholes and Glidden Type Writer, staring at the paper as she composed a letter or memo. She glanced at Anna and immediately went through the far door to inform Morgan.

  A moment later, he stepped out. “Anna, it's good to see you. Come in.” He gestured for her to enter and followed behind her, then strode through the room and sat at his redwood desk, two six-foot wide windows behind him letting in ambient light. “Do you have new research for me, or did you want to schedule dinner?”

  Anna hesitated. A branch of Morgan’s Mechanicals already had her healing research and struggled to come up with their own breakthroughs. Now that she had resurrected a human being, she worried what the company might discover. What if those researchers discovered how to raise the dead? She didn’t want to think about the implications of the knowledge becoming widespread. To bring up this concern, she would have to admit to her discoveries. Anna would have to think on it further.

  “I need the company’s latest research, the way Tesla discovered to send signals without wires. I’d like to work on the tracking system for steelies.”

  “We already have scientists on that.”

  “Yes, scientists who aren’t me,” Anna said.

  Morgan crossed his arms over his belly and flashed her a grin. “That’s true. Currently, the system detects the nearest steely, but we need to be able to track specific steelies. Then, each new model will each come with a tracker so the owner will never lose it.”

  “Sensible,” said Anna. “If you want to do it right, you’ll need to add a unique identifier to each, a code for the tracker to detect. It should be purposeful. Still, the ether rods have tiny imperfections. Perhaps we can track those before devising the new system and retrofitting existin
g steelies. It will depend on how Tesla’s breakthrough works.”

  Miles drummed his thick fingers against his desk and thought. Just when Anna feared he would refuse her, he said, “You can have a prototype tracker. I know how well you work. I expect results within the week.”

  Anna sat at her bedroom vanity with the tracker, sunlight reflecting off the circular glass cover on the left side of the device. Under the glass, an arrow pointed straight ahead, like a compass pointing north. Currently, it detected only the nearest ether rod. A sliding button rested at the base of a numbered track, meant to show distance in miles. Anna thought rotating numbers would work better, giving a more exact reading.

  She flipped a switch on the right side and the brass button moved slightly, but the arrow spun. Of course. She had numerous ether rods downstairs in the lab. This would need hours of work. Could she possibly improve it enough to find Creed, without first testing the rods in his heart and head units? Did she have to find him to be able to find him?

  Still, she had accomplished things Morgan and others called miraculous. She and Jonny just might find a solution.

  Anna changed out of her clean, yellow dress and put on pants and a beige blouse then descended to the laboratory. At her desk, she sharpened a pencil with a whittling knife and opened a research book.

  Tesla’s areas of expertise differed greatly from Anna’s, but their work complemented each other’s. Of course, Tesla had gained popularity for his inventions, while Anna’s identity remained secret. No one felt sure what the world would think if they knew a former whore had made the breakthroughs needed to power the modern world. She removed a screw driver from a drawer and after a few minutes, had the bottom of the device open, and started taking notes.

  Anna and Jonny disassembled, reassembled, reconfigured, and made copies of the device over the next three days. Though she found the work nerve-wracking, she also found it engrossing. She meant to go help the girls upstairs, but the hours passed at the speed of a bullet. She spent about an hour in the saloon every night, but even then, her mind fixated on finding Creed. In the very least, she had to talk to him.