Light assaulted his vision and he had to cover his face for a moment. He squinted down a wooden stairway and caught the burned-honey smell of a forge.
As he walked down, a metallic form moved below. Cantrell reached for his devices when a shiny gray arm came toward him, index finger pointing.
“Fuck!” Cantrell cried. The finger struck him in the neck with a sharp pinch. He fumbled in his pocket, backing up as the automaton ascended the stairs, mentally cursing himself for not using the deactivation device before he opened the hatch.
The massive steely grabbed Cantrell’s left arm as he pulled out the device meant to shut down Creed. Cantrell dropped it and kicked at the steely’s face. The automaton shoved, and Cantrell hit the stairs, his head and lower back smacking the hard edges. The steely’s hands clamped around his lower legs.
Cantrell nearly ripped apart the stitching on his pocket when he pulled free the device he needed. He moved his thumb for the switch but grogginess came over him. The back of his head pounded; the overwhelming feeling was like being drunk on a bottle of rum. The steely had drugged him with a tranquilizer.
With a shout, Cantrell flipped the switch.
The steely went still for a moment. Then, it released his legs. As Cantrell turned around, it stood with arms to the side, like the Vitruvian Man in metal and hard wood.
The bounty hunter shoved the contraption back in with the tracker, retrieved the one he had dropped, shoved that in an outside pocket, then felt his neck. His hand came away with barely a drop of blood. He stood, steadying himself by putting his hand on the stairs. Whatever drug the steely had dosed him with, Cantrell figured only his size and the rush of adrenaline kept him awake. Best to retrieve the damned brain unit and get out.
Cantrell stumbled past the steely, yet managed to keep his footing as he glanced around. There were two tables that looked like advanced medical beds, several cabinets, extra tables, chairs, and work benches. He had seen illustrations of steely brain units and hoped to spot the one Gregg wanted quickly.
For a moment, he forgot what he was doing. The cacophony of men and women’s voices came from upstairs, ruining the music. Thinking he should have shut the trapdoor, he turned to go up the stairs again, then forced himself to look over the room. The brain unit. Get that, get out, don’t collapse.
What might Boyd do to him? Experiment? Make him like Creed? He opened a cabinet and stared inside. Steely parts covered the shelves, but no brain.
After another cabinet, maybe two, Cantrell found it in plain sight at the end of a table, shaped like an egg with the round bottom sliced away, a glass panel on one side. He lifted it, swayed, and figured the circuitry looked about right. It was the size of his fist, so he shoved it in his left coat pocket where it made an ugly bulge.
He went about halfway up the staircase when the skinny man stepped down and pointed a gun at him. In his surprise, the bounty hunter forced away his exhaustion with another shout. Pain ran through his torso and head. He raised his hands as his legs and belly began to cramp.
The young man cocked the pistol but didn’t speak. Cantrell realized he was more wiry than skinny, probably strong and quick.
“Are you going to shoot me, or do you have any requests?” Cantrell asked.
The stranger tilted his head and lowered his eyebrows. Near him, Cantrell heard Anna Boyd snoring. His legs almost folded and he grabbed the railing. He didn’t understand why the young man wouldn’t speak. Fear, maybe? Or did he just realize Cantrell would soon collapse?
“You’ve got me.” Cantrell raised his hands again. “Do what you have to.”
Just as he decided he may as well lie on the steps and wait for sleep, the young man glanced toward the bed.
Cantrell drew his Lawkeeper with his left hand and fired. At any more of a distance, he would have missed the kid entirely as grogginess threatened to overcome him, but a burst of thin lightning struck him in the shoulder. With a shudder, the youngster collapsed.
In his surprise, Cantrell gained a final rush of energy. He went passed his would-be attacker, entered the alley, and moved with a staggering jog along Soquel Avenue until he made it to his stallion.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Creed spent much of the night exploring the massive mine, a maze of cool passageways that smelled of dirt and stone dust. Wooden poles and beams held up the halls. Some avenues were about twenty feet long, others, more than a hundred. Between them, Creed found dozens of wide sections where miners had struck gold and kept searching. These rough, ovoid rooms had wooden columns throughout, holding up the rocky ceilings.
Several lifts lead into deeper areas of the mine, and again, Creed felt grateful for his new eyes. Yes, at times he felt a pang of nostalgia for his human vision, but without these, he would have been blind down here.
The lifts descended to more passages and rooms. Miners had left a few lanterns hanging on hooks from the stone walls.
Creed marveled that this mine had been just one of many claims in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Those unable to dig for gold, either because all the plots had been claimed or because they lacked the initial capital to pay workers, had panned in the rivers. Creed wasn't sure why he remembered that, but he must have read about Santa Cruz at some point or heard the news in his younger days.
Where had he been back then? Creed leaned against a wall beam, arms crossed. Virginia, he thought. He remembered a woman and a little girl, but nothing else. He touched his chest, for it seemed his mechanical heart had sped up.
Though dust lingered in the air, he did not sneeze, but his nostrils felt irritated. He removed his mask and wiped his nose with a handkerchief. He still found it curious how his revived body reacted to the world.
For now, the stone labyrinth would do as shelter. He returned to the lift and using the pulley rope, ascended back to the premier level. The room he entered was one of the most distant from the entrance. He thought it would make a good a place as any to sleep. His pocket watch read seven twenty-two in the morning.
Creed arranged the items in his leather satchel with the harder ones pushed to one side, and shirts, denim jeans, and socks filling the rest of the space. He placed it on the floor and lay down, using it as a pillow, then set his hat beside him and propped the mask against it. A few criminals had tried to shoot him in the face before Anna had made it for him, but he had always anticipated their intentions by catching sight of their aim and ducked or dodged before they could fire. The mask gave him a bit more protection, but had all his bones hardened like his shoulder blade? Could his skull block bullets?
Knowing that the marshals had put a price on his head only strengthened Creed's resolve to complete his original mission. He hadn't come here to clean up crime, though the city sorely needed a protector. He had come to bring Corwin Blake to justice. Many now assumed that Blake had fled town and probably gotten himself shot and buried on the road. Creed couldn't believe that.
Though Blake was reckless, he had always avoided capture. His assortment of black-market gadgets made him even more dangerous. Creed figured that someone had a leash on Blake, but how soon before it snapped, sending the outlaw on another killing spree?
The morning of August eighth, Anna awoke with a headache pounding at her temples and a stiff neck. She threw her legs over the side of the bed and sat, letting the blankets fall off her naked torso. The only headaches she ever suffered came from hangovers, and she drank to inebriation infrequently at best.
She eased herself to the bathroom, each step causing her head to pound again, pumped some cold water into the sink and rubbed it over her face. In the mirror, she looked more alert than she felt. Maybe a cup of coffee would help, so she decided to put on a long skirt and blouse then head to the kitchen. Though it was still dark outside, she feared going back to bed would worsen the pain.
Anna went back to the bedroom and cried in surprise. Jonny lay at the foot of the bed, his torso on the floor, his legs on the stairs to the laboratory. She knelt at his side and
looked over his body for any wounds. His pulse beat strongly in his neck. Good. He hadn’t been shot or stabbed, so what had happened?
“Jonny.” She patted his face, first gently, then a little harder. His eyelids struggled to open, but at last, he gazed at her.
“Aaa... Anna...”
She gasped. “Can you talk?”
He tried again, but he expressed nothing but a groan, and his shoulders slumped.
Anna turned his head to check his modest implant and had another shock. The metal appeared singed. “Jonny, what happened?”
He shrugged.
“Did someone do this to you?” Anna asked, and Jonny nodded. “Someone broke into the lab?” Another nod, more insistent this time, and he pointed down the stairs.
Jonny sat up, hands on his forehead, and Anna stepped down, torso bare. In the back of her mind, she still wished she had time to get dressed and grab a mug of coffee. How in the world had anyone broken into her lab? She supposed someone talented enough could pick the lock. She rubbed the back of her neck, then her forehead. How had they even found the hatch?
She supposed one of the crew that rebuilt The House of Amber Doves could find it, but Morgan had purposefully brought in men from the east coast by train and sent them home with generous pay.
Zero stood at the base of the stairs like a model in a Morgan's Automatons catalog. Anna stepped beside it and examined the frame. Everything seemed in place, head properly connected, joints right, and no damage to any of its plating. Hickory leg, arm, and torso sections showed no cracks, and the steel parts no dents.
Anna retrieved a chair and a screwdriver, set the seat behind Zero, and stood on it. She then unscrewed a small plate in the middle of its upper back. She flipped several small levers and Zero turned its head to gaze at her with its peripheral vision.
“I'm just gonna close you up here, Zero.” Anna screwed it back into place, and Zero walked to its blacksmithing area.
Anna took work trousers and a blouse out of a cabinet and noticed Jonny looking her over as she put them on. “I see you’re doing better than I thought, Jonny. Would you get us both some coffee?” She thought about how he had nearly said her name and her nipples began to stand at attention. It seemed a shame she couldn’t make love to him right then, but they had to focus on the break in. “When you come back, we'll find out what Zero knows.”
Jonny returned after about ten minutes with a mug of coffee for each of them and a plate of buttered biscuits. Anna had Zero facing the wall. While Jonny was in the kitchen, she had switched Zero’s eyes from receiving to projecting.
She brushed aside Jonny’s hair and looked again at his small head unit. It was as though he had received a shock improperly working on a steely or a steam engine. Still, he seemed fine. She would check the unit soon.
First, Anna had to know who had attacked Jonny and Zero. She put her hands to her aching temples again, realizing she had been dosed, probably with the anesthetic chloroform. Clearly he, or she, had remotely deactivated her steely. Might it have been the same man who attempted to abducted Creed? How far had Morgan’s technology spread?
Hoping to ease her headache before examining what Zero had seen, Anna sipped her coffee. Jonny had added a splash of cream and a tablespoon of sugar, just the way she liked it, and had stirred it in perfectly. She drank, slowly at first, then downed a biscuit and finished the drink.
“Lights off!” Anna called, and every light in the room, save for the glow in Zero's eyes, winked out.
“Zero, what happened in the minutes before something shut you off. Show me.”
The steely’s eyes cast images against the wall, which blurred and sharpened as Zero attempted to focus. Even at their best, they remained fuzzy.
Though automatons had acute vision, they also had finite memory. Few humans would even call their recollections memories. They could learn procedures and follow instructions based on their programming, and recognize up to three people authorized to give them commands. Zero had expanded memory, making it capable of forging complex metal parts and assembling machinery. However, its memory allocated to calling up past events was limited. Anna had never needed to use this visual function before. She thought it would prove more reliable.
Perhaps the brain unit they had recovered from the steely in the forest would have helpful information. Anna glanced at the table where she had placed it.
“Where the hell is that steely’s brain?” She shut her eyes. “That’s what the thief took. Okay, Zero, I need to know what the fucker looks like.”
Zero had one image of the encounter, a portrait of a man in a dark coat, black bandana across his face, and a black hat. It could have been one of dozens of men, from Lonzo Rivera to Marshal Bateman, or even Creed. The way the handkerchief lay, she realized the man had a thick beard and black sideburns. A man with black hair, then, in black. Still, not much to go on.
“Did you recognize him, Jonny?” Anna asked.
Her companion shook his head.
“Fuzzy as this is,” Anna said. “I’m not sure a long exposure would tell us much more. God fucking damn it!”
Jonny adjusted Zero's eyes to stop the projection as Anna paced the room. The stranger had a black beard, but what about his eyes? What else might she have missed with her head and neck still aching? “Please turn it back on.”
He did, and Anna studied the image again. The shadows down his face, and the fact that the man was squinting, completely obscured any color. The bridge of his nose appeared a bit wide, the eyebrows full.
“I’ll be watching for you,” she whispered.
Knocking came from above. “Miss Boyd?” called Marjory Smullen. “I can't open the door! We heard you yelling.”
Anna and Jonny ascended the stairs, and Jonny shut the hatch and slid the rug over it.
“I'm all right,” Anna said, opening the door. “We’re just getting up.” She glanced back at her clock, which read five forty. “I'll be out there in an hour or so. Jonny and I were just having a laugh.”
“Good. We’re getting busy with breakfast.” Marjory left and Anna shut the door.
Anna sat beside Jonny on the bed and realized that the caffeine had helped her headache. Perhaps a little morning activity would, too. “Hey, let's take our mind off this.” She wrapped her arms around him, kissed him hard, and rubbed her hand up his leg. Jonny obliged.
Cantrell felt the pillow against his right cheek and the hard mattress under him but struggled to turn his head. He commanded his neck to move, and at last it obeyed, reluctantly. The instant his ear left the pillow his whole body jerked and he took long breaths of the morning air, coming in through the partially opened window.
Maxwell Gregg sat at the table with a pen and jar of ink, writing in a book. His black derby rested beside his left hand, and at the other side of the table sat a metallic half-egg shape and a tin mug. Gregg wore a frown of concentration as he stared at the pages.
“What the hell?” Cantrell muttered, still weak. He reached for Gregg’s arm but merely brushed the man’s pants leg.
“Good morning, Mr. Cantrell,” Gregg said. “What's left of it.”
The bounty hunter took a minute and forced himself to sit. He gazed out the window, head throbbing. “Why am I so groggy?”
Gregg passed Cantrell the mug and the bounty hunter smelled the richness of the dark coffee. “You knew when I'd wake up.”
“I made an educated guess. I'm familiar with the sedative that took you down.”
Now, Cantrell saw the pouch resting on the table, probably containing his payment. He took a long drink of the coffee. Though hot and black, he downed half the mug at once. After staring at the steel egg for a few minutes while Gregg continued to write, he remembered heading into Anna’s room. He gazed out the window as the rest slowly came back to him. He took the pouch.
“It's all there,” Gregg said. “Two hundred dollars, though the glass screen is broken, and there are shards in the casing. I should have paid you half.”<
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“What are you talking about? Your device didn't bring down the steely the first time.” Cantrell didn’t mind lying to such a man. “I had to fight it and get you the damned brain. It's out of Boyd's hands, at least, isn't that what you wanted?”
“We figured it might have some useful information. The glass could have damaged the circuits.”
“I don’t remember it breaking.”
“It must have happened when you fell unconscious,” said Gregg dismissively. “It's probably no matter though. These automatons don’t store many memories, but one little clue could be enough to implicate my friend. It's probably enough to keep the information from her. You're right.”
Cantrell looked away with a brief smile. When he had made it to Malcolm, he had shoved the barrel of his pistol through the brain’s glass plate and smashed much of the machinery. He had then mounted and started riding back to the hotel but must have finally passed out.
“You didn’t tell me she had a partner. A young man with blond hair. Her beau, I assume. I think I saw him the first time I ate there. Jonny?”
“Her beau?” Gregg asked. “Oh yes. His name's Jonathan Johns. I don't know much about him, except that he’s mute and can’t even write. He had an altercation with one of my men a few weeks past Christmas that didn’t go well for him.”
“You want a job done right, you give a man all the information.”
“Why, did Johns give you trouble?”
“Nothing I couldn't handle.” He thought a moment. “You don’t think he’ll be able to describe me to her, then?”
“I wouldn’t worry about it.” Gregg blew across the latest page of his book and shut it. As he put the cork back in the neck of the ink jar, he said, “Good thing you didn’t fall off your horse last night. I found you lying across its back in front of your hotel and had to pay a couple of ranchers to carry you upstairs. I took your steed back to Smullen’s myself.”
“Have you been here all night?” asked Cantrell.
“Hardly. I returned fifteen minutes ago with your coffee. Lots of adventures transpired last night. Earlier in the evening, a friend gave me this.” Gregg opened his satchel.
Bodacious Creed: a Steampunk Zombie Western (The Adventures of Bodacious Creed Book 1) Page 15
