Bodacious Creed: a Steampunk Zombie Western (The Adventures of Bodacious Creed Book 1)
Page 28
The zombie terrier relaxed. Anna glanced at Zero, then felt low on the dog’s chest for a heartbeat. Nothing. “Well, that’s as dead as anything gets.”
Whatever had caused this, Anna felt sure she couldn’t bring the terrier back to life, yet she also couldn’t bring herself to feel sad. She told Zero to remove the mechanical parts and would ask Creed to bury the corpse. Upstairs, she washed her hands and spent the rest of the day in the laboratory reading.
She spent the fifteenth studying, taking notes about, and cataloging Dr. Gilmore’s brain units, while Jonny mostly helped in the saloon, and Creed and Coconino slept. An hour or so after her father and his canine went out, Jonny reminded her to follow him upstairs.
Over the same four days, Maxwell Gregg kept his typical morning routine to help calm his nerves. At about six o’clock, he would wake up go above ground while the fog still lay thick over Railroad Flats. He walked barefoot on the beach, boots under one arm, smelled the sea air, and listened to the churning waves. He would squeeze pale sand beneath his toes and close his eyes, pointing his face toward the brightening sky.
Late the evening of August twelfth, Gregg sent a second group to search for the missing dogs and Blake, in case Melba and Bill had no success. They returned a few hours later to report that they had also found nothing.
Hoping for some good news, he went to the Syndicate morgue. In his anger, he found the bright lights nearly unbearable.
That day, the subject of Dr. Gilmore’s experiments was his former assistant, and Gregg’s former spy at Morgan’s Mechanicals, Lyle Hushbarger. With small screwdrivers and wrenches, Gilmore adjusted the fist-sized contraption bolted to the man's head.
“What happened to Fullerton?”
Gilmore continued his work on the dead assistant. “See for yourself. Bottom drawer, right side.”
The steel felt cold against his hand as he slid it open. Inside lay the body of a lean woman in her sixties, a jagged hole in the left side of her head. Fullerton’s mouth remained open in what might've been her last scream.
“I'm doing my best to wake up Lyle. I hope he can help me,” Gilmore said.
Gregg decided not to answer. Fullerton had been alive—well, undead—when his men had brought her back, and he thought Gilmore would attempt to revive her. Perhaps she had been too far gone.
Though he wanted to hurry Gilmore along, he understood that research took time. Besides, his anxiety stemmed from Blake’s and the dogs’ escape, not from the doctor. If not for that hiccough, they might have all the time in the world.
“What’s that?” Gregg pointed to a small machine on the other autopsy table.
“It’s set to deactivate my work.”
Gregg went to bed, but the next morning, August thirteenth, after his walk, he learned how the deactivator had saved Gilmore’s life. About an hour after Gregg headed out, Gilmore flipped on Hushbarger’s brain unit. The new zombie sprang to life and slashed dirty fingernails across Gilmore’s throat. Holding the deactivator, the doctor flipped the main switch as he fell. Hushbarger collapsed, rolled off the table, and landed beside him on the hard floor.
The doctor showed Gregg the scratches across his neck, deep enough to have drawn blood, then went back to work on the former ranch hand, Rico Olimo. Gregg glanced at the body storage and found it amusing that they had Luis Mierdino, the rancher himself. The Syndicate bought beef from that ranch, and he always found the man condescending.
That evening, Gregg strode through the morgue door with muscular Bill Roseberry following.
“I don’t need help moving him yet,” said Gilmore. Roseberry’s morning task, before heading out to look for the missing canines, was to help the doctor move the bodies.
“He’s here to help, in case Olimo tries to attack you when you switch him on.”
“Why don’t you strap him down?” Roseberry asked.
“There’s no need,” said Gilmore, and with the deactivation machine in hand, he stepped back about fifteen feet. “I suggest you both stand back as well.” The doctor took a long breath as they did, and when he exhaled, the air whistled through his teeth. “One,” he counted, “two, three.”
He flipped a switch.
Olimo blinked, glanced around, and his stare fell on Gilmore. He opened his mouth, said something so garbled he might have been a drunk parrot, then bounded off the table.
He landed firmly on his feet and dashed for the doctor with a scream of “Cabron!”
Gilmore hit the switch and Olimo collapsed with a thud. “Shit.”
“He talked, right?” said Roseberry. “Ain’t that progress?”
“It is.” Gilmore gazed at Gregg. “I’m getting closer.”
Gregg grasped his hands together behind his back. “Doctor, there’s a fine line between confidence and stupidity. From now on, strap your monsters down.”
The morning of Monday, August fourteenth, when Gregg met with Roseberry and Melba, the former swore that after he and Gilmore had moved the heavy body of Louis Mierdino from the slab to the table, Gilmore had strapped the body down tightly.
That evening, as Gregg waited for the activation, Gilmore removed healing units belted to the corpse’s arms and legs. The glare of the Tesla bulbs shined off Mierdino’s paling skin. Once the brown of coffee with a bit of cream, it had turned beige.
Gilmore stood about ten feet back and flipped the remote switch.
Mierdino jerked against the restraints for a good five seconds. At last, the new zombie squinted his eyes and, blinking, looked at his body, pulling gingerly against the straps.
“What is this?” he asked, voice grainy.
Gregg gave the doctor an approving nod. “How do you feel, Senor Mierdino?”
“Do you have that bitch that attacked me?”
“Speech and reason. Very good work.”
They talked with him for eighteen minutes, according to Gregg’s pocket watch. The leader of the Syndicate answered Mierdino’s questions with his own. Gilmore kept edging closer to the zombie, looking at the brain unit, and Gregg considered warning him to stand back. Though Mierdino appeared calm and rational, they knew too little. Still, the leather binding Mierdino was especially thick, the buckles locked into place.
When Gilmore stood a foot away from him, the zombie cried, “I'll kill you! Te voy a matar, carbon!” He pulled at his straps and his cheeks blushed crimson.
Face contorted into sour displeasure, Gilmore stepped back and flipped the switch. Mierdino’s head thumped against the table.
On the morning of August fifteenth, Gregg sat cross-legged in the sand, fists clenched and shoulders tight as he attempted to meditate away his frustration. He looked through the fog at the wharf and considered heading to Plowshares for some downright nasty sex with one of the whores. Word had it one of them had taken over running the place in Hartgraul’s absence. No, he decided. Best to lay low, so in his stress, he stewed.
When Melba and Bill stopped in his office that afternoon, with the three men who had captured Fullerton, he berated them for a terrible job. He nearly drew his gun and insisted they find Blake immediately.
“You grabbed Fullerton right from under Bodacious Creed!” He cried. “Shit, now I’m calling him that. Blake’s no deadlier than she was.”
“And the dogs?” Melba asked.
“What do you think? Get all of them!”
At the end of the day, with two dogs dead at Creed’s hand, and three still missing, Gregg could hardly contain his composure. He had gone to the underground jail cell hoping that maybe his men had returned the killer and had stupidly neglected to tell him. He gripped the bars, staring at the bed where Blake had slept and the chair where he had read. Too comfortable for such an ingrate.
Gregg followed many bright hallways, then went upstairs to his office. He entered, saw Melba and Bill sitting there, and slammed the door shut behind him.
“Let me guess,” he said between clenched teeth.
Melba glanced at Bill. “Still no mutts.�
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“And what about gunfighters?”
“No. No Blake,” said Melba. Neither she nor Bill looked him in the eyes.
Gregg, who tried to keep clean, simmered in the stink of his own armpits, his dried sweat making his face itch. He drew his pistol and pressed it against Melba’s head. Her gasp of genuine shock pleased him. “You’re going back out there, and you’re going to find him. Don’t come back, either of you, until you do. I have others waiting in line for your positions.”
“Max,” Bill said. “We’re on your side. Kill either of us and who’s gonna trust you?”
Gregg rolled his shoulders and after a moment, holstered his gun. He rarely felt love for his sister, and sometimes truly hated her, but did he want to kill her? No. He had to control his anger. As for Roseberry, the man had been little more than a bully when recruited, but he had mellowed, learned to lead and to follow.
“Right you are, Bill.” He stretched out his fingers, made fists, and stretched them again. “You know Susie from Plowshares? Plump, Mexican girl?”
“I may have seen her before,” Bill answered.
“While you’re out, send her to me.” He unlocked his desk and took ten dollars in coins from the stash. “That should more than cover a house call. It’s just what I need to calm my nerves.”
Bill pocketed the coins. As Gregg sat, Melba stood, her own gun pointed at his head.
“That’s not funny,” Gregg said.
“It ain’t meant to be. When we get back, you’d best hope I’ve calmed down.” As she and Bill stepped out, she kept the gun trained at her brother until her partner shut the door.
Creed had mixed luck from the twelfth to the fifteenth. He questioned anyone he met on the street, all over town, from men and women on their way home to drunkards outside saloons and hotels. He showed up at ranches after dusk, and on the wharf after the last train had puffed its way into the station. Mostly, he asked if anyone had seen suspicious activity or things they couldn’t explain. He couldn’t ask directly about the final, missing greyhound, for fear that someone might capture it and use it for their own ambitions, whatever those might be.
The ranchers and vaqueros were worried due to the murders of Mierdino and Olimo, and the subsequent theft of their corpses. However, they had no information that seemed related to Blake or the dog.
On the wharf, he spoke to dozens of railroad workers. Most were first generation Chinese immigrants who spoke broken English at best, but he could usually find someone to translate. They seemed nervous around him, glancing at his mask and the glowing red eyes that looked out from pale sockets. However, he sensed their gratitude. Several wanted him to know that the Flats had been far safer since his arrival, and yet no one claimed to know a thing about Blake’s escape.
On the night of the twelfth, a Chinese man with black hair and meager beard tied in braids stopped Creed near Iron Nelly’s. He appeared in his mid-twenties with a serious, chiseled face. “You've been asking about the railroad.”
Creed had been asking about Blake at the railroad, not about the transportation itself. Still, the young man might have useful information.
“Yes,” Creed said. The lamplight wavered, making their shadows move like phantoms.
“Sometimes they bring in shipments of machine parts. Small things, like might go in clocks or watches, but strange shapes, too.” He looked to either side.
Creed narrowed his gaze. “Don’t worry, son. I won’t give you away.”
“The Syndicate has eyes and ears,” said the man. “A crate fell when I was working and broke open, full of those things.”
“Might have been for one of Morgan's companies,” Creed said.
The man shrugged. “They came from San Francisco. Might have been Morgan’s, but we loaded them on carts destined for the Flats.”
Though the information seemed lean, it told Creed that the criminal underground, which he felt sure was based in Railroad Flats, could extend much farther. He gazed toward the sky, with its smattering of clouds, thinking. How far? To San Francisco? Down to Monterey? Might the boxes lead him to Maxwell Gregg?
“Do you know where they delivered the crates?”
“No,” said the young man. “I just work on the dock.”
Still, it told him that the parts for their roach claws and dust bombs probably came from elsewhere.
Creed had observed every home and business in the Flats and still had no clue where the criminals—the Syndicate—kept their base of operations. Hints of illegal technology filled the area, but most Creed had encountered seemed harmless. They included pocket watches that could record the owner’s voice and repeat a phrase, hand-held mechanical fans for hot weather, and self-lighting matches for smokers. He wanted to protect the people, not uphold Morgan’s un-American monopoly law.
On the night of the thirteenth, when Creed left the bordello, Coconino at his heels, the sun had just set and a few stars shined above. The wind wafted the smells of horse manure and hay from Smullen’s Stables and Livery, and from that direction, Creed’s sharp gaze caught movement. Heidi watched from the shadows across the street.
Unsure what to think, Creed stepped toward her. She started as though pinched and rushed off into the passageway. He had a sudden urge to retrieve Johann just then. He hadn’t thought much of his horse since his resurrection, and now realized he missed his companion. No. Creed knew what he really wanted at that moment was to follow Heidi.
Still, he wondered, how would Johann react to him? Would it recognize him since the change? In any case, he had to wait until he had stopped Blake and was ready to leave town, lest the marshals end up waiting for him to return his horse to the stables.
The coyote yipped, and Creed knelt and scratched it behind its ears. By now, news had spread from witnesses that Bodacious Creed had a new pet, a hybrid of coyote and steely. Anna said she heard someone quip that if the law couldn’t get Creed on anything else, they could arrest him for using illegal technology.
Creed and Coconino headed off, but aside from breaking up a fight outside a saloon, they found no trouble that night and learned no more information than before.
He saw Heidi the next two nights as well, watching from the same spot. Each time he waited for about a minute to give her the opportunity to approach, and each time she merely stood, watching him.
On the night of August fifteenth, heading along an alley between Pacific Avenue and Main Street, Creed heard snarling about a block away. Could it be the last zombie dog?
He sprung into a run with Coconino bounding along beside him. The bulbs in the streetlamps seemed to brighten, and he smiled for the first time in days. In moments, he spotted a woman at an intersection, holding a boy of perhaps five in her arms, his booted feet hanging out of his short overalls.
With her was a man holding a rifle, the muzzle aimed at the growling greyhound. It pawed at the hard-packed ground like a bull, and Creed felt sure it was glaring at the child.
As the gunfighter drew both his Austin Equalizers, a dark figure flew across the street. The man with the rifle staggered back. In his surprise, Creed stalled. The black-clad stranger grabbed the dog in both arms and fled down the road toward a saddled, chestnut stallion.
Creed ran after him, but the large man tossed something over his shoulder. Dust filled the air, slowing the former marshal, covering even his keen vision, and he cried in anger. Another damned dirt bomb. After the second explosion raised more dust, he backed away, coughing. He heard Coconino's distinctive bark and a shout.
Holding his breath, Creed pushed through the haze. Coconino had the man on his back. The canine crouched over him, snarling into his face. As the stranger reached for the coyote's throat, Creed fired.
Coconino flinched at the bang, but held its ground and gnashed its teeth. As Creed had intended, the bullet hit the earth just above the man's head. The criminal froze. Creed punched him in the temple. The struggling stopped. The coyote sniffed first the man’s face, then the zombie dog lying besi
de him.
Creed looked in puzzlement at the greyhound, then thought back over the last few seconds. It had gone silent the moment the stranger had tackled it. What had the stranger done?
Creed approached the chestnut horse. “I need your help. I reckon that should be all right, don't you?” It allowed Creed to pat the top of its head, and he smiled once more. If he could calm this strange steed, perhaps Johann would accept him.
The man and woman approached, the boy still in her arms.
“Thank you,” said the gentleman, voice shaking.
“Yes, thank you, Marshal Creed.” Though the woman's voice held steady, tears glistened in her eyes. “Thank God for you.” The boy, presumably their son, sobbed quietly, and she patted his back.
“Are the three of you heading home?”
“Yes sir,” the man answered.
“Be safe.”
He watched the family proceed toward the east, the child’s cries growing quieter. When they were well down the road, Creed tied the stranger and the limp mutt across the horse’s back. The large man had to be a member of the Syndicate. Now, they might get some answers.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
First thing in the morning on August sixteenth, Maxwell Gregg had a mug of strong, black coffee, boiled eggs, and toast with blackberry jam in his underground apartment. His suite sat under Iron Nelly's. However, the stairs leading to the bar’s back storage room were in the hallway outside his front door, and the door across from his suite opened to a Syndicate meeting room.
Gregg’s apartment had a living room lined with bookcases and a long couch, and a bedroom with a bevy of blankets and pillows on the grandiose bed. While most of the underground had to make due with stuffy air, his suite had vents, letting in fresher air from above. He could sleep with two women in his bed if he cared to, though he more often had whores come to his office. No reason to let them know about the labyrinth beneath Railroad Flats.