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

by Jonathan Fesmire

  “For a moment, I wanted to kill the bartender.” Creed flexed his hands, the metal rings embedded in the gloves hugging each finger. “I’m not used to this feeling.”

  Cantrell said, “I am. It doesn’t have to rule you.” He put his hands on his hips, pushing his coat back there, fingers brushing the grips of his guns. “We need to go back there with marshals and the best deputies. It'll probably take a day or more to plan, and I have no doubt Gregg’s people will be ready. Still, I saw something important.”

  “How important?”

  “You tell me. In the back of Iron Nelly’s, beside crates of whiskey and scotch, you couldn’t miss it. A trapdoor, and a staircase, going down.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  Gilmore held the side of his head, where the pain in his eye socket radiated into the surrounding muscle and bone. At times, he felt as if the eye were still there and caught flashes of primary colors.

  If only he could turn down the morgue lights, the pain might lessen. One could brighten or dim Tesla’s marvelous bulbs with the right sort of control, such as a dial, or a lever one could ease upward or downward, but the room had only a single, binary switch. In an hour, he could even make his own dial out of parts in the morgue, but Gregg insisted he first fix Nancy Hartgraul’s head unit, then focus solely on Blake.

  Since Bill Roseberry was in jail, two other guards helped with the bodies. Fixing the damage to Nancy’s unit took just a few minutes. However, Gilmore dared not turn her back on. He wanted to slap her but resisted the unprofessional urge.

  After the guards helped move Blake onto a metal autopsy table, they stepped out the door. Gilmore did his best on the outlaw, yet whenever the pain flared like liquid steel in his skull, he recalled the knife slicing into his left eye. In those moments, he wanted to wrap his hands around Gregg’s throat and squeeze.

  He started with the bullet wound in Blake’s chest and soon found that the damage to the outlaw’s heart had caused it to bleed into his thorax. The doctor sliced through the left pectoral in the direction of the muscles fibers and used a suction machine to pump much of the sticky blood from the chest cavity. To get to the heart, he placed a bone spreader between two ribs and turned the crank. The bones pulled apart, slowly, enough for him to find the tear in the heart. The projectile had dug a groove through it, enough of a hole to kill Blake, but nothing the doctor couldn’t repair. With a delicate touch and clean catgut, he sewed it shut, stitching the organic thread so tightly that, he hoped, little blood would leak through.

  Gilmore switched to the head unit and spent hours wiring portions of steely brains into the frame. Satisfied with the design, he bolted it to the left side of Blake’s cranium.

  Next, he injected an anticoagulant formula into Blake’s carotid and femoral arteries, affixed tissue-regenerating units to his head, chest, arms, and legs, and sent electric shocks to the heart. The catgut held and no blood, that Gilmore could see, seeped through the wound. The pulses came each a second apart. After several minutes, he turned off the shocks and the heart pumped on its own. He removed the wires and rib separator, then with more catgut stitched the muscle, and with silken thread, closed the long incision across the skin.

  Based on when Creed had died, and when he had reappeared, the marshal had been dead even longer than Blake, probably by a week or more. How had Boyd accomplished it, kept the man sane? Had she used steely circuitry as well? In any case, this method had changed the coyote’s behavior. Gilmore hoped it would render a saner, more compliant Blake.

  The doctor thought it had to be at least five in the morning, checked his pocket watch, and read five twenty-two. He had worked all night.

  One guard had returned to the room hours earlier, at times reading, at times watching, at times dozing on a chair. Gilmore shook his shoulder and the man’s eyes flashed open.

  “I’m going to sleep for a few hours. At noon, have someone wake me.”

  “How did the work go?” The guard yawned.

  “We’ll see.”

  Gilmore staggered to his room, grabbed an apple from a bowl on the table, tore a chunk off a loaf of rye bread next to it, sat, and ate both, downing it with scotch. Minutes later, his eye socket still aching, he managed to fall into a difficult sleep.

  Gregg woke him after one in the afternoon, and as Gilmore pulled himself to wakefulness, he cried, “Fuuuck!”

  “Fuck indeed,” said Gregg with a chuckle. “Speaking of which, if you want a woman to visit you, just tell me.”

  “Right now, I’m just exhausted. A woman? When my wound heals.” Gilmore pressed both hands to his pounding head.

  By one thirty, they stood in the morgue, Blake tightly strapped to the table, four guards standing by the door with duplicate kill switches for Blake’s machinery.

  “I did my best work here,” Gilmore stated. “I hope we have it right this time, and that you’ll give me time to recover.”

  “If you’ve done as asked, then yes.”

  “You want to be able to command him.” He touched the cool surface of the brain unit. “The circuitry is set to respond to my voice. I can use suggestion to affect his behavior. Later, we’ll teach it to answer to you as well.”

  Gilmore nodded to the guards. He opened the head unit cover and flipped the switch.

  For nearly ten seconds, Blake’s pale face remained still, his famous ego etched into the lines of his mouth. At last, the outlaw opened his mouth and let out a sigh, then took in a raspy breath. He opened his eyes to a squint, then jerked in the restraints. The table shifted several inches.

  “Where am I? Why is the light so bright? Damn it, what’s—”

  “Shut up and stay still,” Gregg intoned. He laced his fingers behind his back and turned to Gilmore.

  Blake held his eyelids tightly shut and his mouth twitched. “You made me like Creed.” His throat spasmed as he gagged. Gilmore didn’t think this fake. “A zombie. I should kill you for that.”

  Gilmore thought the moment of truth had arrived and hoped the circuitry would do its job. “I think you’ll want to help.”

  “Lights are too bright,” Blake said.

  “We’re going to keep them that way for now. You need to listen.” Gilmore bit his lower lip in thought. “The Syndicate isn’t your enemy. Maxwell isn’t your enemy. Your true enemy was yourself. I think you know that.”

  Blake frowned and lowered his eyebrows. “How did I get here?”

  “Do you remember what happened to you?” Gilmore countered.

  “I don’t know your voice.”

  “I’m your doctor.”

  “Hello, Doc. Wait. Do I know your voice? The more you speak, it’s like I’ve heard it, but I haven’t.” Blake opened his eyes to narrow slits.

  Gregg asked, “How does your head feel, Corwin?”

  “Itchy. It’s like what Creed has on his skull. I know it is.” Blake’s eyes strained to the left, and he slowly turned his head. It reminded Gilmore of one zombie dog that chased its own tail for hours after its resurrection. “Creed and that bounty hunter shot at me. Melba was there, too. How is she?”

  “We couldn’t bring her back,” Gregg answered. “One of them shot her in the head. It’s what both of you get for going after him on your own.”

  “Fuck you, Maxwell. Doctor, which one killed me?”

  Again, Gilmore wished they could dim the lights. He held his hands over Blake’s head, giving him a bit of shade, and looked at each guard in turn. If Blake somehow broke free and attacked, they would have to react quickly. “El Tiburón got the reward,” said Gilmore. “That doesn’t mean he shot you though, and it doesn’t mean he didn’t.”

  “Had to be Creed. I need to finish what I started. Do you both understand? When I mean to do something, I do it!”

  “I do understand that,” said Gregg.

  “You put me in that cell! You kept me from doing what I had to!”

  “You put yourself in—”

  “Maxwell, let me.” Gilmore placed a hand on G
regg’s shoulder. The Syndicate leader’s muscles stiffened under his touch, so he quickly drew his hand away. Gilmore looked over the head implant. Behind thick glass came a faint orange glow and long blue flashes, like the dash in Morse code. “You’re among friends, Blake. Don’t you want to be here?”

  “Well, I... I know.” Blake shut his eyes again and his expression softened. “Am I missing a finger?”

  “Your left middle finger was shot off,” said Gregg.

  “Damn that fucking—”

  Gilmore interrupted and turned a tiny dial inside the head unit. “Creed wants nothing more than to shut this place down. Maxwell, do you have anything to say to our friend?”

  “You answer to me, or the doctor.”

  “Of course.” Blake’s voice was quiet but clear. “Do I have to stay strapped down? I don’t like it.”

  “For a short time,” said Gregg.

  They spent the better part of three hours talking to Blake. Gilmore found Gregg expertly sly, the way he worked in his suggestions for Blake to do as asked. He had apparently intuited that orders might get Blake to think critically about everything, while subtlety allowed the steely brain unit to alter his thinking.

  At last, Gregg said, “Time to unstrap you. This is highly sophisticated machinery keeping you alive. Still, you’ll be safer in one of those drawers for now. The doctor just brought you back. Your body needs time to replenish itself. We’re going to shut down that machine on your head for now, and put you in the cabinet to heal.”

  Gilmore had told Gregg no such thing, but he thought the man might be right. In the same day, he had surgically installed new parts into Blake’s body and activated healing units. He had spent more time enlivening the bodies of the rats, dogs, and Margarita Fullerton before bringing them fully back to life. Time in a refrigerated drawer with the healing units drawing in ether might help.

  He shaded Blake’s eyes, and as the killer opened them, Gregg pointed to the wall. Blake frowned, but answered, “If that's best.”

  Gilmore nodded to the guards, and it seemed that each of them had been eager to flip their switches. They did so at once, the lights in the head unit shut off, and Blake lay there, eyes gazing blankly at the body storage drawers. The doctor closed Blake’s eyelids with his thumbs.

  Gregg held his hands behind his back as though calm, but his foot tapped like the pendulum of a grandfather clock. “You think it worked?”

  “I do.”

  “Creed and El Tiburón were at Iron Nelly’s last night looking for me. They’ll be back, and in force. We need Blake ready.”

  That same morning, Friday, August eighteenth, El Tiburón walked into the U.S. Marshal's office and told Hector Peake about his and Creed's encounter with Syndicate men the night before, the staircase in Iron Nelly’s, and Creed’s discoveries at City Hall.

  Marshal Peake agreed. They had to go return, but first, they would need a search warrant. Cantrell cared little for that idea. It would be better, he argued, to storm the place. They had no clue how many worked for the Syndicate or how many people lived beneath Railroad Flats, yet Peake insisted. They would follow the Constitution and federal laws.

  By noon, they gathered six of their regular deputies and Peake had made his plea to the local judge. They waited on the warrant that would allow them to search the back room and possibly beyond.

  The rain faded to a slow drizzle, but, if Santa Cruz weather was anything like in San Francisco, and Cantrell believed it was, those dark clouds might mean a storm later at night.

  Peake sent out the seven men, including Cantrell and Deputy Marshal Ross, to convince more to help. Marshal Bateman agreed to do the same. The others left, and again only Cantrell and Peake remained at the post.

  “Can you get Creed to help you?” asked Peake.

  “I don’t know. He sleeps during the day. You can count on him though come dusk.”

  Just as Cantrell stepped to the door, ready to mount Malcolm and hit shops, restaurants, ranches, and saloons looking for men, a message tapped in on the telegraph. He listened, parsing the Morse code in his mind.

  “Well fuck this,” said Cantrell.

  Peake dropped to his chair, mouth agape. “We did everything we could. Marshal Gray was there watching.” He stood, staggered a step, then made it to the table with the telegraph, and tapped his response. Describe the body.

  He looked at Cantrell, his expression that of a child who lost his favorite toy. “How did they lift his body off a train? Without anyone knowing?”

  After a few minutes, they received a long response, and his time, Peake had a pencil and sheet of paper. He jotted down each letter as it came through in dots and dashes.

  Cantrell stood beside him and read over the note.

  Fight on train. Gray broke it up. Stopped in SV. Removed offenders. Brothers, curly brown hair, short beards, young. The body in coffin: curly long black hair. Face half gone. Explosion? Middling height. Identify?

  “That sounds like Margarita Fullerton,” said Cantrell. “That cinches it. The Evil Eye Syndicate has Blake’s corpse. They mean to bring him back.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  Corwin Blake looked this way and that in terror, gut throbbing with each hard thump of his heart as he breathed the chill air. He reached up and felt cold, flat metal. Someone had shot him, and now he had to be in his grave. With a cry of frustration, he made fists, then stopped himself. No, this wasn’t a coffin, but a drawer, the one the doctor and Gregg had put him in.

  “Now,” he whispered, feeling along the edges above him, “can I get out?” Did the drawers lock? During the hours they spoke to him, he gradually realized that their words were changing his thoughts. A deeper part of him told him to fight it, but he had to concentrate on every word. Had they drugged him, or was it something in the doodad on his head? Blake touched its frigid bulk. Nothing he could do about it. He knew that tearing it away would kill him.

  He reached up and wedged his fingers into a gap where the drawer connected to the body of the cabinet and pulled. For a moment, he thought it had to be locked, but he increased pressure until his biceps shook.

  The drawer sprang open, rolling out completely.

  The operating room was as dark as inside the drawer. He climbed out and jumped to the ground; his drawer had to be about five feet up. His arms and legs felt as though they had bands wrapped around them, and he touched more cold metal lumps. Did he need them to live? He recalled the doctor or Gregg saying something about them being there to heal him while he slept.

  Blake unbuckled each and dropped them on the floor. Then, he sniffed but smelled nothing aside from a faint hint of alcohol. Even that seemed to vanish in moments. It seemed resurrection had blunted his sense of smell. He held his hands before him and walked directly away from the body cabinet, figuring there had to be a light lever by the door. He bumped, belly first, into one of the tables, felt his way around it, and took careful steps until his fingers brushed the wood grain of a wall. It took another good thirty seconds to find the door, but then he discovered the light lever and flipped it up.

  The brightness of a dozen or more bulbs assailed Blake’s vision, and he threw his hands over his eyes. He wanted to curse aloud but shut his mouth firmly instead. Someone could be in the room, maybe a sleeping guard, and if so, the light would wake them and he’d have to fight. Or, someone might be just outside the door. In that case, best to be as silent as possible.

  A fraction of an inch at a time, he moved his hands down but kept his lids shut, letting his eyes adjust. Finally, when they had become used to the brightness, Blake perused the shelves around the room. The many contraptions, made mostly of steel and polished wood, meant little to him. His shoulders slumped. Nothing useful there, unless he meant to fiddle with them for hours and risk capture. As he turned toward the body drawers, he noticed a stash of technology he recognized. Toward the floor, one section contained dust bombs, goggles, a shadow walker necklace, and roach claws.

  As Blake r
eached for a dust bomb, pain stabbed at his chest. He placed his hand there and felt a lump. When he pulled it, he realized it was strapped, with a belt, around his torso. He peered down his shirt at the blood-crusted stitches and a gently vibrating machine. Another healer. He thought to remove it, too, but a memory intruded.

  El Tiburón marched toward him and fired. Pain flared in his chest. The bounty hunter had shot him in the heart. The doctor had patched him up. Best to leave that doohickey in place.

  Blake looked back at the collection of Syndicate equipment. Did Gregg mean to outfit him with the gadgets? No matter. He refused to work for Gregg, anyway. He would leave and take what he wanted. From the stash, he clipped all six dust bombs to his belt, donned a pair of night goggles, put on the necklace, tucking it into his shirt, and pulled on the roach claw gloves.

  Beside the equipment sat four pairs of boots and one pair of men’s lace-up shoes. Blake grabbed his, found the socks stuffed inside, and put them on.

  Might they have left a gun in the room? Blake spent about five minutes moving small machines and metal parts on the shelves, glancing now and then at the door. He found nothing but plates, gears, rivets, wires, and machinery he didn’t understand, but no firearms.

  He went to the door, determined to subdue, or, if he had to, kill any guard waiting on the other side, and flung it open.

  The hallway stood empty.

  Blake thought of Creed. Where might the man be? He remembered the street and the gunfight. Where was that? A stable. Blake snorted a laugh. Strange as it seemed, Creed was hiding out in a bordello, The House of Amber Doves. Melba said she hated the place, since a few weeks earlier they had kicked her out before she could pay. Had someone there brought Creed back to life? Also, how had the Syndicate brought Blake himself back? Right, they had wanted him to kidnap Creed, spring him from jail, so they could learn about him, but he had failed.