Cassidy St. Claire and The Fountain of Youth Parts I, II, & III

by A. H. Rousseau

  “Mother-fucker!!” yelled Gideon into the air.

  “He's readying his gun!” yelled Jebediah again.

  At this point, Ethel the prostitute came in from the lobby. Cassidy looked at her, wearing Cassidy's clothing, and ran over. “Give me my gun!” she yelled, startling Ethel who immediately handed the St. Claire revolver over.

  Cassidy took the gun and ran back over to the blown out door. “What's that going to do?” asked Jebediah.

  “Trust me,” said Cassidy. “I've got experience with this.” Cassidy took aim and fired an explosive round into the windshield of the attack car, causing it to explode and shatter. The car accelerated away hard as the gawky man started firing. Everyone in the hotel dropped to the floor. The car turned left onto the main road and drove away from the hotel. “Well, we just scared the shit out of him!” said Cassidy with a smile. “Let's run!”

  Cassidy and Jebediah both got up and ran for the park, dancing around piles of burning wreckage. They eventually reached the weapon, sitting up against the garden wall. Cassidy knelt down and opened the case. She removed some grenades. “Here. I won't be using these,” she said, handing them to Jebediah. “Pull the pin and throw. They've got a ten-second fuse, give or take. Don't be around when it goes.” Cassidy then dropped a missile into the launcher and flipped a small switch on the side. She then slammed the case shut and latched it. “He's in that train yard somewhere. I'm going in after him,” she said.

  Jebediah gave her a wide, concerned stare.

  “He's leveling the town looking for me. It's either me or him,” she said. Jebediah nodded. She picked up her launcher and her ammunition and headed into the smoke.

  ---

  Cassidy walked slowly, carefully, keeping her steps as quiet as possible. She kept the launcher aimed forward as she crept. Her gaze darted around the smokey arena, listening for the sound of the cars. The burbling of the engines seemed to come from everywhere. Her head perked up as a train whistle sounded in the distance. Then, rumbling out of the haze, came one of the cars. Cassidy knelt and brought the car into her aim, but took flight at the sound of gunshots elsewhere in the smoke. She breathed heavily, choking, as she ran up against a building.

  An explosion. Then another explosion. Silence. A gunshot. A bullet struck the building next to her, she dropped to the ground and with lightning speed drew one of her revolvers and fired a few shots into the smoke. Another shot and Cassidy dove to the ground, crawling around the edge of the building before rising to a crouch. She looked out into the smoke and saw nothing. Waiting, she didn't even blink. Finally, a tall man in one of the long, leather coats and metal masks came inching out of the darkness. He didn't seem to notice her as he ran for the same cover she was using. She fired at him, but it it didn't stop him.

  “Bulletproof. Guess I'm not the only one with that trick,” she mumbled to herself. As the assailant neared Cassidy, she leapt out and swung her grenade launcher, clocking him in the head. He recovered quickly, but Cassidy had grabbed hold of his collar. He rotated, trying to break free, but removed his arm from one of the sleeves. Cassidy fell back on her butt as the man ripped free from the coat, the weight of it surprising Cassidy. He produced a gun and fired at Cassidy who held the coat up, blocking the shots. As she lay there behind the impromptu cover of the coat, Gideon came running out of the smoke, both guns blazing. The assailant jerked left and right as bullets hit him, before staggering back and falling to the ground with a dusty thud.

  “You alright?” asked Gideon, trotting over to Cassidy.

  “Yeah. I'm good,” said Cassidy, standing up. “Thanks.”

  “Don't mention it,” replied Gideon, clicking the guns back into his sleeves. Cassidy picked the coat up off of the ground and handed it to Gideon.

  “This seems able to handle a point-blank hit. Do something responsible with it,” she said.

  “What? Why don't you wear it?”

  “I've already got this on,” she replied, patting her vest. “And that's too heavy. I need to move.”

  The two stopped talking, interrupted by the sound of one of the cars rumbling in the smoke. Giving them little time to think, the car burst out of the haze, nearly hitting them and rolling over the body of the fallen man. The attack car skidded around, the rear tracks bouncing as they jumped over the train tracks. The gawky man was the gunner. He turned with the gun already spinning and opened up a volley on the duo. They split, running in opposite directions. Gideon used the coat as a shield as he ran for cover between the hotel and the building abutting the tracks, a trail of bullets following him. Immediately after the assault ended, Gideon popped out from behind the building and opened up both of his guns.

  The gawky man ducked behind the Gatling gun and its shields. He glanced over at Cassidy, who had stopped running. She had dropped her ammunition crate to the dirt, turned, and with the burning gazebo behind her billowing glowing smoke into the air, she fired a rocket into the side of the attack car, blasting off a set of the rear tracks and causing the car to tilt slightly to the side. The gawky man brushed off the dirt and rocks from his coat and, scowling at Cassidy, aimed his turret at her again. Just as the gun spun up, the sound of the train whistle again sounded, loud, imminent, and ear-piercing. A look of fear and concern washed over the gawky man's face as he looked down at the tracks, then turned and looked to his right. There, in a wispy clearing of smoke and cinders, rolled a massive locomotive, it's whistle ripping the air. The gawky man stared, his eyes growing to discs of fearful paralysis, as the train slammed into him and his car.

  SMASH!

  Fragments of the car sprayed out in all directions from the immense force of the impact. The car lifted up onto the cow tipper before rolling over onto its roof, sucking in the gawky gunner, ripping his body apart. The train derailed on the track damaged from Cassidy's rocket and like a colossal plow, gouged a massive furrow in the ground. The attack car got pushed down into the dirt by the train, lifting the engine up and over the car, crushing and grinding it under one-hundred tons of metal.

  BOOM!

  The car exploded, its shockwave flat and low, lifting the train nearly a foot into the air. Flaming shrapnel rained down on the surrounding buildings, clunking and bouncing off wood and brick, and hitting the dirt with puffs of dust. The train engine tipped to its right side as it continued to slide, smashing into a burning track-side building as it dug its five-hundred foot trough through the ground. Cassidy stood back calmly into the park as the slow-motion train wreck ground past her. The engine stopped a hundred feet ahead, the hiss of steam and the creak of hot metal filling the area.

  The train engineer fell from the back of the engine, coughing and trying to find his bearings.

  “Buh!” he yelled, surprised by Cassidy standing directly in front of him.

  “No time to explain,” began Cassidy. “Stay back and keep everyone in the train. If they need to get out, head north. Do not head into town. You understand?”

  “Uh, yes. Yes.”

  “Good. Go,” Cassidy said, giving the engineer a slap on the shoulder. She then dropped her ammunition case to the ground and loaded in another missile. She latched the case again and, her launcher primed and ready, slowly walked back out into the smoke, haze, and steam.

  ---

  Cassidy walked slowly. Carefully. Her eyes and head darted all over her environment, desperately taking in as much data as possible. She breathed heavily, coughing lightly every so often as waves of dense smoke flowed over her. The sounds of people yelling and fighting fires echoed in the distance.

  The burbling engine. Cassidy turned quickly, her launched ready. She backed off slowly. The engine again. She turned back. She walked sideways, toward the smoldering ruins of the gazebo. She walked through the burnt, smoking stalks that were once the beautiful Chinese elms in the park, wafts of wind clearing the air briefly and allowing her to see.

  “Cassidy?” Jebediah's voice called.

  “Jeb? Jeb, where are you?” Cassidy repli
ed, moving her head about quickly, trying to pinpoint his location.

  “I'm over here.”

  “Where? I can't... I can't,” she said, continuing to move her head about. “Where??”

  A gunshot. “Jeb!” Cassidy yelled. Two more gunshots. “Jeb! Jeb?!” she ran in the direction of the sound, but nothing. She turned around and ran back, finding herself at the alligator garden. “Shit,” she said quietly. The burble of the engine again murmured out from the haze before turning off completely. Cassidy crouched down and ran as fast as she could out of the park and over to where the disabled train engine lay. As she ran across the street, the wind cleared a path in the smoke. Jebediah knelt in the middle of the street, in front of the once-opulent, three-story whorehouse, now engulfed in flames.

  “Cassidy!” he yelled. Cassidy turned, her launcher aimed and ready.

  “Jeb!” she paused, staring at Jebediah. “What are you doing?”

  Emerging like a specter from the haze behind Jebediah, walked Mr. Caesar, his gun drawn and held up in a relaxed arm. Cassidy's pupils reduced to pin-points. With lightning speed, she drew one of her revolvers with her left hand. Mr. Caesar quickly responded by aiming his gun at Jebediah's head. Cassidy began to hyperventilate in panic. Mr. Caesar wagged his finger at Cassidy.

  The two stood there, on the street, in front of the towering inferno that was the whorehouse. Wisps of burnt material, deadly fireflies, floated in the air. The wind was blowing more intensely and clearing away large areas of smoke. Mr. Caesar looked about, into the sky, then looked back to Cassidy.

  “Storm's coming,” he said.

  Cassidy nodded. “Seems that way.”

  “I give you a choice.” said Mr. Caesar. “Face me one-on-one, or he dies right now.” Cassidy didn't move. She didn't flinch. She didn't give any indication that she had even heard him.

  “Don't, Cassidy! You don't stand a chance!” yelled back Jebediah. Cassidy gave no response.

  “I have one bullet left in the gun. You or him.”

  Cassidy stared through eyes of grit and fury. Her face twitched with energy and anxiety. As she thought, the wind cleared out the smoke from the park to her right. Parked at its edge, the burning trees acting like giant incense sticks beside it, was Mr. Caesar's attack car, covered in dirt and blood. She glanced to her right, then stood up straight, letting the launcher relax to her side.

  “No!” yelled Jebediah. “You idiot!”

  Cassidy responded with a wink. She then turned slightly to the right and raised her launcher again, firing one directly into the car, sending out a spray of shrapnel. Jebediah looked on, then looked at Cassidy. Cassidy looked back with a self-satisfied expression. Jebediah promptly dove to the ground and covered his head and ears. Mr. Caesar looked down, confused. He looked at the car, then turned and looked behind him, seeing the blaze. His eyes widened with realization as he turned to Cassidy. Cassidy smirked at him and kissed the air.

  BOOM!

  Like a dome of glass, the shockwave distorted the air as it expanded out from the car, the shattered vehicle bursting out behind it. Dust and rock lifted off the ground as it passed. Every window facing the park cracked, shattered, and then blew into their buildings. It leveled every burnt tree in the park. It blew out the smaller fires. Cassidy, holding her ears, was turning away from the blast, falling slowly to the ground. The wave, the car, the dust, the glass: it all reflected in Mr. Caesar's eyes, viewing the world faster than his body would allow him to react. As it hit Mr. Caesar, his face rippled and distorted; his eyes closed; his clothing ballooned and billowed behind him; Slowly, almost delicately, Mr. Caesar was lifted completely off his feet and he sailed back-first into the fiery pit. The burning whorehouse collapsed around him.

  The world was slow and calm as the rain of material and cinders came down on the town. The sound of fire and the people fighting it faded into the encompassing quiet. The world burned in silence. Gideon came running out of the hotel. Cassidy crawled toward Jebediah, who lay on the ground, glowing flecks falling down like snow. She got to him and put her hand out, he extended his and they held there, in the quiet devastation, smiling. They both looked over at the whorehouse, absorbing the ultimate scene of the battle. They turned back, still adorned with their weary smiles, before putting their heads down on the ground to rest.

  8

  Anna sat alone in the room. It was small, no more than fifteen feet square, with a small table of food and drink in the middle. Two large lamps in the corners provided a dim illumination to the room, bouncing off the nicely-finished wooden walls, giving the room a warm caress that stood in stark contrast to how chilly it was. Her chair was in the corner and was padded but stiff and uncomfortable. She sat on the edge of the seat, her hands resting in her lap, her bag between her legs. Her head jerked up in surprise at the sound of the door being opened. In walked Reginald Muybridge, carrying a lantern.

  “Hello, Miss Brown. Please come with me.”

  Anna nodded and got up from her chair, picking up her bag and walking out the thick door behind Reginald.

  “Please stay close, Miss Brown,” said Reginald. “We are having some power problems and the hallways always lose light first.”

  “I see,” said Anna. “Are these problems frequent?”

  “Not terribly so,” said Reginald. “Being in a large, subterranean facility obviously comes with some considerations, so if anything has trouble, power is always diverted to the labs.”

  “How many labs are down here?”

  “Don't think me rude, but it is in your best interest to only worry about your lab and your work.”

  Anna nodded and adjusted her bag in her arms.

  “We have your permanent quarters arranged. I'm sure that you will find them comfortable. We would like to introduce you to your new laboratory, so I can take your bag to your room if you like.”

  Anna gripped her bag a bit tighter. “No thank you. I would like to keep it.”

  “Your choice,” said Reginald. “Here we are,” he said, walking up to a polished metal door, a relief of a nude man in a Grecian pose, looking aloft with a burning torch. He pushed the door open and in walked Anna. The room was large, but not nearly as large as the previous chambers to which she had been introduced. It was, at most, one-hundred-and-fifty feet square. It was of another sort, though. It was a room without equal on all of the Earth's surface. Work stations made of polished metal and glass were laid out in a grid pattern, providing a stunning sense of geometric structure to the wondrous work on display. Tall, cylindrical tanks filled with bubbling liquid glowed with light, illuminating disembodied organs and body parts. Some tanks had whole humans in them. Anna walked slowly down a polished, hardwood walkway in the middle of the room. Reginald walked quickly ahead of her, leaving her behind.

  As she walked past, clutching her bag, scientists at their stations, lit ominously from below, clad in goggles and equipped with alien devices of metal and wire, looked up and stared at Anna. They loomed out of the light and shadow like bizarre gargoyles of advanced technology. She saw a large square tank with the body of a monstrosity inside. Floating there, unmoving, supported by cables connected to the ceiling, was a creature, half man, half machine — flaps of flesh tight over metal, exposed tendons and muscles, pistons and gears. Everywhere, in tanks, on hooks, on tabletop displays, lay similar monsters. Machine cats, horses, pigs, and men, loomed out of the stark, threatening lighting — a phantasmagoria of science and horror. She paused as she walked past the mutilated chest and head of man, dangling from a hanger of sorts, his arms and lower abdomen gone and replaced with a thicket of wires and tubes. The top of his head, from the teeth up, was replaced with a rudimentary skull of metal. A single eye socket, filled with fluid and encased in crystalline glass, contained an almost-free-floating eye, connected by muscles going into the metal skull.

  As Anna, wide-eyed and frightened, walked nearer the monster, he lifted his head lazily and looked at her. “Could you scratch my nose,” he asked
in a low, raspy voice.

  Anna opened her mouth, but was initially unable to make a sound. “But you have no nose,” she finally managed to say.

  He didn't respond. He just bobbed his head ever so slight side to side, and looked away. After a moment, he looked back. “Could you scratch my nose. I can't seem to reach it.”

  “Miss Brown,” Reginald said.

  Anna looked up to see that Reginald and gotten quite a bit away from her. She trotted to catch up as Reginald walked up to a large, central arrangement. It was like a house in the middle of the room, with walls made from rectangular tanks, encircling machines and tables. Reginald and Anna walked through a split in the tanks in the middle of the structure and walked down a hallway. As they walked toward another break in the tanks, Anna looked through the bubbling liquid suspending a series of organs to the distorted form of a man, hunched over a table. He looked up and watched Anna as she walked past. his goggles brightly reflected the light from the tanks, giving them the frightening appearance of white-hot ball so fire, floating in the air.

  Reginald turned left through the gap between tanks and stopped, motioning with his hand toward the goggled man.

  “Professor Hoffman, here is the woman you were told about,” said Reginald.

  The goggled man, Hoffman, rose from his seat, removing his goggles, revealing an incredibly tall and lanky man of about sixty-five with pallid white skin. Reginald's eyes widened as his head had to turn up slightly to keep track of Hoffman's face. He gulped loudly, visibly intimidated. Hoffman's eyes were so blue as to be almost white and they glowed out from an aged, serious brow. He had sparse white hair, stubble on his jaw, and a prominent nose that flowed down into the lines around his mouth.

  Hoffman stood there for a moment, his left hand resting on the table with outstretched fingers. He then nodded far enough to make it almost a bow. “Good evening,” he said.

  Reginald breathed deeply. “Well, I will leave you be, then. Good day,” he said with a quick bow. He then walked quickly out of the structure and into the greater room. Hoffman watched him through the glass tanks as he scurried. Hoffman than turned back to Anna.