The Good the Bad and the Infernal

by Guy Adams

  “What should we do?” Forset asked. “Do you think they mean us harm?”

  “They’re riding in an attack formation,” said Billy, “a pincer movement closing in from both sides.” He hoisted himself up on the side of the cabin. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there weren’t more of them coming from the rear.”

  He couldn’t get high enough to tell, and, wary of presenting himself as a target, he dropped back down again.

  “Have we enough firepower to defend ourselves?” he asked.

  “Not really,” Forset admitted. “I’m afraid I’m an inventor, not a soldier. I didn’t really think about this sort of thing.”

  “Well, maybe you should go back there and see what you can rustle up. I’ll keep the speed as high as I can; we’ll see if we can outrun them. The horses look normal enough and, carrying those guys, you’d think they’d tire easily.”

  Forset stepped back into the dining car, where everybody was staring out of the windows at the approaching army.

  “What do you think they are, father?” asked Elisabeth. “Are they wearing armour?”

  “I think it’s a little more unconventional than that,” the peer admitted. “We need to get ourselves armed and ready for trouble.”

  Quartershaft visibly paled, but said nothing. After the trouble last night, he had made the decision to keep his rifle with him at all times and he clutched it tightly now, hoping to absorb some courage from it. Hadn’t he known that they were bound to fall foul of an attack by Indians? Weren’t they likely to be sharpening the scalping knives even as they drew closer?

  “Brothers,” Forset announced, “I think I should once again ask you all to retire to the relative safety of the sleeping carriage. Please do so now, and quickly. Try not to stay exposed between the carriages for too long.”

  The men filed quickly towards the adjoining door, all except Brother William.

  “I may be a man of God,” he said, “but I am willing to fight if He wishes it.”

  “If He didn’t, old son,” said Quartershaft, “He would hardly send a whole load of ruddy Indians at us.” He reached for his belt and pulled out a revolver. “Take that with my gratitude. The more of us pointing guns at the enemy, the happier I shall be.”

  FATHER MARTIN, LOST in his thoughts, had failed to even notice the figures outside the window. It was only as the adjoining door banged open and the sound of fretting monks filtered through that he shook himself free of his woolgathering and investigated.

  “We’re under attack, Father Martin,” shouted Brother Clarence, the first through the door.

  “From what?” He stared through the window, scarcely able to believe what his eyes were seeing.

  The riders were drawing in on the Land Carriage now, twin bands of dust and smoke building on either side of them.

  “Come on!” Father Martin shouted, pulling the monks through the doorway. “You’re exposed out there; get through quickly.”

  Brother Jonah was only too aware of this, being the last in line to pass from one carriage to another and still standing in the open air.

  “Do go a little faster, if you could,” he said to Brother Samuel in front of him.

  Brother Samuel was moving as quickly as he could, but the gangplank was shaking violently as he tried to cross it, the wind tugging at his cassock. He gripped the handrail, trying to pull himself across, but his shaking arms had little strength.

  “I think I’m stuck,” he admitted. “Unless you can pull me back?”

  The riders were either side of them now, and Brother Jonah stared in terror at the sight of them, only feet away. “O merciful Lord,” he whispered, “can these be Your creation?”

  The rider to his left raised his arm, and there was a terrifying shriek as a spray of steam jetted from the pipe at the end of his wrist and engulfed Brother Samuel.

  The old man didn’t even cry out as he boiled, contorted and tumbled from the gangplank.

  “Oh, my Lord!” Brother Jonah cried, stepping back. “Oh, my Lord!”

  IN THE ENGINE, Billy was also under attack.

  The riders on either side of him had come in as closely as possible, their hands extended towards him. Unlike the rider that had killed Brother Samuel, these wielded fire, great tongues of it lashing over the side of the engine and curling in towards the cab.

  Billy forced himself up against the boiler as the flames licked around him, only too aware of how exposed he was.

  The flames stopped and he took an opportunity to take a shot with his rifle. He shot to the right, with some regret aiming at the horse rather than the rider. The animal toppled and its rider flew forward. Top heavy, the thing immediately fell, hitting the ground head first with a crunch of impacting metal. There was a burst of fire from the attacker’s boiler and a spray of shrapnel hit the side of the engine.

  The rider on his left raised his arm once more and Billy ducked. The fire flowed over him, coming close enough to set his shirt alight. He rolled on his back, crying out in pain at his singed skin and forcing himself towards the front of the cab where the cover was greatest.

  FATHER MARTIN RECOILED in shock at the sight of Brother Samuel’s death. Was that it? Was that the premonition he had experienced? Certainly Brother Samuel’s old white scalp had turned bright pink in the seconds before he had fallen from sight.

  He shook the thought away. Now was not the time. The rest of the order were still alive and that was where his attentions should be.

  “Go back!” he shouted to Brother Jonah. “Stay in the dining car.”

  Which was certainly sound advice, Brother Jonah decided, if only he could turn around. The door was closed behind him, with his back flat to it. It opened outwards. In order to open it again, he would have to step into the line of fire, pull the door towards him, step past it, then back inside. All of which seemed too much to accomplish without meeting the same fate as Brother Samuel.

  “I can’t,” he said, his quiet voice barely carrying over the sound of the engine and the hooves of the horses on either side. “They’ll catch me for sure.”

  IN THE DINING carriage, Brother Jonah’s predicament was only too clear to Elisabeth, who had watched in horror as Brother Samuel had fallen to his death.

  “We need to provide him with covering fire,” she said. “Or he’ll never get across.”

  Before the death of the monk, her father had been congratulating himself on having insisted on windows that opened. The—much cheaper—suggestion of the National Motor Company had been to provide fixed panels with sliding vents in the roof to allow air circulation. If that had been approved, they would have had nowhere to take a shot from. All the windows were now slightly opened so they could poke out the barrels of their rifles.

  Quartershaft had fired already, but he was not the finest shot, and the challenge of hitting a moving object from inside a moving object seemed altogether too much for him.

  “Easier said than done,” Forset told his daughter, lining up a sight on one of the riders. “I just can’t get the angle to shoot that far back.” He fired once, the bullet ringing off the rider’s metal torso with the resonant clang of a church bell, then fired again. This second shot found its mark, hitting the rider just above its waist and sending it toppling from its horse.

  The wave of riders behind the stricken creature were forced to shift as their fallen comrade embedded itself in the dirt.

  BROTHER JONAH SAW his opportunity as the riders to his left veered out of their fallen comrade’s way. He jumped forward, eyes closed in terror, desperately hoping he could make the open doorway ahead of him.

  The rider to the right flexed his wrist and a shower of shrapnel cut through the air.

  Father Martin grabbed for Brother Jonah and yanked him through into the sleeping carriage as the shrapnel clanged off the gangway behind him. The monk cried out as several pieces of metal whipped through his trailing cassock, and fell on top of his superior in the passageway.

  “Are you alright?” Fath
er Martin asked. “Were you hit?”

  He looked into Brother Jonah’s startled face and saw no response.

  He dragged himself out from under the other monk, and recoiled in horror as he saw that the back of the monk’s head had been sheared clean away by a piece of metal.

  Around him the other monks began to panic, shouted prayers and desperate pleas filling the confined space as the hole in Brother Jonah’s skull began to fill up with blood.

  THIS WAS NOT the first time Brother William had fired a gun. Unlike the rest of his order, William’s background was not among book-stacks and ancient papers. William had grown up in London, a bitter, angry young man. The closest he got to books was when he had been beaten with one by an uncle who had no desire to look after a child just because the boy’s parents had had the audacity to die. A member of the notorious Caine Gang by the age of sixteen, William spent his eighteenth birthday in Newgate Prison, marching in circles around the tiny exercise yard. He decided that the best gift he could allow himself was the chance of a new life; his first had not worked out as well as he might have hoped.

  On release, he turned to God, and since then, God had not let him down. He very much hoped today was not to be the day.

  He fired the revolver, catching a rider in the hip. A second shot entered just below the rib cage and had the desired effect, the rider toppling sideways off the horse.

  “Forgive me,” he muttered, “but we are on a mission from God.”

  He lined up another shot, this one more immediately successful as the bullet entered in the upper stomach, appearing to ricochet before reappearing from the rider’s smoking mouth.

  “Good shot,” said Forset from over his shoulder. “Keep it up. Our only chance is to dissuade the attack by making a sufficient dent in their numbers.”

  “If they don’t ‘dent’ ours first...” said his daughter, seeing the fate of Brother Jonah through the window of the adjoining door.

  “Damn them,” said Quartershaft, kicking at the wall of the carriage before taking a deep breath and moving in front of the window to line up another shot. It clanged off the chest of the closest rider, as did the second.

  “Aim lower,” said Forset, taking a successful shot of his own. “You’ll have no chance against the armour.”

  Quartershaft chose not to admit that he had been aiming lower. He was not what one could call a marksman.

  He reloaded and aimed again.

  BILLY COULD BARELY move. The constant tongues of flame lashing over the rear of the engine cab kept him pressed up against the coal store. This close to the boiler, oppressive heat was coming at him from both sides. To make matters worse, they were now driving blind, but he knew that if he stuck his head up to look at the landscape ahead, he would have it burned away in moments.

  The rider he had shot on his right had been replaced by another, and it and its opposite number now took it in turns to shoot at him, keeping the flames up between them so that he never had an opportunity to move.

  There was only one idea that occurred to him, and he would have acted on it already, but that it had a fair chance of destroying the Land Carriage and all its passengers. That kind of risk gave a man pause.

  The longer he remained boxed in, however, the more he began to give it consideration. It was a gamble, but not one they weren’t already taking, driving blind as they were. At any moment, they could hit a rock or ditch in the road that would tip them. They had deliberately been travelling through open plains, but at their current speed it wouldn’t take much to throw them.

  To hell with it. They weren’t going to get out of this situation without taking risks.

  He checked his revolver, took a deep breath and then threw himself towards the steering column.

  At this speed the one thing you should never do is make a radical change of direction. While the locomotive was designed to be manoeuvrable, the carriages behind were less so. If he forced the locomotive into a sharp turn to the left, the carriages would push forward and swing out to the right. They had been weighted heavily in order to limit the chance of them toppling over, but nobody could have anticipated such a reckless piece of driving.

  His back to the column, he shot at the riders on the Land Carriage’s right. The locomotive engine began to shift, cutting into the path of the riders on the machine’s left. There was a squeal of metal and a roar as the wheels cut into the ground, the momentum of the carriages pushing it forward. Slowly he applied the brakes; if they kept moving forward at speed, they would roll for sure. The column of riders impacted against the nose of the locomotive, two of them thrown from their horses and rolling over the top of the smoke stack, hitting the ground on the opposite side.

  The last carriage began to snake sideways, a great cloud of dust flying up before it. It slammed into the riders on that side, scything through them from the rear even as all three carriages began to tilt.

  Billy fired again, but the riders were ignoring him now, too panicked by the vehicle now cutting them down from both sides.

  He turned back to the controls, pulling the steering column straight and keeping the speed steady. If he could ride the momentum out, he stood a chance of keeping the Land Carriage on its wheels.

  THE EFFECT OF the sudden shift in the carriages was catastrophic inside.

  Father Martin, still lying in the passage of the sleeping car, weathered the movement best, rolling against the wall of the carriage, the dead body of Brother Jonah slamming against him. The other brothers all fell sideways, toppling into the windows. Most held, but the damaged pane from the night before did not and Brother Clement found himself flailing out into open air as one of the nailed boards gave way.

  It was Brother Clarence that prevented him falling further, grabbing hold of the old man’s cassock and tugging him back inside.

  IN THE DINING car, Forset and his daughter were pressed against the windows they had been shooting through, while Quartershaft and William rolled over to join them.

  “What the hell is the young idiot doing?” Quartershaft shouted.

  Forset, watching as the riders fell before the sliding rear carriage, guessed only too well. “Possibly saving our lives.”

  “He has a bloody funny way of going about it,” Quartershaft moaned, crying out as a bookshelf showered him in copies of Jules Verne.

  IT TOOK ALL of Billy’s strength to control the steering column. Eventually the Land Carriage righted itself and, with that, the greatest danger was gone. Now all he had to do was maintain their forward momentum so as to absorb the pressure from the carriages behind. He was so focused on keeping the Land Carriage from destroying itself he had no choice but to ignore the attacking riders. He could only hope they continued to have problems of their own.

  “I THINK WE might have given them pause,” said Forset, shifting now that the carriage had righted itself and taking another shot out of the window. “Keep shooting, and we may repel them yet.”

  Elisabeth raised her rifle and added to her father’s fire. Quartershaft and William returned to the other side of the carriage and did the same.

  “It’s working!” said William. Both columns of riders were peeling away, abandoning their attack.

  “Aye,” Quartershaft agreed, “we’ve got the swine on the run.”

  “I must get Billy to stop!” said Forset.

  “Stop?” his daughter asked. “Surely that’s the last thing we want to do?”

  BILLY AGREED WITH Elisabeth’s sentiments, but Forset was adamant.

  “Only for a few minutes,” he insisted. “We need to turn around and gather a few of the fallen bodies.”

  “We have fallen bodies of our own,” Elisabeth said. “If we stay here, we’re likely to end up with more.”

  “But don’t you see?” the exasperated peer insisted. “If they do attack again—and they probably will—we need to know as much about them as possible. If I had some of them to examine, I might be able to create something to defend us. We survived this time purel
y by the skin of our teeth.”

  “We won’t get to pull a move like that again,” Billy agreed. “They’ll be wiser next time.” The engineer thought about it. “Alright, we go back and we grab a couple of bodies, but we do it quickly, and then we push on as fast as we can.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  MASSACRE TIME

  THE LAND CARRIAGE wasn’t designed to turn back on itself easily. Billy swept it around in a large curve, describing a circle across the plain, and paused so that they could pick up some of the fallen riders before continuing around. It was a deviation of ten minutes in total, every moment spent in the anticipation that the riders would return.

  “These things are unbelievable,” said Billy as they lifted one of them onto the rear carriage. Up close, the merging of metal and flesh was even more disturbing. If it was artificial, then it had been a process of many months, the human bodies fully fused with the black iron.

  The monks had wanted to find the body of Brother Samuel, but Forset had refused for two reasons. The first—the one that he told them—was that they would have to travel back on themselves too far. What they were doing was dangerous enough; Samuel having fallen so early in the attack, it could easily be another few miles before they found him, time they could ill afford to risk. The second, and more truthful, reason was that he couldn’t bear to think what state the body might be in. If it had fallen beneath the wheels—as it most likely had—then he had no doubt the remains would little resemble the fallen monk. It would help nobody to be presented with such a grotesque reminder of their mortality.