Bridgetown, Issue #1: Arrival

by Giovanni Iacobucci

  With that, Rimmler stepped away, leading the crowd in applauding her.

  His words had been, at their base, still condescending—still inadequate. But, she had to admit, she wasn't expecting even that much from her. It was a start.

  She cleared her throat, and brought her lips to the microphone. "Thank you, Howard," she said, the words sounding alien to her ears. Then she pulled her speech out of her pocket and unfolded it. She recognized the anger-fueled determination with which those sharp, angular letters had been written days earlier.

  "Today we stand on the precipice of the future," she began. "A glorious world awaits that, to many of us, might seem only fantasy. Heavier-than-air vessels will conquer the skies. Diseases that take all too many lives today will be cured. Our children will watch mankind step foot on the moon. How can I predict such things? Because they are part of an inevitable march of progress that I have seen in my dreams."

  She took a breath, reflecting on the utter truth of her words that no one else present, save for Wayne, could possibly understand.

  "But progress means more than new factories," she went on. "Progress includes the recognition of all peoples' contributions. When we step backwards in this quest, for fear of retribution from the closed-minded, we silence the ideas of innovators of all ages, creeds, and genders.

  "I have seen this firsthand. These walls, these windows, these assembly lines—I lived and breathed their construction for over a year. But some backwards individuals feared what that would mean for the women now fighting for an equal voice in our society, for the right to vote and to determine the course of their lives."

  Susanna felt murmurs throughout the crowd. Support and discord alike, no doubt.

  "Such men have tried to silence me."

  She could picture Wayne rubbing the sweat from his forehead right about now. She can't be serious, he'd be thinking.

  "But I will not be silenced. Not for some vain sense of posterity, but because this place will make the future, and it is up to us to make sure the future we fashion is the correct one. May this factory be a monument to human ingenuity, and a symbol of new beginnings for men and women around the globe."

  She took a deep breath. "Thank you all." With that, she stepped away from the podium, feeling lighter than she had in weeks. The sound of applause washed over her like the golden honeydew light that transported her into this world all those years earlier.

  White's eyes scanned and flitted about the front of packed house.

  "Any sign of him?" White asked McInnis.

  "I'm looking, I'm looking," the old man said.

  White's attention drifted to one person in particular. In a crowd filled with grey-haired politicians and foreigners dressed in their clothes that were different a subtle, implacable way, this one stood out. He wore a long cloak that hid the outline of his body, and which looked far too warm for August. Wispy blonde hair sat tucked under a broad black hat and the shoulders of the cloak. And while the others clapped, his right hand stayed hidden under that cloak.

  That little voice in the back of White's mind, the one that came with years of the working for the law behind it, was chattering again.

  "Is that him?" White asked, jabbing McInnis in the arm and pointing at the suspicious individual.

  McInnis hesitated. The beginnings of a word formed in his mouth, but something held him back. A process of cognition—an uncertain deliberation. White could tell he wasn't trying to determine if that was the person in question, but rather, whether he ought to say anything about it.

  That was all the confirmation White needed.

  The stranger turned his head to the left, then to the right. One of his eyes caught the sight of the sheriff in his unmistakable ivory jacket.

  Privately, White gasped. The stranger's other eye, lazy as it was, brought the face back to the fore of White's memory. The assassin wasn't a man at all—it was that broad-shouldered, angry Jameson girl. Old Man Beaumont's neighbor.

  A look of panic washed over her face, and White knew he'd been recognized.

  The space between two heartbeats stretched into a song, while White's reflexes kicked into gear. His right hand went to his holster. His left leg stepped forward, as he lowered his center of gravity.

  The girl's .45 made its way out of her jacket. But she did not take aim at White. Instead, she returned her gaze towards Susanna. She raised the barrel, and fired one shot before White let off a round of his own.

  Two bullets ripped through the air in competing paths.

  The would-be assassin collapsed. Her hat traveled along its own separate impact trajectory.

  As people nearby began to register what was happening, panic radiated outwards in all directions.

  White tried to make sense of what was happening, but it was all happening very quickly. A shriek erupted from near the girl White had just shot. It was coming from a woman whom White recognized as the Spanish duchess. Her face was now drenched in the deep red blood of the Jameson girl, who'd collapsed, limp, into her arms.

  A human mass began to push against White and McInnis. McInnis, on his one leg, was quickly felled.

  People were panicking. This was going to be a stampede.

  White turned around to appraise the situation. He had to get a handle on it.

  Those who hadn't been able to squeeze inside the factory before now stuck their heads in every entryway to get a better look.

  The two sides—those trying to get out, and those trying to look inside—were working against each other, creating an inflexible human wall.

  White turned around again to see if Susanna had been struck by the assassin's bullet. But she was nowhere to be seen.

  Susanna wasn't quite sure what had happened to set off the insanity; she hadn't even registered where the shots had come from. She just knew the factory was descending into pandemonium.

  She leapt down from the rear of the stage, out of the crowd's vantage. Back here, it was just her and a football field's worth of assembly line equipment. She started to run for the rear exit.

  Where was Wayne? Where had he gone? Her heart was racing. She couldn't remember the official escape plan. It had all gone too real, and now her fight-or-flight was kicking in. She just needed to get out of here. The agonized screams of those being trampled by the human swarm bounced around the walls of the factory. Unavoidable.

  She took one look backward, despite her better judgement, and watched as those trapped inside the factory smashed the large glass windows, sending deadly, heavy fragments of it flying into the crowd. Previously civilized people climbed over one another, indiscriminate of age or gender, to escape. Emboldened antagonists, meanwhile, climbed over the escapees to get inside. They carried the biggest rocks they could find, and began smashing everything they could. It was as if they were doing their best to recreate the workers' revolt in Jesse's film. She was watching The Robbery of Bridgetown play out, just as she'd read about it.

  "Wayne!" she called out. But she could barely hear herself, yet alone hope anyone else could.

  Rioters were climbing over the barricade now, and spilling out onto the factory floor. They began to destroy everything within sight with a Luddite zeal, tearing metal from metal with inhuman strength.

  They tipped the gleaming Mark III off its rotating dias, sending it slamming into the concrete floor. Shattered glass and chrome accouterments spilled out across the polished surface.

  Susanna had to get out before they found her. She ran.

  She didn't know where she was going.

  She glanced back. A vandal spotted her, and raised the factory piece he'd ripped from the wall as if it were a club.

  She kept running. Close to the exit now.

  The door was within reach.

  She threw open the door, and cast herself out into the blinding light of the desert. Sunlight hugged her flesh.

  There, not far from where she stood, she saw a familiar sight: a Jeep.

  Jesse's Jeep.

  She looked
into his eyes for the first time in nearly a month. "Why did you do this?" she asked, between panting breaths.

  "We didn't," he replied. "The people of Bridgetown did."

  We? She didn't feel anger, exactly. There was too much futility in what she felt to classify it as anger. Confusion, yes. Frustration, certainly.

  "You should get in," Jesse said. "Let me take you away from here."

  "I don't need you to rescue me, Jesse."

  "Not a rescue. A way out."

  She could feel the mob at her back. They'd find her if she stayed any longer. And they would lynch her.

  "I'll only come with you on one condition," she said, unsure if she meant it.

  "Okay."

  "Take me to Black. I want to talk to him. I want to understand everything."

  "Everything?"

  "Yes," Susanna said. "Everything. Why this just happened. Why you made your damn movie. How we ended up here in the first place."

  "Alright," Jesse replied. "But you have to promise me one thing, too."

  Susanna glanced back reflexively. She imagined that man with his club catching up with her, and what he would do to her if he did.

  "What?" she asked.

  "If I find a way home—if Black can get us where we belong, after all this dust is settled—you have to come back with me."

  "Okay," she said, but it sounded hollow, even to her. She'd thought just like him once, years ago. But it was laughable to focus on escape, now, when there were so many more immediate issues to address. Still, she climbed into the Jeep, not once looking him in the eyes.

  He floored the gas, and began to drive away from the factory into the wilderness of the hills beyond Bridgetown.

  Susanna watched as the factory—her factory—receded into the distance of the rear-view mirror. She wondered if she'd ever see it again, or if everything had been snatched from her hands for the last time.

  * * * *

  Sheriff White observed the scene before him: A line of a thirteen hastily-erected tents, their canvas fluttering in the nighttime wind, constituted the makeshift emergency relief site outside the factory. Somewhere inside them were sixteen bodies. A dozen of the poor souls had been trampled inside the factory as the crowd stampeded for the exits, and four more had been shot to death by White's own police force in the melee. One additional man had been severely burned by a small fire that broke out, and the doctors were unsure whether he would survive. That wasn't even accounting for the young assassin White himself had shot dead.

  What a bloody day this had been. Goddamn Wayne for ignoring his warnings about exactly this sort of thing. Goddamn himself for not putting up a bigger fight, for not arguing with Wayne, and instead allowing Cole to get his way once again. Now the whole city would pay the price. Whatever value Wayne was hoping would be attached to Cole Automotive thanks to this event was clearly gone. Instead, the whole of the country would know Bridgetown only as a great place to start a riot.

  In the hours after the chaos, White had put all of Bridgetown on lockdown. He was testing the limits of his authority, but he'd managed to get the cabbies to agree not to take anyone in or out of town. His deputies were keeping Main Street and other probable meeting spots clear of lingerers. Wayne was back on his property, apparently camped out in some kind of secret bunker. There was still no sign of Mrs. Cole.

  Also of conspicuous absence was Jane Carlyle and the SLPA. Clearly, they had the good sense to hightail it out of town while they still could. White was convinced she and her cronies must've been the ones to throw the first stones, to have stormed the factory doors and incited the deadly panic. And now she was gone, evaporated into the mist as suddenly as she'd arrived.

  Termites…

  White looked back at the town, its lights glowing in the distance. Downtown was way at the opposite end of the road to the factory. Nevertheless, he could feel something beckoning him. It was the same uncanny sensation he sometimes felt transmitting into his consciousness from Devil's Peak. He suspected it happened to everyone in Bridgetown from time to time, only most people weren't comfortable talking about it, and so everyone went on about their way, thinking they were crazy. But this time, the feeling wasn't coming from the mountain.

  He scanned the crowd with his eyes, finding Harry over by the third tent, where the most critically wounded were being tended to as best was possible. Harry must've been trying to get more news about the burned man.

  "Harry!" White called, making his way over to his deputy.

  "Colonel," Harry said, sounding deflated.

  "Listen, I've got something to take care of downtown."

  Harry raised his eyebrows, dubious. "'Something to take care of?'"

  How to explain it? "I'm hoping I might shed some light on who's behind this," White replied.

  "I thought it was pretty clear who's behind this—"

  "Hear me out, Harry. I need you to keep the peace down here. Hold down the fort, make sure there's no trouble, and I'll be back as soon as I can."

  "Okay," Harry said, his response trailing off with implied uncertainty.

  White gave him a nod and began his march to downtown. To the red light district.

  The door to Clayburn's was shut, but the lights were on and the muffled, raucous sounds of the saloon still leaked out into the shut-down street. White opened the door, walking into a haze of smoke, and shut it behind him.

  While the lockdown had most of Bridgetown feeling like a ghost town this night, the saloon was roaring with activity. The atmosphere buzzed with what felt like celebration, even.

  Anger burned within White's chest as he drank in the sight of dozens of black-coated bandits—practically in brazen uniform as Lotus Boys—drinking and pokering and telling each other stories. A few of the men saw him in glances, but none allowed their eyes to linger on his conspicuous presence for too long. Best to ignore him and, hopefully, remain invisible that way.

  White walked in that deliberate, shoulders-back manner with which he'd confronted the crowd of activists days earlier. He made his way down the long hall—past the poker tables, past Clayburn, polishing glasses behind his bar as usual, and towards the door on the far wall.

  There it was. Though he could barely remember his dream, the sensation of recognition told him, proof-positive, that it was this door which he had seen in it. It was this plain rose-lacquered door that had been calling to him.

  Two Lotus Boys stood by the door, hands on their belts, talking. As White reached out to turn the knob, one of them put out a hand to block him.

  "This door's off-limits without permission," the gangster said, his words escaping from between uneven, tobacco-stained teeth.

  White pointed to the badge on his jacket. "Official police business. Now, if you don't let me through, I'll be happy to throw you in jail for the obstruction of justice."

  The man looked to his partner, muttered something in Spanish, then turned back to White. He shrugged. "Suit yourself." Then he turned the knob, and opened it for White.

  The sheriff found himself staring down a steep staircase carved out of the earth that seemed to go on forever into the void. A sudden, dizzying sense of vertigo hit him.

  "You're gonna want that lantern," the Lotus Boy said.

  White took the lantern hanging from a nail in the wall. "Thanks," he said, a bit bewildered, and lit it with a match.

  He took the first few steps down the shaft, keeping an eye on the gangster to make sure he didn't try to put a bullet in his back. The Lotus Boy closed the door behind him. A chill ran down White's spine. Nowhere to go now but down.

  He took the next few stairs. Each footstep landed with the sound of dirt scraping under his boot—the wooden planks were covered in a disconcerting patina of debris, and he felt liable to slip and fall at any moment. Each step was a few inches too short for comfort—he almost had to angle his feet outward to keep on them. His free hand remained on the clammy tunnel wall for security, breaking contact with it only occasionally, to clear the cob
webs.

  The farther down he went, the more distant the sounds of the saloon became. What did it mean that this passageway existed underneath the saloon? It certainly wasn't on any official documentation inside city hall. How long had it been here? White got the creeping sense that he was only now discovering a secret that had been hidden from him in plain sight for years.

  Though the flickering light was dim, he could perceive that the staircase was finally about to bottom out. He estimated he must have been four stories below ground by now. The air was stifling. At the base of the stairwell, an archway at the right opened up into the next passage.

  White took a breath, steeled his nerves, and made the turn:

  He was in another snakish tunnel, but there was a light coming from whatever was on the other side. He walked briskly, avoiding the muddy spots as best as he could. Towards the end, the dirt walls were covered in plaster, forming an antechamber. When he reached this spot, he leaned up against the wall, breathing shallow to keep quiet, and poked his head past the doorway into the next room.

  What was this? The room was warm, lit up in long drippy candles. In the center of the room was a desk. And at this desk was a man.

  White's heart skipped a beat, and he nearly gasped.

  The man wore a long dark coat, and his features seemed to recede into the shadows.

  "Black," the sheriff uttered.

  The form rose up from behind the desk and came around it. He approached White, and stuck a hand out to shake. White did so.

  "Sheriff White," the man said. "It's nice to finally meet my better half." He smiled, and crows' feet formed at the corners of his deep-set eyes.

  White did not have it within himself to return the laugh. He was bewildered, disoriented. What was this place? What was going on?

  "Why?" he managed to ask. "Why are you here? What is the meaning of all this?"

  Black shrugged. "I need a place to do business."

  "That's not what I'm talking about." White was trying not to shake. "Where have you taken Mrs. Cole? Why did sixteen people have to die tonight? Why do you burn our derricks to the ground? Why do you work so hard to turn this town against me?"