Lands Beyond Box Set: Books 1 - 3

by Kin S. Law

  It was ridiculous, I know. But the anger I felt then overrode my initial fear, and even my crush over the girl. My cheeks bloomed, and I felt ashamed, embarrassed, demanding something of these strangers. But hell, whatever led me here, even some teenage folly, I was here, and I was the only one who could ask.

  “Why ought we?” the fop asked. He leaned on the warm cab, his feet up on its grille. His flinty up-do was even more obnoxious seen in the light of the burning town. “We have our own problems. This knackered taxi is about to fall apart. Even if we knew something about this, how could we possibly help?” He gestured towards the destruction, as if to say, ‘Derry, you’re fucked.’

  Instead of staying annoyingly condescending, the fop suddenly fell over into the dirt. To my enduring surprise, there was my angel, her hands still palm-open, stretched out in front of her from pushing the fop over.

  “Arturo! That is not how Maman would have it!” she screeched. “You may not be able to help, but we are M.A.D.! We can take this monster apart and build a crêperie with the parts!”

  “She is right about that,” the undertaker agreed lazily, not caring about the fop’s predicament. “The creature… contraption appears to be already damaged, and lashed together with cable. I would have chosen a pneumatic propulsion, sort of like a true spider….”

  “We can take it in the legs,” the graybeard grumbled, a bit sheepishly. “I have a bolt cutter in my toolkit. Get close enough and I can tell you which lines to cut.”

  No matter how angry or insane these people were, suddenly it felt like I had an army at my back. I looked towards my angel, blinded by a brilliant smile.

  “I’m Frances. Frances Dolores Derry,” I said.

  “Cezette Louissaint. C’est la destin, Frances. It is my beloved France you are named for,” she answered. The others must have grunted names, but I barely registered them.

  The hill road let out again farther along, leading to the main road by the townhouse. I guided my velocipede away from the cab, as a decoy, and emerged close to the gear just in time to see Sheriff Patterson leap aside from being crushed by a heavy footfall. The blow flattened her cruiser, steam hissing in angry clouds through the crumpled seams.

  “Derry! Get out of here before I put you in the tank again!” she cried from the shattered front steps of the town hall. Even tussled and knocked down, she still reloaded her rifle with thick, callused fingers. “You ain’t a minor for long; it’ll be jail this time!”

  “Just get on, Sheriff! We have a plan, just get on and don’t stop firing!”

  I whipped the velocipede around and began to weave, threading between the gear’s legs. Behind me, Sheriff Patterson kept up an ear-splitting caterwaul, but to her credit, she continued to fire. The bullets tinkled along the gear’s belly, even as it lurched doggedly forward. The gun wasn’t doing much to hurt it, but I could see the head section twist around to follow the gunfire, away from the Finns’ fleeing wagon.

  “What’s it up to?” the Sheriff hollered into my ear. I shook my head to clear the ringing, shedding droplets. All the steam in the air was soaking into my clothes and hair.

  “I don’t know, but the plan is working. It’s following us,” I answered. Even as we lured it aside, the Sheriff’s question nagged at something. This big metal monster was pockmarked all over and leaking fluids. What could it want with a small town like ours? There were no military bases, no foundries or even a modest logistics depot. The closest thing to a store of parts was the garage I worked in.

  “We’re losing it, Derry!” the Sheriff said. The metal spider, deciding a buck rifle that could demolish a deer’s skull was merely a peashooter against its dense hide, turned its many glittering eyes back towards the closest target: Principal Meyers’ Paddy, tail-up in a ditch, unable to run from the horror at his heels.

  “That’s okay! My friends are over there!” The graybeard brought the taxi around, looking for a way to sidle up to a leg planted in the flower garden outside the school.

  I watched the arachnid gear slowly lean forward, its pincers looking to close on the principal’s struggling Paddy. Principal Meyers, normally so calm and disciplined, desperately spun his wheels, unaware they were getting no traction. The rattling taxi pulled up to the leg, and the fop climbed out of it, agonizingly slow to my eyes. He clutched a long, strangely top-heavy tool: the cable cutters. The graybeard pointed toward a spot in the gear’s leg, behind a joint. The thrumming between my legs seemed to slow, each piston fire in my velocipede coming with a few extra beats between.

  Beat. The monstrous mouth descended creaking upon the Paddy, ripping open the door.

  Beat. The fop dropped the cable cutters, fumbling in the petunias.

  Beat. The mandibles reached in, deep, groping like a real spider’s nightmarish mouthparts. It gripped with ambulatory bits, like fingers. The principal must have retreated to the far side of the engine, but the door on that side was jammed against the ditch.

  Then everything happened all at once. I saw Cezette running forward with the cutters, the graybeard gesticulating madly. The mandibles closed with a sort of finality around something in the Paddy. Cezette closed the cutters on something in the gear’s leg and leaned all her weight on the severing handles. As the mouthparts emerged, clutching the screaming principal between them, Cezette fell over, her black hair landing in the grass. The leg suddenly crumpled, all the strength going out of it, and the gear lurched sideways.

  “Everybody get down! Find cover!” I found myself suddenly screaming.

  What a buck rifle could not do, the gear’s own weight and the sharp, sturdy clock tower of the brick townhouse could. With a rending, screeching noise, the gear lost its balance and impaled itself upon the tapered weather vane, issuing a final gasp of raging steam from its terrible wound. Clouds of hot vapor bleached stone and wilted plants.

  When I jogged the few yards over, I saw a shadowed enclave, all that remained where the bulbous eyes had flipped up on a hinge. The pilot of the gear had opened the driver’s perch and fled. The fop and the undertaker were heaving at their cab. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw Cezette, whole and graceful, attending to the graybeard. The steam parted to reveal Principal Meyers, still clutched between the mandibles two stories above ground, his pants stained dark. What the gear wanted with humiliating Meyers, nobody could say.

  “Is the old fella okay?” I asked as I approached.

  “Cid? He will outlive us all,” the fop breathed through heaving efforts. The graybeard sat on some rubble in front of Cezette, but as he straightened up, he seemed hale enough.

  “Good. You are alive,” my angel replied. She looked me up and down, satisfied I was in one piece. I felt a blush under the layer of soot and grime, all down the front of my chest.

  “And he was supposed to get the dangerous part of the job,” the graybeard grumbled.

  The undertaker looked about to snap like a twig from effort. I walked over, and between the three of us, we rocked the taxi back on its wheels. A look under the hood confirmed the health of the machine: rickety, but it would run still. Old Fjords, they’ll show you every time.

  “I hope you have some explanation for this,” Sheriff Patterson said as she arrived, limping slightly. She gestured toward the smoking ruin, and the faint sound of klaxons arriving from fire engines nearby, but doubtfully, like she would rather be home soaking her feet. “But if not, then I don’t have a reason to detain you.”

  “It might be better that way,” said the fop flatly, but pointedly. “We still have to catch up to the inspector.”

  “Maman,” said Cezette. Oh, tragedy; my angel was getting aboard the taxi again.

  “But you’ve only just arrived!” I gaped stupidly.

  “What a gentleman,” Cezette said. “I would love to see the sights with you, but it looks like the sights are all gone. Perhaps next time, Frances.” She leaned down, and scrubbing a patch clean with one ebon-black sleeve, planted a kiss right on my cheek. “Au revoir, mon chevali
er. Nous vous reverrons, mon cher ami!”

  Stunned, my face tingling with her touch, I barely registered the old Fjord wheezing into life, bent wheels climbing doggedly over the rubble and onto what remained of the road.

  “She called you a knight,” the sheriff said suddenly.

  “What?” I gaped.

  “You just asked me what she said.”

  I had no memory of saying so.

  “Chevalier means knight, and she also said she would see you again,” the sheriff explained.

  “A knight.” I found myself echoing the word. “Tell me the whole thing.”

  “She said,” the sheriff began.

  A warm flush was filling my body, my eyes tracing and retracing the contours of the beautiful Cezette. Never in all my life had I met someone more exotic, more beautiful, or so elegant. A knight!

  “She said, ‘Goodbye, my knight, and we will meet again, my sweet friend!’”

  My pleasure swept over me for a good four seconds.

  “Wait… friend?!”

  THE END

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  OF STATIONS INFERNAL

  Station 1

  Ghosts of the Lonely West

  The inspector landed on soil that had little known the bite of tuppenny boots, breathing the burned-wood scent that prevailed in the American winter. Her boots had been bought for a song across an ocean in a market in Camden Town, which seemed all too far away now.

  In sight of the dim evening lamps of a small town, Vanessa Hargreaves, expatriated from her beloved England, looked back up to her steel guardian. It was a ways down from the cockpit, but his hip plate made for a sturdy footstool to hop the ten feet to the ground. Alphonse certainly looked out of place here, a knight far west of the castles of Scotland where he had been built. As out of place as Hargreaves herself. To think of it! An agent of Victoria III, Queen of Pax Brittania, in exile in the wildness of America with only a steel golem for company!

  But Hargreaves knew too well that what lay in the box on Alphonse’s back had the potential to destroy the world. There were forces high and low, standards under both the black flag and the Union Jack, that would do anything to get the Cook box. Though Hargreaves pined for the high streets and low alleys of their home in London, there were still dragons to be slain in the west. So she put the thought of merry England behind her and resolved to carry on.

  Hargreaves rather thought she would be needing her steel friend before long. Sadly, his innards were starkly empty of fuel, and he would carry her no farther. Alphonse’s belly wouldn’t feed itself, which meant Hargreaves needed to impose on the local town for coal. The inspector supposed the papers might have exaggerated America’s famed conservatism just a tad, but she didn’t care to risk attracting her pursuers in any way by parading an automata down the streets. She slung her carpet bag over her shoulder and covered the bulk of Alphonse with canvas and branches. The covering served to protect her guardian from prying eyes and exposure to elements. The deep darkness of the giant’s metal eye slits seemed to appraise her with a sort of inanimate loneliness.

  “Don’t blame me. It’s your fault for being a great big shiny lump,” Hargreaves admonished it, before covering the steel frog-head. From a distance, the disguise wouldn’t be anything of interest even in the daytime. That was of special importance. Alphonse carried on his back a box that could unleash a plague of biblical proportions on the unsuspecting townsfolk. Nobody must touch the box!

  Hargreaves gave a thought to herself. Her leonine mane whipped about, comforting in the cool of autumn. That would never do. She tied it back into a neat bun. Then, she set off down the path, trying to walk casually. Respectably. Her undercover instincts came alive. Soon, the spot where she had hidden Alphonse disappeared behind the trees, and some peaked roofs and a water tower came into view over the next copse. The tower had been painted with a huge red apple.

  As she entered the town, a steaming omnibus rumbled down the nearly deserted main street. The rounded, riveted front marked it as an older model, not far removed from a locomotive. It stopped in front of the plate glass of an eatery that served double duty as a bus station. With her canvas bag and dusty clothes, Hargreaves easily blended into the group of harried passengers. There was a slight delay as the people packed on the sidewalk, apparently too polite to go onto the road. From the murmuring, it seemed there were more people than usual on the omnibus. One man mentioned something to do with the major rail lines being shut through the Midwest.

  Hargreaves bought a paper and a notebook from a freeman’s newsstand, taking her change from his dark fingers. As she turned, one of the passengers remarked on how lucky he had been to catch this bus, otherwise he would have been obliged to wait an entire week for the next transport. Another bumped into her and kept going, not even raising his cap in apology. She nearly missed the lewd look of appraisal as he glanced back.

  “Why, I never!” Hargreaves breathed. Sometimes she missed the vestiges of Victorian England. Back in the reign of the first Victoria, men were responsible for any untoward display of the baser natures. Even being alone with an unwed woman or remarking on her ankles was considered untoward. Today, women of the Pax Britannia still enjoyed the trace chivalry of that heyday, as was only proper. She reminded herself this was America, and these people had bucked English customs as easily as English rule. But she definitely felt they had thrown the baby out with the bathwater on this one.

  Hargreaves hoped there was an inn or a boarding house somewhere. Alphonse’s seat was no place to weather the cold mountain nights. But the eatery seemed the only establishment open at the moment. Faint smells reminded her she hadn’t eaten since leaving Rosa and the crashed airship ’Berry yesterday afternoon.

  Hargreaves walked into the eatery and settled into a warm, plush booth. A patina of wear had descended on everything, and the air carried just a hint of frying grease. The fare appeared to be the ubiquitous soup and Hamburg steak. A row of taps dispensed a bubbling effervescence, with a smell like sweet engine cleaner. There was an awful lot of paisley, but besides this slight, the place was welcoming in every sense of the word. It was to be expected; airships brought more than goods, they brought ideas, and not all of them were used the way it said on the tin. Hargreaves suddenly missed Auntie, the ’Berry’s resident matron, on a profound level.

  “Blech,” she groaned under her breath, watching someone consume something that looked worse than naval rations. She should have been more subtle, but the stuff was truly foul. Some sort of potted pork or beef.

  “We don’t have none of your fancy city grub,” said an apparent local. The man was two seats away. Whenever he spoke, crumbs dribbled from a spotty beard. “But I got somethin’ a lot tastier back here, legs.”

  Hargreaves was in no mood for his low brand of repulsive.

  “Beg pardon? Have you escaped from the chef, you unbearable swine?”

  Scattered chuckles sounded from the nearby diners. A cook tipped his hat from behind a service window. The sally seemed to rile up the repulsive man, who slowly creaked to his feet. Surprisingly, the man wore threadbare suit trousers and a vest under the grime. The overall effect was of a solicitor rising from the grave to settle an account. Diners nearby crinkled their noses.

  “Why, you limey little whore!” said this repulsive character.

  There were twenty-one different ways Hargreaves could have dealt with the filth, seven of which did not involve stepping in the man’s aura of stench. Fortuitously, it seemed she required none of them, for another man stepped up and delivered a sharp left hook into the roiling swamp of the breathing hazard’s face. He went down with an admirable crack, right onto the tile where a busboy began to unceremoniously sweep the rubbish out the back door.

  “Huzzah!” the diners cried, and began to congratulate Hargreaves’ savior. They looked meanin
gfully into the inspector’s eyes. Etiquette demanded some response, but Hargreaves lacked the social vocabulary. At last, she spotted a waitress enthusiastically lifting a half-full pot.

  “Might I buy you a cup of coffee?” Hargreaves managed, wincing as she said the word. It elicited another round of applause.

  Her rescuer turned out to be a well-dressed man of middling means, with a kempt brown beard and remarkably pale eyes. As first impressions went, Hargreaves could find no fault with his. He struck her as an earnest fellow perhaps a touch older than herself. His name was Herbert Holm Howard, or Howard, as the townspeople seemed to prefer calling him.

  “Thank you,” Hargreaves managed, though she would have preferred a quiet meal and a soft bed to the drama. Her nerves were strained from imagined plots and actual danger.

  “That was Wilford Appleby, one of Appleton’s fallen sons. We take care of our own,” Howard said, as he nursed a cup of black coffee. His knuckles, perched on long craftsman’s fingers, were flushed red where he had decked Appleby.

  “What happened to him?” Hargreaves asked, curious despite herself.

  “In life? Failed in the city, slunk back to Appleton with just the clothes on his back. It’s a common enough story. Jill, the waitress over there, tried her luck as an actress,” Herbert said, wincing as he shook out his hand. A heavy, paper-wrapped cylinder fell from it with a thunk. “Just now? I was palming a roll of quarters.”

  Hargreaves laughed. Her food arrived then, a sad, limp bovine corpse on soggy bread and wilted salad greens. She was reasonably sure she had seen the chef take the patty out of a can before slapping it onto a grill. The chips were suitably greasy, but cut too small. The apple pie, however, was spectacular, and she was told it was on the house.

  “I was under the impression America was a land of plenty, rich with industry, ingenuity and the fat of the land,” said Hargreaves. “But there were an awful lot of people like Mister Appleby, coming up from New York. I hope you do not mind my saying so, but the reality falls short of the dream.”