Dead Iron (38 page)

Mr. Jeb Lindson.

Rose froze and stared into the eyes of a dead man.

“Move!” Alun hollered.

Rose threw herself to the side.

Jeb yelled.

Just as the spiked wheel bashed through the trees. Limbs cracked and crashed to the ground with skull-splitting impact.

Rose tucked up tight behind a boulder and covered her head with her arms. She peeked out just in time to see the wheel come to a crashing stop in front of Jeb Lindson, the forward-most spike pulling back like a cannon ready to fire.

With inhuman strength, Jeb Lindson swung the huge round tickers attached to the chain around his wrists. He slammed them into the matic. Metal met metal, crashing and sparking. Steam gushed into the air as the wheel matic faltered under the blow. Jeb didn’t wait for it to fall. He lifted the giant chain and ball and smashed it into the matic again, busting seams, popping rivets. The wheel matic exploded, hot scrap and ash raining down out of the air.

Then the big man went walking. Toward the rail. Toward Mr. Shard LeFel’s train cars, where his wife, Mae Lindson, was held captive.

Rose smelled hair burning and patted at her shoulders. Her hair was on fire! She pulled at the base of her braid, dragging her hair forward over her shoulder. A very bad mistake. The fire licked up the side of her cheek. Rose yelled and slapped at the fire, blistering her palms. She snuffed it out just before it reached her ear, and sat there, for a second or two, trying to get back her breath and her courage.

The night filled with bullets again. The battlewagon was rolling closer, firing another deadly round off into the night.

Blinking back tears of pain, and swallowing down her fear, Rose scrambled for her gun and prayed she had enough bullets in her pockets to end this.

Mae Lindson had no weapon except her magic. It would take her voice to curse or bind, or draw upon magic of any kind. And she had no voice.

Jeb yelled out in agony. He was alive, trying to find her. Trying to save her. But that monster Shard LeFel was right. He was too late. There was no time left.

Time.

Alun Madder had given her a pocket watch. She knew it carried a speck of glim. Could she use it as a weapon?

As Mr. Shunt turned his back to stuff Elbert inside the gory clockwork of the Strange, Mae worked to get the pocket watch out of her coat. They had bound her hands together in front of her, but she could still move them.

The Strange that held the chain around her throat was hypnotized by Mr. Shunt’s work. If it noticed what she was doing, one hard tug on her chain would crush her neck.

Mae fingered the watch into her hand, then slowly pulled it up to her mouth. She tugged at the leather gag, but it wouldn’t move. Over the top of the pocket watch she whispered, more song than word, more breath than voice, calling on magic, begging magic to come to her, hoping the glim would work as an amplifier, a cupped hand, a bullhorn, to call the magic and make it stronger. She begged magic to not so much break a curse but interrupt it and hold it away for one single minute, for one single man: Cedar Hunt. And then she pressed down the watch stem, stopping the watch, and stopping Cedar Hunt’s curse, for just one minute.

Cedar Hunt gasped for air and pushed himself up onto his knees. He didn’t know how, but he was a man, even though moonlight filled the sky. He saw the gun on the platform beside him. The gun Mr. Shunt had shot him with. He picked it up and pushed onto his feet, nearly blacking out from the pain. He staggered through the train car toward the child, toward his brother, toward Mae.

Rose Small looked for Alun Madder. He was sprinting over the matic Jeb Lindson had reduced to a pile of rubble, and headed straight at the Goliath, an ax in each hand, his pipe cherry bright in his mouth. The battlewagon trundled over the terrain, headed right for him, reloading a cartridge as it picked up speed.

It was suicide. There was no cover, no way Alun would survive a rapid-fire round from the matic.

“This way!” Alun Madder yelled. “Quickly! The boys will take care of the men.”

Boys? Rose heard Cadoc and Bryn let out a hoot from down the rail. The two younger Madder brothers had clambered up inside the big rail-matic scraper with bulletlike wheels that leveled the land. Somehow they’d powered the thing and were now riding it down over the bank of men, Bryn looking like some kind of bug as he worked the levers in the cab—his goggles reflecting moonlight and gunfire. Cadoc, wild-haired and laughing as he hung by one hand and one foot off the side of the beast, unloaded shot after shot into the rail workers’ rank.

The railmen returned fire on the big ticker, but bullets pinged off the huge metal scraper. The rail matic powered forward relentlessly, smashing flat roots and stumps and anything else that got in its way, big screw wheels covering the ground with ease.

The rail workers were outgunned. Those that could turned tail and ran from the nightmare scene. The rest were crushed where they stood.

Alun was at the foot of the Goliath. Far too nimble for a man his size, Alun Madder ducked low and jammed both axes into the bottom links of the matic’s wheel track, then followed that up with another lit bomb that he lobbed up into the beast’s chassis.

“Run, Rose,” Alun Madder yelled. “Run!”

The matic hammered down with a mighty
whump
and the earth itself bent beneath its blow.

She couldn’t see Alun, didn’t know if he had been injured or killed by the hammer. The other two Madder brothers were driving the rail matic up behind the battlewagon, on a clear collision course that would crush the mobile gun.

They were crazy, all of them. Plainly suicidally brained. But she didn’t take the time to ponder further. She ran. Toward LeFel’s train cars, toward Cedar Hunt and Mae Lindson. To save them if she could. Before it was too late.

Mae Lindson threw her hands up to ward off Mr. Shunt, but he slapped the watch out of her hands and then, for good measure, struck her hard across the face. Stars filled Mae’s vision as the barbed-wire chain around her throat tightened and bit.

She couldn’t breathe.

The hot, wet heat of the Strange surrounded her as Mr. Shunt shoved her into the clockwork monster behind her. Spikes scratched, slashed, clamped. The heat and oil inside the Strange caused every open wound on her body to sting as if salt had been rubbed in it. She tried to scream, but had no air.

“Now, Mr. Shunt,” Shard LeFel said. “The blood. Turn the key and open our door so that I may see to my brother’s end.”

Mr. Shunt spun so quickly, his coat billowed around him like dark wings. Then he was at the Strange door where Shard LeFel stood waiting, hunger twisting his hauntingly beautiful features.

Mr. Shunt triggered a switch. And the Strange that held the boy, Wil, and Mae began to close. Mae pushed at the creature swallowing her whole, but it was like pushing against a bear trap. Spikes pressed into her back, her legs, her shoulders, her arms. Sharp agony drew a ragged scream out of her throat as her blood was sucked up and pumped down into the tubes that ran to the door, mixing with the blood of the howling wolf and the screaming child.

The door began to open, hot white light pouring through the cracks and shattering the shadows of the room. And in that light, Mae saw her death.

Cedar Hunt lurched through the empty train car, blinking blood and sweat out of his eyes. His lungs felt heavy and full of blood. He cocked the trigger back on the gun and stumbled into the next car, parceling his breath so as not to pass out.

He lifted the gun and shot the first person he saw—Mr. Shard LeFel, who stood bathing in an unholy light coming up from the floor of the car. The shot caught Shard LeFel in the shoulder and knocked him flat on his back.

Cedar cocked the gun, fired again, this time aiming for the tall, skeletal figure of Mr. Shunt. He missed.

And then, just as sure as a watch running down, Cedar was no longer a man. He was a wolf again. He lunged for Mr. Shunt, jaws, claws, and rage. Mr. Shunt was made of blades and hooks, razors and pain—too fast to catch his throat, too slick to snap his bones. Cedar tore at flesh that tasted of rotted blood, but could do no true damage to the Strange.

“Mr. Shunt,” Shard LeFel yelled as he regained his feet and strode back up to the doorway. “Kill them. Spill their blood now!” Shard LeFel used the bladed cane to help him stand on the edge of the opening doorway beneath him, one boot at the threshold.

Mr. Shunt skittered away from Cedar’s hold and flicked a lever on the device at the top of the doorway. The device lit up.

Screams of agony filled the room.

Cedar could not kill the three Strange creatures in time to save Mae, Elbert, and Wil, and he had no time to choose between them. Little of a man’s reasoning filtered through the pain now. His mind was all wolf, and the wolf would kill the one Strange in front of him.

Cedar jumped over the door, past Shard LeFel, crashing down on Mr. Shunt before he could trigger another lever in the device.

Cedar snapped at Shunt’s face, caught scarf and a hank of hair. Mr. Shunt unhinged and slipped free, then pulled up the gun that had fallen from Cedar’s hand. Mr. Shunt aimed that gun at Cedar’s head.

Then the train car exploded—walls bashed apart as if a boulder had torn through them.

“LeFel!” A great, hoarse bellow shook through the night.

Jeb Lindson had come calling.

Another wall shuddered from the impact of the huge matics Jeb swung like a child swings a stick.

Mr. Shunt turned the gun on Jeb Lindson. And squeezed the trigger.

The shot took Jeb straight through the middle of his head, leaving a trail of smoke spiraling up out of the hole.

Jeb smiled, bloody, charred, torn apart, and shredded so that he barely resembled the man he once was. He picked up one of the huge ball tickers and pounded it into Mr. Shunt, knocking him flat before turning toward his true goal, Mr. Shard LeFel.

Shard LeFel raised his cane. “You will not stand in the way of my revenge! You will not stop me!” He lunged. The silver blade pierced Jeb’s ribs, clean out his back.

And the big man let out a huge wet chortle.

Shard LeFel’s eyes went wide with horror.

“Can’t kill a man more’n three times, devil,” Jeb Lindson said. “Said it yourself. You plain can’t kill me no more.”

Mr. Shunt seemed just as shocked as Shard LeFel and stood, weighing his options. Cedar barreled into Mr. Shunt and tore into his neck, shaking and breaking it. Then Cedar ripped Mr. Shunt apart, limb from limb, stringing bone and guts and metal out of him like pulling the meat out of a crab, until Mr. Shunt stopped moving, stopped twitching, stopped ticking.

It took no more than a minute before Mr. Shunt was reduced to a mess of cracked bits. It took a few seconds more before Cedar could reclaim enough of his mind to realize Wil, Mae, and Elbert were still trapped. Trapped by the Strangeworks.

Cedar attacked the first Strange, sinking teeth into its head and throwing himself backward, twisting off the head with the strength of his jaw.

The Strange wriggled and shrieked and sprang open like a popped seed. From that bloody mess, the little child Elbert tumbled out onto the floor.

Cedar paused just long enough to be sure the child was breathing, then ran to the next Strangework.

“No!” Shard LeFel screamed. “Release me. Fall to the ground and worship me.”

Cedar glanced at him. The door was closing, and Shard LeFel was not walking through it. Jeb Lindson was there instead, big hand wrapped around Shard LeFel’s throat, holding him one-handed in midair above the door. With a vicious smile, Jeb Lindson lowered Shard LeFel just enough, the tips of his boots slipped into the door, before he yanked him up again.

“Only gonna do one thing, devil,” Jeb said. “Gonna kill you, me and this dead iron. And it’s only gonna take me the one time.”

Jeb used one hand to smash the ball matic into the Holder at the head of the doorway.

The Holder exploded in a roll of thunder and a blast of lightning. Seven distinct bits of the device flew straight up into the night and then whisked across the starry sky faster than anything on this earth.

Cedar was on the next Strangework, biting, killing, twisting, destroying, until it disgorged his brother, Wil, who was broken, bloody. But he still breathed.

Cedar Hunt wasn’t done killing yet.

He threw himself at the last Strange. And this time, it was Mae who fell from the monstrous creature, Mae who took a hard, shuddering breath, pulling the gag from her mouth and the barbed wire from her throat.

Jeb Lindson lifted Shard LeFel away from the closed doorway in the floor, his huge hand crushing LeFel’s windpipe. Jeb Lindson laughed and laughed, his ruined face drooping with the effort to smile as he dragged Shard LeFel behind him over the rubble of the train car and down to the ground outside.

Shard LeFel scrabbled, reaching for the door, reaching for the stairs, trying to scream through a throat that could do no more than gurgle.

And then Jeb stopped laughing. “For Mae,” he breathed. “
My
Mae.”

Jeb pounded LeFel’s face methodically with his fists, breaking his beautiful features, snapping his elegant neck, cracking his graceful back, then every other bone in his body, before crushing his skull and digging his brain out with his knuckles. Just for good measure, he pounded the bloody scraps of Shard LeFel with the metal ticker, until all that remained of him was pulverized into a fine mash.

“Mr. Hunt?”

Cedar looked away from the bloody spectacle.

Rose Small stood on what was left of the platform, her rifle smoking, her goggles pushed up, little Elbert hugged close against her hip. She was dirty, singed, a little bloody. He didn’t think he’d ever seen her smile so brightly.