Steampunked (3 page)

Straightening his collar and buttoning his jacket, he walked toward the station and the pretty blonde girl with a face like a hopeful heart.

The Steam Man of the Prairie and the Dark Rider Get Down

Foreword

Somewhere out in space the damaged shuttle circled, unable to come down. Its occupants were confused and frightened.

Forever to the left of the ship was a rip in the sky. And through the rip they saw all sorts of things. Daylight and dark. Odd events.

And dat ole shuttle jes go’n roun’ and roun’ and roun’.

(1)

In Search Of

The shiny steam man, forty feet tall and twenty feet wide, not counting his ten-foot-high conical hat, hissed across the prairie, farted up hills, waded and puffed through streams and rivers. He clanked and clattered. He made good time. His silver metal skin was bright with the sun. The steam from his hat was white as frost. Inside of him, where the four men rode in swaying leather chairs, it was very hot, even with the steam fan blowing.

But they pushed on, working the gears, valves, and faucets, forever closing on the Dark Rider. Or so they hoped.

Bill Beadle, captain of the expedition, took off his wool cap and wiped the sweat from his face with an already damp forearm. He tried to do this casually. He did not want the other three to know how near heat exhaustion he was. He took deep breaths, ran a hand through his sweat-soaked hair, and put his cap back on. The cap was hot, and though there was really nothing official about his uniform or his title of captain, he tried to live by a code that maintained the importance of both.

Hamner and Blake looked at him casually. They were red-faced and sweat-popped. They shifted uncomfortably in their blue woolen uniforms. Through the stained glass eyes of the steam man they could see the hills they had entered, see they were burned brown from the sun.

It was midday, and this gave them several hours to reach the land of the Dark Rider, but by then it would be night, and the Dark Rider and his minions, the apes in trousers, would be out and powerful.

Only John Feather, their Indian guide, looked cool in his breechcloth and headband holding back his long, beaded, black hair. He had removed his moccasins and was therefore barefoot. Unlike the others, he was not interested in a uniform, or to be more precise, he was not interested in being hot when he didn’t have to be. He could never figure out the ways of white men, though he often considered on them. But mostly he considered the steam man, and thought: Neat. This cocksucker can go. A little bouncy on the ass, even in these spring-loaded seats, but the ole boy can go. The white men do come up with a good thing now and then.

They clanked through the hills some more, and through the right ear canal of the steam man, also stained glass, they could see the wrecks.

Beadle was always mystified by the wrecks.

Most people called them saucers. They lay in heaps and shatters all over the place. Strange skeletons that weren’t quite bone had been found in some of them, and there were even mummified remains of others. Green squid with multiple eyes and fragments of clothing.

There was no longer anyone alive who really knew what had happened, but what had been handed down was there had been a war, and though damn near everybody came, nobody really won. Not the world, not the saucer people. But the weapons they used, they had brought about strange things.

Like rips in the sky, and the Dark Rider.

Or so it was rumored. No one really knew. Story was the saucers had ripped open the sky and come to this world through a path alongside the sky. And that after the war, when the saucer men gave it up and went home, the Earth changed and the rips stayed. What was odd about the rips was you could toss things into them, people could enter them, and things could come out. And there were things to see. Great batlike creatures with monstrous wingspans. Snake-headed critters with flippers and rows of teeth, paddling across the blue-green ether inside the rip. Strange craft jetting across odd landscapes. All manner of things. If you stood near the dark openings, which reached from sky to ground, you could feel them pulling at you, like a vacuum, and if you stepped too close, well then you were gone. Sucked into the beyond. Sometimes the people who were pulled, or went by choice into the rips, came back. Sometime they didn’t. But even those that came back bore no real information. It was even reported by a few that the moment they stepped through the rip, they merely exited where they had entered.

Curious.

As for the Dark Rider, no one knew his origin. A disease caused by something from one of the saucers was the usual guess, but that’s all it was. A guess. The Dark Rider sucked blood like a vampire, had prodigious strength and odd powers, but had no aversion to crosses, garlic, or any of the classical defenses. Except one. Sunlight. He could not tolerate it. That much had been established.

He also had an army of apelike critters who traveled with him and did most of the shit work. When the Dark Rider was not able to do it, he sent the apes in britches to do his work. Rape. Murder. Torture. Usually by impalement. His method was to have the victim stripped naked and placed on an upright stake with the point in the anus. The pressure of the victim’s weight would push him or her down the length of the shaft until the point came out the upper part of the torso. Usually the neck or mouth, or even at times through the top of the head.

Beadle had seen enough of this to give him nightmares for the rest of his life, and he had determined that if it ever appeared he was about to be captured alive by the Dark Rider or his minions, he would kill himself. He kept a double-barreled derringer in his boot for just such a circumstance.

The steam man clanked on.

*****

It was near nightfall when they stomped out of the foothills and into the vast forest that grew tall and dark before them and was bordered by a river. It was a good thing, this forest and river. They were out of wood and water, and therefore out of steam.

Though the night brought bad possibilities, it was also preferable to the long, hot days. They grabbed their water bags, pulled their Webb rifles over their shoulders on straps, and disembarked from the steam man via a ladder that they poked out of its ass. Like automated turds, they dropped out of the steam man’s butt and into the coolness of the night.

The white men left John Feather to guard the steam man with an automatic pistol and a knife on his hip, a Webb rifle slung over his shoulder on a strap, a bow and a quiver of arrows, and went down to the river for water.

John Feather knew he would be better off inside the steam man, in case the Dark Rider and his bunch showed up, but the night air felt great and sucked at a man’s common sense. Behind him the steam man popped and crackled as the nocturnal air cooled it.

John Feather tapped the ammo belt strapped across his chest and back, just to make sure it was there. He took one of the heavy clips from his bandolier and squeezed it with his fingers, a habit he had developed when nervous. After a time, he put the oiled clip back on the bandolier and wiped his greasy fingers on his thigh. He looked for a time in every direction, listened intently. Normally, though he liked them, he didn’t miss the white men much, but tonight, he would be glad to have them back. Safety in numbers.

*****

Beadle, Hamner, and Blake inched down the slick riverbank, stopped at the water, and listened to it roar and churn dirt from the bank. There had been a big rain as of late, and the river was wild from it. The reflection of the moon was on the river and it wavered in the water as if it were something bright lying beneath the ripples.

Beadle felt good outside of the metal man. It was wonderful to not have his ass bouncing and his insides shook, to be away from all that hissing and metal clanking.

The roar of the river, the wind through the pines, the moon on the water, the real moon in the sky, bright and gold and nearly full, was soothing.

He eased one of his water bags into the river, listened to it gurgle as it filled.

“We ought to bring Steam down here, Captain,” Hamner said. He had removed his cap, which was pretty much the understanding when nightfall came, and fixed it through his belt. The moonlight shone on his red hair and made it appear to be a copper bowl. “We could camp closer to the water.”

“I’m afraid Steam’s furnaces may be too cold and too low of fuel to walk another inch,” Beadle said. “There’s just enough left for us to get settled for the night. It would take an hour to heat him up. At least. I’m not sure it’s worth it just to have him walk a few hundred feet.”

“It is pleasant here, though,” Hamner said.

“Not so pleasant we don’t need to get this over with and get inside,” Beadle said.

This indirect reference to the Dark Rider settled down on them suddenly, and the need for fresh air, wood, and water was eclipsed by a wave of fear. Just a wave. It passed over them and was tucked away. They had grown used to fear. When you hunted the Dark Rider and his boys, you had to learn to put fear on the back burner. You thought about it too much, you’d never breathe night air again. With the Dark Rider, fear and horror were a constant.

Beadle looked at the nearly full moon and wondered if the Dark Rider was looking up at it too. Beadle had sworn to get the Dark Rider. It’s what he was being paid for, he and his team. He had formed Steam Man and Company a year back, and during that time he had killed many of the Dark Rider’s ape boys, his minions as Beadle liked to call them, and his employers had been very happy, even giving him the honorary title of Captain. But he hadn’t gotten the Dark Rider. There was the real deal. And the big money. The reward for the Dark Rider was phenomenal. And Beadle wanted the bastard, reward or not. He thought of him all the time. He wrote dime novels based on his team’s exploits, stretching the truth only slightly. He had made a silent vow to pursue the Dark Rider to the ends of the Earth.

As Beadle looked at the moon, he saw the last of the white steam that was issuing from the steam man’s tall, conical hat float across the sky, blurring it, and then the steam dissipated.

“Let’s finish,” Beadle said.

*****

They made numerous trips with their bags of water, but soon they were famished. Then, leaving John Feather once again to guard Steam, they gathered wood. That accomplished, they took tools from inside the steam man, chopped and sawed the wood and hauled it inside with the water.

As Beadle had expected, the furnaces had cooled. They were lucky they had been able to find water. They might have had to spend a long night in Steam with little to drink until the morning, when it was safe. This way, they could be more comfortable. Even baths could be taken.

“Do you think the Dark Rider is near?” Beadle asked John Feather as they stacked the wood inside the steam man.

“He is always near, and always far away,” John Feather said.

This was one of the Indian’s odd answers that disturbed Beadle. He knew if he asked John Feather to decipher it, he would merely give him another hard-to-understand remark. It was best to consider the answer given, or just discard it. When John Feather was in this kind of mood, there was no reasoning with him.

Beadle decided to answer his own question, which actually had been foolish, sprung out of fear and the need for something to say. The truth was obvious: they couldn’t be too far away from the Dark Rider. Just the day before, they had passed through the burnt and reeking remains of a village with a hundred inhabitants or so with stakes rammed up their asses. Even cats and dogs and three parakeets had been crucified. It was the Dark Rider’s calling card. Therefore, he could not be far away. And he always fled to this part of the world, amongst the thick, dark woods with its bad things, near the place where the sky was most ripped and you could see into it and view all manner of strange and terrifying things not seen elsewhere.

Beadle pulled up Steam’s ass flap and locked it for the night with bolt and key. While the wood burned and the water heated, they ate a cold supper of beef jerky and hardtack and washed it down with water, then each retired to his own devices. Beadle had wanted to read, but the kerosene lamps made the place smoky and uncomfortable, even with the steam man’s vents. After first usage of the lamps and a miserable night of smoke and kerosene stink, they had decided to withhold from using them. He could, of course, read by candlelight, but he found this uncomfortable and only resorted to this when he was absolutely bored out of his mind.

He did, however, light a candle and put it in a candle hat and used the ladder to descend into one of the steam man’s legs, past the machinery that made it walk, and into the foot where he found a can of oil.

Steam had been well-oiled the night before, but it never hurt to do it again. There was always a fear of rusty devices, gritty gears, a metal rod gone bad. And considering who they were hunting, it wouldn’t do to have Steam play out.

When he finished there, he went throughout the steam man with his candle hat and his can of oil, dripping the liquid into all of its parts. He paid special attention to the backup controls in the trunk of the steam man. If the head controls failed, these, though simpler, cruder, could manage the machine’s basic movements.

After a time the water was heated, and they drew straws for who bathed first, as the others would have the same water. Beadle lucked out. He got naked and climbed in the tub at the top of Steam’s head. He set the timer. He had fifteen minutes before the next bather had a shot at the suds, and he greatly enjoyed every minute of his time.

*****

Deep in the woods, outside his compound, hanging about for lack of anything else to do, the Dark Rider, alias the Time Traveler, alias many other names, turned his face to the moon as he jerked his dick and thought of blood. At his climax he gave up blood and sperm in thick, waddy ropes that splattered on the leaf mold and the body of the dog. He imagined the dog a woman, but it had been days since he had had a woman, tasted a soft throat and sweet blood. He would have settled for a man or child, an old person, but none had been available. Just the dog, and it had been a gamey wild dog at that. Still, feeding on anything made him horny, which was both a blessing and a curse.