Steampunked (7 page)

“Lif id ub, pud id down,” he said as he played. “Lif id ub, pud id down.”

“Would you stop that, for heaven’s sake?” Beadle said.

The Moorlock frowned, popped Beadle’s balls with the back of his hand, and went back to his game. “Lif id ub, pud id down …”

(8)

A View from Doom

John Feather, in pain so intense he could no longer really feel it, could see the horizon, upside down, and he could see the ground and a bunch of ants. He had been taught that the ants, like all things in nature, were one, his kin. But he didn’t like them. He knew what they wanted. Pretty soon they’d be on the cross, then the blood on his hands and feet. Then would come the flies. With kinfolks like ants and flies, who needed enemies? He could kind of get into accepting rocks and trees as his kinfolk, though he was, in fact, crucified on one of his kin, but ants and flies. Uh-uh.

He heard a squawk, lifted his head and looked up. At the top of the cross, waiting patiently, a buzzard had alighted.

John Feather remembered he had never had any use for buzzards, either. Come to think of it, he didn’t like coyotes that much, and the way his luck was running, pretty soon they’d show up.

They didn’t, but he did hear flies buzzing, and soon felt them alight on his bloody hands and feet.

*****

When the Dark Rider showed, the first thing he did was light a kerosene lamp, and the first thing he said was, “I suppose we shall remove the Moorlock head. This will give us a wound to work with.”

The Dark Rider took hold of the Moorlock’s jaws, pried them apart, tossed the head, sent it bouncing across the floor. The assisting Moorlock watched it bounce. He looked longingly at the Dark Rider.

“Do your job here,” the Dark Rider said, “and you can have it all to yourself.”

The Moorlock looked pleased.

The Dark Rider, who had brought a roll of leather, placed it just above Beadle’s head and uncoiled it. It was full of shiny instruments. The first one he pulled out was a long metal probe, sharpened on one end.

He held it up so Beadle could see it. It caught the lamplight and sparkled.

Beadle told himself he would not scream.

The Dark Rider poked the probe into the bite wound on his shoulder, and Beadle, in spite of himself, screamed. In fact, to his embarrassment, he thought he screamed like a girl, but with less restraint.

*****

Inside the great time and space cosmic rip, the metal ship hurtled by again, and inside the ship, or as they called it, the shuttle, peering out one of its portholes, was an astronaut named McCormic. He was frightened. He was confused. And he was hungry. He and his partners, a Russian cosmonaut and a French astronaut, had recently finished their last tube of food and the water didn’t look good. Another forty-eight hours they’d be out of it, another three or four days they’d be crazy and drinking their urine, maybe starting to think of each other as hot lunches.

Through a series of misfortunes they had lost most of their fuel and could not return to Earth. They were the Flying Dutchman, circling the globe. They had lost contact with home base. The radio waves were silent. It was as if the world beneath them had died. To add tension to all this, their air supply was draining. It would in fact play out at about the same time as the water supply, so maybe they would never get to drink their urine or dine on one another.

To top it off, McCormic was having trouble with his hemorrhoids, which was their way, to appear only at the least opportune time.

And then, there was the rip.

No matter where they were while circling the Earth, the rip was always to their left. They watched it constantly, saw inside it strange things. The rip made no sense. It fit nothing they knew or thought they knew. McCormic felt certain it was widening, even as they watched.

McCormic turned to his partners. The Russian was sitting on the floor. His name was Kruschev. Like his companions, he had removed his helmet some time ago. He was reading from the Frenchman’s copy of
Huckleberry Finn
, in French. He didn’t understand the jokes.

The Frenchman, Gisbone, said, “I know what you are thinking, my friend McCormic. I am thinking of the same.”

McCormic glanced at the Russian. The Russian nodded. “It is closer than our Earth, comrade.”

McCormic said, “It would be easy to use the thrusters. Turn into it. I say we do it.”

*****

John Feather thought perhaps the best thing he could do was pull with all his might and tear his hands free. The flesh there was not that strong, and if he could pull them through the nails, and was able to free his hands, then … Well, then he could hang upside down by his feet and die slowly of what he was already dying of, only with his hands free. Loss of blood.

But hell, it was something. He balled his hands into fists around the nails and pulled with everything he had.

Boy did it hurt.

Boy did it hurt a lot.

He pulled the flesh of his palms forward until the nails touched his clenched fingers. He jerked forward, and with a scream and burst of blood, John Feather’s hands were free.

*****

At about that time the shuttle, blasting on the last of its fuel, came hurtling through the crack in the sky, whizzed right by him so hard it caused the impaled steam man to rattle and the cross on which John Feather was crucified to lean dramatically.

The shuttle’s wheels came down, but it hit at such an angle they crumpled and the great craft slid along on its belly.

John Feather, from his unique vantage point, watched as the ship tore up dirt, smashed through what was left of the smoldering stick man, turned sideways, spun in several circles and stopped. There was a popping sound from the craft, as if metal were cooling.

After a long moment, the door of the craft opened. John Feather waited for a squid in harness and overalls to appear. But something else came out. Something white and puffy, shaped like a man, but with a bright face that made it look like some kind of insect.

At this moment, John Feather’s cross finally came loose in the ground and toppled to the earth with him on top of it. He let out a howl of pain.

Fuck that stoic red man shit.

McCormic was first. He wore his helmet, had his oxygen tank turned on. After a moment, he turned off the oxygen and removed the helmet. He came down the flexible staircase breathing deeply of the air.

“Very fresh,” he said.

The Frenchman and the Russian came after him, removing their helmets.

“I believe it ees our Earth,” said the Frenchman. “Only fugged up.”

*****

From where he lay, John Feather tried to yell, but found that he had lost his voice. That scream had taken it out of him. He was hoarse and weak. But if he could get their attention, whoever, whatever they were, they might help him. They might eat him too, but considering his condition, he was willing to take the chance.

He tried to yell, but the voice just wasn’t there. He tried several times.

The men with parts of their heads in their hands, turned away from the ship, walked around it, and headed away from him, in the direction from which he and his friends and the steam man had come.

When they were dots in the distance, John Feather’s voice returned to him in a squeak. But it didn’t matter now. They were out of earshot.

All he could manage was a weak “Shit.”

*****

The Dark Rider had a lot of fun poking Beadle’s wound, but he eventually became bored of that, left, came back with a salt shaker. He shook salt in the wound. Beadle groaned. The Moorlock hopped up and down. He hadn’t had this much fun since he’d helped eat his first-born young. The Dark Rider smiled, tried not to think of Weena.

*****

After lying there for a while, John Feather sat up and looked at his crucified feet. They hurt like a bitch. It took balls, but he reached down and grabbed both feet with his hands, and jerked with all his might.

The nail groaned, came loose, but not completely. The pain that shot through John Feather was so intense he lay back down. He prayed to the Great Spirit, then to the white man’s god Jesus. He threw in a couple words for Buddha as well, even though he couldn’t remember if Buddha actually did anything or not. Wasn’t he just kind of an inspiration or something? He tried to remember the name of the Arabic god he had heard mentioned, but it wouldn’t come to him.

Great Spirit, Jesus, Buddha, all seemed on vacation. The men carrying their heads didn’t show up either.

John Feather sat up, took hold of his feet again, wrenched with all his might.

This time the nail came free, and John Feather passed out.

*****

With pliers, one by one, the Dark Rider removed, with a slow wrench, Beadle’s toenails.

*****

John Feather found he could stand, but it was painful. He preferred to go forward on knuckles and knees, but that wasn’t doing his hands any good.

Finally, using a combination of stand and crawl, he made it to the steam man, looked up at the spike in its ass, saw there was room to enter inside between shaft and passageway. Painfully, he took hold of the shaft and attempted to climb it. It was very difficult. His hands and feet hurt beyond anything he could imagine and the wounds from them slicked the stake with blood.

He fell twice and hit the ground hard before finally rubbing dirt in his wounds and trying a third time. It was slow and deliberate. But this time he made it.

*****

“And this little piggy cried wee-wee-wee, all the way … HOME!”

With that, the Dark Rider jerked out the last toenail on Beadle’s left foot.

Beadle groaned so loud, for a moment, even the Moorlock was startled.

“Now,” the Dark Rider said, “let’s go for the other one. What do you say?”

Beadle was too much in pain to say anything. And besides, what would it matter? He was going to save his breath for groaning and screaming.

*****

Inside Steam, John Feather found water and washed the dirt from his wounds and used herbs and roots from his medicine and utility bag, applied them in a quick poultice, then bound them with ripped sheets from one of the locked cabinets. He made a breech cloth from some of the sheet, found his extra pair of soft moccasins and slid inside of them. His feet had swollen, but the leather was soft and stretched. He was able to put them on without too much trouble, and he found the cleansing and dressing had relieved the pain in his feet enough so that he could stand. It wasn’t by any means comfortable to do so, but he felt he had to.

He tied his medicine bag around his waist, got a Webb rifle from its rack, his extra bow and quiver of forty-five thin arrows with long, steel points.

Then he paused.

He put the rifle, the bow and quiver of arrows aside. He looked out of Steam’s ass at the shaft that ran through it and out the neck, looked at the head balanced on top.

John Feather climbed down inside the right leg and took a canister off the wall. He carried it to the gap in Steam’s ass and opened it, even though the action caused his hands to bleed. Inside was kerosene. He poured the kerosene down the shaft. He took flint and steel from his medicine pouch and struck up a spark that hit the soaked shaft and caused it to burst into flame. Fire ran down the length of the shaft and it began to burn.

John Feather took wood from the sealed hoppers, built a fire in Steam’s belly.

*****

“Just two more to go on this foot,” the Dark Rider said, “then we start on the fingernails. Then we’re going to see if you’ve been circumcised. And if not, we’re going to do that. And if so, we’re going to do it really close, if you know what I mean.”

“Can I have ‘em? Can I have ‘em?” the Moorlock asked.

“You can have them, but as it looks to me, you should start on and finish your head.”

The Moorlock grabbed the head of his brethren and began chewing on it.

Between bites he said, “Thank you, Master. Thank you.”

“Let’s do the right thumb first,” the Dark Rider said. “What do you say?”

It was a rhetorical question. Beadle knew it was useless to ask for mercy from his enemy. He kept wishing he’d just pass out, but so far, no such luck. This hurt like hell, but was survivable, and therefore stretched out the possibilities. None of them good. It was made all the worse by the fact that the Dark Rider took his time. A little tug here, a little tug there, almost a tug, then a tug, easing the nails out one slow nail at a time.

Not to mention that the Dark Rider liked to pause with his pliers to squeeze the joints themselves, or to pause and poke at the wound in his shoulder.

The Dark Rider seemed to be having the time of his life.

Beadle wished he could say the same.

*****

John Feather worked the bellows. The fire was going nicely. It wasn’t normally a wise thing to do, but John Feather doused the interior of the furnace with kerosene, and as a result, a rush of fire burst out of it and singed his eyebrows, but the wood blazed.

John Feather checked the shaft in Steam’s ass.

Burning nicely.

He went back to the bellows, worked there vigorously, stoking up the flame. The water in the chambers began to heat, and John Feather continued to work the bellows. Smoke came up through Steam’s ass as the shaft blazed and caught solid.

*****

“Now we have the pinky on the right hand … And, there, isn’t that better just having it done with?”

Beadle couldn’t understand what the Dark Rider was saying. He couldn’t understand because he couldn’t quit screaming.

The Dark Rider said, “And now let’s do that lefty.”

*****

Vapor from the pipes pumped up and out of Steam’s headless neck. Steam toppled forward and struck the ground hard, throwing John Feather against the side of the furnace, and in that instant, John Feather realized the shaft had burned through. Slightly burned from the furnace, John Feather recovered his feet, closed the furnace door, crawled along the side of Steam and began to work the emergency controls in the mid-body of the machine. They were serviceable at best.

Working these controls, he was able to make Steam put his hands beneath him and right himself.