Dieselpunk: An Anthology (11 page)

“Nothing,” she said, hauling herself up. The gunwale under her fingers was clean; spent shot dotted the
Tonic
’s hull far down. Above her, vapor hissed an burned. Next to her, the grappling-wire hung down empty, swinging loose under the
Tonic
.

She saw a splash.

But there was always more to say about Missy Gin.

“
I am Missy Gin,” she said, turning to the panners. She turned them down, then went back in, put her empty revolver down, holstered her loaded one. She looked back round the
Tonic
, at the black scuffs on the deck. She’d have to scrub to get those off.

“
I am Missy Gin,” she said, taking the wheel. “I’m Missy Gin, I’ll make your head spin, I’m the worst thing you ever went up agin! I’m twice as man as you, an I ain’t even man at all, I’m sharp as steel an quick as an eel, I’m a mess more trouble than you ever could deal! You think I’m just a girly, think there ain’t much me, well that’s your mistake: you cain’t even touch me! So drink all the life-water you see fit — not one single drop don’t matter one bit! Not when you’re up against me an the sea, the Deep Blue down there an me, Missy Gin, cause I am the trouble that you are in!”

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Yankee Diesel Dandy

By Jeremy Simmons

Yankee Diesel went to work, early in the morning
Built a nation out of scratch with sweat and steel adorning.
Yankee Diesel turn the crank, Yankee Diesel dandy;
Yankee Diesel mind the flow and with th’ oil be handy.

A thin crack of dawn peeked uncertainly through a gap in the black smog of downtown Annapolis; it had never recovered its innocence since the Prussians had all but razed it to the ground back in ‘17. Madge wiped the blood from his switchblade, and pocketed it underneath his coat. At least with the factories running all night, nobody heard the screams anymore. Not that he had been so sloppy. In fact, it had been ages since his victims had any time to scream — dead before they ever had time to be surprised.

This girl was doubly easy. The cheap opium she filled her veins with made her oblivious — and now she wouldn’t notice any more senators visiting the “lounge” across the street ever again. No doubt the Bureau of Investigation would duly send over a detective, cross reference some files, and look for suspects in the local opium dens — pin it on some jacko lowlife out of convenience. If everyone thinks they’re looking at a duck, why ruin the illusion?

The girl looked almost pretty,  crumpled on the floor in her white sundress. Her golden hair covered her once delicate face — long since turned haggard and gaunt. In a way, Madge did the stupid woman a favor, releasing her from the waking death of her addiction. His oily black boot nudged the cross laying on the floor, its chain still around her neck. He wondered if it brought her peace or torment in her few moments of lucidity. With practiced deliberation, Madge quickly scattered the meager contents of her wardrobe across the small room, and overturned the mattress. Lo and behold, she had some trivial cash hidden underneath it, probably her petty savings towards a dowry, or a train ticket out west, forgotten in the depressive haze of drugs and smog. He took it, not because he needed the money, but because he needed the scene to be convincing.

Morning was coming. The factories were changing shifts, the browbeaten workers trudging through the streets, dodging the rumbling motor cars of the well-heeled shopkeepers and factory owners. Madge flipped his collar up and put his head down, plodding purposefully down the back stairs and into the growing trickle of workers below.

A small gang of five men stood idly on the corner, holding cards and tossing burnt-out matchsticks to the pavement. Each of the men wore similar pea coats as proof against the raw morning. The policeman grimaced at the loiterers as he patrolled his route, puttering past them on his iron chariot — the ridiculous offspring of a tank and a tricycle. Madge saw the glare of stern disapproval wash over the men like water on the beach as the yellow swath of light colored the damp asphalt around the policeman’s chariot. Madge crossed to the other side of the street.

Madge kept walking as he heard a sedan lumber to the curb and drive away again. When he reached the opposite corner of the
street, he dropped to one knee and untied his shoe. His pocket mir
ror floated lazily from inside the cuff of his overcoat. From his low vantage, Madge noticed the hooked nose and hollow cheeks of one of the men hawking the increasingly busy intersection.

The low whistle of
Yankee Diesel Dandy
was their go-ahead signal; two of the grease-coats grabbed the passerby nearest the group, shoving him against the grimy brick wall. Madge could hear the dull thud of a suckerpunch to the gut, then the air hiss out of the victim’s lungs. A small current of dark jackets and coveralls formed around the ruffians as shift workers, pretending not to notice the man’s plight, quickened their pace and averted their eyes. A crease formed on Madge’s brow as his eyes narrowed, wondering how every man in the crowd hoped the responsibility would fall on someone else’s shoulders. As for himself, there were bigger fish to catch.

Six worn jackboots filled and fled Madge’s cuff-mirror as three of the men clipped past him. The hobnails of their boots left a distinctive clover pattern in the dank muck on the sidewalk and splashed his sleeve with it. Another quick glance in his mirror confirmed the two brawlers were not, in fact, following behind. The shrill warble of a police Airlite patrolling overhead beckoned footmen and chariots from the surrounding city streets. Madge folded the mirror back onto its spring, where it clicked faintly. He stepped in behind a pair of quick-footed pedestrians and followed his quarry.

The three jackbooted men walked briskly; an unbuttoned pea coat jostled over ever so slightly, and Madge saw what he knew to be the business end of a flash pistol hanging on the man’s belt. While they were not exactly rare, flash weapons were definitely difficult to acquire for members of the general public. So this particular cadre of rascals knew someone special, and judging by their gait and sentimental footwear, probably leftovers of Department IIIB — the officially defunct German intelligence directorate — here to rewrite the history of America with a touch more Bavarian pride. Madge knew that five men could accomplish what five hundred thousand could not; a single shot from a Bohr-excited molecular flash pistol, judiciously applied, could topple a nation that resisted half-a-million rockets fired from armored zeppelins polluting its native sky. And he knew that Annapolis, though not remarkable in itself, was the symbolic heart of pride that America had fought and vanquished the onslaught of the Prussian advance. Symbols make easy targets. It was at Annapolis that the skies were cleared again for the first time during the invasion of 1917; it was at Annapolis that the resistance first showed not just determination, but results. And so Annapolis became the rallying cry to push the Prussian invaders back across the ocean. Madge had been marking off the days until he could enlist when the attack came.

He squinted involuntarily as he remembered the initial shock, the fearful running to and fro, hiding from dirigibles and the Red Chasers — a seemingly endless squadron of aeronauts strafing anything that moved — and the sting of burning flesh in his nose and eyes. Most of the casualties from the invasion happened the first week. After the initial advance, most sane people had either fled to St. Louis or simply surrendered to what German ground forces could be found (and they were found everywhere). At the time, America didn’t have any domestic air-defense — smugly trusting the vast ocean and the Western Front to protect her from the Kaiser. It would have worked — except the Kaiser’s aeronauts flew right over the heads of the boys in the trenches.

The skies over Annapolis festered with the swarming zeppelins and aeroplanes, where they buzzed for weeks, ominous clouds of canvas and metal fury. Madge recalled building his first basement-made rocket based on poorly eavesdropped conversations. It was barely more than a jumble of gas lines and propellers welded hastily to bombed-out plumbing and plywood fins. In addition to being terribly inaccurate, it had the added feature of being as likely to blow up on the ground as in the air. He primed his rocket, cautiously sighting up the length towards the nearest dirigible. Satisfied it was pointed in the right direction, he hand-pumped the fuel tank to pressurize it. One match later, the propeller was spraying a halo of fire and diesel around itself, and miraculously, lifted into the air. It made a perfect arc towards the armored zeppelin, laying a broad swath of smoke and fire.

His adolescent brain had forgotten to factor in the aeronaut Chasers tracing the rocket trail to its source; nor was prepared for the underwhelming feeling that lodged in his stomach when the rocket impacted the zeppelin — and bounced away harmlessly.

These days Madge listened to his cautious side. When the jackbooted thugs turned into the lobby of an office building a block further, Madge walked past it. He went to the corner, walking with his head down, keeping to himself; then he crossed to the opposite side of the street. The sign read “Harold’s Cigar Emporium” and, in small letters beneath, “Extravagant Cigars for Discriminating Tastes.” The cigar shop had long since replaced the wooden Indian with mechanical help; the hollow man loudly advertised the latest incendiary fashions over the constant popping of his diesel-electric motor.

To the untrained eye, Madge was window-shopping luxuries he could scarcely hope to afford in his hand-me-down overcoat — but the truth was, Madge was scouring the lobby of the office building for clues, hiding his work in the reflection. Satisfied they had moved on, he aimed for the half-alley that separated the low-rise from the Water Sanitation building.

Madge realized his mistake too late; he walked up on the gang of three melting the lock of the shabby rear entrance of the Water Sanitation Department. The nearest of the three looked up, the flash pistol already in his hand. “You’ve walked down the wrong alley, bum,” said the man.

“Nah, friend,” Madge replied coolly, raising his arms in surrender. “I was hoping that you were up for hire when you get done here. There’s a vault I’ve been meaning to crack and, from one professional to another, it’s hard to find reliable help these days.”

The man lowered his flash pistol ever so slightly. He spoke in hushed tones over his shoulder. The tallest of the three walked up to Madge, peering down his nose like he was sighting in a rifle. “What’s your name…friend?” His accent shouted he had not been in America very long.

“Most folks call me Madge…like badge but without the law,” he said and smiled crookedly. “Just a little nickname I picked up during the war.” Madge kept his arms raised, but his voice was relaxed.

“You were a soldier? They must have been more desperate than I thought,” guffawed the tall man. A short swish of leather told Madge another flash pistol had just been unholstered — behind him. No doubt the two assailants from the street corner.

“Nah, of course not. Too young, they told me, but I know of at least two boys younger’n me who enlisted…of course, they’re dead now. One in Flanders, one from the flu. I just did my part here at home to keep up morale…after the Army turned me down three times. My mates always said I got mad as a badger whenever the subject of enlistment came up as conversation.”

The tall man looked straight past Madge.

Madge ducked the blow from behind and kicked the hooked-nose man squarely in the gut, doubling him over. A two-fisted haymaker brought him to the ground, hard. Madge dodged a wild punch from the other assailant, and managed a quick jab of his own. He grabbed the second attacker by the collar, then flung him headlong at the men by the door. The sharp crackle of flash pistols on full power echoed down the long alleyway. Their carelessly aimed shots tore through the skull of their stumbling compatriot. A red mist formed as blood and brick and mortar exploded into the air.

Madge squinted as dust filled his eyes. Out of instinct, he pulled back the left sleeve of his overcoat, revealing four steel barrels laid next to each other. Fire leapt from the mouth of each one in rapid sequence, scattering red-hot shards of lead at his attackers like a burst of fireworks. The closest burglar collapsed, life draining in a hundred places. Another had fallen to one knee, his pant leg shredded by the flak. A knife pressed itself into Madge’s right hand, delivered by the mechanical accordion hidden under his right sleeve. He ran towards the two men still alive.

The thick brass plate on the toe of his boot shattered the jaw of the man trying to get up from the ground; he fell backwards and over like a pile of rags. Sparks streamed from the tip of
Madge’s knife as he swung it across the bricks of the narrow alley
way. The hot metal seared the neck of the tall ruffian, cauterizing the gash almost instantly.

Madge caught his breath. The gun barrels strapped to his left forearm smoldered faintly. He could feel their heat pressing through the thick layers of padding and into his arm. It was clear that the men working the door were all dead. He turned out their pockets and confiscated the contents: hastily forged identifications, a small ransom of pre-war cash, and a silver deutschmark from each man — five in all. He towered over the two spies who went down first. The first was out cold, but very much alive. The second was lying motionless in a pool of his own blood. He was still alive, barely, but he would bleed out in a matter of minutes.