Dieselpunk: An Anthology (12 page)

Madge rolled himself a cigarette, and chewed on it, unlit. Reluctantly, he grabbed the flash pistols and tucked them into his own belt, where they were uncomfortable and definitely noticeable under even mild scrutiny. At least his long coat concealed them from casual observation. He noticed the distinct cacophony of an Airlite hovering closer and closer. Madge rolled over the spy who would most certainly live — the whistler with the hooked nose — and slipped an apartment key into his closed fist.

He smiled to himself as he pulled a mechanical lighter from his pocket, an inside joke he never grew tired of. He was always selective about where he got the diesel to fill it with; some vendors inevitably sold cheap quality fluids that left an aftertaste. Madge walked quietly back onto the main boulevard, continuing well out of his way to check if he had any unexpected followers. He saw none, but it was hard to check oneself for tails without telegraphing the intention to anyone watching for such things. Reasonably satisfied, he meandered through the slowly brightening streets until he came to a narrow grey door, wedged in between the shoulders of two vaguely more respectable establishments. The low wail of a trumpet solo greeted Madge as he pushed open the door and stepped into the dark stairway. Annapolis made an effort to keep the seedier elements of society underground — and Corty’s Jazz Lounge was no exception. A barely clothed woman brushed against Madge as he threaded his way through the tables of the dim room.

Madge grabbed her hand sharply, jerking her roughly towards him. “Keep your hands to yourself, tramp, or next time you’ll pull back a stump,” he growled. He squeezed her knuckles harder, letting them crackle and roll together. Two silver dollars clinked daintily into his outstretched hand. He dismissed her with a shove.

A dark-skinned man looked up from behind the bar while wiping a tall glass and frowning deeply. “You owe me six dollars.”

“Ah, Corty, always nice to see you too,” Madge mumbled. He sat alone at the bar. “What do you think I owe you money for this time?”

“Couple of revenue agents come in here, demanding a slice of the pie…and some information. I broke two chairs on account of their thick heads.”

“The usual, scotch and tonic. And just how is that my fault?” Madge swept his hand across the bar, a few dollars appeared. The bartender brushed a crumb away, and the money vanished just as quickly as it had appeared.

“Because these mudbrains come pokin’ around after you have a night on the town. They came in asking about you. Somebody who matches your description, anyway. Asking questions about what business you might have on Capitol Hill and the like.”

“Naturally, you had no idea.”

“Naturally,” Corty grinned. “But my mind ain’t always what it used to be, sometimes it forgets to remember not to know what to say, ‘specially when my best customers start putting my livelihood in danger on account of a few little girls.”

“You know I wouldn’t do anything of the sort, Corty. I—”

“I don’t know anything of what you do with yourself when you’re away from here, Mr. Madge,” he interrupted. “But I do know that eight dollars would lay my fears to rest and remind my good friend to watch his hind parts more closely in the course of his business dealings.”

“You said six.”

“Interest.”

“You’re a bloody thief, that’s what. I’ll be damned if I don’t go drink Sterno in the gutter after this.” Madge grinned as he dropped eight crisp dollar bills over the counter, which again vanished before they hit the bar. “Anything your malfunctioning brain can remember now, that it forgot twenty seconds ago?”

“Now that you ask, yes. Hardie tied up those two boys and has ‘em in the back room, if you wanted to come take a look. Go on through.” Corty reached under the counter. A loud clank and a trapdoor fell away just in front of the liquor cabinets, revealing more stairs down.

“Give my regards to your bass player.” Madge swallowed his drink in one massive gulp and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. He walked silently down the steps, ducking to avoid hitting his head. The rhythmic pounding of the jazz quartet died away with the smoke, giving way to the cool, stale air of the cellar. A faint light spilled from under the door. Madge gagged as he opened the door, unprepared for the stench of men soaking in their own waste.

The two “revenue agents” were bound hand and foot, and tied to their chairs. Even from the doorway, Madge could see the large knots on their heads from their run-in with Corty. Their heads drooped forward, unconscious. A splintered chair leg rested on top of a box full of moonshine. From the looks of it, Hardie got in some more batting practice while the agents were being tied up.

“Oh, thank god.” Madge sighed in relief when he noticed their wallets and other pocket contents were laid out neatly on a stack of overturned crates. Madge choked back his own bile at the thought of combing through their soiled pockets for evidence.

A shiny federal badge, the crumpled remains of a movie ticket, a broken watch, some brass knuckles, and two matching silver dollars. Madge presumed that Corty adopted a pair of Bavarian flash pistols and a few hundred dollars uncirculated cash — for safekeeping, of course. Surely Department IIIB had better prospects than this group of cloak-and-dagger wannabes? After the Great War, most of the top German leadership were imprisoned or executed. Were these blunderers just nationalist immigrants looking for some headlines, or the tattered remnants of a once mighty international power?

He could ask them, but any field agent worth his salt would likely kill himself on the spot. It was rumored that the Prussians had experimented heavily with post-hypnotic suggestions to suicide immediately on capture. The hypnosis gave a set of code words that when recited induced not just amnesia, but complete brain failure. Besides, he already had the best clue he could hope for: a matching set of instructions, engraved neatly on the edge of the silver dollars. He just had to figure out how to decode them.

Madge took the two silver dollars and put them in his pocket with the others. He knocked on the trapdoor, which Corty opened from the other side. “All done. Kill ‘em if you want to, they’re not real revenue agents. But you’d better do it fast, they’re already stinkin’ the place up.”

Madge made his way to his least favorite apartment; he was expecting a visitor. The green paint on the door was cracked and peeled in the shape of a battleship. What little carpet was left on the floor was smudged an indistinct blackish color. The plain wooden chair sat alone in the parlor, save for an ornate mirror framed with slowly puttering pistons and gears. Madge opened the broom closet that formed the fourth partial wall, and slipped inside. He fought with his coat, finally tossing it aside in a heap. An appropriately scummy mop cluttered the corner with a small bucket and a dustpan. Madge gave the dustpan a hearty shove with his foot. The back wall hinged aside, and Madge stepped in to wait. The dark alcove was armored
with a myriad of overlapping steel plates sandwiched between rub
ber sheets. Far from invincible, but the frequent re-wallpapering in the parlor had shown its proof against most concealable weapons. Madge detached his shotgun-sleeve and propped it in the corner. It wouldn’t do much good from inside his blind anyway. After his forearm rig followed the motley collection of pistols he had picked up that day, including two flash pistols and the tried-and-true old-fashioned slug thrower he preferred. Innovation is great, he always argued, but reliability is better. You never knew when the fuse on your flash gun might burn out, and depending on the part of the cycle it happened on, it could mean anything from a fizzle instead of a snap, all the way to buying yourself a new hand.

Freed from his burdens, he strolled into the kitchenette. And froze.

The apartment door swung open wide, as a lone figure stood in the doorway, gun drawn. Two more men, clearly soldiers even out of uniform, stepped into the room and tossed aside the coats hiding the muzzles of their submachine guns.

“
Sprecken zie Inglisch
?” Madge asked coolly. He turned slowly. “I’m afraid my Bavarian is woefully inadequate for conversations of national destiny.” He glanced at the soldiers, identical down to their twin crew cuts and cold stares. “It seems you have me at a disadvantage; I wasn’t expecting guests so soon. I know a man who still has some real Schnapps . . .”

“Shut up.” The door closed. The right side of the man’s face was a giant red grape, swollen and bruised. His hooked nose looked like it was probably broken as well. The spy tensed his jaw appraisingly. “Who are you, before I kill you?”

“Not even a hello. You IIIB gents lost the war on account of no manners, I warrant. Since I’ll be dead soon anyway, what’s the message on the silver dollars? I haven’t had time to work the cipher. Bodies to hide, evidence to dispose of, not a moment to spare for reading. It would be a great convenience, is all.”

The bruise-faced man stared numbly into Madge’s eyes. “Kill him.” Their fingers were already on the triggers. Fire shot from their guns in slow motion. Madge leapt forward, fighting against the hot metal pushing through his chest, forcing him down. He flung his arm out desperately, grabbing at the closest of the submachine guns. The red-hot steel seared his hand instantly as he wrenched the barrel to the side. The gun sprayed wildly, punching through the wall and the utility pipes behind it. Hot oil spewed from the punctured lines. Instantly, the carpet was full of puddles from the dingy brown flood. The second soldier leapt away as he shielded his eyes. His red-hot gun barrel hissed as it passed through the oily torrent, touching off cascades of fire.

Madge watched the flames swallow the floor inches from where he lay; though he willed his body to keep moving, it no longer obeyed his commands. The swollen-faced spy was nowhere to be seen, but Madge could still discern the sound of hobnailed boots stomping down the bare apartment stairwell. A fiery angel swooped over his struggling form, screaming ferociously. Madge did not hear the words; he saw only the horrific beauty of the flaming ghost above him. Death was enchanting.

The soldier on fire flailed his arms, screaming obscenities in German and English. He stumbled into the hallway towards the stairs. Stumbling madly, he fell headlong over the railing with a scream to the landing three stories down. His neck snapped instantly, his limbs a crumpled heap on the broken wooden planks. The Prussian spy vaulted over the burning body of his comrade and ran outside without turning his scarred face for a second look.

The fire rushed from the carpet to the wall, from the wall to the pipes. The pressurized oil was a fire bomb that burst the windows of the tiny apartment, sending shards of razor-sharp glass tinkling into the street below. What little air remained in Madge’s gaping chest was sucked from his lungs as he lay on the floor, helpless. He felt, rather than saw, a shadow run to the edge of the apartment and disappear into the greater light. The sound of machine guns reverberated in his head, and the world went black one last time.

Madge awoke to greater pain than he had ever remembered. He hurt all over…mostly. There were a few places that were totally numb…like his left arm. For that matter, his back hurt more than his ribs. His spine felt pinched in a dozen places. He tried sitting up, slowly at first. When he didn’t move, he tried hurling himself forward. Again, his body refused to respond. Visions of an old nurse covered in warts pushing him in a wheelchair down a sterile hallway crowded his mind, unbidden. He was paralyzed. Panic rose in his body, drowning him in a whirlpool of fear and failure. He closed his eyes. Years of mental discipline came back to him. He forced himself to take a long, slow breath.

The phantom nurse vanished and was replaced by a merciful blankness. A stranger’s voice interrupted the stillness.

“Mr. Tourney, I’m so glad you’re awake. Nasty bit of trouble you found yourself in, eh? Lucky for you I happened to be on my way to get a drink when they hauled your body out, or you might have been dead for good.”

Madge opened his eyes. There were only a handful of people who knew him by any name, much less his real one. “Dr. Baxter?”

“That’s right, boy.” The doctor stepped in front of Madge where he could be seen. “You may notice some…changes. You must understand, I was faced with the difficult choice of letting you die, or replacing significant amounts of irreparably damaged tissues with alternatives. Given the circumstances, I expect you can appreciate the outcome.”

“My back hurts. And I can’t get up.” The matter-of-fact tone in his voice disguised his turmoil. He blinked hard to avoid tears.

“That’s not surprising. I had to replace all of your ribs. Now they’re made from a special alloy I came up with myself. I had a machinist over at the Daimler plant turn them out specially.” His eyes flashed jovially as he unfastened the tight leather bindings around Madge’s limbs and chest. “Also, your left arm, right hip, and cranial frontal bone — that’s your forehead,” Dr. Baxter continued. “The only trouble is, you may need to grease your joints on the rare occasion. It shouldn’t be painful, merely…discomforting.”

“It’s times like this, I wish I didn’t know you.”

“Don’t be ungrateful.” Dr. Baxter fluttered around the room, reorganizing a collection of tools that sat in a row. He studied an upside-down patient chart intently. “While I was operating, I received a call from a man who claimed to be invested in your recuperation. Insisted I help Mother Nature as best I could. He tried cajoling first…and finished by telling me I was going to give you a hand in the natural defenses department.”