Dieselpunk: An Anthology (4 page)

Kennedy yelled, “No!” It didn’t matter.

“Okay. Now we’re ready to play. Ms. Shaw, you got till the count of ten to push that handle on your blaster there and seal you and Mr. Kennedy in. I’m sure you’ll survive a few days, maybe even find something to do to entertain one another. If for some reason you refuse,
mio amico
here is gonna have three seconds to take his own life before Vinnie puts a hole in Mr.
Kennedy’s
head.”

Charlie didn’t even flinch at the evil choreography of it.

“If for some reason you
should
find a way to survive, rest assured that the first sign of you going public and
amico’s familia
are dead. Who knows, after we’re done, maybe I’ll even hire him.”

Charlie pushed down on the handle before the count even started. By the time that the dust and smoke cleared, the godfather had already loaded up with Sal Marchegiani. The fleet rolled back into Los Angeles.

Mayor Shaw stood for a moment with his head down, but only a brief one. Then he too climbed back into his Caddy and headed to the next phase of the invasion, Evergreen Cemetery.

Kennedy’s Zippo flame seemed to do more harm than good, casting a glare that just muddied the dark with its auroral haze. He snapped it closed and the two pushed down into the tunnel by feeling their way along the damp walls. At some point the smell of wet stone changed to one that was familiar, albeit misplaced: fuel.

Charlie explained the best she could.

“
The potatoes that father has are only the last of ten shipments. He doesn’t know that. But if he drops them into the ground in L.A., it’ll be disastrous.”

“
Doll, we don’t even have a staple crop of spuds here in the West. I still don’t see the threat. But obviously there is one — for him to wanna bury his own flesh and blood like this.”

“
It’s not the potato that holds the key. It’s the fungus.”

“
Whatever you say.”

“
You’ll see.”

“
I will?”

They rounded a corner and Charlie, who had been holding his hand, suddenly let go and moved farther ahead.

“Say! Where’re you going?”

There was a
pop!
The dark was suddenly bathed in soft yellow illumination from sodium vapor bulbs all along the ceiling and walls of an immense cavern. The highly polished floor was covered in ranks of steel coffins.

“
Mary Mother of Christ . . .”

Charlie ran to the far side of the bay, to a large bin. There was a child-like mischief to her. Kennedy trotted over and looked inside the open container, fighting hard against his gag reflex. It held blighted potatoes, all rotten and stinking. Charlie handed him a German, Civil-C-style gasmask. He shot her a wary look and then donned it.

“Grab a handful and follow me. The coffers are already cracked open, we just have to get the lids off and start the first ten or so. They’ll do the rest.”

“
Ten what?”

“
Mechanaughts.”

Kennedy didn’t bother to ask. Why couldn’t things just be simple?

He helped her push the lid off of the nearest coffin and jumped back when he saw what was inside.

“
You brought the damned Kaiser?” Kennedy exclaimed.

“
Close, but not quite.”

It was a machine. A mechanical soldier whose face was nothing more than steel-banded ovals fitted with aviator goggles for eyes. Its hands were mechanical claws and a rifle was attached to its right forearm, though the weapon didn’t resemble any gun that Kennedy had ever seen. The only thing that kept it from looking exactly like one of the Nazi Wehrmacht from a distance were two exhaust pipes sticking up out of its shoulders. It even sported the German great coat, bandolier, and war helmet.

Charlie climbed the side of the coffin and lifted up the steel troop’s helmet from the back. She plopped the potato in place and slammed the helmet shut. Next, she reached just below its neck, dug for a second, and then yanked back once on a ripcord hidden beneath the thing’s collar.

A small engine sputtered to life and exhaust filled the coffin.

Charlie hopped down to admire her handiwork. The thing’s round goggles slowly illuminated with an eerie green glow from within. It sat erect, then climbed out of its box.

“
Wachen Ihre Kameraden, jetzt
!
”
She said into its silent face. Then to Kennedy, “We need to do as many as we can. These boys will help once they get going.”

The mechanical soldier had already moved to the next coffin to start its mate’s engine.

Charlie explained as they went to the next sleeping soldier, “They’re gas powered, mechanized infantryman. Mechanaughts. The U.S. abandoned the project, but Nazi Germany didn’t. I don’t necessarily care for the Fuehrer’s little mess over there, but some of his R & D lab rats were more than happy to sell off what they perceived as a failure before incurring Hitler’s wrath.”

“
What do you mean ‘failure’?”

“
The mechanaughts are functional, but a live person has to operate a
very
complicated switchboard in order to just get one of the things to walk, much less fight a foot war.”

Kennedy understood, and it made no sense. “How’s that gonna help anything and why are we wasting our time?” He stopped and puzzled over it a minute before continuing, “And what’d you shove a damned potato in its head for?”

Charlie grinned. “That’s the magic! These potatoes carry a particular strain of fungi that are more known for their reanimation abilities.”

Charlie continued to break it down for him while they worked. The gas engines supplied the power, but the fungus gave the things just enough sentience to act without puppet strings. Kennedy had his suspicions that there was a lot more to the mechanical men than Charlie was telling, though. After all, the fungal bacteria would have to infect something
organic
in order for the cockamamie scheme to work. He had a vision of some poor Kraut’s brain nestled inside those metal works, frankensteined to the machine like a bird to a Swiss clock.

Kennedy also finally understood what she had meant by the Belfast Terror. It was a moniker that had been coined to describe a myth. A horror story about the dead coming to life during the famine in Ireland. It wasn’t real, though.
Was it?

“
If what you are saying is true, Charlie, then your father and the mob are about to . . .”

“
Bring holy hell on L.A. That fungus will spread out of control, not to mention the infection from the walking dead attacking the living. It’s happened before.”

Kennedy clenched his jaw muscles and began to work with intense determination.

It only took an hour of shoving spuds into can openers and starting little tiny lawnmowers. The collective hum of the troops’ motors was deafening and the cumulating exhaust filled the cavern at an alarming rate. Just as Charlie had predicted, the mechanaughts provided major battle-buddy assist across the bay. By nightfall her army stood at attention, ready for orders.

Charlie looked across the ranks. Over eight hundred mechanaughts stood, eyes glowing and engines pushing smoke out of their shoulder tubes. She spoke to the first one that they had activated, “
Wir marschieren auf den Toten. Mach schnell
!”
It rendered a Nazi
Sieg Heil
— that part gaining a blush from Charlie and a look of disapproval from Kennedy — and turned to the battalion behind it.

The troops snapped to and moved forward as one, first in slow motion, then at a speed that caused the two humans to jump clear from the surging wave of steel.

Shaw stood beside Don Dragna on the platform overlooking the Potter’s Field section of Evergreen Cemetery. They watched as the last of the potatoes were placed into the ground at one of the graves. Even now the air smelled of the noxious spuds and freshly turned loam. It was sickening.

“
How long?” the godfather asked. He had no patience left.

“
Soon. Look.”

True to his word, within minutes the first of the crop began to push up out of the earth. Don Dragna crossed himself and kissed his rosary before clapping Shaw on the back. The two moved down to inspect the first of their troops.

The undead soldier climbed to its feet and cocked a blind head towards the approaching bosses.

“
Can you hear me?” Shaw called to the zombie.

It craned its neck towards him.

Shaw turned to Dragna. “See? It can hear just fine.”

The sound that came out of the thing’s mouth was a raspy croak, more from the scraping of vocal chords than pushing of air. It lurched towards the two men and stood silently by while Shaw inspected it. The godfather kept his distance.

Behind them, the other graves continued to burst open. As each forced its contents to the surface, Dragna noticed that his men were starting to shrink back until only he and the mayor were left standing. It suddenly occurred to the godfather that the two of them were now surrounded by a graveyard full of zombies while this jackass of a mayor tried to give orders to the undead thing in front of him. Dragna turned, spotted his opening, and began to pick his way through the ranks of undead.

Shaw reached out a hand and touched the zombie. It was an Asian male, freshly dead with the lips gone and eyes filmed over, grubs still making a sponge-work out of its surface flesh. It stood in a burial suit, rocking as he pushed on it.

“Do you understand?” Shaw asked the creature.

He pushed again. The thing’s arm shot out and its face contorted into a feral grin. It pulled the screaming mayor’s neck to its lipless teeth and bit through. An arterial fountain sprayed the zombie and the others around it; the rest of the undead became instantly alert to the smell of fresh blood and Shaw’s screaming.

Don Dragna broke into a sprint for his Packard. When his men saw their godfather, the ones not already cowering behind their steering wheels jumped into vehicles. The LAPD that had been present peeled away from the scene before the mob. In less than an hour, radios inside those prowlers would be squawking reports of monsters terrorizing Los Angeles at what would be known as L.A.’s “Battle of Evergreen.”

“
There,” Kennedy said, pointing at the scramble of vehicles in the vicinity of Evergreen Cemetery.

Charlie gunned her cab towards the fracas, stopping just inside the cemetery gates. Kennedy recognized the godfather’s luxury wagon immediately. He got out and stood in the road, blocking Dragna’s escape. Charlie joined him.

Dragna pulled to a stop and cranked his window.

“
Move!” he yelled. From behind, a sudden commotion caused the godfather to lose his composure and spin away from the window. Flailing fists. Sal!

Kennedy’s attention was taken from the Packard to the swarm behind it. The sound of hundreds of dead bodies moving on broken and atrophied limbs as fast as they could, racing after the fleeing vehicles, poured like an ill-wind across Potter’s Field. It wasn’t the shuffling dead he had always imagined. These things were like necrotic berserkers stampeding after living prey.

Shots were fired with little effect. A zombie would take a hit, but unless the blow was to its brain pan, the thing would keep going. Still, bullets tore through dead body parts like a bloodless slaughterhouse. Some of the undead were reduced to human worms, inching their way forward with terrifying quickness, driven by hunger for living flesh.

The fight in the Packard ended with a harmless shot that went through the roof. Sal spilled out and sprinted towards Kennedy. A Thompson chattered behind him, but the shots went wild as Don Dragna heard the stampede and turned towards the carnage behind him. Another sound caused the godfather to whip back towards Kennedy’s direction just as Sal fell against the cab with eyes wide as saucers.

“What in God’s name is that?” Sal yelled.

The earth rumbled. Window panes rattled. Loose brick and mortar began to fall from the dilapidated brownstones throughout the Evergreen district. Street lights blew out one after another in nearing succession as the unseen menace approached. A raging army.

Don Dragna stared at the wave of mechanaughts cresting the horizon line behind the two men and Charlie Shaw. They moved as a military unit, a wave of steel men in full Nazi regalia, eyes glowing bright green.

The mechanaughts poured past the cowering don as he struggled to roll his window tight, targeting the violent ranks of undead crawling out of the earth and towards the living meat. But it only took one nervous triggerman to fire on a single mechanaught. The tide turned in that instant.

In the next hour, Potter’s Field became a pandemonium of bullets, steel, flesh, and rot. The mechanaughts’ rifles fired plasma bolts, concentrated blasts of electricity that exploded undead heads like rotten melons, but took at least twenty seconds to recharge. The mobsters’ bullets did little to the mechanaughts, but each time a shot pinged off of a metal trooper, a mobster found himself holding a charred arm stub or laying on the ground with a gaping manhole-sized wound in his middle. Soon, the fighting was too close for rifles, and both zombies and goons found themselves being bludgeoned and ripped apart by the mechanical soldiers’ iron fists.