Hellfire (23 page)

“Let’s gun them all down and call it a night,” Ticks suggested.

Nate made a nervous swallow.

“You can’t have a shootout in the middle of the Lake Providence rail yard!” Husk called. His voice was weak. “Can you imagine the bad press?”

Ticks groaned and rolled his dark eyes. “I can see the headline now, ‘Hero Marshals Rescue Captive from Maniacs, Defend Public.’”

“Liar,” Nate whispered. Rage boiled up inside him, hot and sweet. He trained his gun on Ticks. Bullets might not hurt the hellions, but Ticks was a mortal man.

The marshal’s waxed mustache twitched.

“You want to try to gun us down?” Nate asked. “We may go out, but that’s no reason we can’t take you with us.”

“No!” the other marshal, Davies, called. “He said he wanted them alive. Remember the telegram?”

Ticks grunted. He lowered his guns.

Nate blinked. His rage cooled, but remained unquenched.

“Seize them,” Ticks said as if it were matter-of-fact.

The hunchbacks all let out a series of feral squeals. Biggs held Ozzie as she fought, while Parvis dashed on his short legs toward Blake. The other two that had come with Davies charged at him. Nate could not help but fire his gun at the fat one. The bullet caught him straight in the stomach. The sound of the blast echoed through the railyard.

Doc gave a loud cry. Screams erupted from the tall, brick platform where passengers were milling around. More shouts followed.

The gun was knocked out of Nate’s hands by the thin hunchback. Swaths of brown leather filled Nate’s vision and hands grabbed him. He tried to fight back, kicking and punching in any direction he could find, but the monsters wrestled him down. Nate hit the ground with enough force that all the air rushed out of his lungs.

He gasped to try to catch his breath. The air stank of rotting meat and made him choke. Hands with inhuman numbers of fingers held him down, and he couldn’t fight past them.

Chapter Twenty-Three

“I appreciate what you all did for me,” Tom Husk told his would-be rescuers. He didn’t know if it would help the situation any, but he knew they should know.

The others sat quietly: Sheriff Blake, the young fireman from the train wreck, and a girl Husk didn’t know. It was uncanny how they had come out of the darkness like gunslingers from Kansas. Now they all sat on wooden benches in the crate on the back of a steamwagon. Their hands were weighed down by shackles, which in turn were chained to bolts through the floor.

They seemed to have some kind of operation going on, kidnapping the quartermaster of the rail yard. Husk was burning to find out what was going on, but he doubted they would talk. The marshals were riding in the springboard seat at the controls of the automatic vehicle, where they had climbed up when the Lake Providence police arrived with the wagon. The four hunchbacks rode on running boards.

Husk had to talk. Sharp aches roared through his head, and he needed any distraction. It had hurt since he had awoken chained up like this aboard a train as it stopped in Oak Grove. The hunchbacks sat with him shoulder-to-shoulder in the caboose. They stank like they had never taken a bath in their lives. Husk had tried to talk with them, ask where they were going, what he had done to be arrested, any information at all. They had only made a few grunts, just as quiet as the rumors said they were. There were a lot of rumors about the hunchbacks from when they started showing up several years ago. According to the Rail Agency, it was a humanitarian program to adopt people that otherwise might be stuck in a circus. Some said that they weren’t human at all.

Marshal Davies didn’t talk much either; Husk had to get his name off the large badge on his coat. Another marshal, the one with the long mustache who had arrested Kemp the day before, came aboard out of breath and raving furious words about someone stealing his airship and trying to kill him. Davies had dragged him away to the dining car for a stiff drink to cool him down. The two hunchbacks who had come with him weren’t any more talkative than the others; the tall one even had his hat set down over his eyes the whole trip.

There wasn’t any explanation at all when they at last pulled him off at the capital train station. He was even more confused when Blake and the others appeared. They just might have saved him, too, but it wasn’t meant to be.

Husk looked around at the somber faces. Whatever they had been doing, they had sacrificed it for him. He cleared his throat, which made his ear feel like someone jabbed a needle into it. Still, he needed to talk. “I hope that didn’t come off as sarcasm. It’s really good to have company.”

The fireman, Kemp, let out a long sigh. “At least there’s a silver lining.”

“What’s going to happen to us?” the girl asked.

“We’re on record with the city police,” Blake said. “There’s a trail of papers, so they can’t just leave us in a ditch.”

“Can’t they?” Kemp asked. “All they have to do is say we were attempting escape, and they’d probably even get a medal.”

Husk shuddered.

“Maybe there’s still something we can do,” the girl said. “They didn’t arrest the quartermaster.”

Husk nodded, even though it made the pounding in his head worse. The big man had been practically kissing the marshals’ boots after they dragged Blake off him. He wailed that he hadn’t done anything wrong. He’d followed his orders, and he repeatedly said he’d given up the wrong catalyst, whatever that meant. There was more; Husk wished that he had his notebook, which was probably halfway down the Red River by now.

“Think he’ll come to his senses and blow a whistle on the whole affair?” Blake asked.

Kemp leaned forward and shook his head. “I don’t know what to think about anybody anymore.”

Everyone in the crate went silent. Husk listened to the thrumming of the pistons beneath their feet and the clatter of the brick roads beneath the wooden wheels of the wagon. Stinking sulfur from the catalyst-laden boiler slipped down from the thin smokestack he could see through cracks in the wooden ceiling. He wasn’t sure whether that was better than the musky odor of a sweaty horse.

Husk turned away and looked at his compatriots-in-chains. After a moment, he caught the girl’s soft hazel gaze.

“I don’t believe we met,” he said. “My name is Thomas Husk of the Bastrop Star.”

“I’m Ozzie Jacey,” she replied.

“Jacey,” he mumbled. “Are you the girl who showed up to the New Year’s ball in the nurse’s gown?”

She suddenly smiled. It was a broad, genuine smile. “Indeed I am.”

“That caused a major uproar on the society page of every paper in town.”

Ozzie shrugged, making her chains rattle. “I was fresh from my work at the hospital. I’m not sure what more the upper crust could have wanted from me.”

“I, for one, appreciate it,” Husk said. He didn’t exactly mean it, but he was generous with compliments as long as she’d be willing to talk.

Ozzie made a breathy chuckle and shook her head. “Few others did. My mother said it was a disgrace. At least my father only said it was unfashionable.”

The pistons stopped chugging, and a burst of steam hissed. Everyone looked up as the wagon stopped.

Thuds of heavy boots against the street rang. After a pause, the lock on the door clanged. It opened to reveal the thin hunchback.

“Get a move on there,” someone called. Husk thought it sounded like Ticks.

The hunchback crawled inside on his scrawny limbs and began undoing the chains. Husk hadn’t noticed before, but his hands dangled at an awkward degree from the cuffs of his coat. No man he knew had wrists that could bend that far.

When they were free, the hunchback clambered out and waved for them to follow. Husk led the way, ducking through the door and hopping down to the brick street. When he landed, it felt like a rail spike was shoved into the bump on his head and fire set to the ankle where he had fallen in the lumber mill.

The steamwagon stood in a narrow alley next to the state capitol. It was a massive gothic structure, decorated with parapet towers and sweeping buttresses. The orange glow from the city lights reflecting on the ever-present smoke clouds in the night cast weak shadows in the crannies of the complicated façade. There had been word of a scandal when the capitol was built, taking months longer and going many times over its budget. Several politicians took the blame and were ousted for skimming off a share of the treasury, even though there were few signs of spending in their own lives.

A gap at the end of the alley showed the wide city mall that lay in front of the capitol, reportedly larger than the one in Washington. It was swarming with people setting up tents, stages, and carnival games for the Midsummer festival the next day. Everyone was so engrossed in planning for tomorrow none of them noticed prisoners being dragged through the street.

Beyond the busy mall was the even more massive City Center, where cranes worked into the night putting on finishing touches. Even more scandals had broken out over the cost of the new civic development, filling a page in just about every newspaper Husk read. It was finished on time, but the building proved to be a behemoth project at the cost of tax dollars. Governor Mouton had launched an investigation that Mayor Griffin had announced was an invasion of his city’s policy. The political squabble was vicious and the talk of the town for several weeks. Then the populace seemed bored with it, and the matter disappeared from the papers. Husk never heard what became of the investigation, but the center was completed: another behemoth project at the cost of tax dollars from citizens who gave up complaining.

Someone shoved Husk from behind, and he stumbled forward. He looked back to find the hunchbacks unloading the others onto the street. The fat hunchback shoved Husk again, aiming him toward narrow stone steps. The marshals jogged ahead and opened a pair of heavy wooden doors.

“Hurry it up!” Ticks barked.

Davies nodded. “He won’t like waiting.”

Husk squinted his eyes to think. It sharpened his headache, but he forced thoughts through the pain.

Why would they take us to the capitol?

He hurried a glance back toward the city mall. The police station was one of several civic buildings lined up from the courthouse to the state post office. Shouldn’t they be booking us for jail?

Husk shook his head. These were Rail Marshals. They should be headed for the federal building, which was hidden from his view by the state library from this far away.

The marshals brushed past a pair of state militia in their green jackets standing at watch with their muskets at their sides. Gloriana was one of the few states that kept up its militia, a practice Governor Burr had instituted during the War of 1812. The soldiers were well disciplined and looked on as if prisoners being taken inside were commonplace.

Much of the capitol had decorated halls with marble floors and walls covered in murals showing the great history of Gloriana: Colonel Burr establishing his farm at Bastrop, the political campaign led by Burr to liberate the territory from Orleans in 1812, the completion of his bridge across the Mississippi. Huge theaters with velvet seats and carved oak held the legislature with smaller offices to the sides. Husk had been there time and again observing state political meetings that were big enough to warrant a train ticket for an article.

This hallway was narrow and bare gray brick. The marshals led them up a half dozen sets of steep stairs that made Husk’s weary legs burn again. The top of each staircase was guarded by another set of state militia. None of them batted an eye.

Just when Husk again felt like his feet were going to fall off, they stopped at a large landing. Four soldiers stood there, one in each corner, wearing different uniforms from the militia. A large oak desk sat along one wall with an old man in a strange suit and epaulets. His hair was curled at the sides with a ponytail at back, something Husk’s grandfather might have worn in his youth before it went out of style. The desk was covered in papers, many of them rolled up and tied with string, a folding style that had gone out of fashion years ago.

“We’re here with the prisoners,” Ticks said firmly.

The old man nodded. “He’s expecting you.”

He stood, walked with military posture to a thick door set with an enormous lock. Rather than a keyhole, the plate was set with thick pins. The soldier expertly pressed and pulled several of them until something loud clicked. He pulled open the door.

The tall hunchback pushed Husk through the doorway. It was dim inside, and shadows danced as Husk tried to find his footing. Gradually the room came to order in his aching head. Rugs bore strange geometric designs that seemed to have faces in them. The walls had thick pillars built into them that stood at angles, each slightly different, leading up to a ceiling that was painted with a dark mural. Above several gas chandeliers, stained by soot, was Prometheus handing stolen fire off to a mass of savage humans clothed in rags. The titan looked angelic, and his noble expression seemed familiar.

Husk looked back down to eye level. The far wall held a huge window made up of glass set into a woven iron grid. It was like the web of an enormous spider. He sniffed. The room had no smell at all, other than perhaps the acrid tang of polished metal.

Everyone else looked the other way. Blake, Kemp, and Ozzie stared in shock; Ticks and Davies lowered their eyes. Only the hunchbacks seemed stoic. Husk turned slowly.

The whole end of the room was covered in machines, each one of them with some unexplained, specific purpose. Some held bellows attached to clear glass bottles, pumping air through thick filters. Others bubbled as brass pistons drove pumps. More glass bottles and tubes ran various colored liquids among them. In the middle of the base, a decrepit old man sat on a steel throne.

Husk wondered if he were alive. His skin was pale, practically translucent. Only a few long hairs stuck to his withered head. He wore a uniform, something like what the younger old man at the desk had worn, but with more tassels and trim.

The ancient man on the throne raised a hand to press a little gold lever. A new machine near the throne started up, making a soft hiss as a bag inflated. It clicked and deflated. The man’s mouth opened.

“Welcome.”

The man’s voice sounded like a howling wind, his vocal chords rustling more than they vibrated. It was deep and echoed almost as if he were speaking from the bottom of a well. Husk shuddered.

“I’ve been told a great deal about you over these past few hours. In your misadventures, you seem to have struck upon the right place at the right time.”

Husk didn’t know if he could trust his aching ear after what the monster in Shreveport had done to it, but he thought he detected an accent in the man’s voice. It was perfected, flowery, old, the way people spoke back East eighty years ago.

“Step toward me, my new friends. Introduce yourselves.”

The fat hunchback shoved Blake. He fell forward, but righted himself on his feet. He stood tall, raised his head, and lowered his hands, as if he wanted to keep the chain out of view. “I’m Clancy Blake, Sheriff of Bastrop.”

The ancient man flicked the breathing switch again and said, “Bastrop!”

His cheeks twisted, showing a line of silver teeth. Husk wondered if it were a smile.