Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1) (22 page)

And I was alone on
a mattress.

I reached to my
side and felt for my bottle. Not a scratch on it.

Just then, a sour
array of noises sparked up in the direction from which we had fled. I squeezed
my eyes and saw a veritable fleet of steam-powered motorbikes come into view.
They were being driven by a collection of nasty-faced thugs waving chains and
pipes, the very same unwashed group that had interrupted the miracle pie maker
presentation. I spit a blade of grass I had obtained in my fall and watched
them speed off after the caravan, hooting primitive battle cries. I kept my
head down and was lucky not to be spotted.

So here I was.
Will Pocket, newly-deemed renegade adventurer, clinging for dear life to a
getaway mattress by the riverside. I was dizzy and had no clue what to do next.

That’s when I
heard laughter. A large shadow came over me.

“Hey, it’s you
again,” said a big man wearing copper-plated knuckles. “Do you need some more
help?”

I rolled upon my
back and peered past his face into the sky. “I dare say I do.”

I could've said
no. I could've said a lot of things. Impractical as it may sound, I was fairly
confident that I could have never moved an inch at all, not ever again, and
could choose to spend eternity glued to the mattress by the river. Make myself
into some bizarre living monument, an unburied grave left alone in this world.
Besides, the mattress, now that it had stopped moving, was unspeakably
comfortable, stuffed to the brim with some sort of feather. No, not a bad grave
at all. What do most of us get, after all? An oak box under some dirt? That's
lousy. Cramped, dark, absolutely no view. Not like this. The breeze was good,
the tree that stretched over me twisted its branches into unique shapes, very
pleasant to the eye, and the hushed bubbling of the river floated in the back.
I could do far worse. And if I ever became sick of the view, well, I was on the
feathers. I could just sleep the rest of my existence away. Hop off somewhere
unseen and entertain some dream until I got bored with it. Just let my mind
roam pink and yellow fields of imagined cotton while my body sticks around here
to collect dandelions. It's kind of romantic. Maybe I'd rise to some lesser
British myth. The Sleeping Man by the River. A loafer in the wind, rolling
along with the seasons in measured time with this world.

But as it was, I
didn't decide that. I instead got off of the mattress and shook off another
round of dirt, another layer of collected earth from my body. Damn, thinking on
it, I now remember that I had meant to write a poem upon this, on how...what
was my musing? Something about living and traveling and being outside and
carrying pieces of this world around on your clothes. I should have written it
down.

“So...you had a
poem about dirt?”

“Not
just
dirt.”

“And about being
dirty.”

“Well...you
know...Alan...there's a significance in it.”

“Then why do we
wash?”

“Ah! Now
that
is
a provocative question!”

“In that case, I
take it back.”

I rolled my neck
and looked at the large-framed man who was now kicking the corner of the
mattress with his boot heel.

“That's a nice
ride,” he said. “Did its tank run dry out here?”

God help me, I
could not tell if he was joking or not.

“Couldn't say,” I
uttered. “This was my first time driving a mattress.”

He laughed and
slapped me on the shoulder.

“You don't
remember me, do you?” he said.

“Well...”

“The other night.
You were running. I was vomiting. The Happy Machinist Tavern, remember?”

“Oh, right.” That
business with the carriage owner wanting to beat me into submission. The
swaggering brawler-turned-pretzelmaker was just as intimidating in the
daylight, yet there was something strangely inviting about him.

“Heh,” the man
said. “That's funny. I was stinkin' drunk and
you
don't remember.”

“No, no. I
remember. I've just had a lot of people want to attack me in the last few days,
so it slipped my mind.”

“Ah, you in
trouble with the cops?”

“A bit,
yeah...look, I can't really talk now. My friends are off and—“

“Oh. Were they in
that smoking wagon?”

“That's right.
They're kind of in a bind.”

He snorted. “No
kidding, they're in a bind. They had a pack of Motorists following them.”

“Motorists. Can
you tell me what exactly they are?”

“The Motorists?”
he repeated, spitting. “Nothing but a mangy pack of rat bastards.”

“Wonderful,” I
said to myself more than him. “So now what?”

The brawler
cracked a few stiff joints and leaned against the twisting tree. “Well...you
want a ride?”

Minutes later I
was clutching the rounded lip of a rattly sidecar, watching the screws that
held its sides together roll loosely in their place. This slightly rusted
sidecar was attached to a dilapidated brown motorbike that moaned as it chugged
little steam puffs out of its back pipe.

“Sorry I didn't have
another helmet,” said the driver, tilting the vehicle quickly down the road.
His head was strapped into a dented, black cooking pot and his sharp-pointed
hair stuck out from beneath.

“That's all right,
Eddie,” I said, a little wary. “I'll just be careful.”

Eddie Gearhead
pumped a motivated fist to the sky and squeezed the throttle. Eddie Gearhead,
the name he had given me. I don't think Gearhead was his proper name, but he
didn't seem too keen to go by anything else, so I accepted it. Besides, it had
a timely flair to it, and as a self-proclaimed bard, who was I to say an
imagined name was any less real?

Eddie was an
interesting sight. When he met me and my mattress, he was wearing the same
copper knuckles he had earlier donned, but the bowler was missing, revealing
his unusual hair. It was wild and sharp, sticking out at points and appearing
almost like distinct clock hands. Might come in handy, I imagined, thinking on
my broken watch. If at a loss for the time, I could prop him up under the sky
and read him like a sundial.

“Eddie!” I said,
my mind returning to the ride. “Look out for that!”

“I see it. No
worry.”

We hit a
fair-sized rock and the motorbike bounced into the air and back to the ground
like a rubber toy thrown by a spoiled child. The back tire rubbed up some
gravel and we slid along the road.

“Careful!” I said.

“I said, no worry.
We need to make this trip fast, right?”

“Right...but we
need to make it in one piece too.”

Eddie laughed. “I
never came in one piece. I've been broken and bruised since I fell out of my
mother. That's how life gets you, you know? Not all at once, but over time,
over a thousand backstabs and bum deals. Life takes you apart piece by piece.”

“That's kind of
beautiful, Eddie. Can I use that in a story?”

“Stop, you'll make
me blush.” He bounced us over another rough patch of road. “Story, huh? You
some kind of writer?”

“At times. On the
streets,” I said, rocking in the sidecar. “Not a particularly successful one.”

“Eh, I'd keep at
it. How far has this street-writing gotten you?”

“So far? It's
gotten me wanted by the monarchy.”

Eddie chuckled and
the bike sputtered. “Piece by piece, man.”

We continued for a
bit until I spotted the Marins' caravan sitting overturned and still smoking
against a few trees. A few tinted windows were cracked or smashed and there was
a greasy black smear across the underside. Eddie slowed us to a stop and I
jumped out, shouting for my companions.

“Dolly! Kitt!” I
yelled, trying to pry open one of the wagon's doors. “Gren! Are you in here?”

“They are not,”
came a voice from the sky.

I looked up. The
Marin boys were hanging by their coats over a high branch in the trees.

“Are you two all
right?” I asked.

“Not our best
day,” Doctor D admitted, swinging slightly in his place.

“I concur,” his
brother added.

“What happened?” I
asked.

“The Motorists,”
Doctor D said.

“They caught up,”
Doctor P said.

“What did they
do?” I shouted. “Where are the others?!?”

“They took them,”
Doctor D said.

“Took them?!?”

“Afraid so,”
Doctor P said. “Stuck the men at gun-and-knife-point and loaded them on bikes.”

“And the girl?”

“When they got
close, she barricaded herself in the steamer trunk.”

“How?”

“She made us lock
her inside. Then we slipped her the key through an air hole. The
Motorists  couldn't open the steamer and she refused to give over the key,
so they attached the trunk by a rope to a bike and dragged her behind.”

I felt my eyes
blacken. There are men of science who would tell you that such a coloration is
impossible. It is fortunate that such men had not stated that to my face at
that moment, as I would've promptly clawed into their chest cavities and
introduced them to their hearts. I could only face the ground, my bangs hiding
the morbid intent in my gaze. Blood pushed through my veins.

“I'll murder
them,” I said, voice deep and cold. “If they touch them, if I find a single
hair out of place, I'll murder them all.”

“Chillingly put,
Mister Pocket,” Doctor D said, though not in jest. “I'd be careful of
yourself.”

“Gentlemen,” I
said back, daggers in my consonants. “I'm not the one who should be fearing
me.”

Eddie approached,
jaw clenched and eyes equally deep. “Let's go,” he said, his tone gruff and
serious.

“Yeah...” I began
walking back to the motorbike. “Will you Marins be all right?”

“I believe we are
almost free,” Doctor P said, swaying and reaching for the branch. “I can nearly
reach up.”

“Here,” Eddie
said. He grabbed a string of flags that had been hanging from the caravan and
threw the untied end to Doctor D. “Use this to pull yourselves. You'll bend the
branch a little, get your feet to reach that corner of the wagon.”

“Thank you,”
Doctor D said. “I'd tip my hat to you, but at the moment—“

“Forget it,” Eddie
said. “Pocket?”

“Right,” I said.

I got into the
sidecar and waited for Eddie to take us away. This time I didn't care about the
helmet.

“You get fired up
sometimes, don't you?”

“I have my
moments, Alan. I'm not proud of them.”

“You should be. If
a man has no passion rattling around in his body, what is he? Just a glob of
uninspired meat.”

“I guess.”

“So tell me you
found the Motorists.”

“Oh, we found
them, all right.”

A circle of parked
motorbikes filled an open city square. The Motorists, wrapped in their reeking
leathers, were parading around, laughing their dim little heads off. Eddie
increased our speed and we chugged quickly toward the circle.

“So, I'm
thinking,” I said, wind in my face, “we're pretty outnumbered. Our best chance
at rescue is probably going to be from creating a distraction then moving in.”

“Distraction,”
Eddie said. “Couldn't agree more.” The bike sped up.

“Uh...right. Good.
Let's discuss strategy then.”

“Nah.”

“Nah?”

“No need, man.” He
unfastened the straps of his makeshift helmet and tossed it to me. “You better
put this on.”

“I'm all right.”

“No, you're gunna
want this.”

I felt a tightness
in my chest and quickly put on the helmet. “What about you?”

Eddie grinned and
lightly pounded on his head. “I've got a pretty hard shell up here.”

“You sure?”

He shrugged and
switched subjects. “You're in it pretty deep with the King, aren't you?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Lousy luck. Okay,
when I tell you to, duck down as far as you can into the sidecar.”

“I'm pretty tall.”

“Just do what you
can.”

I realized that we
were quickly approaching a row of parked motorbikes on the outer edge of
the   circle and Eddie wasn't letting up. “You aren't really planning
on touching your brake, are you?”

“Not really.”

“Okay. What
are
you planning to do?”

“Distract.”

“Uh...”

“Now! Head down!”

I did as commanded
and hugged my knees. The motorbike collided at top speed with the others and
Eddie went flying out over the pile to the hard ground. I stayed glued,
crashing through the mess and eventually coming to a thudding halt. Dizzy, I
fell out of the sidecar and pressed my hands to the ground. The helmet was
making my head heavy, so I tossed it into the sidecar and retrieved my proper
hat. Another wave of dizziness showed up, so I pressed the ground once more.

Eddie, meanwhile,
was in top form. I realized as I watched the Motorists that only a few among
them had rifles. Those that did immediately took aim at Eddie after he landed
and picked himself up.  Eddie waved them on and waited for them to fire.
They did, missed, and started clutching their barrels. Eddie made a evil grin.

“Oh, you shouldn't
have missed me,” he said, laughing.

The riflemen
grimaced and started frantically repacking their weapons. Then I understood.
The rifles were old, outdated models and cumbersome to reload. Eddie jogged up
to the closest rifleman, a scrawny, whisker-lipped man, and easily snapped the
weapon out of his hand. He then swung the rifle like a club, knocking the man
off of his feet and into two of his cohorts.

“Well, what are
you waiting for?” Eddie said, looking back at me. “Go on. I've got you
covered.”

I came to my
senses and ran. Eddie followed at my side and provided cover. As I darted to
the center of the Motorists' circle, he would bounce back and forth, ripping
chains out of assailant hands or pounding his knuckles into stubbled jaws.