Gears of a Mad God: A Steampunk Lovecraft Adventure (11 page)

"Leave him."
Carter's whisper was so faint she thought she'd imagined it. He was
still staring at the floor, ignoring her. "Free me. Not him."

She hung there,
frozen with indecision, and finally wriggled her way back until her
feet were once again on the floor. She moved along the bank of
machinery. When she judged she was behind Carter she started the
process again, trying to clamber over the machinery without making
a sound.

She found she
could see the Englishman. Once, he stopped pacing and stared right
at her, and she froze. Then he resumed pacing, and Colleen
continued worming her way forward.

Pipes and metal
tracks dug into her shoulders and back. She never did see Carter's
hands. She ended up sprawled across a bench behind him, her legs
poking in the air somewhere behind her. He was the only thing
keeping her from the Englishman's view. She could see Carter's
shoulders, and she put the knife against his sleeve and traced his
arm downward, navigating by touch.

She knew she'd
hit the rope when her knife met resistance. Her arm was bent
awkwardly over the edge of the bench, her hand completely out of
sight, as she set to work sawing back and forth. Her arm scraped
the edge of the bench, and the Englishman's pacing suddenly
stopped.

Colleen
crouched motionless, unable to see the Englishman, unable to do
anything but hold herself still. Then Carter moved his hands up and
down, sawing the rope against her knife. She stayed frozen, letting
him do the work, as the Englishman's pacing resumed.

Finally
Carter's shoulders moved as the rope parted. He kept his arms
behind him, but his hands came up, fumbling blindly for the knife.
Colleen put the knife into his hand, then wormed her hand back,
wriggled the pistol out of her pocket, and put it in his other
hand.

Boots thumped
on the floor to the right, and the Englishman stopped pacing.
Colleen heard one of the cowboys reporting. He had a slow Texas
drawl, and he described how they were searching, how they weren't
finding anything. Colleen took advantage of the distraction to work
her way backward and get her feet on the floor.

The
claustrophobic crawl space seemed infinitely worse without a gun
and a knife. She actually moved much faster, now that her hands
were free and she didn't have to worry about accidental metallic
clanks, but she felt horribly vulnerable.

Soon she found
herself peering around a chunk of rusted machinery into the open
area with the boiler and tool cabinets. She could hear a faint hiss
of air being drawn into the fire box. The fire was burning well,
then. She squinted at the pressure gauge. It was dirty and at least
twenty feet away, but she thought the needle was pretty far
over.

A man stood in
the middle of the floor with a pistol in his hand. He was a cowboy,
Stetson pushed back on his head, with long graying mustaches that
curved around a cruel mouth. His face was in profile. If Colleen
moved, he would spot her instantly.

Someone moaned,
and the cowboy turned away from her. The man she'd hit with the
wrench lay by the far wall, and the armed cowboy walked toward him.
Colleen rose, looking around, knowing that if she tried to come up
behind him he would likely hear her footsteps. She needed noise,
confusion.

There was a
metal casing near her, the main gearbox for the factory floor. A
massive red handle stuck up from the top of it. Colleen calculated
her options. The gearbox itself would provide cover, if she could
pull the handle quickly enough.

She shot a
glance at the cowboy, who still had his back turned, and darted to
the gearbox. She grabbed the red handle and heaved.

Nothing
happened.

Cursing under
her breath, she wrapped both hands around the end of the handle,
brought her feet up, braced them against the side of the gearbox,
and pulled for all she was worth.

For an awful
moment the handle refused to budge. Then, with a squeal of metal,
the handle dropped six inches and the factory machinery came to
life.

The cowboy spun
at the first metallic screech, and Colleen was keenly aware that
she was in plain sight. But things were moving all over the room.
Gears turned, belts and chains quivered, dust came billowing down
from tracks in the ceiling, and the man stared, trying to look in
every direction at once. When his head turned for an instant,
Colleen let go of the handle and dropped out of sight behind the
gearbox.

Two gunshots
rang out behind her. Either the Englishman was shooting the
prisoners, or Carter had shot the Englishman. The cowboy ran past
Colleen, and she rose from her hiding place.

Another shot
echoed through the warehouse, and she ducked involuntarily. She
wasn't about to rush empty-handed into a gunfight, so she turned to
the boiler instead. She poured in more coal from the hopper and
checked the water level. The water was good. The pressure level was
decent, and climbing. She opened the air vent on the firebox and
considered her next move.

Her gaze went
to the man on the floor by the wall, the cowboy she'd knocked out.
He was still unconscious, and she thought about smothering him as
he lay there. She didn't doubt that he'd do the same to her, but
she knew she couldn't kill him in cold blood. She needed to focus
on the task at hand, which was drawing the cultists away from her
friends.

Clumps of
dust-clogged spider web drifted down around her, and she turned her
gaze to the ceiling far above her. She hadn't really noticed just
how much of the factory's machinery was ceiling-mounted. There was
a large structure beside the boiler, with a slowly-turning vertical
shaft surrounded by a zig-zag metal staircase. It gave her the
rudiments of an idea.

Several
toolboxes littered the workbenches around her. She grabbed the
biggest toolbox she could see, grunting at the weight, and headed
for the staircase. She ran up the stairs, not caring about the
noise she made, and someone fired at her from below, the bullet
knocking rust from the steps above her.

She found a
platform she could huddle on just below ceiling level. She was
mostly surrounded by machinery, enough iron and brass to deflect a
bullet.

She heard a
shot, and a ricochet that sounded dangerously close. She couldn't
see the shooter, or where the bullet had hit. She decided he was
shooting wildly, hoping to get lucky, and pushed him from her
mind.

She opened her
toolbox. The top tray was filled with screwdrivers, pliers, and
small wrenches. She pulled the tray out and set it aside.
Underneath was a jumble of wrenches and a couple of hammers, and
she smiled. She had missiles now. Anyone trying to follow her up
the stairs was going to have a hard time of it.

She scanned the
machinery around her. Some of it was in motion. The big vertical
shaft connected to a gearbox which in turn moved a flat metal
chain. The chain rested in a track that ran the length of the
building, a couple of feet below the corrugated iron of the
ceiling.

There was a
second gearbox beside the first one, and a second metal chain. The
rod that should have connected the two gearboxes was missing,
though. That meant the second gearbox was pure raw materials.
Colleen grabbed a screwdriver and set to work.

She removed the
casing and set it aside, and looked over the gears inside. She used
a hammer and screwdriver to knock a cotter pin loose, and set to
work prying loose a gear that had to be a foot and a half wide.

She caught a
flash of light from the corner of her eye as a shot rang out and a
bullet spanged against metal. Colleen shrank back, then peered over
the edge of her platform. A cowboy stood below her, aiming his
pistol carefully, and she flinched back.

She looked up.
A circle of light glowed on the ceiling above her. The last bullet
had punched through the ceiling, and she could see the lightening
sky beyond. She measured the distance. He had missed her by a good
four feet. She shrugged and decided to keep working.

The next shot
was closer, the one after that even closer. He was firing every
five seconds or so, so she kept working for another four seconds
and flinched back. A bullet banged off of the gearbox and she
leaned back in, grabbed the big gear in both hands, and pulled it
off of the shaft.

She sank back,
holding the brass circle in her lap. It was more than two inches
thick, heavy enough to crush bones. She shouted, "Come and get me!
I'm ready for you!"

She peered over
the edge of the platform, and the man below snapped a shot at her.
Then he broke the pistol open, spilling cartridge casings on the
floor, and started reloading from the loops on his belt. He was
looking down at the gun in his hand, and Colleen saw her
opportunity. He was too far out to hit with the big gear, so she
picked up a wrench and let fly.

It was going to
fall short, she knew it as soon as the wrench left her fingers. It
landed with a clatter at his feet, bouncing up to hit his shins,
and he jumped, dropping the cartridge he'd been loading. He looked
up, just in time to take her next wrench in the face.

He swore,
scrambling backward and crashing into the equipment behind him. He
dropped his pistol, clapped a hand to his mouth, then scrambled
forward to scoop up his the gun. She could see blood leaking
between his fingers as he gave her a hate-filled glance and
retreated behind some machinery.

The staircase
creaked below her. Her plan was working. Someone was coming up the
steps. Colleen picked up her biggest hammer and leaned over the far
side of the platform. From here she could look down on a section of
staircase fifteen feet below. A cowboy stepped into view, gun in
hand. He was bareheaded, watching above him, and he spotted Colleen
immediately and pulled back out of sight.

She heard him
moving up the staircase. From the rustle of his steps and the creak
of metal she could pretty much count each step of the staircase as
he advanced. He reached the landing directly beneath her, and she
smiled. He assumed that if she couldn't see him, he was safe. After
all, bullets travelled in practically straight lines.

Hammers,
though, didn't behave like bullets. She waited for the creak of the
next step, then leaned out and lobbed her hammer inward. She threw
blindly, but she knew exactly where he was, and she heard the
hammer slam into flesh before clattering against metal. He grunted,
and she heard him fall, then get back up. He swore, and the gun
blasted three times.

Colleen let out
an involuntary shriek and cringed back as jagged holes appeared in
her platform. She smelled dust and gun smoke and fear, and she
looked down, wondering how close those shots had come.

A chunk was
missing from the toe of her shoe. She stared, filled with a sense
of unreality. A ragged half-circle was gone from the end of her
shoe, and she blinked, wondering how the bullet had missed her
toes. Then she saw the wet gleam of fresh blood and knew that the
bullet hadn't missed. There was no pain, not yet, but the tip of
her middle toe was gone. She saw a white gleam in the redness, the
bone of her toe, and squeezed her eyes shut as the warehouse
started to spin around her.

The sound of
stealthy footsteps snapped her out of her shock. There would be
time later to swoon like a dime-novel damsel. Right now she was
still in mortal peril.

She picked up
the huge brass gear, adrenalin giving her strength, and looked at
the staircase below her. She tried to figure out which step he
would be on, but she had lost track, and she was still having
trouble focusing. Her ears rang from the gunshots, and the subtle
scuff of footsteps seemed distant, directionless. She made her best
guess. He would be half way up that section of the staircase, about
four feet below the landing. That would put the top of his head
about eight feet below her and four feet out, right about...
there.

She gathered
herself, swinging the gear back, and as she swept forward, the
cowboy sprang into view on the landing below her. The pistol came
to bear on her, she felt her stomach lurch with the sure knowledge
that she was going to die, and she tried to change the trajectory
of the gear in mid-throw.

The gear left
her hands, the pistol went off, she saw sparks fly as the bullet
hit the spinning disk, and she saw that the gear was going to miss
him. But his eyes went wide with panic and he tried to dodge back
down the stairs. With only a split second to react he made the
wrong choice and dove into the path of the gear. It slammed into
his chest, knocking him backward, and he hit the railing behind
him. The railing broke with a screech and he tumbled into space,
the pistol spinning away as he fell.

"You couldn't
have dropped the pistol up here," Colleen grumbled, dropping to a
sitting position on her platform. The strength seemed to leave her
limbs, and a sudden wave of agony from her toe filled her eyes with
tears. She drew her knees to her chest, wrapped her arms around her
legs, and let the tears flow.

Footsteps
scuffed the concrete floor far below, and she lifted her head. A
cowboy, his hand still clapped over his bleeding mouth, glared up
at her, his face filled with hate. He lifted his pistol, taking
careful aim, and she heard the thunder of a shot. The cowboy
twitched, and two more shots rang out, somewhere behind him. He
dropped his pistol, started to turn, and collapsed to the
floor.

Colleen closed
her eyes and murmured, "Thank God." Someone else was still alive.
It hadn't all been for nothing.

A voice spoke
directly below her, a clipped British accent in a voice dark with
malice. "You win this round, little girl. But it doesn't matter.
We'll find Tanathos first. We'll be waiting when you get there.
We'll kill you all. And then He will come."