Superhero Universe: Tesseracts Nineteen (24 page)

He might have travelled fifty feet, with exhaustion blunting the edge of his rage, when he saw the riders. There were six of them, staying well back from the train as they curved toward the pass. It was hard to make out details, but he thought they were wearing masks.

The lead rider was a skinny man with a white Stetson. Dan didn’t need to see his face to know who that was, and what it meant.

It meant trouble.

He could see Golden City less than two miles away. It might as well have been on the moon. By the time he got halfway to town it would all be over.

He spun the chair around, grimacing at the effort it required in the tall grass. The salvage train stood alone, the metal contraption beside it. Wu was nowhere in sight.

The manlike machine seemed to stare at him, mocking him in his helplessness, and he squeezed the arms of the chair until the tendons stood out under his skin. If Wu had just stuck around, maybe they could have gone for help. But no, Wu, the man of action, was no doubt trying to save his people.

He was busy getting himself killed.

He’s not entirely a man of action. He had at least one idea.
Dan sneered at the thought that was tickling the back of his mind. A man of action could become a man of ideas, but it didn’t work quite the same way in reverse. A man trapped in a chair could not simply decide to be a man of action. Maybe if the walking suit had been constructed properly, in a real workshop, with suitable supplies. The metal travesty in front of him didn’t look as if it could even move.

And yet here it was. In the open meadow, two miles or more from the shed where Wu must have built it.

He sat there, staring at the machine. He dropped his hands to the wheels of the chair and started himself rolling.

* * *

Wu was in his element, and he gloried in it. The battle was hopeless, but he felt more fully alive, more fully himself, than he had since fleeing China. He had broken men’s guns. He had broken men’s bones. One of the gang was dead, lying face-down in the street beside his horse. The man in the white Stetson was with him, both legs broken, his gun gone, sobbing quietly.

The remaining four cowboys, though, were armed, unhurt, and angry. They were working their way from building to building, covering each other, shooting at anything that moved. Wu was one building ahead, slowly retreating. He let them catch occasional glimpses of him, and encouraged them to waste their ammunition. He kept them afraid, and gave the others time to flee the town.

Wu was going to die. He accepted it. The Canadian West, so different from Shanghai, gave a man so few places to hide, so few directions to retreat. And if he escaped they would return and take their revenge on any Chinese they could find.

So he would let them kill him. The survivors would ride away satisfied. But he would hurt them first. He would leave them with no appetite for this sort of fun.

He slid out a window on the east side of Ping Yan’s shack, once a makeshift saloon for railroad workers. The Chinese hadn’t been allowed inside, back then. He could hear the cowboys call to each other as they reached the west wall of the shack, and he measured the distance to the next building. For three buildings in a row he had retreated. They were hurrying now, growing impatient, growing careless.

They were ripe for an ambush.

He flattened himself against the wall at the north corner. The man to the north had shorter legs than the man to the south, yet he moved faster. He had the more aggressive nature, and it was going to cost him.

In the last moment before he was about to move, Wu heard a strange sound. It was a grinding metallic noise, and he heard the cowboys call to each other, their voices rising in puzzlement. That meant distraction, so Wu stepped around the corner. The nearest fool was staring back over his shoulder, so Wu plucked the pistol from the man’s hand and dropped him with a palm strike.

That caught the attention of the others, and Wu had to scramble back as bullets scorched the air around him. He sprang and pulled himself onto the roof of the saloon.

That was when he saw Dan.

The walking machine was lumbering across the meadow, arms and legs swinging, steam puffing out at the hip joints.
We’ll have to tweak that,
Wu thought absently.
Or he’ll have to carry more water, and he’ll be even heavier.

That the machine was heavy was unmistakable. Dan left a trail of crushed grass and dented earth behind him as he bore down on the shantytown. Wu couldn’t see the cowboys, but he heard them asking each other what the Hell that was, coming across the grass toward them.

A bullet tore through the roof several feet away, and Wu tensed, then made himself keep still. The roof would creak if he moved. Two more shots came through, one uncomfortably close, and the shooting stopped. Wu glanced left, toward the doorway. The man would go outside, stand well back from the building, and shoot him from there. He ought to be coming through the doorway right about…

Wu sprang, twisted in midair, grabbed the edge of the roof above the doorway, and swung down feet-first. The door was just starting to move, and he drove one foot into the boards just above the doorknob. The door slammed shut, his foot burst through, and he felt his sole strike flesh. A man grunted, Wu landed on his back, and he spent a bad moment getting his foot free.

Luckily neither of the remaining cowboys looked back. They were walking slowly toward Dan, guns levelled.

Dan would need help shortly. Wu rolled to his feet and sprang through a window, landing hands-first on the floor and rolling. He crashed into a stool, knocked it over, and came to his feet in time to see the cowboy, one hand pressed to his side, drawing a bead with his pistol.

In a single fluid motion Wu dropped backward and lashed out with his foot. He caught the leg of the stool with his instep and flipped it up an instant before he landed on his back on the floor.

The stool sailed up, a bullet clipped the seat, and the stool crashed into the man at knee height. He cried out and doubled over, and by the time he straightened up Wu was in mid-air. A foot took the man in the middle of the chest, and he crashed backward into the wall.

Wu stepped to the doorway, ignoring the fallen man. It was a solid kick. That man was out of the fight.

Outside, the two cowboys were shooting at Dan. The walking suit had a steel chest plate, and Dan had his arms up to protect his face. Bullets bounced and ricocheted, and the man on Wu’s left swore as a near miss kicked up dust beside his boot. His gun clicked empty and he fumbled cartridges from his belt.

Wu saw his chance and sprang through the doorway, lunging for the man on the right. The man spun just in time to take a kick to the stomach. Wu followed with an elbow strike, then turned.

The last man was backpedalling frantically across the grass, dropping cartridges as he went, dodging Dan’s thrashing metal arms. Dan’s blueprints had crude hands on the ends of the arms, but the machine he wore had blunt steel bars without even elbows. The steam-powered shoulder joints let Dan thrash the arms left and right, and that was more than enough to keep the cowboy retreating. At last he dropped his pistol, turned, and ran toward the shantytown, perhaps thinking he could hide. Wu heard Zhao Bo let out a cry like a hunting wolf. Several men echoed the cry, and Wu smiled as he heard fists striking flesh.

The attack on the shantytown was over.

* * *

“I’m not sure I really did anything,” Dan said later that evening.

“You save me,” Wu told him. “But suit needs weapons.”

Dan nodded. “That thought did cross my mind. I have a few ideas.” He chuckled at the absurdity of the conversation. Still, you never knew what the future might hold. “Maybe we’ll start by rebuilding the suit. From scratch, in a proper workshop.” He gestured at the window behind him, beyond which stood the bulk of the walking suit. “You’ve done a brilliant job working out the basics. Now we’ve got something to build from.”

Wu reddened and smiled.

“The reward money should get your friends through the winter,” Dan said. At least two of the cowboys had prices on their heads, and a third man might have been a notorious American bank robber known as the Montana Kid. A squad of North-West Mounted Police was on its way to collect the prisoners and distribute reward monies.

Life wouldn’t be easy for the Chinese, but the world was in the biggest state of flux it had ever known, and change meant opportunities. They would find a place in the new world that was emerging.

“What about us?” Dan mused aloud. “What will our place be in this new world?” He shook his head. “I was so focused for so long on building this railroad. Making my way all the way west to Gastown. You too, I guess.”

Wu nodded.

“Well,” said Dan, “we could press on to Gastown anyway.” He leaned back in his chair. “It won’t be easy. I’ll have to leave this nice comfortable railcar behind.” He looked at Wu. “It won’t be easy for you, either. You’ll have to help me into and out of a lot of wagons and steamboats and stagecoaches. But we’ll get there.”

Wu nodded again, looking undaunted by the challenge.

Dan smiled. He’d get to the coast, not by rail like he’d imagined, but overland, seeing every inch of the country. Let other travellers drift over the Rockies in airships. Dan was going to see Canada the way a man should. From the ground.

As for when he reached Gastown… well, the acts of greedy and evil men weren’t restricted to the wilderness. He might find a role to play in the big city for a steam-powered walking machine and a kung fu warrior.

* * *

Brent Nichols is a writer based in Calgary.

Black Sheep

Jason Sharp

As escape plans go, it was pretty disgusting.

Before I’d even been sent to the Special Handling Unit of the Joliette Institution for Women, the Feds had known they’d need to keep me away from water. They’d gone to the trouble of building a new wing all for me. It had climate control to keep the interior humidity low. The toilet was a composter with a long drain pipe. I got damp cloth for sponge baths and hand-cleaning rather than a sink or trips to a bathroom. There wasn’t even a sprinkler system for fire suppression— something I’d had my lawyer tackle, but the government had cited some special anti-terrorist law that let them get away with it.

Even my drinking water was rationed out. Every two hours during waking hours, a plastic bottle with a quarter-litre of water was pushed through the slot in my cell door. If I drank it and pushed the bottle back through, it’d arrive again, refilled, in two hours. If I didn’t… they’d wait until I
did
.

So it took a while to work out how I was going to do it.

Timing was another issue. I had minimal contact with the outside world— TV, newspapers, books from the prison library. My lawyer dropped by every few weeks. Rarely — very, very rarely — I received snail mail from my thirteen-year-old cousin; the envelopes were always pre-opened and, I had found on one occasion, actively censored. But Lucie had, nonetheless, told me — quite accidently, I’m sure — when to break out.

It was the last Saturday of July: the tail end of Québec’s construction holiday, when projects across the province shut down for two weeks and all the workers go on vacation. I had uncles and cousins on jobsites doing electrical work, plumbing, and brickwork, so this was one of three weekends when they could all get together. Lucie had written that Aunt Hélène and Uncle Serge would be hosting a family reunion at their place in Montréal.

Thus, on the last Friday of July, I made point of not using the composting toilet before lights-out. It didn’t make for a comfortable sleep; by the time the lights came back on at six in the morning, the pressure in my bladder was something fierce. I thought dry thoughts and took a stab at the crossword in the previous day’s
Gazette
, watching the clock.

At 6:57, I finally shuffled over to the composting toilet.

At 6:59, I heard the faint footsteps of the guard bringing my breakfast. I pulled up my jumper and scurried over to my bunk.

At 7:00, the footsteps stopped. “Stand clear of the door,” the guard’s muffled voice barked, and then, “What—” and
then
came the simultaneous sounds of vomiting and urination. I reached out and called the liquid through the door slot— then combined it with the urine I’d kept clinging to the bowl of the toilet. Darted forward to pop the top off the water bottle and added its contents. Flash-dehydrated my breakfast. Wicked the moisture off the skin and clothes of the heaving guard.

I now had a pool of about 1.8 liters of bile, urine, and water on the floor of my cell. I pulled the solution up in a thin column and fired a narrow high-velocity stream into the narrow gap between the door and the wall. The liquid cut through the locks in a matter of seconds, and I slammed myself against the door.

It jammed against the guard’s spasming body, but there was enough of a gap for me to squeeze through. Another door opened, and I propelled my captive liquid across the room; the guard coming through the door slipped and fell, and then he puked and pissed himself as well.

In a matter of minutes, I’d incapacitated eight guards and had close to ten liters at hand. Once I was outside, I sucked the humidity out of the air and formed a fog cloud to conceal me from snipers as I cut through the outer fence and fled into the stand of trees beyond.

* * *

I’d shed my orange jumper, so I emerged from the forest lining the back fence of a townhouse lot wearing nothing but a grey cotton bra and matching panties. I clambered over the chain link, poking myself in a few places, and fell down into the yard of an end unit. A quick sprint across freshly mowed grass brought me to a side gate. I continued out, across a street, through a narrow line of bush, and into the back lot of a big box store.

I spied a middle-aged woman in the parking lot loading groceries into the trunk of a little silver Toyota and jogged up to her. “Good morning!”

“Good morning!” she replied, her expression turning quizzical as she took in my near-nudity.