The Best of Penny Dread Tales (8 page)

The Tri-ceratops went right through the big door and proceeded to tear through that cage like pages from a Sears & Roebuck. That critter started smashing machines and lightning poles to beat the band. By the time I rode through there were people running everywhere and explosions like it was the fourth of July. I thought it the better part of valor to get out of there fast as I could. As I made for the cage door, I turned one last time, and through the fireworks I could see Pete still on the other side of the big door riding that wheeling, bucking Tyrannosaurus rex, with Pete waving one hand in the air and singing the
Yellow Rose of Texas
at the top of his lungs. Just before the smoke got too dense to see, I would swear I saw a spear hit the beast right under one of its tiny arms. I heard three loud whoops as I was unceremoniously shoved through a side door and out onto an overcast Milwaukee street corner.

Once we were out, that building started shaking and tearing itself apart. It finally just up and imploded into itself with a big old whump of air. By the time the volunteer firemen showed up there wasn’t much left to see. Men in white coats gave statements to bewildered policemen as I sipped a beer offered to me by an understanding soul. Nicola Tesla was off to one side, covered in dust and debris, scribbling madly in a notebook that was now charred slightly at the edges. Buffalo Bill sat hunched up on a curb, hat in hand, crying softly for his lost dreams of dinosaurs at a dime a head.

So, my dearest, Pete is gone. The professor says he will rebuild his machines one day—Bill says not with his money he ain’t. So rescue seems out of the question. The common sense thing to assume is that your baby brother is long gone, a meal for monsters. But Pete was never one much for common sense. I lay awake some nights wondering if, somewhere back in pre-history, Pete didn’t manage to bust that rex after all. If so, then maybe my old partner has managed to start himself the world’s first and only dinosaur ranch. Never count a cowboy out till he’s six foot under, that’s what I always say.

Hug the children for me. I will be home from my travels in the spring.

Your loving husband,

Sam

***

American Vampire

Keith Good

Part One: Bandito

1913

I

He craved death. Each bone-stubbled carcass, each spike of irradiated grass growled at the dark inside him. Days stretching to weeks, he entertained the fantasy that, like him, these plains would die forever. It was a cruel thought. Flickering lizards—little candles of life—and summer cloudbursts snuffed his macabre fantasies. He could never die, and the world would only live.

He pulled the pamphlet from Rosie’s saddlebag only to put it back. He’d arrive soon. Hypnotized by the chuff of Rosie’s pneumatic horseshoes, he fell into a dream. Denver City sprouted from the shimmering heat, woven from light and fog. He and Rosie trotted its familiar High Street, a squat warehouse on their left. Its hand-carved sign declared:

Metalwork & Horseshoeing

L.M. Smith, Prop.

In this false lucidity, he pulled Rosie’s reins toward their former home. She ignored him, instead breaking into a brisk jog. As all good things do, Denver City died. He tried to ask “¿Que es esto, Rosie?” but weeks without water left his voice dead as the surrounding plains.

The question proved superfluous; a black speck squirmed on the horizon, too big for brush and too small for buffalo. Another horse—and another rider—lay 500 yards ahead. He swung an arm behind him and let the safety off his rifle … just in case. Rosie, her sight superior, her attentions inexhaustible, recognized the speck and upped her pace. The Rider obliged her enthusiasm and sat firm, hand to gun and his eyes on the growing shape.

As in most matters, Rosie’s judgment proved correct. A horse stretched across the earth, missing most of a foreleg and bested by the cruel heat. A bandito slumped against the horse’s neck, pot-bellied and bloody-mouthed. Rosalina broke to a thundering gallop, the tubes grafted to her hooves screaming steam. Too proud for bit or saddle, the Rider tugged her mane to maintain his seat.

“Whoa, chica,” he croaked. His words did nothing. Rosalina put the greasy outlaw under hoof and reared back to deliver vengeance, but a forceful pull on her mane felled the blow wide. The mare stomped murderous intent, snorting and spitting. The Rider, minding his grip lest he end up on the brick-hard ground, whispered in Rosalina’s perked ear.

She settled, and the Rider, rifle in hand, hopped to the ground. The bandito slouched in the shade of his dead horse, gnawing a grisled femur. Yellow blisters and the blackness of encroaching death dotted his book-leather skin. Blood mottled his cheek, flies landing without reprove on eyelids, nose, and cheeks.

“¿Hablas íngles?” The Rider trained his rifle on the bandito, custom scope flickering a red dot between heavy-lidded eyes.

The bandit laughed and tossed the femur away. “No. I sprecken zee Doitch.”

“Get smart with me again and I’ll relieve you of your brains.” The Rider punctuated his warning with a kick to the bandito’s ribs. “You one of the Banditos Rouges that held up the Union Pacific last week?”

“What if I am? You a law dog?”

The Rider lowered his rifle. “If I’m a dog, then you’re the bitch, bandito.” He turned from the wretch and whispered in Rosie’s ear. She snorted, putting a rare smile onto the Rider’s face. He pulled the small book from Rosie’s saddlebag and secreted it to a pants pocket.

“Today is the luckiest day of your life, amigo. The way I figure, your boys are whoring in Santa Fe by now. Rosie here will take you to them.” The Rider took a canteen from his hip, emptied half into the aluminum tanks on Rosie’s haunches and tossed it to the bandito. “Take it easy with the water and you’ll live.”

The bandito laughed.

“You’re gonna give away your horse and your water in the center of hell? Gringo, you’ll be dead by sundown.”

“Doubt it.” The Rider slung the bandito by his collar over Rosie’s back. “Thinking ain’t your strong suit, bandito. You leave the logic to me. Consider yourself fortunate—I’m in a charitable mood. That only happens every two hundred years or so.” The Rider pointed to the rectangular metal case strapped to Rosalina’s hind. “Whatever you do, don’t open Pandora’s box. Hell’s inside.”

With a swift slap, Rosalina and the crusty bandito set off into the plain. He bounced as if strapped to a bucking bull. The boots grafted to Rosie’s hooves hissed pressurized steam, driving hydraulic rods to the ground in concert with her gallop. The machine amplified her speed tenfold.

“What the hell kind of horseshoes is these?” the bandito roared, voice heavy with the echo of distance. Within seconds Rosie and the thief plunged under the horizon. The Rider thought of the noose awaiting the gullible bastard and flashed another rare smile.

The sun needled exposed skin, fighting a battle it could never win. Alone again, he pulled the book from his pants pocket and put it back. Denver City congealed out of the haze. He stood at the arched door of his old workshop, the damned machine just beyond. Decades wound back like the gears in his pocket watch.

The Rider walked through the arch and into a daydream, shuttled from 1913 New Mexico to the floor of his workshop, at the end of the High Street in Denver City, 1861.

Part Two:
Compañera

1861

I

Electric dragons roamed the warehouse. Birthed from copper and steel obelisks, they flew to the center of the shop, leaving a wake of sapphires. He shoveled one last load of compressed coal into the boiler’s mouth and stepped back. His conglomeration of magnets and locomotive parts conducted a beautiful symphony: coal fire from the boiler shot compressed steam to each of the four magneto towers, forcing the magnets across copper screws that pulled electricity to the domes atop each column.

Above the boiler, insulated from its hellfire by layers of Comanche fabric, sat a crystal dodecahedron twelve inches across. The dragons swarmed a filament ascending from the box and plunged inside.

Protected by crystal and glowing with electricity sat a human heart. Each snapping dragon made it dance. The man stepped to a small dial atop the boiler and nudged it clockwise. The pistons increased their intensity. Sparks flew faster, stronger, until one dragon chomped the tail of the next into continuous arcs of power. Electrons sputtered from the machine, condensing an electric cloud over the man’s head.

He lowered black-tinted goggles and peered at the heart glistening inside the crystal box.

The heart beat. It was alive.

The man fell to his knees and cried in savage ecstasy. Electricity rained over his hands, his eyes, until his veins ran blue, flesh indistinguishable from the cloud above him. The dragons, weary of their mechanical master, ransacked the shop. They exploded vials like glass bombs. They kindled errant papers and wood like struck matches.

Even for one who cannot die, the chaos proved too much. Frantic to save the machine, to preserve the two tons of steel and 78 years of toil, he lunged to the copper kill switch glinting from the boiler. The machine shrieked in agony, bleeding molten steel. The pistons halted, the steam fizzled and died.

The familiar dark draped over his eyes. In the haze between life and death, the man saw a strange beast—maybe imagined—roaming his workshop. A chimera of water and flesh doused the shop, squelching the hungry fires. The water-beast hovered to where the man lay, stooped down to his face. He opened his mouth to speak, but the curtain of consciousness dropped, plunging him again into the unfathomable abyss.

II

She perched on a charred stool, his rifle bouncing across her knee. “You should be muerto.” She was as dark as the room, only eyes and teeth, her hair tangled to bare shoulders.

“True.” It still hurt to speak. He coughed ash and propped to his elbows, pain cramping his every muscle. Most humans he read like children’s rhymes: all definition and subtext gleaned from a simple once over. This black wraith, however, was obtuse—indecipherable. She wore rags but had the air of an oil baron.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“The chica that saved you from the ashes.” A slender cigar bounced from the corner of her mouth, ruby ember conjuring peacocks of smoke that strutted and swirled above their heads.

“That’s a fifty-cent cigar you’re chomping.” He made incremental movements in the low light, inching forward while looking stationary.

“Esta cigarillo es mia.” A steely cloud rolled from her mouth. “The way I figure, you owe me for saving your skin.”

“My skin needed no saving.”

“Tu máquina, then.” She tossed her black hair to the mass of steel, copper, crystal and magnet behind them. He gave the machine a once-over: it seemed intact, cogs and wheels still in the right place. The worst damage afflicted the crystal heart—a crack ran top to bottom, saline solution dripping to the floor.

“Fair enough.” He pushed elbows to palms, sitting up in the low light. “If that Oro Cubano pays part of my debt, what more do I owe?”

Her eyes sparked with bemusement. “When the Law shows up, you tell them I’m not here and you never saw me.” She looked to the arched doorway across the workshop. Her attentions foolishly divested, he jumped from the floor, stole the rifle and trained it between her chocolate eyes.

“Chica,” he snorted, “Law ain’t piss next to a malo like me.” He swung the barrel skyward and boomed a shot into the rafters. “I despise humanity. Pray tell why I shouldn’t blast your head clean off and bury you under the floorboards with the rest.” His finger flexed against the trigger, rifle nestled into his shoulder.

“Easy,” she snorted. “No soy humana. Soy monstrua.” She bared her incisors and growled.

“A monster?” He lowered the gun a shade.

“Mi madre was a slave in El Paso. Una dia, a pack of banditos rode in; slaughtered her master like the puerco he was, burned the house and plundered its stores. It would have been a blessing if they’d burned mi madre with the house, but they were coños without compassion. They cut her face, stripped her naked and took turns. Twelve banditos, one after another for days. When they got bored, when she stopped fighting, they rode away, left her for dead. The law came in after and sold her to another puerco. Nine months later I arrived … she died soon after.”

She stared past him into a dark corner of the warehouse. “Soy una monstrua: half bandita, half negra. In this country, a Mexican half of three-fifths ain’t shit.” The woman looked to the barreled ceiling and whispered smoke.

“Alright.” He swung the rifle point to dirt and leaned his elbow to its stock. “What’s the law want with a monstrua like you?”

“The sheriff of this town mistook me for a sporting bitch. I told him my honey wasn’t for sale, but the coño slapped me around and stole the poke I wouldn’t sell. When he was done, sleeping like a baby, I took a set of butcher shears and—
snip
!” she mimed cutting with her fingers, “Sliced off his tiny little pene. I was out the window and down the street before he realized the blood was his.”

He had no choice but to laugh with her, sap the electricity she generated. He hadn’t laughed in centuries; the ease of his smile and the helium bubbling his chest surprised him—joy was a luxury he thought long dead.

“Fine.” He tossed the rifle onto the girl’s lap. “The Cock-Butcher of Denver City can stay in my shop as long as it would have taken me to rebuild the machine she saved. Two months sound fair?”

“Sí.” she answered with a firm nod.

“¿Como te llamas, senorita?” he asked, striding to inspect his damaged machine.

“Rosalina.” She quit the stool and followed.

“Get a wrench, Rosalina. We have some repairs to make.”

III

The law hobbled in 24 hours later, comical in an ill-fitted waistcoat, waxed moustache and frayed bowler. His accessories—a gauze diaper and sapling crutch—proved too much for the Blacksmith’s sense of humor. Only practiced self-discipline (and molars gnashing his tongue) kept his laughter at bay.

“Now, John, I heard of cowpokes asking whores to diaper them, let them suck the tit, but honestly, I didn’t peg you as the type.”

“Where is she, Blacksmith?” The sheriff’s voice was more cry than command.

The Smith put on a cocksure smile. “I’m sorry, but of whom are we speaking?”

“The mulatto who tried to kill me, that’s who!”

“I heard she only tried to geld you, John.”

The Sheriff struggled to stay upright, sweating and out of breath. The strain of argument nearly felled him. He took a few breaths and swallowed before starting again in a calmer voice.

“We know she’s here, Blacksmith. We ain’t found her tracks out of town, and we checked every dern building. Hand her over so she can hang for what she done.”

The Smith showed the sheriff his upturned palms, absolving himself of sleeved aces. “As much as I’d fancy any dame that snips off your prick, I regret to say I haven’t seen her.”

The sheriff stood fast at the door, blood dribbling down his diaper. Seeing him not easily divested, the Blacksmith, palms still out, stepped aside and waved the law in.

“You and your boys are welcome to nose around the shop. I should warn you though,” he pointed to the mass of blackened steel behind them, “I’m experimenting with electricity. I’d hate for any mortal accident to befall you.”

The Sheriff righted himself as best his gnarled groin would allow, face scrunched with skepticism. Trickles of sweat arched his convex jaw, quivering at each of his three chins. With his non-crutch hand, the Sheriff removed his bowler—blonde wisps matted to a bald head—and mopped his flop sweat with a sleeve. Bowler back in place, he unleashed a heavy-hearted sigh.

“I suppose she ain’t here.”

“Very good,” the Smith replied.

The Sheriff nodded—bookending their interaction—and the Blacksmith swung the massive oak door. It slammed into the jamb with a resounding thud.

The Smith turned to face the waiting dark. “Don’t think he’ll be back.”

IV

Rosalina proved an inexhaustible fountain of questions. Had the Smith known this from the start, he may have shot her and been done with it.

“¿Que es esta máquina?”

Her first query came before the diapered law. The Smith was walking a slow circuit of the contraption, hands clasped behind his back, head swiveling, when the reserves of Rosalina’s restraint evaporated, exposing a vast bed of curiosity.