eSteampunk Vol. 01 No. 02 Read online

  Nat Gibson shrugged. “If you really think there’s a chance someone down there is a plague carrier and we have no clue who it is, I say we open the bomb bay doors and drop ‘em all in the river. No sense messing about with it.”

  There were no bomb bay doors, Nayad knew, but it was as interesting a solution as any he’d heard of so far: dump everyone and start all over.

  “We’ve been out for nearly a week now. Surely the gestation period for this is much shorter than that?” Lucinda offered.

  Nayad nodded. “From what I understand, it comes in relation to how badly they received the infection. If one of the monsters takes a chunk out of someone, they’ll succumb within days. But if a body is lucky enough to get away with just a scratch, it could take longer. I don’t know how much longer, though. But I’m inclined to agree with Lucinda: If someone was infected, they’d be full blown infected by now. If that was the case, someone would’ve noticed, right?”

  “I’ve never been around when someone turns, but I hear tell it’s not pretty,” Lucinda threw in. “And not quiet. If someone already went ugly down there, a lot of people would know it.”

  Nayad agreed. He hadn’t seen it either, but he’d heard the same. “So that leaves us with two possibilities: either this is a hoax and someone like Cantolione is trying to turn us around, or a passenger is infected and not yet full-blown shambling.” He looked at each of them. “Any thoughts on how to proceed?”

  Gibson opened his mouth, and Nayad stopped him with a wave of his hand. “We’ve heard your idea. Anyone else?” Nayad asked.

  It was quiet for a moment until Lester cleared his throat and spoke up. “Why does it only have to be your two possibilities? Maybe there’s a third.”

  Nayad leaned back and smiled. “Let’s hear it boy. And don’t talk shit. We haven’t the time.”

  “There’s always a chance passenger 213 turned already, and the others killed it themselves.”

  It was obvious to Nayad that everyone was prepared to jump on the kid’s idea with a joke or an insult before he spoke, but they were quiet when he was done.

  “I suppose that could happen. But why wouldn’t they tell us? They’d at least want the body tossed out so it didn’t reek by time we hit the other coast,” Gibson said.

  “Who knows? Maybe these people are desperate and want to get across the country.” Lester took a sip of water from his little metal cup. “Could be they’re afraid we’d have to turn back if there was the threat of an outbreak. Couldn’t tell you.”

  Nayad sighed. It was as good of a theory as any, but the thought of Cantolione stuck in the front of his consciousness. The man had been ruthless in his attempts to corner the market. Word was he’d been the one that destroyed the remaining railroad lines that crossed the region. Key bridges had been firebombed and tracks mangled in heavily infested areas, making them impossible to repair safely. “I’m inclined to keep moving.”

  Lucinda flinched, drawing attention to herself.

  “Problem?” Nayad asked. She was the only one the rest of the crew might side with. He liked to think it was because of her brains and not her tits, but he never took an official poll of the others.

  “I think we stop the Turtle and go down to the hold and visibly inspect each person,” she said.

  “What? There’s three hundred passengers down there.” Nayad looked at the others.

  “So? It’ll take an hour or two. I’m not talking about giving each of them a medical exam. I’m talking about a cursory glance to make sure no one looks like they don’t have any limbs or nothing falling off them.” She glanced at Lester. “And to make sure they’re all still alive. That’s it.”

  Nayad pulled out his pocket watch and stared at it for a moment; he could feel his lips move involuntarily as he tried to figure out the hours until they should reach the river. “We’ve got just half a day or so – ten hours about, before we take on water and fresh air.” Lucinda started to say something, but Nayad cut her off. “We can’t turn around and go home without taking on water at this point. We have to go to the river anyway.” He was reluctant to admit she might be right in front of the men, but he was afraid of the talk that would go on if he didn’t .“We can do your inspection while the Turtle’s filling up with water. That’ll take some time.” He looked around the room to confirm everyone was happy with that. They looked skeptical, but none brought out a knife to press their point.

  Nayad stood and walked out into the hall. “Jansen, get us moving again. Tell the Freebies to get us as much power as they can.” The Freebies made up the rest of the crew. They were four strong, able-bodied men who had no means of paying for the journey. They made their way by being locked in the engine room, stoking the fires and seeing to the boiler.

  Nayad turned back to look at Lester. “Boy, see if you can get a fix on that airship. Hate to turn our backs on them for too long.”

  * * *

  For the second day in a row, Nayad awoke from his sleep by bad news borne by his young, disfigured crewmate.

  “It’s gone,” Lester said.

  Nayad kept his eyes closed for another moment. “Lester, I’ll tell you once more – knock at my door and wait for me to answer.” He peeked open one eye to get a fix on the young man. “Out with it. What pile of fresh steaming news do you have for me today? What’s gone, the airship?”

  “The river.”

  Nayad followed Lester up onto the deck, still adjusting his clothes as he and Lester approached Lucinda with the boy’s telescope. The morning air was cool on his face. He enjoyed it as much as he could as he crossed the deck.

  “I came up to see if he’d gotten a bead on the airship,” she said. “He hadn’t seen it, so we thought we’d get a glimpse of the river. We should be able to see it by now, but it ain’t there.”

  Nayad looked at Lester, and the boy confirmed what Lucinda said with a nod. True enough, when Nayad looked through the scope, there was no river within view. “You sure we aren’t off course?”

  “We’ve passed all the other landmarks, no problem.” Lester said. “We’re right where we’re supposed to be.”

  “But the river isn’t?” Nayad sighed.

  * * *

  The airship did, indeed, show up again an hour later. As Lucinda, Gibson, and Nayad looked on, the airship closed quickly to within a mile of the Turtle and paralleled its course west. Jansen was at the controls, and the boy had gone to his bunk for some sack time. Nayad squinted and strained his eye at the telescope but couldn’t make out any details of the airship that would officially identify it. “Hell if I know,” he said.

  “We checked it too,” Lucinda said. “Nothing.”

  “Could be one of those unmarked government ships we’ve heard rumors about,” Gibson suggested.

  Nayad laughed at the reference. “Black Craft? Folk tales and superstition. Why would the government skulk around in dark airships? I’ll wager that’s one of Cantolione’s.” He rubbed his chin and pointed to the airship in the distance. “I’ll bet he had something to do with this river situation. Probably dammed it to keep us from continuing.” His finger shifted to point at the two crewmen before him. “I want one of you watching that bastard at all times. Take turns, whatever, but I want a pair of eyes on it constantly. Right?” Lucinda and Jansen nodded reluctantly. “Right.” Nayad turned back for the hatch.

  “I’ll grab a rifle and be right back.” Lucinda shouted to Jansen over her shoulder. She didn’t wait for his response.

  “This is getting to be a busy little trip sir. I’m not sure I like it,” Lucinda said.

  Nayad nodded. The two of them stood outside Lester’s tiny cabin and waited for him to answer their pounding.

  “Ever consider knocking it on the head and finding a new career?”

  He pounded again and laughed. “Like w
hat?”

  “There are other things. More…”

  “Respectable? Safe?” Nayad interrupted.

  Lucinda raised her eyebrows. “More fulfilling.”

  “More lucrative would be nice.” The door was unlocked, and Nayad cranked the handle and pulled. “Lester?” He looked around the room and pushed his way in, with Lucinda behind him. The room was just as stark as all the others, with metal bulkheads and rivets for wall decorations and a cold steel floor. The only visible difference in Lester’s room was what was hanging from the ceiling. A taut hemp rope had a dozen or so large water bladders dangling from it.

  Nayad looked at Lucinda. “Is the boy stealing from our supply and hoarding water?”

  “I don’t think so, he told me once that he always bought a little extra water at each port just for safety sake, but…” she looked around the room. “This has to be a bathtub worth or more. This could sustain the crew for a couple of weeks if we ever got stranded.”

  Nayad stepped around the hanging bladders and scanned the rest of the room. There were also empty ones lying nearby. He looked from the full ones, dripping sweat off their leather hides, to the dry ones on the floor. “Check the hall,” Nayad pointed to the door, and Lucinda leaned out. She shook her head as he slid one of the boy’s foot lockers out from under his bunk. He had a suspicion.

  The locker was filled haphazardly with a hodgepodge of items in no particular order, which seemed unlike the boy. On top was a large box of fine salted crackers.

  “I think I know the source of the crumbs now,” Nayad said. “Those look a bit expensive for what I pay him, don’t you think?”

  Other items lining the top included a white shirt with fine ruffled cuffs, two pairs of goggles, what appeared to be a hand-crafted wooden whistle, and a peacock feather pen.

  “Is he stealing from the passengers?” Lucinda asked.

  Nayad extended a finger toward the water bladders. “More likely bartering.” He moved aside a few of the topmost items and dug down a bit. He’d seen something that caught his eye and needed to confirm it was what he thought. He tugged the flowery cloth out and held it up for Lucinda to see. “Looks like he’s trading for all kinds of things.”

  “Are those women’s underthings?” Lucinda wrinkled her nose and stepped back to the door to check the hall.

  “Looks like.”

  A shout came across the intercom. It was Gibson. “We’re approaching the river.”

  Nayad threw the garment back into the foot locker and slid the whole thing back under the bed. “Find the boy,” he said. He left her in the hall and made his way up onto the deck. He joined Jansen, who stood at the forward rail. They stared at the great muddy expanse before them that used to be the Sacramento River. There were still large puddles of standing water, a few trickles that ran like veins down the river bed and everywhere were bodies that had been washed away by the water.

  Nayad took the binoculars and focused on debris in the river bed. Some of the bodies he saw were moving, and he sighed at the ubiquity of the undead. “Is there enough water out there?”

  “I don’t know. It’d take forever to collect it. We’ll be moving around, starting, stopping, restarting. Puddle to puddle. The boys downstairs’ll be busy,” Jansen said.

  Nayad stared out over the river bed. “Check the maps, there’s a good-sized lake on the other side of the river if I remember right. We’ll drain that. To hell with this mess.” Nayad handed back the binoculars, turned and headed back toward the hatch. “Hell with it,” he mumbled and went back inside to help Lucinda.

  Gibson poked his head out of his quarters. “Sir?” He disappeared again.

  “I assumed you’d be asleep,” Nayad said. “You’ve been driving this thing for hours.”

  “Hard to sleep,” he replied.

  “Why’s that?” Lucinda joined them in the doorway.

  Gibson put a finger to his lips. “Shhh. Listen.”

  With the Turtle idling, the crunch and stomp of the great legs were silent, and the engines were quieter. Nayad heard nothing at first and then a sound he thought was a hose with a slow, intermittent leak. He stepped forward, careful not to make a noise. He paused to listen again and then moved to the nearby bulkhead. He waited for the sound again and knelt on the metal floor, where the sound was slightly louder.

  “What…?” Lucinda asked, but Nayad held her off with his hand.

  He got on all fours and put his face closer to the floor. The sound was closer. He paused to listen, to try to identify the sound, and he realized it was not a leak or a hose or steam escaping; it was someone crying and sniffling.

  “Boy?” He called through the lines of the grated metal floor. The word echoed in the ventilation system. “Lester? Is that you?”

  Lucinda knelt down and listened with Nayad. “Look. We know what you did, and it’s ok. You don’t have to be scared. We just want you to come out. It’s dangerous for you to be about without the rest of us.”

  As the woman spoke, Nayad felt a wave of relief. He had a hard time speaking with the young man in calm tones. From the time they’d taken him on as part of the crew, Nayad had spoke to him severely, as a gruff captain. It was a joke at first, trying to make the boy uncomfortable with life on the Turtle in an effort to see how far he could push the lad. The tone had stuck when Lester became a model crew member under Nayad’s command. Or so Nayad thought. Profiteering, possibly theft, and now the boy lay crying in the ductwork.

  The boy’s sobbing was accompanied by a sliding sound and both noises slowly became fainter. “I’m sorry. They knew I was coming. I’m sorry.” The sounds ended with the boy’s apology.

  “Lester!” Lucinda called. “Come out.” There was no answer.

  Gibson cleared his throat. “What do you think he meant about them knowing he was coming?”

  “Our Lester had a business of selling water to the passengers,” Lucinda said.

  Nayad nodded. “Maybe word got around. Someone we took across in the last few months might’ve spread the word.”

  There was a clatter in the hallway as the outer hatch slammed shut. Footsteps of someone running reverberated throughout the deck. Everyone turned to see Jansen run past the open door before sliding to a stop and coming back. “The ship’s changing course to intercept us.”

  Great. One more thing. Nayad thought.

  * * *

  As Lucinda and Nayad descended the stairs this time, things were different. There was still the wave of heat and stench of sweat, but it wasn’t quiet. There were moans coming from further down the staircase and a steady clank of the cage being shaken. When they reached the landing, Miss Pickerd was already waiting with her arms crossed in front of her and her bag at her feet.

  Behind her, on the other side of the cage, were several men, or what was left of them. The light was dim, but it was obvious they were dead men come alive. The front two were bloody, one with a great chunk of his shoulder gone and the other missing his arm below the elbow. They were shaking and batting at the cage with the others behind them trying to do the same.

  “Good Lord, woman. What have you done?” Lucinda asked. She pulled her pistol and aimed it at one of the men. She pulled the trigger, and the man with the missing forearm sank away, only to be replaced by a woman with a torn jaw.

  “Hope you have plenty of those bullets,” Miss Pickerd said.

  Lucinda stepped through the smoke from her first shot and pointed the gun at Pickerd. “I have at least one more.”

  “Cantolione?” Nayad said.

  “He married my cousin.” A sly smile came across her mouth.

  Nayad looked past her at the diseased monsters. “The boy?”

  “We heard about his side business. Wasn’t hard to lure him down with feminine wiles.” She winked. “I understand he’s
good eats,” Pickerd said.

  “All these people were in on it?” Lucinda asked.

  The woman in the cage shook her head. “Just a handful. They were promised safe passage on one of his airships for their families. There was no other way they’d afford it.”

  “But they’ll die down in that stinking hold,” Nayad said.

  “At least their relatives won’t.”

  “You’ll die down here,” Lucinda said. “If I don’t shoot you or the undead don’t devour you, the government might destroy this vessel if they think it’s been compromised. Whichever happens, you won’t make it out.”

  Pickerd paused and looked at the gun that Lucinda still had pointed at her.

  “You just aren’t a planner, are you?” Nayad said.

  * * *

  The Turtle moved again, slowly stomping across the riverbed. Nayad stood behind Jansen with his eye to the periscope watching the airship. “Can we go any faster? I’d like to be out of this muck so we can maneuver if we have to,” Nayad asked.

  “It’s damn slippery.”

  Across the debris field, Nayad caught a glimpse of one of the many small streams that made its way down the river bed and thought of how strong the current used to be in the this area. He’d scouted out several locations over the years, and this was the best crossing he could find. It was shallow here, and they could traverse it with relative ease. “Doesn’t the river wind through Sacramento?”

  “It did,” Jansen replied. “Why?”

  “When we first saw that black ship, it was hovering over Sacramento for some reason,” Nayad said.

  Without looking up, Jansen said, “They couldn’t have dammed the river could they?”

  “I’d think it would’ve taken a while for the water to drain out of the river bed, wouldn’t it? It must’ve already been dammed.” Nayad asked, “So what were they doing if they weren’t damming the river?” He thought about how sure he’d been that it was one of Cantolione’s ships that had come to destroy them, but why hadn’t they just attacked from a distance or flew high over head, bombing the Turtle into the ground? And why give the warning?