Author: Patrick Kapera
October 31, 1878 Founder’s Day
Clell Miller thrummed his fingers over the thin envelope and considered how to bring Max Baine down. The documents and photos inside were fabricated, of course, and the counterfeit operations and zombie mining operations they pointed to were Clell’s designs, but they would stand up in what passed for a court in Gomorra today. It was enough to convince everyone that the “valiant champion of the underdog” was indeed nothing more than a thief and a diabolist. He’d come so far since his days on the trail, when looting and robbery were the name of the game. Power brokering had replaced six-shooters and his life had become much more complicated. But ultimately, the faster pace suited him. Miller had a mind for numbers – and extortion – and found the life of a Sweetrock mogul very much to his liking. And since the shift in power last year, since Mr. Prim went missing and Findley was committed to the asylum, Clell nearly had the run of the place. He would be in charge now if it weren’t for Max Baine and his silly assistant, Walter Ponds. But soon enough that would all change.
Duvalier stepped into Clell’s office and placed a telegram on the desk. “Came for you while I was at the Rail Station.” Clell stared at the telegram for several seconds. “Aren’t you going to open it?” Duvalier asked. Clell knew what the telegram was about. There was only one person whom he’d been in contact with outside Sweetrock channels. Now he found himself both anxious and nervous, because it could make or break his future. It could quite literally mean life or death for him. With shaky fingers, he opened the telegram and read it. A moment later, his eyes lit up and a broad smile crossed his face. “They’ve agreed,” he said in a low tone, not truly believing it yet. “They’ve agreed!” He nearly leaped from his chair. “Splendid!” Duvalier shared Clell’s enthusiasm, as much as his character would allow. “What are their terms?”
“Well, the first is that we take care of Max Baine,” Clell answered. “Which means that you’ll have to distract Mr. Ponds.” Duvalier’s smile grew twisted at the edges and his eyes narrowed in anticipation. “I’d be delighted.”
“Good. You get him out of the way for a few hours while Pierce and I get this,” Clell lifted the envelope, “to Mr. Evans. Then we’ll see how happy Baine’s days are!”
The Pacific Maze Rail Station was crowded and smelly and had been so for over a week. The Chinese migrant laborers Sweetrock had previously employed were being relocated, and it seemed that their egress through the station would never end. Clell, flanked by Scott Pierce and his hired guns – Juliet Sumner, Wendigo Garrison, and Rhett Caulfield – made their way through the masses toward the train bound for Salt Lake City, where Evan Childes waited for the evidence they carried. Pressing their way onto a rear car, Clell handed the group’s tickets to the conductor and made their way to the private cabin they had rented. The sliding door leading into the cabin was open less than an inch but it was enough to draw Caulfield’s attention. The gunman slipped forward of the party and up against the wall next to the door, then reached out to gently push it open. Before his fingers contacted the door, however, it slid the rest of the way open and a low Asian voice said from within, “Come in, come in, and sit down. We have much to discuss.” Scott Pierce pushed into the room to find a thin, lithe Chinese man wearing simple clothing and a Jingasa hat hanging over his shoulders by a strap around his neck. “Shigetoshi Hohiro,” Clell Miller said, entering behind Pierce. Miller was the only person who had seen the Shaolin mystic other than Garrison, and the outlaw wasn’t inclined to speak at the moment. “We thought all the Rats had fled north for good.”
“Not fled,” Shigetoshi corrected. “Regrouped. The Iron Dragon will own this Valley before long.”
“The Iron Dragon, huh?” Miller scoffed. “That what you’re calling yourselves these days? I suppose you have a shiny new boat and everything.” The Maze Rat couldn’t withhold a chuckle. “Something like that.”
“What do you want?” Scott Pierce interrupted. “My, these new Sweetrock types are all business, aren’t they? Very well, we desire the contents of the envelope that Mr. Miller is carrying.”
“You don’t ask much, do you?” Wendigo Garrison said with a thick helping of sarcasm. “And the surrender of Sweetrock West operations to the Iron Dragon and its controllers.”
“Now hang on just a minute!” Scott Pierce blustered, suddenly on the defensive. “This is not a request!” Shigetoshi drowned the other voices in the cabin out. “I’m giving you one chance to survive after the Iron Dragon claims Gomorra and the Motherlode.”
Without a word of warning, Juliet’s pistols were level with Shigetoshi’s head and her boot was planted squarely on his chest. Caulfield stood ready to back her up if the bullets started flying. “You might want to rethink that, Rat!”
The window beside Hohiro exploded inward and two figures dove in, collapsing Jewel and Caulfield in one frenzy of moment. In their place, two Asian warriors faced the Sweetrock executives and Wendigo Garrison – one young and sculpted, wearing light and flowing clothes; the other an ancient husk, balding and withered. “Sin Je! Shi Kuan! The envelope!”
Garrison stepped in front of Clell Miller and pulled his pistol, but felt it ripped from his hands the instant it left the holster, kicked away by Sin Je’s lightning fast foot. Shi Kuan, despite his age, followed up with a strike to Garrison’s throat, which sent him reeling backward through the cabin door. A moment later, Shi Kuan leapt toward him, grabbed the cabin doorframe and swept up, kicking Garrison out the window across the hall and into the crowds of milling migrant workers outside. Several of them grabbed him and lifted him up, carrying him away into the station. His voice trailed away as if he’d fallen from a great cliff.
“The envelope,” Shigetoshi repeated.
Clell reached into his satchel then paused as he noticed a shadow move outside the cabin window – a shadow that grew and writhed. Clell dove for the floor, dragging Scott Pierce with him as a tentacle crashed through the window and wrapped around Shigetoshi’s neck, pulling him backward and pinning him to the shattered frame. More figures stepped in through the cabin door – a pair of children with furry legs and cloven hooves who appeared to be twins. They leapt at the martial artists, using the enormous strength of their hindquarters to knock them down and then kick them into unconsciousness. Scott Pierce glanced around for another way out, assuming that these were more enemies – Whateleys, perhaps – also after the envelope, or their blood. But Clell seemed unfazed by their appearance and rifled through a cabinet for some smelling salts, which he handed to Pierce, pointing to Jewel and Caulfield. Then he stepped over to Hohiro, who struggled against the infernal mass holding him in place, and clucked his tongue at him.
“You underestimate us, Rat. This is not the Gomorra you once knew, and we are not the same Sweetrock. Do not return here.” A sudden explosion rocked the train as screams rose throughout the station. The train lifted from the rails and landed just a shade off from where it was previously, and slid sideways, pitching everyone in the room sideways, into Hohiro and the tentacle. The beast was stiff and pulsed as if in pain and fire licked at its edges. Some explosive device, a large one from the feel of it, had just been dropped on the creature, and had derailed the train.
“Come on!” Jewel screamed, grabbing at Clell’s collar and dragging him backward, out of the cabin and through the askew hallway. Midway to the door, she used the butt of her pistol to smash a window out and crawled through, again dragging Miller through after her. Pierce and Caulfield brought up the rear, rising through the train’s side window just as another blast went off, this one detonating the engine car and sending everyone in the area down for cover.
“What in Heaven?” Pierce screamed, to no one in particular.
“Get down!” Jewel said, pushing him down to the floor and covering the group with her twin sidearms. “Where to, Miller?” Clell looked to the skies for the origin of the bombs and caught sight of two biplanes circling and heading back north. They were pained in scarlet hues and looked like giant eagles. The Maze Rats have some new toys, he considered. I wonder what else they have up their sleeves? “Where to?” Jewel repeated, raising her voice to draw Clell’s attention.
“This way,” he said, finally, leading them through the rail station office and through a back door, into an alley nearly at the outskirts of town. “Looks like we’ll have to call in some old favors!”
Ten miles north, a single stagecoach wound through the plains, headed for Gomorra. Inside, two monks cared for a young boy who’d sweat through his clothes, his skin blistered and flushed. “Have you ever seen one live this long?” the first monk asked. “I’ve never seen one live at all,” the second answered, observing the boy with deep concern. “Maybe Po Yu has misinterpreted the signs? Maybe there isn’t a visionary among us this generation.”
“Perhaps,” the first answered, “but it isn’t our place to question him. We must simply obey.”
“But he’s just a child,” the second said, petting Chao Li’s forehead.
“The gods must have their voice,” the first stated flatly, raising Chao Li’s eyelid and examining the pasty orbs within. “He’s ready.”
“How long does he have left?”
“A few hours, at least. After that, it’s up to his spirit.” The first monk lifted Chao Li and carried him out onto the plain, setting him down in the shade of a rock. “Good fortune go with you,” he said, wiping the sweat from the Maze Rat’s brow. Then he made his way back to the stagecoach and directed the driver to head west, back to the edge of the Maze, to the Iron Dragon stronghold.
Nearly an hour after the coach vanished over the horizon, Chao Li stirred, the images in his mind collecting into a swirl of bright green. Lifting himself to his knees, the boy looked around to find nothing but prairie and sun. He closed his eyes and concentrated, focusing on the words of his mentor, Po Yu: “Yours is a powerful legacy, boy. Your strength is in the senses beyond sight, sound, and touch. Let them guide you, and fate will always favor you.”
Chao Li’s conscious thoughts slowed to a crawl as he allowed himself to look past his surroundings, into the world around him, the few people toiling in the mines closest to town, and the rock they harvested. The ghost rock! That was why he was here. He knew that it was the solution to this puzzle, that it could save him from the infection raging through his body.
He allowed his thoughts to venture further, deeper into the earth, where the ground and its contents were older, and evil rested. He detected movement there – a flow of pure, unadulterated evil which threatened to consume the entire Valley. He knew its face, knew that it was once something else, something far greater in body but less in spirit than it had become. And it was rising to the surface in pieces, seeping into everything and everyone in Gomorra, preparing them for some incredible metamorphosis into. What? Chao Li couldn’t make out the future forms of the town’s inhabitants, but he knew that they were not human, that they threatened the entire world. The river beneath the town was a poison, a plague of pestilence and bile. But it was also his salvation. He alone might be able to endure direct contact with it, to endure the change that would either cure the poison in his system or end his life. Either way, he would become something new. Chao Li rose to his feet, acquired his bearings, and let his sixth sense guide him toward the nearest mine. Only a few miles, he thought. If I can’t make it that far, then I don’t deserve the opportunity to live.
Charlie Landers ducked low behind a brightly colored wagon, his eyes darting around anxiously. “This is as far as I go, Ponds,” he said to the Sweetrock bodyguard.
“Understood,” Walter responded. “This ‘Troupe,’ they’re –”
“Not your everyday visitors, no.” Charlie’s voice was laced with sarcasm, a cover for fear. “Be careful in there.”
“Where will you be?” Walter asked as several laughing carnies stumbled by. Charlie dove beneath the wagon and prepared to run if necessary.
“Wherever the Troupe aren’t.” Then he swiveled and run out from under the wagon, into the shadow of a nearby tent.
“Well, folks,” Walter said, drawing his trusty Colt Army .44. “Looks like it’s show time.” Walter led the quick charge through the camp, with Sandra Harris and Robert Northrop trailing behind. All three kept low and close to the tents and wagons, heading deep toward the far end, beyond the cheerful carnival that Charlie had told them was only an illusion. Within moments of clearing the carnival proper, they came to a series of stagecoaches obviously belonging to the owners of the carnival. Voices could be heard within the coach to the rear.
“You come at an unfortunate time, Miller,” came the slippery voice of Old Scratch, the ringmaster. “The Troupe have no plans to leave Gomorra anytime soon. Besides, I’ve already placed you in contact with the Black Circle. If anything, you owe me a favor.”
“The way I see it, Scratch, my alliance with the Black Circle benefits you as much as it does me, and maybe more. After all, the more friends you have in this town, the better, am I right?”
“You’re quite observant,” Scratch said after a moment, “for a simple man.”
“You don’t help us, Sweetrock West is Max’s for good and the deal with Devlin is off. Whatdya say, Scratch? Will you get us out?” Outside, Sandra nudged Walter and pointed up into the sky, where four planes streaked overhead.
“Perfect,” Walter muttered. Moments later, the planes turned and dove, arcing to an altitude of less than a hundred feet, and angled to fly directly over the carnival. “Get down!” Walter screamed, diving to the ground and rolling beneath the rear wagon. Sandra followed and rolled on top of him, unaware of her actions until they’d already happened. Robert Northrop stood his ground, watching as the planes fanned out and began strafing the carnival from front to back. He fingered the Colt Peacemaker that Walter had given him and raised it toward the central onrushing plane.
“Um, uh, sorry,” Sandra stammered, looking about to dissuade the anger she knew must be peaking in Robert, then, noticing that he was still in the open, started crawling toward him. Walter grabbed hold of her and pulled her back, however, well aware of the rain of bullets that was coming.
“Sandra, wait!” he screamed over the machinegun fire. “You’ll be killed out there!”
“Robert!” she screamed, struggling in Walter’s arms. “He’ll be fine, Sandra. He’s better equipped to handle this than we are.” Walter was glad he’d caught himself before he’d used the word “zombie,” but it didn’t help to ease his own worry at all. He knew that even zombies could be killed, and, with the number of bullets flying around right now, Robert surviving the next few moments wasn’t a bet he’d take on a good day. Robert leveled the pistol at the plane and aimed, carefully, waiting until the plane was immediately overhead. When the wail of its engines peaked, he fired, falling back into the stagecoach from the recoil, and allowed himself to drop to the ground, bullets riddling his torso and the wood behind him. Above, he faintly head the shatter of glass and a scream as one of the planes failed to pull up after the strafing run and skidding into the plains beyond the carnival. Seconds later, a ball of fire erupted into the night sky a half mile away, casting a shadow over Robert as the stagecoach door opened and a man in a well-tailored suit and top hat stepped out.
“My goodness,” Scratch said, kneeling next to Robert, “you took more than your share of fire, didn’t you?”
“I, uh.” Robert, still dazed from the seven gaping wounds he’d suffered, couldn’t respond.
“Let me help you.” Scratch placed his hands on Robert’s shoulders and closed his eyes. Momentarily, the harrowed miner started to feel warmer, elated, euphoric. The effect spread down his body as the wounds closed and the skin returned to a “healthy” shade of slate gray. “There, now get back to the cages. It’s not safe for the lesser minions to be out right now.”
“Yes. yes!” Robert said, rising to his feet. Scratch was already on the move, stalking around the stagecoach and deeper into Troupe territory.
“Robert! Are you alright?” Sandra’s voice came up from under the coach. He knelt and looked below, where Sandra and Walter lay on the ground, covered in dirt stains.
“I’m fine,” Northrop answered. “The ringmaster mistook me for one of his minions.”
“I got one of the planes, but –” Robert recoiled as the coach door suddenly exploded outward and Jewel Sumner fell backward onto the ground, guns blazing.
“Demon!” she screamed after her. “He’s a demon!” Robert rolled under the coach as well, hoping that Jewel hadn’t seen him. Glass shattered outward on the other side of the coach and someone hit the ground rolling, breaking into a full run.
“Caulfield,” Walter said, craning his neck around to see who the figure was. “What the hell’s going on in there?”
“Sumner said demons,” Robert answered.
Walter sighed and shook his head. “Better and better.” The trio could hear the sounds of fighting on the ground in the distance, and that it was spreading through the carnival, toward the Troupe’s line of coaches. “We haven’t got a lot of time,” Sandra said, but Robert hushed her, putting a finger to his lips and staring through a crack in the coach’s floor above.
“I can see Pierce and Miller. Wait! … oh, my.” Miller was pinned to a chair by Pierce, whose face was clearly visible. The pupils of the Sweetrock representative’s eyes were red as blood and fangs had grown out of his incisors.
“He’s a vampire!” Robert whispered, astonished.
“What? Who?” Walter asked, keeping his voice low, but Robert hushed him as well, still focused on the scene unfolding within the coach.
“I’m afraid your little conspiracy to run Gomorra’s rail lines is over,” Pierce growled. “Gomorra belongs to Sweetrock, not the Black Circle and certainly not the Troupe. Progress has no place for degenerates or demons.”
“Have you looked in a mirror lately, Pierce? You’re not exactly the picture of noble humanity.”
“My condition is a temporary one, I assure you. Besides, at the moment,” Pierce hooked his hand under Miller’s chin and lifted him off the chair, “it’s quite useful.” Pierce spun around and threw Clell across the coach and out the front door, shattering the railing of its light wooden stairway, and landed, unconscious, on the ground outside.
Walter made to dive out toward the body, to grab the envelope in his breast pocket, but Robert help him fast, saying, “It isn’t over yet. Pierce is coming out.” Robert and the others fell deeper into shadow under the coach as Scott Pierce hopped onto the ground beside Clell and rummaged through his pockets, eventually finding the envelope and slipping it into his own dress coat.
The sounds of fighting were dangerously close now and the sound of the planes rose overhead. Another strafing run began, sending wood chunks and screams into the air toward the front of the carnival. Pierce twisted as a mass of slimy tendrils wrapped around something that might have been a woman tore through the tent beside him. One of the Iron Dragon kung fu warriors followed the monster, swinging a chain with a sharp hooked end over his head. The kung fu warrior threw the weapon’s end at the creature, wrapping the chain around a tendril several times until the claw dug into its pale red-brown flesh. The creature held the chain tight and struck the chain with another tendril, snapping it in two, then followed the defensive maneuver with three quick lashes with its other appendages. The warrior fell backward, unconscious. Red welts appeared over his face, chest, and neck where the tendrils had hit, which soon burst and leaked foul-looking fluids.
Pierce was running now but, seeing the inhuman speed of the monster behind him, stopped and leapt up onto the coach where Robert and the others were hidden. The creature slithered toward the coach as Pierce ran toward the far edge and leapt off, heading for the next one forward. As he landed, the creature slithered beneath the first coach, forcing the trio to roll away, out and into the open, and lifted it up from the ground. The creature obviously meant to throw the coach at Pierce, assuming him to be another intruder, but it was caught short as the second round of strafing began. Bullets ripped through the Troupe’s coach line, eliciting a wild bellow from the minion and shattering wood and glass everywhere. Walter grabbed Sandra and dove toward the creature, using it as cover, tiny dirt explosions pitching into the air all around them.
“He’s down!” Robert screamed to the others, diving through the gunfire toward the coach that Scott Pierce had leapt onto. Walter and Sandra couldn’t make it to Robert before the coach previously held by the minion crashed into the ground between them, cutting off their path. Both fell back, seeking cover in the other direction. The creature collapsed over their shadows behind them.
Robert approached Scott Pierce’s unmoving body cautiously, knowing that his kind didn’t have to breathe. He looked unconscious, but anything was possible with a vampire. The dirt surrounding Pierce shifted and Robert paused. Two hands rose through the ground and crawled onto the body, cut away from their owners at the wrist. Soon more followed, and Scott Pierce’s body was covered in animate hands, each taking a defensive stance over him like he was their property. The sound of clapping from the shadows drew Robert’s attention, but also sent him into the shadows again, hiding from the newcomer. Old Scratch stepped into the evening light, his hands coming together with pride.
“Goood, children. Good. We have a prize.”
“Any chance you might want to trade?” came a distinctly Asian voice from across the ruined carnival ‘street.’ Quon Lin approached the ringmaster, leading a small gang of kung fu warriors and carrying a diminutive figure cursing up a storm. “Put me down, Lee!” Charlie Landers yelled up at Lin. “I’ll punch you in the –”
“Charlie.” Scratch purred, looking the disfigured dwarf over. “How long has it been?”
“Not long enough!”
“Yes,” Scratch continued, looking Pierce over. “I think we can arrange a trade.”
Three hours later, Walter, Sandra, and Robert crawled to the lip of a ridge above the Howlin’ Hollow Strike, where the Maze Rats had taken Scott Pierce. The area around the mine had been scoured of black, withered trees and the ground leveled, creating a wide, flat expanse that was being converted into a runway.
“The biplanes,” Sandra commented. Walter nodded and watched the strike, an enormous rock outcropping in the shape of a human skull, the gaping entrance its moaning mouth. Guards sat in the eye sockets, miniature caves above the entrance, scanning the surrounding terrain for intruders. One or two more guards could be seen just inside the cave mouth.
“They’re waiting for something,” he said. “Maybe the planes are only part of this … Iron Dragon?”
“Look!” Robert pointed to the east, where a single figure stalked the high cliffs, angling toward the Howlin’ Hollow. He carried a shotgun and moved carefully, ensuring that no step kicked dirt or pebbles to the ground, alerting the guards to his presence. When he was within ten feet of the strike, he climbed upward, toward the rightmost eye socket, and hid in a crevice a few feet away.
“Nash Bilton,” Walter said. “What’s he doing here?”
“Breaking in, from the look of it,” Sandra answered. Nash swung into the eye socket and wrapped his legs around the guard’s neck, twisting quickly. There was sharp crack as the guard’s neck snapped, and he plummeted out of the cave, landing in front of the mine’s entrance. Two guards leaped out of the lower cavern, searching upward for their attacker, but Nash already had his shotgun out and pulled a single trigger for each, dropping them both in a matter of seconds. Then Nash turned and vanished from sight, venturing deeper into the strike, into the Maze Rat’s base.
“What do we do?” Robert asked.
“Bilton’s blazed the trail. Let’s use it,” Walter answered, leading the others down toward the strike. It was a simple matter to follow Nash Bilton through the caverns. The periodic discovery of an unconscious or dead guard acted like a trail of breadcrumbs, leading the trio deep into the earth. Minutes after entering the tunnels, Walter and the others came upon a most unexpected conversation.
“Forty percent,” Po Yu offered.
“Twenty,” Scott Pierce answered. The bargainers were surrounded by a cadre of kung fu warriors, within a cavern that opened up to thirty feet across some fifteen feet below. Several tunnels led off from this central chamber, in all directions.
“Thirty,” Po Yu said, “and we keep the fruits of Mr. Miller’s labors.”
“Done!”
“The double-crossing snake!” Walter Ponds spat. “He’s selling us out.” A sudden shotgun blast startled the group huddling in the tunnel, as one of the kung fu warriors below exploded into the chamber. Nash Bilton stepped over his body, one barrel of his weapon still smoking. “I’ve been hired to get you out of here, Mr. Pierce. Come on, we’re leaving.”
“Bilton!” Pierce chimed. “The corporate office mentioned that they might send you. I’m glad to see that we’ll have an extra gun for the journey east.”
“My rent only gets me to the Valley’s edge, Pierce. After that, you’re on your own.”
Pierce’s lower lip rose in acknowledgment. “Fair enough.” Then turning back to Po Yu, he asked, “Shall we take this discussion onto the road?”
“We’re outnumbered,” Robert said, “and outgunned. We need a distraction.” A split-second later, the tunnels rocked violently and sent dirt raining down from the ceiling. The thunderous report of a powerful explosion near the front of the strike resounded through the mines, announcing the arrival of new hostiles.
“Ask and you shall receive,” came Walter’s cocky reply. Shouts from the strike’s forward guards followed the sound of more fighting, and moments later, one of them rushed into the central chamber. “The Whateleys!” he cried, “and the Black Circle! They’re here!”
Po Yu and Scott Pierce followed several of the most able-bodies warriors in the room out a side passage as most of the others left for defensive positions elsewhere. Only two guards were left in the room below, which Walter dispatched with two quick squeezes of his trigger finger.
“We have to follow them! Let’s go!” Walter Ponds dropped down to the cavern floor and ducked into the tunnel after Po Yu and Pierce. Robert and Sandra followed, keeping close to him but off to the sides, so they might fire on any guards they came across without hitting Walter himself. Soon, they came out under the evening sky, exiting the caverns into a war zone. The air was acrid with the smell of spent gunpowder and the noise was overwhelming. Overhead, the few biplanes which hadn’t been caught on the ground and destroyed by the steel carriages and slithering monsters of the Black Circle fought to offer cover for Po Yu and Scott Pierce, helping them get to the highest ridge alongside the strike. Ponds followed, with Sandra and Robert close behind, but their path up to the ridge was cut off as an obese huckster and two attractive women stepped in front of them. Together, they worked some sort of foul magic to keep the trio at bay as other abominations and hucksters scurried up toward their prey above.
Sandra fired, catching the huckster in the shoulder and disrupting the spell. One of the assistants returned fire with a throwing card, which blazed white hot, smoldering with infernal fury. Robert shoved Sandra out of the way and the card grazed his shoulder, leaving a wide, oozing gash behind. Walter fired, winging the other assistant before she could conjure another hellfire bolt, and swung back behind an outcropping for cover.
Without warning, the cliff face exploded outward, consuming the hucksters and bathing those below in rocks and smoke. A figure appeared from within the cliff side, stepping out into the evening air with a stiff, calculated gait. When the smoke started to clear, Walter and the others made the figure out to be Chao Li, the young Maze Rat ingénue, though he had certainly changed considerably since the last time they’d seen him. Now he walked with the acquired confidence of a man in total control of his surroundings, who inherently knew that his power was greater that that of everyone around him. Chao Li considered Robert Northrop and Sandra Harris, then moved down into the fighting below.
“Stay here,” Walter said to the other two. “I’ll get Pierce myself.” As Walter climbed the ridges toward the summit, he was suddenly aware of a high-pitched engine roaring above. Moments later, a shadow fell over the strike and its surrounding environs as a zeppelin rose above the ridge, a rope ladder hanging toward the ground. Po Yu and Scott Pierce, already mid-way up the ladder, quickly climbed the remainder and vanished inside the enormous metal blimp. Walter increased his pace but was already far too late. The zeppelin swept out over the open battlefield and the ladder was drawn inside, eliminating his last hope to get to Pierce before he left the Valley.
November 1, 1878 The Last Kingdom
Max Baine looked over his shoulder again to see if he was being followed, and slipped inside St. Martin’s Church. Victims of recent fighting were still cramped into the rear chambers of the building, tended to by members of Father Terrance’s congregation. Baine sought out Terrance’s office, where he found the priest pouring over a high stack of open books. “We’ve lost Sweetrock.” The weight of the event felt much heavier now that he’d said it. “And the Iron Dragon have seized Clell Miller’s counterfeiting equipment and the zombie-run mines.”
“I heard,” Terrance said, completing a final translation. “But we have more pressing problems. I’ve finally made it through the Missionary’s Bible. It explains Elijah’s plans for Gomorra.”
“Uh huh.” The apprehension was clear in Baine’s voice.
“The ritual he performed at Gulgoleth was supposed to transport the entire Valley into Heaven, where it would be transformed into this ‘Last Kingdom’ the Angels have been talking about. Only I think he was a little off about the destination.”
“The storm front.”
Terrance nodded. “If my translations are right, the storm will be here in a matter of hours. Then we’ll have twelve hours before it blows over.”
“In the meantime?”
“In the meantime, Max, it’s gonna be Hell.”
Doomtown Classic Archives 