Abney Park's The Wrath Of Fate (23 page)

I can only assume these were beasts the Emperor’s predecessor had brought back from extinction in an effort to “restore balance”. If so, why bring these creatures back? Was it to have a large enough food source to feed the now overrun populations of man-eating predators?

Each massive beast pulled one or two multiple floored hauls as the tribe rode around them on camels. I could hardly imagine a more exotic scene then the pale yellow sands, the brightly painted hauls, the turbaned riders, and strange assortment of beasts from large to immensely large!

That was not the only unusual wildlife I saw. I almost lost my life that evening to a herd of deer-sized beasts with antlers like a gazelle, and what appeared to be two short trunks! I have no idea what they were, but they were spread thickly on the road in a massive herd of at least a hundred beasts. I had just crested a small hill and when I cleared the top I found myself plunging into the herd. They only just darted to the side in time to allow me to break right in the middle of the herd.

I sat, engines rumbling and sputtering, in the middle of this mass of stupid and timid animals. As the sun started to set, I honked my little horn to try to get them to move. They just plodded slowly onward, hardly noticing me and at times even bumping into me. I must have sat there a good twenty minutes, wondering what to do, and thinking of the shotgun.

In my head I had started to call them elelope. That’s “elephant” plus “antelope”, since they looked like an antelope with a couple small elephant trunks. “Antephant’ really didn’t seem to fit them. Eventually something spooked them. The beasts at the head of the herd started to turn back around, making a panicked noise that sounded desperate and fearful. The dumb beasts around me did nothing to alter their course, and some were knocked down as the others pushed in.

Finally, the entire herd started to run in the other direction, and I could see why. Over their heads, I could see three beasts as large as SUVs, hunched and spread in a stalking formation. They had thick prickly fur, long at the shoulders, but short on their legs and hindquarters, and a spotted pattern like hyenas. Their immense size would have made a Siberian tiger cower and run. I swear I could
smell
them coming.

I couldn’t really move until the herd had raced past, but when I could I gunned the engine, and darted to one side. This sound, however, drew the beasts attention. The nearest leaped a good twenty feet toward me. I saw him coming and I turned to the side, and throttled hard. When he landed where I had been, he slide six feet in the dirt and gravel. A drawback of being that large is that you have more inertia, so stopping isn’t easy. A house cat would have changed directions instantly upon hitting the ground, and would have pinned me before I could get away. By the time he corrected his course, I was now bulleting full speed through the herd.

It leaped again, but I was not so much his target as he was interested in catching the nearest prey. It pinned some poor beast behind me and stood on it as it thrashed briefly, and then resolved to its fate.

This I saw through my rearview mirror. I didn’t turn my head to look back.

In a few moments I burst out the front of the herd, and headed down the empty road with a new fear and respect for the growing darkness around me.

Over the next few hours, the sides of the road began to fill with trees, and I crossed over many little bridges, until finally I was on a raised spit between long, low marshes. Fireflies swirled in the bushes, and the sounds of croaking frogs could be heard audibly over the engines.

Finally, the road turned to wooden planks. This dock and its skewed pylons led about a quarter mile out to a small shack. The sky had turned to midnight blue, dark and foreboding between the trees, but there was a warm, inviting glow coming from the shack. Silhouetted in this light was a large crouched figure, seven feet tall, with unnaturally square shoulders.

He held in his hand what looked like a demolition bar. This was a six-foot long steel bar that is used to tear apart buildings or cars. It’s nearly as thick as your wrist, and is immensely heavy. The shadow held it lightly in one hand, and a dim glow came from were its eyes must be.

“Turn away, Bedouin. Your tribe is elsewhere.
My
road ends here,” said the voice, raspy, yet strong and threatening. It spoke with the confidence of a man who had won a hundred confrontations of this nature, but this was not a man.

I got off my bike.

“Turn back, Bedouin. Your motion will bring the crocks. They know I am not their food, so they leave me alone, but I’m sure they can smell you already.” At this, something moved in the water.

My eyes searched the black marsh, and I swear I saw a beast the size of a school bus slowly shift under the blackness to point towards me.

“Gyrod, I’m here to speak to you. Your sister has sent me! She has left the city, and wants to see you!” I yelled back to him.

Two things happened at once. First, a massive exaggeration of a crocodile, thirty feet long, with crooked teeth the size of my feet, eyes wild and hungry, put one massive, clawed foot onto the dock. Its head and body lay under the water nearly out of view, and it lifted the tip of its nose into the light and snorted.

The other thing that happened was that a small child of five, in a little white lacy dress, slipped past her stoic guardian, and was running towards me unaware of the beast in the water!

The Automaton yelled in a voice of pained fear and pity, “This is not your father, Isabella, come back to the house!”

The child was nearly to where the beast lay in wait, her eyes on me, and I could see the lizard’s huge nostrils flair as it took in her scent. It was slowly raising its mouth from the water in perfect anticipation.

I didn’t think. Forgetting my shotgun, I leaped from my bike and ran toward her. At the same time, the clockwork man started toward the beast, but as he took his second step, a rattling, scrapping sound came from his torso, a kind of
Screeeee-chika-chika-chika-chika!
He grabbed at his chest in pain. This sound drew the attention of the beast, and as it swung its head up over the dock to look, the weight of its massive claw broke through, knocking the child to the ground.

I ran to her, and fell on the uneven dock. Together we slid towards the beast, and as my boots hit it, I grabbed the child. The beast swung its head back around and over us, and it opened its foul, blackened mouth.

At this point, the clockwork man pounded his chest hard, denting the metal, which made the scrapping sound quiet, then he leaped into the air. The wrecking bar came down on the head of the beast, and in doing so changed the shape of its skull. At this the beast thrashed in the water, its tail swung into the dock sending planks spinning into the air.

The automaton pulled the bar back, and thrust it into the beast’s cheek. The bar sank two feet into the dark green flesh, and the beast pulled back from the dock in horror, swinging the man like a rag doll.

I held the child, stood, and ran for the house. As I ran, I watched the clockwork man standing astride the beast. He lifted the bar again to strike, but as he did the rattling scrapping sound came again.
Screeeee-chika-chika-chika –chika!.
He froze mid-swing and stumbled backward into the water.

The beast pulled back, facing where the clockwork man had sunk, and slowly submerged.

I ran up the porch of the house, stumbling on an overturned dollhouse, and threw open the screen door. I set the child on a wooden bench, and with a “Stay!” I turned and ran back out.

On the porch stood the automaton, with scrapped and stained copper and brass fitting dripping with mud, black blood, and swamp grass. He grasped at his chest in pain.

All he said was, “My sister?”

FATHER

The cabin was a single room, containing a small dinette set, a kitchen, a double bed, and two child-sized beds. We put five-year-old Isabella in a bed next to her eight-year-old sister who had managed to sleep through the night’s events.

The little cabin was a mess. Dishes were on the floor with half-eaten food stuck to them. Spoons and plates stuck to the blankets of the beds. Couch cushions had been taken from the old sofa, and arranged into a fort in the center of the room. There was a pile of unopened canned food in the corner of the kitchen, and a pile of old half-emptied cans on the floor around it.

“I apologize for the mess,” said the brass man. “But I have been traveling further and further away to find food for them. The girls are good, and stay inside when told, but they do make a mess when I’m gone.”

Visibly tired, he began to tidy up. “I was not made for domestic duties,” he said, trying his best to pick up a glass bowl with his huge brass fists. “I was not made to take care of children. I was made to protect, not to nurture. But with their parents dead six months now, ‘protecting’ has more responsibilities than it used to.”

He was quiet for a minute. “Tell me of my sister.”

So I told him of the doll, and the floating city. I told him of our airship, and the broken Chrononautilus.

“I guess our ship needs some work. How about you? What is that grating sound I keep hearing whenever you are about to do something strenuous?” I said.

“My flywheel. I have weighted wheels inside me. When I am about to leap or run, or swing my rod, it spins up inertia that I can then use for extra momentum. But it’s been damaged. Bent. It doesn’t fit just right any longer, and so as it spins it vibrates and drags against my heart. This heats up, and can occasionally lock things up inside until I cool,” he said.

“Can it be replaced?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I found a replacement, in a…well, a few miles from here. But I don’t know what will happen it I take the old one out. I could die,” he said.

“Forgive my ignorance, but couldn’t you just be restarted? Perhaps if I…” I said, but he interrupted me.

“It doesn’t work like that,” he said.

We had talked now so long the sun was beginning to rise. As it did the children woke.

First the eldest woke up, and she sat in bed staring at me with her blinking, sleep-blurred eyes. She was a girl of eight, with red pigtails and a freckly face. Her eyes were green, and looked like they had seen recent tears. As she watched me, she absentmindedly took a small, broken plastic crown from her night stand and put it on her head, as if it was simply what one did first thing in the morning.

When the other child woke, without opening her eyes she got out of her bed and climbed into her sister’s, and hugged her. Then, still without opening her eyes she went back to her bed, grabbed a rag doll from under her pillow, and then got back into bed with her sister.

Gyrod said, “Eventually the wheel is just going to freeze up. At that point I will stop. There is no way of telling when it will happen, but I will die.”

Under his rasping deep tones, I heard a soft voice ask her sister, “Is that daddy?” They were looking at me.

“So I suppose I should just try to change the gear. But if I fail, the girls will be alone. And if I die because I didn’t try to replace it, the girls will also be alone. “