The Curious Case Of The Clockwork Man (35 page)

“Absolutely correct, Mr. Faithfull. Do you agree, Mr. Cribbins?”

“Indeed! Indeed! My apologies, Doctor Monroe, and thank you very much indeed for allowing us to tour your fine establishment. I think it fair to say that it has made an indelible impression on all three of us.”

Monroe smiled and shook Burton’s hand, then Burke’s, then Hare’s.

They proceeded down to the lobby and out onto the front steps. Monroe bade them a final farewell and indicated a horse-drawn carriage waiting on the driveway. “This will take you across the grounds to the main—
Ugh!
”

“Gate,” Burton finished.

Monroe blinked at him, pursed his lips, turned, and disappeared back into the hospital.

The king’s agent looked at the sky and frowned. The atmosphere was thick and steamy, and through it, ugly smudges of smoke could be seen drifting raggedly overhead. Flakes of ash were falling.

“It’s been a while since we had a London particular,” he muttered.

They climbed into the carriage and, a couple of minutes later, arrived at the big main gate, in which a smaller door was set.

They thanked the driver and tipped their hats to the guard who opened the door for them.

Sir Richard Francis Burton, Damien Burke, and Gregory Hare stepped out of the mental asylum into—
madness!

Resistance to aggression is not simply justified, but imperative.

—Herbert Spencer

London was ablaze.

At ground level, the smoke was suffocating. Hellish red and orange light flared through the swirling clouds.

“What the—”

Burton was cut off by a scream of fury. A man came tearing out of the murk, dressed only in trousers and boots, his naked upper body smeared with blood, sweat, and soot. His face was contorted with animal ferocity, and before they could react, he swung a pitchfork with vicious force into Damien Burke’s upper left arm.

Burke fell sideways with a yell of pain.

Gregory Hare jumped onto the back of the attacker, snatched the pitchfork out of his hand and threw it aside, wrapped a huge forearm around the man’s neck, and squeezed. Seconds later, he was lowering the limp body to the pavement.

Burton snapped back into himself. The assault had been so sudden and brutal that he’d stood frozen, disassociated.

“Damn it!” he muttered, and joined Hare on his knees at Burke’s side.

“It’s bad,” Burke gasped. “Broken.”

“You’re losing blood. Hare, give me your cravat. We need to get a tourniquet on him right away. Don’t worry, old man,” he encouraged Burke. “We’ll have you fixed up in no time.”

“Mr. Hare will attend to me, Captain,” Burke responded weakly. “I recommend you draw your spine-gun and see to our defence.” He nodded at the street behind Burton.

The king’s agent twisted around and saw five individuals shuffling into view. There were two men and three women. All wore dishevelled clothing and diabolical grins. Their eyes were wide and glazed.

One of the women held a dripping severed arm that had, apparently, been torn from its owner’s shoulder.

She seemed to recognise the shock in Burton’s eyes and responded to it by shouting: “Meat! Tichborne wants meat!” She then raised the limb to her mouth and clamped her teeth into it with a muffled giggle. The giggle turned into a gurgle as blood bubbled down over her chin.

“Your gun, sir!” Damien Burke groaned.

Burton grunted, stood, and reached into his pocket. He pulled out the cactus pistol and pressed the nodule that activated it.

“Die!” said one of the approaching men. “You—upper—crust—bastards.”

The woman with the arm, distracted by the taste of blood, lost interest in Burton and his companions. She squatted on her haunches and began to rip mouthfuls of flesh from the bone, swallowing chunks of raw, bloody human meat.

Burton, sickened, wanted to look away. Instead, he raised his strange pistol and shot her in the forehead.

She collapsed onto her back and lay still with the arm across her throat.

The remaining two men and two women screamed and lurched forward, their arms outstretched, their fingers curled into claws, their eyes rolling aimlessly.

Holding his right wrist with his left hand to keep it steady, Burton shot them each in turn.

He released a shuddering breath, looked at the fallen bodies, and allowed his arms to drop to his sides. He was trembling as if in the grip of another malarial fever.

“What the hell is happening?” he muttered.

Something exploded in the distance.

He stepped back to the hospital gate and hammered upon it.

“Let us in! Hey in there! Open up!”

There was no response. The guard had apparently locked the door before returning to the main building with the carriage driver.

“Help me up with him, if you would, Captain,” Hare said.

Burton lifted his hat, yanked off his wig and false beard, shoved them into a pocket, replaced his topper, and assisted Hare.

“The rioters appear to be rather more zealous than they were yesterday,” the prime minister’s man noted. “Yet, equally, rather more mindless. I need to get Mr. Burke back to Whitehall. I suggest we make our way along the Lambeth Road to Saint George’s Circus, and follow Waterloo Road to the bridge. What say you?”

“I say let’s go.”

“I can support Mr. Burke now that he’s up, Captain. You keep that pistol handy.”

Burton nodded and began to move slowly through the eye-watering fumes, with his companions following behind.

Beams of light swept over them from above. A huge police rotorship descended, its turbines roaring, steam belching from its exhausts. The down-draught from its rotors cleared the street of smoke, and Burton saw that debris and bodies were scattered all over.

“This is the police!” an amplified voice announced.

The king’s agent looked up and noticed a cluster of speaking trumpets projecting down from the ship’s hull.

“This is the police. Return to your homes. Stay inside and bar your doors and windows. Do not venture onto the streets. A state of emergency has been declared. Return to your homes. This is the police. Return to your homes. Remain inside.”

The mammoth flying machine slowly slid away over the rooftops. As it passed, ash-laden smoke rolled back over Burton and his colleagues.

A horse bolted past, trailing the broken shafts of a wagon behind it.

Somewhere nearby, glass smashed and rained onto the pavement.

Incoherent shouts echoed from the near and far distance.

Cautiously, they moved on.

Ahead, a male voice pleaded: “Help me! Oh, sweet Lord, help me! No! Please! Though I walk in the valley of death I shall—”

It was cut off.

A broken walking stick came whirling out of the miasma and clattered onto the cobbles inches from Burton’s feet.

Moments later, through the gloom, they saw the other half of it. One end was held in the hand of a snarling street pedlar. The other end—the broken end—had been thrust up into the base of an elderly clergyman’s chin and was projecting from the top of his skull. The pedlar was holding his victim upright but released him as he saw the trio approaching. The dead man crumpled to the pavement. His murderer laughed. Froth sprayed from his mouth. He wiped his bloodied hand on his thigh.

Without hesitation, Burton shot cactus spines into the pedlar’s neck and winced at the sound the man’s skull made as it hit the road.

“We should proceed with greater haste,” he advised Palmerston’s men. “Can you manage?”

“Yes, Captain,” Hare replied. “Though Mr. Burke seems to be uncon—
Look out!”

Burton gasped and stepped back as a wraith materialised right in front of him. He saw the figure clearly. It was dressed in a long frock coat, wore a top hat, and its mouth was hidden behind a soup-strainer mustache. Then it dissolved and blew away, nothing but a ribbon of dirty particles.

“What
are
those things?” Hare whispered.

“I don’t know, but each time I see one it appears a little more solid, more opaque. I think they’re gaining in strength, and they’re inciting this violence.”

They pressed on and reached Saint George’s Circus. A man ran out of a shop, stopped in front of them, and raised an antiquated blunderbuss.

“Die for Tichborne, you posh sods!” he shouted. He pulled the trigger and the weapon exploded in his face, blowing off his right ear.

“Christ!” he screamed. “My bloody head!”

Burton shot him and the man crumpled.

The rumble of approaching wheels came out of the smoke.

“Let that be an empty cab!” Burton pleaded.

It was.

A steam-horse erupted from the fumes, pelting along at full speed, its crankshafts clanking. It was dragging behind it an old-fashioned landau, engulfed in flames. The vehicle careened past them, bounced onto the pavement, and ran smack into the front of a tavern. Glass burst noisily and an angry clamour of voices came from within the building. The vehicle’s boiler detonated, hot metal flying in all directions. The front of the building collapsed into the street, sending bricks, glass, and masonry spinning into the air.

Gregory Hare yelled in pain.

Burton turned and saw that a chunk of metal had embedded itself in his colleague’s left arm. He slipped under the semiconscious Burke’s shoulder to keep him upright and gave a steadying hand to the other man.

“Oof!” Hare grunted. “This isn’t good! Ouch! Ouch! Not good at all, Captain!”

The king’s agent looked at the wound.

“Wait,” he snapped.

He lowered the two men to the ground then shrugged out of his jacket, dropped it, gripped the sleeve of his shirt, and ripped it off.

“How many tourniquets am I to tie today, hey, Hare? Must you and Burke do everything together? You both have wounds in exactly the same blessed place!”

“I apologise, sir,” Hare groaned. “A terrible inconvenience. Is it serious?”

“Three men, two out of action, one weapon between them, in the midst of a riot? Yes, I should judge that to be fairly serious. As for the wound, it would be as severe as Mr. Burke’s were it not for the fact that your biceps are the size of thigh muscles. The bone is intact.”

“As I say, sir, I’m terribly sorry.”

“Don’t be a fool,” Burton growled, tugging the tourniquet tight. “You hardly leaped into the path of that projectile.”

In the distance, the police announced: “Get off the streets. Remain inside.”

Tongues of flame licked from the ruined tavern. Screams came from within.

Burton retrieved his jacket and put it back on. “Mr. Burke is out cold. Stay with him. Hold this.” He pushed the cactus gun into Hare’s hand. “I’ll be back in a jiffy.”

He dived into the murk. Something had caught his eye moments ago. It had possibilities.

“We have to keep moving, Captain!” Hare called after him.

Burton ran back the way they’d come until he reached the edge of the square. He peered to his right, through the swirling haze.

It was still there.

He returned to Burke and Hare.

“There’s an abandoned omnipede,” he reported, taking back the pistol. “I suggest we hijack the blighter. It’ll get us over Waterloo Bridge in no time.”

“You can drive the contraption?” Hare asked.

“I can try. I don’t think the controls are much different from those on a rotorchair. Come on.”

He helped Hare with Burke, dragging him along until they reached the giant mechanised millipede. It was slumped across the road, empty but for the driver, whose corpse hung over the edge of the control seat.

“Looks like he was bludgeoned,” Hare muttered.

They hauled Burke up the steps in the side of the vehicle’s carapace and laid him on a bench. He stirred and moaned.

“Help me to shift the driver,” Burton said. “Try not to use your injured arm—I don’t want you bleeding any more than you already are.”

“Me neither, Sir Richard.”

They descended and moved to what used to be the head of the gigantic insect. As they dragged the dead body down and across to the side of the road, Hare noted that there weren’t many people about. “It seems like a wave of rioters has come and gone through this part of town,” he ruminated. “I wonder where they are now? Do you think they’re still at it, Captain?”

“From the various cries and screams we’re hearing, it appears that passions are still running high,” Burton replied. “But whether the riot is dying down or has just moved past this district remains to be seen. There were certainly a fair few unfortunates in that tavern when the landau hit it.”

He suddenly pointed the pistol at the other man and pressed the trigger. With a soft
phut!
seven spines flew past Hare’s ear and embedded themselves in the throat of the woman who’d loomed out of the smoke behind him. The length of pipe she held poised to crack down onto his head fell from numb fingers and clanged onto the road. She dropped on top of it.

“Much obliged,” said Hare.

“Take the cactus gun again. I’ll drive. You shoot.”

Hare grasped the proffered weapon and clambered back onto the omnipede. He stood by the bench upon which Burke lay and braced himself against the canopy, clamping his injured arm against his side, holding the spine-shooter ready.

Burton slipped into the driver’s seat and examined the controls. A gauge indicated that the furnace was still burning and another that boiler pressure was high. He settled his feet onto a plate which operated in the same way as the one in his rotorchair: press it forward with the toes to accelerate and backward with the heels to slow and brake. There were two levers to facilitate steering.

“Simple enough,” he breathed. “Let’s be off.”

He pushed gently on the footplate. The insect shuddered and rattled, steam whistling from the vents between its many legs. It jerked ahead, stopped, the engines spluttered, snarled, and the vehicle began to rumble forward.

Burton struggled with the controls. The machine was so long that, as he exited the square and guided it onto Waterloo Road, its middle strayed onto the pavement and scraped against the corner of a bakery, grinding horribly on the brickwork and causing red dust to plume into the already dense atmosphere.