Iron and Blood (40 page)

The clockwork joints were still visible, though scorched by the fire. Sheffield sat on his haunches, using the claw end of his skull hammer to pry the mechanism loose.

“Crude, but effective,” he muttered. “What I’d really like to know is how they tied the gears in with the joints and muscles.” He probed some more at the dead thing, heedless of the smell. “And I wonder, how were they being controlled?”

“I’m still wondering why all the noise and gunshots down here didn’t have any guards heading down here at a run,” Drostan said.

A nasty suspicion was forming in his mind, but before he could put his thoughts into words, a uniformed cop came to the door.

“You’re late!” Sheffield snapped, rising to his feet. “Where the hell have you been? We were attacked!”

The cop glanced around the ruined morgue, paid scant attention to the charred bodies on the floor, and fixed his gaze on Drostan. His expression hardened. “I’m here to arrest one Drostan Fletcher, on suspicion of conspiracy.”

Sheffield gaped. “Did you not hear a word I just said? Fletcher and I were attacked!”

The Oligarchy would have the means to create abominable machines like the clockwork zombies,
Drostan thought as his suspicions grew.
They might have been afraid Sheffield knew something, too. That’s why we didn’t get any help.

“I have a warrant for Fletcher’s arrest,” the cop said, and one hand fell to the butt of the gun in his holster. “I’d suggest you come along peacefully.”

Drostan had not voiced his suspicions aloud, but he saw the skepticism in Sheffield’s eyes change to anger. The cop took a step toward them, drawing his gun, and Drostan raised his hands in surrender. Sheffield slipped behind the cop. With one swift movement, he brought the blunt end of the skull hammer down in a glancing blow behind the cop’s ear, and the man dropped like a stone.

“Get out of here, Drostan. Someone’s setting you up.” Sheffield said as he knelt by the fallen officer and checked for a pulse. “He’ll be out for a while, but you need to hurry.”

Before Drostan could make a move toward the door, they heard voices and the sound of running feet.

“Hide!” Sheffield hissed.

Drostan looked wildly around him, seeing nowhere in the chaos of the operatory to go. He took a step towards the back room. “Here,” Sheffield said, stepping around the downed cop and the charred zombies to lead Drostan toward the body drawers.

“Get in,” he ordered, yanking one of the slabs open. “It’s cold, but there’s air, and I’ll let you out again once they’re gone. Hurry!”

Drostan forced down his fear as he climbed onto the slab. The stone was cold, and the air coming from the bank of mortuary drawers was icy. Sheffield had once told him that the city bought a huge amount of block ice to keep the drawers chilled. Drostan had barely laid down when Sheffield shoved the drawer shut, sealing him in the dark.

Terror seized him. The drawer was slightly wider across than Drostan’s shoulders and a little longer than he was tall, and there was about six inches of open space between his face and the ceiling. Claustrophobia made him desperate to sit up, stretch out, take in great lungfuls of breath. Rationality forced him to remain still, breathe shallowly and stay quiet.

Drostan could hear muffled voices on the other side of the drawer. Sheffield sounded like he was arguing with someone. Footsteps grew louder, and Drostan gripped his gun, unsure of just how well he could get off a shot if someone suddenly opened his drawer.

“We’d better have a look inside those drawers,” an unfamiliar voice said.

“Suit yourselves,” Sheffield replied. “That’s where we keep the smallpox cases.” There was a few seconds’ silence, then, “Nasty thing, smallpox. Real easy to catch if you’re not immune to it, like I am.”

“Maybe... we can take your word for it that the drawers haven’t been disturbed,” the voice replied, sounding less certain than before.

To Drostan’s relief, the steps receded. More muffled voices sounded in the distance, and some banging and scraping. He wondered whether Sheffield had gotten the cops to help him turn the tables back over and remove the charred remains. He heard a few more minutes of talking, then silence.

To keep himself from giving in to full-blown panic, Drostan forced himself to think through the case. At Catherine Desmet’s request, he had drawn a map that showed the killer making its way up the Monongahela River from near Vestaburg toward larger communities—and more prey. He doubted it was a coincidence that Vestaburg was the closest town to the Vesta Nine mine.

The deaths along the rivers had been nobodies, unimportant to anyone in a position of power; the Night Hag had chosen victims unlikely to be mourned. Smart behavior for a predator, he thought. And if more miners than usual had died lately from problems with the mines, that was regrettable, but of no consequence to anyone important.

But Thomas Desmet had been somebody. Desmet hadn’t been killed by the Night Hag, but he had been killed by magic.
We must be getting close
, he thought.
The more people are trying to kill us, the more likely it is that we’re making someone nervous
.

Someone had sent the clockwork cadavers after him after he’d ignored the warning. Maybe that someone would have been happy to have Sheffield silenced as well. The cop had paid no attention to the headless, charred bodies and the war zone of the operatory, and focused solely on arresting Drostan—for conspiracy. Conspiracy to do what? Against whom? Drostan had no desire to give himself over to custody to find out.

Obviously someone in power thought he was dangerous.
What do I know that is so important?

The morgue was silent.
What if the cops arrested Sheffield? What if he isn’t coming back for me?

Drostan’s heart pounded, and he choked back a scream. He felt around the confines of the mortuary drawer. Steel on the sides and top, granite beneath him. He stretched, touching the front of the drawer with his toes. Drostan had no idea how much time had passed, but already the cold was beginning to make him shiver.

If I don’t suffocate, or starve to death, I’ll die of cold.

He thrust his hands against the top of the drawer, trying to push against the surface to slide the drawer out. The heavy granite slab beneath him did not move. No one had expected the drawer’s occupant to need to leave.

Maybe hiding in a morgue might not have been a smart idea for someone able to see and hear ghosts.

Drostan could hear the buzz of dead voices. Most were heavy with the accents of their native languages: German, Polish, Hungarian, and Italian, though there were others. Nearly all were male.

Drostan focused his attention on the voices, if only to blunt his own claustrophobia; their stirring was unusual. Thankfully, the dead were silent most of the time. It seemed the appearance of the clockwork zombies and the imprisonment of a living man inside a body drawer was enough to rouse the spirits from their half-sleep.

“What do you know about clockwork corpses and the Night Hag?” Drostan asked in a whisper. “I can hear you. Tell me.”

For a moment, the voices grew silent. Drostan was acutely aware that he was the stranger here, in the land of the dead. The spirits were deciding whether or not to trust him, even though they were beyond the reach of consequences. Or perhaps, he thought, fear of creatures like the Night Hag lasted even after death.

“There are things in the dark,” a man’s voice said, thick with a Welsh lilt. “Deep in the mines. Creatures that ought not be let loose.”

“How did they get loose?” Drostan murmured.

“Dig, they told us,” another man answered in an Irish brogue. “Deeper. Always deeper. For their coal. And now, for other things. To make them rich. And if we die, no matter. There are more where we came from. But now, what’s gotten loose will kill them too, kill everyone.”

“They said you died of bad air, blackdamp.”

“They lied.”

“What about the clockwork corpses?” The image of those mechanized abominations would haunt Drostan’s sleep for years.

“Not all of us got out,” a man with a Polish accent replied. “We were sent here. The lucky ones. They took some of the bodies. Don’t know where. Maybe to experiment.”

If the spirits of the mining dead had followed their corpses to the morgue, Drostan did not want to think about the ghosts of the clockwork zombies being aware enough to know what had happened to their human shells.

“What about the boilers that blew?” Drostan asked. Questioning the ghosts was helping him hang onto his sanity in the close, cold dark.

“Evil things are loose,” replied a ghost, his consonants clipped and guttural, like his German native tongue. “They feed on death, on blood. And no one knows how to lock them up.”

The ghosts seemed to lose interest in the conversation and gradually drew farther away. In the silence, Drostan was left alone with the darkness, and the walls of the mortuary drawer seemed to close in around him until he thought he might scream and begin to tear at the steel.

Just as Drostan thought he could not contain his panic any longer, footsteps sounded outside the drawers. The drawer jerked open, and light and air flooded in. Drostan blinked, trying to determine whether his savior was friend or foe, and he raised his pistol.

“Jesus, Drostan. Point that thing somewhere else,” Sheffield said. “We need to get you out of here.”

Drostan sat up, struggling against the irrational urge to suck in huge breaths of air, to run around the morgue stretching his arms and basking in the relative warmth of the room. “What happened?” he asked, hoping he sounded steadier than he felt.

“Couple more cops showed up. Didn’t care at all about the zombies. I told them the clockwork guys hit their buddy,” Sheffield added with a smirk. “Makes me think they might have been the ones that sent them.” He sounded aggrieved. “If that’s the case, I have a real bone to pick with them. Anyhow, all they wanted to know was where you were. Said you were dangerous. Said you were consorting with anarchists. Bunch of hornswoggle if I ever heard it. They picked up the other cop, who was still out cold, and left.”

“I owe you,” Drostan said, getting to his feet.

“You sure as hell do,” Sheffield agreed. “I’ve already assaulted an officer and perjured myself on your behalf.” He paused. “As far as the cops know, the zombies assaulted the officer—but you can bet they’ll blame you for it. Which means you really need to get going. And know there’s a warrant out for your arrest.”

“Won’t they be watching the door?” Drostan asked.

Sheffield shrugged. “Not if they believed me when I said you were already gone. After all, they searched the place. Lucky for you, they didn’t want to take a risk opening the drawers. Most folks have an aversion to dead bodies—and communicable diseases.” He grabbed his overcoat and hat from a peg on the wall. “Here. Take these. We’re about the same height. Keep your head down, and they’ll think you’re me. If they ask, I’ll tell them you stole them at gunpoint.”

“Gee, thanks,” Drostan said. “Dig me deeper, why don’t you? And don’t you think the cop will figure it had to be you that hit him when he comes ’round?”

Sheffield grinned. “Not if I hit him hard enough to scramble some gray matter. What are friends for?”

Drostan shouldered into the coat and took the hat. As he was leaving, Sheffield called out to him.

“Good luck, Drostan. Now get the hell out of here.”

Drostan forced himself to step out into the night as if he had nothing to worry about. He stood tall and tried to walk with confidence, heading down the street toward the streetcar Sheffield usually took home. In case anyone was watching, he caught the streetcar, rode it several blocks, then hopped off, took another streetcar in a different direction, and then another.

While he rode the streetcars, he thought furiously, trying to come up with a plan. If someone in the Oligarchy had sent the clockwork zombies to kill him and the police to arrest him, then odds were good his rooming house was being watched. Drostan thought of contacting Finian, and dismissed the idea. It was a toss-up whether Finian would weigh friendship over duty, and Drostan did not want to make that wager unless he had run out of other options.

Then he remembered the pigeon. Agent Storm had left him a clockwork carrier pigeon, roosting outside his room at Mrs. Mueller’s. If Drostan could get to the pigeon, he could warn Mitch and his partner about the clockwork zombies and the Oligarchy’s involvement. Assuming that the federal agents weren’t also in the Oligarchy’s pocket.

Recovering the clockwork pigeon sounded better to Drostan than aimlessly riding the night trolleys. He took a different route across the Allegheny River than normal, to a stop he had never used before. That meant he had a dozen or more blocks to reach his rooming house, but no one who had been watching his movements would have anticipated him.

Allegheny’s streets were quiet in the middle of the night; closer to dawn, they would bustle with mill workers coming off third shift. It had rained while Drostan was in the morgue, and the streets and sidewalks were wet, glistening in the light of the streetlamps.

Drostan walked with the stride of a busy man, someone who had every right to be where he was. He kept his collar up and his head down, just another weary workman anxious to go home. Drostan did not slow his pace as he neared the rooming house. He passed the street by, with only a cursory glance as if it did not matter. He spotted two policemen in front of the house, and guessed that someone was also watching the rear.

Drostan headed for the river. It was quiet along the banks as the dark, swift water flowed past the sleeping city. With a hand on his revolver, Drostan feared little except the Oligarchy and the Night Hag. To his relief, neither seemed in evidence.

“I need your help,” he murmured to the empty, trash-strewn shore. “I’m trying to find out who was behind your deaths, and someone’s doing their best to stop me. Please,” he said. “I need your help.”

One by one, the ghosts of the riverbanks materialized. They formed a ring around him, and the hair on the back of Drostan’s neck prickled. No matter how often he spoke with the dead, it struck him anew every time that although they had once been human, they were now something other. And that the longer they remained dead, the less connected they remained to the concerns of the living.