Whitechapel Gods Page 17

  All of them? With the clickrats and…those ghastly things?

  His breath began coming in staccato pulses. There had to be something else. Could he toss them some meat maybe? Or…

  One bloody stick of dynamite.

  With numbing slowness he shouldered out of his pack and slipped it to the ground. He knelt and reached inside. The dynamite slipped into his hand as if it had been waiting for him. The matchbox he clasped between two fingertips.

  His eyes never left the horde around him. The snouts and muzzles and bared skull teeth began to shift, taking on more human features. They became rounder and softer, a shifting image of translucent flesh over the metal beneath, like a trick of the smoke, a trick of the light, the unhinging of a tired mind. A chill touched the air.

  Hold together, he thought, repeating it like a manta.

  Oliver set the butt of the rifle on the ground and leaned the barrel against his leg. With his left hand, he slid the matchbox open, then plucked a match out with his right.

  One toss. How many could he catch in the blast?

  The metallic heads continued their stares unbroken. The phantom images dipped as one, as if in prayer. The air grew cold.

  Oliver laid the match head against the edge of the box.

  A wind cut across the square. Yellow-green mist began collecting in the empty space between Oliver and the hounds. It lapped at the stones and the feet of the creatures, seeping into cracks and between toes and claws. Oliver stayed the match, retreating back against the fence. The yellow mist, blackening as it swept the brick, began a steady undulating pulse, propelling itself along the stones like an inchworm.

  The ground began to boil.

  Oliver stuffed the dynamite in his pocket and leapt for the fence. His injured hand landed on a rough-edged slat of iron that tore into the bandages. He wrapped his other arm into a tangle of bent crossbars and held himself up by the sheer strength of fright. His legs kicked for purchase, scuffing the edge of the low wall.

  Below, the square suddenly became a seething lake of black-yellow pus. Bubbles churned to its surface and burst, spraying up into the air. Tendrils of yellow mist snaked up beside Oliver’s face, then swept over him with a rank odour of decay. They got in his nose, his throat, his ears.

  And something crashed through into his mind.

  Not this time, by God! Oliver released one hand and grabbed for the dynamite, and at once the world evaporated.

  He was hanging above an endless sea of filth: blood mixed with oils, ashes, white and yellow ichors, and pus. Above loomed a sky of towering grey fingers, their steel ends lancing into the ocean. Bodies swam the seas, drowning, choking, flailing, bloated and pustulant.

  Oliver hung from nothing, having lost all perception of his body. He clawed with no hands at the iron fence he knew to be there.

  A figure came walking across the ocean, stumbling over the roiling bubbles. He wore an oversized long coat, speckled with additional pockets, which the spurting filth did not seem to touch. He fixed Oliver with startling blue eyes.

  “You’re Oliver Sumner,” he said.

  Oliver clung to the invisible fence, still trying to secure his feet.

  Who’s asking?

  “My name is Aaron,” he said. “Aaron Bolden.”

  Could I trouble you for some assistance?

  His slight smile flattened. “I’m not sure how.”

  Perfect. Oliver gave up on his fingers and tried to will himself to stay above the frothing liquid. You’re the Aaron, aren’t you? You know, Hews and Bailey speak very highly of you.

  “For watching, perhaps; for intelligence. I haven’t had much luck with action, I’m afraid.”

  Hews mentioned that you had certain faculties of sight.

  “And so I do.”

  What do you see?

  “Do I see you hanging off a fence, you mean? Yes, you’re there.”

  With a mental sigh, Oliver concentrated on loosening his grip.

  “No, no. Don’t drop down,” Aaron said hastily. “It isn’t real, but it may still harm you.”

  How do you know that?

  “I…” A sudden jolt of pain stole across the man’s face. “Grandfather Clock…hurt me. The noise wasn’t real, not in the auditory sense, but it was still…I remember my bones breaking.”

  Oliver looked up and down the man’s limbs. Aaron followed his gaze.

  “It’s strange, I know, that they’re intact now. Though I’m not quite dead and may thus retain a bit of myself.”

  Bailey said they’d hooked you to the Chimney.

  Aaron’s hands began to tremble.

  “I…true…though I…” He inhaled, still shaking. “I should not be alive. A thousand times I should not be alive.”

  You seem quite alive to me.

  The small smile returned.

  “A conclusion drawn from observation. I suppose I can accept that.”

  Oliver looked around, seeing no visible means of escape. He realised with some relief that his sense of smell did not appear to be working, nor could he feel fatigue in his clinging arm, nor nausea in his gut from the vile sights. The sloshing and moaning of the ocean’s prisoners echoed undiminished by distance.

  Where are we, Aaron?

  “We are inside his mind.”

  Whose mind?

  “The third one,” he said. “Not the Lord, not the Lady. Someone else.”

  I would hope I heard you wrongly.

  “Except that you heard perfectly.”

  Aaron began to pace beneath Oliver.

  “I have gathered through my limited observation of him that he is an exile of sorts. He hates the Lord and Lady so powerfully…” Aaron’s eyes flickered almost closed. He tilted his head as if craning to hear a sound Oliver couldn’t hear. “They’ve done something to him, I think, to hurt him, to cause him pain. That’s what all this is.” He swept his arm to indicate the sea. “His pain.”

  And those? Oliver said, casting his glance at the moaning souls slipping between the waves.

  “They are those of us who have been claimed by the downstreets, and the machine disease.”

  You know that?

  “He…showed me.”

  Has he claimed you as well, then?

  The man’s face fell. “I don’t know.”

  Oliver thought for a moment as Aaron stood caught in his melancholy.

  Would he help us, do you think, Aaron?

  “Help us? This is not some Titan that can be bribed.”

  You said he hates the Lord and Lady. Well, if Bailey does his job, we will have what we need to kill Grandfather Clock, but we may need help with Mama Engine. We haven’t even begun to look at how to deal with her.

  Aaron hunched his shoulders and glanced out across the ocean. “He hates us too, Oliver.”

  Then we’ll have to deal with him as well, won’t we?

  Aaron sucked in a breath. “He could very well have heard that.”

  Talk to him. Offer him an…an agreement. Between him and myself. Let him know we have common enemies.

  “Are you certain about that?”

  No. It may turn out to be the most fool thing I’ve ever attempted, but it’s prudent to keep your doors open.

  The cries of the damned hammered on Oliver’s ears. He struggled to keep his concentration amidst rising panic.

  At last, Aaron nodded; then his eyelids began to flicker again. Oliver hung for an endless few minutes as his impromptu companion performed whatever inward gyrations the contact required. Doubt worried at him—What are you thinking, allying with this horror?—but he quashed it with logic: one of these unholy creatures was easier to deal with than three. That made sense, didn’t it?

  Aaron jerked and came back to himself.

  So? What’s the word?

  Aaron shook his head. “I can’t tell. I know he understood.” Aaron took a deep breath, rubbed his abdomen absently with one palm. “But this doesn’t feel right. What if he turns on us after…”

 
And suddenly Oliver was hanging from a fence, with his left arm cramping and a stick of dynamite in his right hand.

  The ground rushed up to meet him. He landed squarely on the already-injured ankle, toppled forward, and slammed cheek first into the brick. His stomach clenched and he barely had time to tear the mask off his face before yellow and white vomit surged up and out. After that, the scalding air rushed in and he hacked up more vileness. Vomit be damned, he slapped the mask back over his mouth and took long breaths until his lungs settled back from convulsions to mere searing discomfort.

  Bugger.

  He pushed himself up and leaned heavily on the wall. His pack and rifle lay where he’d left them. The lamplight guttered out, disturbed by its rough treatment. A few minutes of exhausting struggle found a match struck and the flame reluctantly wiggling back to life.

  A silver, eyeless snout regarded him from just past his shoes.

  “Jeremy?” Oliver said.

  The rat shook its head.

  “Aaron?”

  Jeremy ducked his head and clicked backwards and sideways without turning. Oliver lifted his gaze slightly and found the glinting brass eyes of his choir staring back. They’d stepped off to the sides. A clear path spread in front of him, out into the dark.

  Jeremy backed some more and ticked three times.

  “Jesus. Give me a minute.”

  Oliver took a pull from his rapidly emptying water flask and fixed his mask. Then, with aching joints and muscles, he collected his gear and his rifle and pushed himself to his feet. He kept the dynamite and the matches in his pocket.

  Jeremy turned and scuttled away. Oliver followed at a slow limp. When he’d gone twenty feet he heard noise and turned.

  Ticker hounds and clickrats and half-human Frankensteins gathered behind him. He stepped forward and they followed. He started again at a steady pace, and they trailed behind him like a herd of cattle…or a pack of wolves.

  Guess we know his answer, eh, Aaron?

  Albright had fallen with a bullet in his throat.

  Kinney had died screaming with a hound tearing into his belly.

  Sims had crawled nearly thirty yards with a severed arm before the Boiler Men cooked him like a pig with their copper rods.

  Phineas had just vanished, and he’d last seen Thomas Moore assaulting a Boiler Man with his bare hands.

  And who had run away and hid himself in the shadows of old Mile End Road?

  Bailey crouched behind a piece of rotted and soggy wall, once the façade of a building, and clutched his rifle to his chest. It was an old Enfield from his days in the army, made in ’41, and it had seen him through worse snags than this.

  Worse than metal beasts impervious to bullets at war with metal men equally impervious?

  He silenced his own thoughts to better hear the movements of the enemy.

  The Boiler Men had been waiting right at the base of the rusted stair. Phineas Macrae had been the first to spot them. They might have been waiting for hours, not needing air or rest or water. Luck was with the queen’s agents, however, as the Ironboys were some ways off and facing away from the stair, as if waiting for someone to return to it. Bailey had ordered retreat, hoping to slip away and circle around outside their field of vision.

  Then the dogs had come at them, tearing out of old shop doors and from beneath the uneven flagstones of the street. Nothing Bailey’s crew had thrown at them had done anything to slow them down. Then the Boiler Men had caught them, charging impassively into the fray and killing everything in sight with Atlas rifles firing as fast as Maxim guns and copper lightning rods lancing through the perpetual night. At some point Bailey had ordered retreat and fled.

  There had been noise, then silence. Now there was only the thudding footfalls of the baron’s soldiers patrolling the perimeter of the street, and the shuffle of their guns poking into cracks and beneath rubble.

  Bailey held one lapel of his vest over his mouth and sucked a breath. His mask had vanished in the fighting, along with his lantern and half his ammunition. He squatted, sweating, and fiercely willed himself not to cough.

  He wished for a moment he was back in India, where the heat was not so oppressive and the enemy died like men aught to. But Boiler Men did nothing like normal men. Even their movements were strange, executed with the confident, measured precision of creatures who knew themselves to be invincible.

  A foot fell on the other side of the wall. Time to move on.

  Bailey sucked one last burning lungful of air, blinked the soot from his eyes, and crept backwards from his place of concealment. The old shop’s floor had rotted and fallen through, and had formed a shallow crater into which Bailey retreated. He slipped silently into a viscous pool at the bottom, cursing the lack of light.

  The Boiler Men seemed to have no need for illumination, and thus hid their movements. Worse, Bailey could not see far enough through the smoke to determine how visible he might be. Did the sides of this hole provide any cover at all?

  He exhaled his held breath quietly and drew another through his lapel. The Boiler Men could not be stopped with a single Enfield rifle. It would be at least another two or three hours trekking though these depths to reach the base of Aldgate Tower. Bailey had no mask, no eye protection, no water, no food, and thirty rounds of ammunition that were useless against such adversaries anyway.

  But the tape had to be retrieved. No matter the cost, those horrid godlings of Whitechapel had to be dealt with.

  “Praise to England,” he muttered to himself. “God save the queen.”

  The oily liquid moved.

  Tentacles shot out of the pool at the base of the hole, entangling his legs with terrible speed. In an instant the faithful Enfield was readied and a shot plunged into the opaque waters. Whatever lay beneath spasmed with the impact. The tentacles contracted, shredding though Bailey’s trousers with serrated metal edges. The sting of sliced skin shot up through his spine, followed by the blazing fire of slime in the wounds. A second shot shattered the water’s surface, sending up bits of metal and gore. The tentacles shuddered and fell limp back into the pool. Bailey staggered from the water, collapsing on the bank of the hole.

  A ness. Damn it—how could he have been so careless? He tested one leg to see if there was any tendon damage. Flesh, mostly. Good. First order is to get out of this blasted hole.

  He planted the butt of his rifle in the muck and pushed himself up.

  A shot rang out, and a portion of Bailey’s arm exploded.

  Another, and a force like a charging elephant bore him to the ground, smothering his face in the clinging mud. White pain flared in his back and abdomen.

  His gasp drew in the unfiltered razor smoke of the downstreets. Choking, he clawed at the slick, cold earth and cursed every machine built since the dawn of history.

  The ground shook with the approach of iron boots.

  Chapter 11

  How many worlds They have consumed, I cannot fathom. How many small creatures They have leashed to serve Them—I cannot count them all. How many ghosts have been thrown screaming into Their bellies, I dare not guess.

  What I do know is that They will continue in Their way until the end of the universe, for They are machines, and machines do only one thing, over and over.

  —II. xvii

  Pennyedge had to be killed.

  In the short time since retrieving Scared’s precious tape, Bergen had discovered he could not bring himself to take it back to its creator. He knew he couldn’t stomach serving that troll one instant longer. The horrid things he’d done to maintain his cover mounted on his conscience with each step, freed to haunt him by the act of mercy just performed. He had to escape. He had to bring the tape into Bailey’s hands and rejoin his true comrades in arms.

  His cover might have been blown anyway. Scared would not have sent his child-killer along if he didn’t at least suspect.

  And so Penny had to be killed. Mulls as well, as an inescapable consequence. That saddened Bergen a bit
, for Mulls, if he had escaped Scared’s trap and been raised by decent folk, might have become a decent man. Penny was a monster and Bergen spared not a scrap of remorse for him.

  The question was how to do it. Penny was sharp, and as silent as a snake in the ferns, and was at every opportunity manoeuvring for a killing stab on Bergen. He probably wouldn’t strike until Bergen led them to within sight of the rusted stair, which gave him perhaps two hours of time.

  He passed up several opportunities to take his shot—times when Penny was beyond the range of a good lunge and scanning the dark after some suspicious sound—because Bergen was unsure of what to do with Mulls. How many shots would it take? Would the bullets even hurt him through all those mechanical growths? Mulls might have to be down long enough for Bergen to hit him with the steam rifle, and that was a long space of time indeed.

  They passed a mound of sodden and collapsed debris on their right. Bergen heard the click of metal tines on stone. He drew his sidearm with his left hand, and aimed it into the dark. Penny spun the wheel on his flasher, then dropped into a crouch and spread his arms, knife in one hand and striking rod in the other. Mulls, after a moment’s delay, brought his rifle up to his shoulder, though he apparently did not see anything to aim at yet.

  A clickrat scuttled into the radius of their electric lights. Mulls let off a rough chuckle.

  “Ha. Just a littl’un.”

  “Quiet!” Bergen hissed. The clickrat stopped and began to make buzzing and ticking sounds. Bergen tuned it out and listened to the other sounds of the dark around them. He let his ears guide his weapon, until its aim rested at the top of the mound.

  “Come out where we can see you,” Bergen ordered.

  Mulls started and locked his rifle onto the same location. Penny did not move.

  The voice came back. “We have you surrounded. Throw your weapons on the ground.”

  “There is only one of you,” Bergen said. “And there are three of us. Can you shoot us all, do you think, before we kill you?”

  The enemy fell silent, considering, Bergen supposed, what to do now that his bluff had failed. It was an opportunity.