Steven Harper - The Doomsday Vault

“A clockworker,” Alice whispered with understanding.

Every so often, perhaps one time in a hundred thousand, the plague gave even as it took. Instead of destroying the victim’s brain, the disease made it work with a wondrous efficiency. Mathematics, physics, biology, chemistry-even some forms of art-became mere toys to these rare and particular plague victims. They created amazing, impossible inventions. Every automaton in existence, for example, owed its mechanical brain to Charles Babbage catching the plague and almost overnight perfecting the analytical engine. Jean-Pierre Blanchard came down with it and swiftly designed not only the light, semirigid framework used by most airships, but also the engines used to propel them and the hydrogen extractors that pulled the necessary gasses out of thin air. Alexander Pilkington discovered how to temper glass so it would keep an edge without shattering, allowing the creation of glass blades and electric lights that didn’t break.

Unfortunately, such geniuses became notoriously unstable as the disease continued to devour their brains. They went completely mad in the end; for all that they showed no other physical symptoms. Due to their penchant for complicated machinery, many people called them clockworkers. People also called them lunatics, bedbugs, fireflies, and any number of less-flattering names.

Alice grimaced. This particular clockworker seemed to have discovered how to control his plague-ridden brethren through hypnotic music. She had no idea where he’d come from or what he hoped to accomplish. At the moment, she didn’t care. All she wanted, with every fiber of her being, was to get away and find her way home without touching a zombie. The ones on the street might or might not be at the infectious stage, but Alice had no intention of finding out.

Her original cab was not a possibility-that zombie was still inside it. The cab horse snorted again and tossed its head but miraculously remained where it was. The blinders no doubt prevented it from understanding everything that was going on.

The grinning man continued to play the eerie music, and two zombies shambled around the cab, one from each side. They limped toward Alice, ragged clothes seeming to fade into the yellow fog, as if they wore the mist itself. Alice was surrounded-zombies to her left and right, a zombie in the cab ahead of her, and a brick wall behind. No doorways to dodge into, no stairs to climb. Nowhere to flee. Desperately, she cast about for a weapon or a distraction, anything. The zombies shuffled closer. One was a woman in a torn house-dress. Alice fumbled under her heavy skirts in an attempt to wrench off a shoe, but the buttons were done up too tightly. Tears streamed down her face.

“Get away!” she screamed at them. “Get away from me!”

A shot cracked through the fog. The head of the zombie woman exploded like a ripe melon. An awful smell washed over Alice as the body dropped to the sidewalk. Alice gaped. A horse rode up-two horses, no, four-their iron shoes clattering on the cobblestones. One of the riders rushed at Alice, stomping over the zombie woman’s corpse.

“Up you come,” the rider said, hauling Alice up behind the saddle in an awkward sideways perch. Alice, clutching for purchase and fighting The Dress, barely had time to register the fact that her rescuer was a woman in leather trousers before the horse wheeled around and cantered back the way it had come, leaving the two remaining zombies behind. Alice noted the pistol at the woman’s belt.

“Who are you?” Alice demanded. “What’s going on?”

“We’re here to help,” the woman said. “Down you go. Stay safe, love.”

Before Alice could register the shocking familiarity of the address, the woman deposited her on the street. The other horseback riders were shooting at the zombies and working their way toward the grinning clockworker. He continued to play, then abruptly turned, caught Alice’s eye, and winked. Alice took a backward step, uncertain. She was clear of the zombie mob now. She could run. But the tableaux tugged at her. Now that she was out of immediate danger, the scene turned more fascinating than frightening, and she wanted to stay. She could help somehow, should help. They had helped her. Still, she was half turning to flee when another thought whipped through her mind.

Louisa wouldn’t run.

With that, Alice turned back, and the clockworker threw her a wide grin as he played and played. The music scraped over Alice’s bones with the edge of a butcher’s knife. She was the only person left on the street besides the mysterious horsemen-and horsewomen. Another rider was pushing his way toward the sea of zombies, lashing out with a truncheon and using his horse to shoulder his way through the crowd toward the clockworker. But the clockworker seemed to glide away without effort, still surrounded by a zombie mob. Their screeches and groans half threatened to drown out the ever-present music. Yet another rider was forced to abandon his horse and leap atop the overturned beer truck. The horse disappeared, screaming, beneath a pile of ragged, half-dead plague victims.

“I could use a bit of help over here!” the rider shouted as three zombies clawed slowly up the side of the truck toward him. He kicked at one, a male in a tattered opera cloak, and the zombie lost its grip.

“On the way!” the woman rider shouted back from the edge of the zombie crowd. She drew her pistol and shot one of the other zombies crawling up the truck. Blood sprayed. The zombie fell backward, dead. Alice put a hand to her mouth.

A cart careened around the corner on two wheels, its horses in a lather. It skidded to a stop not far from Alice. A young man in a dark topcoat, work boots, and twill trousers dropped the reins and leapt to the back of the cart, where he whipped a canvas cover off an enormous… thing. It looked to Alice like a calliope that had lost a fight with a steam engine. Some of the pipes had come loose, and the young man was thrusting them back into place. Alice watched with fascination. The clockworker continued pouring out demonic music that drowned out the voice of God.

“Hurry with that, d’Arco!” the rider on the truck shouted, still kicking at zombies. The woman and the other riders circled the zombie mob, shooting where they could and trying to find a way to reach the clockworker.

D’Arco sat down at the machine, pumped at a few pedals, and slammed the ivory keyboard with both hands. A chord tooted from the pipes. The sound was jarring, almost dissonant. It was also barely audible over the clockworker’s music. Alice heard d’Arco say a word she wasn’t supposed to know. He pumped the pedals harder and tried again. The chord came out louder this time. Several of the zombies paused. So did the clockworker. He stared across the cobblestones at d’Arco. For a long moment, the two locked eyes. Then the clockworker changed his melody. With a blood-chilling sound of dozens of bare feet slapping stone in unison, every zombie on the street turned smartly to face d’Arco-and Alice.

“Uh-oh,” d’Arco said.

The clockworker snapped out notes in a quick tempo, and the zombies marched forward, straight for the cart. D’Arco nervously played his chord again, but he’d had little time to pump up the bellows attached to the pedals under his machine, and the sound came out differently. The clockworker laughed and continued to play. Alice backed away, then climbed into the wagon beside d’Arco, not sure what to do, but determined to do something . The other riders tried to slow the zombies like sheepdogs working a flock, but the zombies largely ignored them, even when they got trampled, and the three riders left on horses couldn’t hope to stop more than a hundred zombies on their own. What did the grinning man want ?