Steven Harper - The Doomsday Vault

“Thank you, Kemp.” She planted another kiss on Gavin’s mouth and scuttled behind a tall fire screen to let Kemp help finish removing her dress while Gavin changed out of the remainder of his evening clothes. His groin ached, and he was glad that Alice couldn’t see his present state. Click cocked his head across the map table.

“What are you looking at, cat?” Gavin muttered.

Click licked a metal paw.

Alice emerged from behind the screen wearing brown trousers, a white blouse, a riding jacket, and a boy’s cloth cap. Gavin barely recognized her, but she was still beautiful. The trousers and jacket outlined her shape and made her femininity even more apparent. Gavin longed to snatch her up and flee to a remote mountaintop, where the air was clear and the clouds washed the world clean and where they could be alone together for an eternity of moments.

Kemp said, “I took the liberty of ordering a pair of riding horses from the stable. I will stay behind to ensure proper quarters are prepared for Madam’s return.”

They were heading out the door when Alice stopped and dashed back to Kemp. She spoke to him briefly, then rejoined Gavin.

“What was that about?” he asked.

“I’ll want tea and a hot bath when I get back,” she explained, “and Click will need winding, since he’s staying behind. Life is in the details, Gavin.”

“At least you’re not calling me Mr. Ennock.”

They didn’t go the stables, though. Instead, Gavin led Alice to a staircase that took them down to the first basement level and a heavy door with several keyholes on it. Gavin spun a combination lock several times, depressed a number of keys on a large adding machine set into the door itself, and produced a key, which he slid into the third keyhole from the right. The door clanked and groaned, then creaked slowly inward.

“What is this?” Alice asked.

“The weapons vault. We’re not going unarmed.”

The large, large room beyond was filled with racks and shelves and drawers. Gun barrels made of metal, glass, and other substances gleamed in the overhead electric lights. Pistols in a variety of shapes waited to be loaded and used. Many were connected by long, heavy cords to power packs meant to be strapped to the wielder’s back. Other racks sported explosives-bombs, dynamite, barrels of gunpowder. One section was lined with syringes, ampules, and rows of brown medicine bottles.

“Goodness,” Alice said. “You’re well equipped.”

“We try.” Gavin felt unaccountably pleased at the remark, as if he had something to do with the Ward’s weaponry. “Most of them are singular pieces invented by the clockworkers we find. The worst ones go into the Doomsday Vault, of course, but these are for us agents to use as we see fit.”

Alice picked up a small ball of red porcelain. “What’s this?”

“It’s filled with pollen from a plant developed by L’Arbre Magnifique. Don’t drop it! It’ll put you to sleep for several minutes unless you drink absinthe first.”

“Absinthe?” Alice shuddered. “Why absinthe?”

“Ask L’Arbre Magnifique.”

She set the ball down and hefted a bulky rifle. “What’s this one do?”

“Good choice. It shoots a balled-up net that springs open to engulf the target. Not much accuracy over long distances, but good at close range.” Gavin selected several syringes with corks on the end. “Opiates. Clockworkers don’t sleep much, and it takes a lot to keep them out, as you saw with Patrick Barton.”

“Why didn’t we take any of this with us when we went after him?”

“No time, remember? He was running, and we had to track him before the trail faded. Besides, Tree came armed. Here, take this one, too.” He handed her a pistol and holstered one for himself. “ Now we can get those horses.”

Alice, Baroness Michaels, swung down from her horse with the net rifle heavy on her back. Everything felt odd. It felt odd to ride astride. It felt odd to wear trousers. It felt odd to think of herself as Baroness Michaels. It felt odd to think she had left her fiance.

One thing that didn’t feel odd was having Gavin beside her. That felt perfectly right. She was theoretically about to walk into the den of a notorious clockworker who was also her own aunt; yet right now she felt happier and more secure than she had since before her mother died.

Gavin dismounted from his own horse with a creak of leather, and the animal snorted hard. His pale hair shone almost like a halo from under the simple cloth cap he favored. They were in the middle of Hyde Park, some distance north of the Serpentine. Trees and bushes and lawn stretched out around them, and a misty drizzle made the moon a fuzzy disk. Yellow gaslights shone here and there, but the park itself was deserted. Alice glanced around, wondering exactly where to start looking.

“This is more or less where the map coordinates would put us,” Gavin said. “It may take several hours of searching before-”

“Here it is!” Alice called out. She was examining a small gardener’s shack that stood beneath a spreading beech tree. It appeared completely normal, except for the overly complicated lock on the door. Gavin trotted over and shone a large electric torch on it. Brass gleamed, and Alice saw scratches above the lock.

“Too much for a simple gardener,” Gavin agreed.

Alice’s heart rate climbed, and her lips were parted with excitement. “How do we get in?”

“These scratches.” His fingers dragged across them. “It’s musical notation, but old-fashioned-medieval. Doctor Clef showed me some stuff like it.”

“What happens if you sing it?”

Gavin sang, a short, quick melody that trilled like a nightingale. Alice found it pretty, but she glanced nervously around. Staying in one place after dark was a good way to encounter a plague zombie, especially in a place like Hyde Park, where the lights were scattered and far apart. Even as the thought crossed her mind, a shadow moved to their right. Two plague zombies lurched out of a clump of bushes. Both were women in tattered dresses. One carried a battered parasol. To their left came a trio-three teenaged boys, barefoot and in rags.

“Gavin!” Alice hissed.

He caught sight of the zombies, and the melody stopped with a startled choke. A red light flashed above the lock.

“Let’s get out of here,” Alice said. “The Ward can find this place again.”

“Agreed.”

But more zombies oozed out of the damp darkness, a crowd of pale men, women, and children, all groaning their misery. There was no way through them. Alice shrank back against the shack, her excitement forgotten.

“Where did they all come from?” she asked desperately. “Why are they coming for us ?”

Gavin turned back to the door and started the song again, but his voice shook, and he got only a few notes in before the red light flashed. He started a third time. Alice drew her pistol. There didn’t seem to be much point in using the net rifle against a whole crowd, though the single pistol in her hand didn’t seem a great defense, either. Could she kill a plague zombie? They had once been-perhaps still were-human beings. The closest ones were only a few paces away now, and she could smell the rotten meat, even see the maggots that crawled around their open sores. Gavin continued to sing. Alice drew back the pistol’s hammer and aimed with a shaky hand.

The lock clunked and the bolts drew back. Gavin’s torch revealed a staircase heading down.

“Go!” Gavin shoved her inside without waiting for a response, then dived after her and slammed the door shut. Alice leaned against the shack wall, breathing heavily. Her knees quaked inside the unfamiliar trousers.