Ypsilon and the Plague Doctor Read online

  A fat droplet of the oily bronze liquid rolled off the top of the train and landed on Adal’s face. Relief washed him as he reached up and wiped the substance away. “Where’s all this coming from?”

  Arija pointed at the top of the train. “Uh, Adal...”

  “Yeah, hang on, let me check this out.” Adal stepped up on the railing. He reached for the light hanging at the entrance and gripped it to steady himself.

  “Adal?” Maza called.

  Adal adjusted his grip as he pulled himself on top of the railing. “Wait a minute. I got this.”

  “Hey, idiot!” Ypsilon shouted.

  Adal shot a look over his shoulder. “What?”

  Ypsilon, Maza and Arija all backed up, pointing at the top of the railcar, a look of horror mirrored on each of their faces.

  2|Brains

  Adal turned and pulled himself up to look at the top of the car. “What the hell is wrong with—?”

  A crumpled mass shuffled towards him. There was a wet, grinding sound as it pulled itself across the roof of the train. It released a pained gurgle out of the hole that should have been its mouth, like a pipe forcing air through water. The mass dug its fingers into a small divot in the roof as a panicked, erratic breath strangled in its throat.

  Adal gasped.

  A scream lodged itself in his throat as the barely alive Dweller jerked upward and lunged at him.

  Fear clouded Adal’s mind and he pushed back from the roof, desperate to get as far away from the decaying being as possible. But the Dweller’s fingers tangled in the fabric of his shirt.

  The metal ramp drove into Adal’s back as he fell, the bloody and beaten body following him down. Adal landed at the bottom of the steps, the Dweller still clutching his shirt.

  The mangled Dweller opened its mouth wide like it was struggling to take in air. Then it whispered, its voice horse and raspy, “They’re… coming…” The bronze liquid they’d seen coating the inside of the rail car covered the Dweller, dripping onto Adal. The dying creature twitched. Half of its face had been ripped away, exposing the inner clockwork mechanisms. “Must… go….”

  Fear paralyzed Adal’s body. He couldn’t think. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t scream.

  Then the half dead Dweller lifted into the air. Maza stood over Adal holding the writhing creature as it struggled to release itself from the Grinder’s grasp. Arija reached down and Adal took her hand, letting her pull him to his feet.

  Maza held the mangled Dweller under its one remaining arm like a baby. Most of its torso was still intact, the only damage a huge gash in its side that let Adal see its bone structure. The Dweller kicked with the leg that was still fully attached but the other leg just hung there, like a piece of meat.

  Ypsilon joined Adal and Arija. “What the hell is that?”

  “He’s a Dweller,” Arija replied, cocking her head to the side. “They’re the creatures that live down here. Like Kip.”

  “Do they always look like a discarded chew toy?” Maza asked, struggling to hold the wriggling creature.

  Adal wiped his face. “I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

  The Dweller screamed. Its features scrunched up in rage. It swung its remaining arm, its fingers stretched towards Adal.

  “We need to get him inside and get him some help,” Arija ordered. She turned to face Adal, her eyebrows knitting together. “What’s going on?”

  Adal finished wiping the golden slime from his face and adjusted his clothes. “No clue. Didn’t think to ask him while he was attacking me. I’ll remember that for next time.”

  “Uh, guys?” Ypsilon said, her voice a higher pitch than usual.

  Arija rolled her eyes. “Well you don’t need to be a dick about it.”

  “Guys?”

  “All I’m saying is, maybe we should ask—”

  “Guys!” Ypsilon’s shriek halted Arija mid-sentence.

  The Grinder pointed over Adal’s shoulder, in the direction of Webley’s house. “By any chance, do you think they may know what’s going on?”

  A strained breath forced its way out of Adal’s lungs as he stared at a dozen Dwellers, all wielding pipes, wrenches and other various tools. He took a step towards the line, but something didn’t feel right. As the Dwellers shuffled towards him, their motions were jerky and unnatural.

  Arija started towards the group of newcomers. “Hi everyone. Do any of you know what happened here?” She paused, her head twitching to one side as she watched the strange movements of the group.

  “Adal, their eyes...” she whispered.

  A rusty orange tint covered the Dwellers’ eyes, like two weather-beaten bolts sticking out of each face. Adal glanced at the mangled Dweller they’d found on the roof of the train, his eyes impossibly wide as he watched the gathered mass struggle and twist.

  “They’re here!” the mangled Dweller shrieked.

  “Well this just got real,” Adal mumbled under his breath as he turned back to the horde of Dwellers. “Listen fellas, I’m not sure what happened to this guy here, but you need to leave before this goes bad.”

  One of the Dwellers in the front of the line extended a hand, her movements fragmented and unnatural.

  “You heard him!” Arija shouted. “Get the hell out of here!” Her face scrunched with concern. “Adal, something’s really wrong here.”

  Ypsilon stepped between Adal and Arija, a small smile playing at the corners of her mouth that she utterly failed to hide. “So, what’s the call? You know these guys?” she asked. “Because if you don’t…” The psychotic Grinder rolled her head from side to side, cracking her neck.

  “I wouldn’t do that,” Arija chimed in. “Dwellers are stronger than they look.”

  “Oh good, I could really use a challenge.”

  Adal stepped around the two women to address the crowd once again. “You need to roll out now. We won’t tell you again.”

  A pinging sound drew Adal’s attention. A tall Dweller tapped the tip of a pipe on the hard, metallic ground. Adal narrowed his eyes, studying the man. The pinging seemed to get louder, and it took Adal a few minutes to realize that more Dwellers had joined in, banging various tools against the platform.

  “My turn,” Maza growled. He slumped the shredded Dweller-who appeared to have passed out-over Arija’s shoulder, then marched past the group towards the crowd. “She asked you, he told you, and now I’m gonna show you why you should leave.”

  The Grinder chief grabbed two Dwellers, lifted them into the air, and threw them back into the crowd.

  Another Dweller charged Maza, forcing him back a few feet. The Grinder ripped the man away and shoved him backwards. Then a short woman started screeching. She charged at Maza, a small knife raised in the air. Maza deflected the attack but the crowd of Dwellers was starting to look antsy.

  “Oh, hell no,” Ypsilon grunted. She charged, faster than Adal thought possible. Grabbing the knife, she slid it into the woman’s head before the Dweller realized what was happening. The woman crumpled to the ground, the rage on her face relaxing until she looked almost peaceful.

  Maza yelled as several Dwellers surrounded him, rushing him until they overpowered him. Ypsilon sprinted towards him, but three Dwellers charged her before she could reach him.

  “High or low?” Adal asked as he watched in horror.

  Arija lowered the passed-out man to the ground. “Low.” She ran towards the fray and threw herself at the legs of two of the Dwellers trying to get behind Ypsilon. The two stumbled over her and she locked their legs with her own.

  Adal smashed his fist into the face of a rotund man who came up behind Arija. The bones in his right hand had been reinforced with metal after he broke them fighting when they’d first found the World Machine, so the connection only caused a dull sting to tingle up his arm.

  Next to Adal, Maza gripped a man by his thick leather vest and kicked his legs out from under him. His knee connected with the man’s jaw as he dropped to the ground. “What are these t
hings?”

  Ypsilon mule kicked a man, sending him to the ground. She spun and jumped on him, driving her knife repeatedly into the Dweller’s chest until she was covered in a slick, bronze substance and the man stopped struggling. “Can’t hang, Maza?”

  Maza opened his mouth to reply but a Dweller thrust a knife into his side. His face contorted in pain but he didn’t call out. He grabbed the Dweller's wrist and spun him around so that his back was against Maza’s stomach. With his other hand, Maza pulled the knife out of his side and tossed it to the ground. He pressed his free hand against the wound as Ypsilon punched the Dweller who had stabbed him. She repeatedly thrust her fist into the Dweller’s face until he was unrecognizable and slumped to the ground.

  Adal eyed the knife on the ground. Given a choice between allowing the weapon to inflict more damage and losing a little blood, Maza had obviously gone for the former. Adal would have done the same in his position.

  Ypsilon picked up the discarded knife and tossed it to Maza. He caught it with his free hand, spun and stabbed a fat man in overalls in the neck in one fluid motion.

  “Adal!” Arija yelled.

  Adal turned his attention back to the fight and punched a gangly Dweller, knocking the glasses off his face in the process. “Little. Busy.”

  The enraged Dweller swung a pipe at his head. Adal ducked, bringing his fist into an uppercut, separating his enemies head from its shoulders. He stopped, staring down at his still balled up fist. “What the hell?”

  Adal turned towards Arija, the question poised on his lips. She’d managed to fold a short woman in half, snapping her spine in the process. His girlfriend stood over the twisted woman, her eyes wide at what she’d done. Something was wrong. Dwellers were made of metal. Even with the reinforced bones in his hand, he shouldn’t be able to take a guy’s head off.

  Arija turned towards him, a strange, stunned look on her face. “Adal...”

  “What?”

  She pointed up, towards the darkening sky. Dozens of outraged Dwellers hung from the girders and beams above them. Their dark eyes glazed over, as if they were looking through Adal rather than at him.

  “What the…” Adal trailed off, not able to put into words exactly what he was thinking. “Uhh, guys, we need to get inside. Now.”

  Ypsilon wiped bronze blood from her forehead as she looked up at the cloud of hanging mechanical men and women. “Holy hell.”

  Maza grunted. He kicked a woman wielding a wrench in the stomach.

  This was bad. They needed guns and fast.

  “Go,” Ypsilon mumbled, cracking her knuckles as she bounced on the balls of her feet. She slid up the headphones that were slung around her neck and scrolled through the screen on her wrist until she found a song that fit her mood, like she did before every fight. “Maz and I will hold them off while you and Arija get our weapons.”

  Adal nodded towards his girlfriend. “Arija, come on.” He turned on his heels and sprinted towards the house, Arija in tow.

  A few feet from the door, Adal hit the ground hard. He twisted and kicked as a half-decayed Dweller man clutched his ankles. The Dweller's face was rotting away, sliding off his metal skull, but Adal could still see the rage in his orange-glazed eyes.

  “Shit!” Arija grabbed Adal’s shoulders, pulling him away from the crawling attacker.

  Pulling his boot free of the Dweller’s grasp, Adal slammed his heel into the man’s head, killing him in one solid kick. As Arija yanked him to his feet, Adal let out a relieved sigh.

  He turned to head back towards the house when something gripped the hem of his pant leg. Confused, Adal glanced down to see the Dweller he’d just killed twitching and slowly pulling himself up again. Adal’s eyes widened. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He’d heard that Dweller’s neck snap when he kicked him in the head.

  The Dweller pulled on Adal’s pants as he tried to leverage himself up and, as if just now realizing what was happening, Adal screamed. He reached down and punched the Dweller in the head until the enraged man let go. Then he ran, full sprint into the house.

  Kip stood just inside the door, waiting for them. “What’s happening?”

  Van pushed her chair out from the table and stood, glaring expectantly at Adal and Arija. She had removed her mechanical leg and Kip's tools were sprawled across the table.

  Arija ran to the bookshelf and turned a small gear mounted to the side. “I don’t know, Kip. But we need weapons.”

  “Why didn’t you say so?” Kip walked over to a large vase on the floor next to the fireplace. He gave it a firm kick and it shattered. A hundred small, metal balls rolled out, spilling across the floor.

  “What the shit, Kip? We need to kill the bad guys, not us. Put your Knockers away,” Adal said as he joined Arija by the arsenal.

  Kip scoffed. He filled his pockets with the small but powerful explosives. When they were full, he tossed a few at Adal. Despite his reservations, Adal pocketed the spheres.

  “Is it Kleinmasch?” Kip asked as he joined Adal and Arija.

  Arija surveyed the wall of weapons, as if trying to decide what she wanted to use. “No. We have no idea what is happening. It’s like the Dwellers all lost their minds.” She tossed a pistol to Van, then picked up her rifle and slid the bolt forward.

  “What’s a Kleinmasch?” Van asked.

  Kip was the one who answered. “They’re Pajak’s mechanical bug army. It’s sort of a long story but, basically, they want us dead.” Kip paused before adding, “and Pajak is one of Webley’s creations. He’s like me but evil… Oh and he has a lot more legs.”

  Adal grabbed his reinforced knuckles, a pistol and a curved knife. Van looked utterly confused but he didn’t have time to explain everything to her. He turned, then paused and grabbed some extra gear for Maza. Adal spotted Ypsilon’s pistol, Bangarang, on the coffee table by the couch and scooped it up, reloading it and stuffing his pockets with extra ammo.

  “What the hell is going on?” Van shouted, eyeing the gun in her hands.

  “We’re under attack,” Adal replied, as he tried to fit another knife in his boot. “We need to get outside and help Ypsilon and Maza.” He turned and glared at Kip, who was still trying to fit a few more knockers into one of his pockets. “Van, you keep Kip from killing us.”

  He hurried back across the living room. An explosion of glass rained down on him. The far window exploded, and two bodies rolled across the floor.

  Ypsilon groaned as she helped Maza to his feet. “Ok, so maybe fifty is too many to take on hand-to-hand. I owe you twenty bucks.”

  Maza shook the glass from his pants. “You think?”

  Arija rushed towards the two Grinders. “Are you two all right? What just happened?”

  “We were able to kill a few of them,” Ypsilon began. “Well, I thought we killed them, but they just kept coming back.”

  The door to the kitchen slapped the wall as it flew open and a mob of Dwellers charged in. The first four were launched backwards, decapitated by Arija’s well-placed shot. Adal arbitrarily thrust various weapons into Maza’s and Ypsilon’s hands as more Dwellers ran through the open doorway. Several more started to make their way through the window.

  “Now we can have some fun!” Ypsilon cheered, running her tongue along the side of Bangarang and placing a delicate kiss on its barrel.

  Adal opened fire on the crowd pushing through the front door, while Ypsilon and Maza covered the shattered window. But after every shot they fired, the Dwellers pulled themselves up and kept coming.

  Adal couldn’t help but see the similarities between these creatures and zombies. He pursed his lips, wondering if zombie rules would apply down here. Aiming his pistol at a tall, skinny man in grey overalls, Adal pulled the trigger and sent a round into the Dweller’s head. He waited a few seconds to see if the man would get back up again. When he didn’t, Adal let a wide smile crease his face. “We need headshots, fam.”

  Bodies piled up, blocking the entrance to the door, bu
t more and more Dwellers pulled themselves over the stack to get into the house. Their faces were hungry and desperate, like they needed to kill Adal to survive. After a few minutes, the bodies in the pile around the door began to twitch. Only an arm here or a leg there and, while Adal attributed it to death spasms, something about the movements unnerved him.

  “Shit!” Maza yelled, pulling Adal from his thoughts. As Maza reloaded his pistol, several Dwellers pushed through the window over the sink and swung their hands at him like claws. Ypsilon shot two of them before her gun clicked empty and she resorted to finishing the last with the butt of her pistol.

  “Watch your—” A Dweller swept Adal’s legs out from beneath him, toppling him to the floor and knocking the wind from his lungs. A sharp pain erupted from the back of his head as it bounced on the hard metal floor. Adal’s vision briefly tunneled before the adrenalin pumping through his veins won out. He pressed the snapping jaws of the robotic humanoid away and turned his head to the side. Van stood in the doorway with her pistol pointed at Adal’s attacker, but her face looked conflicted.

  “Van. Do it,” Adal grunted. “Shoot him.”

  Van stood motionless. She looked distant, like she was in a different world at a different time.

  Adal pressed the attacker away with every ounce of strength he had, but it was stronger than he thought, and it bore down on him. “Van!”

  There was a loud pop and the top of the Dweller’s head was gone.

  Kip stood holding Van's pistol. Van hadn’t moved. She still stared at Adal, the same distant expression on her face.

  Arija slapped a new magazine into her rifle and helped Adal to his feet. “Let’s finish this.”

  3|Darkness Has Come

  Several Hours Earlier

  The workers of Aesop’s Station went about their regular routine maintaining a railway point in one of the more remote areas of the World Machine. The constant flow of ore from the local cache kept the Dwellers blissfully unaware, their guard lowered since the war between Pajak and Webley raging in the Machine had quieted down. A fact that Pajak planned to use to his benefit.