Mae turned Prudence in a circle, and the mule, thinking she was headed back to the shed, finally lifted her feet. Then Mae dug her heels in again, spurring Prudence into a trot, straight into the forest.
The wind howled, wailed. She heard the crack of a treetop breaking high above her. Old Prudence ran as if ghosts and goblins were on her heels. It was all that Mae could do to keep her on the trail to the town.
Trees flew by as Prudence galloped. Mae held tight to the boy, sparing a glance down at him just once.
He smiled, his small white teeth sharp and feral, his eyes too wide, too dark, too hungry in a face that was no longer sweet.
Then he attacked.
Mae screamed as he sprang up and bit her shoulder. She shoved at him, but he clung tight, fingers digging at her eyes, tearing her hair. He kicked the gun off the saddle and laughed. Even with all her strength, Mae Lindson could not hold him off as he sank his teeth deep into her neck.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Jeb Lindson knew how to fight. He had lived by wits first and fists second for most all his life. He knew how to tamp his temper too, when a fight weren’t never going to go his way. And he knew when the odds were against a man, sometimes that was when the mettle of a man was made.
Jeb wasn’t the sort of man to give up easily. Jeb wasn’t the sort of man to give up at all.
But even an undead man with inhuman strength could see when he was outnumbered.
The tickers had surrounded him. Instead of attacking all at once like he thought they’d do, they’d taken their turn, deciding which monstrous metal beast would strike him. The small, fast matics had done him the most damage.
Matics, tickers, did not have the brains or reasoning of a man. But these tickers, these devil toys, carried vials of glim in their heads. Glim gave things power and unholy strength. And Jeb was sure it was that which made these matics clever.
They wanted him dead—he knew the truth of that. But they seemed to have put some consideration into how to kill him. Near as Jeb could figure, they wanted to kill him slowly, wear him down, then chop him up for good.
He still had the boulder at his back. The ground round in front of him was littered with scrap metal.
Jeb swung the scythelike arm of the first matic he’d taken down. The blade was strong and sharp. Strong enough and sharp enough to cleave through six metal torsos of six metal monsters. Strong enough and sharp enough to smash through skull casings and pop rivets, so Jeb could suck out the sweet glim in their brains.
But they had done damage to him; that was plain sure. Jeb didn’t so much hurt, even though he had cuts and gouges and hunks of missing flesh. He was wearing down, picked apart, broke apart. Soon he wouldn’t be much left but a bag of bones.
A new ticker faced off in front of him. It was near the size of a man, body and head made of mahogany casing over brass and iron. Water filled what looked like a wooden keg on its back, and brass pipes fitted around from that pack into its belly. From the smell of it, it was powered by wood, not coal. Its four legs were all piston and spring. When it bent, it launched up and bounced from boulder top to boulder top, grappling hold with two retractable clamps at the ends of arms.
Jeb watched it bounce back and forth between the rocks, puzzling out how it might be strung so he’d know how to unstring it. It finally landed in front of him with the strangled-siren sound of pistons thunking and pumping.
Every ticker that had come at him had a way to be unmade, a weakness. There was a pile of twisted, dead matics behind him. He’d figured the jugular of every one of them. Cut through pipes, torn off valves, jammed vents, and ripped appendages and torsos apart. Didn’t matter to him how to take one apart, just so much as he got it done.
This one, with the springs where legs and joints should be, was the hardest yet. Quick and wicked, it was near enough height to Jeb, but when it landed on its feet, rocks crushed to dust.
Heavy, then. Like a steam hammer.
Jeb watched it squat, the cow-sized head swiveling up to pour green light in his face. He didn’t know how many more tickers waited to attack back in the scrub. Maybe two. Maybe two dozen. There was still steam in the night, rising in wisps of clouds like thin lines of campfires, stovepipes, chimneys, rising in a wide half circle in front of him. Were there less tickers now? Were there less glowing green eyes, burning orange furnaces, glints of copper, silver, and steel in the night?
Hard to tell. Made no never mind. One at a time, by and by, he’d break them down, drink their glim, and leave nothing but metal bones and cold ash to show for it.
Spring feet clattered, like a chain somewhere inside it was pulling gears, winding tighter, tighter.
Jeb shifted his grip on the ticker arm he kept tight by his side, the length of which tucked between his arm and rib. He’d lost the other matic’s arm he had also used as a weapon. But he still had the hanging rope, and held it by the end, letting the weighted noose dangle from his fingertips.
He tipped his chin to his chest, set his feet wide, and waited for the matic to attack.
The chain rattled louder, then paused, as if the ticker in front of him was holding a breath. The matic leaped.
Jeb swung the rope. The matic was up so high, it was as if it had wings.
The rope missed. But the matic did not. It landed against Jeb, long arms wrapped around him, pincers snapping for his neck.
Jeb roared as the heat from the matic burned through his clothes. His arms were strapped down tight. And the ticker squeezed tighter.
Jeb worked to think this through. Drawing a thought up through the fog in his head was hard as pulling roots out of parched soil. He had to break the matic’s hold. Had to break it before it burned him up and cut his head off.
Jeb took a deep breath, then exhaled all a sudden and dropped the weapon out from between his arm and ribs. It was a sliver of room, the smallest space. But the matic’s arms were ratcheted as tight as the workings inside it would allow. Jeb had a thought the matic hadn’t been built for holding a man. It was just built for killing a man.
That small stretch of space was enough for him to pull his arm down. He twisted. Pulled one arm free as the ticker huffed and mandibles sharp as saw blades snicked and snacked at his face.
Jeb got cut, more than once, but he didn’t care how much he bled so long as there was freedom at the end of it. With his free hand he grabbed hold of the matic’s arm and wrenched it out of the socket.
The matic squealed. Steam and heat burst out of the hole in its side. A hole that revealed pipes and gears. The matic rolled its hand, trying to catch at Jeb’s clothes, his flesh, and draw him in close.
Jeb beat the thing with its own arm, clanking away like a man pounding down a railroad spike. It squealed and squalled, bit and tore.
Jeb kept beating. Nothing but anger driving his arm that fell again and again like a pile driver. Nothing but anger driving him to keep going, keep killing, keep living so he could find his Mae. So he could kill LeFel.
Didn’t matter how much the matic tore into him. Didn’t matter the burns, didn’t matter the chunk of ear lying on the ground, the three fingers he was now missing. Anger mattered. And anger got the job done.
It took a while, maybe a full five or ten minutes, before Jeb realized the matic had stopped moving. By and by he came to realize he’d been pounding away on the ticker, pulverizing it into a shredded pile of metal and wood. Water dribbled out over the mess of it, water dark with ash and oil.
All of it going cold.
Jeb raised the arm one last time, but the ticker was undone, unstrung. He straightened and felt the ground beneath his feet sway. He was tired. Sore tired. But there were more tickers in the shadows waiting to crush his bones.
He looked up, through the water and blood and bits of flesh that hung wrong-ways on his face. He looked up to see how many enemies he had left to kill.
