Steampunk Zombie

Adrian’s wrist instantly snapped up towards his face, his long fingers making contact with the pesky gnat that continued to fly towards the beads of sweat falling down his rough cheeks. It was a blessing in disguise, just the action he needed in order to fully become alert. He cursed, scolding himself for falling asleep when it was his turn to keep watch. Mistakes like this were not to be tolerated, especially at night. He looked across the low, crackling fire to make sure that all was well with the woman lying on her side. The burning flames were costly, but so was the chilly weather creeping in as the leaves began to change color. The orange glow made Rebecca’s sleeping face look as though she was in pain.

Adrian had fallen asleep with his back against a tall sourwood. The past day of traveling through the Alabama forestry had been rough on both him and his cousin, especially because of the continuous attacks from the screaming dead. The industrial Western civilization of the 19th century was not as bountiful as it had once been. No longer did thick steam blow from anachronistic warehouses or retro-futuristic buildings. The same men and women who once blabbered about science and steam-powered machinery now blabbered because of dislocated jaws and rotting tongues.

A low breathing brought Adrian back to reality. He cocked his head slightly to the left, his brown eyes boring into the fire. In one swift movement, the well-toned man hauled himself up, twisting around the bumpy tree trunk and thrusting a steal blade into the open mouth of a decaying walker. There were two things that Adrian possessed that helped him to kill the infected and that was stealth and speed. The rotting being had no time to let out even a short scream before Adrian was twisting his knife deep into the roof of the being’s mouth, little clusters of bone and gum falling onto the gold pieces of clockwork that made up the handle. Adrian pulled back his weapon, his brown boot digging into the moist ground so that he could turn and throw the knife at the zombie that was looming over his cousin’s sleeping body. Another one killed in completed silence.

Adrian listened to the night sounds. He took in the crackles of the fire and the soft whispers of the wind that hit him in splotchy waves. Rebecca was not the type to normally panic. Nevertheless, Adrian wanted to handle things without waking the stubborn woman. He crept towards where the being lay by his cousin - now truly dead. Her chest rose and fell in melodic patterns as he jerked the knife out of its forehead, a single patch of bone holding the face together. He wiped the dark blood against the open blue vest of the infected human. He noticed how the clasp of the being’s belt was made of a gold cog. Thick goggles were drooped around the man’s neck. His boots were made of dark leather. His attire looked expensive, even covered in layers of dead skin and grime.

“You came from a city,” Adrian concluded as he prodded the man’s side. “How far can a thing like you travel?”

A snapping in the trees echoed through their camp. Adrian brought his blade against the flabby throat of another dead man. Using his forearm, he pushed it back against a tree as the creature’s claws tried to tear any part of his skin for it to taste against its decomposing tongue. Adrian violently lifted his left elbow, snapping the frail neck right in half. The gargles from the man immediately deceased, allowing Adrian to move on to the fourth one before it, too, could make an excruciating noise. Rebecca moved a bit in her sleep, her lips parting to let out a soft coo. Even if she had been awake, she wouldn’t have given much concern towards the silent battle being fought between her handsome cousin and the ugly dead. Satisfied, Adrian forcibly stabbed his blade into the empty socket of the being’s right eye. He thrust it so hard that it pierced all the way through to the tree trunk, pinning it up like an article of clothing hung out to dry. He fixed the garters on his sleeve, cracked his neck, and then smoothed back his crisp brown hair.

Feeling at ease, Adrian went for the coarse beige horse blanket bunched at his cousin’s side. He grabbed the lifeless creature that lie beside her and threw it into the brush by the right arm. It ripped from the socket a bit, but did not completely detach. Adrian carefully placed the blanket over his cousin’s naked legs. Rebecca meant more to Adrian not because she was his cousin, but because she was one of the last sane persons in the world; and in a world full of deadbeat walkers, sanity was all that they had left to hold onto.

Despite their hateful and frequent banters, Adrian would never dare let his cousin out of his sight. As much as he dreaded their entrance into Cahawba, he begrudgingly understood why it would be a strategic and beneficial stop in their journey to Savannah. In the last two days, the world around him had changed in ways that he could have never fathomed. He had never been the type to become entranced by the wonders and revolutions of the cities. He had heard stories of the new inventions that modernized many traditional industries. He had scoffed at the many inventions that travelers had tried to bring into his town. Adrian had laughed at the man who had voyaged to his town in a small steam car. The steam engine had combusted shortly after the man had come to a stop and he was stuck in the town for days until a relative could come to get him.

It wasn’t long before the early morning rays of the orange sun were pressing through the damp leaves of the forest trees. Adrian put the fire out and packed up the saddlebags before shaking his cousin awake. The whites of her eyes were red, still tired with sleep. She brushed the leaves and pine needles from her legs.

“You didn’t wake me for watch,” she said.

“I was fine going an extra two hours,” he answered.

“Adrian,” Rebecca said, gently. She put a hand on the shoulder of her cousin. Adrian stopped folding the blanket to look at her. “I care about you. I need to know that we are on the same page with the choices that we make. I get that you don’t want to go to Cahawba, but how worse off will we be if we don’t? I’m a trick rider, Adrian. I do tricks on horses for a living. And you work on a cattle ranch. Even if we tried to survive, what kind of life would we live now?”

The man let out a low sigh. “I can’t give you an answer for that, Rebecca. I still don’t even understand what we are facing.”

“Why do you want to go to Savannah? Are you looking for a cure?”

Adrian didn’t have an answer for her. He wasn’t sure why he wanted to go there, but finding a cure had never crossed his mine. He was not the savior type. The one time he had dared to care about another being, it had cost him his place among his own family. His heart had been hardened, and so a cure was of no interest to him. He had simply concluded that this outbreak of living corpses could not be stopped, so he was intent on joining them…on his own terms. He had always been a man of strong-will and dominance. If he was to go down, he wanted it to be because of an attack with the original creature that had started this whole mess. His intentions were unknown by his cousin, and he did not feel the need to tell her. He knew that she would not stop him or argue with his decision, but he also did not see the need in bringing it up with the woman. Adrian Holt was on the search for the Alpha. He did not want to get bit and turn due to a warped strand of mental expiry. He wanted the original creature to have the honors of infecting him with the purest form of this disease. If he was that powerful in life, then he wanted to be that powerful in death.

“I suppose a cure would be a start,” was what he murmured.

Seemingly content with his ambiguous response, Rebecca nodded her head and pulled back her hand. She walked over to Gizmo to pet his nose and coo to him before jumping up on the saddle. Adrian did the same, but with much less affection towards his horse. To him, animals were merely replaceable. His only pet had been a terrier when he was seven-years-old. Just a few months later it was taken into the air by the long claws of a hawk and Adrian never once allowed himself to bond with another animal. To him, Rebecca’s attachment with Gizmo was weird; but then again, he thought that his cousin was, too.

“I would have thought we would have run into a few of those infected things by now,” Rebecca’s voice broke the hour-long silence. “Cahawba is only a half mile away.”

“I’m assuming that they migrate in search of living humans to feed on, which would mean that Cahawba is more empty than it was before,” figured Adrian.

“I guess that’s good for us,” she whispered.

Cahawba. A ghost town. What was once Alabama’s state capital had long since been abandoned by political banners and replaced by vicious flooding waters. It had been built on a grid system, with streets running north and south named for trees and those running eat and west after famous men. After the horrendous flood in 1825, the residents of Cahawba worked hard to turn their desolate town into a distribution point for cotton to be shipped down the Alabama river to the ports in Mobile. Now, the streets were no longer flooded with salesmen and political jockeys, but instead littered with their putrefying remains.

As they walked through the town, the hooves of their horses clicked along the cobblestone road like the tapping of a woman’s long painted fingernails. The cousins gazed down at the aftermath of a much larger attack than the one that had erupted in Adrian’s town. The sky was dark, a sunless sky reflecting in the puddles of water that pooled in the divots of the street. Back clouds threatened to release large drops of rain at any moment. There was a crack of thunder in the distance.

Bodies were dropped in every direction. A pile of about fifteen were stacked in the middle of the road. Gray smoke rose from the blackened bodies whose skin was peeling from their skeletons after being set on fire. Some of their expressions where frozen in looks of terror, while others looked demonic. Rebecca coughed as they rode passed. Adrian’s nose crinkled. The smell was enough to make them both choke on their breakfast. The burning odor of rotting human flesh was worse than any pile of cattle crap that Adrian had ever dealt with.

“Do you know where we are headed?” Rebecca asked after they rode past a few more darkened streets.

“Nope. Figured you would tell me where to turn at some point,” Adrian said.

Rebecca led Gizmo past the thoroughbred so that she was taking the lead. She made an abrupt left, taking Adrian to a block between Pine and Chestnut streets past one of the biggest houses he had ever seen in a town. It seemed out of place almost with its tall ceiling to floor windows and beautiful wraparound veranda. Artesian wells and fountains adorned the front field. A maze of tall cedars decorated the back.

“It used to be a jail,” Rebecca stated after seeing the interest in her cousin’s eyes. “Colonel C. C. Pegues bought it for his family. Renovated it until it became the center point of Cahawba. Lovers would spend hours getting lost in that maze.”

“You ever make your way through it?” wondered Adrian.

The woman smiled coyly. “I don’t kiss and tell.”

Adrian scoffed. He kept his eyes on the abandoned house until his cousin led him down another road that was far less glamorous. He noticed movement in a few of the windows that they passed. Small pudgy faces of children were staring back at him, their noses pressed firmly against the windows until an adult would pull them away. Many curtains were drawn. Adrian noted how a few of the glass panels had already been boarded up. Many of the buildings looked charred, as though a fire had made its way through Cahawba instead of water for once.

“It’s that one,” Rebecca said.

Adrian followed her finger towards a shop several yards from where they had stopped. Its sign was glamorous, gilded carvings embellishing the cogwheels that made up the sign. Six large metal letters created the word SNAPP’S. It was another building out of place in the forsaken town. Two wide square windows made up the front, a double-door separating them. Messy brushstrokes of black covered the glass. Adrian used his nail to scratch at the chalky paint. It didn’t seem to want to come off.

The mass of bone and muscle pressed against the door suddenly moved. The bottom part of its body was gone leaving just the upper half and right arm attached in a jagged manner. It had been a woman. She wore no clothing, her naked breast exposed, but was covered in black soot and blood. Her hair fell from her beaten head in gloppy strands, patches of skin revealing a fractured skull. She popped her jaw open and shut. She had no tongue, so the only noises that came from her mouth were heavy huffs and a sound similar to that of a neighing donkey. She let herself fall forward from the door. She used her hand to grab at the cobblestone one by one to pull herself towards the on looking cousins. Adrian gazed to Rebecca before reaching down to grab at the woman’s wrist. He threw her body along the street. Her head hit a stone as she continued to roll from the force. Her impeded gargles soon halted.

“I’m surprised she is the first we have seen still alert,” Rebecca said.

“There are people still alive here, hiding in the shadows of their quiet homes. I saw them in the windows,” Adrian informed her.

“I suppose then that there is still hope.”

Adrian’s hand rested on the brass door handle. He looked down at his cousin. “Hope died long before mankind did,” he muttered softly.

Adrian did not let his surprise show when the doors could be opened. He had figured getting in would have been more of a hassle, for a place such as this was not the type of store to easily have access to. Due to the covering on the window, no light was able to seep in to illuminate the interior. Rebecca shuffled in quickly so that the doors could be shut. Adrian was hesitant to move. There was no way to tell where anything was or even if they were alone. It was not the kind of environment to aimlessly walk around in.

Adrian felt a sudden brush of cold air past his cheek as a bolt whizzed by. The force from the small quarrel was enough to push him back against the wooden doorframe. The bolt has pieced through the right sleeve of his shirt, pinning him to the wall. Adrian’s chest heaved as he fought to catch his breath.

A low chuckle filled the room. Several yards in front of him a glowing orange circle illuminated the face of an older man. The glow softened as the main exhaled a thick puff of smoke. With another drag, the cigar grew bright and Adrian could tell that the man was very much amused by the dark smile that stretched his chapped lips.

“The darkness fucks with my aim,” he mused. “I wasn’t supposed to miss.”

The man reached towards a wooden counter where an oil lamp sat. He lit the wick and then turned the notch upwards until the flame grew as high as it could. With his left hand, the old man moved the cigar from between his lips and with his right one he curled his fingers around the handle of the lamp. His brown boots clunked against the floor as he walked towards the corner wall. He flipped a switch. A spark of blue light snapped above before copper coils began to grow red. Within a few minutes, electricity found its way coursing through the small bulbs that hung from the two-story ceiling.

“Pap!” grinned Rebecca. She raced forward into the chest of the older man. He set the lamp back on the wooden counter before giving the woman a one-arm squeeze.

“Hello, my dear,” he murmured.

Bernard Snapp was not an affectionate man. He was reserved, cold towards all displays of emotion. Having grown up in a strict Christian household, he never let his mind be corrupt by the sentiments of the heart. He had his routine and despised all who interrupted it. He preferred the company of the weapons in his store and would spend sleepless days dedicated to perfecting a new model. For forty-three years he had owned SNAPP’S. It consumed him to the point where family was nothing more than a thing of the past.

Adrian pulled himself from the doorframe, the quarrel in his shirt causing the fabric to rip. He cast his grandfather a dark look. “You owe me a new shirt,” Adrian hissed.

Bernard scowled. He pushed Rebecca back so that the woman was no longer clinging to his middle. “Those are the first words you choose to say after eight years? I don’t owe you shit, boy,” huffed the bitter man.

Noting how the space between the two men was growing dangerously thin, Rebecca stepped forward. “We are on our way to Savannah. We were hoping you could help us in the weapons department,” she said.

Bernard scrunched his nose, the wrinkles on his brow multiplying. “Savannah? What’s in Savannah?”

“Show him,” instructed Rebecca with the wave of her hand.

Adrian begrudgingly pulled the silver stopwatch from his vest pocket and tossed it across the room to his grandfather. The old man caught it in the palm of his right hand. He flipped it over a few times then opened it. He shook it. A small rattle sounded from inside.

“What’s this?” he grumbled.

“There’s an inscribing on the back,” Adrian said. “It was on the body of a man that came into my town and infected everyone. I figured it would be a good starting point.”

“A good starting point for what?” Bernard scoffed. “Don’t tell me you’ve become soft once more. Saving a country is a big step from saving just one man.”

Adrian breathed deeply. Rebecca noticed his clenched fists and intervened yet again knowing that the two men could go at it at any minute. “Pap,” she said. “So do you have anything we can use?”

Bernard continued to stare into the heated eyes of his grandson. He slowly turned his head to look down at the woman that clung to his arm. “Of course I do,” he said. “I am the only damn weapon smith in this goddamn country that knows what he’s doing. Let me show you all the shit I recently got from the British Empire. With a few American modifications, they are completely one-of-a-kind.”

Adrian and Rebecca followed their grandfather behind the counter where a glass door made up the other side. It housed a lot of smaller trinkets and pocketknives. Bernard pushed back the door. He grabbed what looked like a thick leather bracelet about eight inches wide. On the top rested a gold box. From it was a chain made if small links. At the end of it was a ring.

“Put this on,” Bernard instructed.

Rebecca helped the man to slide the bracelet along her right arm. He snapped the metal buttons together on the underside so that it fit snuggly from her wrist up her forearm. He slid the ring down her middle finger. He took a step back to access how the ornament looked on his granddaughter’s arm.

“Very good,” he muttered under his breath. “Now make a fist.”

Rebecca shot a weary look towards her cousin. Adrian simply shrugged. The woman delicately balled up her first, worried about what this foreign invention might do. Nothing. Nothing happened. Rebecca waited for her grandfather to get upset, muttering about how the damn thing must be broken. Instead, he let loose an amused cackled.

“Good,” Bernard clasped his hands together. “Now do it again. This time fast and sudden.”

Rebecca furrowed her brows, skeptically, but did as she was told. She pulled her fingers inward towards so that her nails left white curves in her palm. Her eyes went wide and a small gasp left her lips when a full-sized knife shot from the gold box. She looked from the knife to Adrian to her grandfather and back to the knife in astonishment.

“How did it do that?” she cried.

“When you curl your middle finger, the vein above the tarsometatarsal joint tenses. So long as you ball your fist in a quick manner, it triggers the knife to spring forward from the compartment in defense. A simple grip like when you are clutching the reigns of a horse will not be powerful enough to cause it to spring,” Bernard explained.

Rebecca’s smile grew. She jumped a little in excitement. “I love it!” she squealed. “…How do I get it to retract?”

“Just relax your fist.”

Rebecca opened her hand and the knife flew back into the gold compartment. The woman caressed the weathered brown leather as though it were a pet. Bernard then turned to Adrian.

“I supposed you want one?” he said with a dark manner, his tone completely changing when he addressed the young man compared to the young woman. There was hate evident in each syllable.

Adrian shook his head. “I have a blade.”

Bernard scoffed. “Then what do you desire?”

Adrian looked around. Not much looked familiar to him. Most of the items were customized with gadgets that he had never seen before. A far wall of pistols and wide barreled revolvers caught his attention. He crossed the room to get a better look at the weapons that hung on the wall. He lifted a finger to trace the gears engraved within the bright nickel frame of one.

“What is this one?” he looked towards his grandfather and spoke.

Bernard took a step forward, his hands clasped behind his back. “That is a Volcanic Repeater with a personal touch. Its conical bullets are hollowed at the base to hold propellant powder and the primer charge. What makes it special is due to the physical and geometrical limitations of the original tube magazine under the barrel, I replaced it with one four times its size so that the chamber can accommodate bullets with enough room for more propellant thus giving it more force and longer range. I turned it from a decent pistol to a hardcore motherfucker.”

The right side of Adrian’s lips lifted upwards. With both hands, he lifted the pistol from off the wall. After inspecting it thoroughly, flipping it over numerous times, he slipped it into the belt loop of his pants.

Bernard looked to Rebecca who was standing on his right. “And would you like one, my dear?”

“I suppose. If you’re just handing them out,” she grinned, playfully.

Bernard pursed his lips. Handling humor was not his strong point. He passed her to get a better look at the wall. He scanned it up and down before settling on a revolver hanging on the bottom right corner. Every part of it was encrusted in a shiny metallic material. The raised coils along the grip shimmered against the beams of light that shown from the swaying bulbs above.

“This was adapted from a model made by Jean Alexander Le Mat. I ran into him once in New Orleans right before he met his wife. Its percussion-cap makes it usable in any sort of weather. It’s got a secondary twenty gauge smooth-bore barrel capable of firing buckshot. So once your nine cylinder runs out, flip this switch to engage its secondary function,” the old man instructed.

Rebecca gripped it gently. Her face paled. It was a hefty size and she had never wielded such a strong weapon before. Bernard handed her a brown belt with a holster attached. After clipping it around her middle, the woman cautiously set the revolver into the pocket.

“What’s this?” Adrian asked. He walked towards the darkened window where a tall cylinder rested. A bronzed coil like a snake was wrapped around what looked to be a very wide barrel. Adrian struggled to lift it.

“I haven’t named that one yet,” Bernard admitted. He shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his brown pants that were covered in black powder. His fingernails were soiled with the same material.

“What does it fire?” Rebecca asked next.

“Anything you want it to,” Bernard stated. “Its barrel is large enough to put a shoe in there if you wanted to. It’s powered by the same stuff steamboats are. It’s not as loud as the pistol and revolver. And the pipe creates suction in the back that releases steam when you fire it. Just be careful how many times you use it, as it’s prone to overheating.”

“Could you fill it with rocks?” Rebecca inquired once she took a step closer to investigate the device in her cousin’s arms.

“I don’t see why not,” Bernard cocked his head. “That would probably be more effective considering what you’re trying to ward off. There you go. Call it a Rock Launcher.”

Both cousins jumped from the sudden bang against the blackened glass of the window. It sent a ripple of vibrations with each force that pressed against it. Nails screeched against the paint. Adrian and Rebecca backed away until they were standing by their grandfather. The scream of a terrified woman enticed the creatures and soon the glass was still once more.

“They do that sometimes,” Bernard said. “They don’t know what awaits for them in here.”

“Will the glass hold?” feared Rebecca.

“It hasn’t broke yet,” the old man nonchalantly stated. He turned to head towards the set of stairs that curved up the wall in a half circle. On the second story balcony sat a tall wooden door with a hunter green frame. Before his foot left the last step, he looked down at his grandchildren. “Well? Aren’t you coming?” he frowned.

Adrian and Rebecca shared a look before scrambling up the green and gold paisley carpet runner after the acrimonious old man. The beginning of their visit had been unexpectedly calm, Bernard showing more attention towards them than he had in the past decade. But like all Snapp family gatherings, Adrian had learned that none of them ever seemed to end well.