The engine Hiawatha pulled into Rochester Station, announcing herself with a squeal of brakes and a hiss of steam. The Station's drawbridge rattled up behind her, red-gold leaves fluttering away. Rochester Station's minutemen took up their positions around the arriving vehicle. A line of people snaked out from the train through the quarantine checkpoint, where each passenger was stripped and inspected for bite marks before being permitted to walk freely through the city.
The hatchway to the engine itself squeaked open, and the machine's commander stepped out to meet the leader of the minutemen.
"Welcome back, ma'am." Andrew Halleck said, shouldering his steam-musket and saluting.
"Thank you, Andrew." Dame Elizabeth Adams responded, bunching her skirts off to one side as she climbed down the ladder to reach the station's floor.
"Did you have a safe trip?" he asked, offering her a hand, which she accepted.
Elizabeth grimaced. "I'm afraid not." She answered. "A section of tracks between here and Philadelphia were washed out by a storm— the Dead killed five while we repaired them."
Andrew closed his eyes. "I'm sorry to hear that."
Elizabeth acknowledged the sentiment with a nod. "How are things here?"
"Better. The Dead have been getting aggressive, but we haven't lost anyone so far."
"They do tend to be a little more dangerous just before winter." Elizabeth agreed. "Probably looking for food before they freeze."
"Most likely." Andrew agreed. He surveyed the long line of train cars as the stevedores began hauling an endless line of boxes out onto horse-drawn carts to be pulled to the warehouses.
"Long Island Station had a bumper crop this summer." Elizabeth commented, noticing his gaze. "We traded the extra salt for five new steam-muskets while we were there."
"Glad to hear it." Andrew said, and meant it. "The guild-masters tell me we're almost set for winter. All the pickling and canning's been done, and the quartermasters tell me the warehouses are about eighty-five percent full. This should about round us off."
"At least a comfortable winter, then." Elizabeth said. "What about the industrial side of things?"
"Oh, the salt mines are closed now, but we're a bit behind on rail production." Andrew explained. "Still, blacksmith Jasper tells me they'll be on schedule by autumn's end if he has to hammer steel in his own hearth."
"That does sound like him." Elizabeth smiled, and Andrew fought down the urge to grin like an idiot schoolboy. "And how are things on your end?" she asked.
"Ah, we're in excellent shape, ma'am."
"Yes, I see that." She grinned as he flushed.
"One hundred and fifty-six minutemen at present, each with his own steam-musket." Andrew pressed on. "Ten officers, plus myself, all with sabers and revolvers. Six cannons are running at present, we took Number Four down for maintenance. There were a few dozen Dead outside the other day, but a few volleys sent them packing without any fuss."
"All our train cars in a row then." Elizabeth said, then yawned.
"Ma'am, why don't you rest for a bit before the Council meeting?" Andrew suggested, offering his arm. "I'd be happy to escort you home."
"That's very kind of you, Andrew. I'd like that."
The Council meeting that night opened to a loud hubbub of voices. The Guild-masters all shouted over one another to be heard, dozens of side conversations erupting in every direction. The Duke of Rochester, Jacob Adams, presided over the hubbub in stoic silence. When the hour for the meeting began, the last few Council members straggling in, Adams nodded to Halleck.
"SILENCE!" Halleck boomed, and the rumble of voices fell off. Andrew took a parade rest position behind Adams as the white-haired Duke looked over his notes.
"Thank you, gentlemen." The Duke said into the near-quiet. His voice was quiet beneath the weight of years it had endured, but it carried throughout the hall with little difficulty. "I have a few opening remarks before I turn today's business over to Elizabeth." There was a groan from somewhere in the back, and Rose Tremblay flushed as all eyes turned towards her. She leaned back from Adams' fierce glare, but held his gaze until the Duke returned to address the council in general.
"Our final expedition for the fall has returned." He continued. "They bring news and mail from several of the other stations of New England and the Mid-Atlantic region. Anyone with specific questions, I ask you to wait until the free period to ask them. The cargo manifest included—"
The doors banged open. A young minuteman Andrew recognized as Eric Gansworth sprinted through the assembly to reach him. Gansworth skidded to a halt in front of Andrew, breathing hard.
"Sir," he panted, "Lieutenant Green's compliments sir, and he requests your immediate presence."
"Where is he?"
"Near the Number Three cannon."
"Let's go." Andrew hurried out the door and swung onto his horse, sparing just enough time to yank the halters free from the hitching post. Gansworth led the way as they galloped out to the station's wall. As they approached, the crackle of musket fire and the deeper concussion of cannons assaulted Andrew's ears.
When they reached the wall, Andrew leaped up the steps two at a time, and arrived to find a scene of utter chaos. Men milled about, firing their muskets as fast as they could reload them. The cannon leaped back as if fired once more, and Andrew winced at the sound. Andrew glanced over the wall, and felt himself go white. The cleared area that surrounded the station was swarming with the Dead— at least a thousand of them, and more were streaming out of the trees.
Looking at the men about him, Andrew could see they were on the verge of breaking. A pair of lieutenants were trying to restore order, but each got in another's way, overlapping orders and gestures adding to the confusion. Andrew took a deep breath and held up his saber with both hands, the blade still within the sheath. "FORM UP ON ME!" he bellowed, and was gratified to see the nearest minutemen leap to his side. Using the saber to indicate direction, Andrew continued shouting: "MAKE A LINE! SHOULDER ARMS!"
As more minutemen followed his instructions, the rest began to fall in place. The two lieutenants, now with a goal to work towards, became an asset once more. Each began barking orders to his platoon to form a line, and within only a few minutes a long line of blue and silver uniforms stretched across the wall. At the same time, the Dead had reached the wall, and were crawling over each other in a seething, howling mass as they sought to reach the heights.
Andrew pointed with his saber, the movement copied by his lieutenants. "Company, take aim!" he waited a breath as the clatter of metal on metal subsided, and one hundred long black barrels canted downward into the mass of grayish streaked flesh.
The sword jerked down. "Fire!"
CRACKRACRACKRACK.
The moans of the dead increased in volume, as howls of animalistic pain joined them. The steam-muskets swung up, and each man pulled out another cartridge, bit it open, and stuffed the contents down the barrel. As soon as a militiaman had finished the task, he stood back up and re-aimed his rifle.
"Fire!"
CRACKRACKRACKRACK.
BOOM.
The cannon jerked again, and a knot of shattered flesh burst away from the wall. The Dead screamed again, but now they were dying again, the thin iron shells around their heaths blown apart by cannon fire and steam-muskets.
It took almost two dozen more volleys to finish off the rest, and by the end Andrew was hoarse from shouting orders, streaked with dirt and powder from the muskets. The Dead had been run off, but the Station had not escaped unscathed. Twelve militiamen had died, and two had been injured by minor burns from the cannon. All of those wounded by the Dead were, of course, now Dead themselves.
The town meeting reconvened soon after, but the mood had shifted. The relaxed air of business about to be concluded had gone, and in it's place was a distinct sense of something-must-be-done. The debate was short-lived and one-sided. The Hiawatha would go out for one more run-not to trade, but to scour the countryside for evidence of more of the Dead. Any and all Dead encountered were to be destroyed. The consequences of allowing large volume of the Dead to reappear just as the city was weakened by the winter could not be allowed- they must destroy as many as possible before the frost stuck.
Duke Adams' gavel clacked against the block with resounding finality. "It is decided. The Hiawatha will drive once more. Prepare her for launch."
The next ten hours were a blur of activity for Andrew. Crates of muskets, bullets, and sabers were packed up and stored. Cannons were swabbed, test-fired, swabbed again. As he was standing with one leg inside the train and one eye on the manifest, Rose Tremblay approached.
"Steam in fifteen minutes, soldier boy." She informed him. "Be on board of I'm leaving without you." Without waiting for a reply, she leapt aboard, her moccasins silent on the scuffed metal.
Andrew stuffed the list int a pocket and followed her aboard. His own militiamen, a detachment of fifty, were already aboard and packing their effects away for launch. Elizabeth was standing on the foredeck, beside the Hiawatha's stumpy mast, and Andrew climbed up to join her. Rose was already there, her gustoweh slightly askew as usual.
At the shrill sound of the Hiawatha's whistle, the work stopped as the train's crew formed up behind Rose, while the militiamen fell in behind Andrew. Elizabeth stepped forward before both rows, the purple-and-white flag of Rochester in her hands. Silence fell as she clipped the flag to the short mast and cranked it into the air. Her voice was quiet and calm, but carried across the ranks like a ripple across as still pond.
"Hiawatha, do you have water?" she asked.
"Yes." Sixty-five voices replied.
"Hiawatha, do you have coal?"
"Yes."
"Hiawatha, do you have bullets?"
"Yes."
"Hiawatha, do you have a crew?"
"Yes!"
"Hiawatha, are you ready to launch?" she asked.
"YES." roared the response.
"Then launch!" Elizabeth cried, and the neat rows dissolved into furious activity. Hoppers were closed, hatches were sealed, and gangplanks lifted. Andrew joined Rose and Elizabeth in the forward-most room of the train, a place Rose liked to call the "Combat Information Center". The train's blowers thrummed as they pumped air into the firebox, and the sweating fireman shoveled coal as Rose watched the gauges with cool attentiveness. The needles shivered forwards, and after a moment she flipped open one of the speaking tubes that sprouted from the bulkhead beside her.
"Launching in five, four, three, two…one." She hauled up the brake lever, and Hiawatha lurched forward with a hiss, her drive rods squealing and spitting steam. A dozen valves open, and pistons thudded while steam hissed, the Hiawatha gaining speed as the drawbridge slammed down before her.
A stray pair of Dead sought to reach the drawbridge, but the train's gunners jerked their firing lanyards and blew them apart. Her flanks wreathed in a haze of brown smoke and white steam, Hiawatha steamed away from Rochester, the first lookout climbing up the mast.
Hiawatha chattered down the track, her three high-pressure pistons churning to pull ten cars bristling with cannon behind. Andrew, Lady Adams, and Rose Tremblay all stood in the CIC of the train, clustered around a map of the region.
"The next sweep is the secondary beltway." Rose explained, tracing a short dark line with the head of a screwdriver. "It's only a thirty-mile stretch or so, but it crosses one of the few sections of open ground in the area. There's the marshes around Genesee River on one side, and the Pinnacle-Cobbs ridge on the other side. Any of the Dead coming up from the south will almost have to come through here."
"So it's going to be a rough thirty miles." Andrew summarized.
"No, it's going to be a shitshow." Rose corrected. "If the Dead we've seen so far follow the same population densities, they'll be most concentrated here."
"That is our mission." Elizabeth said. "We need to have this stretch cleared out if we don't want to get ambushed by thousands of Dead in the spring. Andrew, I think this will be the time to double-shot the cannons."
"Can do, ma'am." Andrew agreed.
"And Rose, how high can we raise the tolerances on the governors?"
"Oh, nineteen hundred PSI or so." Rose answered.
"Isn't that…a hundred higher than the listed pressure tolerance?" Andrew said in a neutral tone.
"We've been using distilled water, so scale deposition won't be that bad. The boiler will probably hold."
"'Probably' isn't a word I like to hear when we're talking about boiler integrity." Andrew remarked.
Rose waved a hand in dismissal. "If it does explode, it won't be our problem anymore."
Andrew looked at Elizabeth, who shrugged. "I'm going to go see about the cannons, then." He said. "Try not to let us explode."
The stretch loomed before them, a wide-open lowland covered in half-bare trees and fallen leaves. The sounds of Hiawatha's passage echoed from the distant cliffs, and the faint sound of the Dead's howling came with it. Andrew waited on the cold, windy top of the train, one hand on a speaking tube while he scanned the oncoming forest. Up ahead, the tracks were swarming with the Dead.
Dull, empty faces turned with listless abandon as Hiawatha's one thousand ton bulk slammed into them at sixty-five miles per hour. Most of the bodies ceased to exist entirely as rank, foul-smelling blood splattered across Hiawatha's plow.
"Fire!" Andrew ordered, then ducked and covered his ears as Hiawatha's cannons thundered.
BOOMBOOMBOOM.
Canister shot shredded the surrounding trees, and the Dead streaming out from the forest seemed to pause as their front ranks were torn to bloody scraps. Their screams rose in pitch, and now thousands of grayish bodies streamed out of the forest towards Hiawatha.
"Fire!"
CRACKRACKRACKCRACK. The higher-pitched sound of steam muskets cut through the air , and lead streaked across the forest. Many of the balls went wide, but it was mass of firepower, not accuracy, that would determine the battle.
The Dead raced inward, gangling gray arms grasping for the minutemen. They stumbled over the tracks, over fallen branches, in one wave of gurgling, screeching bodies. Hiawatha's great plow ran through them like a frigate cutting the ocean, a spray of bone and blood cascading from her flanks. Of all the Dead that had swarmed the Hiawatha in that first charge, only a handful survived the leap aboard.
But a handful was quite enough in Andrew's opinion as he ducked under the frantic lunge of one such Corpse. Its teeth snapped shut inches from his arm, and he used his saber as a lever to pry its face away from him. He brought one leg up and kicked it in the chest, firing his revolver into it as it stumbled backwards. The bullets seemed to annoy the Corpse, who screeched and tried once more to leap up after him. Andrew met its lunge with the tip of his saber, and the Corpse gurgled as the tip of the blade intersected with its neck, severing the spinal cord in a trickle of sour blood.
Andrew kicked the Corpse over the side and looked about at the rest of the battle. The majority of his minutemen still manned the cannons, wheeling them back to be reloaded, even as the Dead continued to rush forwards. Over their heads, another line of minutemen with steam-muskets picked off the foremost enemies. A few others were fighting the last of the Dead that had managed to get aboard, filling them with bullet holes and saber slashes. So far, no one appeared to have been bitten.
A cry of agony hit Andrew in the stomach. One of the gunners was staring in horror at a ruined hand, the last three fingers bitten off. The wound was already beginning to turn, long streaks of purple running down towards the unfortunate man's elbow.
"Hold him down!" Andrew ordered, hurrying forward. "And pass the word for Leon!"
The medic was already on his way, two assistants hauling the cauldron of hot pitch that all minutemen dreaded. Andrew knelt down, holding the gunner's remaining good arm down.
"You're gonna be alright, Sam." He lied.
Sam's eyes darted back and forth. "Oh god- please, I-"
Andrew pinned Sam's arm underneath his knees and fumbled for his hip flask. Two other minutemen nearby grabbed Sam's legs. The purple blotches of infection crept further down Sam's arm, laced through with glowing reddish veins. Andrew unscrewed the cap and poured a generous portion of whiskey into Sam's mouth. The man gulped it down with a wince, and then screamed as the surgeon's saw bit down into his shoulder. The surgeon worked with numb efficiency, removing the infected limb in seconds. Sam screamed again as the hot tar was applied against his shoulder, then mercifully fell unconscious.
"Did we get it in time?" Andrew asked Leon.
White eyebrows contracted. "We'll know in a minute. I'll pull him up to the hospital car."
Andrew nodded, and stood back up to take in their situation. The rhythmic thunder of the guns still sounded, the faster, arhythmic popping of the steam-muskets in counterpoint. They were holding well for the moment- the cannons chewed through the crowds of Dead while the muskets picked off those that got too close.
The battle was not over, but they were holding their own. And in a war like this, that was a victory of its own.