INFINITE 1: GHOSTS of GARRYOWEN

by CTCORBITT

Wounded by a dark past, Booker DeWitt has struggled in life, finding himself penniless and on the bar room floor. But when an orange-haired stranger shows up with an odd proposal concerning an enigmatic young woman, DeWitt faces a choice...ignore him and complete his self-destruction, or travel to find her. All he has to do is make it to a place called...Columbia.

20. Red Dawn

20. Red Dawn

I woke to a shudder.

Gradually my eyes opened, swollen and aching through a crust of blood caked upon the corners of my vision. Along with my arousal, the pain returned…the bruises from a dozen or more beatings reminding me that my undoing had not all been a dream. I lay upon a wooden bed, suspended by two chains cantilever against the wall of stone blocks. Again, the walls and grates trembled.

Vox.

Laboring to my feet, I peered out the lone window, a sad thing five inches by eight, set with steel bars as if I might somehow attempt to slip through. Beyond it Emporia's cloud swept skyline was gray, while in the streets below, watching over the gulf of air that separated wherever we were from it, troopers clustered within makeshift fighting positions with barrels lit to keep them against the dark. A bridge had been drawn up that led to the main island. Had Fitzroy's people succeeded in taking control of Columbia? Who was leading them? I didn't matter, even if they had…over this portion of the city, at least, it seemed Comstock still held sway.

"They've burned it all." I heard from outside my door. "And it's your fault."

I turned to the voice, carrying from a small metal port on the door. "I didn't have nothing to do with the Vox, friend. Your holy savior conjured them up all up on his own."

"You're lucky the Prophet insisted we spare you. If it had been me, you'd have taken the long dive to the deep end of the Atlantic."

"Where are we, if you don't mind me asking?"

"Comstock House, filth." Faintly I heard boots scuff the concrete outside, followed by the ring of a bell and handset lifted from its receiver. "Yes. I'll wait." Loping to the steel hatch, I peered through to see a trooper on a telephone. He looked back my way, tall and gaunt, pale with hazel eyes that lacked emotion even as he spoke on the hanset. "Your Holiness, the Shepherd has awakened. Are you certain this is what you wish?" By the souring of his expression, he didn't seem to savor the answer. He nodded anyway. "Yes, your Holiness. I'll have him ready."

He must have divined my gaze for his eyes smoldered upon me. Casually he hung the receiver upon its rack and walked my way, loosing a truncheon upon the peep hole as he arrived. Backward I snapped as it struck against the cold steel. Beyond the door, he chortled.

It wasn't long before Comstock joined him, the old man entering through the cell block's outer door, clad in a blue frock coat, nodding to the guard who took up behind him. Smugly he approached the door of my cell. "So, False Shepherd, you are finally awake. I'd thought Sergeant Vines might have been a shade too rough on you at Fink's residence. Even that you might not recover."

"I'm tougher than I look. And what is with this 'False Shepherd' bit anyway? I ain't never even heard of this place before, let alone been here. How could you even know about me let alone moniker me 'False Shepherd'?"

"The question, Mr. DeWitt, is how could you have possibly known about Columbia, considering where you are from." Brow furrowed, Comstock inspected the door with wizened eye...tapped upon it with his cane. The subtle scent of cologne wafted in the chill air.

"What do you mean, 'where I'm from?' You mean New York?"

"In a manner of speaking, yes. How, might I ask, did you get here?"

"By Zeppelin." Even now I could smell the smoke from outside mixing with his foul taint, wondering why he was dallying with me while his city burned. Either he was nuts or getting at something. "What did you do with Elizabeth? With Archie and Evelyn?"

"My, my, Mr. DeWitt...you demand so much when you are in a position to insist upon absolutely nothing. But if you must know, my daughter is being prepared for her next role in her life, that of my successor. In that matter, nothing has changed."

"And the Montgomerys?"

Through the peep hole Comstock turned to the guard, blue eyes intent. "You mean the couple that aided and abetted you? The ones who facilitated your kidnapping of my daughter and sympathized with the Vox? My, such paraphernalia and propaganda they had in their home. What fate do you think becomes of traitors and apostates?"

"You murdered them."

"They received the judgment God had set upon them, Booker DeWitt. May I call you that? It is your name, after all, is it not?"

"You can call me whatever you like, jackass. I'm going to be grinning ear to ear when the Vox shove your head on a pike."

Comstock nodded toward the door. After hesitation the hazel eyed guard stepped outside, leaving the two of us alone, separated by but an inch of steel. Comstock's gaze again turned to mine through the grate. "That will not be anytime soon, Booker. With the fortuitous death of Miss Fitzroy her so-called insurrection is now split between forces loyal to my old acquaintance Slate, Preston Downs and these repugnant Bavarian communists. In their struggle for dominance my troops have been able to reassert control of a good portion of Emporia and Finkton, as well as the outlying islands. Soon we shall reassert our control over the rest, God willing, and this rebellion shall be over."

"How do you know my name?" Through the hole I could see Comstock's eyes turn away from me, gazing outward through a larger window upon what I could now see to be a lighted airship, heavily gunned, hovering protectively over Emporia's devastated skyline. The big one I'd seen at the park upon my arrival that seemed so long ago. Beyond it clouds streamed by the city's darkened downtown, gray and forbidding.

"Well, Booker...I am a Prophet after all."

"You're no prophet. You're a fraud and a murderer."

"I have killed, yes..." Comstock said, almost reedy as if he were unwell. "A trait we share, do we not? Still, I assure you that I am indeed a seer of the future. After all, I've known of your coming for some time, False Shepherd...or had that fact eluded you these last several days?"

"The posters..." I whispered, feeling still the throbbing bones and bruises he'd savaged upon me…the tang of dried blood upon my tongue. "How could you..."

"How could I know? Through prophecy, DeWitt. God saw fit to lend his gift to me many years ago in the form of a young lady, a brilliant young lady. Perhaps you have heard of her...Rosalind Lutece? It was she who developed the ability to make tears, though unlike my daughter's innate talent her design was through a device."

"Tears...you use tears to view the future. That's why the damned things are all over the city."

"The result of experiment, yes. They tend to drift you see, though one may hold them in place by the cunning application of electromagnetism. Alas, with Dr. Lutece's untimely death I have had to make do with what I could retain myself." He paused, looking downward at his fingernails. "It was enough."

"I suppose you had something to do with 'untimely.' Or did you just pawn that off on Fink to take care of your dirty work?"

He scowled at me, the bow tying the cape about his shoulders nearly undone. It had, I suspected, been a rough day for his holiness. "Both she and her brother perished in an accident. Tragic really, and well before I could carry out my revenge upon McKinley. Luckily there were others who hated him as much as I."

"McKinley?" My thoughts turned back these many years to the assassinated president. "What did he have to do with this?"

"T'was he who, in our hour of might, even as our fire of justice rained down upon Peking, it was he who strong armed the Congress to recall us. As if he or anyone in the Congress had any capability to dictate one iota as to what this city could and could not do. And this Roosevelt who followed him, this...this despot...he has been no better." He looked at me clearly now, my eyes meeting his wrinkled visage. "The Philippines would have gone differently had it not been for that mistake. You would not have suffered so."

"What do you know about me?"

"More than you know, DeWitt." Closer he came, and I could see his white mustache clearly…his long beard, snowy and pristine. "I know about your murderous ways, for I have seen them in a hundred windows into your soul! Yes, I know about the Philippines and the poor, poor Moros you took such an interest in, I know about your time with the Pinkertons and the men you beat and crippled. I know about Wounded Knee."

At that sentence I froze, feeling cut to the quick. No one knew about that, no one save Slate and the men whom with I'd done the deed.

And Elizabeth. Had she betrayed me?

"You condemn me after you've built this folly on little more than the backs of slaves. How did you think for a moment after the war, after what's happened in Europe, that it could end any other way?!"

"How many of those 'backs' did you personally break for Carnegie and others, Booker? How many men did your deeds enslave to work for little more than a pittance?" Looking outward again at his burnt-out city, he continued. "I've seen this all not once...but a hundred times. Of course, the timing varied...I could not predict the precise day you'd come in this reality, nor the week the Vox would rise...there was too much variation. But come you would, I knew. I'd seen you in the crowd. And rise the Vox would, I also knew. And, my old friend, I have seen THE end...and this is not it." I challenge you, oh, righteous Indian spirit of the Dakotas, to name even one great civilization that wasn't been built upon the misfortune of the wretched. Point to one egalitarian upstart that even survived. How...in God's great wisdom, could he allow such merciless schemes to prevail unless it was Providence, HIS master plan?!"

"Why did you do that to your girl? My God, she's your daughter and you locked her up in that tower, all...all alone her whole life. Don't you know we tortured people that way?"

"I did it for her own good. She had her books and her advisors until she became too willful, DeWitt. With Lutece's untimely departure and her growing threat, what else could we do? Rosalind was the only one who truly understood Elizabeth and could approach her. Without her guidance, with the deaths Elizabeth caused...I simply could not get my people to stay in the tower."

"Deaths…she'd caused?"

"You stole her away, thief …surely you saw the blood. Not her fault, perhaps, not consciously…but she was unable to be tamed. I did…I did what I must."

My memory slipped back to the ground floor of the monument…the stains and evidence of carnage. Had she known? Even as we spoke, the sound of gunfire carried into my cell, distant but real. "People fight back when enslaved. Dangerous as she is, you still keep her here in the city."

"Because she is the manifestation of Prophecy, Booker. I have seen..." He started, but then stopped, seeming to choke upon his words. "I have seen that I shall not live to witness God's judgement upon the world, the world that rejected the gifts I brought, but Elizabeth...will. She will be God's judgment."

"You kept me alive to tell me this?"

"I kept you alive, DeWitt, so that I might learn who sent you. How you got here."

"I told you, by Zeppelin. From New York."

"Then you do not know, do you? You truly do not…know." He answered with a smirk upon the corner of his almost obscured mouth. "Could I have been so stupid or was Lutece right after all?"

"What the hell are you talking about, old man?"

"Many pardons." Comstock answered, almost with a chuckle. "But as you know there is a bit of a war on and I must attend to the fight...after all, at this juncture there may only be one alternative left to ensure victory. I regret to inform you that by the morrow morning none of this will matter…at least, to you. Now, if you shall excuse me, I must pay my…respects…to my errant daughter."

"Comstock!" I threw myself against the door…pounding with both of my blood-caked fists. Sneering hazel replaced the old man's waistcoated figure, blocking sight of the closing door. It shut with a thump, those eyes relishing the thought of casting me from the house gates. Over the next hours the sky refused to lighten, the booms and gunshots continuing, jarring me back awake where I lay. I shook the door…prowled the cell again, hoping to find something I'd missed, some hope of escape, wishing fervently for Elizabeth's uncanny ability to produce open doors from thin air. Eventually I sat.

They came to me at first as a terror, her hand reaching out to me as she was carried away from the rubble of a building in the clutches of her nightmarish bird creature. It was only after I came to that I realized her wailing had been real. I heard her screams now, carrying from outside through the rectangular cutout that was my only opening to the world. My eyes opened.

She was being tortured.

In the gloom overhead I heard the droning of an airship, followed by shouting and a pop from below. In short order the Zeppelin, still only dimly seen, returned fire. Bullets and cannonade raked the fighting positions below and sent men diving for cover. Illuminated by the lights of Comstock House and its own spotlights I now saw the Edmonton's red starred tail in a descent, twin gun turrets coming to bear. Engels, I saw emblazoned in black Fraktur calligraphy upon its prow. Realizing what was about to happen, I dove for the floor and covered my ears. A terrific detonation shook the foundations of Comstock's Palace.

"By the Prophet, what is this you've done!?" I heard hazel bellow. Keys turned in the lock and the door came open…in time for me to lunge. He had his rifle out, apparently with the intent end to my shenanigans permanently. My impact drove him back out the door and into the wall. His weapon went off and plastered the door frame above as we hit. I pulled my arm back...saw those hazel eyes wide...then plunged my fist into them with a snap. He went limp, his head cracking the tile like an overripe gourd.

Outside the battle continued, punctuated every few minutes by the shatter of Engels' guns. Helping myself to my guard's repeater, I sifted his pockets for ammunition then pressed myself back to the window. Below Comstock's holdouts were in full retreat...yet not all of them. From the smoke I saw strange dark figures emerge with mechanical gait.

Mobile turrets.

As Engels came alongside the house its ropes flew. Men in black uniform heaved themselves from the airship to tie it off even as bullets sparked upon the zeppelin's steel shell. Now the machines I'd seen sallying engaged, Gatling guns whirling and spitting fire at the Bolshevik's advance party. The ship's deck guns opened fire, blowing the mechanical house guard into razor blades.

Far too close and fearing I'd follow the House's façade into the abyss below, I sought the corridors. From my brief view of it from Emporia, Comstock House was comprised of three towers, the outer two adorned by flood lights and the higher central ziggurat capped by the Angel of Columbia. Beneath each five-hundred-foot rise was an enormous façade of one of Comstock's Founding Fathers...Jefferson, Washington and Franklin. What the Jews forswore in graven images, Comstock's ilk more than made up for.

My cell block must have been in the Eastern Wing, for I happened upon another window and could clearly see the stonework of Franklin's glasses dangling below. Despite the cacophony of gunfire, I could still hear Elizabeth's screams. Following the catwalk I emerged into a chamber high and rectangular, fifty feet across. The run I'd been following wrapped arounds it on three sides, a balcony to the floor twenty feet below. Hearing approaching voices, I fell back to see two gray-suited Columbians dash across the floor. Not long after I heard shots ring out, followed by a barrage of bullets that shattered glass and flesh. Then I only heard German.

Circumnavigating the creaking catwalk, I discovered twin wooden doors on the opposite side. Daring to open them, I found the décor changed from utilitarian I-beams and concrete block to red carpeted floors and paneled halls. Upon the walls I noticed a placard...saw annotations for a bevy of prominent places. Lutece Experimental Chamber and Auxiliary Siphon stood out. Down the curtained passage I began to run, my feet quieted by red carpet upon the marble.

Before I knew it I blundered into an open rotunda, a circle of portraits adorning its surround. Between them tapestries hung, while at blown double doors on the other side four Columbian Constabulary looked down another approach...men with the fear of God upon their faces. As I stumbled to a halt, they turned to look at me, faced pale and shocked and soon with lethal intent. Our weapons raced to beat one another.

One of them pulled faster but his aim was awful. As misguided rounds tore the plaster and paneling beside me to splinters, I shot him clean through the chest. The others dove. About us renderings of Columbia's elite crashed to the floor with great and painful crashes. Wheeling around those opposite doors, one of Comstock's police swung inward and fired, his bullets chewing into the paneling beside my head. I pulled back and sheltered behind a column, flinching at every volley, letting him waste his ammo.

From their rear an explosion threw debris and a shower of stone. Suddenly Comstock's men were on my side of the portal, one of them turning to again shoot down the next approach while the others continued firing upon me.

It had been a long time since I'd been on this end of the stick, not since a squad of Sakay's jungle boys ran me and my mates into the ditch outside Manila. Clenching my eyes against the flying debris, I listened and waited...heard one of them yell for his comrade to flank me. Perceiving motion, I rolled outward...brought the repeater up to find my target in a crouch. With brown hair and frightened green eyes, the cop was barely an adult. He got off a round before I answered three-fold, riddling his grey coated frame with a burst of lead. His eyes rolled back as he collapsed to the floor spraying blood. A hammer struck my arm.

I screamed, loosed my repeater and clutched the raw wound. Where the Columbians had died an explosion blossomed, smashing the last of them against the wall. The man who'd shot me spun to the roar, shielding himself instinctively from the blast. It gave me a dandy shot, yet with my arm bleeding out I couldn't gather the goddamned gun. Bullets blasted his form, and with the blood pouring out of him his eyes rolled back and he collapsed to the ground.

Grunting and groaning, I managed to bind the bullet hole with my teeth and neckerchief. I now saw it oozing red from a hole about the size of a nickel. Wincing against the sight and pain, I realized from lack of gushing the round had spared my artery. I couldn't find an exit wound.

Outside I heard whispers from the pall of smoke billowing in from the hall...saw a stick with a can on its end drop amid the dead men. A spray of shrapnel pelted my column, the blast setting my ears to ringing. In the swirling smoke two men in black uniform swung into the Rotunda, surveying their victims. Remaining still against the pillar despite my pain, I peered outward to see a blond man walking past the portal, Steyr in hand, casting an offhand glance at the aftermath of the Rotunda. Ten others followed, black machine guns glinting at the ready.

In black uniform as he'd been with Fitzroy, the fellow evinced a distinctly Germanic air now, a cool Teutonic command that emanated from those blue eyes and hushed guttural syllables. Not Eton but Munchen. Upon his arm he wore a red armband.

He approached what I now saw to be a pair of closed double doors before his men, finding them locked or perhaps barred. After a fruitless kick of glossy jackboot, he nodded to one of his Sergeants. The man slipped forward through the crowd as Edmonton motioned his troop back, placing a potato masher in the handles. Producing another himself, Edmonton pulled the string at the handle's base and set it atop the other before hastening back down the corridor.

The blast blew splinters of wood and fabric past me. After the crash abated, I opened my eyes to find the doors demolished. Kicking the splintered boards aside, Edmonton's goons took to the carpeted passage beyond in quickstep. Again, I heard his commands, growing more distant as they receded down the corridor. I played dead a little longer, biding my time. Checking my arm again, I found the bandage tight and the pain less. I'd been lucky. At least I still had two legs yet to be shot. With a grimace I lifted my repeater and went after them.

All about the passages once elegant walls, paintings and curtains were down and smoldering upon the red-carpet floor. Before me more gunfire echoed from the outer passageway, and from the shouts and cries ahead I realized Edmonton's assault hadn't finished Comstock's men. Keeping my distance behind the Commie's main body, I stepped through a second pair of bullet-ridden doors to find a sprawl of bodies. Above the door a brass placard proclaiming, 'SIPHON ROOM.'

I'd heard her screams echoing through the corridors, pleading in vain for the men doing whatever they were doing to her to stop. Edmonton had obviously heard them too, homing upon her shrieks like a beacon. Advancing inward, he'd deployed his troops alongside the laboratory walls in a cordon. Despite all they'd seen in Columbia and the other places they'd surely fought; nothing had prepared them for this.

A large chamber lay beyond, concrete walls, adorned with tables and consoles and work benches, a high ceiling thirty feet above. At its center, within a glass-paned cylinder, Comstock had Elizabeth shackled upon her back, hands strapped to a metal bench beneath a bright overhead floodlight. Beside her two men in surgical gear stood, white coats and masks concealing their faces, eyes suddenly looking up to the Bavarians' arrival with arcane instruments in hand. Cables ran the tile floor beneath them, while above the girl two sound horns drew in shimmers of diaphanous light. Overseeing it all from above the containment I saw the bearded silhouette of the monster himself, hands behind his back.

"They're here! Get your men upstairs!" One of the surgeons shouted, eyes now firmly upon Edmonton. "If she gets ornery, hit her with the machine!"

"You damned idiots...they're HERE!" Comstock announced over the public address, anger of fear in his voice. "Get her to open the tear now or we're done for!" Looking at the Germans with hateful eyes from the control room above, he turned and hastened from the window. Following his retreat Edmonton glanced to Elizabeth's, containment bell and the machinery about it. "Destroy it." He said with a nod. In unison they raised their weapons and commenced fire.

The barrage was deafening. Sparks flew, but the more they fired, the more it became apparent that the glass was not only thick but bulletproof. The slugs simply made pock marks. Edmonton raised his hand and the firing stopped. Inside the bell the scientists were cringing. He turned his eyes to the black and white zigzag of the tile, following numerous cables to through the round orifice of a hatch. With his Steyr he shot it, but only succeeded in setting the thing alight. "I want the girl." He said calmly to his men. "Find a way in." Perhaps out of respect, perhaps out of fear they nodded and fanned out.

Whatever procedure Comstock's butchers were inflicting upon Elizabeth it was both painful and effective. Over the past days she'd deterred me by all manner of keen apparition. Now she lay impotent, writhing in pain as these 'physicians' manipulated the most horrific contraption in her back...something like an electrical plug. Aside from them I could see two men manning glass enclosures above...the ones the cables led to. They could only be the source of the Siphon's power, the power that was destroying her. Alone I had no chance against Edmonton, but with Elizabeth...

Behind me I heard a clunking, thudding drone. Into the passageway entered two lumbering automata, each bearing the visage of Robert E. Lee. Twelve barrels spun up. I dove for cover beneath a pierced metal stairwell, narrowly dodged their fire. Edmonton's men wheeled and opened fire. A hundred rounds struck each, shattering their guts and blowing pieces willy nilly, left and right. Inside I heard one's gearing grind to a halt. The other Lee sank to his knees and fell over face forward as smoke spewed from its backside. Having heard the commotion, Edmonton turned. His eyes met mine and instantly he pointed pistol first, pulling the trigger as his voice bellowed, "Töte ihn!"

Again, Elizabeth shrieked. Rounds landing all about me, I dashed to an access ladder that rose to the closest cupola. At its top the door was shut but unlocked, and as a fusillade of lead hammered its seemingly impregnable windows, I kicked that door open...raised the gun to the terrified operator. He raised his hands to his face. I shot him dead right through them. Outside I heard boots hit the ladder. Turning my weapon upon the console, I followed suit.

"No!" I heard from below, turned to see one of the doctors looking at me in abject terror. I was on to something. I riddled the control console with the last of my clip and the thing blew in my face, sparks and electricity flying left and right. "He's shut down one of the generators! You need to sedate her!"

"We are not going to sedate her, Powell!" The other screamed. "She's our only chance! Make the tear, whore!"

Behind me beyond the door a machine gun clattered sideways upon the grate. Gunfire raked the enclosure. Upward I jumped as bullets ricocheted, one striking the shooter's weapon and knocking it clear to the man's yelp. After a second, I heard him lose his balance followed by a hard, meaty impact upon the deck below. Seeing Edmonton eyeing me from beside the great cage I began to backpedal, tearing down the glass passage with increased haste, rounding two corners until I emerged in the other siphon's control chamber. Hovering over the operator's corpse two men in black uniform stood with machine guns.

I pulled my trigger to a deafening 'click.'

Sparks flew about me, and I felt metal pins and shavings sting my skin. Stumbling backward out of the line of fire, my ears rang. Fumbling through my pockets for a magazine, I was just about to seat one when Edmonton rounded the corner, jackboots clicking. He lowered his pistol to my eye.

"Ah, ah." He said, shaking a black gloved finger at me. With a toss of head, he brought his soldiers to my side, muttering something in German. "Imagine meeting you here, Mr. DeWitt." He withdrew his handgun, even as his men covered down upon me. "I must say, you do have pluck. You put down Daisy Fitzroy now we find you coming after Comstock himself."

Behind him Elizabeth screamed. "Open the damned tear!" Her doctor answered, pulling her arms down, slapping her across the face.

Edmonton followed my gaze. "Alas, your situation is hopeless."

"What do you want from me." I groaned.

"You're an able chap...in fact, I believe you were well ahead of me in realizing the nature of this girl. A cunning ability such as that would do well for the Internationale."

"A little premature to be...be choosing sides, don't you think?" I offered in a broken cough. My blood was dripping through the grate to the tile below. "Then there's this little matter of the Vox. I think they'll want a say in Comstock's disposition."

Edmonton smirked, his dapper English façade making him look positively diabolical. "Mr. DeWitt...a de facto alliance exists between the forces of the Second Internationale and the new 'government' of Columbia under Mr. Downs. In recognition of our assistance, we are free to take what we see fit."

"The girl."

"Yes. You must know that we already have the lift cell manufacture...at least enough equipment to replicate a line of manufacture. Alas, hydrogen gas is not enough to provide for the needs of our growing aerial armada. And with what is coming on Continent, an Armada will be needed."

"But you already have that." I said, remembering Engels hovering over the Liftworks. Did they even know what Comstock had been working on?

He smirked...cast a glance toward thrashing Elizabeth. "She is such an oddity, not to mention quite fetching...which is why I've come to take her too." He stepped toward the remaining Siphon's cables and circuitry. "Along with the means to subdue and control her. Perhaps she may turn out to be a weapon even more powerful than dreadnaughts."

"Be careful what you wish for, Fritz. You'd do better chasing down the old man."

"We are not the least bit interested in the Dear Prophet, DeWitt. We did, however, hope to discover what he knew about the Lutece Facility and origin of its production, as well as a certain reserve of cells we've apprised and scientific secrets we have as of yet have been unable to find. Bring him." He said, turning back towards the cab.

"You're not going to kill me?"

"Of course, we are going to kill you, DeWitt. Right after you reveal to us what you're hiding." Two of his men disarmed me. In concert they dragged me to my feet. I was a bloody mess but began to realize that I perhaps looked worse than I felt. They thought I was done for. I had the advantage.

At gunpoint they allowed me to descend the ladder, a metal rung thing...like the one leading up to the other cupola. Alighting on the debris strewn tile, Edmonton's men pushed me at gunpoint past cables and steel work trusses toward the containment bell. Inside the surgeons were staring outward at us, masks down and breathless. Elizabeth was supine, no longer moving. By the looks upon the faces I could see they'd failed at whatever they were at. I was so proud of her.

Edmonton glanced at the hatch and smiled. "Open the door."

"N...no." One of them said.

Edmonton approached. "Who are you?"

Sweating profusely, the blond one he'd addressed answered. "Dr. P...Pettifog. This is Dr. Powell. We're in charge of the Comstock House...Re-Education Facility."

Behind them Elizabeth opened her eyes. After a despairing moment and through a well of glistening tears she found mine. "Oh, excellent. We have those back East and I assure both of you are invited for a stay. Please open the door." When neither complied, Edmonton turned and extracted a potato masher from one of his men's belts, then another, followed by a third, all the while keeping his smiling eyes on the nervous physicians. Gingerly he sequestered two in the hatch locking mechanism. With a nod he chastened his men backward, including the pair who had restrained my arms. Holding the last before the terrified men, he toyed with the pull string at its base. "I suggest you open the door, or the invitation is rescinded."

Neither did. "Pity."

He pulled the string and set it with its brood mates. His men drew back and the improvised breaching charge went off with a stultifying bang. As the smoke cleared and shrapnel finished plinking to the floor, Edmonton emerged with Steyr in hand. Kicking the shattered hatch inward with the sole of his boot, he glanced upward at the Siphons, still wringing Elizabeth's life force from quivering body.

"Please, no!" The doctor shouted.

Summarily Edmonton shot the one called Powell in the forehead.

Engels' men stirred and I took the moment to drive my boot heel down the one to my right's shin. He screamed like hell but let go. I swung about and drove my good fist into my other captor's face. With the others distracted, I liberated him of a potato masher and yanked is string, heaving it upward into the cupola. Inside the bell I saw Edmonton's eyes widen.

Suddenly everyone was in motion. The grenade went off and sent them crashing to the ground. Having been at war for most of my life, I knew a few things about grenades. One was that I hated them. But I loved baseball and could land a pitch exactly where I wanted. It went off with a shatter and suddenly the power went out, followed by the generator panel exploding in a fratz of light and energy. I was hoping for a distraction.

I got one.

Relieving my stunned captor of his repeater, I brought it up butt first and racked the man in the jaw. As he spilled to the floor a couple of his more conscious friends opened fire. None of us had cover, but they missed and I didn't, riddling their jerking corpses until they gurgled and fell. Bullets struck to my right and I pedaled backward, taking cover behind a stack of heavy machinery that was now dead as a doornail. A potato masher clanked and spun at my foot.

Eyes wide, I kicked its gyrating mass back to whence it had come. It went off with an ear numbing crack and hideous screams, the deformed shrieks of dying men. Realizing I'd soon join their dying if I stayed put, I forced myself upward, ears ringing, holding the Russian automatic as level as I could.

Edmonton had come out now, striding through his mortally wounded crew like a juggernaut. Crew, I thought. Not soldiers. God, I'd been lucky. Having substituted his Steyr with a Russian zip gun, he blasted the machinery in front of me, forcing me back behind a wall of crates.

As Elizabeth wrenched herself from the bench a tremor shook the floor. Holding herself upright upon one arm she looked up to her torturer and shrieked. The lights flickered and chamber flashed, a fiery curtain of electricity shrieked, and the walls drew back to reveal a hellish black cloudscape two hundred feet across. Amid fields of whipping wheat lightning flashed. Thunder boomed. An impossibly towering black funnel of dirt and debris spun before us, its sound that of a fast-approaching freight train. The remaining physician wailed. Edmonton turned in shock, eyes gaping at his forthcoming doom. Nearby a barn exploded, splinters flying into the towering vortex and toward him.

Eyes wide, Edmonton screamed.