Dieselpunk: An Anthology by Craig Gabrysch

steadily plinking away until other bells joined in, each keeping its own rhythm.
    “Hammers?” Mudd’s tone had changed from that of the stern disciplinarian to a dumbfounded witness.
    “Maybe they’re not organizing after all.” The brute with the shotgun suggested.
    Mudd shook his head. “No, that doesn’t make sense. Keep going.”
    They traveled on, drawn in by the intermittent pecking. As they went deeper into the mountain, the tunnel walls became less disciplined in their construction, eventually giving up their hall-like dimensions and becoming a sort of underground goat path that wallowed and wound. The floor dropped irregularly, creating pitfalls that left Alan stumbling as he attempted to keep up. Then, as suddenly as it had degenerated, the tunnel leveled and widened into an irregularly shaped terminal room.
    More tools lay scattered about but fewer than in the higher chamber. The shells that decorated the walls were far bigger, the smallest specimens rivaling a truck tire in size. Alan counted three dead-end passages from this chamber, starts of tunnels the miners abandoned as if the muse they followed left them to grope blindly once they reached this depth. What struck Alan most, though, was the skeleton.
    The creature had been some sort of half-fish and half-reptile and its calcified corpse made up the whole of the chamber floor. Fins that wanted to be feet splayed over ribs and crushed-vertebra lay contorted in a pose that suggested a painful demise.
    “Mother of . . .” Alan breathed, slowly stepping into the room and taking in the sight.
    “Yeah, some fish.” One of the enforcers confirmed. “I wonder what kind of bait you’d use to catch something like this.”
    “You mean who you’d use for bait!” the driver countered, laughing nervously.
    “Look!” Another of the men knelt on the gargantuan, horned gill plate of the beast, waving for a lantern.
    Alan approached, directing his light where the man indicated. The grisly mouth of the thing sported rows of sharp teeth and above its giant maw, an empty eye socket yawned ghastly and black save for the protruding ladder that led down into the abyss. The hammer blows rang clear, emanating from below and filling the air with their song.
    Stepping back to get a better view of the situation, Alan stumbled over something that rolled from under his foot and clattered into a corner of the chamber. He shined the light after the obstacle, casting a swath across the chamber that revealed dozens of irregularly shaped objects. Cautiously he retrieved one, holding it up to show his companions.
    “It’s a miner’s lantern,” Mudd commented. “Just more evidence of the contempt they have for company property.”
    Alan gently shook the lamp and then tested a few of its companions. “They’re all empty.”
    “So?” Mudd surveyed the room.
    “It just doesn’t sit right.” Alan stood, looking down at the lamp-littered floor. “It’s like everything just stopped; like the men just dropped what they were doing and headed down into that hole.”
    “Isn’t it obvious to you by now?” Mudd shook his head, chuckling sourly. “And you call yourself a newsman? No wonder you’re going broke, you can’t even see what’s right in front of your face.”
    “Alright.” Alan pitched the spent lamp. “Enlighten me.”
    “Look around you, look at the bones. They obviously figured they’d struck it rich and wanted to steal whatever they could before I caught onto their scheme.” The old man looked around the chamber, bitterness filling his eyes. “There probably are hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of fossils where we stand.”
    Alan hooked a thumb in the direction of the piled lamps. “How are they digging fossils in the dark?”
    “We’ll ask them when we see them.” Mudd paced the perimeter of the opening, his wrinkled jowls working as he chewed on how best to proceed. “You two, go down first, Mr. Roth and I will follow, then the rest of