Dieselpunk: An Anthology by Craig Gabrysch Page B

squinted up the face of the bank, watching the gunmen emerge from the creek-bed like soldiers topping some subterranean entrenchment. Mudd rose to supervise his vengeance, his glasses set alight by the ghostly light. With a breathless curse, the old man slogged up the bank, leaving Alan waiting for the killing to commence.
    The gunshots never came. Instead Alan’s piqued ears caught muffled gasps and obscenities muttered by the stalwart union busters. Slowly he got to his feet, succumbing to curiosity and climbing the crumbling slope to witness what had dumbfounded Mudd and his men.
    The bank fell away like the face of a dune, declining to the foot of a steep cliff face that seemed to bisect the cavern. Imbedded in the rock, a vast spiral caught the acetylene light, breaking into fiery rainbows and distortions. The burning disk stood, set out from the rest of the cliff face by careful chiseling. If there had been a god of the ammonites, Mudd’s rogue miners surely had unearthed it.
    “Jesus.” The shotgun-wielding ruffian breathed, craning his neck to stare up at the thing. “It’s got to be at least fifty feet across.”
    “Well, I guess you know what they’ve been up to now.” Alan shined his light across the corkscrew shell, shaking his head. “I never imagined anything could be so . . .” He choked his comment off. “Did you see that?”
    “I did.” Mudd straightened his glasses. “Something’s moving in there.”
    A glimmer within the crystal matured into the fluctuating sheen of movement. Like wine through the neck of a great, jeweled decanter, some liquid thing poured itself from deep within the shell, working towards where the excavations had unearthed a portion of its curled lip. A glow presaged the coughing flow of viscous liquid bubbling out of the opening, flowing onto the cave floor. Then it appeared.
    At first it resembled a huge, glowing pearl, radiating the grey-green luminescence that had showed through the shell. The illusion died quickly, though. The sphere swiveled on a slender stalk, revealing a fist-size pupil that dilated at the artificial lights and then withdrew. As it disappeared, the first gunshot rang out.
    The blast came from Alan’s right and he dropped instinctively, sheltering against the ground. He could see a dark figure struggling with one of Mudd’s men, a figure dressed in stained overalls with what appeared to be a miner’s lamp protruding from his hat. The men scuffled, stumbling closer to where he cowered and, as they did, a terrible truth struck. The light at the man’s brow wasn’t a lamp. A grey-white stalk protruded from the center of the man’s forehead, atop which a single eye glowed. The creature resembled a man, his features withered as if his life essence had been drawn out. Something horrid occupied the desiccated husk that had been left behind. It clumsily clubbed at its opponent, moving like a poorly controlled marionette. Mudd’s man pushed his opponent away but as he brought his gun up, the thing vomited a glowing spray that sent the gunman to the ground wailing and convulsing.
    The victor didn’t get to savor his accomplishment. Mudd’s driver discharged both barrels and the creature’s head exploded. The decapitated corpse staggered, falling beside its victim.
    Cold silence fell over the cave. Alan crept forward, approaching the fallen abomination. Instead of blood and viscera, a fibrous, moldy mass spilled out of the open wound: the bits of bone ensnared in its wispy threads and the brass, numbered tag dangling from the pocket of its overalls were the only evidence that it had ever been human.
    “Is it dead?” The brute asked, ejecting the spent cartridges from his weapon and digging for more.
    “I think so.” Alan turned from the creature to the victim. The man convulsed in fits and spasms, his cries of pain reduced to a gurgling hiss. His face had withered, turning grey with the mycelium that knitted his eyes, ears, and nostrils shut. A