Altered America: Steampunk Stories by Cat Rambo

Author:Cat Rambo [Rambo, Cat]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Plunkett Press
Published: 2016-06-12T04:00:00+00:00

Summoned, two wide-eyed porters helped drag the body back several cars, wrapped in a blanket and supported as though it were an under-the-weather passenger, back to the refrigerator car.

After that, the Pinkerton agents canvassed the train to find the individuals planning on getting out at Kansas City. A young married couple, the Emersons, planning on joining Mrs. Emerson’s brother’s homestead nearby; a school-teacher headed into the Territory; two traveling sales-men, one in patent sun hats and soaps, and the other in tin-ware; two former soldiers headed to get jobs as cattle drovers; and a veterinarian who had just purchased a practice in Kansas City in the mail.

Neither Artemus nor Elspeth could extract any reason why any of these individuals would have reason to kill the Professor.

Artemus’ expression was still disapproving. “The daughter...”

“It’s not her,” Elspeth said. “I think it’s a wolf. We saw one when we were out there. One could jump onto a platform and come along a corridor.”

“And have hands to open the door?”

“Were-wolves,” she pointed out. “Shape-changers. Skilled ones can manage half-way forms.”

“If there were such a creature then it is long gone,” Artemus said.

“Let’s question everyone,” Elspeth said. “The man who called him a necromancer, for example.”

That man turned out to be a Portland bound minister, Alexander Knolle. Roused from his own sleeping car and questioned as to how he knew what McCormick had been doing, he pointed out that it had not been much of a secret, since McCormick had spoken in several lyceums in the Baltimore and DC area in the week previous to boarding the train.

“He bragged on it,” the fat man said sweating but adamant, gaze trembling between the two. “On how his formula help suit machinery and morbid flesh to each other. Morbid flesh, that’s what he called it. Dead things. I fought in the war last year. I know what comes of that.” He shuddered and retched.

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