A Girl in Time by Birmingham John

Author:Birmingham, John [Birmingham, John]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9780648003618
Publisher: GWC
Published: 2016-12-09T05:00:00+00:00

* * *

Smith got to ride in another horseless carriage, but this one had none of the amenity of the last two. In a strange way, it reminded him of the stage coaches with which he was familiar. A big, black crate of a thing, it was obviously designed to carry a large number of passengers within its ugly, angular confines. They were railroaded out of the apartment, down onto the street and into the back of the six-wheeled vehicle in less than a minute.

Or at least, he and Cady were.

Miss Georgia was taken away separately. To what end, he could not imagine and did not care to.

He desperately wanted to reach into the pocket of his waistcoat to satisfy himself he still had the watch, but his hands remained chained behind him. He twisted about once or twice, trying to feel the weight of the chronometer, but a black-clad Homelander cuffed him hard upon the side of his head and warned him not to mess around; although, he used much stronger language than that.

Cady was trussed up a couple of places down from him, with two officers separating them, preventing any exchange of intelligence or even reassurance. The seating arrangement recalled the omnibus they had ridden in London, except here the passengers lined the walls and faced inwards. The Homelanders talked quietly among themselves on the ride to the jug—he assumed that's where they were headed—but Smith gleaned nothing useful from their exchanges. Mostly they seemed fixated on the same game of running ball as the Uber man had been earlier.

The marshal found himself quietly pleased that their team had lost.

The journey was no less comfortable than a coach in his own era, save for the pressing sense of confinement. The Homelanders' steel omnibus enjoyed only two small windows on the rear doorway, and they were protected by some manner of iron grillwork. Outside, the city rolled on with its business.

The trip came to an end inside the basement of a building. He felt them descend a series of inclines just before the vehicle drew up and a Homelander threw wide the rear doors. Strong hands gripped his upper arms and pushed him out. He looked around hoping to take a fix on their location but could see nothing but the grey concrete walls and low ceiling of whatever guardhouse now held them. He tried to talk with Cady, but got a baton in the guts for his trouble.

“Just sit tight, Smith. I'll get us out of this,” she said and it sounded like the greatest of all the lies she had been forced to utter that morning. Her bold claim occasioned some hilarity among their captors.

They were quickly separated and he found himself at a counter, where a rotund, pasty-faced fellow relieved him of all his goods.

The deputies, if that's what they were, patted him down.

They found his Marshal's badge, and one of them bellowed directly in his face.

“What the hell is this?”

Before Smith could answer somebody whipped him on the back of his legs with a heavy baton.

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