The constable slammed the iron barred door in Johnny’s face.
“It’s cause the likes of you why we don’t like visitors round here!
The constable scowled before turning and leaving Johnny alone in the cell. Johnny sighed and slowly sat down on the hard bench, the only furniture in the small cell. Elbows on legs and hands on face, he stared at the slats of waning sunlight and pondered how he ended up here.
Things started going wrong when the boiler he had repaired exploded minutes after he had left it behind to see a friend. The trip here had been long. The local station mechanic had been taken ill and Johnny answered the call when the Marlowe-Strathford Rocket had broken down, stranding folks in the small town of Nicoshire. After the long trip he repaired the ship as fast as possible, sent his repairmen home on the Autocart, and thrown into jail when blamed for blowing up the train on purpose. This whole situation smelled of Cadaver Cogs, literally.
When questioned at the scene of the crime he had smelled burning flesh, yet only the engineer had been in the train and had escaped unsinged. He could almost smell it right now. The blood drained from his face.
Johnny leaped forward and felt cold fingers brush the top of his head, just failing to get a grip on his hair. When he hit the floor he rolled to look at the window and saw the arm and heard the ticking.
Quickly using his legs to change direction, he pressed off from the wall and leaped again, this time grabbing at the arm. Once he gripped it firmly, he twisted. It broke at the elbow and a gear fell out of the rotting flesh with a puff of steam. An angry hiss sounded through the window. Another arm snaked through the window, holding an object. Johnny batted at it and the object clunked to the ground. It too ticked. Dropping the arm, he picked up the object and tossed it back out the window. A second later a boom shook the cell and bricks cracked and fell.
“Wot’s goin on in there!”
Johnny started pulling bricks from the wall.
“Hey, you’re trying to escape!”
“No, I’m trying to get those who blew up the train and are now trying to kill me!”
Maybe trying again, it the earlier explosion wasn’t just a setup.
Another hand reached through a hole on the wall. Johnny bashed it with a brick. It bent and crunched, and gears began to grind. The wall began to collapse and Johnny had to leap back to avoid getting crushed.
The constable, thankfully not as daft as expected, unlocked the cell and pulled Johnny out, and relocked the cell. Several lumbering bodies shambled into the cell, clicking, whirring, and expelling puffs of steam.
Johnny pointed at them.
“Check the rubble of the train and I’m sure you’ll find gears just like in them!”
Once the remaining Cadaver Cogs had been disassembled, they did check the rubble, and they did find the gears, and Johnny got a good nights rest, then went home.
