Far Horizons: Tales of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror. Issue #22 January 2016 | Page 48

Clark turn and walk into the middle of the corpses
smashing at them before becoming buried.
Trooper Delaney had turned to support him
with maxim fire and had been firing into the mob of
corpses when the other Ironsides boiler ruptured, and
the pile of dead was engulfed in a cloud of superheated
steam. They told you in training, the boiler goes—
you’re dead. They even ran a demonstration, put a pig
in a steel box and vented a boiler at full pressure into
it. Cooked it proper, mind you, it was tasty.
When the Ironside in front of him burst its
boiler he had instinctively backed away from the
expanding cloud, there was a group of soldiers from
third platoon further up the street that were drawing
most of the corpses so he began to cover them with
short bursts of fire. Several men formed on him, and
they fired at every corpse that came near.
When his maxim ran dry Delany took to
smashing the shambling dead with the piston driven
arms of his Ironside. One of the corpses had been
knocked down by rifle fire and crawled toward him.
It grabbed one of the legs of the Ironside suit and was
trying to topple it, but Delaney hadn’t noticed the
futile effort until he heard one of the redcoats shouting
and pointing.
So he leaned the suit forward enough to be
able to see down, raised one steam piston-powered
leg and stamped it down, crushing the corpse, and
smashing through the wooden planks under the dirt he
was standing on.
Then he woke up here. Right! He had fallen
into some sort of cellar. Shit!
It took some struggling to use his left arm to
turn the suit enough to then use both arms to stand up,
something else they covered in the training course.
Don’t fall over — it is a bad thing to do. The Ironsides
could not stand up from a prone position. Fortunately
he had landed on something that left him at an angle
and he was able to lever the suit upright.
By the time he did it he was sweating

profusely, his clothing soaked and his eyes stinging
despite the cloth headband he used to protect his eyes
from sweat.
Looking around by turning the suit he found
himself in a cellar, oddly tall but no more than six
feet wide by ten feet long, a single opening led into
the darkness. The walls were lined with some sort of
rickety shelves and clay jars, most of which had been
smashed by the Ironside as it came crashing down.
Then with a wet thump a body landed in front
of him, long hair and a blue tunic. It was a woman,
no more than twenty, or at least she had been that
age when she was alive. Then another corpse came
crashing down on top of the Ironside and shattered
most of its bones and skull against the armour on the
head, chest and shoulder.
Trooper Delaney backed up till he hit the wall
then tilted the suit backwards and stretched his head
forward and up to try and see what was happening
above him; he was barely able to see anything, the
heavily armoured grill was angled to look straight
ahead only.
He was just able to see one edge of the
hole high above him, the bright sunlight, a flash of
movement, a dusty red jacket then another figure
wearing dirty white. A swinging rifle butt and the
white clad figure was knocked backwards into the
hole to fall with a wet splat at the Ironside’s feet. It
wasn’t dead but after hesitating for a second in case he
smashed through another floor, Delaney stamped on
the moving corpse. He crushed its chest and spine, and
it stopped twitching.
There was no way he was going to climb out of
this hole; the opening into the darkness was his only
option. He turned the heavy suit and lumbered toward
his only way out.
#
Aboard Greyhound both the aft Maxim Turrets
had been firing almost continuously. The port turret
no longer had any targets but the starboard turret
was still providing fire in support of the survivors of

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