Mad Reign of the Plague Master
By Mark Justice
By Mark Justice
Art by Billy TackettThe two greatest heroes of the 1930s must put their differences aside to prevent America's greatest city – and then the country – from falling before the most insidious evil science has ever created.
Chapter 1.1
The Burning Men
The Burning Men
Jace Kendall did not know he was about to die.
If you had told him of his impending demise - mere minutes away - and if you could convince him of the truthfulness of your prediction, Jace Kendall might have shrugged and accepted his fate.
Kendall had not lived what most would call a happy life.
That was why he accepted the stranger's offer of fifty dollars to deliver the package. Fifty bucks, plus cab fare, to take him from Hell's Kitchen to Fifth Avenue, between 33rd and 34th Streets, to the tallest building in the world.
Fifty bucks would buy him some fine food and a lot of what his friend Ernie called "the juice of forgetfulness".
Jace had a lot to forget. But no matter how many pints he drank, his sleep was always troubled with the dreams of war: muddy trenches, exploding bodies and the yellow gas that killed so many. It had been almost twenty years, yet every night he was back on those French fields, fighting, hiding and praying.
The day he had shipped home had been the happiest of his life, back in Brooklyn with Nellie and his folks. His whole life seemed a path filled with unlimited possibilities.
Until the dreams started. The dreams led to the drinking, which made it harder to hold on to a job and harder to hold on to his family. Eventually Nellie took the twins north to live with her sister.
By then, the crash had come and gone, leaving soup lines and hopelessness in its wake. Jace no longer had a reason to crawl out of the bottle, so he stayed.
And when the man in the dark sedan gave him the cash and the package he saw no reason to pass it up.
It was a simple job. All he had to do was deliver the little box to Doc Kronos.
Jace may have been in a stupor for much of the past few years, but even he had heard of Kronos, the surgeon, inventor and wealthy adventurer. They said he and his aides devoted their lives to helping those in trouble. Jace knew of a few flophouses he'd like to show to Kronos.
But that didn't seem likely. The man in the sedan said Kronos wouldn't be at the building this night. When Jace asked the man how he'd come by the information, the man suggested that there were other, less inquisitive men who would appreciate fifty bucks. So Jace shut up and took a cab downtown. The man in the sedan said Jace would be watched the whole way, and if he stopped to get a bottle, he would regret it. As much as he needed a drink, Jace gritted his teeth and carried out his task.
Now, in the last moments of his life, Jace Kendall paused to admire the building. He had seen it many times, though this would be the first time he had ever entered the structure. Standing on the sidewalk, with his neck craned upward, he could not see the top of the building. He knew there was a dirigible mooring mast on the roof. He had read that somewhere. Jace wondered what it would be like to climb aboard one of those airships and just drift off to a new life in a distant land, far from dreams of death and the cloying scent of failure.
He sighed and pushed open the door.
The lobby was massive. It was decorated with gold columns and a marble floor. Behind a small desk, a man in a clean, starched uniform sat reading a detective story magazine.
Jace stood in front of the desk until the guard looked up. "May I help you?" If the man was surprised at seeing a bum like Jace stroll into this classy place on a Saturday night, he didn't show it.
"Doc Kronos," Jace said. He was getting pretty dry. His voice rasped a bit. He held up the small box. It was wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. The package shook slightly, thanks to the tremor in his hand.
"The intercom on the wall," the guard said, nodding toward the east corner of the lobby before returning to his magazine.
The intercom was set in the center of a square section of gold metal next to an elevator. It caused Jace Kendall to recall something else about Kronos. He was sometimes called The Golden Man by the papers, both because of the color of his skin and hair, as well as the source of his great wealth, which was rumored to come from a civilization hidden deep in an inactive volcano in some remote part of the world. Jace hardly believed the stories - his brain wasn't that far gone. But it did make a good yarn.
The intercom seemed to be a pretty simple affair. There was a speaker set into the center of the square and a button beneath. He could see nothing that indicated a connection with Doc Kronos. Jace cleared his throat and pressed the button.
After a few seconds a voice from the speaker said, "Yeah?" It was a rough voice, one that sounded like the owner of the throat was gargling gravel. It was out of place in a building like this.
"Uh, I have a package for Doc Kronos," Jace said.
"Stay right there," the gravelly voice said. "I'll be right down."
Almost immediately he heard the elevator hum to life. Jace knew that Kronos had a number of associates, men who had been with the golden adventurer since the Great War. Perhaps the gravel-voiced man would give him a nice tip for delivering the package. No one had to know that Jace was paid by two people tonight.
Suddenly the tremors in his hands returned. His last drink had been hours ago and he was paying the price.
In the last seconds of his life, Jace wondered how different things might have been had he caught a couple of decent breaks, how nice it would be if Nellie and the girls were still with him.
Then the tremors became so bad he couldn't hold on to the box.
It landed on the marble floor and Jace heard the sound of breaking glass.
In his life, William Gunnerson had been a professional boxer, soldier and chemist. When he joined up with Doc Kronos's organization, it was with the anticipation of excitement and adventure. There had been plenty of that, but lately it seemed like he was sitting around playing cards more than slamming his huge fists into heads. So when he answered the delivery call, he merely viewed it as a break in his monotonous routine.
When the doors opened on the lobby, the last thing Gunny expected to see was a flaming man.
Gunny barely registered that the fellow looked like a derelict. His shoes and pants were nearly worn out and his jacket was torn.
It was the flames that held the big man's attention. Instead of consuming the bum's body, they sprouted red and angry in dozens of locations along his hands and face. As Gunny watched, he saw pustules on the man's skin swell up and explode with red fire.
"Damnation," he muttered.
At that moment, the individual flames joined together in a crimson conflagration that quickly consumed the screaming man.
It was another scream that finally drew Gunny's notice away from the burning derelict. Near the front door of the lobby, the night clerk was beating at his face and arms. In an instant he, too, was covered by a scarlet blaze.
The second victim spurred Gunny into action. He stepped back into the elevator and pushed a button. The door hissed closed. Gunny opened a cabinet on the wall of the cab and extracted a small tube. This had a tiny mouthpiece, which he immediately clasped between his lips. As he breathed through the compact, powerful oxygen mask he had helped Doc Kronos develop, Gunny pulled open a viewing hatch in the elevator's door.
By now, the night clerk was covered by the crimson flames. Gunny was pretty sure the man's name was Charlie. Charlie had been a big Dodgers fan.
The derelict was a smoldering corpse on the lobby floor.
Where a normal elevator car would have a row of buttons for choosing a floor, this special cage, used only by Doc Kronos and crew, was equipped with a control panel that resembled the cockpit controls in an airplane. Gunny slammed the side of one big hand against a button. In a second, a thin squeaky voice said, "What is it, pally? Package too big for you to lift?"
Gummy mumbled something before he realized he was still wearing the oxygen mask. He ripped it from his mouth and said, "Brick! Condition X. Lock it down."
"Right," the voice said, all playfulness vanished.
Gunny reinserted the oxygen mask, knowing that upstairs Aloysius Desmond McMurphy - "Brick" to his friends - was rushing to another control panel, one with which the short and homely fellow could seal all entrances to the building. Brick, one of the world's greatest mechanical engineers, had constructed the system himself. Doc Kronos had made many enemies in his career, and extraordinary measures had to be taken to ensure the safety of the people who worked around him.
Unfortunately for Charlie the clerk and the poor stiff on the floor, those measures were put into effect too late.
Even in the elevator cab Gunny could hear the sound of the mechanisms sliding into place around the doors and windows. In another moment the radio squalled and Brick's squeaky voice said, "Okay, now what happened?"
"Two guys in the lobby burst into flames," Gunny said, after removing the mask again. "One of them was Charlie."
"Aw, no," Brick said.
"It was something funny, Brick. They both had these strange boils on them that swelled until they exploded into fire."
"Incendiary pimples?" Brick said. "Brother, I want some of what you've been drinking."
"Just pull out the safety suits," Gunny said, the surge of excitement already coursing through his body. "I'm on my way up. And you better get hold of Doc."
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