Read The Austin Job Online

Authors: David Mark Brown

Tags: #A dieselpunk Thriller. A novel of the Lost DMB Files

The Austin Job

Contents

Title Page

Letter to the Reader

Once Upon a Bolshevik

Sausage and Eggs

Warming Up

Clarity of Communication

A Starr is Borne

Put Your Dying Shoes On

Back to the Beginning

The Gambit

Towers and Tunnels

An Older Austin

This Keeps Getting Better

Starr, James Starr

A Streetcar Named Retribution

Ballroom Games

Get Ready, Get Set...

...Middlegame!

None of This is Real

Hell's Gates

Welcome to the Final Act

Deaf Ears

Plan B

Let's Make This Look Good

Over the Edge

Endgame

Second to Last Chapter

Phoenix

Author Greeting

Author Bio

Copyright Page

Letter to the Reader

The Austin Job
was where it all started for me. Two years after receiving my research and teaching post at the historic University of Texas campus, I received a manilla envelope in the mail, book rate. I ignored it for a week (I get conspiratorial treatises from whackjobs as well as unsolicited manuscripts from amateur geologists constantly). Upon opening it, I discovered a first edition of
The Austin Job
, published 1929.

Honestly, I thought it to be a joke from a coworker. It wasn’t until after being kidnapped and nearly blown up that I sat down to read the thing. And its reading has changed me. Laugh if you must, but I write this letter
 
from the very same office referenced in the story. I’ve seen the passage way and underground facility.

While most consider David Mark Brown, IV and the Truth in History Society to be mild-mannered terrorists and irrelevant conspiracists (I would have agreed until last year), I now know differently. Thus I’ve accepted the challenge of seeking out, editing and organizing the obscure and forgotten works of David Mark Brown.

Due to the polished nature of
The Austin Job
in its original published form, editing had been a relatively simple task. When possible I’ve replaced pseudonyms with their historical counterparts. For example, James Starr appeared as Junior Corona (cute) in the original text. No doubt Brown would have been hunted earlier and more fiercely by the mysterious individuals he attempted to uncover if he’d been transparent about such well known public figures.

And so without further ado, I let the reader decide for her or himself. Is there more to this roisterous, pulpy thriller than meets the eye? Finally, be forewarned. Becoming lost in these “lost” files and the world they reconstruct is difficult to resist. May what once was lost, now be found.

Professor Jim “Buck” Buckner

Department of Geology, University of Texicas, Austin

All known “Lost” Files (in chronological order allowing for suspected gaps):

Reefer Ranger (#9)

Del Rio Con Amor (#14)

Fistful of Reefer (#1
7)

The Austin Job (#18)

Hell’s Womb (#22)

Get Doc Quick (#24)

McCutchen’s Bones (#25)

Twitch and Die! (#26)

Paraplegic Zombie Slayer (#35)

Fourth Horseman (#43)

And now,
The Austin Job
. Saddle up. Austin’s about to get hot…

The Austin Job

ONE

Once Upon a Bolshevik

It was the anniversary of his exile. Standing on the northern lawn of the Austin State Capitol, Oleg watched the sun wink below the horizon. The last of its reflected light danced off the river in the distance. Transported back to the Dneiper, he closed his eyes and let the ecstasy of sorrow bubble within his heart. One of the few remaining Ukrainian warriors trained in classic buza, he rolled his neck and loosened his slight shoulders. Hatred flowed from his center into every extremity.

Opening his eyes, he yanked his arms forward, orchestrating the movement of minions on either side. Two dozen figures enshrouded in shadow rushed the perimeter of the capitol building. Lifting his gaze slowly to the darkened dome, he flicked a black parasol from a sheath on his back and opened it at the exact moment the exterior lights of the dome buzzed to life.

Ten years ago on this day, men and women he’d fought alongside for a democratic Russia betrayed him. For the unification of the party, they forced his wife and daughter to disavow him—stole his inventions, his dreams and his identity. After several years of anonymity as a chemistry professor by the name of Yuri Medved, new individuals with old lusts promised to reunite him with his family. Indeed he would dance, but not without taking his pound of flesh.
Pulling Oleg Rodchenko’s strings come at great cost. Tonight, first payment.

With quick strides he rounded the building. Grand pergolas emblazoned with electric lights and crammed with Austin’s elite littered the southeast lawn. Pure titillation. He snapped his fingers and drew his thumb across his throat. Reaching the gala’s fringe, he collapsed the umbrella and strode forward, twirling it like a conductor’s baton.

As if representing the gnarled finger of death, cracks in the merriment rippled outward from his presence. A portly woman adorned in pearls dropped her beverage, fanning herself with both hands. Perspiration poured down her face and neck. A gentleman tossed his jacket to the ground while clutching his thigh.

Oleg inhaled deeply, tasting the ionized air—the pregnant pause between lightning and thunder. He slowed to appreciate the moment.

“Good Gawd, it’s hot!” The jacketless man convulsed, his skin red under the twinkling electric lights. “I’m so damn hooooouuah!” Racked with spasm the man crushed his wine glass, the skin of his hand erupting with flame. During the brief moment it took to fill his lungs with precious, flammable oxygen, five blue tendrils of fire spiraled from the tips of his fingers several feet into the evening air.

Oleg licked his lips, sweat dripping from his mustache. Then came the scream—like vine-ripened terror plucked at the perfect moment. So juicy. So fresh. As the man’s lipids bled into his clothing through cracks in the skin, his fear and agony bled into the crowd. After barreling into open lawn, the man froze, rigid with pain. He arched his back, head only inches from the ground. Finally, the low, wispy flames creeping over the surface of his body erupted.

They burst from his thighs, his buttocks, his chest, his hands. Surging from his opened throat, the flames extinguished his voice. Oleg commenced his stroll through the panicked crowd. In another moment the man’s soul would vanish, gone in a puff as his ashes collapsed to earth. But Oleg had greater business to attend to, and he would relish the expression on her face when she realized how far he was willing to stretch the boundaries of their arrangement. He wished to erase the smug look she’d worn when they last parted.

His two fingers mimicking a pistol, he predicted each combustion—an attractive debutant, a banker with a lazy eye. Swirling storms of flame burst from human islands—friends, lovers, spouses absent during their final moment—nothing left but green grass, a private hell, and purifying fire.

The heat and stench licked Oleg’s skin, beads of sweat forming on his forehead, dripping down the ridge of his nose. He split the herd. Stepping over bodies spent of fuel, crushing brittle skulls with his heel, retarding tongues of flame through sheer discipline—he imposed an angry contrast from the corrupt chattel of government and the slaves to wealth surrounding him. Their own predictable indulgence forfeited them to the flames. Tonight he freed them from the illusion of a happiness found in others’ misery.

The pathetic ones too weak to flee dropped with limp thuds, overcome by artificial heatstroke. With a sigh of contentment he spotted her and her associates through the thinning herd, cowering by the refreshments he’d laced with dinitrophenol.
Let her taste my loss
. The temporary light of human torches faded as his demonstration ran its course. Out from the shadows and brimming with anticipation, Oleg approached the band of four.

Ms. Lloyd, the sheriff, his daughter and the new pet, State Senator Starr.
An interesting one that. Might have been great man, but for corruption of vanity
. Oleg leveled his parasol, took aim at the sheriff’s chest and squeezed the handle. An eruption of gases built within the hollow of its chamber as a tiny pellet of lithium interacted with water. Oleg watched realization crest in the eyes of his enemies, the senator first. Bursting from the umbrella’s tip at 200 meters per second, the projectile struck the spontaneous Senator Starr in the fat of his ass as he attempted to play the hero. Laughing, Oleg turned to go.
Fate always allows for worthy improvisation.

TWO

Sausage and Eggs

12 hours earlier

Senator James Starr hefted the envelope in his hand, weighing its words versus the personal check it contained. He intended it as a gift, but he couldn’t shake the feeling it was a betrayal wrapped in a half-assed apology. His parents needed the money, and they would accept it, bitter pill or not.

They were simply too young to live off their oldest son’s handouts. Returning to the farm to pick up the slack left by his brother shipping off to Europe and his sister getting married would have preserved their dignity. But a check in the mail?

All the same, he slipped the letter through the slot and exited the post office back onto Congress Avenue. He breathed deep, inhaling the mixture of past, present and future as Austin’s early morning bustle girded him. The clip clop of horses’ hooves punctuated the steady rumble of a half dozen Model Ts. A Packard bounced across the streetcar rails in the middle of the intersection before turning south toward the river.

Once again, the city’s cogs had been oiled overnight. Despite two days of the largest organized strikes the state had ever seen, Austin’s financial district continued to bear a fastidious front. Riots from the previous day rested uneasily for the moment, and as Starr turned east on Sixth Avenue, thick grey skies blocked out the morning sun. With a huff, he picked up the pace.

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