Boneshaker

Not even the faintest gust of air ruffled Briar’s hair, and she couldn’t hear the water, or the birds. Once upon a time there had been birds by the thousands, most of them crows and seagulls, all of them loud. Together the tribes had made a mighty racket of feathers and clacking calls, and the silence without them was strange. No birds, no people. No machines or horses.

Nothing moved.

Leading with her left hand, Briar crept up and out of her hole on leather-soled feet that didn’t make a sound to disturb the disturbing silence.

Finally she stood out in the open, close against the building beside the stairs.

The only sound was the rustle of her own hair against the straps and sides of the face mask, and when she quit moving, even that faint tickle of noise ceased.

She was standing on an incline, and she could see a place downhill where the incline increased sharply — dropping off and out of sight. At the edges of the drop-off, there were stalls filled with empty bins. And off to the side, and up, as Briar explored the scene with her eyes, she saw the remains of a half-toppled sign and an enormous clock without any hands.

And this must be… “The market. I’m near Pike Street.”

She almost said it aloud, but then merely mouthed the observation. The street made a dead end at the market, and on the other side of the market was the Sound — or it would’ve been, if the wall hadn’t cut the shoreline away from it.

The building at her back must face Commercial Avenue, the street that once ran alongside the ocean and now ran alongside the wall.

For the next few blocks, any of the streets that paralleled Pike would take her in roughly the direction she’d chosen.

She hugged close to the building, aiming rifle and eyes up and down the street as she shuffled sideways. Breathing inside the mask hadn’t become any easier, but she was growing accustomed to it and there was no alternative, anyway. Her chest was sore from the extra effort her muscles were making to inflate and deflate her lungs, and down at one corner of her left eyepiece, the view was getting foggy from condensation.

Heading uphill ever so slightly, she worked her way away from the wall, which she couldn’t even see. Briar knew that its tall blank shadow reached up into the sky, but it vanished from view far sooner and it was easy to forget, especially when she’d turned away from it.

Through her head ran endless calculations. How far was she from the lavender house on the hill? How long would it take to reach it if she ran? If she walked? If she skulked like this, squeezing between the tendrils of low-lying, stinking fog?

She flexed her cheek, trying to shake the condensation and make it gather or roll.

It didn’t work. The vapor clung to the mask.

She sighed, and a second sigh gave it a fu

Confused, she shook her face. It must have been a trick of the straps, or the way the device fit around her forehead. It could’ve been her hair, brushing against the exterior. It might’ve been her boots, scraping unexpectedly against a jagged paving stone. The sound could’ve come from anywhere. It was so quiet, anyway. Hardly a sound at all, really.

Her feet wouldn’t move. Neither would her arms, or her hands, locked around the rifle. Even her neck would barely turn, lest she recreate the noise, or fail to. The only thing worse than hearing it again would be hearing it again and knowing it hadn’t come from her own careful movements.

So slowly that even her long coat didn’t tap itself against her legs, Briar retreated, feeling with her heels, praying that there was nothing behind her. Her heel found a curb, and stopped there.

She stepped up onto it.

The sound came again. There was a whistle to it, and a moan. It was almost a hiss, and it could’ve been a strangled gasp. Above all, it was quiet, and it seemed to have no source.

It whispered.

Briar tried to place the sound, and she decided, now that she’d heard it again and could be certain she hadn’t imagined it, that it came from somewhere to her left, down toward the wall. It was coming from the street stalls where nothing had been bought or sold in almost sixteen years.

The whisper rose to a hum, and then stopped.

Briar stopped too — or she would have, if she hadn’t already. She wanted to freeze herself further, to make herself inaudible and invisible, but there was nowhere to hide — not in her immediate range of vision. The deep old stalls were behind her. All the doors were barred with boards nailed tight around them, and all the windows had likewise been covered. The corner of a stone building pressed against her shoulder when she leaned away from the market.

The noise stopped.

This new kind of quiet was even more frightening than the old kind, which was simply empty. Now it was worse, because the foggy, cluttered landscape was not merely silent. Now it was holding its breath, and listening.

Briar removed her left hand from the rifle and reached backward until she touched the corner. Finding it, and feeling it, she guided herself to the far side of the building. It was no real protection, but it put her out of the market’s line of sight.

The mask was squeezing tight around her face. The condensation on one side was driving her to distraction, and the smell of rubber and toast clogged her throat.

She needed to sneeze, but she chewed on her tongue until the feeling passed.

Around the corner, the whispered wheeze rustled through the calm.

It halted, then began again, louder. And then it was joined by a second hacking gasp, and a third, and then there were too many to count.

Briar wanted to crush her eyes closed and hide from the noises, but she couldn’t even take a moment to peer around the side of the building to see what was making the cacophony, because it was escalating. There was nothing she could do but run.

The middle of the road was mostly clear, so she took it, weaving between the overturned carts and leaping past slabs of earthquake-loosened walls that had collapsed into the road.

Silence was no longer an option.

Briar’s feet smacked against the bricks and her rifle slapped up and down on her hip as she charged downhill, even though she’d meant to go the other direction. She couldn’t run uphill; she didn’t have enough air to struggle any harder. So down, then. Down the hill but not — she thought in a flickering moment of hope — strictly the wrong direction. She was ru

She risked a glance, and then a second glance, and then she stopped trying, because she’d been terribly, terribly wrong — and they were coming in fast.

Those two quick looks had told her everything she needed to know: Run, and for heaven’s sake, don’t stop.

They were not quite on her heels. They were rounding the corner in a loping, ludicrous hobble that was shockingly fast despite the awkward gait. More naked than clothed, and more gray than the proper color of living flesh, the rotters pressed a rollicking lurch that tumbled in a wave. They rolled forward, over everything, past everything, around everything that might have otherwise slowed them down.

Without fear and without pain, they beat their ragged bodies against the litter in the street and bounced away from it, not deterred and not redirected. They smashed through water-weakened wood and stomped through the corpses of animals, and if any other rotters tripped or fell they crawled a vicious assault over the bodies of their own.

Briar remembered all too well those first sad, shambling people who’d been poisoned by the Blight. Most of the victims had died outright, but a few had lingered — and they’d groaned, and gasped, and consumed. They had no other thoughts beyond consuming, and they wished for nothing but fresh, bloody flesh. Animals would suffice. People were preferred, insomuch as the rotters had any preference for anything.