Boneshaker

“His mask,” Lucy supplied. “Wasn’t on him good. It got loose, and he took in too much Blight.”

Willard said, “I suppose it happens.”

“All the damn time. But he was too drunk to be careful, and you see now what it gets you. Will, help me with this mask, will you, man?” Lucy changed the subject. She twisted her neck and tried to convince her hand to work, but it only fluttered against her sternum. “Help me take it off.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. He reached behind her, unbuckled her mask, and pried it off her skull. Then he tackled his own. Soon everyone was barefaced again.

The Chinamen hung back by the furnace, dark eyed and patient, waiting for their work space to empty again. Swakhammer noticed first, the way they lingered with unspoken impatience. He said, “We should get out of their way. These bellows need to run another two hours yet before the downside’s fresh enough to last the night.”

He gave a duck of his head that wasn’t quite a bow and wasn’t quite a nod, and he said a few words in another tongue. He didn’t say the words smoothly or quickly, as if they were sharp in his mouth, but Briar gathered that it was an expression of thanks and a request for pardon.

The leather-aproned, smooth-faced Chinamen appeared to appreciate the effort. They smiled tightly and bobbed their heads back, failing to conceal their relief as the group evacuated down a secondary tu

Varney and Willard stayed close on either side of Lucy, and Swakhammer led the way with Briar beside him. The rest of them — Frank, Ed, Allen, David, Squiddy, Joe, Mackie, and Tim — brought up the rear. They marched together in silence, except for Frank and Ed, who were grousing about Hank.

Frank said, “It’s horseshit, is what it is. And turnabout’s fair play. We ought to go to the edges of the station and turn a few rotters loose down there, at Mi

Ed agreed. “We could go in through the Chinese quarters. They’d let us, I bet. They’d let us if we told ’em what we were up to.”

“And the airmen who hang down at the fort, over by the tower. We could see if any of them are game to raise a little ruckus,” Frank proposed.

But Lucy hushed them from the front of the line. “Knock it off, you two. Don’t you go dragging other folks into your harebrained schemes. Nobody’s going down to the station. Nobody’s tempting fate, or rotters, or the doctor. We don’t need any more trouble.”

Briar thought it was Mackie who quietly complained, “Well how much trouble do we have to swallow before we say it’s enough?”

Lucy said, “More than this.” But she didn’t put much weight behind it.

Mackie mumbled a final word. “I’d like to see how he feels about rotters in his own parlor, biting on his own friends.” He might’ve said more, but Lucy stopped and turned around and stared him down until he closed his mouth.

With rounded walls and sealed, sucking doors that opened and closed like dirty airlocks, the corridor drifted gently down and over to the left.

“These are the Vaults?” Briar asked.

Swakhammer said, “Not exactly. There’s only one real vault, but the name stuck. The rest of what’s back here is mostly where people sleep. Think of it as a big apartment building, turned upside down. Not that many folks live here, really. Most of the people that do live inside the walls have taken up residence at the edges — near De

“That makes sense,” she observed.

“Yeah, but there are drawbacks to living that far off the beaten path; I mean, if you need anything, it’s a tough hike down here to the core. Hell, you know what I’m talking about. Just now we got a man killed going two short blocks. Try picking your way down eight or nine. But people do it.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “The accommodations are a lot nicer. See what I mean?” He leaned on a latch and opened a metal-banded door with a sealed-up window. “It’s not exactly clean, and not exactly comfortable, but it’s pretty much secure.”

“That’s what I thought about Maynard’s.”

Swakhammer made a dismissive flap with his hand and said, “Down here we’ve got those guys.” She assumed he meant the Chinamen. “They’ve got the situation under control. If there’s trouble, they know what to do. Anyway, here’s your room, Miss Wilkes.”

She craned her head to look inside and saw exactly what he’d promised: a somewhat clean, somewhat comfortable-looking space with two beds, a table, a washbasin, and three steaming pipes that ran along the far wall.

“Look out for those pipes,” he added. “They keep the room warm, but you don’t want to touch them. They’ll burn your skin right off.”

“Thanks for the warning.”

“Briar, darling,” Lucy said as she maneuvered her way to the front of the line. “I don’t want to impose on your privacy, but I’m in a bit of a pickle here with this busted arm. Usually I don’t need much assistance, but I’d appreciate yours this evening.”

“That’s fine. We girls need to stick together, don’t we?” She understood a little too well why a woman might not want a man to be her extra hands, even if those men were the well-meaning sort with only the best of intentions.

Briar let Lucy go inside first, and as she settled her bottom on the edge of the bed, Swakhammer had one more set of useful instructions. “There are privies down at the end of the hallways, usually on the left. They don’t lock too good, and they don’t smell too great either, but there you go. Water can be found back towards the Chinamen. They keep it in barrels right outside the furnace-room doors. Anything else you need to know, Lucy can probably fill you in.”

“That’s fine,” she told him, and as he trooped away with the rest of the men tagging behind him like ducklings, she closed the door and went to sit on the other bed.

Lucy had leaned herself over so that her head rested on the flat, musty pillow. “I don’t need so much help, really,” she said. “I just didn’t want to spend the night surrounded by those silly old boys. They want to help, but I don’t think I could stand it.”

Briar nodded. She picked at her bootlaces and wiggled her feet out of the shoes, then went to sit beside Lucy to help her do the same.

“Thank you dear, but don’t worry about it. I’d rather leave them on for now. It’s easier to let ’em stay than to get ’em back on tomorrow. And tomorrow I’m going to get this old thing tuned up.” She shifted her shoulder in an attempt to lift the arm.

“As you like,” Briar said. “Is there anything else I can do for you, then?”

Lucy sat up and pushed the covers aside with her rear end. “I think I’m fine for now. By the way, I’m real glad about your hand. I’m glad you get to keep it. It’s a sad and aggravating thing to lose one.”

Briar said, “I’m glad too. That was awful fast, how Hank turned. What happened to make it go so much quicker?”

Lucy rolled her head back and forth, settling down onto the pillow. “I couldn’t tell you for sure, but I could give you a guess. All the Blight down here, it gets thicker and thicker each year. You used to be able to see the stars at night — but not anymore, just the moon if it’s good and bright. You can’t see the Blight itself exactly, but you know it’s there, and you know it’s collecting up inside the walls. One of these days,” she said, scooting back in the bed so she could lean against the headboard and prop herself and the pillow up enough to talk, “you know what’s going to happen, don’t you?”

“No. What do you mean?”

“I mean, these walls are just a bowl — and a bowl can only hold so much. The Blight is coming up from underground, ain’t it? Pouring more and more into this sealed-up shape. The gas is heavy, and for now, it stays down here like soup. But one day it’s going to be too much. One day, it’s going to overflow, right out there to the Outskirts. Maybe it’ll overflow and poison the whole world, if you give it enough time.”