Boneshaker

Eighteen

Lucy’s smile faded into a tight line that had a question to ask. “Let me ask you something, if that’s all right.”

Briar said, “By all means.” She worked her sore hand under dusty covers. They smelled clean, but old — as if they were kept in a cupboard and rarely used. “If I get to ask one next.”

“Absolutely.” Lucy waited for a piercing fuss of steam from the pipes to quiet itself, and then she lined up her words with care. “I don’t know if Jeremiah’s said anything to you about it or not, but there’s a certain man down here. We call him Dr. Mi

“Mr. Swakhammer might’ve mentioned him.”

She wormed herself more deeply into her own blanket and said, “Good, good. He’s a scientist, this doctor. An inventor who turned up down here not long after the wall went up. We don’t know where he came from, exactly, and we don’t know what’s wrong with him. He always wears a mask, even in the clean air here underneath, so we don’t know what he looks like. Anyway, he’s real smart. He’s real good with mechanical things like this.” She jiggled her shoulder again.

“And the tracks, and the Daisy.”

“Yes, those things too. He’s quite a fellow. He can make something out of nothing, like nobody I ever heard of before.” She added one more word, a word that strongly pointed at a question Briar had no intention of answering. “Almost.”

Briar turned over on her side and leaned on her elbow. “Where are you going with this, Lucy?”

“Oh come on, now. You’re not dumb. Don’t you wonder?”

“No.”

“Not even a little bit? It’s a hell of a coincidence, isn’t it? There’s a lot of talk down here that it might be—”

Briar said flatly, “It’s not. I can promise you that.”

And Lucy’s eyes lowered, not with fatigue but with cu

She almost snapped, “I don’t need to see him.” But instead she said slowly, measuring every word against Lucy’s eager eyes, “I don’t know who this Dr. Mi

“He loved you that much?”

“Love? No. Not love, I don’t think. Possessiveness, maybe. I’m just one more thing that belongs to him, on paper. Zeke is one more thing that belongs to him, in blood. No.” She shook her head. She uncrooked her elbow and lowered herself against the mattress, smushing the feather pillow and flattening it with her cheek. “He’d never let it stand. He would’ve come for us whether we wanted him to or not.”

Lucy digested this, but Briar couldn’t read the conclusion from the other woman’s face. “I suppose you knew him better than anybody. ”

Briar agreed. “I suppose I did. But sometimes, I don’t think I ever knew him at all. It’s like that sometimes. People fool you. And I was a fool, so it was easy for him.”

“You were just a girl.”

“Same difference. Same result. But now it’s my turn. I get to ask a question.”

“Hit me,” Lucy said.

“All right. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

“That’s fine. There’s nothing you can ask that’ll embarrass me.”

“Good. Because I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t wondering about your arms. How’d you lose them?”

Lucy’s smile came back. “I don’t mind. It’s not a secret, anyhow. I lost the right one during the ru

“I was on the far side of the square, closer to the city dump than to the nice hill you lived on. Me and my husband, Charlie, we kept up a place where people used to come — mostly men. The old wharf rats and fishermen in their oiled coats, the prospectors with their tin pans banging together on their backs… They came for the food. I’m sorry, I should’ve said so first thing — it wasn’t a cathouse or anything. We had a little bar, smaller than Maynard’s and about half as nice.

“We called it the Spoiled Seal, and we did all right with it. We served mostly brew and spirits, and fish poached or fried in sandwiches. We kept the place, just the pair of us — me and Charlie — and it wasn’t perfect, but it was fine.”

She cleared her throat. “So sixteen years ago this big old machine came crashing down from the hill, burrowing under the city. You know that part. You know the things it broke, and you probably know better than anyone whether or not the Boneshaker brought the Blight. If anyone knows, you know.”

Briar said softly, “But I don’t know, Lucy. So I guess nobody does.”

“Mi

Briar thought it was as good a theory as any, and she said so. “I don’t know anything about volcanoes, but I guess I’d believe that.”

“Well, I don’t know. That’s just what Dr. Mi

“But you and Charlie,” Briar prompted her. She didn’t want to hear any more about Mi

Lucy said, “Oh yes. Well, the Blight ate its way through town and it was time to run. But I was at the market picking up supplies when the order went out, and the panic hit us good. And Charlie was out at the Seal. We’d been married ten years, and I didn’t want to leave him, but the officers made me. They picked me up and threw me out of town like I was a drunk taking up space on the sidewalk.

“They were already putting up walls, those treated linen ones with the wax and oil. Those didn’t work too great, but they worked better than nothing, and workers were hammering the frames together. As soon as I could, a couple of days after the biggest part of the panic, I put on a mask and ran right on past them — back down to the Seal and to Charlie.

“But when I got there, I couldn’t find him. The place was empty and the windows were broken out. People had thrown things inside and were stealing. I couldn’t believe it — stealing at a time like that!

“So I came inside and called his name over and over, and he answered from the back. I climbed around the counter and stormed into the kitchen, and there he was, all bit up and covered with blood. Most of the blood wasn’t his. He’d shot three of the rotters who’d tried to bring him down — you know how they do, like wolves on a deer — and he was alone with their bodies, but he was so bit up. He was missing an ear and part of his foot, and his throat was half tore out.”

She sighed and cleared her throat again. “He was dying, and he was turning, too. I didn’t know which one he was going to do first. We didn’t understand back then, so I didn’t know that I shouldn’t get down close to him. His head was nodding all loose-like, and his eyes were drying up, going that yellow-gray color.

“I tried to pull him up, thinking maybe I’d rush him over to the hospital. It was a stupid thing to think. They’d closed everything up by then, and there wasn’t anywhere to go for help. But I got him up onto his feet. He wasn’t a big man, and I’m no tiny woman myself.