Boneshaker

Slowly, then with stronger rhythm, he began to nod. “Yes, but it’s not as daft as you make it sound — no, don’t. Stop it, and listen to me. Hear me out: If, all this time, everyone in the Outskirts has been wrong about you, then—”

“How are they wrong about me?” she demanded to know.

“They think everything was your fault! The jailbreak, the Blight, and the Boneshaker too. But they weren’t your fault, and the jailbreak wasn’t a big ol’ act of mayhem and nuisance.” He paused to take in some air, and his mother wondered where he’d ever heard such a phrase.

“So they’re wrong about you, and I think they’re wrong about Grandfather. That’s two out of three, ain’t it? Why’s it so nuts to think they’ve all been wrong about Levi, too? ”

It was exactly as she’d feared, laid out in a pretty, perfect line. “You,” she tried to say, but it came out as a cough. She slowed herself down and did her best to calm herself, despite the awful crashing of her son’s dangerous, i

Zeke made an adolescent squeak of disbelief and held out his hands like he wanted to shake his mother, or strangle her. “Then why haven’t you ever said anything? Why would you let them stomp all over his memory if you think he was trying to help people?”

“I told you, it wouldn’t matter. And besides, even if the jailbreak had never happened, and he’d died in some other, less strange way, it wouldn’t have made a difference to me. I wouldn’t have remembered him any different for any last-minute heroics, and, and, and… Besides,” she added another fierce defense, “who would listen to me? People avoid me and ignore me, and it’s not Maynard’s fault, not really. Nothing I could say to defend him would sway a single soul in the Outskirts, because being his daughter is only a secondary curse on my head.”

Her voice had crept up again, too close to fear for her own satisfaction. She beat it back down, and counted her breaths, and tried to keep her words in a tight, logical line to match and beat Ezekiel’s.

“I didn’t choose my parents; no one does. I could be forgiven for my father’s sins. But I did choose your father, and for that, they will never let me rest.”

Something salty and bright was searing a deep, angry streak in her chest, and it felt like tears clawing their way up her throat. She gulped them down. She caught her breath and crushed it into submission, and as her son walked away from her, back toward his bedroom where he could close her out, she tagged after him.

He shut the door in her face. He would’ve locked it, but it had no lock, so he leaned his weight against it. Briar could hear the soft whump of his body pressing a stubborn resistance on the other side.

She didn’t yank the knob, or even touch it.

She pressed her temple against a place where she thought his head might be, and she told him, “Try and save Maynard, if that will make you happy. Make that your mission, if it gives you some kind of direction and if it makes you less… angry. But please, Zeke, please. There’s nothing to retrieve from Leviticus Blue. Nothing at all. If you dig too hard or push too far, if you learn too much, it will only break your heart. Sometimes, everyone is right. Not always and not even usually, but once in a while, everyone is right.”

It took all her self-restraint to keep from saying more. Instead, she turned away and went to her own bedroom to swear and seethe.

Four

On Friday morning, Briar rose just before dawn, like always, and lit a candle so she could see.

Her clothes were where she’d left them. She traded yesterday’s shirt for a clean one, but she drew the same pair of pants up over her legs and tucked the narrow cuffs into her boots. The leather support cinch dangled on the bedpost. She picked it up and buckled it on, crushing it more tightly around her waist than was strictly comfortable. Once it warmed to her body it would fit her better.

Once her boots were laced and she’d found a thick wool vest to throw over her shirt, she pulled her overcoat down off the other bedpost and slipped her arms through its sleeves.

Down the hall, she didn’t hear a sound from her son’s room, not even a quick snore or a settling twist in the blankets. He wouldn’t be awake yet, even if he was going to school — and he didn’t often bother.

Briar had already made sure that he could read all right, and he could count and add better than a lot of the kids she’d seen, so she didn’t worry about him too much. School would keep him out of trouble, but school itself was often trouble. Before the Blight, when the city was bustling enough to support it, there had been several schools. But in the aftermath, with so much of the population decimated or scattered, the teachers didn’t always stay, and the students didn’t get much in the way of discipline.

Briar wondered when the war would end back east. The papers talked about it in exciting terms. A Civil War, a War Between the States, a War of Independence or a War of Aggression. It sounded epic, and after eighteen years of ongoing struggle, perhaps it was. But if it would only end, then perhaps it might be worth the trouble to head back toward the other coast. With some scraping and saving, maybe she could pull together the money to start over somewhere else, where no one knew anything about her dead father or husband. Or, if nothing else, Washington could become a proper state, and not merely a distant territory. If Seattle was part of a state, then America would have to send help, wouldn’t it? With help, they could build a better wall, or maybe do something about the Blight gas trapped inside it. They could get doctors to research treatments for the gas poisoning — and God only knew, maybe even cure it.

It should’ve been a thrilling thought, but it wasn’t. Not at six o’clock in the morning, and not when Briar was begi

The sun was rising slowly and the sky was taking on the milky gray daytime hue that it would never shake, not until spring. Rain spit sideways, cast sharply by the wind until it worked its way under Briar’s wide-brimmed leather hat, up her sleeve cuffs, and down through her boots until her feet were frozen and her hands felt like raw chicken skin.

By the time she reached the ’works, her face was numb from the cold but a tiny bit burned from the foul-smelling water.

She wandered around to the back of the enormous compound that hunkered loudly at the edge of Puget Sound. Twenty-four hours of every day it cranked and pumped, sucking rainwater and groundwater into the plant and stripping it, processing it, cleaning it, until it was pure enough to drink and bathe in. It was a slow and laborious procedure, one that was labor intensive but not altogether illogical. The Blight gas had poisoned the natural systems until the creeks and streams flowed almost yellow with contagion. Even the near-constant patter of rain could not be trusted. The clouds that dropped it may have gusted past the walled-up city and absorbed enough toxin to wash skin raw and bleach paint.

But the Blight could be boiled away; it could be filtered and steamed and filtered again. And after seventeen hours of treatment, the water could be safely consumed.