Boneshaker

“What?” she asked. She came to his side and let him listen and squint while she checked the rifle. It was still loaded, and inside the satchel all her belongings seemed to be in place. “I don’t hear anything.”

He listened longer and then said, “Maybe you’re right. I thought I heard something, but I’ve been wrong before. There’s a lift at the end of the hall, over there. You see it?”

She leaned her head around the door and said, “Yes. That’s it, right?”

“Right. We’re going to run for it. We’ve got to; otherwise Yaozu is going to catch us, and we don’t want that.”

“We don’t?” Briar didn’t mean to make it sound like a question, but she was still pulling herself together, and for the moment, it was the easiest way to participate in the conversation. Besides, she was so happy to see him that all she wanted to do was touch him and talk to him.

Off in the distance, she heard gunfire. It was a large crack and loud, the sound of a rifle, not a revolver. More shots answered it, bullets from a smaller gun with a faster firing rate.

“What’s happening?” she asked.

“Long story,” he said.

“Where are we going?”

He took her hand and pulled her into the hallway. “To the Smith Tower — the big one where they dock the dirigibles.”

A memory flickered as her footsteps followed his in a furious patter. “But it’s not Tuesday yet, is it? It can’t be. We can’t get out that way — I don’t think it’s a good idea. We should head back down to the Vaults.”

“But we can get out that way, at the tower,” he swore. “Jeremiah said there’s ships there.”

She tore her arm away from his as they reached the lift. The iron grate covered the same lift as the one she’d taken from the top side; she pulled it over and pushed Zeke onto the platform. As she joined him and closed the gate, she said, “No. I’ve got to go see Lucy. I need to find out if she’s all right. And—”

More shots exploded, somewhere closer.

“And something bad is happening up there.” She pulled the Spencer around and held it in position as the lift rose to the next level. “We should get off here. Let’s avoid as much of it as we can.”

“It’s probably just rotters,” Zeke said, and tried to keep her on the lift as she stubbornly hauled the gate aside. “But we can’t leave yet. The princess might be up there!”

“Well, she isn’t.”

Briar swung the Spencer around and pointed it at a smallish woman with ski

The woman was holding her side. Blood squished out from between her fingers.

“Miss Angeline!” Zeke ran to her.

Briar lowered the Spencer, then changed her mind and held it out, ready for any trouble that might come from some other direction. After all, they were in the midst of a large room with several doors, all of them closed. There was nothing to mark this room as different from any other, or as having any particular purpose. It was mostly empty, except for a stack of tables against one wall and a clump of broken chairs that were piled on top of one another and left to collect dust.

“Ma’am,” she asked over her shoulder. “Ma’am, do you need some help?”

The reply came without a drop of patience in it. “No. And don’t touch me, boy.”

“You’ve been stabbed!”

“I’ve been scratched, and it’s ruined my new suit. Hey,” she said to Briar, tapping her on the shoulder with a bony linger. “If you see a bald-headed Chinaman in a black coat, you shoot him between the eyes for me. That would make me happy,” she fussed.

“I’ll keep a lookout for him,” Briar promised. “Are you the princess?”

“I’m a princess. And I’m mad as hell right now, but we’ve got to get out. If we stay here, they’ll catch us.”

“We’re on our way back to the Vaults,” Briar said. “Or the tower!” Zeke insisted.

Angeline said, “Either one of those would work, but you might want to head to the fort instead. When the Naamah Darling’s fixed, you can get old Cly to take you out, if you’re looking to leave.”

Briar frowned. “Cly’s here? At the fort?”

“He’s making repairs.”

More commotion upstairs told Briar that she’d have to ask about it later.

Zeke asked, “Wait. We’re going back to that ship? With that big old captain? No; no way. I don’t like him.”

“Cly?” Briar asked. “He’s good. He’ll get us out of here, don’t worry.”

Zeke said, “How do you know?”

“He owes us a favor. Or he thinks he does, anyhow.”

Around the bend something fell and broke, and on the other side of the walls, the trundling waves of heavy, rotting feet were beating a gruesome time. “This is bad,” Briar observed.

“Worse than that, probably,” said Angeline, though she didn’t sound too upset. She pulled a big-barreled shotgun out of a quiver she wore on her back, and checked it to make sure it was loaded. The injury in her side oozed, but did not gush when she let go of it.

“You know your way around here?” Briar asked her.

“Better than you folks do,” she said. “But not by much. I can find my way in and out, and that’s about it.”

“Can you take us out to the Vaults?”

“Yes, but I still think you should head for the fort,” she groused, and pushed Zeke so he wouldn’t help her walk. “Get off me, boy. I’m walking all right. It stings a little, but it won’t be the end of me.”

“Good,” Briar said. “Because we’ve got problems.”

From inside the lift, a mournful groan came echoing. Pounding hands beat at the roof above, or from some other spot around the lift’s basket. Then there was a splintering, breaking smash… and they came tumbling inside. One or two blazed the trail, and then they poured in greater numbers through whatever passage they’d forced.

The first three rotters off the lift and into the corridor were once a soldier, a barber, and a Chinaman. Briar pumped the rifle and aimed it fast, catching the first two in the eyes and blowing off the third one’s ear.

“Mother!” Zeke shouted.

“Behind me, both of you!” she commanded, but Angeline wasn’t having any of it and she used her own shotgun to take down the third.

Scrambling hungrily over those three bodies came another round of rotters, half a dozen bodies wide and at least that deep.

“Back!” Angeline cried. “Back, this way!” she said, even as she continued shooting.

The noise in the corridor was deafening, and both Zeke and Briar had heads that were already throbbing. But it was either shoot and aim high or sit down and die; so the women kept firing as Zeke blazed a backward path around the bend, acting as scout and lookout while he tried to follow Angeline’s directions.

“To your right! I mean, to your other right,” she corrected herself. “There ought to be a door there, at the end of the way. Beside the office!”

“It’s locked!” Zeke shouted. The second word was drowned out by the calamity of his mother’s Spencer, but Angeline got the general idea.

She said, “Cover me, just a second.”

Before Briar had time to do anything but comply, Angeline turned around and shoved Zeke out of her way. She unloaded her shotgun’s second barrel into the lock and the door flapped inward, shattering on its hinges.

“It’s a back exit,” the princess explained. “He tells people it’s a dead end, but it’s his own personal escape hatch, the bastard.”

Zeke kicked the door’s fallen shards aside and wished they had something to close behind them, but it wasn’t going to work out that way and he didn’t have time to complain. He tried to let the women clamber up first, but he was unarmed and no one would let him.

His mother took him by the crook of his neck where it met his shoulder and half threw him into the corridor, then almost tripped over him backward with her next shot. Angeline told him, “Get a move on!” and reloaded as she retreated. The hallway was dark and crowded, but Zeke could see stairs going up one direction and down another.