Boneshaker

“Which way?” Zeke asked, perching at the edge of the platform where the steps swapped angles.

“Up, for Christ’s sake,” Angeline swore loudly and cocked her shotgun again. “We’re cutting past the main trouble, and if we go down they’ll trap us there. We’ve got to try up and out, if we want to survive.”

Briar breathed, “We can’t keep this up,” and fired her last shot from within the doorway.

She knocked down the foremost rotter with a bullet; its forehead blistered and popped as it fell. That cleared perhaps ten yards between the surge of decomposing flesh and the narrow bottleneck of the emergency escape hall.

“Up, all right. Up,” Zeke wheezed as he started to climb.

“There’s another door on the first floor up. It’s dark. Feel around. You’ll find it. It should be unlocked; it usually is. I hope it is.” Angeline gave instructions from some black-blanketed corner where Zeke couldn’t see her. As soon as they’d rounded the bottom bend and begun their ascent, the stairwell had become perfectly dark. Arms, elbows, and the burning-hot barrels of guns knocked against shoulders and ribs as the three tried to beat a retreat back up into the mere ordinary chaos of the living.

“I found the door!” Zeke a

When the horde of starving rotters crashed against it, the door jolted, but held. The brace strained and scooted slightly against the floor, but Angeline kicked it into place and stared at it, daring it to move.

“How long will that hold?” Zeke asked. No one answered him.

Briar said, “Where are we, Princess? I don’t recognize this place.”

“Put your mask on,” Angeline said in response. “You’re going to need it soon. Boy, that goes for you too. Put it on. We’re going to make a run for the topside, but it won’t help us any if you can’t breathe.”

Briar’s satchel wasn’t settled on her shoulder the way she liked it; she’d grabbed it in such a hurry that there hadn’t been time to adjust it. She did so then, lodging it into the familiar groove across her torso. She retrieved her mask and wormed her head up into the straps, watching while Zeke did the same. She said, “Where’d you get that? That’s not the mask you left home with.”

He said, “Jeremiah gave it to me.”

“Swakhammer?” Briar said. “What’s he doing here?” she asked no one in particular, but Angeline answered.

“You took too long getting back to the Vaults. Lucy went down there and grabbed your friends, and then all hell broke loose.” She took a deep breath that sounded like it hurt, like her lungs were snagged on something sharp. When Briar looked down at the woman’s side, she could see that the bleeding there was fresh.

“They came after me? To rescue me?”

“Sure, to rescue you. Or to start the war they’ve wanted for years. I’m not saying they don’t mean to help you, because they surely do — but I will say that they’ve needed an excuse to rise up like this, and you’re the best one they ever got.”

Above, a rickety string of rope was knotted around hanging lights powered by no source that Briar could see. But twisted together with the rope she could see metallic veins, wires woven together and transmitting whatever energy it took to illuminate them. They weren’t bright, but they showed the way well enough to keep them from stubbing toes or shooting one another from surprise. Large tarps covered things shaped like monstrous machines that had been pushed into corners, and stacks of crates were piled along the edges of the room, which was low-ceilinged, damp, and chilly.

“What is this place?” she asked.

Angeline said, “Storage. Extra things. Things he stole, and things he’ll use later, someday, if he gets the chance. If we had the time or wherewithal, I’d say we ought to set fire to this place behind us. There’s nothing here but things designed to maim and kill.”

“Like those chemist’s labs, downstairs,” Briar murmured.

“No, not like those. These are things he can sell to a different market, if he can work out how they operate. They’re leftovers from the big contest the Russians held, looking for a mining machine that could dig through ice and lift out gold. He’ll be a rich, rich man if the war goes on any longer.”

Zeke said, “He’s already a rich man, ain’t he?”

“Not as rich as he’d like to be. They never are, are they, Miss Wilkes? Now he’s turning these things into war machines, since they weren’t much use as drilling machines. He wants to sell them back east, to the highest bidder.”

Briar was only half listening. She’d picked up the corner of the nearest tarp and she was gazing up underneath it, like she was lifting a lady’s skirt. After squinting into the murky brown darkness there, she said, “I’ve seen this before. I know what this is — what it was supposed to be… But these aren’t all left over from the contest.”

“What?” Zeke asked. “What do you mean?”

“He’s been stealing Levi’s inventions and retooling them for his own purposes.” She said, “These are your father’s things. This machine, under here…” She yanked the sheet away to reveal a long, ghastly, crane-shaped device with wheels and plating. “This was a device to help build big boats, or that’s how he tried to sell it. It was supposed to do… I don’t remember. Something about moving large parts to and fro on a dock, so men didn’t have to carry them. I didn’t believe it then, and I don’t believe it now.”

“Why not?” Zeke wanted to know.

She told him, “Because how many boat-builders do you know that need artillery shells and gunpowder reservoirs? I’m not stupid. I guess I just didn’t want to know.”

“So Mi

Briar said, “Of course he isn’t. He scared me for a minute there, I don’t mind telling you. He’s about the right size, and about the right… I don’t know. The right type of man. But it’s not him.”

“I knew he wasn’t. I knew it all along.”

“You did, did you?”

Zeke turned to Angeline and said proudly, “You told me not to believe anything he’d tell me, and I didn’t. I knew he was lying all along.”

“Good,” his mother said. “So what about you, Princess? What makes you so sure that the good doctor isn’t my dead husband? I got my own reasons for knowing. What are yours?”

She poked at her injury and winced, and covered it up with her hand. She stuck her shotgun back in the quiver and said, “Because he’s a son of a bitch. Always has been. And I’m…” Angeline started walking away from the battered door and down the corridor along the string of lights that lit the way overhead. “Well, I’m that bitch.”

Zeke’s jaw dropped. “He’s your son?”

“I didn’t mean it quite like that. A long time ago, he was married to my daughter Sarah. He drove her mad, and he killed her.” She didn’t swallow, and her eyes weren’t warming with tears. This was something she’d known and held against her chest for years, and merely saying it didn’t make the truth of it any worse. So she continued. “My girl hung herself in the kitchen, from the ceiling beam. So maybe he didn’t shoot her, or cut her wrists, or feed her poison… but he killed her as sure as if he had.”

Briar asked, “So what’s his real name, then? It can’t be Mi

“His name’s Joe. Joe Foster. No man was ever baptized with a more boring name, and I guess he didn’t like it any. If he could’ve gotten away with it, after the Blight and after the walls, I think he would’ve taken Blue’s life over. He would’ve done it right away if he could. But he got hurt in the leaving. If you’ve seen his face, you know what I mean; he got burned up in a fire, back when people thought maybe the Blight could be burned away. So he did it slow, stealing another man’s life a piece at a time as he took these things — these inventions, toys, and tools. It took him a while to learn how to use them.”