Boneshaker

“I’m not sure of anything, myself,” Lucy told her. “But this much is for damned sure: You’ve got your boy, and this station is about to be overrun full tilt by those rotters, and anyone who stays in here is going to get eaten.”

Zeke said, “Are you the one who let ’em inside?”

Lucy gave a hard toss of her head to Frank and Allen and said, “Turnabout’s fair play, ain’t it? I only wish I knew they’d make it this deep. I wasn’t expecting that.”

“We could go with you. We could help,” he insisted.

Briar was thinking the same thing. She added, “We could see you safely back, at any rate.”

“No, no you couldn’t. We’ll either make it or we won’t. He’ll either make it or he won’t. We don’t need no one else to carry him. But you two, well. You, Miss Wilkes. You need to go tell the captain you didn’t die down here. He needs to know that he paid a debt, not that he incurred an even bigger one. He’s down at Fort Decatur, where they’ve fixed his ship and he’s waiting to take off, out of the city. He knows your boy’s down here, now. He told me so, when I gave him Mi

Swakhammer’s shoulders stretched and he made a gurgling sound like something trying to breathe with a chest full of tar. The last part of it came out in a whimper, which tore Briar up. It wasn’t a sound that Jeremiah Swakhammer ought to make, ever. “He’s dying,” she said. “Oh God, Lucy. Get him out of here. Get him to your Chinese doctor. I thank you, and I’ll be seeing you again sometime, I swear it.”

“On my way,” she said. She didn’t even bother to close the iron gate, just yanked a pulley overhead. The lift began to drop. As the crew was lowered and they disappeared a foot at a time, Lucy said again, “You’ve always got a place with us in the Vaults, if you want it. If not, it was an honor to fight beside you, Wilkes.”

And then the precipitous slide of the lift down its cables and chains took them out of sight.

Briar was left alone with her boy.

The great gun was almost too much for him. He strained against its weight, but he did not complain, even though his knees were shaking and the back of his neck was burning from the warmth of the slowly heating metal.

At the bottom of the lift shaft, something stopped.

Briar and Zeke heard Lucy shouting orders, and she heard arrangements being made, and Swakhammer being toted and dragged off the lift and into the deepest depths of the underground levels. Hopefully there was a mine cart down there someplace; and hopefully, Lucy could take him somewhere to get him help.

With a rustling clank of cables and chains, the lift began to rise once more, climbing back to Briar and Zeke.

They held their breath and prepared to jump for it.

Briar and Zeke held the Daisy between them, and when the lift climbed into view they chucked it onto the deck and followed it. Once they were safely aboard, the lift rose slowly but steadily, a fraction of a floor at a time. Briar rolled the gun over and propped it up on its butt end.

A trigger as big as a large man’s thumb jutted out from the undercarriage.

The whole machine was buzzing with pent-up energy, ready to fire.

Briar said, “Cover your ears, Zeke. And I’m very, very serious about that. Cover ’em good. This’ll stun the rotters, but only for a couple of minutes. We’ll have to move fast.”

Leaning as far away from the gun as possible, Briar waited until the top floor came dawning into view, and then she squeezed the trigger.

The pop and the pulse pounded up, and down. Compressed by the shaft, it echoed and bounced and crashed, coursing from top to bottom and spilling out from floor to floor in a series of waves that might have amplified its power — or might have only dispersed it. The lift rang and rattled; it shook on its cable supports, and for a dazed, almost blinded moment Briar was afraid it was too much. She feared that the lift couldn’t handle it and couldn’t hold them, and at any moment it would drop them both to their deaths.

But the lift held, and it crawled upward into the darkness of yet another lightless place.

Zeke was stu

Without knowing what was behind it, she opened it swiftly, dragging the staggering boy in her wake and aiming her Spencer in a sweeping arc that covered the whole horizon.

The glowing orange bubbles of a dozen bonfires dotted the streets, and around each bonfire there was an empty ring of space. No one had ever told Briar that rotters would keep their distance from a flame, but it stood to reason, so she didn’t question it.

The fires were built up and fed by masked men who cared nothing for whatever fight still raged beneath the station. These men were reeling, but recovering. They’d heard the Daisy too, and they knew what it was when it sounded. They were far enough away, up here — and sheltered some by the crackling loudness of the fires — that only a few had actually fallen. Some of them shook their heads or boxed at their own ears, trying to shake away the dreadful power of Dr. Mi

Briar hadn’t known they were up there. But if she had, likely as not she would’ve fired the Daisy anyway. After all, the living recovered faster than the dead.

Briar spied one ponytail, and then another two or three jutting out from the backs of gas masks. The Chinese quarter was out near the station at the wall’s edge; and these were its residents, defending the streets in order to protect themselves.

All of them ignored her. They ignored Zeke, too.

She told him, “Drop the Daisy.”

“But it’s—”

“We won’t get a chance to use it again. It’ll take too long to charge, and it will just slow us down. Now,” she said, because suddenly it occurred to her that she did not know. “We have to find this fort. Do you know where it is?”

She could barely see through the smoke and the Blight, and she wanted to ask someone for directions. But all the busy men, feeding their fires, did not look her way when she shouted for their attention. She doubted they spoke English.

Zeke tugged at her arm. “It’s not far away from here. Follow me.”

“Are you sure?” She dragged her feet, but he took her hand and started to pull her along.

He said, “I’m sure. Yeah, I’m sure. This is where Yaozu brought me, and I remember it from my maps. Come on. It’s back down this street, around this way. The fires help,” he added. “I can see where I’m going!”

“All right,” she told him, and she let him tow her away from the fires, and away from the strong-armed Chinamen with their masks and shovels.

Zeke rounded the nearest corner and drew up short.

Briar slammed into the back of him, pushing him forward two short steps — over a small sea of rotters. All of them were lying down, but some of them were begi

“Don’t stop,” she told him, and she took the lead. “We’ve got less than a minute. For God’s sake, boy. Run !”

He didn’t argue and didn’t pause; he only leaped after her — charging from body to body, seeking the street beneath them when he could find it. She led him in the direction he’d picked, setting an example by stomping on any heads or torsos that got in her way. She tripped once, sliding on a leg as if it were a log roll, but Zeke helped her recover and then they were off that street with its legion of irate, immobilized corpses.

“Go right,” he told her.

She was still in front, so she was both leading and following his directions. The smell inside her mask was an elixir of fear and hope, and rubber and glass and coal. She breathed it deeply because she had no choice; she was panting, forgetting so fast how hard it was to run and breathe at the same time while her head was bound by the apparatus. Zeke wheezed too, but he was younger, and maybe, in his way, stronger.