by Devon Monk
“I’d prefer to come with you,” Cedar said.
Rose inhaled as if to say more, then stopped. She glanced at the dead girl in the pile, then at his hands and coat, which were both bloody enough, the rain couldn’t wash them clean.
Finally, she looked at his eyes. Likely seeing the sorrow he could not hide.
“Of course, Mr. Hunt,” she said softly. “I’d appreciate your company.”
He walked with her to a lean-to that had been built to keep the worst of the weather off the wood stacked up against a house. There wasn’t enough room in that small shed for two, so he waited outside.
“Enough firewood here to keep a person warm till next summer,” Rose said as she bent beneath the roof eve and piled several pieces into her arms.
“That’s true,” Cedar said distractedly. The night wind brought with it the sound of crying, the soft weeping of a child. A child close by.
“Have you looked in the house across the way there for bodies?” he asked.
“Not yet. I thought after I gathered the wood, I’d help out finding people.”
“I’m going to look inside,” Cedar said.
“I’ll come with you if you wait,” Rose called back.
He didn’t wait. He strode up to the back door of the house and tried the latch.
The door opened onto the kitchen. A woman lay on the floor. She was missing both of her arms. Silent. Dead.
In the far corner of the room huddled a child. He’d guess her to be maybe eight or ten years old. Still in her nightgown, bareheaded, barefoot, her cheek tipped onto her bent knees, her hands gently clasping her ankles.
She didn’t move. But a soft, wheezing cry drifted from the corner of the room. Cedar put his hand on the doorjamb. No song of the Strange came to him. He took a cautious step into the room.
“Child?” he said quietly.
The girl still didn’t stir. But the wheezy sob continued.
Cedar crossed the kitchen, carefully stepping around the mother, and knelt in front of the girl.
“There, now,” he said. “It’s going to be fine.” He placed his hand on her shoulder, hoping he wouldn’t startle her.
At his touch, the song of the Strange shot through him like greased lightning, cracking in his skull and stabbing straight through his feet to fuse him to the earth.
The Strange hadn’t just touched this girl, they had infested her.
He could feel a tremble, a ticking beneath his fingers.
The girl was not a girl. Or at least not anymore. Now she was a hollowed-out shell. A doll with clockwork innards that ticked, ticked, ticked, slowly winding down while leather bellows wheezed out the last of the air it had been pumping into her lungs.
The Strange had made her. Or remade her.
The girl fell sideways. A metal key stuck out of her back. A small key made of tin that ground to a stop like a music box striking the last tine.
“Mr. Hunt?” It was Rose, come into the room.
“Rose!” Cedar called. “Don’t!”
But it was too late. The key stopped moving. Touching the girl had sprung the Strange trap. He’d set off some kind of trigger set deep within her. A trigger that sparked a short fuse.
Cedar was on his feet, running, throwing himself to shield Rose. They tumbled out the door, but the explosion was immense. The kitchen, the mother, and the girl flew into bits. A barrage of flesh and bone and wood rained down around them where they lay out in the mud. His leather duster shielded him from the worst of it.
But Rose was not so lucky. The tin key arrowed into her left shoulder and burrowed in deep. She yelled, and her eyes went wide before they rolled back in her head.
“Rose?” Cedar lifted up off her. She was breathing, fast and shallow, but she did not come to. There was too much blood. Her blood.
He needed Mae. Needed to get that bit of metal out of her. Needed medicines and stitching and herbs.
Cedar swept Rose up into his arms, his heart drumming hard.
A sound behind him made him turn.
Even in the darkness, the mess of blood and flesh from the explosion was startling.
But not as startling as the dead mother who lay on the ground and shuddered. Something—no, not something; the Strange, ghostlike with too many eyes, too many mouths, too many arms—pulled up from the ground beneath her and slipped inside her like a man shrugs into an ill-fitted shirt.
The mother stopped shaking. Then she sat straight up, and got to her feet.
Her ruined face twisted in inhuman glee as she limped toward Cedar. “Hunter,” she exhaled.
Cedar had seen the Strange wear the dead once before. Didn’t know how they did it. Didn’t have time to question. But he knew they were damn hard to kill.
He shifted his hold on Miss Small and drew his gun. He unloaded three bullets straight into the mother’s heart.
And still she kept coming.
He couldn’t fight with Rose in his arms, and he was not about to put her down. So he strode to the center of the town.
“Madders!” he yelled as he jogged toward the fire. “We have a problem.”
As he rounded the last house before the clearing, he saw that the pile of dead bodies they’d so carefully stacked up was now much less carefully unstacking itself.
The dead were rising. Strange slinking down out of the hills and up into bodies to try them on for size.
Vicinity’s townfolk rose up with the look of murder in their eyes. And started toward him.
CHAPTER FOUR
Captain Hink leaned out the port door, holding the dead man’s grip just inside the Swift. Here amid the clouds and freeze, the wind slapped across the tip of Beggar’s Peak and chuffed against the Swift, making her bob like a cork in a tub.
Not many ships were small enough or fast enough to hide here. It took some tight maneuvering to slip into this notch of rock and snow. But for the ship that could sling it, the tight wedge of stone just north, and the outcropping here, were enough to shelter from the worst of winter’s howl.
For a short time, at least.
He’d ordered them to throw anchor and bank the boiler. He wanted quiet and he wanted still. There wasn’t a wisp of steam to give them away, not a click of gear or pump of propeller.
Molly had seen to it that even Guffin was sitting still and keeping his mouth shut—no mean feat.
The Swift was as invisible as a frog’s eyelash.
Captain Hink pressed the brass telescope to the darkened lens of his goggles and closed his left eye to better see the edge of the rocks and cliffs around them. Stump Station was just east a ways. If there was a ship taking to the skies, if there was pursuit, it’d be coming from there.
The rocks were clear, no glimmer, no smoke, no shadow. Hink lowered the telescope and readjusted his breathing gear over his mouth, and his goggles, making sure the leather buckling both together was secure. The rubber hose that ran from his mouthpiece over his left shoulder and on off into the lines of the ship had plenty of slack, but not so much that it would tangle him up.
They weren’t up high enough for the air to kill a man quickly, but blacking out or tripping over a line and taking a tumble from the running board of the ship wasn’t going to keep a man’s tranklements in one piece either.
A glint off starboard caught his eye. He swung the telescope in that direction, and worked to keep the eyepiece steady in the roiling winds.
The Black Sledge, a big steamer, dark-skinned and peaked at the top, bulgy with exterior belly lifts and eight sets of blades driving her on, lumbered up along the ragged edge of the mountain. She was a fully enclosed gondola like the Swift and didn’t have the ocean-faring open-desk style of vessel dangling beneath her envelope.
She wasn’t shooting the glim, didn’t even have her nose pointed up, or her trawling arms and nets at the ready. No, she was low and slow. Looking for something. Looking for them.
Hink swung into the Swift and shut the door, then spun the latch to keep her tight. He
one-fingered the buckle on his breathing gear and let it hang at his chest.
Molly stood at the helm, breathing gear unsecured at her neck. Guffin leaned near the vertical and horizontal rudder controls, scowling like he’d gotten his knuckles rapped by the teacher. He was a slow-eyed and sad-looking fellow with dark brows set too wide and light hair shaved up high off the back of his neck, but left to grow at the top so that his whole head took on a sort of sorry mushroom look.
Mr. Seldom was back among the glim gear, using his pocketknife to clean up a net spread at his feet.
The other member of the crew, Mr. Lum Ansell, a squat, short-necked man of unknown heritage, was sleeping up against the starboard wall, his hat pulled over his round leather brown face, the brim stopped by the breathing gear latched across his chin. Out of all of them, Lum never seemed to find much use for the breathing gear, no matter how high they flew.
“Listen up,” Captain Hink said.
All eyes turned to him. Even Lum shoved his hat back, awake and sharp, his hand drifting to the knife at his hip, as it always did before he was fully awake and taking a straighter sit.
“Looks like we have a cat come prowling,” Captain Hink said. “Or more like a bear. Captain Barlow’s on the sniff.”
“Barlow?” Molly frowned. “What’d we do to stuff his flue?”
“Figure it has something to do with Les Mullins and his idea that I’m Marshal Hink Cage.”
Guffin sucked on the tobacco tucked in his lip. “And?”
“And near as I can tell, Les Mullins is doing General Alabaster Saint’s business. Since that includes seeing that I’m hung and strung, I’d say that puffer out there is looking to kill me.”
“Could be they want our glim stake,” Lum Ansell rumbled in his deep baritone.
“Could,” Hink agreed. “Except for this.” He pulled the tin star out of his pocket.
Molly took in a breath and let it out on a soft curse. She’d met George Rucker, the boy he’d given the star. Hell, all of them had met George.
“So Les Mullins knows you’re Marshal Cage,” Guffin said. “Think he’s gonna hire out Barlow and his big tug out there to take you in?”
“Black Sledge has the boilers and the guns for it,” Hink said.
Guffin shook his head, that hair of his stirring like a tassel in the wind. “Still don’t make no sense to me. Takes money to put a ship up. Your head ain’t worth it. No offense, Marshal.”
“Well, if it ain’t me,” Hink said, “I’m still plentiful curious as to why they’re flying. No glim in the heavens today, and last I heard, Barlow was pulling lines and headed to Texas to weather out the cold.”
“It is strange to find him prowling the west side of the range,” Molly said, “at the same time Stump Station happened to empty out to see us off with their guns this morning.”
“I say it’s time to shut up and hunt bear,” Hink said with a grin. “Molly, bring the boiler on line. Guffin, man the rudders. Seldom, strap up the hooks and ready the ropes. And Lum, see that the cannon’s set to burn.”
He probably didn’t need to tell his crew what to do, they fell to it so fast. Ride the windy trail together long enough and people knew what was what and how to see to getting it done.
After all, there was nothing but their skill, hands, and trust in each other between touching the heavens and being crushed by the earth.
Hink readjusted his gear and knew his crew was doing the same. Then he set his feet in the straps bolted to the floor in front of the helm. He didn’t intend to take her out hot. No, he’d rather the Swift slip up behind the old steamer, and follow in the Black Sledge’s wake.
Caution was half of what kept a glimman alive.
The other half was plain foolhardy luck.
The crew of the Swift had both, ace-high.
Molly Gregor pushed her goggles over her eyes and strode off to the boilers, shutting the blast door behind her.
Hink waited for the bell to ring, indicating that the Swift was steamed and ready to burn sky.
The cord tugged and the bell in the ceiling frame rattled once. The Swift was powered to go.
Guffin, Seldom, and Lum all pushed their feet into floor braces. Hink studied the eastern sky, getting a visual on the Black Sledge.
There she was, a bulk against the intermittent clouds, coming in and out of sight like a barge slipping through fog down a white river.
“All right, then,” Hink said, his words muddled by his breathing gear. “Let’s go see what plunder the sky has for us today.”
He signaled Seldom to pull anchor, and the Irishman set to releasing the catch and cranking up the line.
Captain Hink let out the throttle. Like a living thing, the Swift came awake beneath his feet. He could feel her shudder, feel her lift to the wind, feel her strain to go higher, faster. Built to take the air, the Swift pumped up quick.
“Above her,” Hink said.
Guffin adjusted the trim and Hink steered her, up and up through the white and gray wall of clouds, until he was well behind the Black Sledge, the shadow of his ship pushed behind him by the western setting sun.
The winds were picking up, that squall on the northern horizon headed their way, but not before cooling off between the teeth of the range. If it brought rain or freeze, it’d take as much fuel as they had on hand to fight their way down to a survivable landing.
They were running out of time to get answers.
“Bring her up close,” Hink said. He hit the toggle for the bell back in the boiler room, giving Molly the go-ahead to bail it in. “We’ll swing by and have a look at where she’s lashing for the night.”
They maneuvered the Swift up close and tight to the Black Sledge, bucking riptide winds.
It was hard to get a bead on her with the roil of clouds, but when she veered to the southeast, Hink was right on her trail.
“She’s hopping the peaks,” Hink said as the big blower chugged along the ridge but didn’t fly over. Didn’t make sense. If she was trying to move out of the way of the storm, all she needed was a place to hold up—a difficult proposition with a ship her size—or land. And either of those options would be found at lower elevations.
Why would she ride the ridge?
A flash of yellow bloomed out the side of the Black Sledge and swept across the peaks below them. Then another flash, and another, like beams of sunlight bursting through the clouds.
Mirrors. Goddamn it all, she had mirrors.
She wasn’t hopping the peaks, she was scraping the sky and hills with light. Looking for a flash, looking for a reflection off something metal.
Like, say, a tin ship.
“Back and up!” Hink ordered.
Guffin and Seldom scrambled to work the controls, and the Swift jumped to obey. But it was too late. A wide swath of light, bright and hot as summer off a river, swept across the clouds they’d been holding to, and near as much blinded Hink, even through his goggles.
“Son of a mule!” he swore.
Run or fight? The world seemed to pause for a second, to slip away and slow as he thought through the possibilities, spinning through his mind.
The Sledge outgunned them, outpowered them. It would be a dead man’s gamble to take her on. The Swift could outrun her, but running wouldn’t answer his questions. Why was Alabaster Saint suddenly going so out of his way to kill him? Who was working for the general, and how deep into the western glim trade had Alabaster entrenched himself?
Answers to all of that might be a thing of national security. There’d been talks of uprisings since the war. There’d been talks of the west, with her mountains and glim defecting from the east with her money and matics. Talks the president was keenly interested in getting to the bottom of.
And on most all of those rumors, Hink had heard General Alabaster Saint’s name traded, hand to hand, like coin of the realm. Whatever plans were being made out here in the west, he was fair certain the Saint was a part of them.
“Hellfire,” Hi
nk swore, having made up his mind before the mirror’s light had reached the tail fin. “Take her on!”
They dove for the Black Sledge, pounding sky to beat the devil.
The Black Sledge angled up, catching a hard tailwind. Not so much making a run for it as getting up and into more maneuverable sky to avoid being rammed into the ragged cliffs.
“Watch her guns,” Hink said. “Seldom, ready the hook and torch.”
Guffin pulled his breathing gear off his mouth. “We’re boarding her?” He didn’t sound so much worried as maybe a little too excited about the prospect of dangling feet in thin air.
“We’re taking her down,” Hink said.
The racket of the fans pushing the Swift drowned out anything else. Hink fought the controls, pushed by crosswinds and updrafts as he gave her full throttle to ram that black bag of air.
Their only chance was speed.
Good thing speed was what the Swift had by the bucketloads.
The ship’s frame screeched under the strain of the dive, her tin bones singing out like a hundred wet fingers over fine crystal.
The ship vibrated with the sound of it, the song of it. A rise of pride, of power, of fearless joy swelled Hink’s chest. He ripped off his breathing gear and let out a whoop and holler. Mr. Lum’s deep laughter rolled through the cabin.
The Black Sledge yawed to the side, slinging around hard to show the guns that prickled a line down the length of her.
“Ready, Mr. Seldom?” Hink yelled.
“Aye, Captain!” The Irishman set a hook from his belt to the mid-bar above his head, stomped his feet into the floor belts, then opened the starboard rear door.
The gust of wind that rattled the inside of the ship set her to shaking and would have stirred up anything not tied down, but Hink, Guffin, and Lum were hooked tight to the framework by belts at their waist and braces over their boots.
The blast of a cannon pounded the air like a giant clapping the Swift between his hands. The port rear fan sputtered before picking up to plumb again.
Hink kept the throttle full open. The window filled with the Black Sledge. He could see every stitch and rivet on the big old barge.
