The Doomsday Vault ce-1

by Steven Harper

  It had started as a job, a way to send money home to his family. But after a few weeks in the air, Gavin found himself unwilling to touch the ground. The Juniper quickly became his home, the sky his backyard, the clouds his city. When he worked, he helped send the ship across Infinite. When he played, he sent songs into the blue and white like a sacrifice. Now, both work and music served a different master.

  The pirates, including the captain, laughed and danced and drank all around Gavin’s crate while the sky darkened and the lamps shed their familiar eerie glow over the gunwales, turning his pale hair green. He closed his eyes so he could play in the dark. Music rippled off his fiddle and vanished into blackness. The pirates called out songs for him, and he played “Highland Mary,” “The Irish Washerwoman,” and “Sheebeg, Sheemore.”

  “Play ‘Londonderry Air,’ ” shouted one pirate.

  “That’s a sissy song, Stone,” yelled another. “We don’t want to hear that.”

  “I’ll show you a sissy song,” Stone yelled back, holding up his fists. “Two of ’em.”

  Quickly, Gavin played the requested song, a slow, sad piece. He put everything he had into it, echoes of green Irish hills floating in fog, sad cemeteries with tilted gravestones, and stone cottages warmed by peat fires. The belligerence died away. The pirates fell silent. When the music ended, Stone wiped his nose on his stolen leather sleeve and acted as if he weren’t also wiping his eyes.

  “Nice,” he coughed. “Very nice.” And the other pirates cheered.

  “Sing for us, boy!” “Sing a song!” “A dancing song!”

  “Sing us,” called out a too-familiar voice, “‘Tom of Bedlam.’ ”

  Gavin’s head jerked around. Madoc Blue was staring up at him, thumbs hooked in his belt near his glass-bladed knife. A lump formed in Gavin’s throat. Had Blue learned Tom’s name and chosen that song on purpose? It might have been coincidence-“Tom of Bedlam” was the unofficial anthem for all airmen, and it wasn’t an unusual request.

  “Go on, pretty lad,” Blue said. “You can’t tell me you don’t know it. Lie to me, and I’ll tie one of those fiddle strings around your balls until they turn… blue.”

  The pirates roared with laughter. Gavin swallowed the lump in his throat and firmed his jaw. He wouldn’t give Blue any satisfaction. He set bow to strings and sang.

  For to see Mad Tom of Bedlam, ten thousand miles I’d travel.

  Mad Maudlin goes on dirty toes for to save her shoes from gravel.

  And still I’d sing bonny boys, bonny mad boys, bedlam boys are bonny,

  For they all go bare, and they live by the air, and they want no drink nor money.

  The pirates stomped and drummed on the deck for the last two lines-the chorus was the reason the song was popular among airmen. Want, in this case, meant lack, and the idea that airmen were more than a little insane but also naked, drunk, and rich held great appeal. The song had endless verses, and Gavin settled in to sing them all, his voice pounding at the men like a weapon, letting his anger and fear come pouring out. The men clapped and sang along, oblivious. Blue, however, simply stared at Gavin, his thumbs still hooked in his knife belt. Without thinking, Gavin sang the verse:

  I slept not since the Conquest. Till then I never waked,

  Till the naked boy of love where I lay me found and stripped me naked.

  Every pirate burst out into raucous laughs and cheers. Blue smirked and gave Gavin a pointed look. Gavin flushed bright red and sang the chorus as if he had no idea what anyone was laughing about, but quickly switched to a different verse.

  My staff has murdered giants. My bag a long knife carries

  To cut mince pies from grown men’s thighs and feed them to the fairies.

  He met Blue’s gaze straight on at the last line. The original words ran children’s thighs. The pirates were drunk enough that they didn’t seem to notice the change, but Blue… Blue nodded slightly and turned away. Message understood. Gavin breathed a mental sigh of relief, sang one more verse, and called for a break. The pirates clapped him on the back and congratulated him on his skill, as if he were one of them, as if they hadn’t killed his best friend, his captain, and a dozen of his compatriots. Gavin forced a smile to his face, pretended to accept their accolades, then slipped away from the men, moving toward the lookout post. Overhead, the envelope blotted out the stars, but they formed a field of shining diamonds in all other directions. Ahead, the pirate airship was outlined in its own blue-green glow. A skeleton crew over there had the misfortune to miss the party. The air was cooler, crisper now that he was away from the press of bodies amidships. Gavin blew out a breath, glad to be apart from them for a moment, however short.

  As Gavin passed the man-high bulk of the hydrogen extractor, a figure appeared from the shadows. Before Gavin could react, the figure grabbed Gavin by the shoulders, swung him around, and shoved his back against the extractor. Gavin’s heart lurched, and he barely kept hold of his fiddle.

  “Wandering alone, love?” said Madoc Blue, the rum strong on his breath. “I’m ready to teach you how to dance.”

  Fresh fear spurted through Gavin’s every vein. His breath came in short gasps and his fingers went cold around the neck of his fiddle. The bow clattered to the deck. Blue pressed his body against Gavin’s, his weight shoving Gavin harder against the extractor’s warm brass wall with his forearm across Gavin’s throat. Blue leaned in, his beard scratchy against Gavin’s face. Gavin choked, barely able to breathe.

  “You think I’m stupid and ugly, pretty boy?” Blue growled. “You think I can’t get women? Do you?”

  Gavin tried to answer, but he couldn’t get enough breath. His free hand flailed uselessly, looking for something, anything that might help.

  “When there aren’t any women on deck,” Blue snarled, “a man’s gotta use whatever he can get his hands on.” He grabbed the string that held Gavin’s trousers up and snapped it with a sharp, one-handed jerk. Gavin tried to yell, but Blue’s forearm prevented him. The lack of air made him dizzy. “Got three or four friends who’ve had their eye on you, love. Once I break you in, I can show you around, collect a little money for your services. What do you think of that, hey?”

  And then Gavin’s flailing hand found the hilt of Blue’s knife in his belt. He snatched it out of the holder and slashed downward. Gavin felt warm blood spurt against the thin cloth of his trousers. Blue screamed and instantly let Gavin go. He staggered back, clutching his upper leg. A loose flap of meat the size of Gavin’s hand hung there by a hinge of skin.

  “You little shit!” Blue howled. “I’ll fucking kill you!”

  He lunged for Gavin, who didn’t even think. He stepped aside and swung the knife again. It plunged up to the hilt into the side of Blue’s neck. Blue’s eyes flew wide-open. He made a terrible choking noise and clawed at the knife hilt with curved fingers, then fell twitching to the deck. The air filled with the stench of blood and bowel as he died.

  Gavin didn’t have time to react, or even think. Blue’s screams summoned the rest of the men, who were only a dozen yards away. In an instant, Gavin found himself surrounded by angry pirates. Blood covered his hands and spattered across his face, and he was holding his trousers up with one hand. The other still clutched his fiddle.

  “It’s the fiddler boy.” “He killed Blue!” “Cut his balls off!” “Throw him overboard!” “String him up!” “Shit! There’s blood everywhere!” “The captain!” “Make way for the captain!”

  Captain Keene, short and stocky, shouldered his way through the crowd. He took in the scene, including Gavin’s torn trousers, with a glance. “What the hell happened?”

  “He killed Blue!” someone shouted.

  “I’m not asking you, Biggs,” Keene bellowed.

  Gavin looked at the men. His mind froze. He couldn’t think. It was all too much. “I–I…,” he stammered.

  “Did you kill him?” Keene asked.

  “He… attacked me,” Gavin said. It was hard to talk. He wanted
all those eyes to go away. “He-he shoved me against the extractor. He said he wanted…”

  “Ah,” Keene said with understanding. “Well, you ain’t his first, but it looks like you’re definitely his last.” This got an uneasy chuckle from a few of the pirates. Gavin let himself hope that everything would be all right. Then Keene said, “But you’re a prisoner, boy, and you killed one of my men.” He raised his voice. “Saw his hands off and throw him overboard.”

  Shock numbed Gavin. He barely felt the fingers that snatched his fiddle away, barely noticed that he was being hauled toward the crate where he’d been playing merry music only a few minutes earlier. One of the pirates drew his cutlass. It gleamed green in the phosphorescent light. Gavin’s hands were yanked down to the crate and laid across the rough wood, wrist up. The pirate raised the blade.

  “Captain!”

  The speaker was Stone, the pirate who had requested “Londonderry Air.” The pirate holding the cutlass halted. Keene folded his arms across a broad chest. “You got something to say, Stone?”

  “He’s still a boy, Captain,” Stone said. “You called him one yourself. It don’t seem quite right to give him a man’s punishment, sir.” He held up Gavin’s fiddle. “And he plays so nice. Be a shame to lose that because he fought back against the likes of Madoc Blue. Sir.”

  The hands holding Gavin down were tight enough to leave bruises, though Gavin didn’t have the strength to struggle. Above him, he could see distorted stars through the pirate’s clear cutlass. Keene looked at Gavin for a long moment, surrounded by silent pirates.

  “Fine,” he grumbled at last. “Boy’s punishment. Twenty-four lashes.”

  The hands suddenly shifted from holding Gavin down to wrenching him around. His mind spun, unable to take it all in. He caught a fleeting glimpse of Stone still holding his fiddle, another glimpse of two men covering Blue’s body with a piece of gray canvas, and then his wrists were being strapped to the heavy netting. Someone ripped the shirt off his back. Cold night air washed over his skin, and that broke the stupor. He shouted and struggled against the bonds, but they were too tight. The first mate swung his whip around. It slashed the air, hissing like a snake.

  And then Stone was beside him, his hand on Gavin’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about your fiddle,” he whispered urgently in Gavin’s ear. “I’ll keep it safe.”

  He backed away and the first lash tore a red stripe of pain across Gavin’s back.

  Chapter Three

  The lead zombie pulled the cab door open. Behind it, half a dozen other zombies groaned in an eerie chorus. Alice Michaels gave an unladylike yelp, jerked her violet skirts away, and kicked the opposite door. It banged open, and she flung herself out of the cab to the sidewalk, stumbling over crinolines and hoops. The zombie climbed into the cab, moaning and muttering. Alice slammed the door shut and twisted the cheap handle so hard it broke. The zombie fumbled with the latch but couldn’t get it to work, and the possibility of simply climbing through the open sides of the cab didn’t seem to occur to it. It reached for Alice with bloody fingers. Heart pounding, she backed away until she flattened against a rough brick wall. The cab driver, meanwhile, leapt from his seat and fled down an alley. A pair of zombies shambled after him. The coward hadn’t even stayed to help her. Alice flicked a glance at the foggy street and stared.

  Plague zombies in various stages of deterioration filled the byway. They were-had been-men and women, boys and girls. It looked to be every zombie in London. They limped and hobbled and dragged themselves through the mist, skin sloughing off their muscles, open sores festering in the dim gaslight. The hackney horse snorted in fear. Terrified, Alice pressed herself against the wall. A tiny whimper died in her throat. It was every nightmare she’d ever had come to life. The plague had taken her mother, brother, and fiance. Now it was lurching toward her in a crowd of mottled, oozing flesh.

  Screams from frightened horses and shouts of panicked people filled the air. Alice stayed perfectly still, trying to remain as inconspicuous as a woman in a ball gown could. Her breath came in quick, short pants as she tried to overcome her fear and make sense of what she saw in the street. The crowd of zombies oozed around night-delivery carts, rocking them, shoving at them-they were working together. It was impossible. Plague zombies suffered from an advanced case of the clockwork plague, a disease that attacked both body and brain. It separated skin from muscle and opened up holes in the dermis. It attacked neural tissue, creating dementia, palsy, and paralysis. Nine times out of ten, it killed. The plague was highly contagious, but only after initial contraction, when the victim was asymptomatic, and toward the end, when the victim looked more monster than human. At this stage, the victim’s eyes also became sensitive to daylight, forcing a nocturnal existence that might last for a year before death finally claimed them, though most died of starvation or exposure long before then. Ironically, it was the contagious aspect of the disease that allowed plague zombies to exist within London-the police and other authorities were afraid to get too close for fear of contracting the illness themselves.

  But for their contagious nature, zombies were usually harmless scavengers who looked more frightening than they actually were. They didn’t have the mental capacity to work together in their final months. Yet this mob was doing exactly that.

  There was a crash, and the street flooded with ale as the zombies tipped over a beer delivery van. Drovers scrambled away and fled, abandoning lorries and teams of horses alike.

  And then she heard the music-low, eerie music that reminded her of a flute or an oboe. Intricate and strange, it wove in and through the crowd of zombies. She remembered hearing it earlier, as she left the dance. It chilled her blood. Alice tracked the sound to a figure standing in the middle of the plague zombie crowd. The figure wore a long brown coat with tarnished silver buttons, and a battered top hat. A white mask covered the upper half of its face. It grinned almost wider than any human should be able to grin. In its hands, the figure held a strange device that looked a bit like a set of bagpipes, but without the mouthpiece, and with a number of strange and tiny machines attached. The figure grinned and grinned, white teeth shining in the dim light. Its fingers moved across the device, and the music grew louder. The zombies jerked in unison and tipped over another truck.

  “A clockworker,” Alice whispered with understanding.

  Every so often, perhaps one time in a hundred thousand, the plague gave even as it took. Instead of destroying the victim’s brain, the disease made it work with a wondrous efficiency. Mathematics, physics, biology, chemistry-even some forms of art-became mere toys to these rare and particular plague victims. They created amazing, impossible inventions. Every automaton in existence, for example, owed its mechanical brain to Charles Babbage catching the plague and almost overnight perfecting the analytical engine. Jean-Pierre Blanchard came down with it and swiftly designed not only the light, semirigid framework used by most airships, but also the engines used to propel them and the hydrogen extractors that pulled the necessary gasses out of thin air. Alexander Pilkington discovered how to temper glass so it would keep an edge without shattering, allowing the creation of glass blades and electric lights that didn’t break.

  Unfortunately, such geniuses became notoriously unstable as the disease continued to devour their brains. They went completely mad in the end; for all that they showed no other physical symptoms. Due to their penchant for complicated machinery, many people called them clockworkers. People also called them lunatics, bedbugs, fireflies, and any number of less-flattering names.

  Alice grimaced. This particular clockworker seemed to have discovered how to control his plague-ridden brethren through hypnotic music. She had no idea where he’d come from or what he hoped to accomplish. At the moment, she didn’t care. All she wanted, with every fiber of her being, was to get away and find her way home without touching a zombie. The ones on the street might or might not be at the infectious stage, but Alice had no intention of finding out.

&
nbsp; Her original cab was not a possibility-that zombie was still inside it. The cab horse snorted again and tossed its head but miraculously remained where it was. The blinders no doubt prevented it from understanding everything that was going on.

  The grinning man continued to play the eerie music, and two zombies shambled around the cab, one from each side. They limped toward Alice, ragged clothes seeming to fade into the yellow fog, as if they wore the mist itself. Alice was surrounded-zombies to her left and right, a zombie in the cab ahead of her, and a brick wall behind. No doorways to dodge into, no stairs to climb. Nowhere to flee. Desperately, she cast about for a weapon or a distraction, anything. The zombies shuffled closer. One was a woman in a torn house-dress. Alice fumbled under her heavy skirts in an attempt to wrench off a shoe, but the buttons were done up too tightly. Tears streamed down her face.

  “Get away!” she screamed at them. “Get away from me!”

  A shot cracked through the fog. The head of the zombie woman exploded like a ripe melon. An awful smell washed over Alice as the body dropped to the sidewalk. Alice gaped. A horse rode up-two horses, no, four-their iron shoes clattering on the cobblestones. One of the riders rushed at Alice, stomping over the zombie woman’s corpse.

  “Up you come,” the rider said, hauling Alice up behind the saddle in an awkward sideways perch. Alice, clutching for purchase and fighting The Dress, barely had time to register the fact that her rescuer was a woman in leather trousers before the horse wheeled around and cantered back the way it had come, leaving the two remaining zombies behind. Alice noted the pistol at the woman’s belt.