Addleton Heights

by George Wright Padgett

  For once, he was speechless.

  The buzzing sound seemed to come from everywhere.

  Though Montague was distracted by me joining the fight, Janae wasn’t. At the precise second he turned back toward her, Janae thrust the mangled metal of the alarm stand into his face.

  Montague roared in pain as he stood. “You cut me, you stupid bitch!”

  I shifted the gun slightly to the left of them and squeezed one of the triggers for a second. The ground beside him was peppered with bullets, but it didn’t distract him.

  In one swift move, he charged and latched his arms around her waist. He ignited his leg rocket thrusters, propelling them both into the air.

  They crashed down several yards from where they’d been, Montague on top and Janae lying beneath him.

  “No!” I screamed.

  Skiff riders zoomed over opposite sides of the courtyard. Two approached from the edge that we were closest to, while a single combatant appeared on the far eastern side.

  I spun around and locked onto the new targets closest to me. There was no doubt the riders were Charon this time. Both operated the same type of skiff craft as the freshly dead sentry, but the long coats that flapped in the wind were the city’s colors of yellow, green, and blue. The men flew side-by-side within fifty feet of each other. The twirl of their gaff coil rods moved in perfect unison as they closed in on me.

  I tried for the one on the right side first. The gun responded effortlessly, spewing a constant stream of bullets that filled the sky in front of me like a line of hungry black bees. I adjusted the spray of bullets until it connected with the rider. He fell over backward, and I’m certain he was dead even before he smashed headfirst into the ground.

  The Charon on the left stopped twirling the skiff rod and began weaving his skiff wildly to the right and left. He made the craft bob up and down by releasing hydrogen from the skiff’s overhead bladder.

  Holding my breath, I released another steady line of rounds until I saw the sparks off the metal bottom of the craft, then I inched the barrel upward. The skiff could not maneuver as quickly as I could shift my aim. Bullets sliced through the balloon that suspended the skiff in the air. The bladder crumpled and folded in on itself while falling to the ground like an empty shirt, taking its sole passenger with it.

  Had he remained in the vessel as it settled in the snow, I would’ve probably thought he was dead. Instead, the Charon exited the demolished vehicle and ran at me with his red eye scope aglow, yelling profanities.

  My decision was easy. I sent him to the by-and-by with a nearly effortless flick of my finger.

  I spun around to steal a glance at the walking suits. Janae was still on her back in the snow, but Montague was nowhere in sight.

  “Where is he?” I anxiously mumbled to myself, scanning the area. I turned back to Janae on the ground and hollered her name.

  Even though she didn’t respond, I resisted the impulse to rush to her. The third Charon, who was nearly in range now, had been joined by a fourth one farther back. I did my best to shut out the bombarding emotions that beat against my brain. I had to focus on the attacking Charon.

  I took the third rider out in the same manner as the first. An odd thrill washed over me. I’ve never thought as myself as a violent man, but maybe I just never had the right dance partner. The gun became an extension of my will, ripping and slicing through whatever I pointed at—a glorious, vibrating messenger of death that obediently carried out my dark desires.

  Upon seeing the fate of the other fighter, the fourth Charon took the skiff up high instead. The calculated maneuver left me aiming at the metal underside of the craft. My ravenous bullets found nothing to feast upon.

  Hoping to deter the approach more than expecting to hit him, I unstrapped, leaned the gun back at a sharp angle, and released short, rapid discharges.

  When I realized that by overshooting him, the gun was straight in line with one of the giant hydrogen bladders holding up the compound, I stopped short. If I had hit the metal harness that held it in place, the result would’ve been a fireball as bright as the sun. The last thing any of us needed was to rupture those and send everyone to an icy grave in the ocean over a thousand feet below.

  With no viable target, I had to wait until he made his move. I became aware I’d been anxiously gnawing on my bottom lip when I tasted my own blood.

  At the last second, the Charon hunter dropped from the sky with a wide swoop, banked sharply, and came at me sideways. He was close enough for me to see the rivets on his gloves—near enough to see “he” was actually a “she” and had a fair amount of Chinese genes.

  I remembered what Sawyer had said about the Charon oath of honor. My body tensed as I pressed the trigger in expectation of its glorious rattling chorus of death. This time, the weapon sputtered a few rounds and then went silent.

  The horror of knowing the gun was jammed or out of ammunition was nothing compared to the burst of blue lightning coming at me.

  I dove barely in time to miss the crackling energy blast above my head. I was face down in the snow again for the second time in ten minutes, but I was alive, at least for a little longer.

  The loud buzz of the vessel’s engine grew softer as she turned around in the distance.

  She was gearing up to go again.

  I leapt to my feet and headed for another of the topiaries. My heart dropped, as this moved me farther away from where Janae had fallen. She still hadn’t moved at all. I wrestled with reasons for why she wasn’t getting up but couldn’t come up with anything that my heart could accept. It couldn’t be helped. I had to finish this, and then I could go to her.

  As I hurried through fresh snow up to my shins, my ears filled with the sound of more buzzing from the side of the courtyard. It seemed to come from the edge where Janae was. The sound was enormous, a deep and furious growl.

  I trotted in a wild zigzag pattern in hopes of confusing the Charon at my back. I was certain that their patrols were more accustomed to vertically moving targets in the Under.

  The increased whine of the craft’s engines combined with the crackle of the rod from behind me alerted me to act. This time, I didn’t dive into the snow, since she’d be expecting it. Instead, I spun around and ran a few steps back in the direction I’d come from.

  The gambit worked.

  As swift as the patrol skiff was, it couldn’t stop as quickly and easily as my legs could. The Charon soared past me.

  The stunt bought me a little more time, but it wouldn’t work again. As I fled to the bush hewn in the shape of a woman holding a parasol, I knew I could make it there. The problem was that I knew how long it had taken to unwind the other topiary. She’d be on me by then, and hiding behind it wouldn’t stop a blast from the shock coil. It was the only play I was dealt, so I ran.

  The loud buzzing grew into a roar as I reached the parasol-lady shrub. To my surprise, the Charon swept high up into the air as if looking around.

  I twisted the snow-covered wheel on the ground and freed the wire holding the plant sculpture together.

  The inescapable roar caused me to pause. Just how many skiffs were there? There was no way I could take out a whole squad. I’d been lucky up until now. As I strapped in like before, I told myself to be stingy with my shots, making every burst count. My new objective was driven by spite. How many of them could I take out before they ended me?

  My mouth fell open. The noise hadn’t been a squadron of skiffs.

  Like the morning sun rising in the east, the tip of a massive airship burst into view over the edge of the courtyard railing. The propellers of the dirigible howled in fury as it climbed steeply upward.

  I shuddered when I recognized the green, yellow, and blue markings of Montague’s private airship. How many personal soldiers could fit in the craft?

  True to what one would expect, Charon skiff escorts surrounded the vessel. Two zoomed dangerously close to the left, and two on the right. My most recent attacker joined them. Th
e sky beast rose higher, engulfing the courtyard in a mammoth shadow on the snow below.

  I readied the gun but released the handles upon seeing something peculiar—the bright blue blast of a skiff coil rod.

  At first, I thought it was a misfire. When it occurred a second time from a different Charon, I knew it wasn’t accidental. They were aiming at the ship, blasting at the fabric membrane of the vessel.

  They weren’t escorting the dirigible. They were attacking it.

  It made no sense until I saw the vessel’s captain.

  The colossal ship had leveled off enough for me to see through the front glass of the crowded passenger gondola. At the helm stood a cherub-faced man in a white coat.

  “Sawyer, you magnificent tink son-of-a-bitch!” I said with a laugh of relief.

  As it raced closer, I could see a crowd of people in dark clothing pressed around him. He’d made good on his promise to procure an army.

  The blue electricity from the coil rod blasts scurried around the fabric shell of the ship like heat lightning. One of the currents found a way in through the membrane into the metal skeleton of the craft, and there was a percussive boom, with two others in short succession.

  Reflex made me duck, even though the craft was safely out of range. The platform of the courtyard actually dipped slightly before the hundreds of stabilizing fans on the underside of the compound righted the structure. I shot a look over at Janae’s motionless suit. At least she was clear of the burning dirigible now that it had soared into the center of the courtyard.

  As it was consumed by fire, the fabric of the damaged vessel’s membrane grew smaller as it writhed and curled in on itself like a giant leaf. The varying form couldn’t support its weight, causing it to fall at a frantic speed.

  I felt the heat from it even as far back as I was. Everything was Halloween orange-yellow, dark red, and black as the flames and smoke danced on the wind like the sky was on fire. I watched in horror as the blimp’s passengers poured out of the gondola like a tobacco farmer tossing seed. There were so many of them, but no Sawyer in white.

  Many of the jumpers got up, dusted off snow, and then turned to try to catch others. A few in the back exited on fire, screaming. Those did not get back up. The sizable burning pieces of the craft fell faster than the snow, plummeting downward to singe the ground.

  Looking through falling ash and debris, I unstrapped from the gun to run to Janae.

  A second later, the flaming gondola slammed down to the ground with a crash between us, blocking my view.

  The dark-clad men and women who had leapt from the ship scrambled across the courtyard in every direction, brandishing makeshift weapons. Charon swarmed, slaughtering whomever they could get at through the thick smoke with bright-blue coil blasts and bloody spears. There was no distinguishing between Charon shouts of battle and war cries from the invading fighters.

  I rushed in the direction of where I’d last seen Janae. The burning wreckage blocked my view, making me anxious to make it to the other side to get to her. My heart swam in the guilt of knowing that I should’ve made her get out of that suit—or at the very least, I should have had her stay inside after she broke through the metal door.

  Halfway to the destroyed gondola, a lanky man covered in grime and soot ran up to me wielding a shovel. “You the detective?”

  “Yes,” I answered, startled by the question.

  He nodded. “The tink said we’re to help you.”

  I was stunned for a moment as I realized that I was looking into the leathery face of a scrape. He didn’t have sloats markings like I’d seen in Janae’s Re-Viewer, so I said, “Come with me. There’s a woman in a metal suit on the other side of this burning—”

  That was all I got out before he was skewered by the spear end of a coil rod and lifted away by a Charon. The skiff climbed upward and sailed ahead twenty or thirty feet before dropping the scrape fighter into the flames. I kept running—I was Janae’s only hope.

  The heat from the flaming wreckage was intense. Flakes of ash mixed with snow and fell to the ground like perverse mana from Heaven. The sounds of violence all around rose and fell like an ocean’s tide. I ran around the starboard side of what had been the vessel’s cabin, using my jacket sleeve to shield my mouth from the smoke.

  As I rounded the bow of the ship, I heard someone calling.

  “Detective Kipsey!”

  I stopped and searched for the source of the muffled cry. There was a hard rapping of someone frantically beating on thick glass. I shifted my scan to the smashed gondola some fifty feet to the left side of me. Through the flames, the master tink struck the front window with something, but it held firm. The crash had wedged the nose of the vessel deep into the ground all the way up to the viewing glass, which miraculously hadn’t shattered on impact. Only weak spiderwebs of cracks had formed.

  The top half of Sawyer’s body and that of a female scrape were visible. Both of them desperately struck the glass with alternating blows. Their faces were blackened from smoke. My heart was elated to see he’d survived the crash, but I also knew that he’d cook in the cockpit if he stayed in there for much longer.

  There was no way to know what had become of Janae. Painfully, I admitted to myself that she might already be dead. Sawyer and the woman were very much alive—for now.

  I ran to the gondola and splashed in the snowy trench of ice that had formed around the front of the embedded craft. It’d filled with puddles of melted snow, causing steam vapor to hiss and rise around the burning cockpit. As I got closer, my eyes teared up to combat the ashes swimming in the fiery air. I struggled to breathe, and my nose ran.

  “Sawyer, stand back!” I yelled between fits of coughing.

  “Hurry, Detective!” he shouted as he and the dark-clad woman pulled away from the glass.

  I moved to the area with the most damage and kicked at the jagged lace of spider-web cracks in the glass with all my might.

  The air around me was unbearably hot. I wouldn’t be able to keep this up for long. It was surreal to be sweating as January snow fell.

  After five rapid kicks, I had to pause for a second. I made the mistake of looking upward at the canopy of flames and smoke as dark as dragon’s breath filling the sky above me. Hot air burned in my lungs unmercifully. I had to get out of here or I’d die myself.

  The crunch and thud of nearby sections of the vessel collapsing in on itself bolstered me. The puddle of melted snow at my feet made my boot slip against the glass as I kicked. My heart beat violently against my ribs.

  I desperately kicked again as my eyes watered, blurring my vision.

  The glass broke in a tiny area, and a few pieces fell out.

  “You . . . you did it, Detective!” Sawyer yelled from inside.

  The suffocating heat made me lightheaded.

  Sawyer and the woman frantically struck at the glass with the tips of the scrape shovels. The hole I’d made formed fractures, and after a few seconds of them beating at it, the glass gave way. Large shards fell into the cabin cockpit near them as they jumped back.

  “Come on!” I yelled. I got to my knees and helped the woman out, and then, together, we pulled out Sawyer.

  “Mr. Sawyer, I’m so glad to see you!” I hollered.

  “Told you I’d get an army,” he announced. “This is Ninya.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Kipsey,” said the lanky woman with almond-colored eyes and dark hair. Strong, sinewy hands still gripped her shovel.

  “Where’s Mr. Montague?” Sawyer asked.

  “I don’t know, but I have to help Janae. Something’s happened to her. The suit’s lying flat in the snow.”

  His eyes widened. “Of course, Detective.” He motioned to Ninya. “Go help the others. Charon aren’t used to combat like this. Fighting them in clusters will give your people the greatest advantage.”

  Without a word, Ninya charged into the fray, joining a group of scrapes taunting a low-flying Charon. A cacophony of buzzing skiffs and yells from
both Charon and scrapes filled my ears.

  This was a war.

  “You still have the transmitter to shut down the mechanicals?” I shouted.

  Sawyer produced the brass cylinder from his breast pocket and held it up for me to see.

  “Janae broke open the metal door!” I yelled. “Go to the control tower and make all of this worth it.”

  He hesitated before asking, “You think she’s dead, don’t you?”

  I bit my lip to keep it from quivering—that and partially to punish myself for not telling her to wait in the metal hallway for us. “I don’t know, but I need to honor her final wish. The Under cannot be destroyed.”

  “I understand, but maybe I can help in some way. I’ll go with you to her and then to the tower.”

  I didn’t have the strength to argue, and who was I to deny him anyway?

  “Come on, then.”

  We rounded the side of the wreckage, which had grown as high as a bonfire. The fallen suit lay on its back in a snow mound a hundred feet from us.

  “There she is!” I exclaimed. I called out to her again. “Janae!”

  A horrifying scream from behind made me spin around. At first, it suddenly appeared as if Sawyer was holding a red vase up to his stomach, with the opening pointing outward. He dropped to his knees to reveal a Charon standing behind him with his eye scope glowing red. I stepped back, realizing the tink had been impaled by the spear end of a gaff rod.

  Time stopped, frozen in place as my mind grappled with what I saw before me. I was certain that Sawyer’s wound was fatal. His shocked expression transformed into a look of helplessness. He was dying, and so was our plan of him shutting down the mechanicals.

  Knowing I only had seconds to react before the Charon pulled the spear from Sawyer, I lunged at the fighter. Sawyer defiantly clutched the base of the spear’s head as he slowly collapsed on his side. Doing this made it impossible for the Charon to withdraw it to use it on me.

  Though my body was weary from the events of the past hour, a surge of adrenaline and sheer rage overtook me.