Ironclad

by Daniel Foster

  A minute later, with a jingle of keys, they had the cell door open. Twitch held it and gestured for them to carry Theo inside. Captain Shearer stood out of the way as they carried Theo into the cell and laid him on Captain Shearer’s blanket.

  Shearer waved them back, removed his captain’s hat and knelt. He was beginning to bald on top. He placed a hand on Theo’s forehead, then two fingers of the opposite hand on Theo’s neck.

  “His pulse is strong,” Shearer said. “I can keep him covered with blankets and my uniform jacket when need be. No one will be the wiser.” Captain Shearer stood and donned his cover again. “All of you get out. My next meal will be here within a few minutes.”

  They all went, except Twitch, who, at the last second, stepped right into Captain Shearer’s face. Garret was the only one close enough to hear Twitch’s steely mutter.

  “I know what you’re doing.”

  “What I’m doing,” Shearer replied, “is saving your friend’s life, no thanks to your fool Captain. Now get out.”

  At that, even Twitch went.

  W

  Garret tied the wet rag around his face and pulled a breath. Some air came through the sopping cloth, some came around the corners of it. Around him, his weary, soot-stained friends were doing the same. Cloth fitment was a compromise. Tie it too tightly across your face, and it became hard to inhale. Leave it too loose, and all the air came around it so it wouldn’t filter the smoke.

  It had been hours since they’d hidden Theo in the brig, but it felt like years. Garret didn’t know how many shifts they’d worked since then. He only knew that his friends were looking as bad as he felt. All of them were standing, except Burl, who was sitting on a coal pile, face white as a ghost, eyes closed.

  They all stood close together as they donned their masks. Quarters were tight in the boiler room, made even closer by the fact that they had to work around the blackgang, who were still feeding the boilers to keep Kearsarge ploughing hard across the sea, even as they fought the other fire that threatened to consume her. But Garret and Fishy and Twitch and Pun’kin and Curtis and the rest didn’t stand close because they had to. Theo was on death’s door, all of them were still weak and sick from their last round, and none of them wanted to be any farther apart than arm’s reach.

  “Ready?” Fishy asked Garret. Fishy was holding one of the boiler room fire hoses.

  “Yeah,” Garret said, raising his arms and resting his hands on his head. “Hit me.”

  Fishy opened the valve and doused Garret with salt water. Then he handed the hose to Garret, who returned the favor.

  There was little talking among them. No more than was necessary. The silence was filled by the roar of the boiler fires that flickered out of the open boiler hatches, and the pervading, vibrating rumble of Kearsarge’s engines in the nearby engine room.

  Garret stood there, dripping, as slackly as a person could stand without falling over. The vibrations of Kearsarge’s overlapping heartbeats were like an all-over, low level massage for his work-weary frame, as if Kearsarge was trying to console them as best she could. Garret could almost close his eyes and forget what they were all about to do.

  At least he could until the men from the previous watch began emerging through hatches into the boiler room. Garret and his friends had hosed themselves down because it was time for the shift change. The hatches into the bunkers were small, and the men who were coming off duty had to stoop to emerge. As they came from the flickering, smoky hole, they looked as if they’d been enslaved at the bottom of a volcano. Their postures were bent and broken, their heads hanging, their faces sagging. They reeked even more strongly than the coal stench that already filled the engine room. They had sprayed themselves down before entering the bunkers, just as Garret’s friends had done, but now their clothes were dry as fall’s leaves. They were caked and blackened with the breath of the living furnace that was trying to consume their ship.

  Terrible though the shift change was for Garret and his friends, the black gang had been longing for it. There were now too many people in the boiler room for the blackgang to continue shoveling, so they got to take a break for a few moments. They leaned up against the bulkheads, or leaned against each other, or slumped on the floor. They didn’t talk. They barely moved.

  Garret didn’t know any of the men emerging from the hatches, so they must have been from port side. Not that it mattered now. There was no rivalry here, only a bunch of frightened human beings pulling together to survive.

  The last few of the coming-off-duty crew exited through the hatches. Some stumbled up against a bulkhead, others fell and had to crawl out of the way of the next man, dragging their shovels with them. Then came a guy ass-first. His legs dropped out of the hatch and he grunted, struggling with something. Garret and his friends crowded close to see if they could help. There was an exchange of voices on the other side of the bulkhead, then the ass-first guy exited completely, dragging the head and shoulders of an unconscious man into sight. Garret’s hands and eight others were on the man instantly. They fairly yanked him out of the hole and laid him on the floor. Twitch was there immediately.

  “Don’t lay him down,” Twitch barked. “Get him out of here! Get him to the surgeon.”

  “You mean the doctor?”

  “No, I mean the surgeon!”

  Garret and his friends were on duty, so they couldn’t take the guy anywhere. In fact, the fire was undoubtedly swelling brighter and larger with each passing second that it took them to simply change shifts. The unconscious guy’s buddies came to him, limping and crawling. Lastly, their chief came through the hatch. First man in, last man out. Altogether, they hoisted him and carried him out. Twitch went with them just long enough to take his pulse and pull back an eyelid.

  Garret, Fishy, Curtis, and the rest were looking at him anxiously when he returned.

  Twitch shrugged despondently. “I’m not a doctor.”

  “He’s gonna make it, right?” Pun’kin said.

  Twitch bent over painfully and picked up a shovel. “His breathing is steady and his heartbeat is strong. That’s a good start.”

  Chief Greely, whom Sweet Cheeks had just finished hosing down, grabbed Burl by the shoulder and hauled him to his feet. “Come on, son,” he said. “It’s time.”

  Garret and everyone else picked up a shovel out of the pile that the other guys had left for them. Then, one at a time, they crawled through the hatches into hell.

  Garret followed Sweet Cheeks through the small opening in the steel. The first thing to hit him was the heat. During his first shift down here, Garret had expected hot air to pour from the hatches into the boiler room like dragon’s breath. Instead, the fire inhaled from the boiler room, creating a deceptively cool breeze until Garret clambered through, at which point the heat hit him like a wall. Behind him, Burl cringed and gasped. All of them flinched as the heat slapped every inch of exposed skin and seared their noses and throats as they inhaled. The air felt like molten metal, weighing on them, searing them with its touch.

  Our clothes will be dry in no time, Garret thought miserably.

  “Was it this hot last time?” Fishy asked, raising his voice over the movement of air and the suppressed hiss of flames.

  They all knew the answer. No, it wasn’t. The fire’s spreading.

  The bunker was the size of a large house, all one room, two stories high. They’d filled the bunker to capacity (Garret would never forget that night), and their voyage thus far had used less than a quarter of it. In other words, there was barely enough room for them to stand between the bunker bulkhead and the steep hill of coal that rose in front of them to the ceiling. Ladders had been laid up the coal to the top. Garret would never forget that either. He and his friends had helped lay them.

  Up the ladders they went, trying not to disturb the steeply inclined coal bed. Several hours ago, a clumsy climber had dislodged one of the ladders and caused part of the slope to give way. They’d
had to dig him out. Garret had happened to be slumped against a bulkhead trying not to throw up when they’d carried the guy past on a stretcher. He had a broken leg, several broken ribs, and some missing teeth. He was purple and black with bruises from head to toe.

  Sweet Cheeks crested the ladder just above Garret. Sweet Cheeks stopped for a moment. He swayed. Garret grabbed his waistband with his iron blacksmith’s grip. Since Sweet Cheeks was above him, Garret had no idea how grabbing his waistband was going to help, but he held on until Sweet Cheeks steadied himself. Garret let go. Sweet Cheeks finished the climb, laid out flat beneath the close ceiling and slithered forward on the coal, trying to stay under the fumes.

  When Garret reached the top, he saw why Sweet Cheeks had paused. Not only was the air so hot that it hurt his eyes, it was thick with fumes and smoke. Garret tried to inhale. His lungs closed off. He tried again and again. Eventually, demand for oxygen talked his lungs into admitting the poisoned air. He hacked, blinked, pressed himself flat atop the coal and snaked forward.

  Ten feet later, he arrived beside Sweet Cheeks, who was kneeling before a large ring of coal that circumscribed a pit down into the coal. There was just enough space between them and the upper deck that they could have stood up, but Sweet Cheeks didn’t try to get beyond his knees. Garret just laid there. Off to their right, Fishy was looking at them as he crept over the ring of coal towards their descent into the pit. Fishy’s eyes were streaming. He was obscured behind heat waves and poisonous, smoky air, but he kept moving. Sweet Cheeks and Garret moved ahead too, flanking him. Someone was crawling on Fishy’s other side, but the air was too thick for Garret to see who.

  Garret’s fatigue was worsening, a bit at a time.

  I won’t make it an hour this time. There’s no way.

  He followed Sweet Cheeks over the ring of coal, bringing them at last to the hole into perdition. It was perhaps twenty feet around and half that deep. Heat and steam and fumes rose up out of it, a black funnel of coal, as if it really was the throat into hell. Around the edge of the hole, men knelt and laid, shoveling and throwing coal onto the coal ring, widening the rim of the hole so that it didn’t collapse in on the men who were digging out the fire below. A few more men stood and knelt around them, manning fire hoses that had been run down from the decks above. They directed a jet into the hole occasionally, when someone yelled for it, but mostly their efforts were taken with trying to soak the coal above and around the fire to keep it contained. Judging by the steam rising, the fire was drying it as quickly as they could wet it down.

  There were three jobs involved in fighting the fire: Those who worked around the rim of the pit, widening and spraying it; those who worked at the bottom of the pit, digging away at the burning coal and loading it into buckets; and those who worked on the decks above, reeling up the buckets of burning coal, spreading it out and wetting it down to extinguish it.

  The depth of the fire was the worst part of it, but it was also the thing that had saved them thus far. Packed deep in the coal bed, the fire could draw little air, so it smoldered. If it had risen to the top where it would have all the air it wanted, Kearsarge and every soul aboard her would be burning to death.

  The smoke and fumes were overwhelming but at least they had somewhere to go now. All the hatches above were open, allowing ventilation and the extraction of the coal. Buckets on ropes hung through the hatches, either being reeled up loaded with burning coal, or being let down, empty. As Garret watched, flames chewed through one of the ropes. Its strands unwound in a slow death.

  “Look out below,” Fishy yelled, scrambling towards the edge of the hole. The core of the rope snapped and the bucket dropped like an anvil. Everyone scrambled away after Fishy. A thud came from the bottom of the pit. Garret craned his neck to see over. Deep in the black throat, a startled enlisted man was picking himself up off the coal. The bucket lay beside him, smoldering coal spilled from it. He gave thumbs up through the thick air. It had missed him.

  Now that Garret and his friends were all crowded around the rim, half the guys who had been widening it took their cue and climbed down into the hole on the metal ladders. When they arrived at the bottom, they picked up the shovels of those who had exited the bunkers just before Garret and his friends had entered.

  Garret drove his shovel into the coal, which was surprisingly difficult from a kneeling position, and began widening the rim. Curtis, Sweet Cheeks, and the rest had already spread around the hole among the guys with the hoses.

  Garret’s head was starting to get cloudy as he dug.

  He had no idea how long they dug. By some unspoken agreement, they all moved forward on their knees as they dug, widening the hole in overlapping circles as they went. The piles begun by others heaped higher as they added to them.

  Garret’s thoughts were coming slowly, but as he flung another shovelful aside, he thought, We’re gonna have to… move those piles back soon… or we’ll run into them.

  Shovel and toss away. Shovel and toss away. Over and over. His hands and back remembered the motions from his previous three shifts down here. His lower back twinged every time he turned. His legs, which were folded up under him, lit up with pins and needles every time he inched forward along the edge. He sucked air through the rag around his face, which was now drying and becoming scratchy.

  Minutes crumbled into ashes and fell behind, as if time itself was burning away like everything else around him. And that was what it was like, wasn’t it—his whole life? A housefire, slowly burning down around him. He always stayed moving, going from one room to the next before the ceiling collapsed in a deadly shower of cinder, but sooner or later he knew it would all burn away.

  A circle… Garret thought dully as he shoveled his way around. I’m always… moving in a circle. I can’t love Molly because I can’t forgive Ma… I can’t get away… from the creature even after it’s dead… because the real monster’s… inside me.

  He feared even his time on the ship was a rehash, another rehearsal for something more terrible than he’d yet dreaded to dream.

  I’m always… running. Always running away. But I always end up… in the same place… Why can’t I get away?

  Around and around they went, widening the rim of the black pit from which the buckets and smoke and steam arose. The heat was strangling them, wringing them out like wet rags. Garret’s sweat was lasting just long enough on his skin to mingle with the smoke and create black rivulets all over his arms.

  Shovel and toss away. Shovel and toss away.

  Maybe they shoveled for minutes. Maybe hours. Maybe days. Garret lost all sense of time, lost all sense of everything except heat and black coal and poisonous air.

  Shovel and toss away. Shovel and toss away.

  Around and around they went on their knees as their minds and hearts faltered from lack of air.

  Shovel and toss away. Shovel and toss away.

  A hand was on Garret’s shoulder, shaking him. He turned and squinted. Another man with a rag over his face was crouched beside Garret. Even so, Garret had to strain to see him. Garret didn’t know him. The guy was pointing down into the burning pit. Around the rim, Garret’s friends were sliding and climbing down into the pit. It was their turn.

  One of the two metal ladders was near to Garret, but he chose to scoot down into the pit on his backside. He landed in an avalanche of coal, adding new fuel to the blaze. Most of his friends were already there, picking themselves up. Twitch rose, but fell into Curtis, who despite his size, was weakened enough that he too stumbled. Fishy caught them both and Pun’kin caught Fishy.

  Smoke rose from both sides of the bottom. Garret stumbled through it towards the middle. As if by prearranged plan, the others had done the same. They met in a clump and leaned against each other, arms around one another’s shoulders. They couldn’t waste a second, but they did anyway. They held each other up, they held each other together. Garret felt a third arm on his back, and a fourth. The other men in th
e pit had joined them as well. Around the circle, eyes were streaming, except Sweet Cheeks, whose eyes looked dry and unfocused. Everyone was a grey-and-black filthy mess.

  Without a word spoken, they broke apart and dug in. The previous crew had managed to cut the fire in half, confining it to opposite sides of the pit. Not only did that give them a solid place to stand in the middle, but it also gave them a bit of hope.

  Smaller, Garret thought. Both of these fires put together are smaller. We can win. We can do this.

  Usually, such a revelation would bring strength up from the pit of Garret’s stomach. This time it didn’t. His body had no more to give. He shoveled slowly into the buckets, tugging on the rope when each was full. He was taking smaller and smaller shovel loads with each passing moment.

  Somehow, he found himself shoveling next to Sweet Cheeks. Garret met his eye once or twice, but Sweet Cheeks didn’t seem to be seeing anything. He was red as a beet, shoveling mechanically, his eyes semi-focused.

  They shoveled and shoveled. Some of the coal at their feet was glowing a dull red, but most of it wasn’t. Most of it was just smoking a little and radiating waves and waves of heat. Buckets came and went. Strength flagged and began to fail. They shoveled and shoveled.

  Something was terribly wrong, but Garret couldn’t realize what it was. He tried to form a thought, something, anything. His brain felt like it was boiling in its own juice.

  Like a… prune. My brain’s boiling… in its own juice, like a…. prune.

  The hissing sound of the fire and the rushing sound of the air had disappeared at some point, buried under a high-pitched tone in Garret’s head, as if he’d been boxed in the ears, though he didn’t think he’d been hit with anything. Garret realized he was piling the burning coal up until it was spilling over the bucket. He needed to do something, get rid of the bucket somehow. Sweet Cheeks had stopped shoveling. Garret was sweating profusely, but Sweet Cheeks’ arms looked dry as a bone.