Falling Sky (28 page)

“What are they doing keeping a Feral in here?” I say to Atticus, who along with Rosie has joined me.

“I . . . don't know,” Atticus says.

I raise my revolver and try to figure out if I can hit the thing from here. Whatever it's being used for can't be good. Before I can fire, though, I hear a sound from below us and I pull Atticus and Rosie down. But while the metal walkway is not see-through from the bottom, it is from the side.

“Move!” someone barks.

“No,” another voice, quavering, answers.

Then three people come into view. The one in front is a man, face uncovered, balding with a fringe of copper hair. Pushing him ahead is a Valhalla thug with an animal-skin coat and a rifle. Behind both of them is a woman with a black cap.

Fuck, I think, and pull Rosie and Atticus back. But the metal walkway starts clanging under our movement and so I stop.

The man below is still chanting “no” over and over again as he is pushed forward.

“Wilson,” I hear Atticus say. One of his coworkers, perhaps?

When Wilson nears the edge of the pit he starts to scream. A high keening sound that reverberates through the room.

“You shouldn't have run,” the woman in the back cap says, loud enough that the sound carries to where we are.

Then the thug pushes Wilson down into the pit.

Wilson's screams are joined by a lower-pitched howling as the Feral within the pit recognizes fresh prey. Then the screaming intensifies, joined by grunts and wet, tearing sounds.

I grip the edge of the railing tight. I've heard sounds like that before, but it never gets easier. I want to rise up and shoot both figures in the pit, but that will give us away and there's not much I can do for Wilson anyway. So I force myself to be still.

Atticus is not nearly as successful in his self-control. I look up to see him standing, screaming, his face red, the tendons in his neck like rigid cable.

The two below turn to him as one and begin firing before I can do anything.

The moment becomes chaos and disjointed thoughts. Almost immediately Atticus falls back to the floor of the walkway. His throat is spurting blood and one of his cheeks is gone.

The bullets are still flying.

I grab for Rosie, and together we scrabble as fast as we can, as low to the ground as possible, toward the door. Hoping the sound of the bullets will cover our own sound. Hoping they didn't see us.

The air of the corridor is a welcome change from the stink of the room with the pit. Rosie and I get to our feet and run down the corridor.

“Where do we go?” Rosie says.

“Look for another access tunnel,” I say.

Any moment now, the thug and the woman in the black cap could burst out of the room behind us. There are doors in this corridor, but we have no time to stop and investigate them. Though we may need to take cover in one.

Fuck, I think. Fuck fuck fuck. I can't banish the image of Atticus's eyes as he fell back to the walkway.

“Here!” Rosie points to another metal door in the corridor side. This one has been painted white. As we both work at it to pull it open, I look at the doors opposite me. These have small glass windows cut into them reinforced with metal links. Through the windows I see cages. At least a row of them. And in the cages, naked figures. I go cold because I'm sure these are Ferals. They look cleaner, better-groomed, but something about them, something in their posture, screams at me that they're no longer human.

Then Rosie pulls me into the access corridor, pushing me in front of her. She pulls the door closed with a loud clang and we move, knowing we have to keep going, knowing they could be right behind us. “What are they doing?” I gasp.

“I don't know,” Rosie says. I can hear the horror in her voice.

Ferals. They're playing with Ferals.

They need to be stopped, I think.

We run away as fast as we can.

“Diego said you were brother and sister,” I say, wanting to distract myself. Wanting to push through the numb shroud that seems to have enveloped me.

“Half,” she says. “We had the same father.”

“Wow,” I say.

“What?”

“He convinced not just one woman but two to have his children.”

She smiles for a moment, though there's not much joy in it. “That was my father. He had a way of making the people around him feel safe. I guess our mothers believed it enough to chance having us.”

“Who's older?” I ask.

“Diego. Dad met his mother first. He was a zep, too. The story goes that he swooped in, took her up into the sky. It must have seemed a lot safer that way.”

“What happened?” I ask.

“She got infected,” Rosie says. “No one seems to know how. Probably while they were bartering. Dad . . . he had to put her down.”

“Oh,” I say. “I'm sorry.”

“Dad took care of Diego after that, but it was hard by himself, so I think he looked for someone to help him out and then he met my mother. Of course Dad being the romantic, he fell in love with her.”

“Are they still around?” I ask.

“No,” she says. “Mom died when I was a kid, she caught something—not the Bug, but just a normal human disease. She got real weak. We tried to give her antibiotics, but they didn't help. After that, we kept on with Dad, but then his mind started to go. He would forget where he was, what he was doing. He'd forget about getting food. That's when Diego started taking control. We kept Dad with us for a while, but that proved to be a mistake. One day while we were out looking for food, he left without us.”

“How did you survive?” I ask.

“Diego,” she says. “He found a place for us to take shelter, guarded it from Ferals. At least we'd found some food. We stayed there for a few days, then started making our way back west.”

“On foot?”

She nodded. “That was when Diego started teaching me how to handle a gun, and a knife. How to kill and skin animals. How to cook them. It helped that we were young. We could climb trees and squeeze into small spaces.”

“How old were you?”

She shrugs. “I don't know. Maybe ten years old? Eventually we found a settlement, did some work there. We took work on a freight airship helping to find salvage. Worked that way for a while. That's how we got the
Osprey
.”

“You stole it?” I ask.

“No. We bought it. The previous owner wanted to upgrade, so he sold it to us.”

They earned their ship.

I stop for a moment. Rosie looks at me questioningly.

“Why are you here?”

“You brought me here,” she says.

“No,” I say. “You had your chance to stay up on Gastown. You chose to come down here with me. Why?”

She looks down at her boots. Then back at me. “I wanted to keep an eye on you.”

“You didn't trust me?”

“Do you think that I would after you fucked Diego?”

“I didn't mean to do that.”

Rosie shakes her head. “I don't care. He's my brother. I have his back. And you fucked him good and proper. He was on his way to being a Council member. That was all he ever wanted. He used to dream about being part of a real settlement, helping to take care of other people. And your Feral sabotaged all of that.”

“If I had known—”

“What?” Rosie says. “You would have done things differently? Don't shit a shitter, Ben. You do what you need to do to get by, same as plenty of others.”

The words sting.

“I didn't know what would happen to Diego.”

“But you really didn't care. I've watched you. I know how you feel about your ship. How you feel about Miranda. You would sell me and Diego out in a second if it would help you save either one of them.”

“That's not true,” I say. But I instantly wonder.

“Whatever.”

“So you're here to watch me?”

“Yes.” Her hands are on her hips. “Diego somehow still thinks you have some value. Despite being burned by you he still signed up again. He's a good man, but he's too trusting. So it's up to me to watch you. Make sure you don't fuck him again. Make sure that you do what you say you're going to do. And if not, if you're about to fuck us, fuck Tamoanchan, then it's up to me to put a bullet in your head.”

Her eyes are hard. Unyielding. I'm the first one to look away.

“I understand,” I say.

She shrugs. “I don't need you to. But if it makes you feel better.”

As I continue on, she says, “There is one other thing.”

I turn back to her. “Oh?”

“Whether or not you believe what you told Diego, about Gastown one day coming for Tamoanchan, I do. It's only a matter of time. And the more we know, the better off we'll be. So I came to Gastown. And I came here. And if I can find a place to hit them, to make them weak, I will.”

I believe her.

We move on through the corridor.

We reach the end of the passage and I spare a look back for Rosie. Despite what she told me earlier, she seems ready and gives me a nod, her hand curled around her automatic.

I open the door and see the airfield. Above us, zeppelins, blimps, dirigibles of all sizes float, moored to the ground by tethering cables. And there, like the sweetest sight I've ever seen, is the
Cherub
. All I can see are her tail fins and her rear, but I know her better than almost anything in this world and something inside me that I didn't even know was crawling stands up at the thought of flying her once again.

Of course we have to get to the ship first.

I turn to Rosie. “I'm going to try to get to the ship. Stay here.” I think of telling her to keep an eye on me, but it seems redundant.

Rosie shakes her head, her face tight. “I should go with you.”

“No. I'd feel more comfortable with you covering me from here. If we're both out in the open and they catch us, we'll go down quickly. If you hang back here, well, I'm hoping that will be a lot harder.”

She scowls but doesn't argue.

“If it goes wrong. If they take me down.” I look at the
Cherub
. “Find a way to get back to Tamoanchan. Steal one of these ships. And tell Miranda and Diego I'm sorry.”

There's a lot more I would want to tell Miranda, but . . . there's not time for that now. Sorry will do. I'm feeling now that I have a lot to be remorseful for.

“And if they do get me,” I say. “Make sure you get them back.”

She shakes her head. “Don't get all sentimental on me. Just go,” she says. “I'll watch your back.” She pulls her pistol out of its holster and holds it down by her side.”

“Fair enough,” I say.

She looks me hard in the face. “You really love that ship, don't you?”

“Yes,” I say. Because what else can I say. “The ship is all I have. You have your brother. You have Tamoanchan. I have the
Cherub
. She's the only thing that's ever made me feel safe. The only thing that's ever made me feel good about myself.”

I say those things, and most of them are true. But I realize as I'm saying them that it's not entirely true. Miranda makes me feel good about myself. But she's back on Gastown.

Rosie nods. “Go get her.”