Lust Plague (Steamwork Chronicles) (21 page)

Where is this?
The sound gave her the answer. Gyrocopter. The shaking and shuddering underneath her, the metal floor—they were going somewhere.

Her sight focused. A man with fire in his eyes stood over her. Goatee. Gray hair. The doctor’s face swam into focus.

“Doctor?” Her tongue seemed to have died and been wedged back into her mouth all swollen and dry.

“You are awake? Good.” His voice sawed deep through the words. He smiled. “You’re needed alive and feeling.”

He thudded to one knee before Kaysana and pulled her head up by a handful of her hair.

“You'll be a tasty one.” The fire in his eyes blazed brighter.

Fuck
… She tried to squeeze back into the floor. Not good. How could she escape this? Sten would try to save her.
The man would leap into a pool of burning lava to save me…and I know it. Knew it back there, even
. In the clarity of danger, she saw him as what he was…a forceful yet good man who more than liked her.
I screwed up. Could’ve at least told him how much I…what? Loved him?
She didn’t know, still, didn’t know.

Time to save myself
. She sniffed back the tears. The knife in her boot beckoned.

Some movement drew her eyes downward, to the doctor’s legs. His torn trousers were painted in the dappled light of the moon and man-made sources. With the gleam of dark liquid to guide her, Kaysana suddenly translated the colors as blood and fractured bone. His upper legs were shattered, and yet he stood on them. His lower legs were gleaming rods and coils, pumping hydraulics and cogs. Electricity blazed in sputtering violet across stripped wires.

He struck her across the face, sending her head jolting away, only to be ripped to a stop by the hold on her hair. “I shall have some fun with you.” He leaned in, eyes flaring brighter as he closed in on her face. Jagged teeth showed, bared by the snarl of lip. “I smell blood.”

She drifted into unconsciousness. And in and out. Time flickered past in a susurration of silence and the
thwop thwop
of gyro blades.

She blinked. The world firmed.
How long was I out?

Snow and icy air swept in through the open side door. They were high in the mountains.

My legs still aren’t tied.

The doctor grinned at her—fractured teeth, blue-black gums, no lips. Chin spotted with old gore.
He’s eaten his own lips
. Something lurched in her stomach.

“I see you. Time to play.”

He curved her head to one side and buried his face in her hair. The sweep and dart of his tongue in the wound sent agony peeling through her. He sucked hard, his tongue rasping on her raw flesh and her hair. Kaysana shrieked and wriggled, thrashing about. But he pinned her with a knee on her belly.

“Stay, little meal.” The doctor chuckled and resumed sucking and slurping like a baby at his mother’s breast. She bucked. His teeth slid like tiny chisels across her scalp to fasten on her ear, tight.

His teeth ground in harder, deeper.
Knife, get the knife
. She bent her legs under her, struggling to reach the knife, heaving his body upward. A shriek burst from her. She heard and felt the click of flesh and cartilage severing. Scalding pain exploded down the side of the face. Wet blood slicked her face. The doctor swallowed.

Her hand met the hilt of the knife.

She forced logic into her brain despite the zombie growling at her ear. Shoved away fear, indecision, and the muzziness from the head wound and cataloged what she saw.
Open door. One other raised man at the controls. The night whipping past outside. One chance. Only one.

Twisting sideways, she freed her legs from beneath, then heaved up to jackknife her body. Both feet were at his armpits.
Now!
She kicked, straightening full-length, and sent the doctor sailing straight out through the door into the night.

Fast now. Fast fast fast
. She concentrated, ignoring what she couldn’t change—the guttural cry of the pilot, the craft suddenly diving.

Bend legs under again and feel for the sheath in my boot. Whip out the knife. Don’t cut myself. Insert between body and wrist rope and pray. Rip it through. Yes!

Her wrists free, she flipped upright, catching the back of the pilot’s seat to steady herself as the gyro lurched in flight. Ignore the dead copilot still strapped in, with his brain cavity exposed and the blood frozen on the seat. Ignore the staring, smoldering eyes of the pilot and the drool at his mouth…the flesh torn from his cheekbone, dangling and whipping across his face like a swing.

Anchor one hand in the zombie’s hair, grab it tight, and thrust the slim blade into his ear. Feel bone crunch but ignore again. Not in far enough.

Hammer at the base of the hilt as he gropes for you with his clawed hand. Watch the knife slide, with thump after thump, another…agonizing…three inches into his head.

Grab the hilt again and twist and twist and twist.

The squelch of his brain being pulverized and his screeches embedded into her memory like splinters in her heart. But she only stopped when the gyro threatened to dive full speed into the ground.

Kicking out the newly defunct and still trembling zombie pilot wasn’t an option. Heart thundering in her ears, she plonked herself onto his lap and set about frantically trying to regain control.

The speed of the dive lessened. The arc flattened.

“Come on, come on!” Teeth gritted, she leaned back into the seat, into the dead zombie, using all her strength, with her grip on the semicircular steering wheel surely denting the leather and wood beneath.

Steam screaming out the side stacks, crimson sparks flying, blades spinning like a dervish on drugs, the gyro shuddered, slowed, and pancaked into the deep snow with a loud
crumph.

The blizzard howled, gently covering the burrow made by the crash with a soft blanket of white. Metal clicked and quieted as it cooled into subzero. Way back, miles back, the fallen raised man clawed his way free of snow. Its master knew of its plight. It trudged off, slow and sure, and flawlessly correct in its navigation.

Leaning over the front parapet, Sten peered down the long road. No headlights, just a distant movement and that approaching engine sound. He raised the sniper rifle to his shoulder, settled his cheek, and sighted through the scope. A blurred vehicle came into view. Clicking the scope out to its farthest range, kneeling, and resting the stock on the stone helped.

“Damn. I see orange eyes in the cabin. It’s an überzomb driving a big truck. He seems to have sorted the driving, and I figure he’s heading for us.” Did they have the brains to ram the gate? They could fly gyros. The closer they were to Perihelion, the smarter the zombies seemed.

“There’s four rounds in there,” Emily whispered. “Can you get him?”

“I’ll try.” The finely wrought gold tendrils on the stock curled smooth under his skin, and he anchored his fingers onto them, drew in a breath, and held it. Squeezed and squeezed again and again.

The gun rocked back into him. Bullets cracked the air.

The truck was still coming. Sten grunted. “Missed. The roads so damn bumpy… I’ll wait until he’s a bit closer. I’m a close quarters man.”

“Sir?” Emily tapped his arm. “May I? Rifles and me like each other.”

“Yeah?” Debating didn’t seem right. He handed her the rifle, watched as she swiftly knelt beside him, reloaded, and nestled herself around the long weapon like it was a part of her.

She wound out a screw on the sight, slotted down an extra lens. Moonlight flowed serpentlike along all the little prettiness on the stock and barrel. Blue and black, contrasting with Emily’s tousled blonde hair. Concentration solidified her into a sculpture of flesh and metal.

The single crack when she fired made him turn to look down the road. A spine of spiraling blue-orange sped forth and vanished into the black. Silence gripped the night as he strained to see.

Flame blossomed, swerved to the side, and fell in a long, silent curve down into the darkness of the ravine. A rumble and rolling boom signaled the end of the vehicle when it hit the bottom.

“Damnation, girl! How’d you learn to shoot like that?” He whacked Emily on the back as she rose.

“Ow!” She rolled her shoulder, stepped away from him. “Hope there’s no more of them coming. Anyways, Sten. My daddy always taught us girls to be ready for anything, including war. I can shoot better than I can knit. Though not as good as I can catalog a book. Here.” She thrust the weapon back to him. “That was a napalm round too.”

“Oh?” He did a sweep of the landscape through the scope. Nothing moved on the road or the slopes of the hill. He thought he knew why they’d suddenly appeared. His fault.
I let my libido tell me what to do. Fuck
. He tucked away his guilt for another day.

“That was a big bang for one round. You hit the zomb? Or the truck?”

“The zombie.”

“Those überzombs burn darn well. Let’s go check the ship.”

The envelope of the
Emshalley
had half the air cells deflated…irreparably so. It’d need a week in a repair dock. Next to where his knee rested, holes showed where bullets had passed through the air cell. Sten fingered the tattered cloth.

“I can cut away the ripped cells, Emily, and we’ll have maybe half the buoyancy.” Sten looked up at the remaining envelope of the airship as it moved in the night breeze. “The less weight, the better.”

“You tell me what to toss, and I’ll do it.” She clapped her hands together.

He climbed to his feet and wiped his hands on his trousers. Dawn was hours away.

“Sure. But there’s other stuff needs doing. When I say, I want you to go to the File Room and bring up whatever you can find about Perihelion. We need a map to get us the quickest way through these mountains, at as low an altitude as possible. And a map of the base itself.”

“If it’s there, I’ll find it. We can do this!” She grinned at him.

“Where’d you get all this enthusiasm, woman? Your daddy?”

“Well.” Emily pulled a face. “Maybe. I just know things don’t get done unless you
do
.”

Cut away the torn cells, throw out excess weight—baggage, weapons, even the cabin framework maybe. Ascending in altitude without cover or insulation might be slightly suicidal, but there was no choice, and then…then he needed to do the impossible and figure out where the missing piece of the control panel had gotten to.

Hours of work. And what were the odds she’d still be alive…
Stop
. He shut his eyes for a second.
Guilt later, remember?

“Then let’s get
doing
, Emily.”

The File Room housed an entire cabinet of maps, and Emily brought several up to the roof while Sten cleared out the last of the mess. He glanced at a few, approved them. Finding a safe route to Perihelion seemed sorted out.

“What about the base itself? Or the automaton? Other defenses?”

“Can’t say for sure.” Emily slid a lithograph from the folder on her knee. “But there’s this. Seems to be of the base and this”—she held it up for Sten and tapped a corner where something tall poked up from the snow. “The inscription's in Latin, like some of the research they did. I translated it, but I’m still not sure what this is a picture of. Do ya think it’s your automaton?”

He let go of the canvas he’d been cutting away, leaned in, and scratched his nose with a finger. Eye-scalding blue sky set off a steel and bronze monstrosity. A multitiered metal stack with a dome sitting atop and cannons bristling in rows, mounded up from the snow. Brass and orange logos and numbers were stamped here and there. Steam puffed from a back array of perforated funnels.

“Holy fuck. Looks nasty. That must be it.” Sten wiped sweat off his brow, spat to the side. “Now we know what to keep an eye out for. But odds are, it’s meant to have a human driver.”

Half an hour later, he stretched his back, listening to the series of tiny cracks from his spine. “Done.”

The
Emshalley
was as disfigured as a bug with its legs pulled off. Half the air cells were gone and the skeleton of the framework stuck up here and there like the bones of a half-eaten corpse. A man-high pile of discarded gear sat to one side. He figured they could lift high enough to get over the peaks…if they could start the engine.

“Come.” He helped Emily to her feet. “Let's check out the control cabin.”

Inside, he stood, hands in pockets, jingling the keys from the old gyro and staring at the control panel.

“That’s one whopping great hole.” Emily poked her finger in the cavity.

Sten scowled, sniffed loudly. “Yep.”

He toyed with the edge of the envelope from Dr. F. The key was still in there. He’d opened the room and put it back. The world was teetering on the brink of a big heap of shit. And Kaysana might die. He heaved out a ragged sigh. And he couldn’t figure out this puzzle. Where had he seen something that’d go in there?

Not that he loved her or anything. Not. Totally crazy, that would be. Only been a few days of gobsmacking sex and all. He knew more about the ass end of a donkey than he did about her. Really, add up all the facts and you got nothing much.
I can’t love her. Except dammit, maybe I do. And I sure as hell don’t want her to die
. Just the thought made his stomach ice up, made the future seem as stupid and useless as a house of sand.

The control panel was rectangular in a way.
The hole is circular. Does that mean anything? Or the color? Is there little writing anywhere on this frame here? No.

He took the envelope out and absentmindedly flapped it across his other hand.
Whackitty whack.

“I’ve got this key and the gyrocopter key. Seems like this thing missing is a key too.”

Emily squeaked. “’Course! Do you know what key is in Latin? Clavis!”

He swung toward her. “The clockwork snake?”

“Yes!”

They found the creature curled up on the doctor's blanket. Sad in a way, and weird. It wasn’t alive—or feeling—was it? He stooped and picked up its midsection, grunting as he lifted it over his shoulder. Clavis hissed out a little cloud of steam, then coiled around Sten’s neck. Three yards of pissed-off snake thing. As long as it didn’t tighten, he'd be okay.