Machinations (29 page)

Jeffrey cuts off the feed on the last word. “I coded the coordinates of Juneau into the feed, so they should know where to go,” he tells me, and I nod dumbly, leaning heavily on the table. I feel strangely light-headed, almost relieved, but not quite. I can't allow myself to feel relieved until we're out of here, and maybe not even then, seeing as how I still have Juneau to look forward to. “That was good, by the way,” he adds, an afterthought, but no less sincere for it.

I gather my gun and shoulder my equipment. “I was going for effective, but I'll settle for good. Now, what do you say to a little target practice and one last stroll through Churchill?”

My EMP-G powers on with a faint hum.

Whir-whir-whir
go the machines outside, almost in answer, a kind of challenge.

I never could resist a challenge.

A shocking blue sky and the last gasp of winter awaits us aboveground.

The first thing I do is toss my rifle, now out of juice, and exchange it for a lighter pistol. Jeffrey continues to lean on me, his right leg broken and useless after a malfunctioning machine crushed him against a wall, but his trigger finger is fine and the gun in his hand still functional. Small mercies. As I stare at the unbroken stretch of horizon, I think we're going to need a lot more luck.

I'll worry about that in a minute. For now, I focus on sealing the maintenance hatch behind us, piling up enough snow and ice and rock to weigh it down and keep it closed. Jeffrey helps as best he can, but I know by his grunts and groans that his injury is causing him a fair amount of pain. He needs medical attention. The best I can give him is a splint and some painkillers, and the former only once we're safely inside the chopper.

I try using my helmet comm to phone our ride, but all I receive is static. I smack my head a couple of times, as if it'll help, and repeat my SOS.

“I've heard of knocking sense into a person, but I've never seen someone try and do it to themselves,” Jeffrey remarks, managing a smile, though his eyes remain dull with pain.

“Ha ha, very funny,” I reply, using the flat of my palm against my helmet a couple more times. It proves just as futile as before. “Damn thing's not working.”

“Here. Let me have a look at it.”

“Be my guest.” I slip the helmet off, half-handing it to him, half-throwing it at him. Stupid technology. Never working when you want it to. Always trying to kill you when you don't.

“Pigeons,” I mumble, and Jeffrey gives me another funny look.

“What?”

“We should go back to using carrier pigeons to communicate. Pigeons are more reliable,” I grumble, using a stick to trace an image of a bird in the soft snow. “
Pigeons
never raise an army and try to exterminate the human race. That's two for pigeons right there.” He smiles again, clearly not taking me seriously. Just as well. I'm not taking me seriously either. “I'm just saying the idea has some merit, don't you think?”

“Pigeons,” he repeats.

I nod, gesturing dramatically. “It's the wave of the future.”

Jeffrey chuckles and slips on the helmet, arranging it this way and that way as if it'll make some sort of a difference. I'm beginning to think he doesn't know what the heck he's doing when I hear feedback. “Hello?” he says excitedly. “Hello? Can anyone read me?” I press my ear against the helmet's shell to try to listen.

The usual static gives way to a human voice. “Long, is that you?”

“John!” I shout. “That's our chopper pilot!”

“This is Jeffrey Casa,” Jeffrey says in a rush, “but I have Commander Long with me.”

“Praise God Almighty,” comes the exclamation from the other end. “Where are you folks?”

“Don't look at me. I'm geographically challenged,” I say in response to Jeffrey's gaze. Then I realize he's not looking
to
me for the answer, but around me. Searching for landmarks, anything to determine our coordinates. Good thing he's got the helmet. If anyone will be able to figure out where we are, it's the native Churchillian.

In a few moments, he puzzles it out and relays the information to John.

“The machines are hassling us something fierce right now,” John says. “Might be we'll have some trouble getting to you. Can you find some cover until we get there?”

There's not really any cover in any direction for miles.

“Yes.” I mouth the lie to Jeffrey, and he answers in the affirmative. My reasoning is simple. I know John's moving as fast as he can, as safely as he can. Knowing we'll have a place to hide until he reaches us will give him the peace of mind he needs to work. Knowing the truth would only hurt our chances by distracting him.

John says it'll take ten to fifteen minutes—which is already nine to fourteen minutes too long.

“So, about cover,” Jeffrey says, handing my helmet back to me. I slip it on.

“Let's just head in his direction,” I say. “Maybe we'll meet him a quarter of the way.” I wrap an arm around Jeffrey's middle, hoisting him back onto his feet. “There we go. You okay?”

“Hanging in there,” he says with a tight smile.

We haven't made it more than a few yards when the ground gives out suddenly, snow and concrete dropping away beneath us.

The impact knocks the breath from my lungs. My head bounces off of the floor with a
smack
, rattling my brain. I'm saved from a worse fate by the crash helmet, which nearly breaks apart on contact. I lie there a long moment, afraid or unable to move. Emerging from the shock, I try and get my arms beneath me in order to push myself up.

“Jeffrey,” I say, coughing and wheezing while I look around. I'm not sure yet where we are. “Jeffrey?”

I find him on my left. His body is still, face angled away from me.

“Jeff?” I repeat, hearing my own voice as though in a fog.

Movement is difficult and painful, but fear and adrenaline are good motivators. I begin to crawl toward him, though crawling might be too generous a word. Mostly it involves dragging my poor self across the floor, stunned but still lucid enough to think. Just barely.

Debris is everywhere. Fortunately, I have some experience with war zones like this, courtesy of McKinley's training rooms. Still, the pieces of the crumbled ceiling prove just as irksome, stabbing me through the fabric of my gloves. Some curses may or may not mist the air, especially when my hand comes down on the lenses of Jeffrey's now completely demolished glasses.

When I finally reach him, I realize my plan is incomplete. I'm not sure what to do now. Do I try to move him? Or will that only make things worse? I'm trained in first aid, but no one ever told me what to do in the event of falling through a
freaking ceiling.

Just as I start to touch his shoulder, he moans, scaring the living daylights out of me. I reel back, clutching my chest. “God,” I say, not sure whether I'm taking His name in vain or thanking Him for whatever miracle this constitutes. “Jeff,” I say once my heart's restarted. His response, perhaps involuntary, is to make another agonized noise. “Hey. Easy does it there. Don't try to move, okay?”

“Long.” Practically a moan.

“Yeah,” I say, a smile fluttering across my lips. “I'm here. I'm with you.”

“—happened?” he murmurs, losing the first word of the question in his daze. There was nothing gentle about his landing and his body reflects that, a mess of different injuries. One arm in particular is contorted unnaturally, as though he tried to brace himself midair. And that's not the worst of it. He's bleeding from a head wound that I can't get at without turning his head, and I can't do
that
without risking further injury to his neck and spinal column.

“It looks like Churchill wasn't ready to let us go,” I tell him. “The bombardment must have weakened the structure here. The snow hid the damage from view. We just had the misfortune of being the straw on the camel's back.” I shake my head. Some days, it seems like if I didn't have bad luck, I'd have no luck at all. Unfortunately for Jeffrey, today is proving to be one of those days.

Above us, the crescendo of an approaching vehicle catches my attention, but there's something about the sound I don't trust. Chances are slim it's anyone from our team—anyone human.

I make the split-second decision to move Jeffrey, hoping it won't kill him. “This is going to hurt, but we have to hide,” I tell him.

“Machines?”

“With our luck? Almost definitely.”

I'm not sure, but I think he says something to the effect of not wanting to die. “You're not going to die,” I promise in what I hope is a soothing tone. “But you might pass out. Try not to do that, though, if you can help it, okay?” Grabbing him underneath the armpits, ignoring the pitiful sounds he makes, I maneuver us both into the shade of an overhang, where there's still a part of the roof left as shelter.

No sooner are we tucked in beside the rubble than the roar of an engine grumbles by, its shadow passing across the floor. It slows and slows, and there's a terrifying moment when I'm sure it's going to stop, but then it picks up speed again, moving on. More close calls follow, but we remain undiscovered.

And then, like the flapping of angel's wings, I hear the chopper.

“Hang in there, Jeff,” I say, trying not to notice the blood on my hands or the way his eyes have closed or the barely perceptible rise and fall of his chest. I gently prop him up against what was once a part of the ceiling but is now more of a warped ramp, slanted, having caught partway between the wall and floor.

The chopper is getting louder. Someone has to signal them. The impact that damaged my helmet also likely destroyed its already temperamental comm unit, but I give it another try anyway. Still nothing. Damn.

With Jeffrey out, the job falls to me. So carefully, very,
very
carefully, I use the same piece of angled debris to climb out, mindful of falling a second time. As soon as I pop my head over the edge of the hole, the wind catches me full in the face, setting my teeth chattering.

“Hey!” I yell, unafraid of what else might hear me. “Over here! We're here!” Between my frantic waving and flame-red hair, I hope John and the rest will see me. And by
hope,
I mean they'd damn well better and
soon.
For Jeffrey's sake.

They make a single pass, checking for immediate threats in the nearby vicinity, before doubling back and landing nearby. Lefevre opens the sliding doors and motions for me. He's shouting something, but his words are drowned out by the chopper's downwash. I save my breath, knowing he won't hear me anyway, and use it to sprint/limp over to the chopper. I don't get inside.

“Jeff's hurt,” I say over the
chop-chop-chop-chop
of the helicopter's blades. My hair is blowing every which way, into my eyes, my mouth. I'm starting to wish I'd just shaved it all off when I had the chance. “I need a couple of you to come back with me.”

Lefevre's mouth twists unhappily, but he nods. “Where?” His boots crunch as they hit the icy ground, echoed by a second pair as Zelda joins us, and finally a third as Samuel exits the chopper. I'm happy to see him safe, happy to see them all safe, but as he starts to embrace me, I melt from his grasp with a quick “I'm fine.”

I'm not fine. Nothing about this is fine. But the reunion has to wait, because Jeffrey can't.

“Just over there,” I say, waving them toward the hole. “Follow me.”

They crawl down into the chamber, and prevent me from doing the same. I'm dimly aware of Samuel saying something about needing to check me out, which seems wholly inappropriate for our current situation.

I brush him off, pushing his hands away every time they come near me. “Not right now,” I grumble, straining to see down into the hole. “Well?” I shout against the background noise of blades going around and around and around. “What are you waiting for?” I turn toward Samuel. “What are they waiting for?”

Two go down, and two come back up. It sounds like a bad joke. “Where's Jeff?” I ask. “Why is he still down there? Is he too heavy or…?” Their faces are drawn and tired.
Lazy
, I think.
They're just being lazy.
“You can't leave him there. He needs help! You can't just—”

Very calmly, Lefevre takes me by the shoulders and turns me to face him.

“He's gone, Rhona.”

This doesn't compute. “Where would he have gone? He's got a broken leg, and his head, it was—”

“No,” Lefevre says. “He's dead.”

“She's in shock,” I hear Samuel say from far away. Who's he talking about? Zelda looks okay. Then I understand, coming back to myself suddenly. He's talking about me.

“Get her back to the chopper,” Lefevre says, handing me off to Samuel.

“No!” I struggle against him. “How can that be? I was
just with him.
He was alive. He was breathing.” I quiet and still. I feel moisture on my face, tears freezing into hard, little lines down my cheeks. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

I shut my eyes, wanting the world to just go away and stay there. Lately, it's always in my face, belligerent and brutal, and never, ever fair. In the darkness behind closed lids, I search for some kind of composure. I have to do this, I remind myself. I have to be strong. But I'm so tired of having to be strong all the time.

When I open my eyes, Samuel's turned me away from the scene. “Wait,” I say, shaking him off, and continue to shake even once freed.

Without much thought, I stumble back down into Churchill, where this whole thing started—and where it ended, for some. I didn't get to say goodbye to Ortega. I have nothing to remember him by. People should be remembered. Memories are all we have left in the end, after everything else has gone to dust.

“Bye, Glasses,” I whisper, kneeling next to him. “Sorry about not keeping my promise. I guess I'm more of a politician than I thought.”

I find his glasses on the ground and slip them into my pocket. Their translucent lenses are shattered all to pieces, but the frame is still there. Black, horn-rimmed, and stylishly made for another time and place where they would have been worn by a lawyer or maybe an actor. I never knew what profession Glasses was in before the Machinations. I never thought to ask.

“Rhona!” Samuel shouts down at me. “We've got to go!”

Once inside the chopper, I'm able to do a head count for the first time. Minus Ortega and Jeffrey, we're all accounted for. No small miracle, considering, but it seems to have come with a price, like so many things do.

I scoot over to Kennedy upon takeoff. The whole left side of his body is charred, the flesh flayed from the bone. He looks like an undercooked burger. Some bandaging and gauze have been applied to the worst areas. In other places, it looks like they used snow to try and cool down the superheated skin, judging by the puddle of water around him. “That looks like it hurts,” I say, an understatement of the highest degree, but it makes his lips fracture into a small smile.