Boneshaker (The Clockwork Century 1)

It could’ve been worse.

She didn’t find anything bigger than a sunflower seed. There was hardly any blood, but the broken fabric let the Blight irritate the scratches, and it stung more fiercely than it should have. If she’d had bandages, or wraps, or any other stray and clean piece of fabric she would’ve wrapped the minor injury. But she had nothing, and there was nothing to be done except to make sure it was free of glass.

This having been established, she took a moment to examine her surroundings.

She had not landed in the top floor of anything, as the staircase at the far wall demonstrated; and at one point in time her stopping place had almost certainly been a hotel. On the floor in front of the window there was a great smattering of broken glass, some of which had landed on a battered old bed with a brass headboard that had gone a nastily tarnished brown. A half-broken nightstand crouched against a wall, two drawers out on the floor, and a basin with a broken pitcher had fallen over in the corner.

The floor creaked when she stepped across it, but the noise was no worse than the rumbling havoc outside, where more rotters were collecting, having been drawn by the cries of the others. Eventually they would break their way in, more likely than not; and eventually the filters in Briar’s mask would clog, and she’d suffocate.

But Briar could worry about these things later. For the moment, she was safe. Or at least, she was safer than she had been a handful of moments before. Her definition of “safe” was increasingly flexible.

Looking out the window, she could see an intersection below, where Commercial met some other thoroughfare coming down the hill. Rotters swarmed over the spot on the corner where the street’s name would be marked. It didn’t matter which one it was; it didn’t matter that she hadn’t caught the engraving in the ground to tell her more precisely. The streets were impossible now. Perhaps they’d been impossible for sixteen years. But she’d given it a go, and it had been her best effort. She’d been quiet and she’d been careful, and it hadn’t been enough. So this was it, then. The streets were navigated the same as the wall.

Over or under. It would cost too much to go straight through.

Briar went to the stairwell and pushed aside the door that had dropped from its hinges. Surely it went up no more than another floor or two. She’d go up, first, and see what it looked like from there.

Inside the stairwell it was purely and perfectly dark. The noise of the rotters outside was muffled until it was almost absent, and she could almost forget they were out there, loudly waiting and demanding her bones.

But not quite. Their arguments vibrated in her ears and tugged at her attention, no matter how hard she tried to push them out. Behind her eyes she remembered too clearly the peeling, gray fingers that had clung disembodied to the ladder—persistent to the very last.

Her composure was returning, and with it, her breathing was slowing as she paced herself, scaling the stairs with a measured speed that let her body catch up and adjust.

At the top of the stairs she found a door that opened onto the roof; and on the roof were a few signs of recent life. A broken pair of goggles had been kicked into a corner. A discarded bag had been crumbled and left to soak in a puddle of tar and water. Footprints smudged in coal crossed here and there.

She followed the footprints to the roof’s edge. They disappeared on the ledge, and she wondered if the rooftop pedestrians had jumped or fallen. Then she saw the next building over. It was a taller structure by one full story, and there was a window on perfect parallel with the spot where she stood. This window had been boarded over with two doors that had been pieced together to form one much longer plank; and this plank was fastened up against the other building—left there like a drawbridge, to be lowered or raised depending on the necessity and danger.

Below, one of the rotters had followed her around to the far side. It looked up with a revolting moan, and soon it was joined by more undead with similar intentions. In a matter of minutes, the whole building would be surrounded by them.

As far as Briar could tell, the other building was wholly unoccupied. The windows were boarded or blank, with thin, sloppily drawn curtains and nothing moving on the other side of them.

She might have better luck downstairs. She’d emerged in the city through the underground, so underground might be the best way to travel.

Not very far away, and directly beneath her, something splintered and broke. The moans increased in their intensity, from added numbers and fresh agitation.

Briar reached for her satchel and hastily reloaded. If the rotters had breached the building, she might have to shoot her way through them on the way to the basement.

Her hands paused as they held the canister of shells, but only briefly.

If she went downstairs and they came behind her, she’d be trapped there.

She recommenced loading the rifle, and fast. Trapped downstairs, trapped upstairs. The differences were small, and she was damned either way. Better to keep her gun ready and her options open.

The cacophony escalated, and Briar wondered if she hadn’t already lost the option of seeking a subterranean escape. She locked the cartridges into place and took another look over the edge.

On the street the swarm gathered and clotted. The number of rotters had at least tripled, more than making up for the small handful she’d dispatched on her way up the hotel’s exterior.

She did not see anyplace where they’d found entry. They did not disappear one by one or even in clumps to resume their pursuit; instead they flung themselves at the bricks and the boards, but made no progress.

Again there came a crashing noise and the telltale shattering of damp wood.

Where was it? And what was causing it?

The rotters howled and staggered. They also heard the breaking commotion and sought its source, but they were unwilling to leave Briar, who felt very much like a bear that had been treed.

“You, up on the Seaboard Hotel! Are you wearing a mask?”

The voice shocked her worse than the rotters had. It burst out loud and hard, with a tinny edge that made it sound both foreign and loud. The words carried up from somewhere below, but not all the way down in the street.