Boneshaker (The Clockwork Century 1)

The mask’s seals scrubbed against his skin, and the straps constricted his skull so hard he thought his brain would come out his nose. Zeke wanted to cry, but he was too afraid to even sniffle, and he figured that was just as well.

Mr. Cruise fumbled with a row of buttons, smashing them almost randomly, as if he didn’t know what any of them did. “There’s no release latch for those miserable clamps. How are we supposed to disengage from the—”

“We’re not docked like normal,” Parks told him. “We’re smashed against the tower. We’ll go outside and pry the thing out ourselves, if we have to. ”

“We don’t have time. Where’s the grapple release? Is there a kit for it over there? A lever or something? We got the hooks to deploy for stability; how do we call them back to disengage? ”

Brink said, “Here, maybe this?” He leaned over his first mate and stretched one pale arm out to grab a lever and tug it.

The sound of something clacking outside relieved everyone inside. “Did that do it? Are we loose?” Mr. Guise demanded, as if anyone knew any better than he did.

The ship itself answered them, shifting in the hole it’d broken into the side of the half-built tower. It settled and listed to the left and down. Zeke felt less like theClementine had disengaged than that it was falling out of place. The boy’s stomach sank and then soared as the airship tumbled away from the building and seemed to freefall. It caught and righted itself, and the dirigible’s lower decks quit rocking like a grandmother’s chair.

Zeke was going to throw up.

He could feel the vomit that he’d swallowed after watching the Chinaman’s murder. It crept up his throat, burning the flesh it found and screaming demands to be let out.

“I’m going to—” he said.

“Puke in your mask and that’s what you’re breathing till we set you down, boy,” the captain warned. “Take off your mask and you’re dead. ”

Zeke’s throat burbled, and he burped, tasting bile and whatever he’d last eaten, though he couldn’t remember what that might have been. “I won’t,” he said, because saying the words gave his mouth something to do other than spew. “I won’t throw up,” he said to himself, and he hoped that he gave that impression to the rest of the men, or that they could ignore him, at least.

A left-facing thruster fired and the ship shot in a circle before stabilizing and rising.

“Smooth” the captain accused.

Parks said, “Go to hell. ”

“We’re up,” Mr. Guise announced. “We’re steady. ”

The captain added, “And we’re out of here. ”

“Shit,” said one of the Indian brothers. It was the first English Zeke had heard from either of their mouths, and it didn’t sound good.

Zeke tried to stop himself, but he couldn’t. He asked, “What’s going on? ”

“Jesus,” Captain Brink blasphemed with one eye on the rightmost window. “Crog and his buddy have found us. Holy hell, I figured it’d take him a little longer. Everybody, buckle down. Hang on tight, or we’re all of us dead. ”

Sixteen

Swakhammer shined his lantern at a pile of broken and buried crates that had been stacked haphazardly and left to wobble and sink. It seemed to be the only way forward.

“Me first,” he said. “We ought to be far enough away from Maynard’s that maybe we’ll miss the worst of the swarm. Those things are relentless. They’ll try to dig through the floor until their hands wear off, and the louder they get, the more of their number they’ll draw. ”

“Away from us,?

? Briar mumbled.

“Here’s hoping. Let me take a look around up there and make sure. ”

He lifted one big leg to stomp on the bottom crate and it sank a couple of inches, squishing down into the muck. Once the crate had stopped drooping, he brought the other leg around and climbed slowly up the rickety pile. A set of reinforcing metal bands peeled back with a splintering scrape that was louder than gunfire in the muffled underground.

Everyone cringed and held silent and still. Lucy asked, “Do you hear anything?” Swakhammer said, “No, but let me look. ”

Briar shuffled and lifted her boot up out of the muck, but she was forced to put it right back where it had been sinking. There was no place sturdy enough to stand without feeling the slow, sticky draw of the wet earth. “What are you looking for? More rotters?”

“Uh-huh. ” He pressed the back of his shoulder against the trap-door and locked his knees. “East way was plugged up with them. We’ve gone east underneath ’em, but I don’t know if we’ve gone east enough to miss the back end of the swarm. Everybody quiet now,” he said. The crates groaned beneath him and the mud slurped terribly at the cheap pine corners, threatening to bring the whole stack down. But the structure held, and Swakhammer strained to move himself quietly—and to lift the door without making a noise. “Well?” Hank asked, a little too loudly.