Boneshaker (The Clockwork Century 1)

Lucy didn’t answer; she only pushed forward.

The corner. Briar felt it against her shoulder and side when she crushed herself against it, bobbing along in Lucy’s wake. Lucy yanked Briar to the right and followed the wall in this new direction, and along this new street they could hear it louder—the stomping, insistent footsteps of the rest of their party.

“They’re getting away,” Briar panted. “Are we?”

Lucy said, “Sort of,” and then slammed directly into an inrushing pod of rotters.

Briar yelped and Lucy swung her marvelous mechanical hand into the fray, using it to bludgeon any hapless head that made it within reach. She brained one beast against the wall and punched the sinuses free from another before Briar could get her gun propped and fired—and when she did squeeze off a shot or two, she had no idea if she was hitting anything important.

“Careful!” Lucy shouted, not because she was far away but because she’d just had a rifle discharge next to her head.

“Sorry!” Briar gave a hearty tug on the Spencer’s lever and fired again at the clot of bodies. She’d dropped Lucy’s apron ties and was on her own, but Lucy wouldn’t let her get lost.

She cranked the lever again and prayed for another round in the magazine, but there was no time to fire it.

Lucy wrapped her arm around Briar’s waist and lifted her up, over, and past two fallen rotters—but something held onto Briar’s hand. She felt a surge of terror that was every bit as bad as the first time she’d ever heard that shaky, deathlike warble from a corpse’s throat.

“It’s got me!” she shrieked.

“No it hasn’t!” Lucy said as she swung that cannon-thick arm around and clapped it down on a brittle, flaking head that was as empty as a cup. The head shattered and Briar’s heart gave a horrified squeeze when she realized that the rotter had been holding her by its teeth.

She gasped, “Lucy! Lucy, it—I think it hurt me!”

“We’ll look later,” she said under her breath. “Take the ties again, doll. I’m going to need this arm. It’s all I’ve got. ”

Briar did as she was told, and once again she trailed behind Lucy like a kite on a string. She could feel more than she could see the way Lucy used her arm like a battering ram and she used her weight to chug forward like a steam engine.

The streets were blacker than the ocean at midnight and Briar thought she might throw up at any second, but she held herself together long enough to hear, “Over here, you two!”

“Fire the Daisy!” Lucy commanded. “Fire it, or we’re finished over here!”

“It’s warming up!”

Lucy griped, “Muddy shit! I hate that stupid gun. Never works when—” A rotter swept its reach at her breasts and she battered it across the temple.

It toppled down off the curb. “When you need it,” she finished.

They were close enough to their destination that Swakhammer heard them.

“It works great!” he insisted. “It just takes a second! Now, ladies, cover ’em up!”

Briar didn’t feel like she had the maneuvering room to obey, but she heard the warning hum from the enormous gun. As the sound bomb fired, she released Lucy’s ties and grabbed her own head with one arm and Lucy’s with the other, since Lucy couldn’t cover both ears at once. Then Briar buried her uncovered ear against Lucy’s breast.

The women imploded together, dropping to the ground and huddling while the wave shook the world around them. All the grasping hands fell away, and when the worst of the blast had faded into a memory of shaking, breaking air, Swakhammer’s rolling steel voice began the countdown.

Briar and Lucy staggered to their feet, quivering in their shoes. Both were disoriented, but Lucy said, “This way, I think. ”

And with a crack and a snap, a red-white burst of light illuminated the crowded, dirty blocks with a glow that was almost blinding. “No need for dark or quiet now, is there?” Swakhammer said as he charged toward them, sizzling flare in hand. “You all right?”

“I think so,” Lucy said, despite what Briar had told her.

Swakhammer took Briar’s hand and Lucy’s arm and hauled them forward, stumbling, tripping over their own feet and the limbs of dead things that quivered where they’d fallen. “This is…” Briar’s boot caught on something squishy. She kicked free so she could run again. “The longest two blocks…” Her heel slipped against something wet and sticky. “Of my life. ”

“What?”

“Never mind. ”

“Mind the step. ”