But then, to everyone’s relief, they heard the faint scrape of boots against steel, and Ernie called back, “I’m still here. Hold on. ” Then they all heard more scuttling. “Getting down is easier than getting up. ”
When Robert helped pull him back inside, everyone could see precisely why. His left hand was covered in blood, and the sailor-?turned-?dirigible-?crewman was as pale as death in the unlit cabin. He announced, “One of the lanterns busted in my hand while I was trying to hang it. But the other two are up and holding. I placed ’em by the ‘civilian’ end of the sign. That’s where the CSA logo is tamped on, anyway. Hopefully they’ll see it all right. ”
“It might’ve worked,” Gordon Rand posited. “No one’s shooting at us. Not right this second. ”
The first mate said, “Maybe someone’s planning to make the next shot count. Or maybe they can’t see the paint job yet and they’re trying to get a good look. ”
Rand added, “Or perhaps they’re slow readers. ”
Mercy was out of her chair now, invigorated by the prospect of having something to do. She told Ernie, “Come sit over here, by me. And give me your hand. ”
He joined her at her seat and sat patiently while she rummaged through her sack.
“Everybody hang on to something. We’re losing altitude,” the first mate announced.
The captain amended the announcement to include, “We’re going down, but we aren’t crashing. Brace yourselves as you can, but I repeat, we are not crashing. The steering’s all but gone out, that’s all, so I can raise or lower us, but not point us in any direction. ”
“Are we behind southern lines?” someone other than Mercy asked, but she didn’t see who’d raised the question again.
“Yes,” the captain’s tone of certainty was an outright lie, but he stuck to it. “We’re just setting down, but we might take a tree or two with us. Estimated time to landing, maybe two or three minutes—I’ve got to take her down swift, because we’re drifting back the other way. ”
“Oh, God,” said the old lady.
“Don’t holler for him yet,” Mercy muttered. “It might not be as bad as all that. Ernie, let me see your hand. ”
“We’ve only got a couple of minutes—”
“I only need a couple of minutes. Now hold still and let me look. ” By then, she’d found her bandage rolls. She tore off a portion of one, and used it to wipe the area clear enough to see it better. It wasn’t all cuts, and it wasn’t all burns. In the very dim light that squeezed in through the windows, she could see it was a blending of both. Mercy would’ve bet against him ever having proper use of his mangled index finger again; but the wound wouldn’t be a killing one unless it took to festering.
“How bad is it?” he asked her, both too nervous too look, and too nervous to look away. He blinked, holding his head away so he couldn’t be accused of watching.
“Not so bad. Must hurt like the dickens, though. I need to wash it and wrap it up. ”
“We only have—”
“Hold it up, above your shoulder. It’ll bleed slower and hurt less that way,” she urged, and dived back into the bag. Seconds later, she retrieved a heavy glass bottle filled with a viscous clear liquid that glimmered in the moonlight and the feeble glow from the lanterns outside.
He said, “We’re going down. We’re really going down. ”
He was looking out the window beside her head. She could see it, too—the way the clouds were spilling past. She tried to ignore them, and to ignore the throat-?catching drop of the craft.
“Don’t look out there. Look at me,” she commanded. Meeting his eyes she saw his fear, and his pain, and the way he was so pallid from the injury or the stress of acquiring it. But she held his eyes anyway, until she had to take his hand and swab it off with a dampened bandage.
The Zephyr was not falling, exactly. But Mercy could not in good conscience say that it was “landing” either. Her stomach was up in her mouth, nearly in her ears, she thought; and her ears were popping every time she swallowed. If she didn’t concentrate on something else, she’d start screaming, so she focused on the bleeding, burned hand as she cleaned it, then propped Ernie’s elbow on the headrest to keep it upright while she fumbled for dry bandages.
The old man leaned forward and threw up on the floor. His wife patted at his back, then felt around for any bags or rags to contain or clean it. Finding none, and lacking anything better to do, she returned to the back-?patting. Mercy couldn’t help them, so she stayed with Ernie, wrapping his still-?bleeding hand and doing it swiftly, as if she’d been mummifying hands for her whole life. She did it like the world was ending at any minute, because for all she knew, it might be.
But things could be worse. No one was shooting at them.
She told Ernie, “Hold it above your heart and it won’t throb so bad. Did I tell you that already?”
“Yes ma’am. ”
“Well, keep doing it. ” She gasped then as the ship gave a lurch and a heave as if its own stomach were sinking and rising. The captain told everyone to “Hang on to something!” but there was no something handy except for the seat.
Ernie went for chivalry, flinging his right arm over Mercy’s shoulder and pulling her under his chest; she ducked there, and wrapped her left arm around his waist. She closed her eyes so she couldn’t see the ground rearing up out the window, not even out of her peripheral vision.
The next phase was not as sudden as she’d expected. It sneaked up on her, taking her breath away as the Zephyr sliced through treetops that dragged it to a slower pace, then snagged it and pulled it down to the ground with a horrible rending of metal and rivets. The ship sagged, and dipped, and bounced softly. No one inside it moved.