Fiddlehead (The Clockwork Century 5)

MacGruder gave her a look that asked her what was worth smiling over. She pointed down into the cart to indicate that their foes weren’t going anywhere. “Maybe we should toss them in with the bomb,” he suggested.

“Maybe, but your court-martial idea was probably better. Our side isn’t ruled by pirates or scoundrels, Captain. You have to play fair. On the bright side, maybe one of them will make a run for it, and you can shoot him. ”

Now he smiled back. “A man can dream. ”

The crawler heaved and hauled them up over the road’s raggedy bits with a motion like a ship in terrible seas. Maria found it worse than flying, even in the stormy air they’d navigated thus far that day; but she clutched her seat and—as they traversed one particularly bad pothole—the captain who sat beside her.

“There!” he called out. At first Maria thought it was a strange reaction to being grabbed by a woman, but that wasn’t his point at all. He was looking off to the right, where a dirt road passed between the trees.

The crawler shuddered to an idling stop. Thomson asked over his shoulder, “Sir, you think this is it?”

“It’s about right, so far as the map goes. If it doesn’t take us right to the spot, it’ll get us close, and there will be fewer trees to mow down. Just take the turn, if we can make it. ”

“Oh, I can make the turn. I’m just not sure we can make that road. It’s barely big enough for a pair of horses. ”

“Try it and see. We’re out of plans, and we’re running out of time,” he said.

He was right, and Maria knew it. The Baldwin-Felts men might have been hysterical, but that didn’t mean they were wrong. She could hear it, too, behind her: a different frequency of hum—an off-beat vibration that drummed up against her spine. The bomb’s integrity was failing. The jostle of the rolling-crawler couldn’t be helping matters, and it only grew worse when the vehicle turned right in a slow, perilous arc, then began its passage between the trees on a road even worse than the one it was leaving.

Maria thought it wasn’t possible for the ride to get any rougher, but she’d been wrong before, and here was another fine example.

“Get your head down!” MacGruder ordered her—and perhaps the rest of the men, though she took it personally.

He was right to make the command, as the trees at the road’s edge had sharp, low branches. Their limbs were bare and cold, and they whipped viciously against the crawler and its occupants. Maria huddled down low, ducking as far as she could behind Thomson, who valiantly held the thing steady and forced it forward, ever forward, in the lowest gear imaginable.

“Can’t this thing go any faster?” Sanders shouted.

“It can barely go this fast!” Thomson replied, jerking the steering wheel as it reeled against him, the wheels having snapped against some dip that threatened to trap them. “But if we stop, we’re damned! We’ll never get it moving again!”

So they fought onward, their bones rattling with every turn of the wheels. With each foot the weapon behind them grew a little weaker, a little louder. A little harder to ignore.

“That must be it!” Thomson hollered, pointing at a pair of structures no bigger than shacks. He drew the crawler up close beside them, and let the motor rumble.

One of the shacks was barely a roof on timbers, a covering for a hole in the ground. The structure beside it had a sign out front that said, CUMBERLAND CAVERNS! ONE CENT PER PERSON! SEE THE WONDER! AT YOUR OWN RISK! SUPPLIES AVAILABLE!

“Someone’s selling visits to the cave?” MacGruder wondered aloud.

“It’s not uncommon,” Maria informed him. “But it’s deserted now,” she said aloud, to herself more than anyone else. “It must be. ”

“Thomson, get the back of this thing as close to that hole as you can manage!”

“Yes, sir! You get out and guide me. I’ll do my best!” he vowed.

MacGruder flung himself over the side and went to the rear, hollering instructions and giving whatever guidance he could—and finally the crawler was positioned with its back deck beneath the overhang, almost immediately above the open hole below.

“That’s as close as you’re going to get!” the captain called, and made a throat-cutting gesture that told Thomson to stop the motor.

When he did, the crawler fell silent, except for the pops and pings of the engine cooling almost immediately in the bitter air. But the forest wasn’t perfectly quiet, even without its raucous growling. The crisp afternoon was interrupted by the slow hiss, sizzle, and creak of the Maynard bomb shifting in its housing.

“Captain…” begged Frankum. “You have to let us go!”

“And I will,” MacGruder told them. He reached into his boot and pulled out a knife, then leaned into the compartment and cut the ropes that bound Frankum and his men. “Get out now. You’re going to help us shove this goddamn thing into that goddamn hole. ”

The Baldwin-Felts men agreed to this immediately. They might as well. There was no time to run.

They climbed out of the rear and rubbed at the sore spots on their wrists as Sanders untied the ropes that held the tarp over the awful device.

When he was finished with the knots, he whipped the sheet away, revealing the monstrous creation: a smooth, elongated box with round edges, banded with steel and rivets. Its nose was fixed with gleaming copper plate, and in its tail lurked a vast tangle of tubes, coils, and wires. Three tanks were mounted atop it, side by side like pig iron from the smelter. These tanks were the source of the hissing, the creaking, and other ominous sounds of something tight beginning to split under pressure.