Hellfire (19 page)

Husk threw his head around, looking in every corner of the mill. It was a marvel of modern technology with belts leading to the whirling blades, automated rollers, hooked chains on tracks. Pipes along the walls carried steam from the boilers to do the work. A huge chest near the entrance held pry bars and handsaws, still polished from the factory.

Yet, hung on a nail in one of the corners, there was an old ax. It was rusty, and its blade looked dull. Many men probably would’ve thrown it out, but the millworkers knew somehow it was precious, even though they might have claimed some obscure need for its clunky blade. It was a relic.

Husk dashed for it and turned back as soon as his fingers pulled the ax from the wall. The monster limped toward him again, growling and spitting as it went. Its enormous claws were raised toward his neck.

Husk swung the ax up in front of him. The monster limped faster, swinging out its good leg and growling with every step.

He tried to remember the rest of the words. His mouth stammered, tumbling out a few sounds without making them coherent. “My cup... My cup runneth over. Surely.”

The memory flooded back. “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.”

The monster roared again and turned its wretched face away.

Husk seethed. “My life, not yours.”

He charged. He raised the ax above his head and brought it down with all the strength he could muster. The ax-head buried itself in the monster’s motley face, driving the whole head back into its neck.

The monster made a sickening, babbling groan and fell to the ground. Husk pulled the ax and hacked again and again until the top of the head came free from the rest of the body. Gray pus spread over the brick floor and flicked up onto his boots.

Husk stood over the monster’s corpse, gasping for air once more. He waited a moment, until he was sure it wasn’t going to get up again. It was ended.

“What the hell is this?” a voice behind him called.

Husk jumped. He turned around to find a mass of men charging toward him.

Some of them were workers from the mill, returning with their hands filled with sharp steel axes. Others were deputies armed with rifles and a pair of leather-coated Rail Agency hunchbacks. The sheriff of Shreveport and the blond marshal who had been in the lumberyard at noon stood at the center.

“It’s dead,” Husk told them simply. Despite his body aching with exhaustion, his ruined suit splattered with gray ooze, his ankle he could feel swelling inside his boot, he grinned triumphantly.

A round of shocked gasps rang out from the crowd. The hunchbacks flung up their hands and rolled back their heads as if they were wailing in silence.

“It’s what?” the marshal blurted, dropping his pistol. He had a black eye and several dried cuts where Pike’s men had hit him.

“He said it’s dead,” the sheriff echoed.

Husk nodded. He was still breathing hard.

The marshal turned to one of the hunchbacks, who seemed even thinner than Husk, and jerked a thumb toward the monster’s body. The hunchback shuffled toward it.

“Who are you?” the sheriff asked.

“I’m Thomas Husk,” Husk replied, “of the Bastrop Star.”

“Bastrop?”

Husk nodded. “I don’t think it was a circus ape after all.”

The lanky hunchback poked the body and examined the ax-wound. He looked up and said something Husk didn’t quite catch. It almost sounded more like flies buzzing than a voice. The other hunchback, so fat and round that Husk couldn’t see how he stayed on his feet, pressed his stubby hands against the leather mask on his face.

“It is dead,” the marshal repeated. He narrowed his blue eyes, the one with the black ring under it practically vanishing among the swollen flesh.

“You said it couldn’t be killed,” the sheriff said.

The marshal stood still, his eyes nearly closed.

“Marshal?” the sheriff called. “Davies!”

The marshal seemed to wake up. He looked from the monster to Husk. He shivered. “Brr. He’s going to want to hear about this.”

“Who?” Husk asked.

Instead of an answer, the blond marshal charged at Husk. Husk brought up his ax, but Davies was too quick for him. He knocked the ax aside and brought the butt of his pistol down on Husk’s head. Darkness overcame him.

Chapter Twenty-One

Ozera Jacey’s hands were shaking as she wrapped the bandages around the hip of the man the sheriff had shot. It wasn’t a life-threatening wound since the bullet had gone through his side, but it had left a couple of large holes that took a lot of work before they weren’t bleeding out. Her hands and dress were covered in blood once again. The new stain layered over the old, black one, which had become crusty.

Ozzie stopped and hung her head. “Get a hold on yourself.”

She was at the end of her wits. It had been a stressful enough day nursing Nathan Kemp in surgery, but now she had helped a patient escape, seen two men shot, stitched up one of them, and witnessed monsters. It had been one thing to hear stories from the patients, but actually seeing them…

“No,” Ozzie told herself. “Don’t think about them.”

If she did, she was going to drive herself crazy. She had to bury the memory deep. It was too horrible to dwell on.

“How’s it going in here?” a gruff voice asked. It was the man with the sheriff’s badge, the one who had shot the man.

Ozzie suddenly shivered. She cleared her throat and folded her arms. “Almost done.”

The thuds of boots sounded behind her. “Is he going to make it?”

A little warmth reentered her body. The sheriff cared. That marshal in black hadn’t cared at all. He would’ve killed a man with no more thought than swatting a fly. This man had at least a conscience for what he had done. Still, what he had done was an awful thing.

Ozzie looked over her shoulder. The sheriff was holding his hat in his hands, watching with tight lips. She turned back to unwinding the gauze.

“He’s still asleep,” Ozzie said.

The man had fainted even before she got to him. She didn’t know whether it was from the shock of being shot or from the loss of blood, but she envied him. He didn’t have to deal with any more of this madness.

After the airship had taken off, Ozzie had peeked into the hallway to see the sheriff kneeling next to the fallen man. While he kept the wounds covered, she had rummaged through the ship’s cargo until she found the medicine locker. They had set him in the bunkroom, where Ozzie had washed him and stitched him up. The sheriff had walked out. She expected such from a man, never cleaning up the messes they made.

But he had come back.

“He’ll make it?” the sheriff repeated.

Ozzie tied off the end of the clean gauze. “I think so.”

The sheriff let out a long sigh. “Thank you.”

Ozzie stood up and felt the man’s forehead. It was cool, but not the chill of a dying man. She covered him in a blanket. “It was a good thing you didn’t aim four inches to the left.”

The sheriff shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I know.”

Ozzie held up her bloodstained hands. Without anything else to wipe her hands on, she bent and used the hem of her dress. A little dried mud from the woods fell off. “Who are you, anyway?”

“I’m Sheriff Clancy Blake. From Bastrop.”

“What are you doing shooting people in Oak Grove?”

He cleared his throat. “I came to help Nate Kemp.”

“Nathan?” Ozzie narrowed her eyes. It seemed everybody was doing that today. “How’d you know he was here?”

“I got a telegram,” Blake said. He stopped and held up a finger. “Actually, his mother got a telegram.” He took a breath and explained, “Kemp asked me to let her know he was in the hospital. I was with his family when the telegram arrived.”

Ozzie blinked her eyes open again. “My telegram?”

“Maybe,” Blake said. “It said Nurse Ozera Jac—”

“Ozzie,” she interrupted. “I’m Ozzie Jacey.”

“It’s a pleasure,” Blake said. He grimaced. “I wish it were under better circumstances.”

Ozzie sighed and held up her bloodstained hands. “It couldn’t be much worse.”

The sheriff turned and set his hat on a hook on the wall. He seemed quiet with disgust.

Ozzie hugged herself. Her mouth was getting her into trouble again. This man was a lot bigger than she, and she’d known a few men to use their size to keep women in their place.

Instead, the sheriff went to a set of drawers built into the cedar wall. He opened one, shuffled through it, and then opened another.

Ozzie stretched her neck to look.

He was going through clothes. Blake moved onto the next drawer. After the fourth, he sighed and pulled out a gray set of coveralls. He turned back to Ozzie and held them out.

“Ma’am. I suppose you’d like to get out of that dirty dress. I’m sorry it’s a men’s garment, but I don’t think there are any clothes for womenfolk aboard.”

She arched an eyebrow at him.

“There’s a washroom across the hall,” the sheriff said. “I’ll stay with him if you want to go and…”

He didn’t seem able to finish. Ozzie pursed her lips. Maybe the sheriff wasn’t as bad as she thought. “Thank you.” She took the clothes and left him.

Ozzie had been aboard airships before, but only on pleasure rides during the state fair. The first few trips had thrilled her as the ground had pulled away like the shore from a sailboat. As she got older, it seemed more mundane. The last time she had gone up, she had offered to stay behind, but her father wanted to keep up appearances with his partners going along to show they could afford the ride. She was tired of being shown off, but being scolded for not being worth showing off was worse. Now she had the excuse of nursing at the hospital over Midsummer, at least.

Instead of being the spacious luxury balloons with their sofas and tall windows, this was a working vessel. The rooms were small and crowded with what the men needed to get the Rail Agency’s work done. The bunkroom had a few beds built in like shelves; the others were packed with tools and crates. Down the hemp ladder, the boiler room’s fire groaned with all the coal Nathan Kemp had fed it.

The washroom was an outhouse with a tin tank of water above a basin. It was spartan, but it would do. She stripped off her dress, grabbed a bar of soap, and scrubbed her hands until they were pink instead of red. Ozzie turned toward her dress but paused. It was as good as ruined anyway. She sighed and tucked it behind the water basin.

Ozzie tied off her slip at the waist and pulled on the coveralls. The arms and legs were much too long, so she rolled them up. The belt was too long, too, and she had to punch a new hole in the leather with a hairpin clasp.

She took a step back and looked herself over. Being a nurse was one thing, but a lady engineer? “Oh, Ozzie, if your parents could see you now.”

There was a frosty mirror bolted to the water tank. She polished it with her sleeve and smiled into it. Her face was a mess of muddy red where she had absent
-
mindedly brushed herself and left behind a fingerprint with her new patient’s blood.

Ozzie groaned, emptied the basin of dirty water into the toilet, and washed again. She doubted she’d ever get back to her old self.

“Maybe that’s a good thing,” she mumbled.

The sheriff was still in the bunkroom, watching over the unconscious man as he had said. He wasn’t all bad; the marshal had sneered after he shot Zane Weatherford. This man looked on the edge of tears. Ozzie turned away.

She went to the bridge. It was the most elegant room aboard the austere airship. Brass tubes and delicate gauges accented the cedar walls and little benches. Its paper shutters were all open, letting in the summer breeze. The only room to rival it might have been the tiny cabin she assumed was for the captain, but this was much more spacious.

The redheaded fireman was there, leaning over a pair of large wooden wheels. He had changed clothes, too, into a set of gray coveralls. They suited him, even though he was short enough, he had to roll his pant-legs.

Kemp didn’t seem to see her come in. He just kept staring into the distance.

She followed his gaze. The broad green expanse of Gloriana lay below them, broken up in a few squares where people had carved out farms. In the distance, smoky clouds floated up from the towers of Lake Providence. Shadows rested on the horizon beyond them.

“It looks scary from up here,” Ozzie admitted.

Kemp jumped to life.

“Oh, sorry!” Ozzie said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“No, no,” Kemp told her. He sputtered a couple more words and then pressed his lips together.

Ozzie eyed him. “Are you all right?”

“I should be asking you that,” he said. He looked back out the window. “I should thank you, for believing me, too.”

Ozzie shrugged, until the image of her mother frowning at such an unladylike position made her stop. She straightened her shoulders. “You told the truth, and you were in trouble. I had to help you.”

Kemp looked back at her with his warm brown eyes. “You did more than help! You could have walked away after faking the drugs. Why did you find me in the orchard?”

Ozzie sighed and took a step backward to lean against the wall. “I don’t know… Just, after seeing what that marshal did to Mr. Fl—Weatherford, I didn’t want them to do the same to you.”

He turned away. “Oh.”

Ozzie pursed her lips. “I know we may be considered introduced, but not properly. My name is Ozzie Jacey.”

“Nate Kemp,” he said. After a short pause, he stepped back. “Come here.”

Ozzie shifted against the wall. “What?”

“Have you ever piloted an airship before?”

Ozzie smiled again. “No, of course not.”

He smiled, too. “Neither had I until an hour ago. Want to give it a try?”

She held back for a moment, but at last she came forward. Kemp stepped back from the wheels and took her hands. His grip was rough with calluses, but it was warm. He guided her smaller hands to wooden pegs on the wheels.

“It’s pretty clever, really,” he said. “The furnace below us heats up air that fills the balloon, controlled by all those switches back there we were pulling. These wheels shunt some of the hot air to the air-screws that turn us. Like this.”

He pushed her left hand forward. Soon after the wheel turned, Ozzie felt the airship turn slightly toward the right under her feet.

An excited shiver ran up her spine. Airships were suddenly thrilling again.

The entire machine was enormous, running from the wheels in her hands on cables that directed the huge creation like magic. She locked her eyes on a point on the horizon to keep the airship heading straight. With her bearings set, she could feel the wind brush up against the airship, making it drift or wait to turn the wrong way. Ozzie had to adjust the wheels constantly, steering as invisible waves buffeted the ship.

“She’s called the Auster,” Nate Kemp said.

“What?”

Kemp let her go and pointed to a brass plaque at the front of the bridge, near the paper shutters that kept out the chilly wind. “The name of the airship is the Auster.”

“That’s nice to know.”

Ozzie reached for his hand and brought it back along with hers to the wooden wheel. As they nudged it, gears whined. They were really steering an airship. “We could call it whatever we like, I think, since it’s ours now.”

Neither of them said anything for a moment. Ozzie felt the wheels pull in her hands as the huge external engines caught breezes and updrafts. The whole of Gloriana spread out before her, an unmarked map filled with possibility.

“I wish we could stay like this,” Kemp said from behind her.

She blinked. “Why can’t we?”

Kemp made a long sigh. “Something very bad is going to happen.”

She pulled away from him. “What?”

He was quiet for several moments before admitting, “I don’t know, exactly.”

Ozzie stepped between the wheels and into the open room. It was suddenly too much space, and she hugged her arms around herself, scooting the rolled sleeves down her wrists to cover her.

Kemp was staring at her. “Why’d you go?”

She stared back. “Because you said something horrible was going to happen, but you don’t even know what!”

He let go of the wheels and dug his fingers into his red hair. The airship shifted under Ozzie’s feet as the wheels spun of their own accord. She held out her hands to keep balance.

“It’s not my fault,” Kemp said with a growl in his voice. “The light never told me what, exactly!”

She had seen the body language many times before. As patients, or anyone really, became confused, it caused them to bottle up more and more inside. She had to calm him down before his temper made him lash out. Especially that near the controls.

Ozzie walked careful steps toward him and set a hand on his head. “I’m sorry.”

“What are you sorry for?” he asked, still growling. He lashed the wheels in place with a leather strap. “You’re perfect! You sorted out what I tried to tell you when I was locked up in the asylum, and I…I can’t even figure out what the voice of God is trying to tell me.” He leaned over the podium where the wheels rested and sighed so deeply she doubted he had any breath left.

Ozzie stroked his hair. It was surprisingly soft and still a little damp from where he must have washed. She made her voice just as soft. “It’s all right.”