Hellfire (21 page)

“I guess there is something to it, even if I did swear off it years ago,” Kemp mumbled. He shrugged one of his shoulders. “I was a bitter boy. Just about anything made my temper go off, and it got me into a lot of trouble. I shaped up a lot after my father died. I started taking a lot of things into my hands then.”

Ozzie gasped. “Your father passed away? I’m so sorry.”

“Me, too.”

Ozzie’s heart sank in her chest. Kemp stared ahead; his eyes were cold, almost like a statue’s. She wanted to go hug him back, warm him, but it wouldn’t be proper. Ozzie turned away.

“I was going to hide,” she confessed. “When the monsters came after us in the woods. I was going to let them take you away, and I didn’t care what happened as long as they didn’t come near me.”

Kemp blinked. “But you didn’t.”

“No.” Ozzie had lain there, too scared even to cry, even to breathe. “All I wanted was to be away from the monsters, and then something told me I had to get up. I had to fight them. I didn’t want to, but I knew I had to. I had to help you.”

Kemp’s head slowly sagged. He looked away a moment, and then he looked back. Ozzie’s eyes led straight to his brown ones. “You’re my miracle,” he said.

Her heart skipped a beat. No one had ever said such a thing about her. “What?”

Kemp didn’t repeat himself. He closed his eyes and leaned toward her, his lips on hers. Ozzie was torn between pulling away and falling into him. She let her eyes roll.

The sheriff stood at the edge of the hallway. Ozzie gasped and scooted away from Kemp. He stood up quickly.

“He’s awake,” the sheriff said.

“What?” Kemp blurted.

“The man I, uh,” Blake began. He stammered, took a breath, and then said firmly, “The man I shot. He’s awake.”

Ozzie frowned at him. “And you just left him?”

“He said he wanted to be alone,” Blake replied. “There’s just something discomforting about being next to the man who shot him, I suppose.”

Ozzie’s frown deepened. She wanted to hate the sheriff for what he had done, but his kindness wouldn’t allow that. She was still angry, but it was a hollow anger.

“I’ll go tend to him,” Ozzie said. She stood up and instinctively moved to arrange her skirts, but the legs went taut on the coveralls. She puffed frustrated air.

Blake held up a hand. “No, ma’am, please. He said he wanted to rest on his own.”

“Maybe he said that to you, but—”

Blake shook his head so low it looked like he was hanging it.

“We need to discuss where we’re going,” Kemp called out. He was back at the steering wheels for the airship.

The sheriff raised his head again. “Well, we’re all fugitives on a federal level now— kidnapping, theft, and me for assaulting a man with a deadly weapon. Think this thing could get us to Mexico?”

Ozzie’s jaw dropped. “I’m not going to Mexico!”

“It’s closer than Spanish Cuba,” Blake said. “Besides, we could leave the airship and the engineer at the border and cross on foot. That might at least keep them off our case while they’re trying to recover federal property.”

“But... we can’t,” Ozzie said. She had wanted to help Kemp escape, but this was too much. Had she ruined her whole life? “I want to go home.”

Blake sighed. “I don’t think we can go home again, ma’am.”

Ozzie hugged herself.

“We’re not leaving Gloriana,” Kemp announced. “We have to go to Lake Providence.”

“Lake Providence!” Blake blurted. “You want to go back to the capital? In a stolen airship?”

“We’ll drop the airship off, like you said. We can walk into the city.”

“They’ll see us,” Blake said.

“No,” Ozzie said. She let her grip on herself slip a little. “With all of the hubbub from preparations on Midsummer’s Day, we can blend in with the crowds.”

Blake squinted his eyes. “I suppose we could, but why would we want to? We’ve broken the law. We should run! That’s what criminals do!”

Kemp shook his head. “We’re not criminals like that. We have work to do.”

Blake’s eyes popped open. “We do?”

“I do,” Kemp said firmly. “Something very bad that’s going to happen, and I have to stop it.”

“You do, do you?”

“I do,” Kemp said.

Ozzie watched the fireman at the wheels. His face was set, and his eyes stared forward. She turned and followed his gaze. In the distance, the smoky haze of Lake Providence hung over the horizon.

She turned back to Kemp. “I want to help you.”

He jerked to life. Over softer eyes, his red brows twisted quizzically, he asked, “You do?”

“I do,” she replied. “I don’t know what it is you’re supposed to be doing, but I know it’s good work. I want to help you.”

His brows changed from curious to worried. “Are you sure? You’ve already given up a lot just helping me out of the gate.”

Ozzie blinked. She really had given up a lot. The hospital would never take her back after helping a patient escape, even if Dr. Sims miraculously understood the danger Kemp was in from the murderous Rail Agents. They would probably have a warrant for her arrest running across the state on telegraphs in less than an hour.

She shook her head. It didn’t matter. She had to help. “I’ll do it,” she said firmly.

“No,” Kemp repeated. “You can go home. I’m sure your family can help you.”

Her stomach twisted itself up into a knot. Ozzie didn’t know how she was going to explain this whole ordeal to her father, much less the rest of her family. Everyone had seen what she had done. A warrant for her arrest would probably bring Lake Providence police to the front door of the Jacey home by the end of the day. She could picture her father’s face turn white as all of the blood drained out, her mother and sisters wailing on the fainting couch at their misfortune to have an outlaw in the family. Ozzie was an embarrassment.

She shook her head again and made her stomach loosen itself. “This is bigger than just my family. I will help you.”

Kemp smiled. It was small at first, and gradually his mouth opened up to a grin. “Thank you.”

Blake leaned on the doorframe.

Kemp’s smile faded. He looked back at the older man. “Sheriff, you’ve already done more for me than I could have asked. Perhaps you could drop us off and then take the airship to the border. It should have enough coal to make it across Texas, especially if we load it up with all the catalyst in the furnace room. I’ll teach you how to drive it.”

Blake leaned his head on his arm. He sighed again, and then he stood tall.

“All my life I’ve tried to do what is right, keep the Ten Commandments, as it were,” he said. “I’ve done pretty well of it. I kept my promise to you, Kemp, to visit your mother. I even made up for letting the rail agents take you in the first place by coming back for you. But I shouldn’t have let them take you in the first place.”

“I heard what Ticks said. He had a higher rank. There was nothing you could do,” Kemp told him.

“There was plenty I could’ve done,” Blake said. “He’s just a rotten bully, and I should’ve put him in his place, not bent over backward since he has a bigger badge.”

Ozzie let herself go and then crossed her arms firmly. “You were willing to shoot a man.”

“I was,” Blake admitted. “That’s the level I hadn’t thought about before. Any other day of my life, I would have backed down. Those men would’ve taken the ship, and we’d all be in the custody of those Rail Agents right now.”

Ozzie’s eyebrows shot up her forehead in surprise. She hadn’t thought of it that way. She let her arms fall from their firm crossing.

“Today, I couldn’t let that happen,” Blake said, shaking his head.

“Why not?” Kemp asked.

Blake’s weary eyes stared off at the ceiling. “Because there’s so much more than just doing the right thing according to the law.”

Ozzie didn’t understand. “What does that mean?”

“There are monsters.” Blake’s eyes fell toward the floor. “I saw them, chasing you. They shouldn’t have been there, but I saw them, so twisted and malformed, evil, just from the look of them.”

Ozzie’s heart pounded. She was still afraid of them.

Don’t be afraid. I am with you.

She wasn’t sure which of the men had said it. “What does that mean?”

Blake walked across the room. She stepped out of his way. When he got to the paper-shuttered windows, he pointed out to the broad green world below them.

“It means that none of this matters, not the hills, not the farms, not the crops, not even this airship. We’re just a blink of the eye in a world bigger than all this.”

Goose pimples settle on the back of Ozzie’s neck. She shivered. “That’s too much.”

“No, it’s right,” Blake said.

Kemp winced. “Sheriff, I’m not sure what’s going to come of us. You’ve probably already ruined your law career.”

“Can’t take it with me,” Blake said. He laughed. “In fact, this is probably the first time I’ve been worrying about something other than winning elections until I can retire. I feel pretty free now that I don’t have to worry about appearances.”

Kemp’s smile returned.

Ozzie found herself smiling, too. She had long bickered with her family about how it looked to have a Jacey as a nurse at a mental hospital. After a great deal of debate and many letters home, it was finally her charity that her mother could brag to her friends about at tea. Her father seemed satisfied that she earned an income, although he assured anyone in conversation that it was temporary. Her sisters remained unconvinced, but they routinely told her they took solace in the fact it freed up another eligible Lake Providence bachelor for their own pools of suitors.

“What’s the plan, then?” Blake asked.

Kemp only stared out the windows.

“He doesn’t have one,” Ozzie said. “He doesn’t even know what the danger is.”

Blake hummed. “How’re you supposed to stop something you don’t know?”

“I don’t even know that,” Kemp said simply. “All I know is that the city is going to be in trouble. It’s going to warp and bend… like my locomotive did.”

Blake stopped humming. “You said that happened after you dumped all of the catalyst into the fire on your train.”

Kemp nodded.

“Then we need to look into this catalyst,” Blake said. “You know, your mother mentioned how she hates the stuff. Says it’s a gateway to Hell.”

“She may be right,” Kemp replied.

Ozzie shivered. She wanted to believe it was from the breeze trickling in through the paper shutters.

“So what are we going to do?” she asked, to distract herself as much as find out Kemp’s plan.

The fiery-haired man narrowed his eyes as he stared at the horizon. “If bad catalyst is at the source of this whole mess, I know just where to find it.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

It hadn’t even been two days since Nate Kemp last visited the Lake Providence rail yard, yet it already seemed like an alien place. Shadows danced around corners of the sheds and under the sleeping trains. He had been in the yard plenty of times while it was dark, practically every morning of his adult life so the train would be ready to go by daybreak. It was a matter of navigating the splotches of light from the lamps that dangled from iron posts. He remembered where they were even without looking.

Twin broad lines of tracks led from the west, where the setting sun still had a lingering glow. A single line went east, riding Burr Bridge across the river with the bypass on the other side for trains that had to wait their turn. As the rails came into the yard, they broke into pairs and pairs of pairs on switches. Nate had never counted how many lines there were altogether; it always seemed enough to rearrange for a new train for freight, passengers, mail, and special transports. A few rails led to the huge turnstile that let locomotives go into the big bank of sheds where the mechanics worked with the engineers and firemen to make repairs. Everyone aboard the trains joked how lazy the mechanics were staying at the yard all day, and the mechanics swore at the engineers and firemen not respecting their trains. A brick tower stood near the luxurious passenger depot, as much a show of impressive Glorianan architecture as giving the yardmaster a view of all the tracks at once. On the far side, the elegant passenger platform stood out with its marble accents and bright, gas lamps.

Nate supposed it was he who had changed, not the yard. Every other day, he had come to the yard to put in a long shift of work to make a wage. Now he was here for something so much larger than himself and his family that he didn’t understand it.

Three of them walked as quietly as they could through the gravel-coated yard. Nate led, finding patches where the rocks had worn thin and they could step on the packed earth without giving themselves away by crunching footsteps. He stayed out of the direct light of the lamps, walking with bent knees and back, low in the twilight. They didn’t carry a lantern of their own.

Even at night, the rail yard was busy. A train was coming in from Mississippi, its brakes squealing as iron wheels ground against iron rails amid loud hisses of escaping steam. Warning chimes rang and whistles blew for anyone who didn’t notice the locomotive. The sound covered their steps, so they hurried to cover as much ground as they could before the train came to a rest.

They had abandoned the airship hours ago outside of Lake Providence. Nate had steered it far south of the city, out in the country where few people would be watching for a stolen airship. The landing had been easy enough in principle: he had to let the hot air out of the balloon. In the end, it was more of an art. Letting out too much would make the airship plummet, so it was trial-and-error opening the vents and then scrambling to close them and firing up the furnace as the ground rushed up. In the end, they landed with a loud thud and a symphony of crunches as every beam in the ship settled. Nate wondered how much practice pilots had to do before they got it right.

After they had helped themselves to the larder for an airborne dinner of hardtack, cheese, and apples. Sheriff Blake had raided the armory, taking a rifle for himself and giving each of them a revolver.

The nurse, Ozzie, had practically turned green as she held the weight of iron in her hands.

“Have you handled a gun before?” Nate had asked.

Her pale eyes were wide. “Of course not!”

“Me neither,” Nate confessed.

She stared at him as if she weren’t sure whether to feel comforted.

“They’re expensive,” he had explained. “Besides, I never seemed to need more than my own fists.”

He winked.

She winked back, and then she rolled her eyes.

When Blake and Ozzie had disembarked, Nate had set the furnace to full blast and tied the steering wheels in place with the directing screws pointed north. The airship rose back into the air immediately, and he jumped down about six feet after he had run from the pilot’s station. If no one noticed, the airship would ride out its fuel for hot air and eventually come to a rest somewhere in Ozarka, possibly even Missouri. With any luck, the Rail Agency would catch word of her and end up on a wild goose chase. They’d have to catch up to her and board her, only to find a bandaged-up engineer with quite a story to tell.

The man Blake had shot said his name was Armistand Cramer. They had left him in bed with a canteen of soup and another of coffee. Nate had never seen a man apologize to another man for shooting him, but he decided Blake did it as well as it could be done. Armistand seemed to understand, even though Nate couldn’t explain all that was going to happen. He was just a fireman who followed orders, like Nate.

After the airship had disappeared overhead, they hiked through woods and across fields to the outskirts of Lake Providence, where they waited for nightfall and ate the leftover crackers and cheese. The south side of town was packed with factories and warehouses. The streets were practically abandoned as they walked through them. Workers had already headed into the nightshift, and there wasn’t any reason for anyone else to be around.

They had snuck into the rail yard through the back, jumping the short fence that was more of a suggestion than an actual impediment to anyone who was determined to get inside. The real threats were the watchmen, who strolled, swinging their lanterns, and carried short bats that were officially for bashing rats. Unofficially, they made excellent tools to chase off ne’er-do-wells.

The trio had crossed paths with the first watchman shortly after coming over the fence. Nate directed them behind an old boxcar. Their shuffling footfalls would certainly have caught his attention if it weren’t for a train blowing its whistle as it left the station. As it was, the watchman walked calmly by them, not even pausing to glance under the wheels of the abandoned car for legs. From there they had snuck around the sheds and across three trains waiting for their time on the schedule.

“Where are we going?” Ozzie whispered from behind him.

Nate shushed her and pointed. One end of the yard held the mountain of coal that had spilled over the short walls of its bin so long ago that Nate had never seen it. Old-timers told him about the days when the pile was smaller and a train coming through was a special occasion. Now the coal was dumped by the carload onto the pile by cranes and loaded almost as quickly onto tenders for trains coming and going.

Next to the coal was the pump-house that slurped up fresh water from the Lake Providence reservoir and fed it through overhead pipes to the several water towers that quenched the eternal thirst of the steam engines. That was where Doc kept his logistics office, watching over the consumption of water, coal, and, most importantly, Newton’s Catalyst.

They followed a parked train for several car-lengths and waited at the caboose. Nate scanned the yard, found it clear, and waved the others on. They scurried across the last few yards of open space and dove into the shadow of the coal hill.

Nate waited a moment for a shout of “Hey!” or the sounds of boots racing after them. Neither came.

“Let’s go,” he whispered to the others and led them toward the door to the logistics office.

He laid a hand on the latch and checked over his shoulder. Ozzie was right behind him, and Blake was a little farther back, looking both ways in constant surveillance. He hoped the sheriff would spot anyone before they spotted them. They were already surrounded, and there would be no escape.

Nate opened the door quietly and slipped inside. It was brighter there, with several lamps burning kerosene. Whale oil had long given out, and the few giant sea creatures left were typically kept as pets and mascots of various navies. Fortunately, the same steam-powered engines that had driven the ships to harvest whales down to stubble could now squeeze useful oil from coal itself.

He blinked a few times until he could see clearly. The office was a long room, with a door leading to the water pipes on the left and a door reinforced with iron bars on the right guarding the precious catalyst stores. Boards with papers clipped to them lined the walls, keeping track of every expenditure. In the middle of it all, Doc sat at his desk, which was covered in even more papers than the walls.

Doc was a portly man, balding and big from a stressful job without fresh air. His white shirt had the collar undone and the sleeves rolled up. Small spectacles rested on his nose, his eyesight ruined by too many late nights. Nate had only once seen him without his glasses, and the depressions in his flesh where they rested on his nose were so deep that they were permanent.

“Hi, Doc,” Nate said. “Working late?”

The man looked up. Sputtering sounds came from his tiny mouth between huge cheeks. A sign on his desk was marked “Mr. Schuylkill.” Nate assumed he had a first name, but he had never heard it. Everyone in the railroad business just knew him as “Doc.”

“Nate Kemp!” Doc cried. “I thought you were dead!”

“Just because I didn’t come in one day of work?” Nate asked. He supposed that might have been a clue, in any other situation. As a fireman, he had to account for the weight of coal left in the tender at the end of each day’s run and sign for a new load each morning.

“They said you died fighting with the agents,” Doc said. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped beads of sweat from his forehead. “After you killed Jones and crashed the train.”

Nate’s heart missed a beat. His chest hurt. “I didn’t kill anybody. Something else did.”

“Hold it!” Blake called.

The sheriff stepped forward with threatening thuds of his boots. He had the rifle raised to his shoulder and his eye down the sight. The end of the barrel was pointed straight at Doc’s round head.

Nate jumped with a hand out to stop him. As he moved, he saw Doc’s other hand come into view of the corner of his eye. While Nate had been watching him mop his brow, the clerk had quietly pulled a pistol from under the desk.

“Doc!” Nate shouted.

“Drop it,” Blake warned.

The pistol hit the floorboards with a clunk. Doc raised up both hands and took heavy breaths.

Nate looked at the sheriff, who stood stone-still with the rifle still trained on Doc. Blake didn’t trust him, but Nate would’ve trusted the old clerk with anything. They had known each other for all the years Nate had worked the trains. If Nate had come in alone, that would have been the end of him.

“Doc,” Nate said, his voice soft. “You were going to shoot me?”

The big man sat silently with both hands up.

“I don’t believe it. Why, Doc?”

Doc’s voice came out low and stilted. “You have the madness.”

“No, he doesn’t!” Ozzie called, now stepping forward herself. “I’ve seen men with Stoker’s Madness, and Nathan Kemp is right in the head.”

Nate smiled a little. “And she’s a medical professional.”

Doc’s lips moved, but he didn’t seem able to say anything.

Nate sighed away his smile. He leaned over Doc’s desk and set both hands as fists on top of the loose papers. “I’m sane, Doc, but I’ve seen a lot more in the past two days than most men do in a lifetime. Something’s not right in Gloriana.”

Doc shook his head. “I don’t know what you tell you.”

The words were clean, almost practiced. Any other man would have asked what was the matter, unless they had an idea already. Nate squinted. “What don’t you know, Doc?”

The big man shrank a little in his wooden chair. “I don’t know anything.”

“The morning of the train wreck, the fire wouldn’t light up properly. Why is that, Doc?”

He shrugged.

“I’ve been working the firebox for years, but I’ve never seen it act like that outside of a bad mix of Newton’s Catalyst.”

Doc’s eyes flashed wide.

“It’s the catalyst, isn’t it, Doc?” Nate demanded. He realized he was shouting. “I got that catalyst from you!”

“I know, I know,” Doc admitted. He hung his head.

“What do you know, Doc?”

The big man leaned forward, rested his hands on top of the desk, and took several gulps of air. “They told me to give it to you.”

Nate fell back from the desk.

“Who’s they?” Blake asked.

“The rail agents.”

“Which rail agent? Ticks?”

“Bill Ticks, John Davies, Kyle Larper, the whole lot of them,” Doc said. Tears streamed down his face. “I was just doing my job.”

“It’s your job to wreck trains and kill people?” Ozzie burst out.

“No!” Doc said. He buried his round face in his hands. “I didn’t know they would wreck! I was just doing as I was told!”

“There were three wrecks this month,” Blake said. “You didn’t know what was happening?”

Doc shook his head, still keeping his hands on his face. “I knew about them. I’d already been handing off special bags of catalyst for weeks by then, but nothing ever came of it, except a few people complaining of bad batches… I thought about refusing, but do you know what they would have done to me if I hadn’t given it out?”

Nate glared at him. “Put you on a train destined to blow up? Throw you out of an airship? Lock you up? Because all of that has happened to me!”