Storming: A Dieselpunk Adventure (59 page)

She gasped and tried to wrench free.

Zlo pushed harder. He thrust his face into hers. “This is what you get, worthless
nikto
. You betray me? You choose Groundsmen over people of your own blood?”

“You wanted to bring me to death!”

“You have brought your friends to
their
deaths. I will let you watch maybe, before it is your turn.” He pulled her arm up farther, then bent her fingers back.

A cry gurgled in her throat. She arched her back, teeth clenched.

With a scream, Walter twisted away from his captor. He hurled himself at Zlo’s legs and landed two hard kicks.

Zlo shoved him back and someone caught him from behind.

Again, Walter twisted loose and dropped to his knees. He closed his teeth in Zlo’s calf, so hard the click was audible across the room.

With a bellow, Zlo kicked him away. “
Parazit
!” He lurched at Hitch, ripped the knife free, and turned back to Walter.

The hot center in Hitch’s belly exploded. Everything around him went red hot. Blood rushed in his ears. The hole in his arm seemed to ignite in a gout of pain. All of it funneled into strength.

With a roar, he jerked free of his captors. He hurled himself at Zlo and managed to hook his good shoulder in the small of Zlo’s back, right where his kidneys should be.

Zlo’s back arched, his head flinging back. He hit his knees and practically bounced. His head came back up, and Hitch brought his own down hard. He cracked his forehead against the back of Zlo’s skull. More pain shattered through him, starting in his head and radiating down through his limbs. Blackness and stars swam in his vision.

But if Zlo was still conscious, Hitch would hit him again, so help him. He reared his head back for another go. He’d beat the evil swine’s brains to a bloody mush, even if he had to beat his own out right along.

Hands scrabbled at his back and his arms. They hauled him to his feet, and his arm sockets screamed in protest. A few hard blinks cleared his vision.

Zlo had managed to prop himself on his hands and knees, but his head hung down and he swayed.

Hitch braced against his captors and jumped off the floorboards with both feet. His booted heels caught Zlo in the hip and spun him halfway around. The mugs hanging onto Hitch lost their grip for a second, and Hitch gained a few forward inches. Enough to land another kick square on Zlo’s nose.

The man sprawled again.

Somebody jabbed fingers in Hitch’s shoulder wound.

The whole room spun, and every thought in his head got smashed flat under the weight of pain.

When finally it let up, Zlo was dragging himself to his feet. He glared at Hitch, eyes huge and unblinking. He backhanded a wash of blood from under his nose and clenched his knife in the other hand. If ever anybody’d had homicide in his eyes, he did right now.

It was a look Hitch had seen a few times before, in barroom brawls gone bad. But this was the first time he’d ever seen it while tied up and stabbed, with no Earl in sight to watch his back.

He kept his feet under him, fighting the restraining arms that held him.

Zlo reeled closer. He spat blood to the side. “Now, I
will
take out your guts.”

“No!” Walter screamed.

Jael fought against the men who held her. “Zlo! Do not do this. You cannot do this! You said fault was mine. So kill me—kill me and let them go! They are no part of this!”

He kept coming.

Hitch looked him in the eye. “C’mon, then.”

Beneath their feet, the floor heaved. The whole ship jerked like a tail-shot Jenny. It listed hard to port and bounced in the turbulence. In the corridor, everyone smacked into the far wall. Hitch pitched forward, and his guards clawed at his sleeves to keep their grip.

From far back in the ship, the propellers whined—and then
silence
.

It... worked? He had to forcibly tighten every muscle in his neck to keep from looking back at the busted pipes. In the excitement, Zlo and his pals hadn’t noticed them. And now, with any luck, the damage would be good and done.

Zlo shoved back to his feet and hollered at his men. His gaze snagged on Hitch and he hesitated. He tightened his fist on the knife.

Then
Schturming
’s tail end slewed again.

Zlo bared his teeth and waved the prisoners away. “And you,” he said to Hitch, “you will get my blade, every bit of it, later.”

At this point, later was almost as good as never. Hitch let a long breath fizz past his teeth. He looked at Jael.

She closed her eyes in relief and gave him a little nod.

They were bundled down the hall into what might be a navigation room, judging from the charts spread all over the high table in the center and the scrolls sticking out of racks along the walls.

Their guard—a fidgety kid in a striped coat—latched the door from the inside and posted himself in front of it. He swallowed twice, then pointed at the floor. “You will sit to ground, all of you.” He studiously avoided eye contact with Jael.

Wind whistled against the porthole in the far wall. The floor slanted prow-ward now, and the ship bucked in the gale like a fresh-broke colt.

Walter scootched down against the wall beside Hitch. He cradled Taos’s head in his lap.

“Are we going to crash?” he whispered.

That was a mighty good question. “Of course not.” Hitch exchanged a look with Jael on his other side.

She shook her head.

This was
not
how the plan was supposed to go. Of the two present options—get gutted by Zlo or crash in a fireball—neither was too appealing. He glanced sidelong at Walter. This was supposed to have been a rescue. At the moment, it looked a whole lot more like Custer’s last stand.

Walter stared up at him.

Hitch forced a tiny grin. “It’s going to be okay.”

The boy snuggled into the crook of his arm.

Without looking at Jael, Hitch crawled his hand across the floor until he found her icy fingertips.

She gave him a little squeeze back. But she didn’t look at him either. “I am sorry,” she whispered. “You are here because of me. Both of you.”

“The only way somebody gets someplace, bad or good, is if he takes himself.” He craned his head around to see her face. “I’m here because of me.”

She looked at him for a long moment, her eyes charting his face. Then she smiled, just a smidge. “Thank you. For very little it is worth now, I thank you.”

Hitch looked at their guard and cocked his head toward Jael. “Can’t you get her a chair? You can see she’s hurting.”

The guard glanced uncertainly over his shoulder, then back. “That is not orders—”

“Just get her a chair. What’s it going to harm at this point?”

The guard hesitated, then shuffled across the room, headed for a round-backed chair.

Hitch let him get the chair and he let him come back. But as soon as the guard was in front of him, he drew back a leg and kicked the kid right below the knee, as hard as he could.

The leg buckled.

The guard wailed and staggered forward. He whacked his chin on the chair’s seat, and, for a second, his eyes rolled up into white.

Hitch lunged forward and threw a leg over the guard’s back. He sat, facing the kid’s feet. Swallowing back the pain in his shoulder, he groped until he found hair.

The guard moaned and raised his arms, trying to push himself up.

“Just don’t.” Hitch pulled the guard’s head back by his hair and gave it a good thwack against the floor. And then another for proper measure.

“Oww...”

“Oh, shut up,” Jael said.

“Yeah, please,” Hitch said. “And listen close, because I’m going to tell you how this is going to go.”

Forty-Seven

AS SOON AS Jael and Walter were free, they got Hitch’s shoulder wound packed and bandaged. It hurt like the devil’s ugly face, but it wasn’t bleeding too much and he still had pretty good flexion. At least Zlo had missed hitting anything too important, like arteries and tendons.

As best he could with one and a half arms, he snugged the ropes around the guard’s wrists. Then he gave the kid’s head an extra bonk on the floor—just because. The guard’s eyes rolled white again, and he moaned against the gag—Taos’s gag—stuffed in his mouth.

Schturming
fishtailed in the wind, and the floor slanted even more.

Hitch groaned and stood up. “Now let’s get out of here. And I do mean now.” He looked at Jael. “How do we get to the wheelhouse?”

She had buttressed herself with one hand on the chart table and the other on Walter’s shoulder. “It is on next level up. There are stairs in engines room.” She eyed him, her face crimped with pain. “What are you going to do?”

He clamped his bad arm against his stomach and extended the other one, herding her and Walter toward the door. “I’m going to find Zlo. Then I’m going to find his knife. And then I’m going to stick his knife right in his black heart.”

“But ship, it is crashing. We have to exit.”

“Also part of the plan.”

They hustled down the corridors, following Jael’s directions. She kept them mostly to the back routes, clear of the traffic. And there was plenty of traffic.

Every juncture they passed was crowded with men, running and shouting. Heavy boots clomped against the canted floor. Lights flickered through the doorways and cast mutating shadows across the floors. In the distance, a klaxon blared.

A faint breeze blew through the hallways, carrying a whiff of smoke. A fire under a gas bag. Just what they all needed.

“They are evacuating,” Jael whispered. “With elevators.”

Hitch looked down to where he was supporting her in the crook of his good arm. “They’re not even going to try to fix the engines?”

She lifted a shoulder. “We have damaged maybe more than we thought. Or they are too afraid of fire.”

“Well, that’s something.”

Whether it was a good something or a bad something remained to be seen. He firmed his mouth. At least if they all had to die in a fireball, they’d take the infernal ship with them.

Walter trotted along at his side. He peered up at him. “Are we... evacuating?”

“You bet your buttons, kiddo.”

They passed the observation balcony where he and Jael had gotten trapped earlier. At the end of the corridor, he raised the bar from the entrance to the cargo bay, then eased open the door. The room lay in darkness. The big doors to the storm had been closed, and without the propellers thunking away in the engine room beyond, the only sounds filtering in were the muffled shouts of Zlo’s crew.

“All right, c’mon,” he said.

He hauled Jael through the door and halfway across the room, all the way to the Jenny—which Zlo, fortunately, hadn’t had the foresight to chuck overboard. In fact, somebody had cleared the boxes away from it enough to turn it around, and then they’d tied it down so it hadn’t gotten tossed around when the dirigible swerved. Looked like they thought they’d found themselves a prize.

He pushed Jael on ahead. “Go on to the engines. I’ll meet you there.”

She knit her brows, but staggered on anyway.

He turned to Walter and knelt to eye level. “Everybody’s got a part in this plan, you hear me?”

Walter nodded, tight-lipped.

“I need you to keep Taos here while Jael and I take care of a few things. If Jael comes back and tells you to, I want you to help her start up the plane, like I showed you the other day, okay? You remember where all the switches are?”

Walter frowned, but he nodded again.

“Of course you do.” Hitch’s heart bumped up into his throat. He opened his mouth to say more, but there was way yonder too much. He helped Walter into the rear cockpit. Then he directed Taos into the front.

If something went wrong and he couldn’t get back to them before the fire spread too far, Jael would never get the doors open by herself. So he took five precious seconds to heave them open, one-handed. Rain-flecked wind swirled in.

When he turned back, Walter was watching him. The boy had his face all scrunched up and his head cocked to the side, like he used to do when he was trying to ask a question.

Hitch headed for the engine room and reached to touch Walter’s head as he passed.

“Wait.” Walter swiveled in the cockpit. “Aren’t you going to come back?”

Hitch stopped and looked over his shoulder. “You just wait there. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” Then he started walking.

This time, the only way to come back was to leave.

Jael had already made it into the engine room. She huddled over the
dawsedometer
and its steady hum, clicking away at the buttons.

Hitch hustled toward her, looking around as he came. Wonder of wonders, nobody else was here. If she was right about the evacuation, they could be flying an empty ship now, for all they knew.