Fire & Frost (26 page)

Her stomach twisted into a knot. Had her father caught up to them?

Captain Harker began shouting orders, then his voice was lost as the roar of the engine changed—deeper, louder. Not a steady rattling huff but fast and irregular.

Not the sound of
one
engine, she realized with sudden horror. They were hearing
two
engines.

And both were at full steam. Her father’s airship had caught up to them but his crew must not have seen them yet, because no one would barrel through a storm like this so close to another airship.

How close?
Were they higher or lower? Off to the side and on a parallel heading or coming directly toward them?

Desperately, she searched the snow-filled night. Her arms tightened around Caius’s neck. “Where are they?”

Even as she asked, a shadow moved through the swirling white on the portside tail. Just off to the side. Maybe they would miss each other—

All at once, the shadow’s shape resolved into the jutting prow of an airship, like a spear tossed out of the dark.

Directly at
Kingfisher
’s propellers.

“Oh, dear God,” she whispered, just Caius’s arm cinched around her and he dove for the deck.

A heartbeat later, her father’s airship rammed into them.

ELIZABETH’S BACK SLAMMED INTO THE boards, knocking away her breath. A rhythmic
thunk thunk thunk
thumped heavily through the dark. Beneath her,
Kingfisher
shuddered in time with each thump—then jolted sharply to port.

Metal shrieked, a piercing scream that drowned out every other sound and resonated in Elizabeth’s teeth and skull, spiking agony through her ears. She couldn’t hear her own scream, only feel Caius above her, shielding her body with his and shoving her along the smooth deck. Around behind the lifeboat, she realized. Using it for cover.

The shriek rose and snapped. The boards trembled and the grinding of gears reverberated through the deck. The rumble of
Kingfisher
’s engine died.

Oh, thank God.
Someone below must have thrown the engine to full stop.

Splintered wood hailed around them, pelting the boat.

Then nothing.

For a breathless second, Elizabeth couldn’t believe it. She lay still, waiting, with Caius’s tense body like steel over hers.

Well. That hadn’t been as bad as she’d feared.

In the sudden quiet, joyful shouts rose around them. Murmuring that he loved her, he loved her, Caius pressed kisses to her forehead and cheeks. Laughing and coughing, she sat up, clinging to him.

A metallic
thwipkt!
whipped through the air. The deck lurched.

Silence fell for a taut moment—then a high-pitched scream of pain and horror split the dark.

“Get down, Elizabeth!” Caius flattened her to the deck. “Down!”

Thwipkt!

The deck seemed to drop toward the stern. More screams—but the first abruptly cut off. Glass shattered nearby. The pilot’s wheelhouse. All around them, wood splintered and groaned. Another
thwipkt!
And another. Each followed by a jolt of the deck, as if it were falling out from beneath them.

The cables tethering the balloon to the wooden cruiser were breaking, Elizabeth realized—the tension snapping them like whips.

Terror dug into her heart with feral claws. The crash must have fractured the primary tether anchors at the stern. Now the weight of the cruiser and its massive steam engine were tearing the secondary cables from their anchors in succession, from stern to bow. Like a clamshell being forced open, the ship was ripping away from the balloon.

“Hold on to me!” Caius shouted.

The deck dropped again, a sharp downward slant. Elizabeth cried out as they suddenly slid past the lifeboat—then jerked to a stop.

Caius had caught the timber. But even that wouldn’t save them. She could hear wood cracking all around them. It wouldn’t be long before their support broke free.

Another
thwipkt!
and she screamed as the deck suddenly seemed to disappear beneath them. But they weren’t dropping to the ground. They dangled high above it, Caius’s arm around her waist and hanging on to the timber with his opposite hand.

A scream rushed past them. Someone falling. Dear God.

Wood creaking, the airship seemed to swing, as if the cruiser was hanging vertically from the balloon by the few cables remaining near the bow. It couldn’t be long before the metal fabric of the balloon ripped. The envelope was strong, designed to carry the weight of the cruiser and withstand the effects of extreme weather. It wasn’t made to do this.

Caius couldn’t hold them forever, either—though she knew he would try. Thank the heavens he didn’t have to.

“The glider!” she cried. “Can you reach it?”

“I can’t reach it without letting you go!”

She tightened her arms around his shoulders. “Then let go of me. I’ll hold on!”

He hesitated.

“Do it, Caius! I’ll hold on!”

The ship groaned, swinging as another cable broke. Elizabeth’s heart stopped for a terrifying moment when Caius’s hold vanished from around her waist and her arms bore her full weight. Frantically, she wrapped her legs around him. Grunting with effort, he hauled them both upward with one hand, blindly reaching for the glider’s hooks with the other.

Another scream as someone else fell. She prayed that others had gotten to the gliders, too.

A ratcheting series of clicks sounded by her ear—he’d opened the glider. Sheer relief made her weight seem like a feather’s. Clinging to him, she tucked her head against his neck.

“Don’t let go.” Urgency hardened his voice. “Whatever happens, Elizabeth, don’t let go.”

Heavy muscle bunched beneath her hands. He seemed to swing—so his feet could push them away from the deck, she realized, jumping out away from the ship instead of just dropping—and then there was nothing around them, and the sharp jolt of their leap and the glider catching the air knocked her legs from around him. Gritting her teeth, she locked her arms tighter.

“Elizabeth!” Desperation filled his shout. Flying the glider required both hands. He couldn’t hold on to her.

“I’m all right!”

Terrified, but alive and hanging on. Her stomach dropped and swooped as they leveled out, her feet dangling and skirts whipping around her legs.

Her eyes had squeezed shut. She made herself open them, looking into the dark beyond his shoulder.

An explosion of orange light burned her eyes. A blast of heated air hit her legs, seemed to toss the glider upward.

“Hold on!”

Arms shaking with strain, she did. The glider leveled out again and banked to the left.

Elizabeth dared another look and her heart pulled in two, ripping a denial from her throat.

On the ground, her father’s airship had caught fire, the falling snow forming a glowing halo around the wreckage and lighting the scene. A rolling white plain stretched around the airship, broken here and there by bodies or crates and pieces of the engine.
Kingfisher
floated above, balloon upended, the cruiser dangling beneath. A small two-seater balloon was in the air, flying toward
Kingfisher
. More emergency gliders circled around the airship. Eleven or twelve. Not enough for everyone who must have been on the two vessels.

She glanced down again.
Oh, thank God.
There were more people down there, racing across the snow—

Not people. Fear slicked the back of her neck in a cold sweat.

Zombies.

Drawn by the noise and the light, the ravenous creatures were converging on the wreck. She watched in horror as a glider landed on the snow and four of the zombies sped in that direction. A figure burst away from the glider. Not fast enough.

Eyes burning, she looked away, then bit back her scream when
Kingfisher
’s balloon suddenly split along a seam. The cruiser dropped—a lone glider flying away from the ship as it fell, a long sickening silence that ended with a deafening crash. The stern collapsed on impact, smashing in on itself. The bow snapped backward and slammed upside-down onto the ground. The remains of the heavy balloon flopped down around it.

More zombies turned toward
Kingfisher
’s wreckage, then Caius banked the glider away from the site and she couldn’t see either of the airships, only the glow of the fire illuminating the falling flakes of snow.

Flying away from the light and the noise and the zombies...but they had to land sometime.
Kingfisher
’s bow might provide a shelter.

But she couldn’t ask where Caius was going. She needed to be quiet, to avoid attracting the zombies’ notice. And every bit of her concentration and strength centered on her arms, the trembling pain that weakened her hold with every minute that she dangled above the ground. A few more zombies roamed below—all heading toward the wreck while she and Caius flew silently above the creatures’ heads.

Slowly, the glider lost altitude. Numbness had just begun to creep into her hands when her heels suddenly scraped over snow, her feet bouncing along until Caius’s boots hit and then they were tumbling, rolling, the glider’s frame cracking and the canvas shredding.

In the next second, he hauled her onto her feet. His coat was open, the brass buckles of his weapons harness glinting in the faint light. A machete gleamed in his left hand.

A man’s best friend when facing the creatures. She was suddenly glad that Caius had one—and that he’d declared himself her friend, too.

“All right, Elizabeth?”

It was a hoarse whisper. Making as little noise as possible.

Elizabeth nodded in response. Bruised and sore, with needles of pain stabbing from her shoulders to her fingers, but alive.

He cupped her cheek. Not looking down at her, though. His gaze searched the snow around them.

Heart racing, she scanned their surroundings. The snow still fell heavily, and although a bit of wind scattered the flakes it wasn’t the blinding torrent on the airship, offering fifty yards or more of visibility.

No zombies—but the fire burned in the distance, an orange glow against the sky. Any of the creatures heading in that direction might come across her and Caius in their path.

His hand dropping away from her cheek, Caius bent to the ground. Pinning the glider with his foot, he wrenched an arm’s length of the broken frame free. Canvas ripped. He paused for a long second, watching the snow around them before turning toward her. Holding the broken piece in his fist, he mimed jabbing the sharp aluminum point into his eye.

She nodded to show her understanding. If they came across any zombies, stab them through the head.

Caius gave her the weapon and took her free hand, tugging her away from the light. She hesitated. They might find
some
shelter in the wreckage; there wasn’t any out here in the open. He glanced back and lowered his mouth to her ear.

“There’s an outpost ahead,” he breathed. “I saw it in the flare of the explosion.”

A Horde outpost? With high stone walls—and possible rescue for those left at the airship.

She nodded. “How far?”

“A half mile. The storm will help cover us as we move.”

Then best to go quickly. She gestured for him to lead on, her boots sinking four or five inches into the snow with each step. Thank God not any deeper. He broke into a jog and she kept pace beside him, her heart thundering. She tried to be silent but her chest sounded like a bellows, each breath bursting into a frozen cloud, the snow crunching under her boots.

A distant crack split the air behind them. Gunfire. Someone was shooting the zombies—but that would only bring more, not scare them away.

All around them, shadows moved through the night, heading toward the sound of the shots. Faint moans and growls prickled the hairs on the back of her neck. She darted terrified glances over her shoulder as they ran, expecting to see one behind them at any moment.

But it came from ahead, rushing out of the dark and snow. Caius released her hand, sprinting ahead to meet it. Elizabeth faltered, horror slowing her steps. Covered in filth, the creature was naked, as if any clothing it had worn long ago rotted off. Some of its flesh had, too, skin hanging loose over its chest. She couldn’t tell whether it was male or female. Gaping wounds exposed shredded muscle and bone in its lower abdomen and face. Snarls ripped from a nightmarish mouth, the lips torn or bitten away.

Fingers like claws, it lunged for Caius. With a quick sidestep and a powerful swing, he hacked through its skull. The top half of its head dropped to the ground, an upended bowl. The body took a few more running steps before plowing into the snow, thick blood drooling from the severed jaw.

Her stomach lurching into her throat, Elizabeth raced past it, catching Caius’s hand again. A solid shadow stood directly ahead—the outpost wall. A hulking machine appeared on the left and they sped past an enormous segmented wheeltrack, larger than any vehicle treads she’d ever seen.

A harvester. Or a war machine.

They reached the wall. Elizabeth collapsed against it, catching her breath. His back to the stone, Caius’s gaze swept their trail before he nodded. “This way.”

Because the entrance to Horde structures almost always faced south. Without a visible moon, she didn’t know how he could tell which direction they were running in, but soon after rounding the corner of the wall they came across the massive wooden doors.

The massive
open
doors. No sound or lights within.

Caius’s jaw clenched. She knew what he was thinking. Those open doors meant the outpost had been abandoned or overrun. They couldn’t know what was inside—whether the site would be infested with zombies or empty—and the worst way to find out would be walking through those doors in the dark.

He looked away from the outpost and his eyes narrowed. Elizabeth followed his gaze. Another giant machine stood twenty yards away, a long armored body on dozens of segmented legs.

A second later they were running toward it, Caius’s hand holding hers.