Devon Monk - Tin Swift

The ground far, far below him twirled as he was hauled upward. The Black Sledge seemed to have done some fair good in putting out the fire, and was smoking downward at a relatively safe speed toward a green bowl of a valley cradled between two peaks. They might make it down just fine.

Or they might be stuck in the middle of a range, with little in the way of supplies and a winter storm bearing down.

As if reflecting on his thoughts, the sky flashed with a rattle of lightning, thunder rolling way up above the glim fields. Rain started off in spits that turned into a good hard-driven drizzle. Even at this height, it was still just rain and not ice or snow.

By the time Hink was reaching up for Mr. Seldom’s and Molly Gregor’s hands to haul him into the Swift , he was soaked down to his long underwear and shaking from the cold.

“Who’s this?” Molly asked of the man he deposited on the floor.

“Didn’t catch his name,” Hink said, shivering under the blanket she tossed over his shoulders.

“If you’re cold, Captain,” she said, “you can work the boilers on the way home.” Molly’s sleeves were rolled up to her elbows, and sweat trickled down the side of her neck and glossed her cheeks. Every inch of her exposed skin was tanned and dusted with soot from the big engine.

Hink grinned. “Wouldn’t want to put you out of a job, Molly.”

“The way you handle a boiler?” She scoffed. “We’d be dead before sunrise. Captain,” she added.

Seldom finished unlatching the harnesses and ropes between Hink and their guest, and then dragged the man by the armpits off to one side where he could latch him into the straps and framework there and keep him from getting stepped on by the crew.

Hink shoved up to his feet and, holding the blanket around him, walked over to Guffin, at the wheel.

“Heading?”

“Due west. Thought we could bed down in one of the hollows there.”

“We got the guts for that, Molly?” Hink asked.

“We’ll need to take it slow, but she’ll get us there,” Molly said. “So long as the storm doesn’t kick up too strong.”

“Aim us over the ridge, Mr. Guffin,” Hink said. “Easy as you can.”

“Aye, Captain,” Guffin said.

Seldom stepped over to navigation and Lum Ansell kept steady where he was, humming a low song, as was his habit in the air.

Hink walked the planking, trying to pace the warm back into his bones and taking the time to think things through. Who he should have gone for was Barlow, not this ship plugger. For all he knew the man was new to the hills and didn’t have a darn idea of why Barlow was looking for him.

“He’s coming to,” Molly announced. “Want I should put the snore back in him?”

“No, he needs talking to, and I need to do the talking.” Captain Hink stopped pacing and stood in front of the man, who had a blanket thrown on him. Likely that was Molly’s doing. Sure, the man was a captive and they’d just as soon throw him out to kick the breeze if he so much as spit, but if he froze, they wouldn’t be able to chisel any words out of him.

Hink waited for the man to rouse himself enough to pull the blanket up around his chin and tuck his knees to his chest.

“Have a few questions for you, sailor,” Hink said. “And if you answer them nice and clear, and nice and true, I won’t have my second kick you out of this boat.”

He had to raise his voice enough to be heard over the engines and the wind and rain squalling around out there. From the rock and yaw of the Swift , it was darned clear they were airborne.

Hink watched as the man scratched the tally of each of those things in his brain.

“I don’t want no trouble,” he finally said. Well, croaked was more like it. The smoke and the cold had run roughshod over his vocals.

“Then we’re of an agreement,” Hink said. “No trouble. You give me answers, and I’ll see that your boots are planted on solid ground. Here’s question number one: who is Captain Barlow answering to?”

“Said his name was the Saint,” the man said.

Hink tried not to let his surprise show. The man jumped so quick into telling him the truth, it caught him quiet for a second. Which worked out just fine. The man must have interpreted Hink’s surprised silence as an invitation to keep on babbling.

“I don’t know anything else, mister. Captain,” the man said. “All I know is the cap said there’s a general who had a need for us to do our job and do it quickly.”

“What was your job?” Hink asked.

“Find Marshal Paisley Cadwaller Hink Cage and bring him in.”

“Paisley?” Molly said, smiling. “What kind of pansy-pants name is Paisley?”

Hink did not answer her, though he sent a glare in her direction that would have burned through steel. His mama had her reasons for giving him so many names.

“So once you found this marshal, what was it you were going to do to him?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” the man said. “Take him to the Saint for the thing he was holding out Vicinity’s way.”

“Holding?” Hink said, bending down over the man. “What thing? What thing is the marshal holding?”

“Don’t know,” the man said, cowering back from Hink’s questions as if each word was a rock thrown at his head. “Just heard Barlow say something about a holder and Vicinity and Marshal Hink Cage. I don’t know nothing more. I swear by it. I don’t know nothing more.”

Man was half scared out of his mind, that was sure.

“Captain,” Molly said. “You might want to step back a bit.”

Hink frowned and looked at Molly. She nodded toward his hand.

In that hand was the man’s shirt, and in that shirt was the man. Hink had reached out and grabbed him and hauled him onto his feet so he could yell in his face proper. Had done it without thinking, that temper catching hold of his hands and using them before his brain could send in suggestions.

No wonder the man was quaking.

“Sure thing,” Hink said. “Sure.” He let go of the man and took a step or two back. “Molly, we got anything hot to drink on this boat?”

“Might,” she said.

“See to it the sailor here gets something to knock the freeze off.”

Molly nodded and headed back to the keg stove at the rear of the ship to rustle up some tea.

Hink took off in the opposite way and came up behind Guffin. “Give over the wheel,” he said.

Guffin untethered and stepped back.

“We putting down in a pocket, Captain?”

Hink latched line to the frame and stomped his boots into the floor bracers. “We’re cutting over the range.”

“Over? Where to?”

“Vicinity,” he said. “Before the Saint’s devils get there first.”

Cedar Hunt eyed the rising dead piled up in the center of the town. He needed to get Rose to the wagon, then ride out of here before the undead could follow. Only problem was the undead were between him and the wagon, and Rose was bleeding badly from that shoulder wound.

He backtracked, working in the shadows of the buildings and trying to get to the wagon around the other way.

The idea of leaving an entire town full of bodies being trotted around by the Strange set a rod of fear down his spine. How long would they stay in this town, and if they got loose, how many people would die?

The stack of bodies was still unstacking. Some of them slow and awkward, with no hands, arms, feet, or eyes to guide them. They crawled about, moaning and mewling. They might have once been human, but it was clear and sure from the way they moved, and from the unholy sounds coming out of them, that they were human no longer.

Others pulled up quick, catching on to the hows of walking. If not exactly graceful, they were at least steady and growing steadier with every step. First they walked. Then they broke into a jog. Fast. Headed his way.