She started after him.
Campbell snarled and snatched her back. “If he’s unlucky enough to survive this, he’s going to be in more trouble than even he knows what to do with.”
Walter finally yanked free. He glanced at Jael. He should stop and help her.
She caught his eye and shook her head. “Go!”
That was all he needed. He took off running. His feet, in his pinched party shoes, slapped through the sloppy mud of the road. He’d help carry buckets—or bandages—or anything, if it’d help Hitch stay alive.
Forty-Nine
SCHTURMING WAS HOLDING altitude about as well as a lump of lead. Faint wisps of smoke trickled into the wheelhouse. Fire was gnawing at her from somewhere below decks. All it’d take would be one spark on one hiss of gas, and the whole thing would go up in flames.
Hitch ignored the blood trickling from under his shoulder bandage. No chance at all of getting completely clear of the city. Pretty near the only thing he could do now was find a crash site where she’d cause the least amount of damage.
And he knew just the place.
He muscled the wheel around, hand over hand, and managed to turn the prow a couple degrees. That’d be enough. They were almost there.
Schturming whisked over housetops, maybe only twenty feet above the chimneys.
Through the windshield, a two-story frame house with a dormer roof loomed on the edge of town. Campbell’s house.
But not for long. Hitch spared a tight grin.
He hauled the wheel back to center. The bowsprit lined up with the dormer window like the sight on a .22.
Only thirty feet to go.
Didn’t matter how hard that wheel spun now. Schturming couldn’t help but hit Campbell’s house. That was Hitch’s cue to leave if he wanted any chance of surviving the crash.
He let go of the wheel and backed away two steps. Then he turned and ran.
He blasted across the wheelhouse, hurdled the stairway railing, and landed halfway down the circular steps. He ran back down the length of the ship to the engine room in the stern and Jael’s hidden closet next to the entrance. He yanked the door shut, dragged her thin mattress over him, and dropped to the floor in a fetal ball.
The whole ship shuddered. Then, almost as if the momentum had to catch up with the feeling, she slammed hard. That’d be her prow ripping through Campbell’s roof.
His good shoulder thudded into the closet door. Hammers and wrenches from Jael’s hanging bag clattered down on him.
The ship kept skidding. A sensation like fingernails against slate grated up the floorboards all through his body. And then she was pitching forward. He went weightless for a moment.
The prow battered into the ground and hurled him against the door. The latch gave way, and he hurtled down the floor’s steep incline. Halfway across the room, he thumped into the dawsedometer where it was bolted to the floor.
The ship skidded even farther: another weightless sensation, followed by another tremendous thud. She toppled onto her port side.
Hitch caught hold of the dawsedometer and kept himself from toppling with her.
Any second now, she was going to burst into flames and burn like the devil’s bacon.
He looked around. With the floor slanted like this, he’d never be able to climb back up to the door in time.
Thick smoke wafted in from the cargo bay and grated in his lungs. He coughed.
Out of the corner of his eye, gray daylight flashed. Only a few yards back from the dawsedometer was Jael’s “door in floor.” Without the pendant, he could hardly have unlocked it, but the crash had already done the work for him: the trapdoor hung open, its hinges completely busted.
That’d do—and how.
He scrambled around to the topside of the dawsedometer and barely managed to catch a handhold on the nearest of the engine’s pistons. Every muscle in his body screaming, and his right arm refusing to hold his weight half the time, he dragged himself up. His hand found the edge of the trapdoor, and cool air wicked against the sweat on his skin.
He heaved himself over the ledge. This end of the ship had run aground in Campbell’s yard, but the front end was still wedged in the roof. From the porthole, it was only a ten-foot drop. He hit the ground, lost all his breath, and got up dizzy.
Run. That was the only thought in his head. He sure as gravy hadn’t made it this far to blow up with his feet on firm ground.
He spared one glance at the wilting envelope. Both arms pumping, lungs heaving, he ran across Campbell’s yard, turned the corner around the picket fence, and sprinted down the road.
From behind, a sound whuffed, like a thousand birthday candles blowing out. Heat engulfed his back, the hairs on his neck singeing. Light like high noon splashed shadows everywhere. A great crackling blotted out every other noise, even the slap of his feet against the road.
In front of him, people packed the street. Half of them stopped and stared, shouting and screaming. Some turned and ran. They were probably out of range back there, but better safe than sorry at this point. A handful of men with sloshing buckets broke through the crowd, headed toward the wreck.
Earl, a bucket in his unbroken arm, led the charge. From across the road, he caught sight of Hitch and stopped to hang his head back in relief.
Hitch’s lungs burned hotter than the fire behind him. He slowed up and looked back.
Sure enough, Schturming had plowed through Campbell’s dormer roof. Three times as big as the house, she leaned upended in the yard. Fifty-foot flames chewed through the skeleton of the envelope. Right in front of his eyes, the whole structure crumbled into ash.
Without the gas to consume, the flames subsided. But they’d already crawled across the yard and up the side of Campbell’s house.
Hitch crouched, hands on his knees, and rasped in breath after breath. Every single one made him want to cough, but he kept pulling them in.
“Hitch!” That was Jael’s voice.
He jerked his head around, back toward the crowd.
Campbell had Jael by the arm and was stalking toward him.
Jael grinned. Walter ran beside her, lugging a bucket in both hands. She grabbed his shoulder and pointed at Hitch.
A smile split the boy’s face. He jumped up and down, bucket and all, water splashing all over the dark front of his party suit.
Thank God. They’d made it. Hitch dropped to both knees. Thank God, thank God, thank God. And bless that crazy, cranky Jenny. Somehow, impossibly, she’d gotten them both back to the ground in one piece.
Campbell let go of Jael. “Hitchcock!” He looked like he wanted to barrel across the road and pummel Hitch. But every few steps, he had to stop and gape at his house.
Finally, he turned to Hitch and jabbed a finger at him. A pulse beat in his temple, and his jowls quivered. “I’ll bury you for this!”
Hitch stood up. Blood from his shoulder wet the crevices of his fingers, but he left the arm straight at his side. The time for showing weaknesses was over.
Campbell grabbed his arm—the good one, thankfully—and leaned into his face. “You’re going to wish you’d died in that crash, you hear me?”
“Stand down, Sheriff. I just did you the biggest favor of your life in saving your people from that thing.”