But Rose was not so lucky. The tin key arrowed into her left shoulder and burrowed in deep. She yelled, and her eyes went wide before they rolled back in her head.
“Rose?” Cedar lifted up off her. She was breathing, fast and shallow, but she did not come to. There was too much blood. Her blood.
He needed Mae. Needed to get that bit of metal out of her. Needed medicines and stitching and herbs.
Cedar swept Rose up into his arms, his heart drumming hard.
A sound behind him made him turn.
Even in the darkness, the mess of blood and flesh from the explosion was startling.
But not as startling as the dead mother who lay on the ground and shuddered. Something—no, not something; the Strange, ghostlike with too many eyes, too many mouths, too many arms—pulled up from the ground beneath her and slipped inside her like a man shrugs into an ill-fitted shirt.
The mother stopped shaking. Then she sat straight up, and got to her feet.
Her ruined face twisted in inhuman glee as she limped toward Cedar. “Hunter,” she exhaled.
Cedar had seen the Strange wear the dead once before. Didn’t know how they did it. Didn’t have time to question. But he knew they were damn hard to kill.
He shifted his hold on Miss Small and drew his gun. He unloaded three bullets straight into the mother’s heart.
And still she kept coming.
He couldn’t fight with Rose in his arms, and he was not about to put her down. So he strode to the center of the town.
“Madders!” he yelled as he jogged toward the fire. “We have a problem.”
As he rounded the last house before the clearing, he saw that the pile of dead bodies they’d so carefully stacked up was now much less carefully unstacking itself.
The dead were rising. Strange slinking down out of the hills and up into bodies to try them on for size.
Vicinity’s townfolk rose up with the look of murder in their eyes. And started toward him.
CHAPTER FOUR
Captain Hink leaned out the port door, holding the dead man’s grip just inside the Swift. Here amid the clouds and freeze, the wind slapped across the tip of Beggar’s Peak and chuffed against the Swift, making her bob like a cork in a tub.
Not many ships were small enough or fast enough to hide here. It took some tight maneuvering to slip into this notch of rock and snow. But for the ship that could sling it, the tight wedge of stone just north, and the outcropping here, were enough to shelter from the worst of winter’s howl.
For a short time, at least.
He’d ordered them to throw anchor and bank the boiler. He wanted quiet and he wanted still. There wasn’t a wisp of steam to give them away, not a click of gear or pump of propeller.
Molly had seen to it that even Guffin was sitting still and keeping his mouth shut—no mean feat.
The Swift was as invisible as a frog’s eyelash.
Captain Hink pressed the brass telescope to the darkened lens of his goggles and closed his left eye to better see the edge of the rocks and cliffs around them. Stump Station was just east a ways. If there was a ship taking to the skies, if there was pursuit, it’d be coming from there.
The rocks were clear, no glimmer, no smoke, no shadow. Hink lowered the telescope and readjusted his breathing gear over his mouth, and his goggles, making sure the leather buckling both together was secure. The rubber hose that ran from his mouthpiece over his left shoulder and on off into the lines of the ship had plenty of slack, but not so much that it would tangle him up.
They weren’t up high enough for the air to kill a man quickly, but blacking out or tripping over a line and taking a tumble from the running board of the ship wasn’t going to keep a man’s tranklements in one piece either.
A glint off starboard caught his eye. He swung the telescope in that direction, and worked to keep the eyepiece steady in the roiling winds.
The Black Sledge, a big steamer, dark-skinned and peaked at the top, bulgy with exterior belly lifts and eight sets of blades driving her on, lumbered up along the ragged edge of the mountain. She was a fully enclosed gondola like the Swift and didn’t have the ocean-faring open-desk style of vessel dangling beneath her envelope.
She wasn’t shooting the glim, didn’t even have her nose pointed up, or her trawling arms and nets at the ready. No, she was low and slow. Looking for something. Looking for them.
Hink swung into the Swift and shut the door, then spun the latch to keep her tight. He one-fingered the buckle on his breathing gear and let it hang at his chest.
Molly stood at the helm, breathing gear unsecured at her neck. Guffin leaned near the vertical and horizontal rudder controls, scowling like he’d gotten his knuckles rapped by the teacher. He was a slow-eyed and sad-looking fellow with dark brows set too wide and light hair shaved up high off the back of his neck, but left to grow at the top so that his whole head took on a sort of sorry mushroom look.
Mr. Seldom was back among the glim gear, using his pocketknife to clean up a net spread at his feet.
The other member of the crew, Mr. Lum Ansell, a squat, short-necked man of unknown heritage, was sleeping up against the starboard wall, his hat pulled over his round leather brown face, the brim stopped by the breathing gear latched across his chin. Out of all of them, Lum never seemed to find much use for the breathing gear, no matter how high they flew.
“Listen up,” Captain Hink said.
All eyes turned to him. Even Lum shoved his hat back, awake and sharp, his hand drifting to the knife at his hip, as it always did before he was fully awake and taking a straighter sit.
“Looks like we have a cat come prowling,” Captain Hink said. “Or more like a bear. Captain Barlow’s on the sniff.”
“Barlow?” Molly frowned. “What’d we do to stuff his flue?”
“Figure it has something to do with Les Mullins and his idea that I’m Marshal Hink Cage.”
Guffin sucked on the tobacco tucked in his lip. “And?”
“And near as I can tell, Les Mullins is doing General Alabaster Saint’s business. Since that includes seeing that I’m hung and strung, I’d say that puffer out there is looking to kill me.”
“Could be they want our glim stake,” Lum Ansell rumbled in his deep baritone.
“Could,” Hink agreed. “Except for this.” He pulled the tin star out of his pocket.
Molly took in a breath and let it out on a soft curse. She’d met George Rucker, the boy he’d given the star. Hell, all of them had met George.
“So Les Mullins knows you’re Marshal Cage,” Guffin said. “Think he’s gonna hire out Barlow and his big tug out there to take you in?”
“Black Sledge has the boilers and the guns for it,” Hink said.
Guffin shook his head, that hair of his stirring like a tassel in the wind. “Still don’t make no sense to me. Takes money to put a ship up. Your head ain’t worth it. No offense, Marshal.”
“Well, if it ain’t me,” Hink said, “I’m still plentiful curious as to why they’re flying. No glim in the heavens today, and last I heard, Barlow was pulling lines and headed to Texas to weather out the cold.”
“It is strange to find him prowling the west side of the range,” Molly said, “at the same time Stump Station happened to empty out to see us off with their guns this morning.”
“I say it’s time to shut up and hunt bear,” Hink said with a grin. “Molly, bring the boiler on line. Guffin, man the rudders. Seldom, strap up the hooks and ready the ropes. And Lum, see that the cannon’s set to burn.”
He probably didn’t need to tell his crew what to do, they fell to it so fast. Ride the windy trail together long enough and people knew what was what and how to see to getting it done.