Cress

The stringent, cloying, somehow-just-too-green smell of sargo bush sap filled the enclosed space of the cargo bin. It was getting everywhere, oozing from the broken branches laced together over the gopher, dripping down on us and making everything sticky.

Jimmy clutched one of the ion rifles close to his chest and stared through the slats of the bin.

I concentrated on making myself breathe. Slow and even. In, out. I wasn't going to fret about any gaps in the blind. I had done it well. The gopher looked like just another sargo bush, sitting innocently in the bottom of the gulley. There wasn't any way they would see a wheel or a fender or a glint of glass. They would just roll right on by. Breathe in. Breathe out. I had double and triple checked my work. Smoothed our tire marks out of the sand and gravel. We were going to be fine. There wasn't enough time to check again, anyway. The first vehicle had already passed Karumu's place.

Breathe.

I closed my eyes tight, my stomach churning as that deep roar of military bitrack vehicles and draft lorries grew from a distant rumble to an endless bone-humming grind of noise barely a hundred yards away.

Jimmy's hand found mine in the space between us, his lanky fingers wrapping tight around my wrist as one engine was followed by another, after another, after another.

It took hours but couldn't have been more than a few minutes before there came an end, and silence fell.

For a moment, Jimmy's breathing was harsh, hissing through clenched teeth, until finally his grip on my wrist eased and he visibly relaxed.

I waited for a full minute. Then another.

Nothing.

Then I looked at Jimmy.

He swallowed, then nodded, knowing what I was saying without having to hear the words.

I got up and pushed a few of the sargo branches out of the way, then climbed over the half tailgate, exiting our makeshift hide. A second later, I pulled the gopher out of Karumu's lot and onto the road, leaves and twigs fluttering in our wake as I sent the old girl chugging up the mountain toward Darkening.

Please let Doc be alright. Let him be safe. Please...

~~~

Red's Alehouse was gone. Flat and smoldering. I might not have known what it was if it hadn't been for the coopering hoops of his huge house ale barrels sticking up out of what had been the back room like the ribs of some great metal animal. Where the buildings along the bottom curve of main street used to close off the view of the rest of the town, there were only a few crumbling walls left here and there. A chimney stack from the brick ovens in Ordell's bakery. The front door frame of Lopine & Sons furrier and miliner's. There was hardly anything but sticks and stones blocking a straight view all the way from Main Street to the Market beyond the fountain square.

Grey sticks. Grey stones. The whole town was painted in shades of grey. Grey ashes lying thick as snow on the ground, grey smudges and footprints where the soles of countless boots had walked along the road, grey on everything.

I hated Darkening. There had been plenty of folk who treated me and my mother like we were lower than bugs, even with Da around, but even they hadn't deserved this.

I went round to the back of what had once been Doc's surgery. Then I sat for a moment, staring dully at the ruin of the kitchen I had stood in barely more than two days before.

All that was left was the round stove.

The stove door was hanging by one hinge and the pipe was askew.

My stomach hurt.

I almost hoped the Mech had just not seen him, and he'd been taken with the rest of the townies. There was no way he would have survived that fire.

A sudden wash of tears stung my parched eyelids. Doc couldn't be gone. If he was, and I never got to see those beautiful eyes again...

I sucked in deep breaths, long and slow, and shoved that choking wave of panic back down. If I gave in, it would take over, and there was no time for that. I had to worry about Beckett. If Doc was gone, I still might be able to find some of his medical supplies. There were a few cupboards still standing in what used to be his examination room.

With a savage scrub of my hands over my face, I pulled up my courage, and shoved the gopher door open.

Bandages. And some of that salve he made from honey. I'd have to get that round out of Beckett somehow. Maybe I could find those long pincer things Doc had used to get the rapier thorns out of Da's hand that one time.

I slid out of the driver's seat, my foot falls strangely muffled in the ash as I hit the ground and began picking my way across the old back stoop. There weren't stairs, but there wasn't a floor, either, or a door to the kitchen. I simply stepped over two successively higher sections of foundation stones, and then I was standing where his kitchen table had been. It had apparently burned very well.

The cabinets were nothing but char held together with the metal of the hinges. As soon as I touched one of them, it let out a little groan and toppled over sideways. Hope shriveling, I nudged at the cinders with my toe, fishing through them for anything. There were a stone pot that had held some sort of stinky mold culture, a mortar and pestle, a few brass stands for his testing equipment, but the fire had been hot enough to melt all the jars that had been in the cabinet.

I turned around, then came to a halt instead of going for the other cabinet. To get to it I would have to climb over what must have been the stairs to his bedchamber upstairs. There wasn't any upstairs. There wasn't much of a roof left, either. Both the upstairs and the roof were now downstairs, burying whatever had been in his surgery under heaps of broken slates and blackened roofing beams. My heart sank. There was too much rubble. I was never going to find anything.

Which fit right in with the way the rest of the week was going.

An insane burst of laughter bubbled out of my throat, coupled with a fresh prickle of tears. The laugh ended on a curse that would have made my mother gasp, and then I lashed out and kicked a burned over plank. "Why can't anything good ever happen! Just once!"

The plank shifted. Then it kept shifting. The floor was moving, a section of it cracking open and rising up.

Swearing again, I stumbled backwards, only to stop and stumble forward again when a muffled, "Cress! Cress, help me get this open!" came from under the ground.

Doc was alive. That thought sang through me like sunlight after a month of rain, setting every frayed nerve aglow. There was a bootlegger's cellar sunk beneath the house, Doc was in that cellar, and there were pieces of stairwell and roofing timber keeping him from opening the trap door. Frantic, I began pushing and hauling things out of the way, paying no heed to the state of my burnt hands or the weight of what I was lifting.

As soon as I got the riser off, the trapdoor burst open and Doc came crawling up out of the hole that had saved his life, coughing and sooty and rumpled, and the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I wanted nothing more than to wrap my arms around him, to make sure he was real and whole, but not even his return from the dead made it easier to cross that line. So I knelt there in the dirt, just staring at him, drinking him in.

Completely unaware of what was running through my head, he sat on the edge of the trapdoor, feet dangling, and squinted around, his face set in grim lines.

His medical satchel was slung from his shoulder, as welcome a sight as the rest of him.

"Beckett," I croaked, finally finding my voice. "Beckett's been shot."

Instantly, those green eyes found mine and Doc pushed himself to his feet. "Where?"

I got up and started for the gopher, my feet weirdly clumsy, my vision watery as I led the way around to the tail of the cargo bin, talking as I went, "Jamesh has him... You'll have to ask him what he did. Just... please..."

Doc didn't need more. He swung on up into the cargo bin, barking questions at Jimmy while he stripped off his jacket and rolled up his dirty shirt sleeves.

I held back, feeling about as useful as a pickle in a pudding. Jimmy was the smart one anyway. He answered Doc's questions so quick it made my head spin listening to the two of them. Then Doc started pulling things out of his medical bag, and I turned away, unable to watch what was coming, my throat gone tight and achy.

That was where I was when I saw the two of them. They were wandering hand in hand down the middle of Conifer Street, their nightgowns hanging limp and filthy, their bare feet smeared black, their hair still tied up in rag rolls: Ephinia Ormell and her little sister, Lolarose.

My jaw dropped open. Where had they even come from? Or, more importantly, where did they think they were going? They wouldn't get far, dressed like they were. I closed my mouth, pursing my lips. It was too easy to hesitate, but Momma would have had my hide if I just let those two pass on by. With a little growl, I gave in, striding forward around the gopher. "Ephie! Lola!"

Ephie jerked like my voice had slapped her face, cringing and wobbling a little while Lola whipped around and looked at me with big, terror-glazed eyes.

I kept coming. "I've got water if you need it," I called. "Come on. You can sit in the cab."

At first I thought maybe Ephie was going to do what she always did, sneer and stick her nose in the air, but she just stared, her face as pale as her frilly night dress. Then she nodded, her head bobbing on her slender neck, her hands shaking as she gave Lola a nudge in my direction.

Neither of them said a thing. They just drifted after me like ghosts and climbed up into the cab, where they sat all huddled up together, drinking water out of my canteen.

I would worry about them later.

Doc was still hard at work on Beckett, his fine brows knit together in an intense frown as he pulled fragments of metal out of Beck's skin.

My stomach rolled at the sight of those pincers fishing around in Beck's bloodied shoulder. So I left. Whatever happened, we were going to have to leave Darkening. I needed any supplies I could salvage, and tools to fix the Mech. Whoever those men were, the Mech knew more than he was saying. Asgeran, my blue backside. Something was going on, something a whole lot bigger than one runaway mechanical butler.

Just like Doc's surgery, and most of the other businesses in town, Mallush had a bootlegger's cellar under his shop. Mallush didn't keep medical supplies in his, though. He really did use it for bootlegging. There would be something useful in there, if the fire hadn't eaten its way in.

~~~

I found Mallush. He was one of six corpses lined up on the other side of the town fountain, each shot execution style through the back of the head.

The rest were some of the oldest townfolk. Grandfather Thiery, Old Ma Dam-Ban... Gram Ferone... Their wizened, stooped, ancient bodies lay pitifully small and silent on the cobbles, ashes drifting gently over them. Even more than burning everything and taking the healthy, those deaths spoke of the character of the men who had come here. Men willing to shoot the old, the helpless, the harmless.

Slowly, I sat down next to Mallush. His hand was already stiff and cold. He wasn't suffering, he was just... gone. Peaceful. Quiet.

I should have felt something, some stirring in my soul that acknowledged his loss. I wanted to. But I was only empty.

I buried them all together in Old Ma Dam-Ban's front garden. It was the only patch of bare dirt I could find that wouldn't be driven over. The grave wasn't deep enough, but it was the best I could do alone. I marked it with six big stones. Then I picked my way through Mallush's ruined storefront, found the hidden entrance to his 'second cellar,' and got it open.

Everything reeked of smoke, but the thick stone roof had spared everything from the worst of the heat. I found his trapping rig, complete with tent, bedroll and cookware. His hunting knives were all there, and his bush blade. So was Rusty Legend, his beloved Gleishe & Sons long rifle. I grabbed those, and all the ammunition on the shelves. We still had the four ion rifles, but there wouldn't be any such thing as too many weapons where we were going. A supply of rather questionable unlabeled canned meat was all lined up on one of the shelves, as well as several crocks of pepper jelly.

His tool bag made me pause. He had taught me how to take apart an engine with those tools. How to put one back together, too. Or build my own. In many ways, Mallush had been the grandfather I never had.

He hadn't deserved to die like that.

Whoever these men were, they were going to pay.

Grim, I dragged all of that out to what was left of the shop's front walk. Then I trooped back to the gopher.