Marked

by S. Andrew Swann

  “Where’s that?”

  Jacob studied the map and pointed down the corridor. “That way, then the second corridor to our left.”

  I started in that direction. Jacob walked next to me. “‘Restricted’ is a vague term, are you sure that’s what we want?”

  “No.”

  “As long as we have a plan.”

  We kept going through the empty corridor, the muted klaxons almost sounding like the airship’s pulse. Twice, the lights dimmed to a sickly yellow then returned to normal. As we closed on the passage we wanted, the air began to take on the hint of something burning.

  “Do you smell a fire?” I asked. I heard the edge of panic in my own voice as visions of the Hindenburg ran through my head.

  “Yeah. I hope the fact these guys have control of North America means that they’re using helium.”

  We had just reached the passage to the left when a sharp crack echoed through the corridor. Another, more muffled, report followed.

  “Gunshots?” It was less a question on my part than an expression of alarm. Beyond the corner, before another shot tore through the air, I heard scraping, shuffling, and something moaning.

  I crouched so my head was much lower than eye level.

  “Dana—”

  I snuck a half-second peek around the corner and pulled back before a gunman could take a bead on me. Turns out that was the least of my worries. The gunmen had other problems.

  “—don’t.” Jacob finished.

  “Shadows,” I gasped. “Five or six. Two guards pinned against a door.”

  “Okay, we should—”

  I stood up and started frantically looking around the corridor. “They sense me. Two are headed back toward us.”

  THIRTY-FIVE

  I SAW WHAT I needed, directly across from us on the other side of the cross passage. Without listening to Jacob’s objections, I ran across the front of the passage, giving the guards a perfect shot at me had they been so inclined. I heard two shots tear through the corridor, but neither came anywhere near me.

  On the other side of the passage opening was an alcove with a sign reading “urgence du feu” in bold red letters. Beneath the sign was a roll of canvas hose, a squat brass canister with a triangular handle that must have been some sort of extinguisher, and, hanging on a bracket on the wall, a fire ax.

  Just as I reached the alcove, a trio of Shadows emerged into the corridor between me and Jacob. All three turned their inhuman black eyes toward me. They were less ragged than the ones that had converged on me back home; their clothes fresher, less dirty, covering them so I could only see glimpses of their perverted Mark eating into their flesh along their wrists or their neck, or—in one disturbing case—their face.

  I grabbed the ax off the wall and dodged to the side as the nearest one lunged at me. I swung the ax clumsily and cracked that one in the back of the head with the flat. He fell into the alcove and slammed his face into the brass fire extinguisher.

  The one with the scarred face grabbed me. His Mark had clawed across his jawline, cheek, and temple, eating away flesh badly enough that I should have seen bone, though all that was visible was a glistening black that seemed to sink even deeper.

  The touch of it was like falling into an open cistern overflowing with filth. I could almost taste the corruption sliding across my Mark like a swarm of maggots. I probably screamed as I swung the spiked back end of the fire ax up into the Shadow’s no-longer human face. It tried to dodge, but it was clumsier than the Shadows that had attacked earlier, and despite my awkward swing, the end of the ax buried itself up under its scarred cheekbone. Its head snapped back, away from the impact, and it let go of its hold on me.

  I scrambled back, yanking the ax with me. The Shadow stumbled off to my right, dragging its left leg and arm as if they didn’t work anymore. I kept backing up as the third Shadow reached for me—

  Just as something heavy and brass came down on its head from behind. It crumpled to the ground in front of Jacob, who held the fire extinguisher cylinder in both hands.

  I looked down at the Shadow, then at Jacob, then at the fire extinguisher. “That’s becoming a habit.”

  “Maybe I should start a new martial art.”

  “Extinguisher-fu?” I asked as I edged back around him. The three Shadows that had come after me were no longer threatening, two unconscious or dead, the third shambling away, leaning against the wall smearing blood and black fluid after itself, and apparently no longer aware of us.

  I shifted my grip on the ax as I stepped back into the line of fire. The hallway was littered with four Shadow corpses, and without a rush of attackers between us anymore, the guards leveled their guns at me. I suddenly realized that with my torn-up dress, grease stains, and Mark exposed on my shoulders, I could easily be mistaken for one of the Shadows. I threw the ax aside as if it was on fire and raised my hands, shouting, “I’m not one of them!”

  One of them spoke English.

  “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

  Jacob emerged from behind me and said, “This is Lady Dana Rohan, and we are headed to the hangar deck.” The guard had spoken with a Russian accent thicker than Ivan’s, and I noticed that Jacob had adopted a slight, but noticeable, French accent when addressing him. Also, despite being as out of place and overwhelmed as I was—more so even, since my Mark gave me at least one point of common ground with the world we were in—Jacob managed to put on an air of confident, almost dismissive, authority. The slight arrogance made the tux he wore fit better.

  “Hangar deck is White Guard only,” the one guard continued to speak, while the other pointed the barrel of his rifle at the deck between us and them. I glanced down at the Shadows and had the ugly realization that the clothes they wore were more contemporary to this world than my own. I realized why their clothes looked fresher.

  The Shadows were fresher.

  “We understand that,” Jacob said with the air of someone explaining to a petulant child why it was not a good idea to eat the furniture polish. “But you might have noticed we are in the middle of a crisis here.” He walked over and nonchalantly picked up the fire ax from where I had tossed it. Intellectually, it was a stupid move, grabbing for a weapon while guns were trained on him, but he seemed to be reading the guards right—the guns weren’t actually pointed at us anymore, and he moved casually enough that if they’d felt threatened they’d have plenty of time to warn him away from it.

  Instead, the guards just watched him as he hefted the ax and leaned it on his shoulder. “The Guard is going to need all the help it can get. The Lady Rohan is a guest of the Emperor precisely because she is a Prince in her own right. She is offering her assistance in the defense of this airship. Will you tell her no?”

  Listening to Jacob’s faux accent, I began to wonder if gall and Gallic had some etymology in common.

  The guards looked at each other, and I could see in their faces that neither of them wanted to take responsibility for answering the questions Jacob posed to them. After a few moments of silent consultation, the one who’d been speaking to us shouldered his weapon, said a few short words in Russian to his comrade, and stepped toward us. “I am Corporal Mikhail Andreyev. I will take you to the next checkpoint; the officers of the Guard can decide what to make of your assistance.”

  * * *

  —

  WE followed Mikhail up through a series of decks that were distinctly more functional than ornamental. While we jogged after him, I whispered to Jacob, “Thanks, you didn’t need to do that.”

  “In for a penny, in for a pound.”

  “Really, I dragged you into something you didn’t need to be involved in.”

  “Dana, I’m not a cop because I like sitting back and watching the bad guys. Not only are these Shadows trying to kill people—you, in particular—but it looks like something really nasty was done t
o them.”

  “Like Whedon.”

  “Yeah. If whoever’s responsible for that is on that other airship, they need to be taken out.”

  I really wouldn’t have blamed Jacob for not wanting to be involved, but as I thought about it, I realized that if he had, he wouldn’t be the Jacob I knew. He was the one with the solid sense of the right thing, much better than I’d ever been. I’d built so much of my life with guilt and secrets and lies that I think I couldn’t even perceive right and wrong in the same terms as he did, much less act on it.

  It was why the episode with Roscoe Kendal’s gun was such a betrayal. It was also why, despite that, he was still here with me. He was the kind of guy who made doing the right thing look easy.

  Mikhail led us up several decks above where we started. During the journey upward, it became obvious that it was a few decks above the residential cabins. The stairways became skeletal, and once we passed through a bulkhead door, the walls vanished, and we moved past girders and guy wires as if we climbed through an unfinished office building.

  The stairway climbed up between two curving walls made of gray rubberized fabric. At the same time I realized we climbed up between two of the gas cells that held this whole thing aloft, I also realized the smell of smoke was becoming worse. I silently echoed Jacob’s hope that it was helium behind those gray walls.

  When we reached the checkpoint, no one was there to meet us. We emerged onto a broad catwalk that seemed to bisect the short axis of the airship. Mounted across from us, a small room had been built on top of the catwalk. Through the windows I saw a white wall where clipboards hung, and at least three of the intercom devices were mounted. No one seemed to be inside. When Mikhail saw the door hanging open, he cursed something in Russian and ran to the doorway.

  “What—” I didn’t finish my question because I took another step and saw what Mikhail had: a single foot, just visible through the half-open doorway.

  I heard more probably-obscene Russian, and Mikhail emerged from the room carrying a pistol and a grim expression. He walked up to Jacob and handed the butt of the pistol toward him. “My friend, you have been promoted.”

  Jacob glanced in my direction, then handed me the ax before taking the gun. I felt a bit of irritation that Mikhail handed the gun to Jacob and not to me, the obviously unarmed person, not that I had any time to express it. As soon as Mikhail handed off the weapon, he was running down the catwalk toward the outer skin of the airship.

  Jacob and I followed.

  I heard gunshots and the smell of smoke became worse as we headed toward the open door at the end of the catwalk. As we got closer, the temperature dropped until our breath started fogging, and I could hear the sound of wind tearing past the gap in the open door.

  The air pressure probably should have slammed the door shut, but it had closed on someone’s unmoving leg.

  Jacob took cover, flattening against the wall on the open side of the door. Mikhail unslung his rifle to point at the gap. That left me with the job of pulling the door the rest of the way open.

  I stood behind it, pulling the door to me, letting in the smell of smoke and the sound of rushing wind. Mikhail stepped forward, sweeping his gun back and forth. Jacob followed, and I took up the rear.

  I had to suck in a breath as we stepped around the corpse that blocked the door. The man’s back had been torn open, skin and muscle torn ragged until glints of bloody spine and rib were visible through the shredded remains of his uniform.

  The White Guard were Walkers like me or John Doe. I had seen what they had done to John Doe’s corpse. The corpse could have been Ivan—

  The snap of another gunshot brought my attention back to where we were. We stood at one end of a very long, narrow deck that seemed to run nearly all the way along the side of the airship, along the outer skin. The wind and cold came from openings to the outside, the night beyond seemed pitch-black from the lighted deck.

  About sixty feet away, I saw a makeshift barricade made of a bulkhead door, a tool bench, a pile of crates, and machine parts. The White Guard had taken refuge behind it, opposite us. Up against the other side of the barricade were over a dozen Shadows, maybe more.

  I saw a glimpse of a garish uniform and was relieved to see Ivan’s face. Then the Shadows surged toward the barricade, and my view was blocked as someone took a shot and part of a Shadow’s head tore away in front of him.

  I realized that using the airship didn’t stop the invading Shadows, but it still took away their main advantage. Unlike the morgue, these Shadows weren’t in a place where they could dodge bullets or “Walk” around blockages like the makeshift barricade.

  Unfortunately, there wasn’t any such barricade between us and the Shadows, and as soon as we entered, about half of them turned to face us, moving like a pack of hungry dogs just catching a whiff of a rare steak.

  Me, I thought as the group broke off from the rear of the attack and started running back toward us. They’re attracted by the Mark. I realized that, standing behind Jacob and Mikhail, I’d attract these things right through them.

  I hefted the ax and ran out from behind Jacob and Mikhail. I ran at an angle toward the outer wall of the airship to avoid putting myself in the line of fire. Jacob shouted some objection, but the Shadows did as I expected, and veered off from their frontal attack to intercept my course. Jacob and Mikhail both picked off stragglers at the rear of the attacking group, and I heard more shots from behind the barricade.

  I didn’t pay much attention because I was focused on the trio of Shadows leading the group headed at me. Two were dressed like the mechanic who’d challenged me and Jacob belowdecks, and the third was a woman who might have worn a servant’s outfit like Greta’s, but because it was shredded and crusted in blood and black fluid, it was hard to tell.

  Whatever action movies might show to the contrary, a fire-ax is no great hand-to-hand weapon, especially if you’re fighting off more than one person. It’s heavy, unwieldy, designed for two hands, and—if you’re wielding it with effective force—it leaves you completely undefended while attacking.

  Fortunately, it wasn’t my only form of attack.

  The only excuse I had for even attempting the stupid maneuver I was contemplating was the fact I had done it once already and managed not to kill myself.

  Once they were almost on me, I spun around and faced them, braced myself, and jumped at them holding the handle of the ax out in front of me with both hands to take the closest one across the throat.

  THIRTY-SIX

  JUST AS THE wood made contact with the Shadow’s Adam’s apple, I pushed with my Mark. The airship winked out of existence in a swirl of freezing wind, leaving me and the Shadow suspended above moonlit cloud cover.

  This time I was expecting it, and I responded by immediately jerking the ax back toward my body, breaking my contact with the Shadow as I pushed with the Mark again.

  I rolled to a stop on the deck behind the advancing Shadows, my mind just beginning to register what might have been a look of surprise on the face of the Shadow I had left falling over the Atlantic Ocean.

  The other Shadows turned to face me as I sprang to my feet. The one I had clotheslined into another universe was not among them. I had a brief impulse to reprise my successful attack, but they were now bunched up between me and Jacob and Mikhail. No stragglers I could pick off as they charged me.

  I backed away from them, toward the barricade and more Shadows. I heard gunfire which probably thinned their numbers, but I was focused primarily on the ones that were almost on me. I braced my feet on the deck as well as I could, my bare feet sliding on gore, and I shifted my grip on the ax and swung low at the first Shadow to run at me.

  I took out the knee on the Shadow’s forward leg. Not a mortal wound, but I recovered control of my weapon almost immediately, and it had the necessary effect of halting the Shadow’s advance.


  The Shadow face-planted in front of me, and I brought the ax up into the hip of the one immediately behind it. Through the handle I felt the blade chew into bone as I knocked the Shadow a step to my right, stumbling into the path of a third Shadow.

  I let them collapse into a heap and took another step back.

  Something grabbed my shoulder and I belatedly realized I had backed into the Shadows that had remained by the barricade. I spun to face the one grappling with me, bringing the ax up. For a moment I was face-to-face with a nightmare. The malignant Mark on this one had eaten away the upper part of its face, leaving a pair of eye sockets to stare at me. The sockets weren’t empty. They were filled with the same black that carved the Mark into its skin.

  It opened its mouth and hissed at me, revealing the flesh inside painted with the same blackness.

  I brought the ax up into the side of its skull. It was a clumsy underhand swing across the arm it was grabbing me with, but it still hit with a satisfying thud that caused it to let go. Before I recovered control of the ax, I heard a gunshot and the two black sockets in its face turned into a single gaping black hole.

  As it collapsed, I could feel the other Shadows closing on me from the sides and behind. I took a step up on an engine block that was part of the makeshift barricade in front of me and pushed myself in an upward leap. I was leaping toward a solid wall made of a bulkhead door, but I pushed with the Mark just as I reached it.

  Wind tore at me and I spent a brief quarter second staring down into the cloud cover.

  The airship was still there, pacing our course.

  I pushed the Mark again and slammed into the deck, rolling to a stop next to a member of the White Guard aiming his rifle through a small gap in the barricade. I pushed myself upright and heard the sound of tearing fabric as the remains of my skirts gave way after catching on a piece of twisted metal poking from the barricade.