by Mark Lingane
Sebastian stopped. A smart man would not head toward the screams of pain. Neither would a dumb one. He turned around and followed the fleeing men.
He ducked into a side corridor and made his way deeper into the voidship, hoping that whatever was back down the corridor would be more interested in the prey it had already injured than in finding a fresh source. He calmed his nerves and rested against the metal wall. The wall flexed under his weight and made a slight popping sound. The floor beneath him creaked.
He glanced down. Through the perforated sheeting, he saw something move. Deep red eyes stared up at him through the holes. There was a hiss.
A thump came from the end of the corridor and Sebastian wheeled around. A dead body lay prostrate. He glanced back down below the floor. Whatever had been beneath him was gone. He heard the scrabbling of claws on metal even further below. There was an intake of air, almost joyous, then a click. All the lights went out.
Sebastian let his mind unwind.
Again, the pain hit him instantly. He sensed the metal flooring that stretched away in both directions, leading down the corridor to a T-junction. On the left, he sensed a metal door. Through the door was a small space, which held a metal bucket and a battery-powered flashlight. On the right he sensed a staircase leading down into the belly of the craft. The staircase was a big concern. Whatever was down there could easily come up.
He felt liquid drip out of his nose. Even in the darkness, he knew it was blood. He took a couple of deep breaths and made his way along the corridor. Footsteps mirrored his own. His heartbeat began to increase. In the freezing air of the craft, he was sweating heavily.
The pitch-black stretched out before him; it was impossible to see what lay ahead. He crept along, small step by small step, feeling his way along the wall and trying to be absolutely silent. The flashlight in the small room he had sensed was vital to his survival, and reaching it consumed his mind. He crept forward, listening carefully. He was certain he could hear the wet slaps of bare feet on metal. The staircase was still worrying him.
He reached the junction. His fingers quested around the sharp edge of the corner. He leaned around and felt a warm breeze against his face. Something organic felt creepily close. Terror gripped him. He had nothing to use as a weapon.
There was a commotion from the corridor ahead and the wet footsteps stopped. There was an intake of air, inches from his ear. His heart pounded to the point of pain, and his head swam. He took the chance and charged around the corner. He felt something to the left of him.
He found the door and wrenched it open, as something behind him let out a bloodcurdling scream. He jumped into the small room and slammed the door shut. Something on the other side crashed into it.
He found the flashlight and fumbled with it, twisting it frantically until it clicked on. He swept the beam around the cramped space. All he could see were the metal bucket and wooden-handled mop, both useless for defense. He rested momentarily against the rear wall of the storage cupboard before springing forward and wrenching open the door.
The beam from the flashlight fell across the hideous green body of an infected. Somehow, it must have found a way through Melanie’s wall of firepower and onto the voidship before takeoff. Sebastian’s heart sank. He’d seen the way these creatures devoured their prey. Their speed and ferociousness, powered by mutated base desires, would be difficult to overcome in the restricted space of the zeppelin.
The creature’s deformed limbs flashed briefly in the light before gouging deeply into the body of a dying void rider lying on the metal floor. Blood sprayed out and coated the wall as the infected severed the man’s forearm. There was a dull thud as the dead limb hit the metal, and the man screamed. There was a howl of laughter from the infected. Sebastian knew there were worse things an infected could do than simply kill its victim.
He bolted. The beam of light illuminated the corridor erratically as his pounding legs carried him as fast as they would go. The light caught the edge of the stairs, too late, and he tumbled down the metal steps, landing heavily at the bottom. He jumped up onto unsteady feet and dashed down another corridor, bouncing off the walls.
He sprinted through a bulkhead, turned, and slammed the depressurization door behind him. He searched for a way to lock it, but the securing bolt was missing. There was a furious scratching on the other side of the door. He searched frantically for something to jam the door closed, but the flashlight sweeping over the deck revealed nothing. He braced against the heavy pounding on the door.
Sebastian let his mind stretch out.
The pain speared through him. He caught the outline of a wrench at the far end of the deck on his side of the door. He flipped the electrons and held out his hand. The wrench sailed through the air and smacked into his palm. He twisted and slammed it into the holding loop. The door rattled manically, and he pushed back. Eventually, the thrashing stopped and he heard a snuff, then footsteps heading away. He stepped back cautiously from the door.
All was quiet. He leaned into the door and placed his ear against it. Another bout of manic shaking and banging erupted from the other side. He jumped back, turned, and fled into the darkness.
The deck was long and narrow, with no exits. His footsteps clanged and echoed in the chamber as he ran. Darkness lay to both sides and below. He assumed he was in the hold, the base of the ship. Just outside the zeppelin’s thin metal casing was a drop of many thousands of feet to oblivion. The thought caused him to slow momentarily.
He rounded a corner into another corridor and found a small alcove stacked with supplies. And his steambike. It was in poor condition, his escape through the streets of the capital of Queensland having taken its toll on the machine. He ran a sad hand over its dents and scratches. His sword was still tied to the seat.
He smiled. “I’ll take that,” he said, pulling it free and strapping the scabbard onto his back.
There was a reptilian, clicking sound behind him. He wheeled around. There was nothing there. He heard a slithering sound. He withdrew his sword and cautiously made his way further along the corridor, putting distance between himself and the hold. The shaking of the craft unsettled his steps, slowing his progress.
The corridor ended in a set of steps that led up to the level above. He heard the sound of a tongue clicking very quickly. He swept the light over the corridor behind him, and caught movement as something disappeared behind the supplies.
The ship had gone quiet. The screams had ceased, he hoped not from a lack of living lungs. Through the rattling of the metal zeppelin, he could hear hissing and growling. There was a scraping sound from below.
“Melanie, where are you when I need you?” he whispered.
The beam from the flashlight started to dim and flicker. He watched it fade and then extinguish. He sighed. He hefted the sword and listened carefully for movement. There was a hiss in front of him, and he stabbed into nothing. He swept the sword back and forth, and managed to nick the creature. It squealed. He heard it jump back.
He turned back toward his bike. He focused his mind on the steambike’s battery, pouring energy into it. The headlight flashed on, startling the infected, which wheeled around to face the threat. The horribly thin and disfigured body flailed in front of him, stunned by the light. He was able to land several blows, forcing the creature away from him.
He turned and ran up the stairs and into the living quarters on the deck above. He slammed the bulkhead door behind him and shot the bolt into the securing hole, sealing the door. He rested against it, panting.
He caught the stench of old, heavily used clothes. The smell reminded him of the tesla school back at the Steam Academy, where all the teenage boys crammed in together had a sloppy idea of what “personal hygiene” meant. This smell was much worse. It almost had its own life. His mom would’ve had something to say about it.
Subdued daylight in various shades of gray flickered in via a tiny window at the far end of the quarters. He made his way between the stink
ing bunk beds, stepping over the discarded clothes and food scraps on the floor, to a row of steel lockers. Some had been torn open, revealing personal belongings that highlighted the depressing, lonely existence of the void rider.
A locker door rattled as he walked past. He stopped. The door rattled again. He placed his ear against the door. He thought he could hear the gentlest of breaths. He raised his sword and flung open the door. A spitting ball of fury leaped at him, all claws and fur. It landed on his shoulder and took a swipe at his ear, sinking in its claws and drawing blood before jumping off him and running away.
Sebastian was stunned. Who kept a cat on the oversized balloon that was a voidship?
The long room ended with another staircase leading up to yet another level. He took the steps two at a time and emerged onto a large deck. He stepped through the bulkhead door and bolted it behind him. It was bitterly cold. Freezing air whipped around the deck and blew his hair into his eyes. Ten-foot harpoons stuck out through portholes in the zeppelin walls. They were attached via thick metal chains to large hoops in the center of the deck.
There was only one other door on this level and it was closed. He moved to the bow of the zeppelin and examined the door. He could hear a human voice on the other side. He tried to open the door, but it was secure.
Sebastian focused his mind and let the pain roll over him.
He sensed the simple bolt on the other side of the door. He felt the electrons in his mind, aligned them, and twisted. The bolt slid open.
He burst through the door. Dark, stormy clouds rushed toward him, coupled with a blinding light that made him throw up his hands to shield his eyes.
2
“HEY, KID, GLAD to see you up and around.”
Sweat was pouring off Andana as he struggled with the large wooden wheel mounted in the center of the console. In front of him was an array of dials and gauges. Steam poured from the console as the gauges screamed to maximum, adding the only degree of warmth to the entire craft. The large glass wall that comprised the bow of the flight deck eclipsed Andana’s already diminutive frame.
“You know there’s an infected on board,” Sebastian said. “Maybe even more than one.”
“Yeah, I know. Somehow the freaks got onboard when we was waiting for you.”
“You’re the one who promised to bring me here.”
“Yeah, well, words can be mistaken. Look, don’t stand around looking untidy. If you help with these controls, we might just make it out of here alive, or at least not totally dead.”
Sebastian stepped up to the console. The gauges were beyond his understanding. Long, tall tubes full of liquids bubbled furiously. Needles were bouncing off the red markers on the dials.
“Is it always this turbulent?”
“No, but we’s been on the back end of the void arm all the way across the Pacific. God knows what’s holding us together. By rights we should be dead, but because of my masterful navigation skills we’s made it. You can thank me later.”
He glanced over at the teen and squinted. “You look bigger than when you came aboard.”
The craft made a sudden lunge to one side and dropped height dramatically. Sebastian lost his balance as gravity left him, and he left the floor. He crashed down heavily onto the steel grating as the craft stabilized again.
“If it ain’t too much effort, kid, how about releasing that valve on the far right.”
Sebastian looked at the apparatus in front of him. What did a valve look like? Was it a dial or a switch? A button? A lever? Or was it a latch? He went through the various options until something slid to the right and there was an intense release of air, forcing him back several paces.
Andana watched the dial in front of him. It bounced around furiously before rotating dramatically to the left. He gave a sigh of relief. “And that means we … ain’t going to die.”
A loud alarm pierced the rattling of the zeppelin and the roar of the rushing air.
“I might’ve spoken too soon,” Andana said.
The clouds parted and the immense city of Los Angeles, parts of it on fire and smoking, filled the expanse of glass in front of them. The ground approached at a stomach-churning pace. Sebastian saw a swarm of insect-like creatures, several stories high, stalking through the massive explosions below.
“Hold on,” Andana warned. “Things are going to get rough.”
Time seemed to slow as the voidship continued to descend. Andana heaved on the wheel, trying to turn the craft sideways. The steel groaned in complaint as the tortured structure fought against the opposing forces. The ship started to rotate to the left, slowly, and then snapped forward.
The wheel cracked out of Andana’s hands and he howled in pain. He leaped backward then lunged for the furiously spinning wheel, screaming as the wood slammed against his hands. He picked up a long bar and jammed it through the spokes. The wheel came to an instant halt, but not before bending the bar. The ship lurched as the motors went haywire.
The city swum back into focus as they approached the tops of the tallest buildings, all burned-out shells, at frightening speed. The ship crashed down on top of one of them, bouncing once. The building cracked and collapsed under the brutal impact. The ship slipped down the side of the building and lurched into the one beside it. The second building twisted and slowly started to collapse. What remained of the windows cracked, and glass sprayed out into the air and down onto the streets below.
The zeppelin caught a corner of the falling building, twisted, and slammed into the tumbling rubble. Sebastian held on with grim determination as the ship rolled. Andana, cursing, had his arm wrapped around the wheel. The zeppelin flipped. With its nose pointing downward, it fell toward the ground several hundred feet below. People on the streets below stopped and looked up in horror as the craft hurtled toward them.
The ship hit.
In the blink of an eye, the glass wall in the flight deck cracked and shattered, glowing white-hot as it cut through the metal and fabric lining the interior of the ship. The debris sliced deeply into Andana’s flesh. Blood sprayed out as his body was shredded, until only his hands remained clamped around the buckled wheel. The massive framework of the zeppelin cracked and then crumpled, smashing through the rear wall of the flight deck, but not before pulverizing what remained of Andana.
Sebastian was catapulted through the opening at the front of the ship moments before the glass erupted into the cabin. He soared downward and impacted the ground.
His mind took over. The world flickered in front of him, flashing between death and the dark void that filled his body with pain. The world twisted and the dark void was replaced by a hint of salvation. He could feel his death and he could feel his survival; the choice lay before him as the twin realities flickered manically in his mind. The pain reached toward eternity as he felt his entire body being ripped apart.
He chose life.
The blackness disappeared, but with the rushing light came a new wave of pain. He found himself lying on the black tarmac of the street, free of the crash zone, feeling broken, but still breathing. He lifted himself up onto his hands and knees, coughed out a mouthful of blood, and sagged back onto his knees. He looked around, his vision bloodied and blurred. The people had vanished.
He looked up. Smoke and flames from the wreckage towered above him. The ruins of the voidship creaked distressingly, and then the ship shifted and began to topple. He clambered to his feet and sprinted away under the shadow of the falling craft. The ship crashed to the ground. Metal shrapnel flew past him and smashed into the surroundings buildings, somehow leaving him unscathed.
“Welcome to the North America,” he muttered.
Commander Nikola Tasman glared at the captain of the voidship and narrowed his eyes. “Say that again.”
The voidship captain hesitated. Normally the ceremonial tattoos over his face and arms kept potential troublemakers away, but the fury and desperation in the face of the towering man in front of him was unmatched by anything
he’d seen before. And as a man who continually enraged many fraught people, he had seen a lot of anger. The madman had already lifted up the captain’s biggest bodyguard and slammed him onto the table, shattering it and driving one of the legs through the man’s stomach.
“No,” the captain repeated. “I can’t take you because we miss sweep. You want cross pond to North America, you wait for next rotation.”
Nikola grabbed the man by his tunic and wrenched him up to eye level. The captain struggled. “How long until the sweep comes around again?”
“Two months.”
Nikola wrapped his hand around the captain’s throat and started to squeeze.
“Every captain will tell you the same,” the man spluttered, his face turning purple.
Nikola released him and threw him back into the chair. The captain nodded to one of the crew members. The man withdrew an automatic rifle, but before he could fire, he found himself riddled with bullets. The place went quiet. The man collapsed to the floor.
Colonel Parker nodded to Nikola, turned back to the bar, and carried on talking to the barman. He holstered his still-smoking pistol. The general murmur of voices resumed as the cleaners moved in to remove the body.
“What do people do here for two months?” Nikola asked the captain.
The captain pulled out another chair and patted it. “Sit down, have drink. Anyway, why you want go North America? It not nice place.”
Nikola sighed. “My boy,” he said. “I need to protect him.”
3
THE PEACEMAKER SAT atop the Salt Lake City citadel and stared out his panoramic and cavernous corner-office window at the maintenance team toiling on the building opposite. The city around him was struggling to stay together. He’d worked hard to keep the peace in the neighboring regions of the west, and to maintain the Great Wall dividing it from the east, but success had extracted its toll in exhaustion and a withered frame.