It was still dark when the War Engines broke through. I’d drifted off to sleep, and I’d been dreaming: a raging sea, untold tons of water moving like muscle, a sight I’d never seen in life. The waves crashed into a cliffside, shaking the earth, rumbling like a world-spanning storm. Someone screamed. I opened my eyes, and the rumbling was real.
The others must have been sleeping, too. We were all sitting up, our eyes adjusting to the low light, trying to understand what we were hearing.
Peabody was with us. He stood in our midst, silent and still. A single black moth perched on his tilted, ruined skull, wings beating like a slow pulse.
Silas leapt off his chair and rushed down the corridor. “They’re in! They’re in!”
My first thought: “Watson’s out there.”
I looked at the others, expecting them to launch into action. Joe and Sally stared back at me, their faces blank. They didn’t move. Peabody’s reaction, if he had one, was unknowable to me.
Another scream floated down to us, a ghost on a dark current. I pushed myself to my feet, and against every instinct in my body I made my way to the mouth of the corridor. Sally’s rifle leaned beside it; I snatched it up and raced down the hallway. I felt the cold pulse of wind waiting at the far end.
“Stay here!” Sally called, but I ignored her. As far as I was concerned, they were once again displaying cowardice in the face of a true threat. If they were worried enough about it, they’d follow me.
I arrived at the door to see Silas pulling it closed and spinning the seal.
I felt the hum of the Lamplighter as Peabody brought the engines to life.
“No!” I raised the rifle, aimed it at Silas. “Open it!”
He looked at me as though I’d lost my mind. “The War Engines are inside! Can’t you hear what’s happening? We’re getting out of here!”
“Watson! If they came in, then he would have come in with him! He’s looking for me!”
Silas took a step closer, anger contorting his face. “Put that goddamn gun down! You idiot! We’re leaving!”
There were other cultists out there. People he’d been living with and working beside for God knew how long. People who’d stayed with him as others fled, people who believed as much as he did in the chance to send the Lamplighter home and solve the greatest mystery, the direst calamity, that the Martian colony had ever faced. And he was prepared to leave them all behind, without even attempting to save a single one.
He took another step and I fired the rifle. I was aiming above his head, and by some stroke of luck I did actually miss him. The bullet struck the metal wall behind him and ricocheted past my own ear. His face was almost comical with shock.
“Open it!” I screamed.
He spun the wheel and hauled the door open again. As he did so I slammed the button that extended the ramp. The wind was howling, and an icy spray stung my face. A wedge of light spilled from the hatchway onto the cold ground. The green mist of the Strange clung to the ranks of the unharvested cylinders, their weird crystalline ghosts shivering in the night.
Some of the Moths were here, having been pushed back into the garden by the advance of the War Engines. They’d arrayed themselves in a defensive position in front of the corridor, waiting for the Engines to make their appearance. A couple of them turned to look back at the ship, their drawn and haggard faces lighting with hope. The others kept waiting, their rifles and their pistols ready, prepared to sacrifice their lives to aid in the Lamplighter’s escape. It was a remarkable, doomed act of courage, and I couldn’t help but wonder how different things might have been if the people of New Galveston had shared even a quarter of that bravery.
Screams cascaded from the tunnel’s yawning mouth, as if Mars itself cried out. I walked to the bottom of the ramp, the rifle dangling uselessly in my hand, looking for any sign of Watson. But no Engines had made it into the garden yet.
A percussive blast of gunfire overlaid the screaming, calm and unhurried.
Thumpthumpthumpthumpthump.
Thumpthumpthump.
One of the Moths started firing into the tunnel.
And then there was Watson, that dear old Kitchen Engine, that stupid bucket of rattling parts, frustrating and helpless and reassuring and safe, rolling quickly out of it, his useless dishwasher arms sticking comically out, his head peering this way and that as the rifle rounds ricocheted off his chassis.
“Watson! Over here!”
He heard me and altered his course. The Moths let him go, concentrating their fire at whatever was coming down the tunnel behind him.
The Lamplighter vibrated with energy. Its big engine hammered and rolled, an old horse eager for another run. Every impulse in my body urged me back inside. The ship was moments from flight.
Watson made it halfway and stopped. He was saying something to me, but I couldn’t hear him over the Lamplighter, the wind, the gunfire, the screams.
I jumped off the ramp and ran to him. I wasn’t dressed for the temperature. The wind was already making my body shake, my fingers numb. I’d forgotten how bad it could get, without the heat tents, without even a heavy-weather jacket to block the wind. The cold was a killing thing. Keeping low, I hustled across the small open space separating me from Watson. I spared a quick look at the mouth of the corridor.
A War Engine filled it. It was one of the Engines with a dangling human being, a puppet, as Silas had called it. He twitched like a hideous living doll. His hands were black at the fingertips, as were his nose and his cheeks. Frostbite, in its dark flourish. The machine’s other limb was a Gatling gun, and it spun in a red heat as it spewed bullets across the garden like a swinging scythe.
“Watson,” I said, arriving at his side. I positioned myself so that he was between me and the War Engine. “Watson, what’s wrong? Let’s go!”
“My treads have come loose,” he said. I looked down and saw that it was true: the right tread had separated and lay uselessly in the dirt.
“Watson, no. Can’t you move anyway?”
He made an effort, inching forward.
“I’m afraid not, Miss Crisp.”
“Try!” I ran behind him and threw my whole weight against his body. It was like trying to push a fully loaded wagon, but he crept forward again.
I glanced at the Lamplighter. To my horror, the ramp had been retracted. Silas stood at the door; he locked eyes with me once before swinging it shut.
“NO!”
The Lamplighter lifted off the ground.
It was like seeing Death raise its head. I stood in the middle of this maelstrom of blood and terror, the frozen wind slowing my brain, the ghosts in the garden winking out as the cylinders were shattered by stray bullets of the firefight, and watched that little sphere of warmth and possibility start its journey into the starry sky, as removed and peaceful as an illustration from one of my books.
I was suddenly aware of my mother’s recording, still in my pocket. If I didn’t make it out, Father would never hear her voice again.
“I’ll protect you, Miss Crisp.”
He pushed me until he stood between me and the War Engines. He rotated his position so that he faced them. It was everything he could do. It was all he could do. I rested my forehead against him.
What Moths remained made their final stand. Though a few had taken up positions behind the odd crate or a recess in the cavern walls, most of them had nowhere to hide. They stood lined up in the open, like the soldiers from the Civil War I’d seen pictures of in school. They fired a volley at the War Engines and lowered their rifles to reload.
The War Engines fired their Gatling guns, and the bullets flew, thundering hammerblows with a noise so loud it was almost physical. People came apart like toys. Limbs flew every which way, blood leapt and arced, misting the air. The Moths screamed. Some of them fired back, their bullets pinging off the Engines’ hides or landing with dull wet thuds into the dangling puppets’ bodies. I fixated on Percy, the arrogant kid who’d wanted to stand up to Joe until Sally backed him down, crouching on one knee and bracing his rifle against his shoulder, firing futilely at our encroaching doom.
A voice sounded behind me: “Anabelle! Get inside!”
It was Joe Reilly, standing in the opened hatchway, his jacket flapping in the wind. The loading ramp had been extended again, though since the Lamplighter was still airborne, it hovered a foot off the ground.
“Come on, Watson!” I started pushing him again.
Rage colored Joe’s face. “Goddamn it, forget him and come on!”
Watson tried again, making it another six inches before lurching to a stop. A stray bullet caught his head, just under his left eye. A shower of sparks and metal flew out like a small geyser. “I think, Miss Crisp,” he said, “that I would prefer to stay.”
The War Engines released another volley of hell, and the sound and the stink of human destruction was too much. I dropped to the ground, terror short-circuiting everything else; I curled around myself, arms over my head. I think I was screaming. A small point of stillness in my head, an embattled fortress of reason, told me that I had to get up and go. That I would be killed for sure if I stayed even another moment.
“Anabelle! It has to be now!”
All right, I thought. All right. There’s another way to save him.
I pulled myself up to Watson’s side. “Bluebonnet,” I said.
Watson’s eyes went dark and his cylinder tried to eject from his body. It caught; the bullet to his head had warped the metal. I tried to grab it with my fingers, pry it out. “No, no, no, no, no, no.”
It wouldn’t come.
I turned my head in time to see bullets shred Percy’s head and shoulders into gaudy ribbons of blood and bone, the flesh of his face ripped away by a hurricane of metal, the teeth in his skull briefly visible before they dissolved into splinters and dust.
I felt a crushing horror. These people were giving up their lives so that Peabody and the Lamplighter could escape, and by delaying that escape I risked turning their sacrifice into a useless, gore-strewn waste.
Watson sat inert like a stone. I tried to shove the cylinder back in, to wake him again. So he could hide, so he could come home on his own.
It wouldn’t go back in. It was completely stuck.
“Watson,” I sobbed, turning toward the ship and running. “Watson, I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”
I reached for Joe. He grabbed my forearm and hauled me onto the ramp, nearly pulling my arm from its socket. I felt a surge of relief at his strength, at the way his grip brooked no argument. I was a child still, and he illustrated this by lifting me off my feet and carrying me to safety.
“Go go go go go!”
Bullets punched into the Lamplighter’s hide and into the open port as the hydraulics labored to pull the ramp closed. I saw Joe’s coat flare out on one side as the bullets pinged and spanged around us. The ship pitched hard to one side, tumbling us painfully into the damaged corridor. I slammed into the wall, breath exploding from my lungs. The whole world tilted and spun, and I knew that the bullets must have ruptured some necessary pipe or reservoir, or smashed through the motherboard that housed Peabody’s consciousness.
But the Lamplighter quickly leveled, and the inertia of a fast ascent pressed me into the floor.
The ramp hadn’t closed completely; one of the struts had been damaged, and it stalled out with a gap several inches wide, beyond which the cold night air roared like a banshee, and flashes from the firefight could be seen dropping swiftly away.
Watson was down there among them.
Joe climbed to his feet, examining a large hole in his jacket. Remarkably, the bullet had missed him. I felt a vast relief, even underneath the grief I felt for Watson.
“I almost died,” he said. “I almost got killed for your piece-of-shit Engine.”
I stared at him, stunned. He looked calm, but it was the wrong sort of calm: all animation in his face had ceased. It was like he’d been wearing a mask, and it had come loose in the violence, and now just hung there like dead skin.
I was scared all over again, and I didn’t even know why. “I had to do it,” I said. I looked around for my anger, but I couldn’t find it. I needed it and it wasn’t there. “I had to try to save him.”
“No,” he said. “You didn’t. You risked every single one of our lives for something that isn’t even real. In fact, that’s Anabelle Crisp in a nutshell, isn’t it? That’s what you do.”
He leaned against the bulkhead, his eyes unfocused. He seemed to think about things for a minute. Maybe he was looking for something, too. Finally, he said, “Get away from that door. If you slip out, I don’t want to have to go fetch your corpse.” He walked away, toward the main cabin.
I pressed myself against the wall, staring through the gap in the broken door, into the darkness where I had left my only friend in the world. Where I had left a field of slaughter.
I wrapped my arms around myself, clutching my mother’s cylinder to my chest. I closed my eyes and imagined that my head was in her lap, her fingers stroking my hair. It’s not your fault, she said. Everything’s going to be okay. For the first time since Silas had broken into the diner, I cried.