The Hangman's Revolution (29 page)

Imagine the horror, the sheer terror, of being suddenly completely underwater with the only sensory inputs being the frantic scrabble of rats and water pressure. Chevie slid into the foundry and the current changed from linear to swirling, and things began to bump against her.

Bodies, she realized, one twitch away from screaming underwater just for a quick death, but then she opened her eyes and saw a tunnel of light.

A tunnel of light?

But no, it wasn’t the afterlife. Some distance away, a pale cylinder of light cut six feet down into the water before raggedly fading into the gloom.

That must be a chimney! thought Chevie, and she pulled out of the current she was in, striking hard for the twenty-foot shaft that allowed machine smoke out of the catacombs.

She willed herself not to panic, even though the odds were stacked sky-high against her actually surviving this ordeal.

And even if I do survive, what then?

Amazingly, this was the first time Chevie’s own future had occurred to her beyond dealing with Clayton Box.

This is not the right moment to make a life-changing decision, she thought as she squinted through the murk, fixing on the blades of light cutting through the water.

Actually, it was the perfect time to think about something for half a minute, to distract herself from her situation and keep panic locked up in her mind.

The first fact to accept was that she could never go back to the twenty-first century. She could feel the Timekey lying on her breastbone, but the landing pad had been dismantled and destroyed, so now the pendant was nothing more than a complex ornament.

Chevie was surprised to find that she didn’t really care about the future. All she wanted to do was lie down somewhere dry and go to sleep for a long while.

And a medal from Queen Victoria would be nice. And a decent cup of coffee.

Dryness and sleep, she decided, were the priorities. Queen Vic would have to wait a few days.

She reached the chimney, thrust herself inside, and was mightily relieved to find a tube of air leading twenty feet up to the surface. The shaft was soot-blackened and rose steeply, but not vertically, so she had a fighting chance.

Chevie shared the chimney with hundreds of rats, who trotted easily along the shaft. At another time she would have been disgusted and repulsed by their spiky wet fur and pink tails, but on this day she was almost relieved that the rats were taking the same route.

These guys know what they’re doing.

All the same, Chevie had no desire to get nipped and pick up a dose of some Victorian plague, so she placed her hands carefully and tried not to flinch when the rats clambered over her forearms, careless in their desperation.

On a good day, with sunshine and breezes, a twenty-foot climb with plenty of toeholds would not have inconvenienced Chevie much—in fact, her pulse probably would not have risen much above sixty—but now, with her uniform sopping wet and death all around, it seemed to Chevie that this sloping shaft could be the straw that not only broke the camel’s back, but its will to survive, too.

The chimney’s surface was treacherous for a climber. The bricks were coated with soot and oil, which had been slickened by the rats’ claws as they hurried to the surface. Chevie dug her fingers into the spaces between bricks and pulled herself upward inch by painful inch. She could see her hands now and was not surprised to find her knuckles bloodied from the climb. She lifted her face toward the sky and thought that the pale disk of evening light was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.

I will survive this, she thought. I will swim in the ocean again. In clean, sparkling water.

Which was a lofty ambition indeed, given her current surroundings.

She was halfway there now, and the world had reduced itself to this struggle. What came before and after the climb did not matter. It was very simple: go on, or die. So she dug in her fingers and toes, dragging herself along, watching her blood seep out from cracks in her skin’s sooty coating.

There were too many rats now—a bubbling carpet of claws and teeth—and so Chevie began sweeping them off with her forearms, clearing a path for herself. The chimney narrowed as it rose, and Chevie fought back panic when it occurred to her that she might not be able to squeeze through the opening.

I will fit, she resolved. Cadet Chevie may not have had the resolve for this fight, but she is gone now. Forever.

But her mind was all Special Agent now. The cadet had been losing coherence from the moment she saw Box’s body. The Boxite Empire would never come to pass.

But what will happen to the world? Chevie wondered, thinking as loudly as she could to shut out the squeaks, chitters, and claw-clicking rat sounds. What new horror will rise up?

Would it be as she learned in history class? Or would it be worse?

Chevie could see now that the opening to the outside world was small, but not too small to wriggle through. She also noticed for the first time that there was a grille on the chimney mouth.

Of course there is, she thought. I should have foreseen this and dived for a tool.

But she could never have dived into the black waters where God only knew what was waiting to snag her pale limbs.

Chevie freed one hand and tried the grille. Locked, naturally. Why did she even bother hoping anymore, when nothing ever seemed to go her way?

Except all those times you survived virtually unsurvivable situations.

Chevie hunched her shoulder to her ear, then rammed the grille until it lifted to the extent a securing chain would allow. There was a gap large enough for a few rats, but not even a human arm.

“Hello!” she called through the bars. “Is there anyone there?”

No one answered and no one came to investigate. She was alone.

It was beyond infuriating to be so close to freedom that she could literally taste it. Chevie laced her fingers into the grille and lay flat on the stones.

Just a moment to rest and think.

She allowed the rats to flow over her and envied them their size, which let them squeeze out through the bars. Her toe jiggled a loose brick in its housing and it was this stroke of luck that probably saved her life.

Chevie inched backward until her eyes were level with the loose brick. She cleared away loose mortar with one stiff finger, digging in as far as she could, huffing the dust into her face; then she wiggled the brick from side to side until the wall gave it up. It slid out with a noise like a crypt opening.

She hefted the brick in one hand, climbed a few feet until she could dig her foot into the new hole for stability, and took a swing at the lock that secured the chain. She put all of her strength into the blow but missed, braining an unfortunate rat and splitting the brick down the middle, sending sharp chunks tumbling down the shaft.

One more time, she thought, and: Sorry, Ratty.

Chevie drew back her arm, tightened her core, then swung with the last burst of energy in her beleaguered body, grunting like a Viking swinging his ax. She flattened the old lock into the wall. The mechanism crumpled and popped, and the body separated entirely from the shackle, allowing the end links to swing freely.

“Ha!” she crowed. “Thank you, Tecumseh.”

The moment the name
Tecumseh
fell from her lips, Chevie began to cry. Firstly because
Thank you, Tecumseh
was one of the phrases her dad used when anything went his way.

The spirit of the great Shawnee warrior, Tecumseh, watches over us,
he had explained.

When Chevie’s mind conjured the phrase, she remembered the last time he had used the words. It was on the morning his Harley’s gas tank had exploded on the Pacific Coast Highway. His bike had been reluctant to start the first couple of times, and when the engine had caught on the third try, he had looked to the sky and shouted,
Thank you, Tecumseh,
and they had both laughed.

Better for him to die while doing something he loved than while being tied up in a Thundercat chair. At least she had spared him that.

Chevie dropped the brick stub down the shaft and pushed open the grille with her head and shoulders. Suddenly her entire body seemed heavier than a stone statue; she felt that if the open air had been one more inch away, she could not have made it. She wiggled from the chimney mouth and flopped onto the blessed surface.

“Thank you, Tecumseh,” she mumbled, watching the last few rats scamper down the canal bank. “Thank you.”

She would have been content to lie there on the cold hard clay, ignoring the stares of passersby and dock workers. But for one thing, no one was looking at her—they were all staring at the strange futuristic vehicle that was barreling across Camden Bridge.

And for another thing, there was a strange futuristic vehicle on Camden Bridge.

It would seem that Boxstrike had not been completely averted just yet.

Clover Vallicose sat on Box’s desk with the corpse of her Lord draped across her knees, and she cried. She bawled for the loss of her master and her faith, for how stupid she had been to believe in Clayton Box. This was how it always ended; every time she had trusted someone, that person had eventually proven himself unworthy. Her parents had been secretly writing poetry, forcing her to inform on them. Her trusted partner, Lunka Witmeyer, seemed to have freed that gorilla Otto. The Hangman had gotten his bones stripped bare by rats, and now the Blessed Colonel himself had proven to be a hollow vessel.

It was too much for her mind to process; that she could have been so wrong for so long. Clover had believed with all her heart that she had been chosen to stand at her Blessed Colonel’s side during the first round of Boxstrike, but it seemed as though she would die with him in this cavern. There would be no Boxstrike to cleanse the British Empire of the covetous men who sat on the polished benches of Parliament. Man would continue to damn the world to an eternity in hell. Their only real chance at salvation lay dead in her lap, and he was not worthy. He had never been worthy.

He had never been.

The notion struck Vallicose like a bolt from the heavens.

Box had never been worthy.

He had never believed as she had believed with every atom in her body, with every beat of her heart.

I believe.

Vallicose realized with a jolt that she herself was a true believer.

I am worthy.

But this was hubris. This was the pride that would damn her.

No. This is why I was chosen. To make sure Boxstrike takes place.
I
am the sword of God.
I
am the angel of death. Godstrike!

As soon as the notion struck her, it seemed to fit. She felt the rightness of it, and her head swam with glorious images of herself at the head of an army.

An army of God.

Whether she lived or died did not matter, for she would live forever in the sight of God and all her sins would be forgiven.

But how to proceed without weapons or army?

Vallicose rolled Box’s corpse from her lap and stood on the desk.

Perhaps she did not have an army, but there was one weapon that had not been lost to the flood. One rather large weapon.

Vallicose turned to the newly hung
Pietà
and ripped it down, revealing a steel door in the wall. Vallicose leaped into the water and ducked to punch in the code on the submerged mechanical keypad. Box had shared the combination with her earlier in the day.

Zero six zero two,
he’d told her. Revelation chapter six verse two:

I looked, and behold, a white horse, and he who sat on it had a bow; and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer.

Vallicose opened the door with a little more effort than it had cost Box earlier and swam through the gap. Inside was a spiral staircase leading up, and she climbed it just as she had earlier that day, following Box’s footsteps.

This is my white horse,
he had said.
A secret project that two of my engineers have been working on for ten years.

At the last bend of the staircase was a large storage shed with reinforced walls and no door.

I will ride my white horse to the very seat of government and blow those graven idols from their hiding place,
he had declared,
and you shall ride beside me.

Just like the first time she had seen it, Vallicose stared at Box’s white horse, awestruck.

It was neither a horse nor white, but for blowing graven idols from their hiding places, it would do quite nicely.

It could not be said that Chevie did not believe what she was seeing. After all, she had witnessed some strange things in her short life/lives, including a tunnel composed of quantum foam, a man who could change his face at will, and a gang boss sporting powdered wig and rouge. But despite all her visual experiences, she was still dumbstruck by the sight of an armored tank rumbling across Camden Bridge, which could barely bear its gross tonnage.

But if Chevie was dumbstruck, the Londoners compensated for her silence with a rising chorus of screams and howls, forming a corridor of panic that followed the tank’s thundering route, first through the marketplace and then across the groaning bridge. Chevie heard shouts of
Dragon!
and even
Martian!
as the locals tried desperately to assess the metal monstrosity that had burst through the brick wall of a storage warehouse and was now crushing the cobblestones beneath its mighty metal treads.

The turret swung in a wide arc, like the head of a drunken man, and the 120-mm gun barrel knocked a cab horse unconscious and almost ripped the carriage itself in half. Onward the tank powered down Camden High Street, dragging stalls into its maw and spitting out twisted wreckage in its wake.

Your average Londoner is a plucky bloke, and several locals pelted the tank with fruit and vegetables from market stalls. One youngster even lifted a few steaks from a meat cart and lobbed them into the tank’s tread mechanism in an effort to clog it up. The effects of this action were twofold: for one, the steak was instantly minced, and for two, the enterprising youngster had his ears boxed by the butcher.