That figured. Any fabricated explanation for the “viral creatures” never before seen would strain the credulity of even the dumbest citizens of Lovecraft. And Draven, only the city Head then, was doubly in control now, had the whole machine of the Proctors to back up whatever story he cared to spin like the venomous spider he was. He was a big man now, bigger than everyone except the president and a few other men who were equally cruel and conniving. He had somebody to blame—me. As long as he had my face to put to the disaster, uncomfortable truths could be swept aside, the way uncomfortable truths often were when the Proctors got involved.
“So, you’re a wanted criminal now,” Dean said, grinning. “I’d be lying if I said that didn’t make me like you even more, princess.”
I tried to smile back but mostly just felt sick at the thought. My picture would be in every paper in every part of the world that didn’t belong to the Crimson Guard.
Casey led us off the main road and down an access path. I could hear the ice creaking in the river as we drew closer. Wind cut into me, and I was glad for the jacket Shard had given me in Windhaven. “The trusses on this side aren’t too heavily guarded,” she called. “We just gotta be quick.”
“And then getting to Old Town?” I asked. Casey chewed her lip and cut her eyes to the river below.
“Getting to Old Town means you’re gonna have to be even quicker,” she said. “You’re not bleeding, are you? Any of you? Ghouls’ll sniff blood a week old.”
“We’re square,” Dean said. “Nobody’s cut so’s it’ll bleed freely.”
Casey bit her lip. “For the record, I still think this is a stupid idea.”
“Duly noted,” I told her.
Ahead of us, I saw one of the great trusses of the Boundary Bridge planted in the riverbank like the resting foot of an iron animal.
The supports traveled down into the bedrock, but from here at the base they looked impossibly thin and high, the span above creaking in the harsh wind.
Casey cast a look at my hands, which I’d tucked as far as they’d go into my sleeves. Exposure to the cold air felt like scraping my knuckles across a brick wall. “Here,” she grumbled, shoving a spare pair of fingerless leather gloves at me.
“I’m fine,” I insisted, though the idea of clinging to a piece of iron with my bare skin above a hundred-foot drop was about as far from fine as I could conceive.
“You’ll be fine until you get about halfway across,” Casey said. “Then either your hands will freeze to a piece of iron or they’ll get so cold they can’t grip the iron at all. Best case, you lose the skin off your palms. Worst case, you go swimming.”
I looked out at the river, the surface a rumpled canvas of ice floes and black water. I put the gloves on.
Casey went first, climbing the support as quickly and surely as a pirate from Cal’s adventure stories going up a mast. I followed, using the massive rivets as foot- and handholds, as she had. Conrad came next, and Dean was last.
I knew exactly how high and wide the bridge ran, of course. Every engineering student in the world probably knew its dimensions, marvel that it was. Joseph Strauss’s masterwork, along with the Cross-Brooklyn Bridge in New Amsterdam. The Boundary Bridge was one hundred twenty feet high. Just shy of one-half mile across. Two hundred lengths of wrist-thick cable suspending it above the river.
As we climbed, I could feel the bridge humming. My Weird didn’t crackle like it did when I encountered a machine with moving parts, but I could feel the river’s force running through the iron, the never-ceasing current working to push the bridge aside and be free. Working through me, into the cracks and crannies of my mind, working at the madness, trying to pick the lock and set it free.
The higher we climbed, the worse the wind got, until it was a trial to even breathe when a gust blew straight at my face.
I just kept going. Hand up, foot up. Muscles crying out, every fiber straining. Grab rivet, test for ice, pull myself to the next. I had to get into the city, had to find Nerissa, get her out of there. Then, I knew, and only then, I could rest.
Hand up, foot up. I couldn’t feel my cheeks or the tips of my fingers. Up ahead, Casey reached the span, the metal lattice that supported the roadbed, slick with ice. With one last tug I joined her and slumped, panting, in the crooked embrace of the iron while we waited for the boys to join us.
“See that?” She pointed at a small black launch with a prow shaped like a blunt battering ram that was working its way through the river below. “Proctors patrolling in an icebreaker,” she said. “We’ll have about three minutes before they get down to the point and start to come back.”
I looked to the next support lattice, at least six feet away across open space. “Am I supposed to sprout wings?”
Casey pointed up, grinning. “Those wires will hold us. You just lace your legs above it and then pull hand over hand and you’re over in no time.”
The idea of hanging upside down over certain death didn’t exactly appeal to me, but I wouldn’t be any kind of hero if I balked. I followed Casey’s lead and grabbed the wire. She slung herself up easily, muscular legs encased in men’s dungarees wrapping around the thin line and holding her weight.
The wire jiggled as Conrad followed me, and bowed a bit as Dean joined him. I couldn’t see them, but knowing they were behind me gave me the nerve I needed to edge along after Casey.
Casey tracked the progress of the ice breaker, which had nearly reached the tall stone lighthouse at Half Moon Point.
“Scoot,” she hissed. “And keep it quiet. There’s men up there on the bridge.”
Clinging to that wire was one of the most singularly miserable experiences of my life. The cold cut straight through my trousers and my gloves everywhere I touched the wire. My skin was rubbed raw, and my hands ached so much I hoped they wouldn’t simply break off and fall away.
Casey was nearly all the way across, and I close behind her, when I felt a shudder in the bridge and heard an explosive cracking of ice in the river below.
My shoulder began to throb with a vengeance. When I was in Arkham, a shoggoth, one of the mindless creatures made up of mouths and eyes that roamed outside the city, had latched onto me and left a bit of itself in a black and puckered scar flushed with venom even now. I gasped at the pain, losing my grip on the wire. I dropped rather than try to hold on, my feet landing on the edge of a support beam.
“There’s something down there!” Conrad shouted from his vantage above, and I looked down to see the ice churning and the water foaming as something fought its way out of the depths.
“Shut up!” Casey hissed at us. “Keep moving!”
My shoulder throbbed so badly it caused black whirlpools to grow in my field of vision. I looked at Dean frantically as he dropped down to stand beside me. “This is wrong …,” I said, my throat raw from cold. I sounded like I was floating far above myself, my voice a hollow and metallic echo. Something was rising out of the river. I could see through the fog that it had yellow, lidless eyes, lanternlike beneath the dark ice, and rubbery green limbs extending from a bullet-shaped body.
Ice shattered when it broke the surface, sending shards and spray in all directions. The creature wrapped its tentacles around the bridge, battering the solid parts of its body against the supports and nearly shaking all four of us free.
“What
“Leviathan!” one shouted. “Shoot that bastard before he shakes the bridge down!”
Dean lost his grip as the thing battered itself against the bridge again, and I reached out and grabbed the back of his jacket before he could fall.
“Never seen one that close before,” he panted. “Must’ve picked up the vibrations from the explosion. Gotten turned around.”
Leviathans were abominations of the deep supposedly caused by the necrovirus, but really, who knew where they came from? Its tentacles were spiraling up the supports of the bridge even as the Proctors opened fire, bullets zipping past us too close for comfort. My stomach lurched as the bridge rattled under its assault, and I abandoned all pretense of bravado. This was not good. Not at all.
