Hometaker: A Steampunk Dystopian Action Adventure (The Great Iron War, Book 6) by Wilson Dean F

Author:Wilson, Dean F. [Wilson, Dean F.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Dioscuri Press
Published: 2016-12-15T16:00:00+00:00

22 – BENEATH

Whistler felt the first glimmers of consciousness, accompanied by the first prickles of pain. His head throbbed. His muscles ached. His ears rang out fiercely. The screeching noise was constant for what seemed like forever, then slowly started to fade. As it did, his vision returned, though it returned blurred.

 Am I dead? he thought to himself, wondering if the dead could think. The second thought he buried: it was about his mother, and it was more painful than the physical sensations running through his body.

 He realised he was staring up at a stone plinth overhead, far up, so high up that he thought it had to be more than six feet. He thought maybe it was the crust of the earth, and he was in the centre. His mind raced with the ideas, dragging the next one over the last, like a burial tomb, until it seemed they tripped over one another, and his mind was a jumble, foggy and distant.

 For a moment he lay there, until he realised he could feel some of the stone beneath him too, a little cold in places, and quite hot in others, where the spears of the sun poked through to sear the surface. Yet he also felt something different beneath his head, like a pillow, and something a little coarser in his hand. He turned his head very slightly and looked down at his hand, only to realise that he was still clutching Jacob's, or rather that Jacob was still holding onto him.

 Then the fog cleared a little, and he remembered the rolling column, and the horrible fall that followed. He felt it again in the pit of his stomach, as if his organs were plummeting. He felt the wind catch his breath, stealing and silencing his cry. He saw the rush of colour, the tumble of ground and sky, the blurring of all things, and Jacob's body dropping like an anchor with him.

 He recalled hitting something, and feeling a stab of pain in his left ankle, before it seemed that he was sliding again, and Jacob was sliding faster. He thought they both reached out with their other hand for something to grip, and both looked up as the column came down upon the new, smaller slope, still intent on crushing them.

 Then they fell again. What little breath he had sucked in was torn once again from his lungs, and the sight became even blurrier, and the sounds became even harder to distinguish from the taunting whistlers of the wind. It seemed like a longer fall now, and he felt and heard the thump of the impact for barely a second before a rush of tingles leapt up through his body, as if to counterbalance the fall. Once it struck his head, the tingles became sparkles in his eyes, little growing stars upon a black field. And then nothing.

 He felt a different kind of tingle now in his feet, and he found he could wiggle his toes. There was a sudden sense of immense relief in that little movement that somewhat frightened him.

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