Hellfire by Jeff Provine Read Free Book Online

shirt suddenly seemed thin. He wondered if he could reach the porthole and close it.
    Nate shifted up from where he sat on the floor. The hunchbacks had thrown him in this little room at the back of the airship near the disembarking balcony. It was a half-empty storeroom with boxes piled in one of the corners. They were lashed to eyehooks set in the wall, the same as he was across the room.
    Nate pulled as far as he could from the chain, pressing the metal of the shackles into his wrists. His right shoulder burned, so he gave up trying to pull.
    The porthole was still a yard away from him. He could see through it, at least. There wasn’t too much to see in the darkness of night with the moon still in its first quarter and already setting. He made out a few creeks and farmsteads cleared out of the woods. A faint glow came from the east ahead of them.
    Struggling closer to the wall, he could see in front of the airship. There, the city of Lake Providence lay out before him, visible even at night. The oxbow lake shined, and the buildings stood tall. A few of the smokestacks had haze streaming out of them as factory men worked the nightshift. Right in the middle, down the public mall from the new capitol, was the City Center building. It was a prize of modern architecture, something the politicians had been harping on for over a year as it grew up from the ground. Now just a few cranes stood over it like mother herons as workers finished its construction in time for the fiftieth anniversary of Burr’s settlement of Bastrop alongside the Midsummer festival. Beyond the city, he could make out the famed Burr Bridge across Stack Island, built after the earthquakes of 1813, long before Nate’s parents came to the then-territory. It glowed with lamps that reflected on the sleepy Mississippi.
    None of it had been there a half century ago, just a few Indian settlements and Colonel Burr’s colony near Bastrop. When steam power began its surge, Burr was quick to do everything he could to improve the new territory he dubbed Gloriana. The bridge across the Mississippi was one of a dozen feats of engineering that showered wealth upon the state. Now trains crisscrossed it up to Ozarka and Texas, tractors ploughed farms, factories churned out goods, and even airships flew. All that progress came in under a lifetime, yet Nate couldn’t imagine the city not being there.
    From the air, it didn’t look real through the hazy smoke. It seemed like a painting by an unknown artist capturing the city in the moment. The people and horses in the streets were too small to make out from this distance; only the buildings and the smoke stood out.
    He heard the door open behind him. Nate backed away from the porthole.
    The man with the waxed mustache walked inside, his boots making hollow thumps on the wooden planks. Marshal Ticks, Nate remembered. “Enjoying the view?”
    The two hunchbacks were behind him, the tall one ducking under the low ceiling.
    “I was just trying to close the window,” Nate said.
    Ticks strode across the room, pulling a black leather glove from one hand and leaving the hunchbacks at the door. He shut the glass, fastening its lock with a click. His hands looked smooth, no callouses like Nate’s shovel left.
    “Better?” he asked.
    Nate gave a slow nod.
    “Now, then,” Ticks said, leaning against the cedar wall and crossing the arms. “Let’s talk about what happened this afternoon.”
    “You said I had to see a doctor.”
    “We can deal with that later, provided we have to at all. I’m just looking for your statement on what you saw.”
    Nate turned away. He didn’t want to think about the thing in the firebox. “I told that sheriff everything already.”
    Ticks made a disappointed grunt. “Yes, and we’ll have to collect his report in due time. Now, in the interest of timeliness, mind repeating what you told him?”
    The dark, faceless thing flashed in front of his eyes. Nate squeezed them shut and took in a