Masque of the Red Death (27 page)

“That way,” I say.

We begin to walk, quickly, against the flowing water. We need to get out of here.

“Remember when I told you that Elliott liked books better than girls? I didn’t know he’d end up besotted—” Her voice breaks, and she tries to suppress a sob. “He had a place … he was working on some secret project.”

The mask factory… Kent, who seems involved with everything … the balloon.

“I know how we’re getting out of the city,” I say. “We should take the next tunnel to the right and then climb up to the street as soon as we can.” My voice sounds sure, but I’m not completely certain of any of this.

Water rushes down the corridor in a steady flow. We have to lift our feet higher than normal to walk, and it’s exhausting. I suspect this passage isn’t flooding yet because there are lower passages, and the water is finding its way there.

We pass one perpendicular passage and then another. The water swirls around our ankles. We can keep going this way. It’s probably safer than fighting through the mob on the street.

“So the Reverend Malcontent plans to send an army of the diseased to take over the city?” I ask.

“They want stone buildings and running water. You can’t blame them. Though, if you think about it, that’s all going slowly to hell. Crumbling. And the water”—she splashes it against the wall to prove her point—“tastes like swamp muck. Maybe they’ll be happy in their houses in the city. No one else is.”

The water is freezing cold, and I can’t see much of anything.

“Was Elliott very upset when he realized that I was gone?” I ask, trying to distract myself from the cold and my horror.

“He was frantic. He thought one of the prince’s spies had taken you. He threw one of those old men against the wall and knocked over a bookcase.” She sighs. “Don’t feel too terrible. If he’s alive, you’ll be the one who saved him. He saw you in the crowd and started down the gangplank. It’s possible—”

Her words are interrupted by a splash from behind us. Not water hitting the walls, but something bigger. Is someone following us? April and I hold very still, but I hear nothing, and now the water has risen to our knees.

“It’s not flowing down to the lower passages fast enough. Do you think we should climb up yet?” April asks.

“Let’s keep moving until we find a ladder,” I say.

The floor of the passage rumbles, and as we turn the corner we see a wall of dark water roaring toward us. My face hits bricks, and my mask makes a sound like bones cracking. Elliott’s ring slips down to the edge of my finger. I make a desperate fist because I don’t want to lose it.

The water settles at our waists, but the current is stronger. A vortex swirls around my body, and I can’t help imagining being sucked into the darkness of the corridors below.

“Araby!” April points to a ladder. I grab wildly, and when my hand touches metal, I wrap my fist around a rung and hold on, even as the water pushes me into the wall again.

April climbs quickly. I’m a few rungs below her.

“Come on, Araby,” she commands.

But I can’t. I’m frozen, and something is nudging my ankles. Something has crept from a dark, abandoned corner and is swimming in the water beside me.

A body floats past. Maybe it touched me; maybe that’s what I felt.

And then there’s a noise from above, and a face looks down, silhouetted in a circle of afternoon light.

“Hey there, you need to get out!” a boy’s high-pitched voice calls.

I stare up, surprised.

The large metal screws that hold this ladder in place must have come loose, and the ladder makes a horrible discordant squeal as the metal twists. I can feel it bending beneath my feet even as I reach for the next rung.

We will only make it to the top if one of us takes the boy’s hand. But he is diseased. And we both know never to touch someone who is diseased. Pus drips from a sore on his arm and drops into the water. I can see the fear on April’s face, revulsion bordering on panic.

She has no mask to protect her, and he’s clearly part of her father’s army. He’s one of the enemy.

I don’t want to take his hand either.

The left side of the ladder pulls from the wall with a loud screech.

Closing my eyes, I reach up past April. The ladder is moving now, shaking with the current, but the boy has both of my hands. Something tears through my shoulder. It could be the metal of the ladder, spearing me as it rips away from the wall. It could be a crocodile, ready to devour me.

April wraps her arms around my waist.

Our only hope is this boy. We are so heavy with our wet skirts, we will drag him down with us....

But he is surprisingly strong. He pulls me to street level, and I let go of his hand, clawing at the cement around the mouth of the tunnel. I’m on the sidewalk, and April is beside me. A corpse is close enough that if I reach out I could touch it. A man’s body, with blood on his cheeks.

I turn to warn April so she won’t look directly at it. Seeing her without a mask, surrounded by corpses, makes me want to cry. How did this happen to us?

April grabs my shoulder, and I almost scream with the pain. “Oh, God, you’re bleeding all over. This is going to scar.” She whimpers. “You’re never going to be able to wear a backless dress again.”

Suddenly we hear screaming from inside one of the buildings. I struggle to my feet and put my hand out to April.

“Thank you,” I say to the boy. He has a gently sweet face, and he’s young. I realize that he’s the boy from below, in the tunnel. “You saved our lives.”

He’s staring at my mask. I put my hand to it. The main part is intact, but I feel a cracked place on the inside.

“I didn’t know,” he says, staring at his hands. He thought we were diseased, like him. “You’re hurt,” he says. A sore beneath his eye bursts, and pus runs unchecked down his face. April makes a sound.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “We don’t cover the sores because fabric makes them itch.”

“So you aren’t dying?” April asks him. “You’re one of the lucky ones....” She trails off. Who knows if the lucky ones are the people who live or the ones who die quickly? April and I lean against each other. My shoulder is burning.

“I’ve had it since I was nine,” he says. “In the last year it’s gotten worse.”

“Does it hurt?” April asks.

I want to tell her to leave him alone. She’s never been the least bit interested before. Musket fire echoes from the buildings on either side of the street before he can answer her.

“We have to go,” April says.

The boy watches us.

“Do you have someplace to go?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “Our homes out in the marsh were destroyed. I don’t want to go back in there.” He gestures to the tunnels.

I wipe at my arm, surprised when I see that my hand is dripping blood.

“Araby, it’s deep. We have to find something.” April sounds distressed.

She tears at her skirt, but it’s made of stiff pieces of lace. Lace isn’t going to staunch the bleeding. “We need something to use as a bandage.”

My dress is made from emerald-green mesh, and the idea of pressing it to the wound, which throbs and burns at the same time, is unthinkable. The dead man’s shirt might be absorbent enough to use as a bandage. But his clothing is probably crawling with germs. The boy has a cotton sash wrapped around his waist. He unties it slowly.

“You can use this if you want.” He holds it out, offering it to me. April looks at the sash for a long moment.

“April, I don’t feel so well.” My hands are shaking.

“Stay with us, Araby,” she says as the world wavers around me. And then she presses the cloth against the heat of the wound.

She puts her arms around me and drags me toward a heavy wooden door. The boy pushes it open, and we all stumble into a dim room, April still pressing the sash against the gash in my back.

“I can tie that,” he says. “If you don’t mind me touching you.”

“I don’t mind....” I falter. “I don’t want to die.” In my mind I’m back in the garden at the top of the Akkadian Towers, and I’m saying it to Elliott. Or maybe in the balloon, saying it to Will. I don’t want to die.

“What’s your name?” I ask the boy.

“Thom,” he says. I nod and sway on my feet as I do.

A burning smell hangs in the air.

“She’s going to pass out,” the boy says. But I don’t think I will.

“Here.” April hands me her flask. I drink everything, and then it falls from my fingers, clinking against the tiles.

“Enough sitting around,” I hear myself say. “Let’s go.”

CHAPTER

TWENTY-SIX

A
PRIL PICKS UP THE FLASK.
I
’M GLAD, BECAUSE
I feel too dizzy. I would have left it on the ground.

Then she completely shocks me. She turns to Thom and asks, “Do you want to come with us?”

“What are you doing?” I whisper to her.

“We can’t just leave him here,” she says.

I stare at her, and she blinks a couple of times, as if the afternoon sunlight is too bright.

“He can’t be more than twelve years old. We can’t leave him alone. If we decide he’s too contagious, we can leave him someplace safe.”

She doesn’t have a mask. Everyone is too contagious.

April puts her arm around me, careful not to touch the side that is wounded.

Thom moves to support me from the other side, but April says, “No. I can hold her.

The alcohol in my stomach burns. My wound begins to itch. I tell myself that I am imagining it. I am not infected. But maybe April is. There are red bumps traveling from the base of her hand to her elbow. “April…” I say. “Why did your father leave you with me?”

“What?”

“Why did your father trust you to keep me prisoner?”

“I’m his daughter.”

I laugh. Actually laugh. “Tell me the truth.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” There are tears in her eyes.

“Fine. I won’t walk with you. I’ll just bleed to death.” I reach back, threatening to pull the bandage from my shoulder. Then I look her in the eyes and try to soften the threat with a quiet “Please?”

“He infected me,” she says in a flat voice.

I gasp. “With…?”

“Not the Red Death. The contagion.” We both glance at Thom. At the glistening bruises running the length of his face. “Father claims that he has the antidote. If I do everything he says, he’ll give it to me.”

“But you left.”

She shrugs.

“He was going to do the same thing to you. That’s what he meant by converting you.”

“April, if he has an antidote…”

“I couldn’t just let him have you.”

I pull the vial from my pocket. “Drink half of this.”

“What is it?”

“Just drink it.”

April takes three delicate sips, emptying the vial exactly halfway, and hands it to me. My arm is too numb to put the vial back in my pocket, so I put it into the bodice of my dress. I have to save it for someone who can make a bigger difference than me.

Thom looks at my wound. “I can’t think what would have ripped your shoulder like that. It looks like something took a bite out of you....” His voice trails away. “Oh.”

“The water was too cold for crocodiles.” I sound silly, even to myself.

“We have to get out,” April says.

“There’s no getting out of the city. Reverend’s God soldiers are surrounding it, blocking all the roads,” Thom says, shaking his head apologetically.

God soldiers? We have to get to that balloon.

“We’re heading for the Morgue,” I tell them.

It’s much like the beginning of the last epidemic. Groups of people pass us, some with suitcases, some carrying the bodies of loved ones. At one point an old man stumbles into our path, shakes his fist in the air, and dies instantly, bleeding crimson tears. We step over his body. I am afraid that none of us will make it out.

And equally afraid that someone will get to the balloon before we do.

The city is sticky and humid. My wound won’t stop bleeding. How long until I bleed to death, like Finn? Maybe this was meant to happen. April is holding me, and the boy wants to help, but he isn’t sure if he should touch me, so he’s just walking beside me.

The Morgue is several streets away. An abandoned textile factory stands directly in front of us. The street splits, and either way we will be the same distance from the Morgue. But I pull to the left. It feels better, going this way.

Two men come out through a side door, carrying a box between them. I recognize one of them. I tell myself that it can’t be him. There are other men who walk that arrogantly. Other men with fair hair.

But perhaps some other man, turning toward us, wouldn’t stumble and stop.

He is wearing his mask, for once. He’s not dead after all, and maybe, just maybe, he’s done taking unnecessary risks. A blue-and-red woven scarf is tied and knotted about his throat.

“That scarf is hideous,” April mutters. But there’s a deeper emotion in her voice, something she doesn’t want any of us to see.

“Elliott.” My voice comes out a whisper.

His face is pink and raw, and there are bandages on his hands and arms.

I take two steps forward, about to throw myself at Elliott, but he leans away from me, putting his side of the chest between us.

“Good, you’re here,” Kent says. “Now we can go.”

April rushes forward, and Elliott drops the chest and pulls her close for a moment. His eyes, as he looks at me over her shoulder, are cold.

I open my mouth to say something, to apologize, but a gust of wind throws a flurry of papers at us. One gets caught in my skirts, and I reach to brush it away.

It’s a political pamphlet. And there is a picture of my father, crudely drawn with a caption.

Wanted for crimes against humanity
.

Phineas Worth, scientist, wanted for setting loose a deadly plague and killing at least half of the people on Earth
.

The words swim in front of my eyes, and I struggle to make sense of them. Half the people on Earth. This is optimistic. Father says the death toll was too huge for us to comprehend. I put a hand to the wall of the building to steady myself. Was this what Mother knew? That Father destroyed humanity before he saved it? No wonder she was afraid of him losing hope.