The Inexplicables (Clockwork Century) (13 page)

“It’s not the
mask.
I hurt all over. It’s been a rough week.” But now that he’d denied it, he realized Huey might be right. In addition to the aches radiating from the bruises on his back, arms, and legs, he felt a cramping tightness in his chest with every breath he drew. “How much farther, anyway? And will there be more stairs?”

Houjin speculated, “Maybe half a mile. But from here on out, all the stairs go
down.
”

“Half a mile, I don’t like. All downstairs, I can live with.”

“Then keep moving,” Zeke said.

“Stop being so goddamn pushy.”

“I’m trying to help.”

“Well,
don’t.
” Rector straightened himself up and prayed for a nice soft feather bed, but told God he’d settle for enough energy to make it to this crazy train station. “Let’s go, if we’re going.”

Houjin crouched and used his hand to push down a loose floorboard. A trapdoor lid came aside, and under it were lanterns. “All right, but take one of these. You probably won’t need one, but you never know.”

Zeke agreed. “Always better to have one, just in case.”

“You two carry them. I can barely carry myself.”

“Have it your way,” Houjin said, missing a measure of his usual levity. “I don’t know how long you plan to survive down here. We do look after our own, but like Miss Lucy says, the Lord helps those who help themselves.”

Rector sniffed. “I’ll help myself just as soon as I can breathe without hurting and walk without fainting, thank you very much. Four days,” he reminded them both. “I spent four days down on my back. Give me half that to get myself back up.”

Zeke said, “That sounds fair.”

“You’re easier on him than you ought to be.” Houjin handed Zeke a lantern and took one for himself. He fished a box of matches out of his pocket and tried to strike one. “Yaozu isn’t so generous.”

“You act like this fellow is some kind of bogeyman.”

Houjin stopped fiddling with the match and squinted through his visor. “What’s a bogeyman?”

Zeke said, “A monster, sort of. Something that comes for you at night after you go to bed.”

Houjin gave this some consideration, and told him, “Maybe that was it—the monster that chased you into the chuckhole. Maybe it was a bogeyman.”

“It wasn’t a bogeyman,” Rector mumbled unhappily, now wishing he hadn’t said anything at all about the thing he’d run from, or mentioned the bogeyman, either, since Houjin was obviously testing out this new English word and having fun with it. “There ain’t no such thing.”

“Something chased you into the chuckhole? Was it a rotter?”

“No.”

And in this way, Rector found himself telling the story to Zeke, just like he’d already told it to Houjin and to Angeline. He relayed it haltingly, stopping often to catch his breath as they went deeper into the building’s interior; and he continued telling it as they took a ladder up one last story to the roof (it was a ladder, not stairs, as Huey was fast to point out). He was finished with the highlights by the time they stood on the roof, testing out the long, narrow bridge that spanned the distance to the third floor of a hotel across the alley below.

Zeke put a foot on the bridge and shoved. It creaked, but didn’t sag.

“Are you sure it’ll hold us?”

“Pretty sure,” Houjin confirmed. “It held Mr. Swakhammer the other day, and he weighs as much as all three of us together.”

“Maybe he weakened it up for us.”

“Maybe you’re a chicken,” Houjin offered.

“Calling other fellows chicken is a good way to get your nose socked in.”

Houjin didn’t look too worried. He said, “I’ll remember that. And
you
remember that all these things—the lanterns, the bridges, and the stairs—are here for a reason. You can use them, or you can die within a day or two.”

“What happened to that cheerful son of a bitch who woke me up?” Rector said, rhetorically.

“Guys, knock it off,” Zeke pleaded. “Rector, tell me more about the monster you saw at the chuckhole.”

“I already told you the whole story. This guy,” he said, cocking a thumb at Houjin, “has heard it three times now, and I bet he’s sick of it.”

Houjin nudged the bridge with his toes. Unless Rector’s eyes deceived him, it was made of more doors fitted together end to end, buttressed with planks. “At least it’s interesting. The monster, I mean. More interesting than listening to you complain.”

“You believe him?” Zeke asked.

“I saw it, too. And Miss Angeline believed him, I think.”

Zeke seemed surprised. “Really?”

Houjin nodded. “She knows a lot about what happens outside the walls. Maybe something lives out there, something we never saw inside here.”

“Like what?” Zeke asked.

“Like … an animal?”

Rector disagreed. “Never saw an animal like that before. Just like I still ain’t seen no rotters.”

Both Houjin and Zeke went to the roof’s edge, where there was nothing but a low wall between them and the streets below. They leaned out over the abyss, squinting as far as they could through the thickened air.

Rector joined them, albeit a bit more carefully.

Zeke said, “It’s weird, ain’t it? Up here, we don’t need to worry about getting their attention. They can’t touch us. Or they
couldn’t,
if they were hanging around. These blocks should be … there should be
dozens
 … hundreds of the things by now. We haven’t been real quiet.” He sounded almost disappointed, like he’d wanted to show Rector this bizarre, interesting thing about his new hometown, but he’d been thwarted.

Rector didn’t mind the silence and its utter lack of rotters. Exhaustion had settled on him like a cast-iron coat and dampened everything else—his nervousness, his faint, morbid eagerness and dread about seeing the undead, and even his irritation at Houjin.

He said, “It’s all right with me. Like the nuns always say, we should count our blessings. Let’s go see ol’ what’s-his-name and get this over with.”

Over the rickety bridge they went, single file, without even the frail handrail they’d had on the fire escapes. Rector used the cane to help himself balance, but he didn’t look down. There was nothing to see, he told himself. No hordes of rotters; not even a single shambler. Nothing but fuzzy tinted air, looking deceptively like a plush yellow cushion that might catch him if he fell.

Into the next building they went, through another door that used to be a window. The lanterns were still useful inside the old hotel, for the interior was all boarded up. Houjin had to visibly restrain himself from gloating about the lanterns, but what could you expect from a kid like that? If he gloated every time he was right, no one would ever put up with him.

Zeke got excited and led the way down a set of stairs (more stairs, yes, but going down) to the second floor. He knew how to get through this set of blocks, and took it as a point of pride that he didn’t have to rely on Houjin to traverse the next two structures.

As they trekked toward the Station, they discussed the Chuckhole Monster, as they’d come to call it. They agreed to trust one another’s stories and assume that something new and unseen was stalking the streets of the poisoned city, and they likewise agreed that it might be worth their time to go hunting for it.

Carefully.

Rector was just thinking that they’d surely gone more than half a mile when he started hearing things that implied they weren’t completely alone in the walled city. Up to that point it’d been downright spooky, with nothing but their own scuffling, scrambling, and chatter to break the quiet. Now he detected the distant churn of big machines huffing in a low rhythm.

“Are we almost there?” he inquired.

“Not much farther,” Houjin assured him, though he’d been saying that for what felt like hours. This time, he added, “See that big tower, through the fog?”

He thought he detected something very tall, standing as pallid as a phantom. Not more than a couple of blocks away, but it was so hard to see—even with the pale white glow of the sun still struggling down through the atmosphere. “I see it.”

“We’re going inside, and down underground again. The Station’s on the other side.”

“That’s good to hear.” Rector sighed. Not that he was enthused about the prospect of hiking all the way back to the Vaults, but he was taking this one step at a time. His feet were tired. His legs hurt. His chest felt as if a bear were using it for a footstool. And now he had to go chat with a bogeyman.

“What’s that sound?” he asked.

Zeke answered, “See those tubes? Sticking up through the air, and up over the Blight layer?”

“I think so.”

“They’re air tubes, leading down to pump stations. Chinamen work the air rooms, mostly—they use coal and big engines to suck the clean air down, so we can breathe it when we’re underneath.”

“Except when the ceiling caves in.”

“Except for that, yeah.”

Rector might’ve asked more questions, but somewhere nearby a moan rose up—forlorn and raspy and wet around the edges.

The boys all froze. Their eyes jerked back and forth, exchanging silent questions and answers. Houjin said, “You wanted to see a rotter, didn’t you, Rector?”

“I never said I wanted to. I just said I
hadn’t.
”

Another deep, sad groan called out. This one received an answer.

“That’s them,” Zeke whispered. “Down below. Don’t worry too hard. All these buildings are sealed on the ground floor. They can’t get inside.”

“You sound pretty sure of that.”

Houjin said, “He’s right. These buildings get checked all the time, the ones with the bridges and seals. Yaozu doesn’t want leaks any more than the Doornails do—and he’s got more men working for him. He maintains the place.”

Zeke went to the nearest window and hung out of it, turning his neck this way and that to get the best view through his visor. “I don’t see them, but they sound pretty close.”

“Not too close, I hope.” Rector scratched at the back of his hand, but that only made it itch more. He scratched harder, every draw of his dirty fingernails ecstasy and misery.

Zeke looked back over his shoulder and saw him. “Stop doing that. You’ll make it worse.”

“I already figured that out.”

“Then why are you still doing it?”

“I can’t stop.”

Houjin sighed. “We have to get you some gloves.”

“Can you tell where it’s coming from? Listen…” Zeke said, and they all stopped talking.

At first, the only sounds they heard were the filtered hiss of their own breathing and the scraping of Rector’s nails against his skin.

But outside, the mournful, sickly, wordless cries continued.

“Let’s go see if we can find them,” Zeke suggested.

“Do we have to?”

Houjin said, “If we don’t know where they are, we can’t avoid them.”

“I thought we weren’t going down within grabbing distance.”

Zeke hemmed and hawed as he went to the other corner window. “We have to get down and cross one street. There aren’t any bridges into the tower—it’s too far away from the nearest buildings.”

“You two can really try a man’s patience, you know that? You tell me no more stairs, and then there are ladders. You tell me we’re staying out of reach, and then you admit we’re headed into the road where rotters can chase us all they like.”

“Goddamn, Wreck. I don’t know when you got so fussy, but it don’t look good on you.”

“Catch me sometime when I haven’t been in bed sick for a week.”

“You were in bed
hurt,
for four days,” Houjin corrected.

Rector would’ve spit if he hadn’t been wearing that miserable mask. He fumed instead. “Neither one of you is worth a damn as a guide.”

“Getting around inside the wall ain’t like walking across the Outskirts, Wreck. And I still don’t see the rotters,” Zeke said. “Maybe we should—” He stopped. And he whispered, “Do you hear that?”

“The rotters?” Rector asked.

Zeke shushed them, then held out his hands to imply that Houjin and Rector ought to do likewise.

Houjin came up beside Zeke and pressed his back against the wall. He peered out the window, then told Rector, “Yaozu’s guys. You want to avoid them.”

“But Yaozu invited me.”

“Yes,” Zeke nodded. “But those fellows are trouble, some of them. Maybe they’ll believe us if we say we’re on a mission from their boss, or maybe they’ll think we’re dumb kids who’re up to no good. We’ll tell Yaozu we ran into some rotters and had to take the long way around. He keeps an eye on where they cluster, so as long as we’re telling the truth, he won’t get too mad about it.”

Rector didn’t like any of this, but he could hardly object, so he followed Zeke’s lead. He settled down on his hands and knees in case someone his height could be spotted through that big broken window.

All three boys hid, but peeked over the edge of the sill down at the street below.

To the west of their hiding spot was the empty shell of a building without a roof. Or, to be more precise, the roof had fallen down inside it and now served as a very uneven, none-too-attractive floor. This floor had a large hole at one end, though where this hole disappeared to was anybody’s guess.

Houjin kept his voice low. “That place used to be called McKinnen’s; it was a dry goods store. It was too far gone to shore up and save. Not enough structure to seal it or make it useful.”

“
Someone
thinks it’s useful,” Rector muttered back.

“Looks like it,” Zeke said, almost too loudly. “What’s going on down there?”

They craned their necks, still trying to keep from being seen. Their shoulders knocked together and their knees jockeyed for position. Fragments of ancient broken glass scattered under their grasping, brushing fingers.

In the ruins of McKinnen’s, no more than thirty yards away, two men were backing up toward the hole in the former roof. Each man held a rectangular metal shield that looked as though it had been pounded out of tin. With these shields, the men pushed, knocked, and otherwise pressed four staggering, unsteady men away from themselves and the hole.

“Rotters!” Zeke said in a voice too high pitched to call a whisper, and not loud enough to call an exclamation.