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“Ten minutes ago, you weren’t up to stairs,” Houjin pointed out.
Rector grumbled, “Hush up. ” But he kept climbing, clinging to the rail and hauling himself forward, upward, and onto a platform big enough to hold all three of them.
They stood there shivering as Houjin flipped another latch on a door that looked no hardier than wet paper. “Inside, and we’re safe,” he promised. “I’ll pull the stairs up behind us. ”
Again, Rector went first.
He let himself inside through a doorframe that was actually a large window frame. The darkness within this new space reminded him of the orphan’s home, except that most of the windows were broken. This was a dingy place occupied by dust, trash, and leftover scraps of nothing useful.
Rector leaned forward, resting his hands on the tops of his legs and hanging his head down low. He desperately wanted to shut his eyes. More desperately than that he wanted to lie down, and more desperately still, he wanted to sleep for another four days.
“We have to keep moving, Wreck,” Zeke nudged him. “Yaozu’s men will have the message back to him by now, saying you’re coming. ”
Rector snapped, “Give me a minute,” without raising his head.
Houjin shook his head. “You’re not used to breathing in these masks. It’s hard at first, but you’ll learn. ”
“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 t
hat 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.