The Inexplicables (Clockwork Century)

by Cherie Priest

  The boys faced one another as they shoved the handles up and down, and the cart rattled merrily through the never-ending tunnel. Along the way, Rector saw that there were actually two sets of tracks—one for each cart, he assumed, in case anyone was coming from the other direction.

  At some point, Houjin insisted they stop for a break—though Rector quickly figured out that he didn’t need a rest so much as he wanted to switch seats. Thus far, Rector had been facing forward, and whoever sat opposite him was watching over his shoulders, back the way they’d come.

  Houjin said, “I need to see the next two splits. We’re about to change directions. A couple of times.”

  “Are we going uphill from here on out?” Zeke asked.

  “Yes, but it’s not bad.”

  The rest of the way Rector watched over their shoulders, eyeing the shifting, rock-sharpened shadows as they retreated behind them. The rollicking, rattling commotion of the cart rang loud throughout the passageway; it echoed in circles, surrounding them like the bobbling light—a pocket of glowing, raucous noise bumbling on the track, screeching as the path turned and the brake leaned against the round metal wheels.

  After a while, Rector almost enjoyed it, despite the rising burn in his arms, as exhaustion did not so much overtake him as threaten him from a distance. He had no intention of stopping anyplace in that claustrophobic tunnel, not after that first unnerving break. The other boys weren’t likely to give him his seat back, and besides—who knew? What if the cart broke, or they couldn’t get it moving again? What if the track was uneven, or imperfectly maintained, and the wheels refused to run against it without their hard-earned momentum?

  The rail line split, just as Houjin said it would. It veered to the right, and soon after, to the left. The grade steepened, the pump handles stiffened, and the way became harder. Sweating and grunting, the trio forced the cart forward, shoving it up the incline.

  Just when Rector was dead certain he’d have to stop cranking or his arms would fall off, the darkness shifted up ahead and he could see the end reflected in the other boys’ visors.

  Before too long they drew up to an open area with lights bolted onto the walls. Some of these lights were lit, but most were out. Even so, it gave the space enough illumination for Rector to find it encouraging.

  Houjin squeezed the brake and the wheels squealed outrageously, sparks spit from the metal-on-metal connection, and the cart came to a halt. All three of its occupants leaned, jerked, and sat up straight with their bones still rattling. They crawled out and gathered their belongings.

  Zeke went behind the cart and kicked a triangle-shaped block, which dropped down against the wheel. “Keeps it from rolling when it’s parked,” he explained when he saw that he was being watched. “’Cause I don’t feel like chasing it down later on. Come on. Let’s hit the bridges.”

  They came up through the basement of an old livery stable that still had decomposing leather tack hanging on the walls. The bones of horses or dogs or maybe even men and women lay scattered about like a child’s game of sticks; the boys avoided them as best they were able, but every so often the room rang out with the loud, cracking pop of something that once was alive.

  The livery was only a story and a half tall, and above street level the windows had been left unboarded, allowing a watery wash of that feeble gray sun to spill inside. Rector turned his lantern down, then off. “Won’t be needing it, will I?” he asked too late, but Houjin shook his head.

  “No, we’ll be on the roof soon.”

  “Will that be high enough? I only see the loft, and the ladder. Everything else we climbed the other day … all of them buildings were taller than this one.”

  “Different part of town,” Zeke said. “Trust me, though. Any roof that’ll hold us will keep us out of reach. And we’ll be right up against the main wall, most of the way.”

  Rector frowned and scratched at the straps that held his mask in place. He didn’t get a lot of traction, since he was wearing Fang’s gloves, but it’d only been an idle gesture anyway. “So the wall went up smack in the middle of some buildings, right?”

  Houjin replied, “Right. Cut some of them in two.”

  “But not all the way around, I wouldn’t think.”

  Zeke shook his head. “No, not all the way around. Why? What are you getting at?”

  “Once we get out to the wall’s edge, how do we investigate without getting down within … you know … grabbing reach?”

  “We don’t,” Houjin said simply.

  “Then how do we avoid the rotters? The ones we’re technically looking for, I mean.”

  “We avoid them the same way we find them,” he said offhandedly. “By listening.”

  “What do we do if we find some, and we can’t climb up out of their reach?”

  Zeke said, “We run like hell, that’s what we do. Unless you’re packing a pistol somewhere in that satchel, and I bet you’re not.”

  “I’m not,” Rector admitted, mentally adding it to his wish list. A gun of some sort seemed to be the obvious means of survival inside the walled city. “And neither of you two have one either, do you?”

  “Naw. Guns are so loud, it just attracts more of them. Once we get up to the roof, you’ll see what we use to take care of them.” Zeke led the way up a long flight of stairs that led to a trapdoor. He flipped it open and a puff of swirling Blight gas billowed down into the livery, dousing Rector and Houjin. They wiped at their visors out of habit or reflex. It didn’t help.

  Houjin ran up the steps behind Zeke, and Rector came after.

  On the roof, a row of storage trunks were lined up along the western edge. These trunks did not match and had never been part of a single person’s luggage set, but they were large and sturdy, and Rector thought he saw Union army markings on one of them. Footlockers, then—that’s what they were. Well, footlockers and a couple of steamers.

  “What’s all this?” he asked.

  Zeke went to the farthest left one and popped the latch. Houjin did the same to the one beside him.

  As Zeke rummaged through the contents, he explained, “The Doornails keep the far corners stocked in case somebody gets stranded. You never know when you’ll meet rotters, or when you’ll fall through something that ain’t as solid as it looks,” he added, and Houjin jabbed him with an elbow. “It’s easy to get hurt out here, or stuck.”

  “That’s smart,” Rector said approvingly. “So what do we have here—food? Filters? Lanterns and such? If you knew this was here, why’d we bring so much fuel?”

  Houjin answered that one. “In case we didn’t make it this far. The whole underground works that way—everyone survives by preparing for just in case.”

  “Sounds like a lot of trouble.”

  “It is a lot of trouble,” Zeke agreed. “But look at this, would you?” He hoisted aloft a long ax that was once painted red, now more rusty than scarlet. It looked solid and dangerous. It also looked almost too heavy for Zeke to hold, much less wield.

  “What’s that, an old fireman’s piece?”

  Zeke nodded. “Probably. And it’ll take a rotter’s head in two, just like that—” He swung for demonstration, and Houjin deftly stepped out of the way as if he’d been part of this particular charade before. “There’s more in here, axes and even some cavalry swords, but I’m not sure I’d recommend one of those.”

  “Why not?”

  “The metal’s too thin; it’s getting brittle. We need to seal these trunks better,” Houjin complained. “Blight gets into everything.”

  “So what do you recommend?” Rector asked. He stood between Zeke and Houjin and stared down into the trunks they’d opened. He saw another couple of axes; some big saws that had been refitted with longer handles (Must be awkward, he thought); a few clubs, some metal and some wood; an assortment of mining tools such as picks and hammers; and a handful of things that might’ve been smithing tools.

  The boys indulged in a brief discussion of the pros and cons of ea
ch, and Rector selected an oversized miner’s pick. He tossed it from palm to palm and spun it around his elbow.

  “This’ll work, I think.”

  Zeke closed his trunk. “All you need to know is, if you see a rotter, you run. Only start swinging if you can’t outrun ’em. You don’t want them to bite you, that’s for damn sure.”

  “Of course I don’t want them to bite me.”

  Houjin shut his trunk, too, and slung a sharpened metal bar over his shoulder. “No, you don’t understand: Their bites fester. Whatever they bite, you have to cut off.”

  Rector was glad for the gas mask—he didn’t want the other boys to see him go green around the edges. He gulped, sniffed, and coolly said, “I’ve heard that before, and I’ll take it into consideration. Say, what’s that you’re carrying, Huey?”

  Huey turned the bar in his hand, twirling it like a baton, but more slowly. It was over three feet long, and appeared to be cast iron. “It was for wagon wheels, I think. To pry them on and off. I like it. It’s a good size and a good weight, and I can stab with it”—which he demonstrated—“or hack with it,” he showed, by jerking it from side to side.

  “Or just beat somebody to death,” Rector observed.

  “True.” Again he rested it on his shoulder. “But you have better luck stopping rotters if you can smash their brains or knock their heads off. Go in through an eye socket, if you’ve got the aim to hit it. Or hack at their necks, if that’s an easier target.”

  “Jesus.”

  “It sounds harder than it really is. Most of the rotters inside the city have been here for years, and they’re starting to get mushy.”

  Zeke chimed in. “And most of them don’t run very fast.”

  Rector held the pickax and looked over the side of the roof. “This is a god-awful way to get around your own neighborhood. And you two talk like it’s just an everyday thing, hacking people up and putting bars through their eyeballs.”

  Houjin muttered, “Don’t like it, don’t have to stay here.”

  “I’ll get used to it,” Rector countered.

  He hefted the pickax and followed him over to the roof’s eastern edge, where a drawbridge was laid out flat and ready. It groaned beneath their feet, and small splinters of old paint and decaying wood went dusting down to the dangerous, deserted streets below as they crossed.

  Fourteen

  They walked single file through more windows turned into doors, navigating along balconies and over storefronts for eight blocks until they were forced to drop to the ground and sprint across one street and down into a storm cellar. Then they went up through an empty grocer’s, scaled more stairs, and emerged on another roof, only to trip lightly down another long bridge made of doors.

  These makeshift devices swayed under their feet enough that more than once the boys agreed to cross one at a time, so as to not strain the walkway.

  Finally they ran out of structures; there were no more roofs or bridges to hold them aloft. Without a word, they scooted down an old iron ladder that had once been part of a fire escape. Its rusted bolts creaked, and as they descended foot by foot, hand by hand, brick dust rained down onto the dead grass and cracked streets below.

  When they had no choice except to speak, they whispered.

  “I’ll light the lantern,” Rector breathed. His voice was shaking, and so were his hands.

  Equally quietly, Houjin said, “No.” He put a hand on Rector’s arm.

  Rector yanked it away. “Why not? It’s getting dark.”

  “No, it’s not,” Zeke joined in. “We’re coming up to the wall. We’re in its shadow.”

  Looking up, and squinting hard—through his visor, and through the foggy air—Rector could see the great Seattle wall peeking past the thick yellow Blight. It loomed and leaned. It crowded him, all two hundred feet of it, cobbled from stone and mortar and anything solid that had been lying around when it was built.

  If he’d had any breath left after riding and climbing and hiking the mile to get there, the view of the wall from here on the inside would’ve taken it all away.

  “It’s still dark,” he murmured. “Still can’t hardly see.”

  Houjin shook his head. “Wait until later. The light will only bounce off the fog. It’s hard to see out here no matter what you do.”

  Zeke nudged Rector’s shoulder and said, “Trust us. We live here,” and he set off toward the wall.

  Houjin followed him, calling back to Rector, “Don’t just stand there—we need to stick together.”

  “Why’s that?” he asked, but he still hurried to catch up.

  His pickax was already heavy; it already slowed him down and made him want to stop walking. Everything felt dense around him: the Blight, the humidity, the oppressive silence. His breathing came harder, and although the ache in his chest had become familiar, it rose up to something sharper. He clasped one hand across his chest and wondered what it meant, this stinging difficulty with every breath.

  “Hey fellows, can we slow down?”

  “You getting tired?” Zeke asked.

  Houjin sighed. “Should’ve changed his filters when I told him to.”

  Zeke said, “Rector, get over here by the wall. We’re not up high and safe, but at least you’ll have your back to something.”

  Rector almost said, Whaddaya know—Zeke’s got more sense than I gave him credit for, but he restrained himself. And he did go to the wall and back up against it, leaning there partly for support, and partly to feel that big, solid thing at his back. It didn’t feel safe, not exactly. Not at all. But it meant that nothing could sneak up behind him.

  One side at a time, he unscrewed the filter portals on his mask and replaced the used filters with clean ones from his pack. His gloved hands fumbled with them, but he refused any help and finally got both of the round charcoal disks properly installed.

  The improvement was immediate, but it wasn’t vast.

  His chest still hurt when he took a deep breath, and his arms were beginning to feel the stretching sting of having been worked too hard in an unfamiliar fashion, but he’d fixed something himself. “I’m all sorted out. Let’s get moving. We can start off … that way.” Still pressing his back against the wall, he indicated a direction to the right.

  Houjin cleared his throat. “I might recommend the other direction.”

  “Oh, might you?”

  “Another fifty yards that way,” the Chinese boy clarified, “and there’s nothing on the other side of the wall but the Puget Sound.”

  Grouchily, Rector argued, “Well, maybe the rotters are headed out to sea.”

  “But the rats and raccoons aren’t coming in that way,” he pointed out. “Your first idea—that the animals are coming inside the same way the rotters are getting outside—was a better one. If I were you, I’d stick with that theory.”

  “Yeah, it was a pretty good thought.” He worked one finger under the itchiest mask strap and rubbed, figuring he could get away with it since his nails were covered by soft leather. If he felt like being honest with himself, he might’ve admitted that he didn’t have good thoughts every minute of every day, so he ought to stick with the ones that made it through. But he didn’t feel like being honest.

  In the minute or two he’d kept his mouth shut thinking about it, he’d begun to hear the soft swish and roll of waves off to his right. “Rector?” Zeke asked, in exactly the same tone you’d use to talk a dog into putting down a bone.

  “All right, that’s fine. You two live here, like you keep telling me. We’ll go your way, and see what we can find.”

  The fog pooled and collected like snow. It drifted and gusted against the vertically stacked stone and twisted in small eddies; it spiraled and spun in tiny tornadoes that tugged at the boys’ hair and tickled the spots where their clothes didn’t cover their skin. Rector, Houjin, and Zeke moved without speaking, except to double-check that they were all together. Sometimes the air was so thick that they couldn’t keep track of one another un
less they held hands. When they seemed to be hiking through a rich cream soup, they would spit one another’s names between their teeth, calling back and forth with as little sound as possible.

  Rector dragged his fingers along the hastily erected wall, feeling the contours rise and fall, dip and crumble into a dry mortar crust. He dusted his hands off against his pants and shivered—even though it wasn’t as cold as it had been a few days earlier, it still wasn’t warm. It was almost never warm, and the wall’s imposing shadow drained the tepid sunlight of what little relief it offered. Up above, and somewhere past the boundaries of what they could see through the pallid air, even the flapping wings of the Blight-poisoned birds were sluggish and slow.

  “You hear those?” Rector breathed. “Getting closer.”

  “I hear ’em,” Zeke replied, so faintly that if Rector had been even another step away, he wouldn’t have heard him.

  “I don’t like them.”

  “They’re only birds,” Zeke assured him. Then he faced forward and softly called, “Huey?”

  “Right here.”

  “Thought I’d lost you for a second.”

  “Keep up, you two,” Houjin urged.

  “How much farther?” Zeke asked.

  “A quarter mile?” he guessed. “Then we’ll hit the next drop down into the underground.”

  “Are there carts?”

  “Yes. Now shhhh.”

  “Don’t you tell me—”

  Houjin came to a sharp stop and turned around. Zeke ran into him, but bounced back. Huey held out his weapon—not to brandish it, exactly, but to make a point. “Hush! I told you, I hear something.”

  Rector was mad, and he was scared, and he didn’t like having a younger kid (or anybody else) put a long metal pole in his face. He smacked the pole away with the back of his hand with a clang. It hurt, and it’d certainly bruise. He wished he hadn’t done it. “I don’t hear anything,” he fussed.

  “Wait,” Zeke said, holding out both hands. The hand that held the big fireman’s ax drooped low. “I hear it, too.”