The Inexplicables (Clockwork Century)

by Cherie Priest

  “If he can be believed.”

  A pause, and then Rector heard two streams of liquid splash against the ground.

  “Eh … he’s got a better idea than anybody. And it’s his money we’re burning, so if he’s wrong, it’s no skin off our noses.”

  “Right. Gotta admit, I hate taking a leak out here. Goddamn gas makes my pecker itch.”

  “Sure, it’s the gas what makes it itch.”

  “Shut your mouth.”

  “Make me.”

  “Can’t be bothered.”

  “That’s up to you, then.”

  Trousers were subsequently adjusted, and the idle conversation continued, leaving a trail of sound for Angeline and the boys to track. The two men weren’t moving fast or carefully; they obviously thought they were alone. And much to Rector’s personal relief, they weren’t going far.

  “Shit, I hate that hill.”

  “Learn to piss closer to where you work.”

  “I wanted to stretch my legs. Tired of being cooped up in there.”

  “Well, your legs are stretched now, ain’t they? Next time just go for a walk down the street like a civilized lazy man.”

  “I’ll consider it.”

  “Anyway, we’ll have plenty of action soon enough.”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  “If you weren’t up for a fight, you shouldn’t have signed on.”

  “I’m up for it,” he insisted, though he did not come across as fully convinced.

  “You heard stories, huh? About the Chinaman from Hell?”

  “I heard plenty about him, and I don’t think this’ll be as easy as the chief expects.”

  “Maybe you’re right.”

  “I hope I’m not.”

  All the way, Angeline and her companions followed half a block behind, staying close enough to keep their quarry but far enough away that they shouldn’t be noticed or caught. Rector was dying to ask where they were going, and what was going on, and did anybody know those two fellows, and where had the men been cooped up? But there was no talking, only sneaking.

  Zeke stumbled and caught himself before he made too much noise. Rector hoisted him by the underarms to keep him upright.

  The wall was dark and flat behind them, framing the whole world with its bulk.

  Or that’s what Rector assumed, until Angeline smacked each boy’s arm quietly—directing their attention up, and away, and back. She jabbed her finger hard into the air, pointing at something difficult to see and uncertain in shape.

  Rector wiped his arm across his visor, still nurturing the ridiculous notion that maybe it’d clear his vision just a little bit. But it didn’t, so he had to squint through the fog.

  It took him a few seconds to understand why the princess was all riled up. The air fought him, and the fussy gray atmosphere didn’t give him much to work with. But as he stared, he realized that something about the wall itself wasn’t quite right. Its angles didn’t meet up like they ought to; its authoritative shadow didn’t spread seamlessly along Seattle’s northeastern border.

  It hit him like a train: The wall was gone.

  Eighteen

  The wall was not a small bit broken, but badly so—missing enough of its volume that the vague afternoon sun spilled inside the U-shaped gouge, as if a great jet of water had been turned against the wall, washing away its stones like a gully cut down the side of a mountain.

  Zeke put his hand over his mouth, and Rector was willing to bet that inside Houjin’s mask, his trap was hanging open, too.

  The chatting men wandered off. Rector thought the plan was to follow them, but Angeline held him back. When there was enough distance between the two parties, she drew their heads close together and spoke so softly she could scarcely be heard.

  “Let ’em go. We found our hole in the wall.”

  Zeke objected. “But they’re getting away!”

  “It doesn’t matter. We know how they got in, and we can guess what they’re up to.”

  Zeke frowned. “We can?”

  Rector elbowed him in the ribs. “Yeah, we can. The Chinaman from Hell—you know that’s Yaozu. They’re here to hassle him, just like he said they would … just like he, and Harry, and Bishop all said. They’re here to take the Station away from him.”

  “But now what?” the Houjin pushed. “If you’re right, what do we do? Do we tell Yaozu? Tell the Doornails?”

  Angeline said to Rector, “I expect you’ll go running to your boss with the news, whatever we say. Perhaps he should know, but let’s get our facts straight first. Let’s go see what they’re doing before we run off telling tales.”

  Reluctantly, Houjin agreed. “Right now, all we know is that new people are inside.”

  The princess corrected him. “Oh, we know more than that. We know they’re up to no good, or else they’d have come inside the same way as everybody else. They picked an out-of-the-way spot where no one’s likely to run across ’em, so they don’t want anyone knowing they’re here. And furthermore, they’re bastards.”

  Huey cocked his head. “Bastards?”

  “They broke the wall. If they did it on purpose, they don’t give a damn about who gets sick, or how sick they get. They’re poisoning the woods, everything in ’em, and anybody who passes through ’em. And they don’t give a damn.”

  “And they let the rotters out,” Zeke noted.

  “Did that on purpose, too, I expect.” Angeline rose out of her crouch and urged them to do the same, then led a careful march toward the jagged hole. As the boys followed, she added under her breath, “Probably thought it’d be easier if they only had to fight Yaozu—and not every dead thing in the city, while they’re at it.”

  Rector cleared his throat. “Yaozu said we need the rotters.”

  As if this was precisely the prompt he’d been waiting for, Houjin immediately blurted out, “He needs them so bad, he’s making them!”

  Everyone stopped and turned to stare at him. Angeline asked, “What did you just say?”

  “He’s making them,” he repeated, and it sounded like a plea for something. Understanding? Reassurance? “When we first went to the Station,” he said, thrusting a thumb at Rector, “Yaozu’s men locked some other men outside without masks. They were brand-new rotters. You saw it, didn’t you?”

  “We didn’t see anybody lock anybody outside,” Rector said carefully.

  “You weren’t paying attention, or you weren’t thinking about it. Those men were unarmed, unmasked, and just barely dead. They hadn’t been exposed for more than a few minutes before we got there. They’d been put out—as some kind of punishment, or Yaozu didn’t like them, or whatever reason. It was obvious.”

  If Angeline was surprised, she could’ve fooled Rector. “I wouldn’t put it past him. He wants the rotters to keep him company for exactly this reason.” She flapped a hand toward the hole in the wall, and whoever had made it. “They’re guard dogs, is what they are. And when they disappear, that leaves nobody but his hired hands watching the place. A man who’s been bought and paid for can change his mind. Yaozu trusts the rotters more than his own people.”

  Zeke had been silent, soaking it all in. But then he said, “I know you don’t like him, Miss Angeline, but the devil you know wouldn’t put a hole in the wall.”

  Grudgingly, she replied, “You’re not wrong, but let’s not call him the cavalry yet. Let’s go get ourselves a gander at the breach. It might tell us something.”

  After another ten minutes of hushed hiking and breathless silence, their masks were not clogged yet, but clogging. They wouldn’t be comfortable outside for very much longer without taking a break to adjust their filters, and everyone knew it, but this was too big to ignore. And it was urgent enough to investigate despite the creeping peril of equipment that could not keep them safe forever.

  For the wall was not merely cracked, and not merely burrowed through.

  It was shattered—split in an untidy slash from top to bottom, its rubble scattered
in every direction. Blocks had been smashed into houses, lodged in the tops of brittle trees, and tumbled across what was left of the streets.

  Zeke whistled quietly, a short note of awe. “What could do something like that?” he asked. “Did … did a ship crash into it, or something?”

  Houjin shook his head. “Dynamite. I bet you anything.”

  Zeke asked, “But wouldn’t we have heard it?”

  They all stood in silence gaping up at the fissure when two thoughts clicked together in Rector’s head. “That storm, a couple of weeks ago. There was thunder, remember? Everybody talked about it, since we don’t ever get none, hardly.”

  Angeline pondered this. “We might’ve heard dynamite, and mistook it for weather. Not bad, Red. That’s as good a guess as any.”

  “If he’s right, it’s been like this for weeks,” Houjin mused. “That’s plenty of time for animals to get inside and get sick.”

  “Plenty of time for man-shaped animals to get inside, too,” the princess said.

  “Look over there…” Zeke said, peering off to the north.

  Rector followed his lead and saw a swath of hazy yellow burning weakly through the fog. “Is that … light? I thought we were practically at the end of the wall.”

  “There ain’t much wall at this northeastern side, that’s for sure,” Angeline confirmed. “But it goes around farther to the north, then back to the east. As for over there…”

  Then Houjin said slowly, “It’s the old park, isn’t it? Up near the big houses, where the rich people used to live.”

  “This whole hill is where the rich people used to live,” Zeke told them. “My momma’s place was back down the hill a few blocks, over to the south.”

  “Yeah, but I mean the really rich people. The men who owned the mills, and the logging company. They lived along Fourteenth Street, and the road stopped at the top of the hill, where they were going to put a park.”

  The princess nodded. “They started building it not too long before the Boneshaker came. They put down a cemetery, too, on the other side”—she waved her hand to suggest a distant location—“and they filled it up with people who’d been dead for years and years and buried downtown once already.”

  “Why didn’t they just wait for new dead people?” Rector asked.

  “They were moving the old boneyard, making way for businesses and such. I even planned for a plot at the new place, thinking I’d be here forever. And my girl’s there, so I figured I’d stay with her. But the wall cuts through that new cemetery full of old folks—slices it right in half.” She fell silent for a moment, then said, “She’s just outside the city, now.”

  “But there’s a park?” Zeke prodded her.

  “Oh, sure. It was supposed to be a real nice one, if they ever got it finished. But the fellow who was working on it also had work in New York City, so he took his own sweet time dealing with us. I don’t know if the place was finished by the time the wall went up … but most of it…” She took a few steps and peered at the wall from another angle, then assessed it from a third position. “Most of it ought to be inside the wall here, and real close by. Huey, you said the park was at Fourteenth Street?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I saw it on a map once.”

  “We just passed Twelfth Street, so we ain’t got far to go. You boys think you can handle another two blocks?”

  Without hesitation, they each said, “Yes, ma’am!”

  “All right, then, let’s look. And same rules apply, you hear? We hit trouble, you three run like the devil knows your name.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” they agreed with somewhat less enthusiasm.

  “So long as we’re clear on that. I think we’ll have the best luck if we dodge the rubble this way, and go around—”

  She stopped, and in the sudden silence the boys heard the tumbling, rattling, and pinging of falling rocks.

  Everyone stood still, and no one breathed.

  The rocks were small and they spilled down like a stream, just a trickle for the moment. Rector’s voice shook as he said, “It’s the wall. It’s going to come down on our heads, ain’t it?”

  But Angeline put a hand on his shoulder and said, “Wait,” in her quietest whisper. She was looking up—they were all looking up—but her eyes were tracking something Rector couldn’t see. He tried to chase her gaze, but saw nothing except for the cornstarch-colored air.

  When the pebbles started falling again, Angeline’s eyes darted to their source, narrowing as they did. “Boys…” she said, and how she fit so much warning into four letters, Rector would never know.

  “I see it,” Houjin told her. He retreated a few feet and kept his face aimed skyward. “It’s moving, back and forth.”

  “Where?” Zeke asked.

  Rector echoed him. “Yeah, where? I don’t see anything.” But he could hear something, and it worried him. The scuttling patter of sliding rocks came with a structure, a rhythm. A pace, like uncertain footsteps. His chest clenched with fear, and without meaning to, he drew himself up closer to Angeline. “Is it the monster?”

  “Not a monster,” she reminded him gently.

  He fought the urge to press his back against hers, and he struggled against the impulse to run for cover. He couldn’t see the thing, but he could sense it. Did it remember him? Would it come for him again?

  He didn’t want to look; he couldn’t help but look. So when a gust of high wind stretched and broke the stringy yellow air, he gasped, pointed, and stumbled backwards.

  “Settle yourself, Red.”

  Zeke gasped, too, only just now joining them. “It’s … it’s … that’s not a person!” he squeaked.

  Angeline’s words were level and calm. “No, not a person.”

  “Not a person,” Rector repeated, saying it like a mantra. “Not a person.” He hadn’t been nuts. It hadn’t been a person who’d scared him half out of his skin and chased him into the chuckhole. “Not a person; never a person. And, oh God…” His stomach sank, tying itself into a complicated sailor’s knot. “It’s right on top of us!”

  But the princess said, “No,” and squeezed the back of his neck.

  Her strength astonished him, though it shouldn’t have. He’d been climbing through the city with her for two days, after all; it shouldn’t be a surprise that her grip was as firm as the nuns at the orphanage. He wanted to turn and run, but her hand was steady, and he had a feeling that it’d yank him back like a dog on a leash if he tried.

  The creature up on top of the wall moved slowly from side to side, pacing back and forth. It maneuvered deftly along the blast-loosened bricks. And as the fog parted and congealed, the elongated, person-shaped creature watched them.

  “She sees us,” Angeline declared softly.

  Zeke’s eyes crinkled into a frown. “She?”

  “I believe so.” The princess turned to Rector and said, “I think I know what’s happening here. She ain’t sick, you see? She ain’t coming down inside. She’s smarter than that. She knows what’s here.”

  “Then what’s she doing up there?” Rector wanted to know.

  “She’s looking for the thing that jumped on you, Red. Dollars to dice, he’s her mate.”

  Rector watched hard as the long-limbed, hair-covered creature up above—which looked almost tiny, all the way up there—came and went, out of focus. Moments later, as the fog twisted into a knot, it vanished.

  More rocks and dried mortar came skittering down; and when the low-lying cloud cleared again, the wall was unoccupied. No leggy, shaggy thing glared down, and no more debris rained down, either.

  Whatever it was, it was gone.

  Rector let out his breath in a long, shaky shudder. He hadn’t even noticed he’d been holding it.

  The princess released her grip on the back of his neck and patted him there, as if to reassure him. “She’s headed back to the woods for now, I expect. I don’t know if we can help her or not, but at least now we know what we’re up against.”

  Zeke kick
ed at a fallen rock. It tumbled into a pile of bricks and was still. “I got a fairly good look at her, and I still don’t know what we’re up against.”

  “Oh, you silly things. Right now, she’s not the worst of our problems. Let’s swing by the park before we call it a day. I’d hate to get so close and not even see our biggest one.”

  Nineteen

  The boys agreed to stop by the park, and after a brief pause to change their gas-mask filters, they followed Angeline farther up the hill. All the way along the edge of Seattle the fractured wall kept them company, looming off to their left and casting a mighty black shadow. The rest of the way, it was as solid as ever.

  Houjin breathed hoarsely into his mask and muttered, “It could be worse. I only see the one hole.”

  “Yeah, but it’s a big one,” Zeke said, and in the muffled silence Rector heard how worried he was.

  The princess said, “It’s fixable.”

  “How can you be so sure?” Rector asked.

  “Because the wall was buildable in the first place. Now hush up, all of you. We’re here.”

  A long row of tattered hedges reared up before them, skeletal and sad. What few leaves remained were withered and brown. No doubt they’d once been cut into tremendous blocks and lovingly pruned to keep their shape. Now they were as ghastly and lifeless as an ironwork fence gone to rust. But they marked a boundary, and Rector made a note of it.

  Angeline led the way, pushing through the brittle flora, which crunched in pitiful snaps. The twigs were as light as dust, and they fluttered to the ground to join the nasty mulch where everything else had fallen.

  And on the other side they saw more dead things—larger dead things. Trees that had once been mighty were now reduced to crumbling trunks, and the odd monument or piece of statuary had gone streaked and pitted from prolonged exposure to the gas. To the left they saw curving walkways with seams that had succumbed to rubble, and a large round pond with nothing inside it but a yellow-black muck. They noticed signs that had gone unreadable, the paint blistered to illegibility and the colors bleached to an ugly gold. Running through all this wreckage were paths that were once graceful, veering prettily between patches of manicured lawns and gardens, and were now uniform in their unkempt ugliness—though they retained their expensive, precise shapes. Nothing could grow in the Blight gas, and therefore nothing became overgrown. It could only rot where once it had thrived.