The Inexplicables (Clockwork Century)

by Cherie Priest

  “Four blocks down,” he said.

  “But they won’t see us! They’ll shoot us!”

  “No, we’ll go this way,” Rector informed him as he took him by the wrist and dragged him in the opposite direction of what Zeke had clearly expected. “One block over the other way, then four blocks down. We’ll have time to announce ourselves, and join the fight if there’s a fight to join.” It dawned on him just then that this was why armies wore uniforms, so you could tell your side’s fellows from the other side’s.

  They dashed to the left and found the edge of the nearest block, then hunkered down long enough to light a lantern outside spotting distance of the park; but when it was lit, they didn’t take time to catch their breath. They only gathered their strength enough to begin another dash, this time downhill—and only one street over from the mayhem that was spilling down that same hill, hoping to escape.

  “Rector!” Zeke gasped. “Rector, do you hear that?”

  Rector gasped back, “What?”

  “I hear … I hear…”

  And then Rector heard it, too. They weren’t the only two people who were wheezing their way along the hill. Something else was nearby, something rather close and very sudden. It charged up out of the fog and straight at them.

  A rotter. An old one.

  Zeke screamed outright, and Rector would’ve joined him if he’d had the time to do so—but he didn’t. Rector was out in front, and the rotter seized him first. He shoved it back, and it pushed forward, moaning and grunting as its jagged rows of broken teeth snapped for Rector’s face.

  The dead thing struggled with strength it shouldn’t have had. A thing so skinny, so far decomposed … it shouldn’t wield a grip like that; it shouldn’t have been able to grasp, hold, and bite with such ferocity. It clung to Rector, pinning his arms and knocking him to the ground where they rolled together, the rotter clamping its jaws over and over, and Rector swinging his skull—his only free weapon—in an attempt to headbutt the thing away from him.

  A second rotter loomed up out of the fog, revealed by the light of the dropped lantern. Rector tried to call out and warn Zeke, but bless the kid, he was already on it.

  The pick was in his hands, its handle slung over his shoulder like a baseball bat. Zeke shook with terror but he held his ground, his feet planted to the spot as if he’d grown roots there—and when the rotter came in close, running up with no idea of anything except that it was hungry, Zeke swung and hit a home run. The pick went through the rotter’s left eye and came out the back of its head. Through sheer centrifugal force, Zeke swung around and ripped out the eye, the temple, and part of the brain, which splattered against a boarded window and dribbled downward.

  But there was no time to call it a victory.

  Rector had leveraged his knee up between himself and the rotter. He threw the creature back, but only a bit; it snapped for his arm, almost caught it, but didn’t quite. Then Zeke was on top of it, taking another swing. His second shot wasn’t as clean as the first, but he clipped it heavily with the side of the pick, knocking it off balance. The rotter fell away, letting Rector climb to all fours so he could retrieve his ax … if he could find it. It’d been strapped to the pack he wore on his back, which had fallen off when the rotter hit him. Where was it?

  There.

  He seized it and threw it, almost in the same motion. From his position on the ground, Rector lacked the room and the leverage he would’ve liked, but this was a rotter, so when the ax caught it in the throat, it still tumbled backwards, largely without its head.

  Zeke reached the twitching rotter first. He yanked the ax out of its throat, dropped it down on the thing’s face once for good measure, and then handed it back to Rector. As he helped Rector up, Zeke asked, “Are you all right? It didn’t bite you, did it? Is your mask still on tight?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Yeah to all of that,” he said, but he sounded drunk. He felt drunk. His head hurt and everything was spinning. He was reasonably certain he was going to faint.

  Zeke shoved the ax back into his hands. “I hear more of them—we have to run for the Sizemore House! We’ll get down in the cellar!”

  “How will we … how will we find it?”

  “We’re two blocks down and one block over. I’ve been counting. Two more blocks, and we ought to hit it.” He retrieved the lantern. “If not, we turn back for the wall and try again. You’re sure you ain’t bit?”

  “I’m sure.” He swallowed hard, resisting the urge to pat himself down. There wasn’t time. He shook his head and it still hurt, but it would have to work whether it wanted to or not. “I’m fine. I’m fine, I swear. Let’s go.”

  This time when he ran, it began as a wobble, but he picked up speed as the slope worked in his favor. One more block down, and he asked, “How much farther? Was that one block or two? I can’t tell where the break is, in the dark.”

  As if someone on high had heard his complaint, a billowing blast of vivid orange flame erupted to his right. He could actually feel the warmth of it radiating outward in a roiling thunder of superheated air, slapping against him and rippling his clothes.

  He and Zeke shielded their eyes from the wall of flame, for the amazing light burned through the fog like nothing they’d ever imagined. It was a perfect, steady flare, a pure barrier that closed off the crack in the wall so that nothing would enter, and nothing would leave. Nothing would survive the passage.

  “So that’s what Houjin wanted the diesel for,” Rector mused.

  “What?”

  “Diesel. It’s fuel. We stole some from the tower. He said it burns.”

  “He wasn’t half kidding,” Zeke agreed. He lowered his hand and squinted into the light. “They won’t let any of them go, will they? All those fellows are going to die.”

  “One way or another. If there are any survivors, I bet you we’ve got new rotters in the morning. Yaozu will see to that.”

  “And we helped kill them.”

  Rector did not say that he expected that he’d helped kill more than a few people, given how long he’d been selling sap, and how many people he’d watched it kill. “It was us or them, you know.”

  “I know. But still. It feels…”

  “Don’t worry about how it feels, ’cause that don’t matter right now. What matters is we routed ’em, and they can’t touch us—or the Vaults, or the Station, or Chinatown either. Maybe it’s dark and wet, and maybe it’s full of hungry dead things, and maybe it smells bad and the food tastes weird and the place is falling down around our ears. But that don’t matter, Zeke. It don’t matter because Seattle is ours, and they can’t have it.”

  Rector sniffed and wiped a smudge of sooty sweat from under his chin.

  “Now help me find the Sizemore House before any more rotters find us. Let’s go home, all right?”

  Twenty-nine

  Come morning, everyone was battered, bruised, singed, and uninterested in getting out of bed … except for Zeke, who shoved at Rector’s stiff, unhappy shoulders. “Get up, you. Come on, we’ve got to go get the inexplicable.”

  Into his pillow Rector mumbled, “I don’t have to go do shit.”

  His head ached. His arms ached. His knee ached, and he wasn’t even sure why. He had a deep-seated suspicion that if he pulled his face off the pillow, he’d see that Zeke was holding a far-too-bright lantern that would blister his eyeballs. This did not encourage any rising or shining on his part.

  “Fine then, I’ll just go by myself and tell everybody you were too chicken to come along.”

  Still facedown, Rector complained, “You wouldn’t.”

  “I might.”

  Even though Rector didn’t care—and he didn’t—what Zeke did or didn’t tell anybody, he rolled over. The blanket twisted around his legs; he kicked his foot free and cracked open one eye. He was right about the lantern.

  It burned.

  “Tell ’em whatever you like.”

  “You’re already awake,” Zeke noted. “Might as w
ell get yourself up and do something useful.”

  He opened the other eye. “Why don’t you drag Huey out to play with the inexplicable, if it’s so damn important to have company?”

  “He didn’t want to come. He didn’t say that, but I know him well enough. It scared him, and he don’t want to see it again. I can’t blame him, except that I do.” Zeke gave Rector another shove for good measure, then withdrew—holding the lantern higher and farther away, thank God.

  “He’s no dummy.” But he sat up, rubbed at his itching eyes, and yawned.

  “He’s pretending he’s got work to do. He’s sticking close to the fort and pretending like he can’t leave. But the captain’s not even over there—he’s off someplace with my mother. I bet.”

  “That must be strange.”

  “Yeah, but what am I going to say about it? He’s all right, and even if he wasn’t, he could toss me over the wall with his pinky finger.”

  “Ain’t that the truth.” Rector reached for his boots—or whoever’s boots they were—and stuffed his feet inside them.

  “Come on, hurry up.”

  “Don’t rush me. I’m working on it.”

  He almost knew the way to the outer blocks by now. He realized this at the same time he realized that he still wasn’t sure how to get back to the Station, so perhaps he’d made some kind of decision without noticing it.

  Not worth wondering yet, not quite so soon.

  The day was quiet after the night’s cacophony of violence and light. It was an odd thing, and it felt like distance, but it wasn’t, was it? The wall had a hole just a few blocks north; the city had a leak and terribly ill animals and dying people; and the tower was gone—blown to a million bricks by Huey’s handiwork on the clock-bomb.

  Neither Zeke nor Rector brought this up, even when they hiked through the fog-shrouded streets and sometimes kicked a gun, or noticed a nearly new gas mask lying beside a body.

  Not all of the bodies became rotters. Most of them, yes. But nothing on earth is any use without its head. Few things are any use when they’re cut or blown or chewed in half. Whatever the cause, no rotters reached out with rickety, grasping fingers as they slogged up the hills and between the narrow blocks of the time-blasted city. So instead of talking about it, the two boys only considered it as they walked side by side. They were careful to stick to the walls for shelter and cover, and they guided each other away from any debris that made them wonder, even in the slightest.

  The prison itself was as they’d left it, quiet and squat. Missing its front door and still as clogged with Blight as ever, it was the very picture of someplace unloved and unused, and almost certainly forgotten.

  Inside, Seattle’s second city jail felt like the tomb it’d almost become seventeen years ago and change. Not a sound. Not a motion. Not a breath to stir the dusty beams of light that cut inside halfheartedly and none too efficiently. Not until Rector and Zeke came inside. Their filters gusted as they exhaled, and sparkling motes of yellow-brown dust eddied in the puddles of ill-formed illumination.

  But then, listening and walking with exaggerated care, they heard the faint, rhythmic sounds of something large drawing steady breaths and pushing them out again. The barest hint of a filter’s hiss underscored the sound, and then the slow, sad scrape of some fur-covered body part sliding along the floor.

  Past the empty cells, with their leaning doors and rusting bars, they walked. Down the corridor of legend, where Maynard Wilkes had set the prisoners free and then raced to outrun the Blight.

  It felt far away, same as the night before, and same as the silence after the fire.

  And here was the great peacekeeper’s descendant—a spindly thing, smallish and slender. A kind boy, if not the imposing man his grandfather was alleged to be. But his mother was a little woman, and come to think of it, Rector didn’t know anything about Leviticus Blue. So this was what you got when you stirred up people and made families. Unexpected combinations. Unlikely weaknesses. Uncommon strengths.

  Ezekiel Wilkes was not a bad sort. He’d worked so hard to save that fox, and he’d held his own on the top of the governor’s mansion with the mirrors and lights. Perhaps Rector needed to rethink the things he thought.

  The inexplicable was seated on the ground, wedged in the corner in his absurd glass helmet that fit too closely. But he was no longer tangled in Angeline’s net. The net was discarded in pieces, shoved to the side.

  Sasquatch looked up at them. His gaze sharpened. And it was probably Rector’s imagination, but the creature looked … clearer. Not healthy, but aware in a way he hadn’t previously.

  Zeke began talking, because that’s what Zeke did. “Hey there, Mister Sasquatch.”

  “He doesn’t know his name. Angeline said so.”

  “I don’t care,” Zeke said. He didn’t look back at Rector. Then, to the seated animal that was neither an animal nor a person so far as either one of the boys could tell, he added, “You’re looking better. I see you looking at me, and I think your eyes are better. I know it’s only been a little while, but the cleaner air will help you, if you let it.”

  He kept his voice level and smooth, and was careful to not make any sudden movements. It took Rector a moment to notice that he was copying Zeke’s posture and methods.

  “You know what you’re risking,” Rector breathed. “You open that door and turn that thing loose…”

  Zeke took out a key—had he taken the key with him? Why did everyone but Rector have keys?—and jammed it into the vintage lock with its rusty edges and squeaking mechanisms. He turned it, jerked the body, and the fastener popped and came away. The door opened. Inside Zeke stepped—still cautious, but with a curious confidence Rector wasn’t sure he’d ever seen before.

  (But he had. With the fox, back in the Vaults.)

  And the world was full of surprises.

  The inexplicable did not move except to track Zeke with his eyes, sparing a slashing look of curiosity toward Rector. But since Rector was hanging back, he kept most of his attention on the scruffy, brown-haired boy in the weird mask. His gaze drew circles on the mask, as if trying his damnedest to understand what it was, and what was underneath it. Not looking at Zeke’s face, but trying to figure out if Zeke had a face.

  “It’s a mask,” Zeke told him, as though he were reading the creature’s mind. “Does the same thing as yours.” He pointed at his filters, at the visor. And then he very, very slowly crept forward until he was well within grabbing distance, then crouched down just far enough to be at eye level with the sasquatch. He held up one finger, moved it slowly to the bulbous glass helmet, and gently tapped its nearest filter.

  The inexplicable cringed.

  Zeke didn’t. “See? Same as mine. And I bet you’re thirsty as can be inside that thing, but you can’t take it off quite yet.”

  “I said, he don’t understand you. Everyone says he don’t understand you,” Rector told him from his position of relative safety, back behind the door. He was already working out the mental ballet—the emergency measures that would surely force him to shut the door with Zeke inside, buying himself the minute and a half necessary for a head start before the creature yanked it clean out of the wall and came after him.

  Zeke ignored him. “Mister Sasquatch, I’m going to take this cuff off you now, all right? Please don’t … please don’t pull my head off, or anything. I’m only trying to help.”

  “You’re insane.”

  “Here, like this. I’m taking your arm now. Don’t hurt me or nothing, ’cause I’m not trying to hurt you.”

  The chain rattled dully in Zeke’s gloved grip as he wrestled with the key and did his best to keep from hurting the manacled thing on the floor. The sasquatch studied his every move, either waiting for an opportunity or only trying to figure out what the hell was going on, Rector didn’t know. When the cuff came off, it dropped with a heavy clank and kicked up a tiny cloud of angry dust.

  Immediately, but slowly, the creature reached his hand up
and touched the filtered helmet.

  As if it hadn’t occurred to him that it was a bad idea, Zeke shot his hand out and took the thing’s wrist. “No!” he said quickly, then withdrew just as fast as he’d objected. Rector knew that look—it was a gesture he’d seen a hundred times on the outside, when other kids had picked on Zeke and he’d ducked back, waiting to get hit.

  He didn’t get hit.

  “You … you got to leave it on, see?” Zeke did his best to explain, but confusion and discomfort was written all over the thing’s puffy, dark-colored face. “You got to leave it on. But not for too much longer—because we’re taking you outside.”

  “I think it’s too soon.”

  Over his shoulder, Zeke said, “He’ll die of thirst if we leave him here too much longer, and he can’t have anything to drink while he’s in the helmet. You can tell he’s better. All we have to do is get him outside.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Just help me, would you?”

  “How?” Rector asked.

  Zeke made a frustrated little noise in response. “Stay out of the way, I guess. And if this thing kills me, run home and tell my mother so she don’t wonder what happened.”

  “Great. I’ll do that.” And she’ll blame me, he added in his head. “Did you even bring a gun?”

  “No. You heard what the princess said about guns.”

  The whole time he talked, Zeke kept eye contact with the creature, and not Rector. He took a step back, and then another one. He held out his hands in an inviting gesture, urging the creature to stand up and follow him. “Come on, Sasquatch. Let me help you get home. Let me get you out of here.”

  Not wholly convinced, but game to see where this was headed, the sasquatch scooted unsteadily to his feet. He folded his legs under himself and shoved, bracing his hands on the wall, on the floor, on the window frame and the half-rusted bars that still filled it. The cuff on his other hand fell slack, its chain already dislodged from the manacle and the wall, both.