The Inexplicables (Clockwork Century) (6 page)

Gas billowed up and out, swirling around his face so thickly that its tendrils ghosted smokelike on either side of his visor. The visor itself was wide and clean—it gave him a good view with only a little detriment to the fringes of his sight—but it soon felt dirty from the greasy, ghastly Blight.

Rector wiped at the visor with the back of his sleeve, flashed the two men a smile they couldn’t see behind his mask, and, with a deep breath that hurt to take, ducked inside.

Five

At first, without even the shuttered glow of a leaky lantern to guide him, Rector saw nothing at all behind the burlap-and-wax curtain that lurked on the other side of the timber scaffolding. He blinked repeatedly, wondering if he ought to drag out one of his candles and light it. Then he realized that the sun was coming up—just barely and vaguely, as if it wasn’t sure about this whole rising business—so maybe he wouldn’t need the extra light after all.

The runny gray haze that passed for dawn showed him only the faintest outlines of the ruined city, but the view stunned him all the same.

He’d heard stories.
Everyone
had heard stories, about how the city rotted inside its wall, dissolving and decaying in the heavy, poisonous gas that billowed out from the fissure at the city’s heart.
It’s just a skeleton now,
the chemists would say.
The buildings remain, most of them—the ones the earthquakes didn’t take after the Boneshaker disaster. But everything that still lives, lives underground.

He blinked furiously, trying to clear his vision. Shapes emerged slowly from the gloom, coming into semifocus in clumps. They sharpened and wavered in cycles, in response to the drafts of sludge-thick air that moved, parted, and collected in currents of toxin.

Seattle sprawled before him and below him, drowning and dead.

As the ghostly, ghastly clouds of yellowish air gave way, Rector detected outlines and right angles. He spied windows, mostly broken, and balconies and drawbridges that connected those windows over alleys. These things appeared in a flash and were gone in a smear, only to reappear, dreamlike and hazy. The whole world inside the wall was uncertain like this, decomposing and static, but shifting and malleable.

Much as he wanted to leave the small entryway—this foyer into the realm of the damned—Rector didn’t know where to go. The sap was dissolving in his system, losing its power and making him less confident of the impulsive decisions he’d made earlier that morning. He was remembering that he was hungry, and it was nearly breakfast time; and recalling that he had no great plan beyond “Find Zeke’s body”—and even that plan was riddled with confusion.

Where had Zeke entered the city? That part was easy: He’d entered through the old water runoff tunnel, the one that had collapsed during the last earthquake. But where did that tunnel emerge? Nowhere near King Street Station. It’d be the other direction, in the northern end of the wall’s elongated oval of territory.

He should go left.

But to the right there were people, right? People who dealt and traded in sap—people who wouldn’t give him any guff about using or selling.

It’d be easier, maybe … simpler by far, now that Rector was a grown man and everything, and more
useful,
to waltz into the Station and announce that he’d like a job, and they could pay him in sap and that’d be all right. Someone was bound to take him on. Harry’s man, if nobody else. He could learn how to distill and produce the stuff, rather than just smoke it and distribute it. That’d be practically like learning a trade, wouldn’t it?

It wasn’t the dumbest thing he could do. Go looking for his own kind: the outcasts, the chemists, the thugs and bullies, and makers of brain-killing venom for sale by the ounce. Even if they didn’t embrace him warmly, he’d know how to work with them. Bartering bits of his soul was a skill Rector had learned years ago—so many years ago, it was a wonder he had any soul left.

No. Come for me, or I will come for you.

But no. Zeke’s insistent shade would not be banished long, by the sap or anything else. Rector had lost too much sleep, been too frightened and too guilty for too long to let go of the One Sure Thing he had to do now. So he turned away from the Station path in one jerky motion that made the whole platform vibrate, and he held out his foot to feel for the top step.

Immediately, his boot slipped on a slick piece of jutting stone. He didn’t slip far, and not too badly … at least, not so wildly that he went careening down forty-odd feet to the street level below, to whatever terrible things prowled down there. He couldn’t see the street itself. Forty feet of Blight and early morning shadow obscured the bottom, which made looking down easier. He saw nothing he could crash-land on, nothing but wispy, filmy clouds that would surely be softer than pillows.

Rector felt for the wall and fought across the mildew and slime until he found a big enough crack to anchor himself. Carefully, using every remaining bit of his brainpower to balance himself and his bag, he inched forward from the first step to the next, and then to the step beyond it.

Some of them shook. Some of them wobbled and splintered, sending tiny shards of wood or rock down to the streets below.

When he stood as still as a statue, catching his breath and feeling the dampness of the stones bleed through his clothing, he heard soft moans and groans coming from somewhere not half so far away as he would’ve liked. He’d never seen a rotter, not up close and personal, and he’d like to keep it that way. But it was hard not to be curious when he was well out of their reach. Maybe the gassy fog would part and he’d catch a glimpse of the shambling dead.

They wouldn’t see him—not all the way up there. Would they?

Rector kept moving, swinging one foot in front of the other, using the wall itself as a brace for his shoulder, his bag, and his hips.

While he climbed, he struggled to recall where he was headed. What was it called again? The place where the tunnel that Zeke took would’ve emerged? Surely he wouldn’t have survived an hour beyond that.

If Rector had ever even known the name, he couldn’t remember it now.

But
north
felt like a good enough direction, so he’d stick to that. There was always a chance, he mused, that the Doornails weren’t as bad as all that. He might be able to ask around, find out if anyone had spotted the body of a boy about his own age, some newcomer who hadn’t made it far. Somebody might know. For all he knew, they might have a place where they put bodies. The dead have to go somewhere, don’t they?

Yes. They come here.

He steadied himself and kept moving until the path dropped away in front of him.

With a gasp, he jerked himself back against the wall, pushing like he could shove himself right through it and back to the Outskirts. Maybe this was all an awful idea. His breath froze in his throat and for a few seconds he couldn’t breathe at all—or didn’t dare to try.

Then he noticed a ladder continuing his path downward.

It wasn’t the usual kind of ladder—rungs and sides and whatnot—and it wasn’t a rope ladder like the one he’d climbed to the platform. This ladder was made of iron, and bolted to the side of the wall.

Rector crouched and reached for the top rung. His bare hands were already warm and reddening with a rash brought on by the Blight, but he ignored the discomfort and tried to give the bar a good, solid grip.

Gripping was trickier than it sounded. The metal had been coated with … tar? Pitch? Glue? He didn’t know, but it was thick and mucky, and probably intended to work against the corrosive power of the tainted air. And indeed, he could see how some of the bolts without this protective goop were rusting with alarming vigor.

The metal groaned under Rector’s boot. He pivoted so that he faced the wall, then brushed the side of the ladder with his free hand until he could reach, and lean, and get a good hold.

With his back to the ruined city, his arms and legs shaking with effort and fear and the unfamiliar posture of the forced vertical … he began to descend.

As he dropped himself one rung at a time, not knowing what was at the bottom—or how far away that bottom might be—he watched the rusting bolts scroll past his visor. He winced and squeezed tighter as the iron’s covering made his hands gummy; he flinched as the fixtures wobbled in their settings, puffing soft red dust into the yellow air. Finally, after what felt like forever, the ladder came to a stop—giving Rector another fresh infusion of terror when he realized that the rungs had run out, and nothing but open air awaited his dangling foot.

Now it was time to look down. He did, and he gave a wheezing bark of relief: Below him, just a short hop away … he saw a flat surface.

With something akin to joy he released his grip on the nasty ladder and spun, dropping himself down. It was farther than it looked, enough to throw off his balance when he hit, landing oddly on one set of toes and the back of his other heel. He stumbled, swore, and recovered—then stood up straight and proud, feeling accomplished for the first time in recent memory. He’d made it to the roof.

“Now what?” he asked himself, and the words echoed wetly around in his mask. “Got to sort myself out, that’s all. Got to find which way’s north.”

Rector had spent several years trafficking in maps, and he knew what the city ought to look like. There’d been a big Sanborn survey right before the Boneshaker happened, and the resulting charts told him where all the roads went and what they were called. But those black-and-white diagrams weren’t a whole lot of help when he couldn’t see the streets.

He thought hard. He could do this.

All the downtown corners had their intersection names cut into the stone curbs, but Rector concluded, with no small amount of irritation, that he’d have to be sitting right on top of one to see it, much less read it. Still, the wall was at his back. Given where he entered, that meant he was facing east. If he wanted to go north, toward the spot where the old water runoff tunnels came out, he’d have to go left, up the hill and along the wall.

He walked around the roof in small semicircles, taking in his surroundings and making sure that nothing horrible lurked in any of the corners or shadows. He saw only bits of trash—newspapers wadded and soaked, broken bottles, discarded rags, and a stray shoe.

He also found a doorway that no doubt led down inside whatever building this was—not that he wanted to go down into the darkness, because he didn’t. But he had a plan again, and it was easier to stick with one plan than figure out a second plan. He opened his tied-up blanket-bag and retrieved a box of matches plus one of the taller candle stubs he’d pilfered on his way out of the orphanage.

The little candle struggled, flared, and settled into a steady flame that gave him another few feet of sight. It told him that yes, he was right—and no, there was nothing else on the rooftop with him.

He didn’t really believe in God, but he thanked Him anyway on the off chance it’d do him good to be polite.

You never know. You might find out, soon enough.

“Stop it,” Rector hissed at the wispy forms that came and went, billowing and eddying between the roof’s raised corners, and against the wall behind him. “You’re not really there.”

You’re getting closer. You’d better keep your promise.

“I’m working on it, ain’t I?” he asked almost frantically, searching the swirling air for some sign of the familiar phantom, and seeing nothing. Except there, perhaps … at the edge of … something. The edge of the roof. His vision. His sanity.

He shook his head some more, for all the good it did him. He told the ghost, “I’m coming, as soon as I can find you. Why don’t you make yourself useful, and tell me where you are?”

When he received no answer, he sniffed. The candle danced. “That’s what I thought. Just like a useless kid. Making demands and refusing to help. Hey Zeke, you dummy—think about this, will you? If I die before I reach you, then neither one of us gets any grave except this miserable city.”

He stepped with defiance toward the doorway, which was raised up out of the roof, and he gave the knob a stern, confident tug.

It came off in his hand.

He stood there stupidly, holding the rotted old piece of cheap metal. Then he looked at the hole it’d left and tried to reinsert the thing, in case such a simple act could magically repair it.

No such luck.

“Fine,” he said. Maybe that wasn’t the way he was supposed to go anyway.

Rector set the candle down and gave the door a solid kick, then a second one. His foot connected a third time, and each percussion was louder—the beating of a forlorn drum, banging out a low echo that drove the curdling gas away in fleeing puffs.

Nothing budged.
All right. Time to look for something else
. People didn’t come and go from that ladder just to die on the rooftop, now did they? No. No bodies, no bones, no rotters. There was some other way down.

Methodically, he began a survey of the roof. Pools of water collected and gelled nastily in the places where the surface sagged, but Rector avoided those because he didn’t want his already-filthy socks to suck up anything worse than what they’d already gathered. Every step felt like sneaking through something that was on the very verge of collapse.

He dragged his free hand along the edge overlooking the street.

Ah. There. Yes
.

His hand stopped against a plank covered in splinters—no, only partly covered in splinters, and partly covered in peeling, chipping paint that sloughed away at his touch. He held the candle up over this newfound object and discovered that it was affixed horizontally to a space immediately below the edge, where it could be easily seen from the roof.

“One of them fellows might’ve mentioned this. Might’ve made things easier,” he grumbled. As he examined the plank, he realized that, in fact, it was a collection of doors laid end to end. They’d all been lashed together, braced from underneath, and affixed with guide ropes intended to serve as rails, for all the wonderful good they’d do if this rigged-together bridge were to break. But Rector couldn’t get too upset about that, because that’s what it was—a bridge. A bridge that went straight into the open window of a taller building next door, perhaps thirty feet away. Not far at all. A hop, a skip, and a jump.