The Inexplicables

“Caplan! Westie!” he cried out.

Rector cringed, fearing for a moment that they’d been spotted after all … but no.

“Something’s wrong!” he shouted toward the tower. Then he added, “It’s me, don’t nobody shoot!” which was absolutely the wisest way to approach anybody in Seattle, these days. “Something’s wrong downtown!”

From the top of the tower, somebody hollered back. “What’s going on? I don’t see no fire! I didn’t hear no dynamite!”

“No sir, the Station’s still standing!”

“What do you mean it’s…?” Swearing followed, and the sound of someone descending the brittle metal stairs.

“It’s starting,” Zeke said in a muffled grunt.

Rector pulled his hand away from Zeke’s mask. “It started already. We gotta go.”

They picked themselves up and took half a dozen seconds to relight their candles. Then they ran, guarding the little flames with their palms. Behind them came the rising noise and clatter of men whose plans had been thwarted.

As promised, the back of the house had fallen down altogether, exposing three stories and a convenient set of stairs that started just above ground level. The boys pulled themselves quickly along the stairs and scrambled up, up, and up that third staircase, then up another set to the wide, flat roof.

From there, the city looked strange; it looked blanketed rather than poisoned. They could even make out the moon above, and its cool, shimmering light gave them just a hint of where everything around them was located. Still, Rector kept his eyes on his candle. He moved carefully, and reached a hand back to grab Zeke’s shirt. “Stay close to me now. This roof is straight, but it might not be sound.”

“Might not? More like probably ain’t. The back wall didn’t hold up, did it? That doesn’t bode well for the roof.”

“Hang close. I don’t want to pull you out of a hole.”

“Like Huey pulled you—”

“Can it.”

“Sorry. You’re right. I don’t want to fall in a hole.”

Rector found the roof’s edge with his eyes only inches before his feet would’ve found it the hard way. “Stop!” he said—a little too loud, but Zeke obeyed. “Here. The edge is right here. Let’s put our stuff down and set up before things get crazy.”

With relief and exhaustion, they dropped the heavy packs that contained the big gaslights and all their accoutrements. Only once had they been shown how the lights were assembled, but it wasn’t as complicated as it sounded. While they worked by one small bubble of candlelight, they eavesdropped on the tower from behind a row of long-dead shrubs.

“All of them? At once?”

Rector said, “That’s Otis, I think.”

“It must be something with the gas, or something. Messing with the wires.”

Zeke asked, “Who’s that?” and Rector answered, “I don’t know.”

“That’s one goddamn hell of a coincidence!”

The clattering of descending footsteps echoed like the banging of gongs, and Otis Caplan’s lantern lit up the small windows as he passed each one. When he reached the bottom floor he kicked the gate open and stomped out into the yard, shouting for various lieutenants and henchmen. Some followed him down the tower, down the stairs—and some charged up from Millionaire’s Row, coming up the wide streets with their lanterns held high and a great deal of complaining.

“What are you all doing back here?” he demanded.

“Sabotage!”

“What?”

“Someone sabotaged our sabotage! All of it! There’s fighting down at the Station right now—they opened fire on us! They came right for us!”

“They were waiting for us! They knew we was coming!”

Zeke whispered to Rector, “You all ready to go?”

“Yep. How about you?”

“All I gotta do is flip the switch.”

“Me, too.” Then Rector asked, “How do we know when to turn ’em on?”

“Huey said we’d know.”

Down in the open space, at the circle in front of the tower where all the streets met, Otis Caplan was furious. His light swung back and forth in his hand, as though he’d love for someone to come close enough to beat with it. He stalked toward the men, some of whom were bleeding and ragged, and a few of whom were wheezing like maybe their masks weren’t working quite right.

“Where’s everybody else?” he demanded.

“Still there. Or dead!”

“That’s horseshit, and I won’t hear it!”

“But, sir!”

“It’s horseshit! Those damn Station monkeys and that yellow-headed, slant-eyed son of a bitch—”

Whatever else he had to say about Yaozu, he didn’t get to finish it.

Behind him, a bell began to ring—the chime of a wake-up call. It jingled for two full seconds, giving everyone present just enough time to wonder what the hell was going on before the tower exploded.

It blasted outward and upward, a cascade of bricks blooming and billowing, flung from their foundations. Twisted, melted metal hurtled in 360 degrees, flattening whatever the bricks missed on their first wave and slicing trees into kindling. The bricks smashed any windows within a hundred yards, including those on the old governor’s mansion; they gusted inward, a million little daggers glittering in the resulting fire.

And there was plenty of fire.

As the conical tower roof slapped down upon the park in peeling, shriveled pieces the size of horses, the still in the tower spread burning fuel in every direction—and everything close had sparked, and some of the sparks had caught.

Rector and Zeke looked up to see a dozen flickers of flame licking dead trees, downed walls, and the brittle shrubbery that once had decorated the manicured lawns. Only then did it occur to Rector that it hadn’t rained in a week, at least. Maybe two.

He grinned. “Zeke, guess what: Summer’s here.”

“Must be, otherwise none of that shit would light.”

“Speaking of light … I think this is where we come in.” Rector cranked the little switch to turn on his spotlight, forgetting that the thing had been aiming straight up into his face. It came on with the brilliance of a dozen suns. He instantly dropped it—but Zeke caught it. “Jesus Christ!” Rector swore. “I can’t see!”

Zeke laughed. “Me either, hardly. Give your eyes a minute, and turn that damn thing around!”

Blindly, Rector fumbled the light away from Zeke; he heard the sizzle of leather and thanked heaven for Fang’s old gloves, even in their terrible condition, and he swung the light toward where the tower used to be. As his eyes adjusted, his lamp joined Zeke’s beam, and the light of the two hissing, portable gas lamps with their heavy mirrors joined the glimmer of the growing fires along the trees. The ring of dead fauna spit and hissed, glowing warmly. It shined upon a scene of confusion … which was swiftly becoming a scene of pandemonium.

All the men who were able rose from the ground, crawling to their feet or simply crawling away. Otis Caplan was down for the count and maybe longer, but two of his men tugged at him—drawing him up and away from the smoldering rubble of the tower. They hoisted him, and he dangled—slung between them, a dead weight.

And then someone started shooting.

At the edge of the woodwork Chinese men and Station men waited, and Doornails, too. Rector and Zeke knew it, even though they couldn’t see them—and it was their job to make sure the tower men didn’t see them, either. The spotlights flashed and swung; the boys aimed at the tower men, blinding and revealing them as they tried to flee, or tried to mount their defense.

They had nowhere left to retreat to.

They were in the open, and there was far more light than anyone expected, though the fire was running out of fuel as it backed up to the wall. It fizzled and petered, but some of the bigger trees still burned, and gobs of brick fell from their branches, raining down on the heads of anyone unfortunate enough to hide below them.

The tower men shot back, and they struggled to rally. But there weren’t enough of them left, and there weren’t any places to hide except maybe … the big mansions. They could mount a defense from a place as huge as the governor’s old place.

This dawned on Rector right around the time it dawned on a few of the brighter survivors. Rector pointed his spotlight down at those who ran toward him, and he told Zeke to do the same. “Hit them with it! Don’t let them get inside!”

“These aren’t guns! We can’t shoot them and keep them away!” Zeke protested, even as he followed Rector’s suggestion.

“Pretend they are. Hit them in the face and keep them blinded—make ’em easy to see!”

And then, he prayed, maybe some of the Station men or the Doornails will pick them off before they reach us and kill us both.

Three men fell to bullets before they arrived at the house’s big black door. Seven more were behind them, and they missed the lights, dodged the bullets, and reached the columned front porch. Soon the boys heard the loud thunk of someone beating on a solid wood door, knocking it hard, shoving it with shoulders and kicking it with heavy boots.

“Shit!” Zeke said. “Can’t hit ’em with the lights from here!”

“Not like this,” Rector admitted. He stood up, balanced his spotlight on the edge, and said, “But maybe like this.” And he shoved it over the side. It crashed down to the porch and through it, shattering somewhere below and showering the men with glass—but otherwise not hurting them, or so Rector thought.

Zeke followed suit, tossing his light over the side and listening for the smashing of timbers, roofing tiles, and maybe men’s heads. But his didn’t even break through the porch, and Rector grabbed him by the arm. “They don’t know the back’s fallen down. We have to get out before they get in!”

Now, with the fires and the shouting, there was plenty of light and noise to navigate by. The boys dashed back across the roof with their packs, so much lighter without those spotlights, and they half fell, half skidded down the stairs until they had dirt and dead grass beneath their feet again. At the front of the house, they heard the old door shatter. ns class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">