The Inexplicables

Rector brought up the rear, watching the sasquatch strive to keep his head up. Sometimes he tipped and toppled, then jerked up straight again. “The mask is heavy,” Rector observed. “It must be hurting his neck.”

“Must be,” Zeke replied, glancing backwards and around, keeping track of all the rocks and debris in his path. He avoided the clutter where he could, and climbed over it where he couldn’t. All the while, he kept his arms up and out, showing he meant no harm, and asking the sasquatch to follow.

Please come with me. Please let me help.

Up the hill a few more blocks, not very far. There weren’t any people there yet, but the previous night’s battle was increasingly evident. Zeke shuddered when the way was blocked by a pair of mutilated corpses. (Mutilated by what? Neither of the boys looked too closely.) Walls were burned and charred pieces of clothing billowed in the Blight as it moved on its usual currents. Pieces of hair and flannel with burned-off edges rolled into the gutters in clotted clumps.

Rector thanked God he couldn’t smell a damn thing.

The breach in the wall was not yet repaired, and might not be for a while yet. But it was covered, down at the base, by a great flap of burlap and wax, stitched together hastily and imperfectly and strung across the crevice like a curtain.

“Better than nothing,” Rector breathed. How much better, he couldn’t say.

By now, Zeke was prepared to trust that his strange ward wouldn’t run away or take to violence. He turned his back and climbed the lowest rocks to reach the curtain. He fumbled with the ties that held it, and the sasquatch watched with his vivid, unblinking eyes.

Those bright eyes widened when the flap came aside, revealing a hole. It was large enough for Zeke to walk through, almost, so it’d be large enough for the sasquatch to crawl through.

Light came through on the other side. Not brilliant light, but a creamy, soft glow that was far more mist than Blight.

Through the hole, Rector saw trees, and the edge of an old building, and part of a road that nobody but the tower men had used in years. He saw the rest of the world, away from the Station and the Vaults, and out of the Blight (or it would be, when they got this hole fixed); he saw a portal to someplace else a million miles away. And it was right over there, a handful of feet on the other side of those huge, rumbling rocks.

He could’ve climbed through it as easily as the sasquatch.

Thirty

The next day, Rector found the old jail again without too much trouble. He had a compass and a lantern, though it was daylight and he hoped he wouldn’t need them. He also had his ax, some extra filters, a canteen of water, some dried cherries and pemmican, and a number of other just-in-case supplies in the pack he wore on his back. A pack kept his hands freer, and his balance was better in the event he needed to run or climb.

He was no great fan of running or climbing, but in the walled city he never knew when it might be called for. There were rotters, after all.

Not as many rotters as there once were, no. Still, their ranks had plumped overnight for reasons everyone knew but nobody talked about. He didn’t like them, but he knew the city needed them, after a fashion. So he learned to take precautions and tried not to complain too much.

This was his first jaunt alone through the city since the day he’d arrived.

He didn’t yet know his way around as well as he’d like, but he had one of Mr. Miller’s hand-drawn maps and he’d been up and down the hill enough to know some of the landmarks. He knew where the wall was, anyway—and if you found the wall, you could find your way almost anywhere.

If you had enough filters. If you didn’t die of thirst.

Every trip to the surface was a risk even once you got used to it, like most of Seattle’s residents had. Even if you were ready for anything, and in tip-top physical shape, the rotters could still get you. The gas could still get you.

Rector thought maybe this was the only place in the whole world where you could die just from standing still. But he wasn’t standing still. He was on his way to the old jail.

Dark, cool, and spooky, it was a relic of a place. Rector could feel it: Here was a spot where a story happened … a real story, not something made up and fed to small children so they’d sleep, or be proud, or behave.

Not every place had a story like the jail, or Maynard. Or the sasquatch.

It was brighter inside the jail today.

The sun was up above the Blight, burning clear in a vivid blue sky for the first time all year. If Rector was lucky, it’d be dry and bright for a couple of months—and even warm, for a while. If he was less lucky, better weather would come in fits and starts, without settling in until September, at which point summer would vanish one afternoon as if it’d never been there at all. Since it hadn’t.

But for now, while the brilliant sky worked hard to cook off the ever-present fog, everything was kind of all right.

Dust specks and dirty air polluted what sunlight made it inside the old jail. The bits of abandonment floated smoothly, silently, stirred only by Rector’s presence. His foot kicked against something that clinked.

When he looked down, he saw the jailer’s key ring, cracked and crumbled almost to dust. It’d been discarded by the door and forgotten for almost as long as Rector had been alive, but it was a token. A relic more than an artifact.

He picked it up because it seemed rude to leave it. Maybe he’d give it to Zeke. Maybe he’d put it on a saint’s card.

“He’s gone.”

Rector whirled around. He knew the voice, but it nearly stopped his heart since he’d thought he was alone. “I know the inexplicable’s gone. Me and Zeke took it outside yesterday. What are you doing here, Miss Angeline?”

She leaned against a brick support post, arms folded and gas mask showing nothing but her eyes. She wore what she always wore: menswear that had been tailored down to fit her. Her silver hair was braided and coiled back, and today it was mostly covered by a scarf, except where snowy tendrils peeked out around her ears.

Rector looked back and forth between the woman and the empty cell.

“Where are Zeke and Houjin?” she asked.

“Still in bed, I expect.”

“Everyone’s had an exciting couple of days. Some more than others. But I’m glad you boys are all just fine. I’d have felt pretty bad if any of you’d gotten hurt. I’d feel responsible, a little bit.”

“Why’s that?”

“I was the one who helped you learn your way about, and roped you into helping with the sasquatch. I urged you to poke your noses around the tower. Everything worked out for the best, I reckon, but even so, you don’t want anyone to get shot up over it.”

Rector had been wondering something, though it only just then sprang to his mind. And since the princess was standing right there, he went ahead and asked. “Where were you that night at the tower, Miss Angeline? I didn’t see you anyplace, once the fighting got started.” Quickly, he amended the question to include, “I’m not accusing you of chickening out or nothing—’cause I’m real sure you didn’t. Or wouldn’t. I just didn’t see you, that’s all.”

She smiled inside the mask, her eyes crinkling up tight. “Funny thing about being an old lady … sometimes, it’s like being invisible. I was there, honey. Trust me on that one. And I saw you and Zeke up on the old governor’s mansion. You two did a real good job.”

“Thank you, ma’am.” He figured he wouldn’t get a straighter answer out of her, so he didn’t press for one. It was easier to change the subject. “Where do you think the sasquatch went, once he got outside the wall? Do you think he’ll be all right?”

“Where’d he go?” She unfolded her arms. She stepped forward and came to stand beside Rector, staring into the empty cell right along with him. “If you forced me to give you my best guess, I’d say he had a long nap and woke up feeling better—feeling clearer, and stronger. I’d say he pulled off the mask, or his lady friend pulled it off him. He’ll have to eat and drink. One of ’em will take care of it.”

“You think they’re that smart?”

“I think instinct is an interesting thing, for all the things it can tell a body. What are your instincts telling you, these days?”

He frowned at her. “What?”

“You heard me. What do your instincts say about being here, staying here? You going to hang around the Vaults, or go to the Station? You going to stay inside Seattle, or seek your fortune someplace else?”

“I’m gonna…”

He thought of his small room in the Vaults, not unlike the room he’d had in the orphanage a few weeks before. He considered the Station and Yaozu and Bishop, and Zeke and Houjin, and earning an honest living or a dishonest one, but earning something, somewhere.

“It looks like you folks need a few good men around here.”

“We do,” she replied too solemnly to imply anything.

“The place is falling apart. Yaozu’s got money, but not as many people as he needs. And those docks—the ones the captain’s setting up at Decatur—he’ll need people to man them. The patch job where the wall’s broke—what’d they use, canvas? That won’t hold anything, and it’ll take a lot of fellows a few weeks to fix it, at least. Never mind all the tunnels falling down and the buildings rotting where they stand, if they still stand. There are jobs in here, that’s all I’m sayin’. And there aren’t any jobs out there, in the Outskirts. Not for someone like me, unless I want to go back to selling.” He said it offhandedly, as if the thought hadn’t occurred to him.

Angeline went ahead and asked. “Do you want to go back to selling?”

Why lie? “Yeah, I do. It’s easy, and everyone’s always happy to see me.”

“But?”

“But,” he paused. “I can’t handle the sap anymore. That’s not to say I don’t want it, but I know I can’t have it. It’ll kill me.” 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">