“What?” Rector squeaked, “is … that?” But Houjin was running too hard, paying too much attention to answer.
Besides, it was after them. The cracks and stomps of the big thing’s scramble were surely loud enough to raise the dead or bring them running. It was finding its footing, gathering its energy, focusing its attention, and listening to the Blight just like the boys had done.
Houjin’s feet stumbled and he slowed, looking over his shoulder and then forward again, quickly. One direction, then the other. Trying not to fall. A worthy goal, in Rector’s estimation, but behind them something enormously tall was mumbling to itself. It sniffed the air—they could hear it, like a windstorm up two great nostrils—and picked its direction.
It tumbled out of the wreckage of its fall, and gave chase along their retreat path.
“Shit!” Houjin gasped wetly. It was the first time Rector’d ever heard him curse, but this was a fantastic time to start getting the hang of it.
Improbably heavy footsteps clomped hard against the smooth-packed streets and uncluttered avenues, making a beeline right for Houjin and Rector, who had wholly quit fighting Houjin’s attempts to guide him—by force, if necessary—farther up the hill and away from the thing behind them.
In Rector’s head he was going over the possibilities. Perhaps some oversized rotter dropped in from the sky … maybe the giant captain? He was big, he was nearby, and the ship was right up there. Huey had made such a show of pointing it out, hadn’t he?
Anything but the inexplicable.
But he knew it was all wrong. The captain would’ve called out, certainly. He would’ve said their names and asked what they were doing; he wouldn’t have fallen from the sky only to scare them witless. The thing behind them rumbled a thick bellow that wasn’t quite a cry and wasn’t quite a call. Either way, it wasn’t human.
Definitely not the captain, even as Rector’s racing brain tried to maintain the hypothetical option.
“No way,” he wheezed. “No way.”
“Hush up!”
“Where are we going?”
“I said, be quiet!”
“Huey, for Chrissake, it already hears us!”
“Underground.” He coughed. “Back to the underground.”
Rector’s heart took a dip down to his stomach. There was no way they’d outrun the thing. They were at least three blocks from the nearest entrance he knew of … if, in fact, they were anywhere close to where he thought they were. This realization made him lunge all the harder to keep up with Huey, whose grip on Rector’s arm seemed terribly fragile.
An unexpected curb appeared under their feet. Houjin jumped it, just barely and just in time. Rector caught it with his shin and went flying. Momentum snapped him free of Huey’s grip and he rolled off to the side, up against a wall that had held up a roof a long time ago, and now served entirely to make Rector’s head spin. Stars flashed and flickered before him, and he couldn’t see anything.
Even his own hand, when he wobbled it forward in an effort to right himself, looked misshapen and alien. It was coated in stars and Blight like everything else, and the prospect of getting onto all fours felt insurmountable.
Houjin was feeling around with his hands and feet, whispering, “Rector!”
“Um…”
A moment later, a very firm hand seized Rector’s ankle, pulling it out from under him. Rector’s heart nearly stopped.
“Sorry; I’m sorry,” Huey said. “Get up, Rector. Get up! We have to…” And then he stopped talking.
The thing was very close; they could feel it more than they could hear it—the nearness of something unfamiliar and large, its existence pressing against their fear like a tangible force. It shoved against their chests, and stuffed up the filters in their masks. Neither one of them could breathe anymore except in short, horrified bursts that fogged their visors and gave them scarcely enough oxygen to keep from passing out.
The inexplicable—for what else could it be?—circled them and sniffed, always that disgusting sniffing as he tried to smell something other than the Blight. He homed in on them awkwardly, uncertainly. When he was within a few feet (ten feet? twenty?), someone shouted.
“Over here!”
The call was loud—almost as loud as the inexplicable’s roar. The call was accompanied by footsteps. Big, solid, certain ones.
“Captain!” Houjin barked, though where he’d found the energy or breath to holler even that one word, Rector would never know.
“Huey? And Rector, I expect,” Andan Cly added. “You two—run.”
The inexplicable turned. They heard him pivot on his feet, seeking this new speaker.
“Captain, no—”
“Make for the Sizemore House!” he commanded.
Easier said than done, Rector said, or that’s what he would’ve said if he could’ve said anything at all. So it was just as well that he was too stunned to do much more than stagger to his feet, which scarcely held him up.
A moment of silence.
Another scraping scuff of some large foot, someplace in the foggy air.
Rector looked down at his hands and saw that his borrowed gloves were pocked with holes and his knuckles were oozing red. Everything smarted, including his knees, now that he had a moment to notice it.
He should’ve noticed the puff of the inexplicable breathing, and the sordid, sticky sound of his lungs working against the Blight as he approached. The inexplicable had made up his mind. Two small things, or one big thing. He’d take his chances with the littler opponents.
Rector knew it, but he couldn’t do anything about it. He could hardly stand, and could hardly tell that Huey’s grip on his forearm was now a grip on his sleeve. Huey’s fingers twisted into the fabric, securing their grip, but he was tired, too. Could either of them run?
“Run!” the captain ordered again—a shout that shook even the inexplicable, who paused for a brief moment and turned back again. His long arms swam against the air. He was uncertain of Cly, but the boys were within its reach.
The Blight wavered, pushed aside or blown that way by circumstance, and Rector caught a glimpse of the thing’s yellow-gold eyes surrounded by black. They flinched, squinted, and focused on Rector’s vivid red hair, which no doubt showed brighter than anything around it, a patch of color searing through the washed-out city air.
The inexplicable surged forward, his leathery, hairy hand snapping out in a move so fast Rector might not have seen it in broad daylight in the Outskirts … and then it snapped back. It retreated violently, immediately—and without meaning to. Even in the soupy atmosphere, Rector could see that much.
Something had him by the throat. Something hauled him backwards.
Someone.
“Captain!” Huey shouted, and the big man tumbled with the inexplicable in tow, locked against him—one long arm winched around the thing’s throat. The white flutter of his shirtsleeve flashed through the viscous air and Rector watched it, following the action with mute fascination.
“Go!” the captain replied in a muffled, frenzied grunt, but Houjin wouldn’t have it.
The boy scrambled forward. Briefly Rector thought, Jesus Christ, what’s he going to do?—a thought that Houjin caught up with just in time to keep him from getting within grabbing distance. He tripped over himself, hesitated, and leaned back to get out of range.
“You heard the man!” Rector said, reaching forward and taking Houjin by the shoulder. “Let’s go!”
“Do it!” Cly ordered.
As Rector staggered up to his proper footing, he hauled Huey with him until they were both upright, but neither could take their eyes off the weird ballet that flickered through the gas.
The inexplicable’s preposterous, hairy limbs swayed and stretched, grabbing for purchase. His feet turned, his body doing an uneven pirouette as he fought against the weight of the man who held him. The man was a true giant, but still not as big as this thing in the mist. He had the inexplicable by the neck, but his grip was being shaken, battered, and knocked free. Still, the lanky heft of his body held the thing back from the boys, just far enough that his hands couldn’t grab them.
The inexplicable shook himself like a wet dog. Once, twice, a third time.
And the captain fell backwards with a crunching smash into something just out of sight. His feet stuck up from wherever he’d landed, but only for the briefest of moments. With a leap he was up again, and coming again—a massive, bald shape in a gas mask and suspenders. Not quite a match for the thing in front of him. Rector knew that in a heartbeat … the very same heartbeat that caught in his mouth when the glittering amber eyes of the sasquatch streaked from left to right, judging his attacker. They shot through the bleak, uncertain air like two small fireworks.
They flashed and were gone, and a stomping leap launched the creature somewhere else.
In the span of a few long strides of the creature’s scrambling retreat, the city was quiet again, sullen and empty even of the rotter moans and bird calls that usually scratched across every stone.
Captain Andan Cly let his torso fall forward. He put his hands upon the top of his knees, hung his head a moment, and worked hard to breathe. Huey ran to his side, fretting about a bloody smear on the back of the captain’s head, but Cly waved the young engineer away. “It’s all right. I’m fine. It’s the filters—you know how it goes. Let me … let me get some air.”
“What happened?” Rector wanted to know. “How did you find us?”
After another ten seconds of deeply drawn gulps of air, he said. “Didn’t find you. Didn’t know you were here. Found it. We were doing low trainers, checking that new thruster. The damn thing jumped up and grabbed us.” He shook his head, stretched his shoulders, and stood up straight again. “Goddamn, it must outweigh me by a hundred pounds, and I’m no slouch.”
Houjin agreed, “No sir, absolutely not.”
“I opened the bay door to see what we’d picked up, and there it was. There he was,” he said, a marvel in his words. “There he was, hanging there like a kid from a tree house. I swear to God, there he was.”