The Inexplicables

by Cherie Priest

Page 36

 

  “If he’s right, it’s been like this for weeks,” Houjin mused. “That’s plenty of time for animals to get inside and get sick. ”

  “Plenty of time for man-shaped animals to get inside, too,” the princess said.

  “Look over there…” Zeke said, peering off to the north.

  Rector followed his lead and saw a swath of hazy yellow burning weakly through the fog. “Is that … light? I thought we were practically at the end of the wall. ”

  “There ain’t much wall at this northeastern side, that’s for sure,” Angeline confirmed. “But it goes around farther to the north, then back to the east. As for over there…”

  Then Houjin said slowly, “It’s the old park, isn’t it? Up near the big houses, where the rich people used to live. ”

  “This whole hill is where the rich people used to live,” Zeke told them. “My momma’s place was back down the hill a few blocks, over to the south. ”

  “Yeah, but I mean the really rich people. The men who owned the mills, and the logging company. They lived along Fourteenth Street, and the road stopped at the top of the hill, where they were going to put a park. ”

  The princess nodded. “They started building it not too long before the Boneshaker came. They put down a cemetery, too, on the other side”—she waved her hand to suggest a distant location—“and they filled it up with people who’d been dead for years and years and buried downtown once already. ”

  “Why didn’t they just wait for new dead people?” Rector asked.

  “They were moving the old boneyard, making way for businesses and such. I even planned for a plot at the new place, thinking I’d be here forever. And my girl’s there, so I figured I’d stay with her. But the wall cuts through that new cemetery full of old folks—slices it right in half. ” She fell silent for a moment, then said, “She’s just outside the city, now. ”

  “But there’s a park?” Zeke prodded her.

  “Oh, sure. It was supposed to be a real nice one, if they ever got it finished. But the fellow who was working on it also had work in New York City, so he took his own sweet time dealing with us. I don’t know if the place was finished by the time the wall went up … but most of it…” She took a few steps and peered at the wall from another angle, then assessed it from a third position. “Most of it ought to be inside the wall here, and real close by. Huey, you said the park was at Fourteenth Street?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I saw it on a map once. ”

  “We just passed Twelfth Street, so we ain’t got far to go. You boys think you can handle another two blocks?”

  Without hesitation, they each said, “Yes, ma’am!”

  “All right, then, let’s look. And same rules apply, you hear? We hit trouble, you three run like the devil knows your name. ”

  “Yes, ma’am,” they agreed with somewhat less enthusiasm.

  “So long as we’re clear on that. I think we’ll have the best luck if we dodge the rubble this way, and go around—”

  She stopped, and in the sudden silence the boys heard the tumbling, rattling, and pinging of falling rocks.

  Everyone stood still, and no one breathed.

  The rocks were small and they spilled down like a stream, just a trickle for the moment. Rector’s voice shook as he said, “It’s the wall. It’s going to come down on our heads, ain’t it?”

  But Angeline put a hand on his shoulder and said, “Wait,” in her quietest whisper. She was looking up—they were all looking up—but her eyes were tracking something Rector couldn’t see. He tried to chase her gaze, but saw nothing except for the cornstarch-colored air.

  When the pebbles started falling again, Angeline’s eyes darted to their source, narrowing as they did. “Boys…” she said, and how she fit so much warning into four letters, Rector would never know.

  “I see it,” Houjin told her. He retreated a few feet and kept his face aimed skyward. “It’s moving, back and forth. ”

  “Where?” Zeke asked.

  Rector echoed him. “Yeah, where? I don’t see anything. ” But he could hear something, and it worried him. The scuttling patter of sliding rocks came with a structure, a rhythm. A pace, like uncertain footsteps. His chest clenched with fear, and without meaning to, he drew himself up closer to Angeline. “Is it the monster?”

  “Not a monster,” she reminded him gently.

  He fought the urge to press his back against hers, and he struggled against the impulse to run for cover. He couldn’t see the thing, but he could sense it. Did it remember him? Would it come for him again?

  He didn’t want to look; he couldn’t help but look. So when a gust of high wind stretched and broke the stringy yellow air, he gasped, pointed, and stumbled backwards.

  “Settle yourself, Red. ”

  Zeke gasped, too, only just now joining them. “It’s … it’s … that’s not a person!” he squeaked.

  Angeline’s words were level and calm. “No, not a person. ”

  “Not a person,” Rector repeated, saying it like a mantra. “Not a person. ” He hadn’t been nuts. It hadn’t been a person who’d scared him half out of his skin and chased him into the chuckhole. “Not a person; never a person. And, oh God…” His stomach sank, tying itself into a complicated sailor’s knot. “It’s right on top of us!”

  But the princess said, “No,” and squeezed the back of his neck.

  Her strength astonished him, though it shouldn’t have. He’d been climbing through the city with her for two days, after all; it shouldn’t be a surprise that her grip was as firm as the nuns at the orphanage. He wanted to turn and run, but her hand was steady, and he had a feeling that it’d yank him back like a dog on a leash if he tried.

  The creature up on top of the wall moved slowly from side to side, pacing back and forth. It maneuvered deftly along the blast-loosened bricks. And as the fog parted and congealed, the elongated, person-shaped creature watched them.

  “She sees us,” Angeline declared softly.

  Zeke’s eyes crinkled into a frown. “She?”

  “I believe so. ” The princess turned to Rector and said, “I think I know what’s happening here. She ain’t sick, you see? She ain’t coming down inside. She’s smarter than that. She knows what’s here. ”

  “Then what’s she doing up there?” Rector wanted to know.

  “She’s looking for the thing that jumped on you, Red. Dollars to dice, he’s her mate. ”

  Rector watched hard as the long-limbed, hair-covered creature up above—which looked almost tiny, all the way up there—came and went, out of focus. Moments later, as the fog twisted into a knot, it vanished.

  More rocks and dried mortar came skittering down; and when the low-lying cloud cleared again, the wall was unoccupied. No leggy, shaggy thing glared down, and no more debris rained down, either.

  Whatever it was, it was gone.

  Rector let out his breath in a long, shaky shudder. He hadn’t even noticed he’d been holding it.

  The princess released her grip on the back of his neck and patted him there, as if to reassure him. “She’s headed back to the woods for now, I expect. I don’t know if we can help her or not, but at least now we know what we’re up against. ”

  Zeke kicked at a fallen rock. It tumbled into a pile of bricks and was still. “I got a fairly good look at her, and I still don’t know what we’re up against. ”

  “Oh, you silly things. Right now, she’s not the worst of our problems. Let’s swing by the park before we call it a day. I’d hate to get so close and not even see our biggest one. ”

  Nineteen

  The boys agreed to stop by the park, and after a brief pause to change their gas-mask filters, they followed Angeline farther up the hill. All the way along the edge of Seattle the fractured wall kept them company, looming off to their left and casting a mighty black shadow. The rest of the way, it was as solid as ever.

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sp; Houjin breathed hoarsely into his mask and muttered, “It could be worse. I only see the one hole. ”

  “Yeah, but it’s a big one,” Zeke said, and in the muffled silence Rector heard how worried he was.

  The princess said, “It’s fixable. ”

  “How can you be so sure?” Rector asked.

  “Because the wall was buildable in the first place. Now hush up, all of you. We’re here. ”

  A long row of tattered hedges reared up before them, skeletal and sad. What few leaves remained were withered and brown. No doubt they’d once been cut into tremendous blocks and lovingly pruned to keep their shape. Now they were as ghastly and lifeless as an ironwork fence gone to rust. But they marked a boundary, and Rector made a note of it.

  Angeline led the way, pushing through the brittle flora, which crunched in pitiful snaps. The twigs were as light as dust, and they fluttered to the ground to join the nasty mulch where everything else had fallen.

  And on the other side they saw more dead things—larger dead things. Trees that had once been mighty were now reduced to crumbling trunks, and the odd monument or piece of statuary had gone streaked and pitted from prolonged exposure to the gas. To the left they saw curving walkways with seams that had succumbed to rubble, and a large round pond with nothing inside it but a yellow-black muck. They noticed signs that had gone unreadable, the paint blistered to illegibility and the colors bleached to an ugly gold. Running through all this wreckage were paths that were once graceful, veering prettily between patches of manicured lawns and gardens, and were now uniform in their unkempt ugliness—though they retained their expensive, precise shapes. Nothing could grow in the Blight gas, and therefore nothing became overgrown. It could only rot where once it had thrived.

  In the center of all this cheerless, colorless misery, a tremendous structure jutted from the center of a circular path. At first glance it blended into the wall, which ran a few yards behind it. “What’s that?” Zeke asked.