“Who are you?”
I spin around. Three of them be standing right behind me. Little ones. Scavengers in Rooftops be either children or people the size of kids. They got to be awful light on they feet for this kind of work, so I ain’t heard ’em coming. They staring at me with they hard eyes, two skinny boys the color of river mud and a woman, an old lady with a back like a crow, all hunched in half, shoulder blades like wings. They be dressed in pocket coats down to they ankles, waterproof sailcloth with pockets up and down to hold what they find.
“Who are you?” the woman say again. She sound like a crow, too, and her hair be gray and wild, like a bird nest on her head. She got to be close to fifty. That mean she crafty, living this long.
“That ain’t your business,” I say. “Strike me a deal.”
The three of them lean forward, peering at Baby Girl with greedy eyes. Scavengers usually go for scraps and findings, but they ain’t above trading with blood hunters if they hungry enough. Judging from the skinny on these boys, they plenty hungry for sure.
“A deal for the baby?” the old woman say.
I shake my head. “Something better.”
“What be better than that?” one of the boys ask. “Baby worth an awful lot to some folks.”
“A treasure be worth more,” I say. “We got a house full of it.”
“What treasure? There ain’t no treasure here but bottle caps and chimney ends,” the old lady say with a wave of her hand.
“Nobody goes in them houses!” the boy exclaims. “Death be in them houses. We take from the tops.”
True, Rooftops be dangerous enough without going underground. Don’t take much rain to make things float to the surface, even through the mud and grass, if you know where to look.
I shrug and walk away. “All right, be like that. I’ma find someone else to carry it.”
I can feel ’em looking at each other behind me. “Wait, wait, wait!” the old lady call. I stop, but don’t turn around.
“I have two fine boys here, strapping boys, they help carry anything you got, for a price.”
Now I turn around, swinging Baby Girl onto my hip, and give them the once-over. “I don’t know. Maybe they ain’t light enough on they feet for my kind of treasure.”
“We light. We like feathers,” one of the boys insist, and step forward.
“Like a bubble,” the other say.
“We don’t want no treasure from under below,” the old lady say. “But them braids of yours be fine. Mighty fine.”
She come closer and snake out a hand. I slap it away, but she reach with her free hand and grab a hold of my hair anyway. “Yes. This gone do just fine.”
• • •
DANIEL STOPPED BREATHING. THE DARKNESS was suffocating and his goggles were useless without a light source. They could amplify even starlight a thousandfold, but the thing above him was blocking the hole to the upper world. He willed himself into silence, but his heart was jolting against his ribs so loudly, he was sure it could be heard. Any predator worth its salt would scent him out.
But Daniel was wearing an encounter suit. Would he still smell like food? He hoped not. Up above, Fen was saying something. He ignored it, wishing she would shut up. Maybe the thing in the room would go away if she was quiet. Maybe it would move again and the patch of daylight would come back. Then he could find a way to climb out.
Unable to stop himself, Daniel took a quick breath. Above him, the creature shifted. He couldn’t see well enough to know where or how, but he heard the creak of broken floorboards, the slow drag of a body against the floor. He could feel it, an enormous presence, filling up the attic, taking what little air there was out of the room. A musty smell pressed down on him, making his stomach flip with fear. He knew that smell. Had come across it in the lab where they kept the reptiles. Snake, or something like it. Alligator?
Daniel pissed himself. A second later, he felt the skin of the encounter suit compress, and a soft whir as it processed the urine, filling a catch pocket with drinking water.
Then something touched his face.
Flickering against the outer skin of the suit, it fluttered against him and retreated. Fluttered again. A tongue?
Alligator or snake, even if this thing couldn’t smell him, it had found him and was coming in for a better look. Daniel thought about praying, but he was a scientist. He didn’t know where to begin.
He wondered what the virus would do in the belly of this beast, and he closed his eyes. The afterimage of the hole in the sky filled his blackened lids.
Glow sticks.
It popped into his head just like that. He had taken them from his duffel before climbing the Wall, had used one to light the Dome. Slowly, he moved his hand down to the right pocket and reached inside. He could feel them with his fingertips. Closing a hand around the tube, he pulled one out.
The tongue had stopped touching his face, but it was close. Any sudden movement might cause it to strike, but he had no choice.
Daniel shook the glow stick, snapping it to ignite the chemical light. Green light flooded from his hands, searing his night vision, causing the thing in the room to shriek. He screamed along with it, not wanting to see what it was. A giant reptilian eye glared at him, no more than a foot away. He saw the inner eyelid snap shut, protecting the eye. A pupil the size of his fist disappeared, and the thing, whatever it was, dragged itself out of the light.
“Fen!” Daniel yelled.
She didn’t respond.
30
I STEP BACK TO PULL MY HAIR OUT OF HER grasp. “Back off.”
The old lady shrug and point her chin back at the boys. “I got two strong boys. Used to have three, but one gone now. Down underneath. The rope come back.” She reach into a pack on her back and pull out a coil of rope made from vines, fibers, and locks of human hair. I look at her and realize for the first time her head be nearly shaved bald. Them boys, too. Nothing but blond and brown stubble, same color as the rope. She hold it up to me. “See? Three feet short. Cost me a house diver. But you . . . you got more braid than you need. Give it to me, and we help with your treasure.”
I hesitate. Don’t know why. Ain’t like I be uppity about my looks or nothing. I been bald before, I been all kinds of things. But I reach up and feel my braids tied on top my head, and my eyes start to sting. Lydia done this for me. From the first day, she took me in, cleaned me up, got the tangles out. My hair softer and shinier than it got a right to be ’cause of her. Uncle Rom say she treat me like a doll, always brushing and smoothing it down. I say she treat me better than that. She treat me like a person. Like a person she love. These braids all I got left of that.
Then I think of Daniel down there with whatever it be bit off the end of this woman’s rope. These braids gonna have to come out sometime. Might as well be now.
I sigh. “Follow me.”
The old lady nod and the boys come scampering around me like a pack of street dogs, bounding in front and behind, stepping in places I be too afraid to go. Like they got bubbles on they feet, for sure. When they see where I be heading, though, they slow down.
“You afraid?” I ask.
The boys look at each other, then at the old lady. I know they be missing friends what fell down these holes before, so I try to act casual. “Daniel?” I call into the hole.
I can see a pale light way down inside, but not much else.
“Fen?” he call back. He don’t sound so good. “Thank God,” he say.
“You find that rope?”
“No. For God’s sake, hurry.”
“I will.” I turn to the old woman and pull my knife out of my boot. “How much?”
She shrug and hold her hands out a length. I stretch out my braids and lop them off at the string holding them in a tail. The string come undone and little bits of black curls fall around my shoulders. My hair be sticking up all over the place. I still smell the palm oil Lydia use to keep the braids soft. I hand them to the woman. She grin without all her te
eth.
“Good. Good. Now.” She drop to the ground, cross-legged, like Daniel, only she don’t seem to mind the mud bubbling up around her. She be quick with them old fingers, undoing the braids and weaving them back around her rope ’til she got what she came for and then some. It don’t take long at all. I watch, trying hard not to touch my head and feel the missing hair. I blow a bit of broken stubble off Baby Girl’s face. She wave a fist at me. The woman hand me the rope and I tie it around my waist. The boys come up to the edge of the hole.
“There be monsters down there,” one of the boys say, and I see he just a little kid, younger than I thought.
“And the old dead,” the other boy say with a nod. “That be a hole to Hell.”
“True,” I tell them. “So we best get him out while we can.”
That make some kind of sense, so they hold on to the rope behind me and I call for Daniel to be ready to climb. I drop the rest of the rope down into the hole and the old lady watch us pull in the slack as Daniel haul himself up. Then the pale little light be rising, and finally Daniel come up out of that hole.
When I finally drag him over the edge, he fall to the ground, coughing through his suit filter.
“You okay?” I ask. I can’t say more with the scavengers listening, but I hope he brought up everything he went down with, including that damned black case.
“Where the treasure at?” the old lady ask. Daniel look up at me, confused.
“What it be to you now?” I ask her. “You been paid.”
The little boys back up, but the old lady look at me, suspicious. Daniel sit up. “There’s something down there,” he say.
It dark as pitch down there now, without Daniel’s glow stick.
The lady shake her head. “That’s what took my rope, and my other boy,” she say.
Then it move, whatever it be, a dry rasp below the earth. The boys scream, high and loud, “The Devil!” They run away. Baby Girl start to cry. The old lady give me the evil eye, but she don’t come any closer. She spit at me, then scurry away.
“What was that?” Daniel ask. I shake my head, bouncing Baby Girl to calm her down. She gonna need a bottle soon, and a new diaper, and I wonder how I be managing any of this, let alone the two of them at once.
“Nothing. You all in one piece?” He hesitate, then nod. I help him to his feet easy enough.
“Come on, then,” I say, soothing Baby Girl’s tears into hiccups and sighs. When she quiet down again, we pick our way out of Rooftops toward the lake where the Ursulines live.
31
ORLEANS AIN’T EXACTLY GOT A RELIABLE MAIL system these days. Best way to get a message to anybody be to cover your bases. Lydia call it the rule of three—send it three different ways, and if you lucky, one of them might get there. Looking up at the sun, I see the time be about right, so the Ursuline convent be my first stop. If I get a chance, I’ma leave a note for the old smuggler, McCallan. He got a couple drop points near here and might do a final round before leaving town.
Daniel be following me all quiet now, and he don’t say nothing when I pause to make another bottle for Baby Girl. She just sleep and eat and mess her diaper, nothing more. If I keep her from crying, we maybe do okay. But she a baby and the only cure for that be growing up, so I hold her bottle, burp her when she done, and keep on walking, trying not to think of Lydia every time I look at her face. Soon enough we make it to the edge of the Academy grounds. I take a look around, but we alone now, so we climb up top the concrete wall around what used to be the parking lot.
“What is this?” Daniel ask, looking around from the top of the wall. We be sitting a short three feet above a concrete pebble shore, broken pieces of asphalt and sidewalk still jagged ’cause there ain’t no waves to grind them smooth.
“Convent Lake,” I say, and point across the water. It big as two parking lots maybe, and still and calm, reflecting back the bright blue sky. Daniel follow my hand and see what I be pointing at—the Ursulines’ convent, half underwater, across this big old pond. “When Katrina came, they say it flooded parts of the buildings here.” I sweep my arm to show the whole campus, what used to be a girls’ school, with a chapel and everything. “That the last time it drained all the way. Next storm came and the pavement broke up some, but not enough to drain completely. Now it be like this all the time.”
“What’s that in the middle?” Daniel ask, squinting at the white shape halfway between the shore and the mossy walls of the nun’s home.
“That be Jesus Christ. This the parking lot, then there a courtyard under there somewhere. When the nuns saw the water weren’t gonna drain, they raised the statue. In the right light, it look like he walking on water.”
• • •
DANIEL KICKED HIS BOOTS AGAINST THE concrete wall, letting his heels rebound lightly until the blood moved into the tips of his toes.
INQUIRY: Why did the Ursuline nuns stay in Orleans?
RESPONSE: The Ursuline Sisters have devoted their lives to the education of young girls. The convent is the site of a holy relic believed to have turned back danger from the city time and again. They believe they are protected.
INQUIRY: Who protects the Ursulines?
RESPONSE: Data not available at this time.
The datalink was working again. That was something, at least. They had been on the wall for a quarter of an hour. He felt like vomiting. He had lied to Fen, back in Rooftops, about being in one piece. The vial case was back in his pocket, the seal broken, the light blinking red, but the vials of the DF virus were lost somewhere beneath Rooftops.
For the first time, Daniel was glad of his disguise, of the rags and hat, the thick mucus layer of the encounter suit. He couldn’t have hidden the guilt on his face otherwise. If the ABs hunting them had followed them here, Daniel didn’t notice and didn’t care. He just wanted to keep moving in the daylight and not think of what had happened underground. The vials remained unbroken; the scanners on his datalink would have alerted him otherwise. Daniel wasn’t a mass murderer, just a clumsy, unlucky fool. It was the best news he could hope for, given the circumstances.
He should tell her, he knew. But then what? He couldn’t go back underground again. The thought made him break into a sweat, his suit whirring to life to compensate. And if not go back, then what? Fen didn’t need him. She’d left the men and women of the Institute to die in that school back there, abandoned in their beds. She would leave him, too. He imagined her knife at his throat, the suit slit open, his blood running out as Delta Fever raced in to claim him.
No. Better to hold his tongue and keep pace. She would help him get to the Wall and never be the wiser.
“You being awful quiet,” Fen said, startling him. He jumped and had to force himself to steady his breathing.
“What are we waiting for?” he asked.
Fen shook her head and smiled at the bouncing baby in her arms. “For a miracle, Daniel. We just a bit early.”
Just then, bells rang out from the towers of the convent. “Angelus,” Fen explained. “Noontime prayers.”
Daniel looked around expecting the bells to draw people, but no one came. They rang eight times and the pond in front of them, the woods behind them, fell silent.
“’Round here, folks ignore the bells,” Fen said. “They be ringing all the time. Nuns be the only fools willing to draw attention to theyselves with that kind of noise.” Daniel might have imagined the hint of respect in her voice. “They think God’ll protect them.”
“Does he?” Daniel asked. It was a comforting thought. But Fen snorted, a short, harsh laugh.
“No way, man. This moat protect them; and they sheer numbers, sometimes that protect them. Ursulines take in girls from all over the Delta. They separate them in dorms to keep the Fever down. But that be all they got, that and the walls of that church. But not God. Some tribes ’round here ain’t against rape. Blood hunters, neither. A nun just as like to find herself in a brothel as a convent. If she make it out alive, she stuck raisin
g her rapist’s bastard. Where be God then?”
Daniel shook his head, his heart sinking. He had tried to save this unsalvageable place, and he had failed. He swung his feet in their short arc from knee to wall and back again. “I wonder how they keep their faith.”
Fen shrugged and jumped off the wall, one arm wrapped beneath the baby on her chest. “Who’s to say?”
And then she stepped out onto the water and walked away, barely disturbing the surface as she strode toward the open arms of the statue in the middle of the lake.
• • •
IT TAKE HIM A FULL HALF MINUTE TO PICK HIS jaw up again. That boy be so blind sometimes, I don’t know how he make it on his own. “Stay there,” I call back to him. “You too heavy to be following me.”
Beneath my feet, the hard top of a car shift enough to make me glad he be listening and stay on the wall. I clutch Baby Girl to me and catch my balance.
Noon be the time when the pond go down just enough to make the cars left behind come to the surface. Some days, when the sun ain’t so bright, you can see them under the lake. Today it just look like blue sky under my feet, except where my shadow fall. The nuns lined up sunken trucks and buses, all of a height, to make a path to the statue.
The cars come to a stop right in front of Jesus, and so do I. He be standing like he waiting for us. Baby Girl reach out her little hand to touch the statue’s marble one. She grab his finger while I take my note to the Coopers and tie it to his right wrist, the one facing the convent. If they see it, they paddle a boat out. The nuns be good about things like that—delivering notes, teaching little ones, and looking after the dead. No kind of life for me, but I appreciate they work just the same.
“This be another step, Baby Girl,” I say. “Tell ’em to set up the nursery in California. We gonna get you a nice new home.”
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