Dust City (14 page)

Midway up, a slat opens, revealing an eyeball, which peers up at us in silence.

“Deadwood,” says the cat.

The slat closes and the wall slides smoothly open of its own accord. The corridor flips from silence to the thunder of machinery. The cat turns to me, raising his voice over the din. “That’s the password, got it?”

“Deadwood?” I ask him. “Like the tree?”

“Pretty much works everywhere around here.” He leads the way inside, spreading his arms as he pads ahead. “Welcome,” he says, “to the refinery.”

It’s a
huge
space, many times the size of the derelict warehouse where we raced—and this is certainly not derelict. This one smacks with goblins, cats, dwarves, ravens, nixies, foxes, wolves. Lots of wolves.

They all go about their business, shoveling dust into crates, sieving it into barrels, scooping it off the crisscross of conveyor belts that weave over the floor in every direction.
The conveyors.
They’re just as Dad described them. Every one originates from the same place—from behind a single wall that runs the full length of the refinery, all the way down to where it all disappears in gloom.

“What are you looking at?” The cat beckons and the globs push me forward. “You don’t have to worry about how any of this works.” He sweeps his arm around the refinery. “All you gotta worry about’s in here.” He pushes through a glass door. I follow him in, but the globs stay put, guarding the entrance.

Inside is an office cluttered with measuring scales, arcane hand-tools, smashed crates, and rusty file cabinets. The mess is built up in hills and gorges of scrap. Awkwardly, the cat wades through it. When his tuxedo snags on a broken barrel, he makes his very first display of emotion. “Hans!” he screams. “How many times do I have to tell you?! You have
got
to do something about all this crap!”

Buried behind the chaotic desk is a hedgehog, but not the meek creature I imagine when I think of that particular species. This guy’s massive for his kind. The contours of his
arm muscles bulge through a pinstripe shirt. His quills are manicured into glistening blades. If it were ever possible for a hedgehog to appear threatening, this Hans has succeeded in spades.

“Think of it as conceptual art,” he says. “This mess is my life’s work.” Hans scribbles something into a ledger and whips to the following page. “What are you doing in my office, anyway? You need something?” He still hasn’t noticed me.

The cat steps forward, casting a shadow over the desk. “This is the newbie. Matt had him sleeping in a closet.”

Hans nods but doesn’t look up from his ledger. “That old trick.”

“It’s why I’m late.” He swallows. “Skinner waiting?”

“Next door.”

“I’ll check. Lemme leave him here a second.”

Finally, Hans looks up and sees me. “Who’s this guy?”

“I told you. The newbie.”

Hans squints up at me. “Don’t touch anything.”

“Okay,” I tell him.

The cat stalks out and I’m left alone with Hans. He keeps scribbling. A thick claw on his other hand scrapes down a column of figures on a separate page.

“Um, Hans?”

He doesn’t look up. “Hmm?”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Hmm?”

“What’s behind that wall out there?”

His claw stops running down the figures. He lifts it up and taps it, once, against the page. Then he looks up at me. His eyes have narrowed to a pair of coin slots. “Why do you wanna know?”

“Just curious.”

Hans takes a breath and blows it out. “You’re a newbie, so let me give you some free advice.” His quills tense up and quiver all over his body. “That is not the sort of thing to be curious about. You got me?”

“I think so.”

“But now
I’m
curious,” he says. “Why the interest?”

“Just something I heard.”

“From who?”

“My dad.”

Hans squints at me. “Did I hear that right?”

“George Whelp. Maybe you knew him.”

Hans nods. He turns back to his ledger. He keeps writing and clawing his way down the figures. “Prison life can give folks some pretty odd ideas.”

Before I can ponder what the hedgehog means, the door cracks open.

“Let’s go,” says the cat. “Skinner’s waiting.”

22

HANDS

SKINNER IS PERCHED UP ON ANOTHER ONE OF HIS THRONES, A SMALLER ONE
. Another grotesque clutter of alchemized junk.

“Now that we’re all here,” he says, “it’s time to pair you off.”

Then I see that standing along the wall, camouflaged by the room’s soot stains, are the other wolves. They’re all dark-hairs. Five of them. And my stomach flips. They’re the same ones who tried to toss me off the roof last night: Tom, Squitch, and three friends.

The cat takes out a clipboard, forepaw hovering over it with a pen. “Whenever you’re ready, sir.”

Skinner pulls the stalk of straw out of his mouth. “You,” he says, using it to point at the wolf who nearly broke my arm. “And you.” He points to the wolf beside him.

The cat notes the selection on his clipboard.

Skinner narrows his eyes and looks down the line. “You,” he says, swinging the gnawed straw to me. “And . . .”

The other three—Tom, Squitch, and the third—take a pointed step backward.

“I see,” says Skinner. “Who shall I choose I wonder?” He points immediately to Tom.
“You.”

Tom shows his teeth, a pearl-white strip of them against his dark face.

Skinner frowns. “Do you have a problem, young Tom?”

Tom manages to pull his lips together, hiding his grimace. “No, sir.”

“Good.” Skinner points to Squitch and the last wolf. “That leaves you two.”

The cat marks it down. Then he says: “All right, boys. Time for your first run.”

Hans, the hedgehog, loads us up. Each pair of us is given a pack. Hans gives ours to Tom, but the moment he feels its weight, Tom thrusts it at me. “Here,” he says. “You better carry it.”

Hans opens a drawer in one of his rusted cabinets. He takes out a series of maps. On each one is an intricate diagram of the City. Only a few landmarks—the reservoir, the cemetery, a couple of the prisons, the skyway to Eden—are labeled with actual words. I recognize Hans’s handwriting from when I watched him tally up the figures in his meticulous ledger. Clearly, he’s responsible for designing these maps as well.

Hans spreads one of them delicately over his desktop. It’s like an artifact in a museum, and that’s precisely how Hans treats it.

“Watch carefully,” he says.

The map is comprised of two pages. There’s the map itself and, at the top, a delicate, tightly rolled overlay of something thin and translucent, like tracing paper. Hans unfurls it, revealing a squirrelly network of lines, crisscrossing all over the city.

“These are the tunnels,” he says. “They’ll take you boys where you need to go—
without
folks getting suspicious about wolves barreling through the streets.” He taps Dockside gently with his claw. “We’re here, see? Come up as close to the address as you can. Drop the package at the door and get back underground. Simple, right? Don’t talk to folks, don’t accept money from them. That’s all been taken care of. You’re
runners
. That’s it. Get back here quick, and we’ll have another drop ready to go. Got it?”

We nod.

“Now,” he says. “You see some of these tunnels marked in red? Never use’em. They’re off-limits. You got it?”

We nod.

“They don’t go anywhere anyway. They’re all dead ends. Now, Matt here’ll show you how to get in.”

We turn around and see Matt, propped up against the door frame. He’s wearing the same housecoat that he wore yesterday.

“Follow me,” he says.

He takes us back into the refinery, past the conveyors, to a corner near the password-protected entrance. There’s nothing here but a defunct furnace. Matt tips it sideways
with almost no effort at all. It’s just a fake, a shell of the real thing.

Behind it is a hatchway, which Matt yanks open. A stench of staleness wafts out, and we all flinch. There’s nothing down there but darkness and the first thin rungs of a wrought-iron ladder. Squitch and the others go first. Then it’s Tom and me.

But Matt stops us. “I know you two hate each other, but when you’re down there—” He pauses to cough into his sleeve. “When you’re down there, be careful. Look out for one another.”

“Whatever,” says Tom. He pushes past us, but Matt grabs him.

“I mean it,” he says. “All kinds of things can kill you down there. All
kinds
of things.”

In spite of himself, Tom nods. “Ok, Pop.” He claps me on the shoulder, a little too hard. “We’re a team.”

Then down we go.

The chamber’s damp and nearly pitch-black. Even with wolfish acuity, it’s a long time before our eyes adjust enough to be of use. The tunnel smells like the scent that clogs your snout just before you get sick.

Tom’s galloping ahead. He hasn’t said a word since we left. With a hefty sack of nixiedust on my back, it’s a struggle to keep up. The only thing Tom’s carrying is the map. Now and again, he pauses to consult it with one of the small flashlights we were given. Then he rushes on.

Most of the tunnels are extremely narrow. The walls bulge with outcrops of stone, thrusting out at random. They pepper our faces with chalky whiteness and moisten our clothes with drips of condensation.

On occasion, we jog along the bottoms of chasms, the walls rising up on either side. Other times we’re high on a ledge with a claustrophobic ceiling above us and nothing but a thread of rotted rope to keep us from tumbling into the old sewage below. The wastewater here is so stale and ancient it hardly gives off a scent.

We stop to catch our breath.

“Almost there,” Tom tells me, speaking at last.

“Who do you think built all this?”

Tom shrugs. I can’t see much more than the outline of his body. “The nixies did, when they first arrived. Came up through the reservoir.”

“Can I see the map?”

Tom shakes his head. “No time,” he says. “We’re almost there.”

Eventually, we ascend again to the surface. When we come up behind a derelict building, the smog-filled air is like a lungful of countryside. We follow a few side streets to a block of terraced homes.

“It’s number thirty-one,” says Tom. “Right up here.”

“Why’s the door open?”

“Who cares?” He looks up and down the street. It’s deserted. “Drop off the package and let’s go.”

I pad up the crumbling steps.

Tom whispers nervously after me. “Hurry up!”

I can see all the way down the corridor. Who would leave their door open like this? Especially around here. As if to answer my question, a woman appears at the far end, deep inside the house. She’s in a dress with long white sleeves that flap like wings. She walks toward me with a slow, methodical gait.

“Come in,” she says.

I turn to Tom. He’s shaking his head wildly.

“I can’t,” I tell her. “I, uh—have another delivery.”

“Please,” she says. “I need your help.”

She asks me with such plaintiveness that I can’t resist. The corridor looks worse on the inside. All along the ceiling, wallpaper strips away like dead skin. I hear Tom come pounding up the steps. “Henry! Let’s go!”

“This woman says she needs our help.”

“No kidding.” He takes one step inside. “What do you think the package is for?”

The woman reaches the end of the corridor and turns to face us both. Her voice is wisp-thin, but she manages to project it down to Tom. “It’s what I need your help with,” she says. She looks at me and raises her arms. Her billowy sleeves fall away to reveal her—
nothing
. Not hands. She doesn’t have any. There’s only a pair of shining stumps.

“Please,” she says. “It’s better if you do it.”

She steps to the left and vanishes into a room. I look back at Tom. He doesn’t say anything. His eyes are wide.

“C’mon,” I say to him. “I’m sure it’ll only take a second.”

23

ADDICTED TO BEING WHOLE

THE WOMAN LEANS AGAINST THE STOVE. HER FACE IS AS PALE AS DETECTIVE
White’s, but she’s got none of White’s vigor. Her arms are folded tightly, stumps wedged up into her armpits. I place the package on the table.

“Open it,” she says.

Tom thumps all the way down the corridor and peeks his snout into the kitchen. “We’re not supposed to be here,” he growls. His face isn’t as shocked as it was a moment ago. Now he just looks sour.

I use a claw to cleave away the tape. “I’ve never done this before,” I tell the woman.

“Well,
I
have,” sneers Tom. “Better let me do it.”

The woman points at me with her narrow chin. “I want him to.”

Tom throws up his arms. He stands near the doorway and glares at me. “If we’re late getting back, it’s
your
fault.”

I turn my back to him and face the woman. “What should I do?”

“Put some in your hand.”

I pick up the package and pour a little molehill into my palm, just like Mrs. L would do.

“More.”

I tip the paper until dust fills the whole of my palm. The woman says nothing until a few flecks overflow onto the table.

“Okay, that’s enough.” She comes and stands near me. From here I can see the lines on her face. She’s got a lot of them. She’s older than I thought.

“Go ahead,” she says, staring a the black pad of my upturned paw. “All you have to do is blow a single breath. The dust knows what to do. It always does.”

I bring my paw up to my mouth. The instant I exhale, the dust fans out to cocoon the woman’s head. She hardly moves. Her body goes rigid as the magic roils and hisses into the slackness of her mouth.

She backs toward the window, haloed in the bright sun. Eyes shut, she leans against the glass and lets her head fall back. She raises her arms, elbows pressed together. She’s so pale I can actually see the dust swirling beneath her skin, coursing up toward her wrists. The stumps ignite with strange blue flames—licking, fluttering, silent—and shaping themselves into hands, knitting together into perfect palms and perfect fingers.

She opens her eyes and smiles at me. “Thank you,” she says, her face sweating. It appeared to be painful to regrow a
set of hands, but I can hardly blame her for dabbling in street magic. Anyone can see she’s addicted to being whole.