The Inexplicables (Clockwork Century) (39 page)

Then they loaded themselves back up like pack mules and struck out for the city.

Each boy allowed himself one candle stub, carried in a hurricane glass. It barely did anything except tint the darkness yellow, but it was comfort enough to keep them moving forward. Someone standing half a dozen yards away couldn’t have seen them, so little light did the candles offer—and that was the idea, but it made for slow going.

The blocks were darker than dark, blacker than night’s usual fall, because it fell on Seattle, where the air was thickly curdled and surrounded by the wall and its omnipresent shadow, resisting any interference from the moon and candles alike.

Upon reaching an unmarked corner, Rector asked, “Are we going the right way?”

Zeke checked the compass Houjin had given him. “Yep.”

“I never thought I’d say this, but I kind of wish Huey was here.”

“We’d be better off with Angeline. Not saying he’s useless or anything, ’cause he sure as hell ain’t. But this has never been his part of town. She knows her way around better.”

“I wonder where she went.”

“So do I,” Zeke admitted. “Heck, she might be waiting for us. Or listening. You never know, with her. That woman’s got ears all over the place, and it’s a good thing, too.”

“Sure is.”

“We should probably be quiet.”

“Probably,” Rector agreed.

And they
were
quiet, for about thirty seconds. Then Rector said, “But it’s god-awful dark. And so quiet that I can’t hear a damn thing. Does that make sense?”

“No, but I know what you mean. Hey—what’s…?”

Zeke stopped abruptly, and Rector stopped in time to keep from running into him. “What is it?”

“It’s the wall.”

“It’s
the
wall, or it’s
a
wall?”

“Can’t tell.” Zeke patted at the stones, running his candlelight up and down it. “I think it’s
the
wall.”

“Did we really come that far? I thought we were supposed to turn up toward the park before we hit it.”

“We were. But we didn’t.”

“You’re shit for a navigator, Zeke.”

“That’s what the captain says. And Kirby Troost. And Fang.”

“I thought Fang don’t talk.”

“He writes things down just fine, and he signs with his hands. I don’t read it too good yet, but I’m learning. Anyway, I’m pretty sure this is the wall. We overshot our turnoff.”

“I think maybe you could be forgiven. It’s goddamn dark out here.”

“We should
really
be quiet.”

“I know, I know.” Rector swallowed hard, and dragged his hand along the wall. “I just wish we were using lanterns. Or we could break out these stupid spotlights. They’re heavy, I swear to God.”

“If we had lanterns, we’d be real easy targets.”

“I know,” he said again. “But how far off course do you think we went?”

“Can’t be that far.” Zeke stepped around him and put his free hand on the wall. “The wall runs in one big circle, so it’s not like we’ll get lost
now.
If we follow it north and east, we’ll run right into the park.”

“That’s not the world’s most comforting thought in the world.”

“At least we’ll know where we are.”

What Zeke didn’t say, and Rector didn’t bring up, was that they had no idea where along the wall they were—and they had only a few hours worth of filters in their bags. If they didn’t find the breach, or the tower, or some other landmark soon, they’d be in trouble.

Both boys knew it, and they thought about it.

It was the only thing that kept them quiet for the next fifteen minutes.

Fifteen minutes was long enough. It gave them time to determine that yes, this was
the
wall, and not
a
wall belonging to some oversized building; and it gave them time to get within earshot of the great breach, the broken place where poisonous air oozed out into the Washington Territory. Out near the breach the Blight thinned, becoming less dense from the leak that spooled out into the woods like sludge running down a drain. Their candlelight went farther. The boys took pains to cover the glass with their gloved hands, and then Zeke blew out his own light entirely.

At the breach, there were people talking, but it was too quiet, too distant yet, to recognize any of the voices. “Take the tail of my jacket,” Rector whispered. “Crouch down low behind me. We don’t want to get separated.”

“Are they from the tower?”

“Don’t know.”

They drew up closer, knowing that their allies ought to be approaching the big, ugly break in the wall as well—but not knowing if they’d arrived ahead of them, or if these were other men coming inside from the Outskirts to reinforce the impending fray.

But then Rector saw lanterns, and heard a loud
clang
that shook the whole block. He and Zeke stopped moving, stuck right where they were with one foot up and half a breath drawn in. Then they heard, “Be careful with that!” They knew the voice.

“It’s Huey!” Zeke said with relief.

Huey went on to inform some unseen person, “And keep it away from the gas lamps. Keep it away from
all
the lamps, until I say so. We’ll need to pour it in a few minutes. Mr. Harper, do you have those pipes set up? Those hydraulics?”

“Almost,” Mr. Harper grumbled back.

Rector stood up straight and said, in an almost normal speaking voice, “Hey, Huey, and whoever else you got over there…”

The sounds of guns snapping to attention stopped him short.

He threw his hands into the air.

“I was just going to say,” he continued, “that it’s only me and Zeke. Don’t anybody shoot us!”

“Hey guys!” Houjin said cheerfully. Rector still couldn’t see him through the gathered murk, but when the boy’s shape emerged from the blackened fog, he recognized the gait and the general shape. “Everybody put down your guns.”

Someone—Mr. Harper, Rector assumed—groused something about being ordered around by a schoolyard full of boys, but none of the boys in question gave a damn.

“How much longer before it starts?” Zeke asked.

Houjin looked anxiously up at the wall, and out through the darkness toward the tower. “Not sure, but not long. You two had better get in position.”

Rector said, “We’re headed there now. Got sidetracked.”

“Sidetracked?”

“Lost,” Zeke clarified. “It’s dark.”

“Do you know where you’re supposed to go?”

Zeke nodded. “Roof of the old governor’s mansion. Climb up the back side, where the wall’s done fallen away, and up top we’ll find extra gas for the lights.”

“Yaozu made you memorize that, huh?”

“More or less.”

“All right, then go on,” he told them almost reluctantly. “I’ve got work to do here. Be careful.”

Rector slapped him on the shoulder. “You, too, Huey. Now, you want to point us toward this governor’s mansion?”

“Straight up the hill, count four blocks, and it’s the big white house on the right. Can’t miss it.”

“I could miss a city full of houses at this time of night,” Zeke said ruefully. “But I can count four blocks.”

Before they left, a Chinese messenger came running up to Houjin. He had a lantern in his hand, and sweat had dampened his shirt. His mask’s visor was filled with condensation, and his eyes were wide. He rattled off something fast that Rector didn’t understand, but Houjin made a snappy reply and then translated the highlights.

“The Station men are setting up the pump boxes now. Rector, Zeke—you’d better run!”

Faster than they should have, Rector and Zeke tripped and stumbled through the shadowed city, using only Rector’s candles and their wits to maneuver around dead and fallen trees, over uneven paving stones, up and down curbs, and past the first block …

Second block …

Third block.

By the third block they had to blow out Rector’s candles, too; they were too close to the tower, and they knew it. They could hear the men out there, and once they were closer to block four, they could see the glow of still fires and gas jets illuminating the top floor where the men had been working.

Rector smacked into a barrier, let out a surprised grunt, and flipped forward before Zeke could let go of his jacket. The smaller boy fell forward, too—over a low ironwork fence that snagged his pants. They tore with a ripping sound that seemed ungodly loud. But when they held their breaths and listened, no one asked where it’d come from, and the noise of workers in the tower did not change its timbre or tempo.

“A fence!” Zeke whispered.

“Yeah, I know! Get offa me!”

“Sorry.”

The fence was barely hip-height and made of cast iron; it had collapsed beneath them immediately following its assault on Zeke’s pants. It was hard and sharp and covered in rust, but it didn’t pose any real barrier to the yard, or the enormous house within it.

The boys collected themselves and stood on the lawn. A big lawn. Once, it was no doubt lush and green and landscaped. Now it was a flat expanse of nothing, leading up to a huge white blob that turned out to be not a house, but merely a porch. The porch had columns bigger than many of the houses Rector had ever seen.

“This
has
to be it,” he said.

Zeke nodded, which Rector only barely saw. “Come on. Around back, they said.”

But Rector heard something coming up fast, headed right at them. He grabbed for Zeke, missed him, and instead gave him a hard shove that sent him facedown into the brittle, gruesome grass. Zeke began to protest, but Rector threw a hand over his mouth—crushing the boy’s mask against his face.

“Shh!” he commanded.

Zeke came to the immediate and well-advised decision to not fight, but to lie there as still as possible. It worked out well. Not three seconds after he’d hit the dirt, a man came dashing up past them—right past the mangled fence. The man was carrying a lantern that swayed and jerked in his hands as he ran, casting dramatic spears of light up into the fog and through the skeletal tree limbs that overshadowed everything near the park.

“Caplan! Westie!” he cried out.

Rector cringed, fearing for a moment that they’d been spotted after all … but no.

“Something’s wrong!” he shouted toward the tower. Then he added, “It’s me, don’t nobody shoot!” which was absolutely the wisest way to approach anybody in Seattle, these days. “Something’s wrong downtown!”

From the top of the tower, somebody hollered back. “What’s going on? I don’t see no fire! I didn’t hear no dynamite!”

“No sir, the Station’s still standing!”

“What do you mean it’s…?” Swearing followed, and the sound of someone descending the brittle metal stairs.

“It’s starting,” Zeke said in a muffled grunt.

Rector pulled his hand away from Zeke’s mask. “It started already. We gotta go.”

They picked themselves up and took half a dozen seconds to relight their candles. Then they ran, guarding the little flames with their palms. Behind them came the rising noise and clatter of men whose plans had been thwarted.

As promised, the back of the house had fallen down altogether, exposing three stories and a convenient set of stairs that started just above ground level. The boys pulled themselves quickly along the stairs and scrambled up, up, and up that third staircase, then up another set to the wide, flat roof.

From there, the city looked strange; it looked blanketed rather than poisoned. They could even make out the moon above, and its cool, shimmering light gave them just a hint of where everything around them was located. Still, Rector kept his eyes on his candle. He moved carefully, and reached a hand back to grab Zeke’s shirt. “Stay close to me now. This roof is straight, but it might not be sound.”

“Might not? More like probably
ain’t.
The back wall didn’t hold up, did it? That doesn’t bode well for the roof.”

“Hang close. I don’t want to pull you out of a hole.”

“Like Huey pulled you—”

“Can it.”

“Sorry. You’re right. I don’t want to fall in a hole.”

Rector found the roof’s edge with his eyes only inches before his feet would’ve found it the hard way. “Stop!” he said—a little too loud, but Zeke obeyed. “Here. The edge is right here. Let’s put our stuff down and set up before things get crazy.”

With relief and exhaustion, they dropped the heavy packs that contained the big gaslights and all their accoutrements. Only once had they been shown how the lights were assembled, but it wasn’t as complicated as it sounded. While they worked by one small bubble of candlelight, they eavesdropped on the tower from behind a row of long-dead shrubs.

“All of them? At once?”

Rector said, “That’s Otis, I think.”

“It must be something with the gas, or something. Messing with the wires.”

Zeke asked, “Who’s that?” and Rector answered, “I don’t know.”

“That’s one goddamn hell of a coincidence!”

The clattering of descending footsteps echoed like the banging of gongs, and Otis Caplan’s lantern lit up the small windows as he passed each one. When he reached the bottom floor he kicked the gate open and stomped out into the yard, shouting for various lieutenants and henchmen. Some followed him down the tower, down the stairs—and some charged up from Millionaire’s Row, coming up the wide streets with their lanterns held high and a great deal of complaining.

“What are you all doing back here?” he demanded.

“Sabotage!”

“What?”

“Someone sabotaged our sabotage! All of it! There’s fighting down at the Station right now—they opened fire on us! They came right for us!”

“They were waiting for us! They knew we was coming!”

Zeke whispered to Rector, “You all ready to go?”

“Yep. How about you?”

“All I gotta do is flip the switch.”

“Me, too.” Then Rector asked, “How do we know when to turn ’em on?”

“Huey said we’d know.”

Down in the open space, at the circle in front of the tower where all the streets met, Otis Caplan was furious. His light swung back and forth in his hand, as though he’d love for someone to come close enough to beat with it. He stalked toward the men, some of whom were bleeding and ragged, and a few of whom were wheezing like maybe their masks weren’t working quite right.