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“Like what? Like help him? Boy, he’s so far beyond help that even if I wanted to, there’s nothing to be done for him. Hell. The kindest thing we could do is shoot him in the head. ”
“Angeline!”
“Don’t look at me like that. If he were a dog, you wouldn’t let him suffer. Thing is, he ain’t a dog, and I don’t mind him suffering. You know what’s in that bottle? The one he’s holding there, like it’s his own baby?”
“What is it?” He reached for it and dislodged it from Rudy’s slipping grasp.
The liquid inside the scratched glass bottle was runny and not quite clear. It had a yellowish-green tint to it, and it smelled a little bit like the sour odor of Blight, and a little bit like salt, and maybe kerosene.
“Jesus only knows. This is a chemist’s lab, where they tinker with the nasty stuff and try to make it drinkable, or smokable, or sniffa-ble. The Blight’s a bad, bad thing, and it’s hard to turn it into something people can stand. Rudy here, this old deserter, he’s been stuck on it for years. I tried to tell you, back at the underground tunnel. I tried to get it through your head that he was only taking you back here because he thought Minnericht might reward him for it. This miserable poison was bound to kill him one day, and I think today will be that day. ” She frowned at the bottle, and frowned at the man on the floor.
“We should help him,” Zeke said, protesting the man’s death as a matter of formality.
“You want to shoot him after all?”
“No!”
“Me either. I don’t think he deserves it. He deserves to feel the pain, and die from it. He’s done some mighty nasty things in his time to get that stinking drink, or paste, or powder. Leave him alone. Cover him up if you think that’s polite. He’s not coming back from this one. ”
She stood up, tapped the top of the table, and said, “I bet he didn’t even know what that stuff was. He probably just wandered in here, looking to get all sloppy from his drug of choice, and started sucking down the first thing he found. ”
“Is that what you think?”
“Yeah, that’s what I think. Alistair never had a drop of brains to spare, and what little he started out with got burned away by the sap. ”
Zeke stood up too, and he pulled the burlap cloth over the spot where the vibrations from Rudy’s head were tapping a gruesome hum against the floorboards. He couldn’t stand looking. He asked Angeline, “What are you doing here?” partly because he wanted to know, and partly because he felt the need to talk about something else.
“I told you I was going to kill him, didn’t I?”
“I didn’t think you were serious!”
She asked, with what appeared to be honest confusion, “Why not? He’s not the first man I’d like to kill down here, but I was willing to work him onto the list. ”
Before Angeline could speak again, Zeke noticed that the crashing upstairs was gradually fading to a sporadic, angry rumble. He no longer heard the thrashing against the door back down the hall, not even faintly. He said in a gasp, “The stairs. There was a man on the stairs. ”
“Jeremiah, yes. That’s right. Big fellow, wide as a brick wall. Wearing a bunch of gear. ”
“That’s him. Is he… all right?” Zeke asked.
The princess understood what he meant. “He’s got his faults, like all men, but he’s here to help. ”
“Help who? Help me? Help you?” Zeke recoiled and jerked his head out the doorway, looking left and right. “Where’d he go?”
Angeline joined him at the doorway, then stepped past him into the hall. “I think he’s here to help your mother,” she said. “She’s down here in the station someplace. Jeremiah!” she called out.
“Don’t yell!” Zeke tried to hush her. “And he’s here for my mom? I thought nobody knew where she was!”
“Why’d you think that? Is that what Minnericht told you? Don’t you remember what I told you, you dumb boy? I told you he’s a lying snake. Your mother’s been down here a day or two, and Jeremiah’s here now because he’s afraid the doctor’s done her some kind of mischief. Jeremiah!” she hollered again.
Zeke took Angeline’s arm and shook her. “She’s here? All this time she’s been down here?”
“She’s here somewhere. She was supposed to be back at the Vaults by morning, but she didn’t come back, so now the Doornails have all come spilling into the station, looking for her. I don’t think they mean to leave without her, either. ” And once more she shouted, “Jeremiah!”
Zeke told her, “Don’t! Stop shouting like that! You’ve got to quit shouting!”
“How else am I going to find him? It’s all right. There ain’t nobody else down here anyhow, at least not that I could find. ”
“Yaozu was here, a few minutes ago,” Zeke argued. “I saw him. ”
