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“Congratulations. You were right,” Zeke said.
There was only one unopened door left. He started toward it, but Jeremiah stopped him. “It’s a storage closet. He wouldn’t be keeping her there. My guess is, he took her down one more level, where his living quarters are” he said.
“These aren’t the living quarters?”
“No. These are the guest quarters. ”
“You’ve been here before?”
“Yeah, I’ve been here before. Where do you think I got this gear? Get on the lift. ”
“You know how to work it?”
Jeremiah didn’t respond except to stomp up to the platform and jerk the gate aside. He held it open for Zeke, who had to run to keep up; the lift was dropping before the boy could land both feet inside it.
While the lift shook and descended, Zeke asked, “What’s going on? No one will tell me what’s going on. ”
“What’s going on”—Jeremiah reached up to tug on a lever that must’ve been a brake—“is that we’ve had it up to here with that goddamned deranged doctor. ”
“But why? Why now?”
Jeremiah shook his head crankily. “Now’s as good a time as any, ain’t it? We’ve let him treat us like dogs for years, and we’ve taken it, and taken it, and taken it. But now he’s taken Maynard’s girl, and there’s not a Doornail or scrapper down here who’ll stand for that kind of horseshit. ”
Zeke felt a surge of real relief, and real gratitude, on top of it. “You really are here to help my mom?”
“She was only down here trying to find you. He could’ve left her out of it, and left you both alone. Obviously,” he said, leaning his weight on the lever and drawing the lift to a stop, “he didn’t. Neither of you ought to be here, but you are. And that’s not right. ”
He shoved the gate aside with such force that it broke and dangled.
Zeke kicked his way past it and into yet another hallway lined with carpets, lights, and doors. He could smell a fire burning somewhere. There was a warm and homey scent around its edges, like the burning of hickory logs in a fireplace.
“Where are we? What is this? Mother? Mother, are you down here? Can you hear me?”
Upstairs, something awful happened in one crashing, crushing blast that made Zeke think of the tower when it’d been smashed by the Clementine. He felt that same shuddering immediacy, and being down underneath the world only made the fear worse. The ceiling cracked above him, and the dust of crawlspaces and riggings rained down.
“What was that?” Zeke demanded.
“How the hell would I know?”
A growling roar hummed upstairs in the wake of the explosion, and even Zeke—who had been thinking it’d be a shame if he left the city without ever seeing a rotter—could guess what the sound was.
“Rotters. ” Jeremiah said. “A lot of them. I thought the downstairs was better reinforced than this. I thought that was the point of all these levels. I guess Minnericht doesn’t know everything after all, eh? I’d better get upstairs and hold them. ”
“You’re going to hold them off? By yourself?”
“Some of Minnericht’s boys might join in; they don’t want to wind up rotter shit any more than I do, and most of ’em are only here because they’re paid to be. By the way, if you hear a big boom in a few minutes, don’t get too worked up about it. ”
“What does that mean?” Zeke demanded.
Jeremiah was already back on the lift, thumbing through the levers in search of the right one. He said, “Stay here and look for your mother. She might need help. ”
Zeke ran to the edge of the lift and asked, “And then what do I do? Where do we go, when I find her?”
“Up,” the armored man said. “And out—however you can. Things are going to get worse down here before they get better. The rotters moved faster than our boys thought they would. Go back to the Vaults, maybe—or go to the tower and wait for the next ship. ”
And then the lift jerked, and lurched, and carried Jeremiah up into the ceiling until even the tips of his toes were gone. Zeke was alone again.
But there were more doors to open, and his mother was missing, so at least he had something to take his mind off the commotion upstairs. The door at the end of the room was open, and since that door represented the path of least resistance—or fastest access—the boy barreled towards it and shoved it inward.
