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“Yeah. ”
“Up, boy. ” He threw his cane over the side and hauled himself up after it, then began to crawl even higher with the aid of an improvised ladder. Zeke could see it, once he knew where to look: It was made of boards and bars bolted directly into the stone.
But it wasn’t so easy for him to get up to that point. He was shorter than Rudy and not as strong; and he was gagging from lack of air and the stink of rubber mixed with leather in every breath he drew.
Rudy reached back and grabbed Zeke’s arm, yanking him bodily up onto the ledge and then pivoting the boy to aim him at the ladder built into the wall. “How fast can you climb?” he asked.
Zeke’s only answer was to scale the wall like a lizard. Once he knew where the handholds were, he trusted them to hold because there was no time to test them one by one. He wedged his feet against the boards and wormed his hands around the bars and climbed. Rudy came up behind him, moving slower. Though he acted comfortable enough in a straight stretch, rising was hard on his hip, and he groused and grunted with every step.
“Wait,” he wheezed, but Zeke didn’t see the point. He saw a window with a small balcony—and it looked promising.
“Is this where we get off?”
“What?” Rudy cocked his head up and his hat tipped back, nearly falling away.
“This window. Is this—”
“Yeah, that’s it. Go on, I’m right behind you. ”
A bar like the handle on an oven crossed the window and looked like a logical place to grab. Zeke seized it and yanked; it squeaked and budged, but not enough. He yanked it again and the window popped outward from its frame—almost casting Zeke off balance, and off the balcony.
“Careful, junior,” Rudy admonished. His hands reached the balcony, and he rested while Zeke navigated the window.
Below them the streets had gone darker—not with shadows, but with pressing, groaning bodies that clotted together like a thickening soup. When Zeke looked down he could not distinguish the rotters individually, but he could discern a hand here, and a head there. The dirty air blanketed them and blurred them.
“Ignore them,” Rudy said. “Get inside so we can get these damn masks off. I can’t stand this thing another minute. ”
Zeke couldn’t have agreed more if he’d tried. He lifted one leg and dropped it down on the other side, into the interior of the white-walled building. The other leg followed, and he was inside.
Rudy fell in behind him, folding up and rolling to a rollicking halt. He stayed flat on his back for a moment, breathing harder than the mask would let him. “Shut the damn window, boy. You’re letting the Blight inside. ”
“Oh, sure. ” Zeke wrestled the window back into position. It was harder from the far side, where waxed flaps of stiffened fabric lined the edges to form a seal. But he closed it, and it sucked itself back into place. “Can I take the mask off now?”
“No, not now. Not on this floor, not unless you want to get good and sick, good and fast. Let’s go downstairs. You can take off your mask down there, and we can find our way back to the tunnels, no problem. ”
“Back to the tunnels? And back up the hill?” Zeke asked, knowing that he was asking Rudy to lie and not really caring. He only wanted to remind him of the promise, even if his guide had no intention of keeping it.
“To the hill, sure. We can get there from here. But not by going up any farther. This damn tower is too far away from anything, so there aren’t any bridges or walkways connecting it to any other building. And even if there were, we’d have to keep wearing these things. ”
Zeke tugged at the seals on his mask, and scratched at the raw skin he found there. “I do want to take this off. ”
“Then let’s go downstairs. If I can find the damn stairs,” Rudy said, sitting up and rubbing at his own mask’s edges.
“If you can find them?”
“It’s been a while since I’ve been in here, that’s all. ” He drew up his cane and used it to lever himself upright. He teetered back and forth. He steadied.
The boy gazed around the room, with its unboarded windows and air that was somewhat clearer than the stuff outside. Scattered around the room were ghostly shapes that turned out to be furniture covered with drapery. Zeke poked at one and felt the arm of a chair underneath, and then he inferred the shape of a couch and a table. When he looked up, he saw the skeleton of a chandelier—a piece that surely was beautiful once, but now was missing its crystals. “Where are we?” he asked.
“We’re in…” Rudy swung around and surveyed the premises. “Somebody’s room? Or it used to be, maybe. I don’t know. We’re in the Smith Tower, at any rate. ”
“Why’s it called that?”
“Because it was built by a guy named Smith,” he answered dryly. “You know what a typewriter is?”
“Yeah,” Zeke responded. “Maybe. ”
“All right. You ever hear of Smith Corona?”
