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“Follow me. Don’t take your eyes off the fog. ”
“Couldn’t if I tried. ”
“You know what I mean. ”
If the footsteps, scrapes, and ragged breaths from deep within the fog could be believed, the sasquatch trailed them. Not closely, but without much space between them, either. “How much farther to the jail?” Rector asked.
“Not so far, Red. Keep your calm. The sasquatch don’t want to hurt you. ”
“Then why’d he try in the first place?”
“Don’t know. Maybe he didn’t. ”
There she went, harping on that again. Well, she wasn’t there when it happened. Rector was there, and he knew when something or somebody wanted to tear off his head and play catch with it. Frankly, the sasquatch hadn’t been the first to consider it.
Inch by inch, foot by foot, they clustered and sidled and ambled along, no one breaking from the group. When it seemed as though the sasquatch might be falling behind, or losing interest in armed prey that outnumbered him, Angeline reminded him of the fish. She urged Houjin to hold it up and let it sway back and forth.
“Come on, big fellow,” she told him. “Don’t you smell that? Don’t you want to come in close, and take a big bite of it? There ain’t much to eat inside the wall, I know. You must be hungry as can be. ”
Houjin waved the fish like a pendulum, his arms straining against its weight. “You think he can actually smell this?” he asked.
“Don’t see why not. ”
“Because the Blight smells like rotten eggs and cat piss, that’s why,” Rector murmured. “If he can smell the fish through the gas, then his nose deserves a blue ribbon. ” You didn’t have to breathe the stuff day in and day out to know the reek of it. The odor permeated everything—clothing, wood, and supplies. And of course, Rector had burned enough sap to have a much more intimat
e familiarity with the concentrated stink.
“He can see the fish, even if he can’t smell it,” Zeke tried.
“Then his eyes need a blue ribbon, too. ” Rector couldn’t see more than a dozen feet in any direction, and sometimes not even that far.
“Boys, don’t argue. The jail’s just at the end of this street. Keep yourselves focused. We’ve almost got him. ”
Rector didn’t recognize the street. It looked like any other neighborhood inside the swamped city: low, squat buildings that were sometimes houses, sometimes stores, and occasionally something else. The taller structures were all farther to the southwest, down nearer to the water. There weren’t any hotels this far up the hill, or train stations, either.
This corner of the wall-wrapped space hadn’t been developed much. Rector supposed that was why they put a prison here. And when the prison came into view, it wasn’t an imposing sort of place, or a particularly cruel one in appearance. It was flat and single storied, built of stone gone slimy with the years and the gas.
“There it is,” the princess said.
“That’s it?” Rector asked. “Don’t look like much. ”
Angeline said, “It ain’t much. The main jail was downtown, on Third Street at Jefferson. But that one was emptied before the Blight got too bad. The people who were here … they were the ones left to die. ”
Zeke turned his head to stare at the unimpressive rectangle with the tiny barred windows. “So these were the ones my granddaddy saved. I always thought it was the big jail, the main jail down on Third Street. ”
She shook her head. “No. He’d have saved more than a couple dozen folks if he’d emptied that one. ”
“Stories get bigger in the retelling,” Houjin noted.
“Doesn’t matter. ” Zeke shifted his grip on his old fireman’s ax, which he’d reclaimed from Rector. Like the fish Houjin wielded, it was almost too big for him to swing and it looked ridiculous, but Rector had gotten tired of arguing with him. “He saved them. Including Captain Cly—he was there. Him and his brother. He told me about it. ”
Houjin dutifully tipped the fish back and forth, even though his arms were shaking. “I’m glad he did. Saved the captain, I mean. ”
They reached the corner where the jailhouse stood, melting on its foundations.
Angeline said, “Zeke, I want you to do something for me, all right?”
“Yes, ma’am. ”
