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“Yes, ma’am,” Zeke and Houjin said.
Rector nodded, then he said, “I was trying to ask: Did you ever hear of something called an inexplicable?”
She frowned. “Nope. What’s that word mean?”
Houjin told her, and she said, “All right, I’ll remember that. And let me answer your other question, Red,” she said, perhaps misremembering his name, or just having decided to call him that. “Actually, how about I show you, rather than tell you. ”
He hemmed and hawed. “Aw, we were just heading back down to the Vaults, like we said. ”
“Yes, and I heard you. You’re heading over to the Sizemore House?” she asked Houjin, who bobbed his head
.
“Down through the basement, and back to the Fifth Street tracks. ”
“Good plan, good plan. I’ll come with you, and on the way, I’ll show you what I mean. It’s only a quick detour. ”
“Give us a hint?” asked Zeke.
“Hard to hint, dear boy. Except to say, I’m not sure the rotters are all escaping. Between us … I think something’s killing them. ”
Rector did not say that she might be right, and that she’d just hit on part two of Yaozu’s theory.
Duly hushed and thoughtful, the boys followed the princess around the wall another few dozen yards, then marked their place with a small cairn of bricks and rocks. “To remember where we left off,” Houjin said. “We can start here next time. ” And then they left the sturdy familiarity of the Seattle wall, venturing once again into the Blight-ravaged blocks of what was once the city proper.
Rector trudged after the princess, and after Zeke and Houjin, in what was becoming a regular lineup.
Bringing up the rear, that was how he preferred it. Let them walk headlong into whatever trouble waited. Let them stir up the monsters, or wake up the ghosts. It’d buy him time to run, if running was called for.
But run to where? He didn’t know what the Sizemore House was, or where it was, or how to find it. Nor could he have found his way back the way he’d come. He hadn’t counted the steps around the wall, or the building fragments falling down to block their paths. He hadn’t counted anything. He’d only counted on Houjin and Zeke knowing what they were doing. That had been a mistake.
They moved in a nervous pack, pausing only to light a lantern when Angeline suggested they ought to. She was right. The wall’s shadow was stretching to catch them, and the setting sun behind it left them straining to see.
Only one light burned, and Angeline carried it. Rector thought about objecting, but then he thought about rotters pouring out of the derelict shops and abandoned houses, and he thought they would surely go for the source of light first and foremost. Fine, let someone else carry it.
Angeline brought them to an alley between two great houses that had once belonged to wealthy men. The houses reared up out of the fog like monsters, like things in Rector’s daymares. They were all peaks and gingerbread and rotting bits of unpleasant paint peeling in sheets as big as his hands. Once they might’ve been some bright color, but the gas and the years had bleached whatever hue they’d originally held, and now they were cumbersome corpses, decomposing where they stood.
“I’m giving you boys some credit, you understand,” the princess told them, her voice low and her eyes grave behind the shield of her visor. “What I mean to show you ain’t pretty. But it might be important. ”
She stepped aside and held out the lantern, which cast a wimpy bulge of brightened air down into the alley.
“Go on. Take a look. ”
“At what?” Rector asked, peering as hard as he could into that impenetrable haze.
She corrected him. “Not up there; not like that. Look down on the ground, boy. Tell me what you see. ”
He stepped forward in order to stand beside Houjin and Zeke and he followed Angeline’s pointing finger. Where the light pooled and puddled, he saw strange forms, or pieces of forms, scattered on the ground. He couldn’t imagine what these crooked shapes and splintered parts had once been part of, or where they’d once belonged.
Rector crouched down and his knees popped. He winced, rubbed at his joints, and asked, “Could you bring the light down, Miss Angeline?”
She obliged, and the unidentifiable lumps came into focus.
There, at Rector’s feet, was a disembodied hand.
He jumped and toppled backwards, but caught himself on one palm.
“I did warn you. ”
