“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?”
He said, “Oh sure, yeah. The guns.”
“No, that’s Smith and Wesson. This tower was built with typewriter money. Watch where you’re stepping, kid. Parts of the floor aren’t finished yet, and there aren’t any rails on the stairs. This place wasn’t done being built when the Blight hit. It’s mostly solid, but here and there you’ve got to keep an eye out.”
“Is it tall?”
“The tower? Yeah, it’s tall. It’s the tallest building anyplace for miles, even though the last couple of floors aren’t up yet.”
Zeke said, “I want to go upstairs. I want to look out over the city from the top.” He didn’t add, “So I can figure out where I am, and how much you’ve been lying to me.”
Rudy’s eyes narrowed behind his visor. “I thought you wanted to see the hill?”
“I do want to see the hill. I want to see it from up there. Are the other floors sealed up?”
“Most of them are,” Rudy admitted. “Just this one’s not, because it’s how everybody gets inside. If you go up or down, you can pull the mask off, but if you go all the way up you’ll have to shove it back on. The airships like to dock up there, and the dock ain’t sealed-up space or anything. And it’s a whole lot of stairs, kid. Are you sure you want to hike it?”
“You think you can keep up with me?” Zeke said, trying to make it a light challenge. He wanted to test his guide, and maybe wear him out a little if he could. He’d already figured out that he might need to run, and if it came to that, he’d need to outrun more than the limping man. He’d have to get out of the way of that cane.
“I can keep up with you,” Rudy said. “Go out there, to the main hallway. There should be a lantern around the corner.” He tossed him a box of matches and said, “Light it up.”
Zeke found the lantern and made it bright. Rudy came to stand beside him. He said, “You see that curtain over there?”
“The black one?”
“That’s the one. It’s a seal—silk covered with tar. There’s a bar down there at the bottom; it weighs it down and holds it steady. Slide it out and we can move the curtain.” He leaned on his cane and watched while Zeke followed instructions, then said, “Now hop through fast. I’m behind you,” and he was.
Zeke reset the bar and they were smothered in darkness except for the lantern, which did its best to hold a cheery glow. “Let’s go down to the end, and then we’ll pop these things off.”
“Can we breathe in here?”
“Probably, but I ain’t chancing it. I like to put a pair of seals between me and the Blight if I can help it.” Rudy took the lantern and followed the carpeted hallway to its terminus, then squeezed himself between another set of flaps. After a few seconds, only his left hand with the cane remained out where Zeke could see it. Rudy extended his finger and crooked it, meaning the boy should slip through, too.
On the other side of the seal there was light, though, it was gray and sickly.
Rudy’s mask was already off by the time Zeke pushed himself through the slot. Seeing the other man breathe freely made Zeke desperate to do likewise. He ripped his mask off and sucked in the foulest-tasting air he’d ever inhaled, but it was beautiful because it came without a fight.
Happily he gasped himself back to life. “I can breathe! It stinks in here like shit, but I can breathe!”
“Even the freshest stuff smells like sulfur and smoke up here,” Rudy agreed. “Down below it’s not so bad, but the air up here gets stale because there’s nowhere for it to go. At least underground we force it to move.”
Zeke examined his mask and saw that his filters were changing colors. “I need new filters,” he observed. “I thought these were supposed to work fine for ten hours?”
“Son, how long you think you’ve been down here? That long, at least, I’ll tell you that much for sure. But that’s nothing to panic about. Filters are a penny a pound in the underground since that big old negro robbed a Confederate supply train last spring. And if you find yourself running low, there are sealed tunnels all over the place in this part of town. Remember the rule, though: Put two seals between you and the Blight if you can.”
“I’ll remember,” Zeke said, since the advice seemed sensible.
Off in some unseen corner of the enormous, unfinished tower, both travelers heard a pinging crash. It echoed from loud to soft, and dissipated in the distance. Zeke demanded, “What was that?”
“Damned if I know,” Rudy said.
“It sounded like it was coming from inside.”
Rudy said, “Yeah, it did.” He tightened his grip on his cane and lifted it up off the floor so it’d be ready to fire, should the moment require it.
A second scuttling sound followed the first, and it was more unmistakable this time. It was the sound of something falling down the stairs behind them.
“I don’t like this,” Rudy grumbled. “We got to get back down.”
“We can’t!” Zeke whispered fiercely. “That noise came from downstairs! We’d be better off going up!”
“You’re an idiot. We head up, and we get trapped wherever the stairs run out.”
The argument ended there, because a different sound from a different direction blew louder and stranger up above. It was the sound of machinery and force; it was the swish and rattling sway of something huge coming close—all too quickly.
“What’s that—?”
Zeke couldn’t finish the question. From outside and above, an enormous airship with a billowing, flapping basket and hard metal tanks crashed against the side of the tower and bounced into another structure, then returned for a second broken landing. Windows shattered and the whole world heaved, just like it had when the earth quaked hours before.
Rudy jammed his mask back on over his face and Zeke did likewise, even though the act made him want to cry. Rudy ran to the stairs even as the building shuddered beneath their feet, and he commanded, “Down!”