“From here it ought to be one block down, and one block right.”
“Good. Now listen—Miss Wilkes—there aren’t any down-drops between here and there, so stick close and run like hell if it comes down to it.”
“Down-drops?”
“Entrances to the underground. Secured places. You know. Once we get outside, we’re stuck outside until we reach the Vaults. That’s the closest and safest place around here, outside of Maynard’s. And there’s no going back to Maynard’s for another day or two at soonest.”
“Goddamn,” Lucy grumbled. “And I just got it cleaned up again after last time.”
“Don’t worry about it, Miss Lucy. We’ll put it back together for you. But for now, we need to head down and stay down until we can sort out how the rotters found their way through so fast.”
“No,” Briar shook her head. “No, I can’t hunker down anywhere. I’ve got to find my son.”
Lucy put her hard, clicking hand down on Briar’s arm. She said, “Honey, the Vaults are as close to your boy as we’re likely to get, if you think he’s seeking the way to the Boneshaker. Listen, we’ll head over there, and maybe we’ll find someone who’s seen him. We’ll ask, and we’ll pass the word around. But you’ve got to stick with us if you want to keep yourself in one piece long enough to find him.”
Briar wanted to argue, but she bit the protest back. She nodded over at Swakhammer as if to tell him she agreed, and he accepted the gesture enough to lift the lid and push himself through.
One by one the fugitives from Maynard’s scaled the unsteady stack of crates and chairs, and one by one they emerged from the mildew-dank underworld and up into the basement of an old apothecary’s place.
Swakhammer’s lantern light was fluttering, on the verge of going out altogether, when Frank and Willard scared up a pair of candles in time to spread the glow out farther. They broke the candles in two to make the room brighter with extra flames, but Lucy gave a word of caution.
“Keep the candles up high, folks. These old crates are packed with munitions stuffed in sawdust. All it takes is one spark on a batch that ain’t soaked, so keep ’em close. We got everyone?” she asked.
Hank said, “Yes, ma’am.” He was the last one up, and the trapdoor dropped down behind him.
“Everyone’s masks all secured?”
Nods went around the circle. Buckles were tightened, straps were cinched, and lenses were adjusted into place. Briar checked her satchel and pulled her hat on over the mask. She slung the Spencer over her shoulder. In her pockets she found her gloves, and she thanked heaven for them. If she was going outside, she didn’t want any skin exposed.
While Swakhammer tiptoed up the basement staircase and tried his hand at the door’s latch, Briar worked the gloves on over her filthy fingers.
He unbarred the door and held a pistol out and ready, up next to his chest. The door swung out a few inches and he jammed his head into the crack. Looking left, and looking right, he concluded that the way was clear and announced this to the small crowd downstairs.
“Hurry up, stay quiet, and keep your heads low. The windows aren’t covered up too good. A rotter who’s paying enough attention can take a peek inside. Don’t give them anything to see.”
He let himself all the way into the shop, up into the back room, and out of the way so that others could follow behind him. “Come on. Hurry up. That’s right, everybody—go on past me now and I’ll watch the rear. We’re going to go out the side door. See it? It’s behind the counter. Try to keep yourself below the counter line, and I want all the candles out. I know we just lit them up, but I didn’t know the windows were uncovered and we can’t take a chance up here. We’ll be spotted faster than we can run. So put them out, and stick ’em in your pockets. We’ll want them later. Are we ready?”
“Ready,” said a chorus of whispers, choked by mask filters and nervousness.
“Come on, then” Swakhammer said.
Lucy went first. Swakhammer brought up the back of the single-file line and guarded it with pistols drawn, the Daisy bouncing against his back.
Briar kept her body curled in a crouch as she shuffled—hunched, bent, and half-blind from the darkness—through the boarded-up store with its dusty windows smeared with grime.
Within the store there was almost no light. Swakhammer had abandoned the lantern, and all but one candle had been snuffed and stored. That last candle was kept close and dim at Lucy’s chest, and it cast almost no illumination. But here and there, Briar could see smashed countertops that collected the dripping moisture of a building no longer in good repair. The wood of the floor and the window frames was warped with the sodden air and perpetual acidic, gnawing teeth of the ever-present Blight.
“Lucy, you got that door?” he breathed, barely any quieter than his normal voice.
She bobbed her head and wrapped her mechanical hand around the big wooden brace that shut it from the inside. She leaned her head against the door and said, “I don’t hear anything.”
“Good. Make way. I’m coming through” He shimmied sideways and hunkered up to the front of the line, and Lucy stepped aside so he could lead the way.
He looked back at the assembled crew, said, “Worse comes to worst…” and cocked his head at the Daisy, just sticking up over his shoulder. “But let’s keep it softer than that if we can. Just two blocks.”
“Two blocks,” Briar echoed. She swallowed hard, and told herself that she was making progress. She was getting closer. She was headed toward the neighborhood where her son might have gone, and that was a step in the right direction.
Swakhammer took Lucy’s candle and drew the door inward. The whole line of people behind him retreated half a step at a time, giving him room.
Outside the world was perfectly black.
Briar could’ve guessed that much from the inky interior of the apothecary’s shop, but she’d assumed that the debris-cluttered windows and the filthy glass might make a grim illusion. She hadn’t realized how late the day had become. “It’s night,” she breathed with some amazement.
Lucy reached over and squeezed Briar’s shoulder. “It takes some getting used to,” she whispered back. “Being underneath, it’s hard to tell the time; and God knows the days are short enough during the winter. Come on, sweetheart—it’s still Saturday, technically anyhow. Onward and upward. Over at the Vaults, maybe somebody will know about your boy. But first, we’ve actually got to get there. One thing at a time, right?”
“One thing at a time,” she agreed.
Swakhammer extinguished the last candle with a reluctant pinch of his leather-gloved fingers against its wick. As he drew the door wide enough to let himself out, Briar held her breath and waited for the night to try to kill them all.
But nothing happened.
Swakhammer hustled the group out the door and pulled it closed behind them, making sure that only the smallest click announced the seal. Then he turned back and growled so low that he could scarcely be heard, “Hold close. Hold hands if you can stand it. We’re going one block north and one block west. Miss Wilkes, you and that repeater should bring up the rear. Don’t be too quick to shoot. No noise if possible.”
Her hat brushed against the stone storefront as she nodded, and that was all Swakhammer needed to hear. He could barely see her, but she hadn’t objected. Briar retreated to the back of the line and pulled the Spencer off her shoulder, so she could hold it poised and ready to fire.
In line behind Hank, who was seemed on the verge of falling asleep where he stood, Briar tried to keep watch on both directions at once. But Hank fell behind and lost his place, and Briar shoved him back into position.
He was dragging, and she couldn’t afford to be dragged. She didn’t know where she was going, not really—and certainly not at night, in the dark, when she could not see the shifting forms of her companions. She could not see the sky above, not even the yellow tubes that she knew must sprout up into the air; and only if she squinted through the smudged lens of her cumbersome old mask could she detect the jagged outlines where the rooftops and spires of the crumbling buildings stood black against the clouds above them.
But she couldn’t look long. Hank was sliding back down, knocking his skinny shape against the walls.
She caught him with one hand, and propped him up with the rifle while she tried to steady him. Stupid goddamn drunk, she thought, but she didn’t say it out loud. She used all her weight to hold him in a semistanding position.
“What’s the matter, Hank?” she asked, pushing and shoving, and using her own limbs as crutches to keep him on his feet.
He groaned in response, but it didn’t tell her anything except that he’d had too much of the miserable yellow beer and now it was hurting him. She wished she could see to help, but it was hard to see, and harder to help when he swatted her hands away and rolled himself along the wall.
“Hush up back there!” Swakhammer ordered, the metal in his voice cutting the hiss to a whistling demand.
“I’m trying to keep him—,” Briar started to say back, and stopped herself. “Hank,” she whispered to him, instead. “Hank, get yourself together. You’ve got to walk. I can’t carry you.”
He moaned again and seized at her hand.
She thought he meant to use it to push himself forward, and that was fine; she helped nudge him that way, back into his spot in the frightened, shuffling queue. But the moan stuck in her mind and it itched there, as if it ought to be telling her more than she’d heard at first.
Hank stumbled again and she caught him again, letting him lean on her shoulder as he ambled along. One foot kicked against the other and he crumpled to the ground against the curb, dragging Briar down with him.
She clutched at his hand and he clutched back. To the others, whose footsteps were scraping onward and away, she called out, “Wait!” in the loudest whisper she dared.