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.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.”He leaned forward, and Huey and Zeke came closer, too.Houjin used the edge of his iron rod to poke at the hand.It didn’t move.It didn’t respond in any fashion, except to shed one finger.The digit flaked away, and the small bones that once held it together drooped pitifully—kept in place by habit and a strand or two of old skin.Angeline took her lantern, stepped deeper into the alley, and told them, “Lads, that’s just the start of it.Come have a look, won’t you?” And as she went between the houses, the light seemed brighter than before—bouncing off the walls, since it had nowhere to go except back into the fog.“Miss Angeline,” Huey breathed.He was the only one who could speak.Zeke and Rector remained silent, transfixed and horrified.At Angeline’s feet, they saw legs, arms, and half a dozen heads lying motionless and scattered.And behind her, creeping into a gruesome drift as high as her waist, a pile of dismembered undead oozed, dripped, and settled into a heap of viscous mulch.Zeke gasped, creeping closer, though why he’d want a better look, Rector couldn’t fathom.Rector just wanted away from the damn things—away from the pile, away from the alley and everything in it.He swung his arm up over his nose, shielding his filters further with his sleeve.It didn’t make a difference.“That’s disgusting! Where’d they all come from?”“I couldn’t tell you,” the princess shook her head.“I counted about forty before I made myself sick, being so close.Red, don’t worry about covering your nose.I know you think you smell these things, but you don’t.”But it wasn’t the imagined smell that made him recoil.He withdrew from the details.One long arm lay mere inches from his toes, and he nudged it with his boot.The curled, dead fingers splayed and collapsed.All their nails were broken.They would’ve been bloody if there’d been blood left; but around the edges, even on the gray, dead skin, Rector could see the crusty tint of yellow.His own nails were starting to turn that color.He’d noticed it months ago.And over there, the nearest skull with any skin left to remark … its eyes were sunken and a gritty gold crust spilled from its nostrils and ears.Big, gruesome sores ate the flesh around its mouth.Rector had once had a sore like that.He’d occasionally picked a similar grit out of his own ears, and he’d sneezed it out of his nose once or twice.The sap craving twitched between his ears and in his lungs, just like old times, but just for an instant before it was quashed by a wave of nausea.For that same instant, he thought of the Station, and about the men who considered him one of their own in some vague, proprietary way.Then the nausea washed that away, too.Was this all they expected of him?Houjin, always bravest—the simple result of having lived there the longest, or so Rector guessed—sidled forward and jabbed at the pile with his weapon.Just like the lone, stray hand, the corpse fragments settled and flattened, but did not squirm or show any hint of continued animation
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