r /> “I never said it. ”
“Good. So I don’t have to call you a liar. You men and your toys. ”
“Please,” Briar interrupted. The closeness of the quarters made her restless, and the wet chill was seeping into her clothes. “What do we do now? Where do we go? Mr. Swakhammer, you said up and then out. ”
“That’s right. We’ll have to come back and clean up Maynard’s later. ”
She frowned inside her mask. “Then we’re going to another safe spot? A safer spot, I mean. Maybe I should take off now and see about finding Zeke. ”
“Oh no you don’t. Not with those things swarming, and not on old filters. You’d never make it, crack shot or no. We’ll head for the old vault and regroup there. Then we’ll talk about clearing the topside and taking on the bank blocks. ”
“Bossy old bastard, aren’t you?” she huffed.
“Yet quite reasonable” he said, without having taken any offense.
Willard lifted the lantern, and Swakhammer adjusted the glass. Soon the whole tunnel was alight with a weak orange glow as wet as juice.
Moisture glistened off the incomplete walls, and Briar was only somewhat reassured to see support columns rearing up from the earth and disappearing into the ceiling—the underside of Maynard’s floor. Shovels lounged against the walls and were almost consumed by them; the digging tools sank into the muddy surface and jutted against carts. From the carts, Briar’s eyes followed the scene down to the tracks beneath them, and then she realized that this was a deliberate place—not simply some cooling cellar.
“What’s going on here?” she asked. “You’ve been clearing this out, haven’t you?”
Lucy answered. “Always deeper, dear. Always deeper. For things just like this, you see? We can’t go up, not really. We don’t have the materials, or the wherewithal, or any safe means of doing so. These walls bind us inside as surely as they hold the world at bay. So if we need to expand—if we need to make more safe places, or create new roads—we have to go down. ”
Briar stretched her chest to take a deep breath inside her mask, and she grimaced at the musty gray taste of the air she drew. “But don’t you ever worry? Like you’re undermining the whole place—like it might all come collapsing down?”
From the back of the group Frank said, “Minnericht,” as if it explained everything.
Swakhammer said, “He’s a goddamned monster, but he’s brilliant. The plans are his. He’s the one who laid it all out and told us how to pull the dirt away without hurting the building, but we stopped doing it about six months ago. ”
“Why?” she asked.
“Long story,” he said, and he didn’t sound like he meant to expound on the subject. “Let’s move. ”
“To where?” Briar demanded, even as she fell into step behind him.
“To the old vault, I said. You’ll like it. It’s closer to the bank, blocks. We’ll get out and take a look around. Maybe we’ll see if your boy’s been there. ”
“Closer?”
“Right at the edge of it. We’re headed for the old Swedish Trust—the only one that didn’t go under. What happened was, the foundation was undermined by the Boneshaker; and the big metal vault was too heavy for the floor. So it sank. And we use it as a front door. ” He lifted the lantern up high and looked back over his shoulder. “We got everybody?”
“We got everybody,” Lucy confirmed. “Keep moving, big man. We’re right behind you. ”
In some places the way widened so far that the light from the wiggling flame couldn’t penetrate its edges; and in some areas the going was so tight that Swakhammer had to turn himself sideways to squeeze through.
Briar trundled along behind him in the middle of the pack, tracking that weak yellow light and chasing its shadows from inside her miserable mask.
Fifteen
“Wake up. Wake up, boy. You alive, or are you dead?”
Zeke wasn’t sure who was talking, or if he was the one being spoken to.
His jawline itched all the way up to his ears—that’s what he noticed first. The skin felt burned, like he’d gone and laid down on a stovetop. Next, he noticed the weight on his belly, the uneven pressure of something heavy and hard. Then he felt a pain jabbing at his back, where he was lying against something uneven and possibly sharp.
And someone was shaking him, wiggling his head back and forth and fighting for his attention. The room smelled funny.
“Boy, you wake up now. Boy, don’t you play dead. I can see you breathing. ”