“Well?” Swakhammer demanded, taking her hand into his own and flipping it up so he could see it, too.
“Well, I think it’s all right,” she said. She did not jerk her hand away. She let him look, because she wanted his opinion—even if she deeply feared it.
The whole room stopped breathing—except for the bellows. They gusted and gasped, and the yellow tube between the furnace and the table shuddered with the intake and outrush of air.
Swakhammer said, after a pause, “I think you’re right. I think you lucked out. Those must be some good gloves. ” He released a big breath he’d been stashing in his chest and let go of her hand.
“They’re good gloves,” she agreed, so relieved that she couldn’t think of anything else to add. She cradled her hurt hand and shifted her weight so she could sit on the step instead of kneeling there.
Willard joined Varney at Lucy’s side. He said to no one in particular, “It’s a shame about Hank. How’d we lose him?” The question wasn’t broken or grieving, but it wasn’t happy. It was more than merely curious.
“His mask,” Lucy supplied. “Wasn’t on him good. It got loose, and he took in too much Blight. ”
Willard said, “I suppose it happens. ”
“All the damn time. But he was too drunk to be careful, and you see now what it gets you. Will, help me with this mask, will you, man?” Lucy changed the subject. She twisted her neck and tried to convince her hand to work, but it only fluttered against her sternum. “Help me take it off. ”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. He reached behind her, unbuckled her mask, and pried it off her skull. Then he tackled his own. Soon everyone was barefaced again.
The Chinamen hung back by the furnace, dark eyed and patient, waiting for their work space to empty again. Swakhammer noticed first, the way they lingered with unspoken impatience. He said, “We should get out of their way. These bellows need to run another two hours yet before the downside’s fresh enough to last the night. ”
He gave a duck of his head that wasn’t quite a bow and wasn’t quite a nod, and he said a few words in another tongue. He didn’t say the words smoothly or quickly, as if they were sharp in his mouth, but Briar gathered that it was an expression of thanks and a request for pardon.
The leather-aproned, smooth-faced Chinamen appeared to appreciate the effort. They smiled tightly and bobbed their heads back, failing to conceal their relief as the group evacuated down a secondary tunnel.
Varney and Willard stayed close on either side of Lucy, and Swakhammer led the way
with Briar beside him. The rest of them—Frank, Ed, Allen, David, Squiddy, Joe, Mackie, and Tim—brought up the rear. They marched together in silence, except for Frank and Ed, who were grousing about Hank.
Frank said, “It’s horseshit, is what it is. And turnabout’s fair play. We ought to go to the edges of the station and turn a few rotters loose down there, at Minnericht’s own front door. ”
Ed agreed. “We could go in through the Chinese quarters. They’d let us, I bet. They’d let us if we told ’em what we were up to. ”
“And the airmen who hang down at the fort, over by the tower. We could see if any of them are game to raise a little ruckus,” Frank proposed.
But Lucy hushed them from the front of the line. “Knock it off, you two. Don’t you go dragging other folks into your harebrained schemes. Nobody’s going down to the station. Nobody’s tempting fate, or rotters, or the doctor. We don’t need any more trouble. ”
Briar thought it was Mackie who quietly complained, “Well how much trouble do we have to swallow before we say it’s enough?”
Lucy said, “More than this. ” But she didn’t put much weight behind it.
Mackie mumbled a final word. “I’d like to see how he feels about rotters in his own parlor, biting on his own friends. ” He might’ve said more, but Lucy stopped and turned around and stared him down until he closed his mouth.
With rounded walls and sealed, sucking doors that opened and closed like dirty airlocks, the corridor drifted gently down and over to the left.
“These are the Vaults?” Briar asked.
Swakhammer said, “Not exactly. There’s only one real vault, but the name stuck. The rest of what’s back here is mostly where people sleep. Think of it as a big apartment building, turned upside down. Not that many folks live here, really. Most of the people that do live inside the walls have taken up residence at the edges—near Denny Hill, where the nice old houses have big, deep basements. ”
“That makes sense,” she observed.
“Yeah, but there are drawbacks to living that far off the beaten path; I mean, if you need anything, it’s a tough hike down here to the core. Hell, you know what I’m talking about. Just now we got a man killed going two short blocks. Try picking your way down eight or nine. But people do it. ”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “The accommodations are a lot nicer. See what I mean?” He leaned on a latch and opened a metal-banded door with a sealed-up window. “It’s not exactly clean, and not exactly comfortable, but it’s pretty much secure. ”
“That’s what I thought about Maynard’s. ”