The Inexplicables (The Clockwork Century 4)

Another groan, more harsh this time and, if at all possible, closer still.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Rector squeaked. He saw no one and nothing, heard only the breathing, the moan that came with an edge like gargling.

He ran, tripping over himself and the uneven, unstable stairs. Behind him they crumbled away; he heard them clatter, bounce, and break on their way to the ground. And he heard something else, too: a bang so loud that at first he didn’t realize it was a footstep. Not until a second bang followed behind it, then a third and a fourth, did Rector recognize the rhythm of something stomping behind him.

Not someone. Not this time.

For one ridiculous moment he wondered what’d become of the other guy, the one who’d come after him first. Where was he? Maybe he was evil, and maybe he was a murderer, but he’d been human—Rector was sure of that much. And whatever was behind him, this unseen foe, this was not a man. Men didn’t move so heavily, dropping from foot to foot with the weight of a horse. Men didn’t have such strides, longer than a half flight of stairs. Longer than …

A crash shattered the old building wall and ripped the rail out of the boy’s hands. He gasped and staggered, falling forward and catching himself. But the catch didn’t hold, and he slipped down farther, tumbling less gracefully than he might have if he’d gone down on purpose—but descending all the same, and face-first. On the way down, he whacked his chin on a step and knew it would mean more bleeding, but he couldn’t worry about that right now.

He scrambled on his hands and knees, ducking almost by accident, but his timing was good. As his head went down and his knees went out from under him, an enormous shadow leapfrogged him in a flash of terrible motion.

Through his one good lens Rector saw a shape that had two arms and two legs, but was in no way human. He watched it sail overhead, a lunging hop thrusting the huge, heavy thing from one turn of the stairs to the one below it, shattering the place where it landed.

It bellowed, and Rector’s heart nearly stopped. He still couldn’t see it well, not through the gum-thick air, but there it was, only a few feet in front of him. All he could make out was a person-shaped monster that couldn’t have been a person. No person was so huge, and no person had a face shaped like that, flattened and burnished like the leather on a rich man’s chair. The shape shimmered—or, no, it didn’t. It wasn’t an illusion, not a trick of the air or the dim, runny light. The shadow was just covered in hair.

“Not a rotter,” the damp, horrified boy muttered to himself. “Something else. Oh God, oh God. Something else!” His voice pitched up at the end, and he wanted to run. But he couldn’t go back up; there was nothing left but the sky. Couldn’t go down, because he’d never make it past … whatever that was.

The creature rallied itself and sprang.

Rector squealed, and with all the instinct of the not-quite-suicidal, he dove out of the thing’s way. Straight off the side and into the mystery below. He closed his eyes and waited for the end, wondering which breath would be his last, hoping it came quick, and it wasn’t so bad that he’d remember it on the other side. Hoping he didn’t stick around as a rotter.

The ground caught him.

It met him with a whump that stunned him, knocking out what was left of his breath. The fall hadn’t been far at all, and he almost felt cheated by the need to keep running.

Rector dragged himself to his feet, shaking all the way, and spun left and right.

He’d dropped only a flight or two, and landed in the mulchy, decaying rubble of the collapsed building, its floors having pancaked years before and gone soft with time and humidity. There were worse places he could’ve hit, but at that moment, he had a hard time thinking of any.

He crawled off the rubble and rolled out into the street. He knew good and well he’d made too much noise, but what could he do? The thing behind him, up on the stairs, was making more noise still, so Rector hoped that any nearby rotters would seek out the bigger, more vocal meal.

Once more, with bleeding head, scraped hands, and battered knees, he shoved one foot in front of the other on the uphill slope.

“Hey!” The voice was an outright shout this time, no longer keeping low.

Rector responded, “Not you again!” even though it was a lie, and he could’ve cried with relief just to hear another human being.

“What was that?”

“I don’t know!” Rector called back, his voice creeping back toward hysterical territory.

“This way!”

“Which way?” He still couldn’t see, didn’t know where he was, and had nothing to go on except the idea that uphill was where he wanted to be. But a rustling and roaring from the wreckage of the fallen building told him he needed to pick a direction and commit to it.

Maybe one of the alleys. Maybe if he could get off the main avenues and onto the side streets, he could lose the monster that way. He bolted to the right, zigzagging up and around, then back onto another narr

ow street with mushy wood sidewalks. He left the walkway shortly after setting foot on it—too squishy; slowed him down—and instead he went for the middle of the road and ran up the center as fast as his bruised legs could carry him.

“No!” hollered his invisible advisor. “Not that way! You’re headed right for—”

Rector didn’t hear the last part of that sentence. All he heard was the rush of air and the gasp in his throat as he flew into open space for the second time in the span of five minutes. The world crunched and shook, and he could hear the fizzling stars that swam in front of his eyes.

The white-hot sparkles swarmed, popped, and faded. He thought he might be able to see now, so he opened his eyes. Or he tried, then realized that they were already open.

Standing above him was someone just a bit smaller than him. Chinese, he thought—something about the shape of the eyes behind the other guy’s visor. And about Rector’s own age. But that couldn’t be right, could it? Everybody knew that Seattle was no place for women or children, or even grown men who’d very recently passed the ripe old age of eighteen.