The Inexplicables (The Clockwork Century 4)

Rector sniffed. “She didn’t say anything about snow. ”

“They call him that because he lives in the mountains. I’ve heard him called ‘yeti,’ but it’s like you said, Miss Angeline … no one ever sees him. I don’t know how many people believe, and how many people pass it around because they like a good story. ”

“Yeti, huh?” she mused. “We’ve sure enough got mountains here, don’t we? Not so much snow this far down against the ocean, but still. Same principle—a big hairy thing shaped like a person, living in high rocks. ”

Zeke picked at what was left of the paint on the table. It peeled away in chips, lodging under his fingernails. “Maybe it’s the same thing,” he suggested. “Or maybe they’re cousins, of a kind. ”

Someone called out from the counter and Houjin leaped up. “Food!” he announced, and before anyone could offer to help, he darted off to collect it.

When everything had been brought over, he dove in with a pair of sticks the size and shape of pencils. When he noticed Rector looking at him with utter bafflement on his face, he said, through a mouthful of noodles, “What? I brought forks for you people. ” He used one stick to point down at the table, where three battered metal forks were wrapped together in a cloth.

Angeline retrieved a fork and flicked one toward Rector, who picked it up and used it to poke at the contents of his plate.

“Eat it,” Zeke urged him. “It’s good, and it’s hot. Hot food doesn’t come easy in the Vaults. We don’t have vents there—at least, none as good as the ones they got here. ”

Rector wanted to believe him. It’d been a long time since he’d had a plate of hot food in front of him, and it’d be a shame to waste it. He scooped up a bite, held it under his nose, and shoveled it into his mouth. Chewing slowly, he tasted something sharp and salty—and something green, a vegetable he didn’t recognize. The second bite had more of the same, plus at least two other unfamiliar sources of crunchiness, and by the third bite he didn’t care anymore. He just ate.

Houjin ate more slowly (he could eat faster, Rector thought, if he’d put down those stupid sticks), and continued to grill Angeline about the sasquatch. “What will we do if we find it? Should we bring guns? Should we bring one of the men from the Vaults, or someone from Chinatown?”

Rector thought Huey might’ve been contemplating a suggestion Angeline wouldn’t have liked—that is, bring in someone from th

e Station—but he didn’t say so, and the princess shook her head, anyway. “No, we shouldn’t bring no guns. We don’t want to hurt this thing. ”

“We don’t?” Rector paused mid-bite, his mouth hanging open. “Because I tell you what, it definitely wanted to hurt me. ”

“Did it?” she asked. “Or was it confused, and sick, and scared? It followed you, and that’s all we can say for sure,” she said stubbornly. “Fellows, the sasquatch are few and far between. We can’t kill one. We have to try and save it. ”

It was Houjin’s turn to be appalled. “Save it? We can’t save anything that breathes the Blight. ”

“Why not? Just because no people have ever survived it, that don’t mean nothing else can recover. ”

Zeke smiled optimistically at the princess. “Like that fox? You think we could save the other things that get inside, too?”

“Maybe,” she told him. “I sure would like to think so. ”

Rector had concerns. He finished his next big mouthful and said, “I thought that if you get bitten by anything that’s Blight-sick, you have to cut off whatever it was they chomped on. Even if we had some way to save the sasquatch, and even if we let it loose … wouldn’t it go running ’round the woods biting other sasquatches?”

Angeline shrugged and looked down at her plate. “I don’t have any idea, but I’d like to give it a chance. We know the rotters can’t be saved or fixed, but we also know the crows do just fine, and the foxes and raccoons get mean, but they don’t die. We should try to catch something small; a rat, or even a fox like the one you saw. We could put it in one of the empty rooms in the Vaults. Give it some clean air and clean food. See if it gets any better. ”

Houjin remained dubious. “That’s a better idea than mounting an expedition to save the sasquatch. ”

“If it works, there’s some chance the sasquatch could get better, too. ” She put down her fork beside her mostly empty plate and put her elbows on the table. “I hate to think it can’t be saved. ”

“Is it worth saving?” Rector asked, likewise putting down his fork.

She nodded firmly. “It’s not bad. It’s just sick. Tomorrow, let’s go back out there, back where I caught up to you today. Let’s finish working around the wall—around that back part, anyhow—and see if we can find the hole. ”

“How does that help us help the sasquatch?” Zeke asked.

“Maybe we can lure it out. It followed Red; maybe it’ll follow us if we look nice and harmless. ”

Zeke winced. “I don’t want to look nice and harmless, not with a sasquatch out there, sick and hunting people. ”

Angeline laughed, fast and too loud. “I didn’t say we’d be nice and harmless. I just said we’d look it. ”

Sixteen

Rector awakened to a firm shove to his shoulder. It startled him upright in a tangle of covers, fueled by the alarm of someone who hasn’t awakened in a bed enough times to remember where, precisely, he’s been sleeping.