The man wrestled with the door and finally snapped it into position.
He crossed to the far side of the room, where he began to remove his loosened armor. “Don’t take off the mask quite yet. Give it a minute,” he said, “but make yourself at home. ” The plated arm sheaths clattered as he folded them and set them down on the table. His tubular noise gun—Daisy—also sounded heavy when he plunked it down beside the protective garment.
“You thirsty?” he asked.
She said, “Yes,” in a dry whisper.
“We’ve got water down here. It isn’t very good water, but it’s wet. Got plenty of beer, too. You like beer?”
“Sure. ”
“Go ahead and take off the mask now, if you want. Maybe it’s just superstitious of me, but I don’t like to whip mine off until I’ve had the filter door closed for a minute. ” He reached inside one of the crates labeled STONEWARE and pulled out a mug. In the corner was a fat brown barrel. He popped the lid off and dipped out a mug full of water.
He put it down in front of Briar.
She gave the water a greedy look, but the man hadn’t removed his mask yet, and she didn’t want to go first.
He caught on and reached for the straps that held the elaborate contraption around his head. It slid down to his chest with a sliding scrape of leather being stretched and loosened, revealing a plain, wide face that was neither kind nor unkind. It was an intelligent face, with wild brown eyebrows and a flat nose, plus a pair of full lips that were smashed close against his teeth.
“There you go,” he said of his own reveal. “No prettier, but a damn sight lighter. ”
Without the mechanical mask’s assistance, his voice was still low, but perfectly human.
“Jeremiah Swakhammer, at your service, ma’am. Welcome to the underground. ”
Twelve
Rudy shuffled in a loping, lopsided walk that was faster than it looked. Through the crushing, smelly pressure of the mask Zeke wheezed and puffed to keep up; he struggled to suck in air through filters that had grown somewhat clogged since he’d first entered the city, and he fought with his own skin as it was pulled, stretched, and rubbed raw by the unyielding seal around his face.
“Wait,” he breathed.
“No,” Rudy replied. “No time to wait. ”
He shambled on. Behind them, Zeke was certain he heard a new, rising commotion that came from anger, or grief. He heard the cacophony of consonants and unfamiliar vowels and the shouting, howling, screaming agreement of other voices from other men.
Zeke knew they’d been discovered—or, as he told himself, that Rudy’s violence had been discovered. But Zeke hadn’t done anything wrong, had he? The rules were different here, weren’t they? And all’s fair in war and self-defense, wasn’t it?
But in the back of his mind a small foreign man with glasses was bleeding and confused, and then dead for no reason at all except that he’d once been alive.
The tunnels seemed more winding and the darkness seemed more oppressive as he tagged along behind his guide, whom he viewed with increasing suspicion. He even found himself wishing the princess would come back, whomever she was. Maybe he could get a question or two in edgewise. Maybe she wouldn’t throw knives at him. Maybe she wasn’t dead.
He hoped she wasn’t dead.
But he could still hear, when he thought about it, the rumbling thunder of the ceiling and walls folding in upon themselves and filling all the air space between them, and he wondered if she’d been able to escape. He consoled himself by remembering that she was old, and no one gets to be that old without being smart and strong. It gave him an odd pang, one that he couldn’t place as he watched the hobbling escape of the man in front of him.
Rudy turned around and
said, “You coming, or not?”
“I’m coming. ”
“Then stick with me. I can’t carry your ass, and I’m bleeding again. I can’t do everything for the both of us. ”
“Where are we going?” Zeke asked, and he hated the sound of the begging that he heard from inside his mask.
“Back, same as before. Down, and then up. ”
“We’re still going up the hill? You’re still taking me to Denny Hill?”