The Inexplicables (The Clockwork Century 4)

He leaned forward, and Huey and Zeke came closer, too.

Houjin used the edge of his iron rod to poke at the hand. It didn’t move. It didn’t respond in any fashion, except to shed one finger. The digit flaked away, and the small bones that once held it together drooped pitifully—kept in place by habit and a strand or two of old skin.

Angeline took her lantern, stepped deeper into the alley, and told them, “Lads, that’s just the start of it. Come have a look, won’t you?” And as she went between the houses, the light seemed brighter than before—bouncing off the walls, since it had nowhere to go except back into the fog.

“Miss Angeline,” Huey breathed. He was the only one who could speak.

Zeke and Rector remained silent, transfixed and horrified.

At Angeline’s feet, they saw legs, arms, and half a dozen heads lying motionless and scattered. And behind her, creeping into a gruesome drift as high as her waist, a pile of dismembered undead oozed, dripped, and settled into a heap of viscous mulch.

Zeke gasped, creeping closer, though why he’d want a better look, Rector couldn’t fathom. Rector just wanted away from the damn things—away from the pile, away from the alley and everything in it.

He swung his arm up over his nose, shielding his filters further with his sleeve. It didn’t make a difference. “That’s disgusting! Where’d they all come from?”

“I couldn’t tell you,” the princess shook her head. “I counted about forty before I made myself sick, being so close. Red, don’t worry about covering your nose. I know you think you smell these things, but you don’t. ”

But it wasn’t the imagined smell that made him recoil. He withdrew from the details.

One long arm lay mere inches from his toes, and he nudged it with his boot. The curled, dead fingers splayed and collapsed. All their nails were broken. They would’ve been bloody if there’d been blood left; but around the edges, even on the gray, dead skin, Rector could see the crusty tint of yellow. His own nails were starting to turn that color. He’d noticed it months ago.

And over there, the nearest skull with any skin left to remark … its eyes were sunken and a gritty gold crust spilled from its nostrils and ears. Big, gruesome sores ate the flesh around its mouth. Rector had once had a sore like that. He’d occasionally picked a similar grit out of his own ears, and he’d sneezed it out of his nose once or twice.

The sap craving twitched between his ears and in his lungs, just like old times, but just for an instant before it was quashed by a wave of nausea. For that same instant, he thought of the Station, and about the men who considered him one of their own in some vague, proprietary way.

Then the nausea washed that away, too. Was this all they expected of him?

Houjin, always bravest—the simple result of having lived there the longest, or so Rector guessed—sidled forward and jabbed at the pile with his weapon. Just like the lone, stray hand, the corpse fragments settled and flattened, but did not squirm or show any hint of continued animation. “Look at the breaks,” he said, now using the rod to point. “They’re torn. All of them. Not cut, not hacked. ”

“They were ripped apart,” Zeke said, with no small measure of awe.

“But what could do something like that?” Huey asked. “And some of these men … they weren’t gone yet when the thing took them. Look, that one still had a mask on. I think he’s one of Yaozu’s men. And there’s a hand over there that hardly looks rotty at all. Some of these fellows are fresh. ”

Rector gulped. “Four of the Station men got tore up. Maybe more. What could tear forty rotters and a bunch of men to bits?”

Angeline turned pointedly to Rector and said, “I can’t say for sure, but I have an idea. ”

“Ma’am?” Rector asked, guiltily confident that he was being accused of something.

“What you saw, when you first came into the city—you said it was a monster?”

“It was a monster. It chased me. It stalked me,” he said, and it sounded like an echo. He remembered saying it once before, and he shivered, despite his best efforts.

“It was big, and it had long arms,” she reminded him.

“That’s right. ” He nodded violently.

Houjin backed him up. “I saw it, too. Whatever was after him, he’s right. It was really big. ”

“Let me ask you this,” Angeline proposed to the pair of them. “Do you think it might’ve been covered in hair?”

“Hair?” Rector frowned and cocked his head. “I don’t know … I guess it might’ve been?”

“Long hair. Brown hair, with a little bit of red in it—not half so red as yours, I don’t suppose. But like this…” She pulled a swatch of something stringy and russet colored out of her pocket and held it up to the lantern so the boys could get a gander at it. “I found this nearby. Lots of it, not just this little lock. It’s scattered around the scene. I don’t mind telling you, I took my time here. It’s nasty as can be, but it got me thinking. ”

Houjin’s eyes narrowed. “You know what did this, don’t you, Miss Angeline? You don’t know the word inexplicable, but you know what did this. ”

“I have an idea, and it’s a strange one—but it’s the only one I’ve got that makes any sense. Come along, boys. I think you’ve seen enough. Let’s go to the Sizemore House and down someplace safer, and then I’ll tell you about my thoughts. ”