Orleans (24 page)

The compartment was open, the seal smashed by the impact of the fall. He felt around, belatedly remembering his night-vision goggles. They were smeared with muck from the fall. He wiped them as best he could and dialed up the intensity, turning the blackness around him into a murky green. He was in a small bedroom, having fallen through the attic of a house. Tatters of carpet and splintered floorboards framed the hole above him. The walls were black with mold. Mushrooms grew on what might once have been a bed, the brass framework poking through like bones. He looked down.

The inner case with its six vials was gone, dropped into the depths of Orleans. The edges of the empty compartment glinted in the negative view of his goggles.

“Dear God,” he said. He had lost the virus. And there were scavengers here.
Anybody
could find it. He needed to tell Fen. For all he knew, she had fallen with him.

“Fen?” he called out.

He heard a sound overhead. “Fen!”

It came again. A dragging sound from above. It wasn’t Fen. But it was nearby. “Hello?” he said, and started to stand, panicking. And then he saw something move above him, dragging a heavy, long body in front of the hole his fall had created, blocking out the light.

29

“AW, HELL.” I START TO RUN BEFORE THE
sinkhole take me with it. The ground be too damn soft here to be messing around like this. So I keep moving, watching my feet, and finally the soft fall of sod stop behind me.

It look bad. The roof done give way over a row of houses, long skinny things a couple stories high. Everything be rotten under the earth. If I be lucky, Daniel broke his neck. Then I don’t got to risk my life saving him. Then again, he carrying that virus. If that broke, I be good as dead, too.

“Daniel?” My voice echo back to me from the dark hole. I look hard, but all I see be broken roof and blackness down below. “Can you hear me?”

Silence.
Please let him be on the top floor,
I think. Then maybe a rope or something can get him out. If he any lower, there be worse things than a broken neck to kill him.

“Daniel!” Baby Girl be crying again. She scared from the crash, and the smell coming from the hole be almost as bad as the blood farm. “It be all right, Baby, everything all right,” I croon to her, searching the dark with my eyes.

“Fen.”

It sound real weak, like he far away, but Daniel alive. Maybe he got a broken leg or arm or something, or maybe that suit hold him together better than regular clothes do, but he alive.

It make me happier than it should to hear his voice. The Fen I used to be woulda been glad to be rid of a nuisance. But it different now. Just the three of us. We be like a tribe.

“You hurt?” I call.

“Yes.” He sound like he talking into a tin can.

My stomach twist. “Bad?”

“I don’t know.”

I wait, but he don’t say more than that. “I can’t see you. Hold on.” I tiptoe around the sinkhole ’til I find a place firm enough to stand on at the edge. It be the top of another chimney, something solid enough for the time being.

“Daniel?” There be a long pause.

“Yes?”

“You passing out?” Another long pause. What that boy doing? I look around for rope or something to help him climb out. Finally, he answer.

“No. I . . . There’s something down here.”

Shit. Course there is. There be things living in every damn nook and cranny of this place. Like a city beneath the city here in Rooftops. They say there even be roads down there, but you got to be a damn fool or a fish to reach them. “Can you climb out?”

“Uh . . . no.”

“Then I’ma come down and get you.”

“How?”

I look around. I could jump down and find a way for both of us to climb back, but I got the baby to think of, too. “You got a rope? I can pull you out.”

“In one of my pockets. Hold on . . . I . . . Christ, it’s dark down here,” I hear him say.

I hear more whistling behind us and know there be scavengers about. They’d have a rope I could use, but they ain’t gonna be loaning it to me out of the kindness of they hearts.

“Daniel, talk to me,” I say.

“Um . . . I’d rather not,” he answer. And I hear a sound that ain’t like Daniel, and I know for sure he ain’t alone.

“Be right back,” I say, and run off, light as I can, to find them scavengers. I whistle like they whistle and keep looking over the fields, but it be hard to see over so many little hills and piles of trash. I whistle louder.

“Who are you?”

I spin around. Three of them be standing right behind me. Little ones. Scavengers in Rooftops be either children or people the size of kids. They got to be awful light on they feet for this kind of work, so I ain’t heard ’em coming. They staring at me with they hard eyes, two skinny boys the color of river mud and a woman, an old lady with a back like a crow, all hunched in half, shoulder blades like wings. They be dressed in pocket coats down to they ankles, waterproof sailcloth with pockets up and down to hold what they find.

“Who are you?” the woman say again. She sound like a crow, too, and her hair be gray and wild, like a bird nest on her head. She got to be close to fifty. That mean she crafty, living this long.

“That ain’t your business,” I say. “Strike me a deal.”

The three of them lean forward, peering at Baby Girl with greedy eyes. Scavengers usually go for scraps and findings, but they ain’t above trading with blood hunters if they hungry enough. Judging from the skinny on these boys, they plenty hungry for sure.

“A deal for the baby?” the old woman say.

I shake my head. “Something better.”

“What be better than that?” one of the boys ask. “Baby worth an awful lot to some folks.”

“A treasure be worth more,” I say. “We got a house full of it.”

“What treasure? There ain’t no treasure here but bottle caps and chimney ends,” the old lady say with a wave of her hand.

“Nobody goes in them houses!” the boy exclaims. “Death be in them houses. We take from the tops.”

True, Rooftops be dangerous enough without going underground. Don’t take much rain to make things float to the surface, even through the mud and grass, if you know where to look.

I shrug and walk away. “All right, be like that. I’ma find someone else to carry it.”

I can feel ’em looking at each other behind me. “Wait, wait, wait!” the old lady call. I stop, but don’t turn around.

“I have two fine boys here, strapping boys, they help carry anything you got, for a price.”

Now I turn around, swinging Baby Girl onto my hip, and give them the once-over. “I don’t know. Maybe they ain’t light enough on they feet for my kind of treasure.”

“We light. We like feathers,” one of the boys insist, and step forward.

“Like a bubble,” the other say.

“We don’t want no treasure from under below,” the old lady say. “But them braids of yours be fine. Mighty fine.”

She come closer and snake out a hand. I slap it away, but she reach with her free hand and grab a hold of my hair anyway. “Yes. This gone do just fine.”

• • • 

DANIEL STOPPED BREATHING. THE DARKNESS
was suffocating and his goggles were useless without a light source. They could amplify even starlight a thousandfold, but the thing above him was blocking the hole to the upper world. He willed himself into silence, but his heart was jolting against his ribs so loudly, he was sure it could be heard. Any predator worth its salt would scent him out.

But Daniel was wearing an encounter suit. Would he still smell like food? He hoped not. Up above, Fen was saying something. He ignored it, wishing she would shut up. Maybe the thing in the room would go away if she was quiet. Maybe it would move again and the patch of daylight would come back. Then he could find a way to climb out.

Unable to stop himself, Daniel took a quick breath. Above him, the creature shifted. He couldn’t see well enough to know where or how, but he heard the creak of broken floorboards, the slow drag of a body against the floor. He could
feel
it, an enormous presence, filling up the attic, taking what little air there was out of the room. A musty smell pressed down on him, making his stomach flip with fear. He knew that smell. Had come across it in the lab where they kept the reptiles. Snake, or something like it. Alligator?

Daniel pissed himself. A second later, he felt the skin of the encounter suit compress, and a soft whir as it processed the urine, filling a catch pocket with drinking water.

Then something touched his face.

Flickering against the outer skin of the suit, it fluttered against him and retreated. Fluttered again. A tongue?

Alligator or snake, even if this thing
couldn’t
smell him, it had found him and was coming in for a better look. Daniel thought about praying, but he was a scientist. He didn’t know where to begin.

He wondered what the virus would do in the belly of this beast, and he closed his eyes. The afterimage of the hole in the sky filled his blackened lids.

Glow sticks.

It popped into his head just like that. He had taken them from his duffel before climbing the Wall, had used one to light the Dome. Slowly, he moved his hand down to the right pocket and reached inside. He could feel them with his fingertips. Closing a hand around the tube, he pulled one out.

The tongue had stopped touching his face, but it was close. Any sudden movement might cause it to strike, but he had no choice.

Daniel shook the glow stick, snapping it to ignite the chemical light. Green light flooded from his hands, searing his night vision, causing the thing in the room to shriek. He screamed along with it, not wanting to see what it was. A giant reptilian eye glared at him, no more than a foot away. He saw the inner eyelid snap shut, protecting the eye. A pupil the size of his fist disappeared, and the thing, whatever it was, dragged itself out of the light.

“Fen!” Daniel yelled.

She didn’t respond.

30

I STEP BACK TO PULL MY HAIR OUT OF HER
grasp. “Back off.”

The old lady shrug and point her chin back at the boys. “I got two strong boys. Used to have three, but one gone now. Down underneath. The rope come back.” She reach into a pack on her back and pull out a coil of rope made from vines, fibers, and locks of human hair. I look at her and realize for the first time her head be nearly shaved bald. Them boys, too. Nothing but blond and brown stubble, same color as the rope. She hold it up to me. “See? Three feet short. Cost me a house diver. But you . . . you got more braid than you need. Give it to me, and we help with your treasure.”

I hesitate. Don’t know why. Ain’t like I be uppity about my looks or nothing. I been bald before, I been all kinds of things. But I reach up and feel my braids tied on top my head, and my eyes start to sting. Lydia done this for me. From the first day, she took me in, cleaned me up, got the tangles out. My hair softer and shinier than it got a right to be ’cause of her. Uncle Rom say she treat me like a doll, always brushing and smoothing it down. I say she treat me better than that. She treat me like a person. Like a person she love. These braids all I got left of that.