Page 137

“Of course not. You’re Artisans. But I don’t think it’s exactly that.”

“Then what is it?” I asked. “If it’s not to keep us in, or to keep others out?”

“I think it’s to keep me off the street, miss,” he said. “Me dad got buried in the tunnels. Sometimes Patty invents jobs just to keep people paid.”

I considered the burden of it, of ensuring everyone had what they needed. “Sometimes I can’t tell if he’s as good as he is bad.” I wasn’t sure why I admitted as much to a boy.

But the boy in question seemed to take care in his answer. For a moment his face tightened in thought. “He’s bad to those who’re bad. No idea if that makes him good, though.”

Perhaps Sam and I weren’t of the authority to decide who was good or not. But I thought Sam’s father might be thankful that Patrick had kept his son out of the tunnels and off the streets. “Goodbye, Sam.”

He nodded, lit a cigarette.

I descended the flights of stairs with a genuine grin, and my limbs felt lighter. I got the strange urge to jump down to the landings, slide down the rails. I was eager to be near him again. Too eager. I could still feel the sensation of his lips traveling over my mouth, my throat. In my mind, I crashed out of the stairwell and Patrick was waiting, already taking my weight in his hands and kissing me again.

I pushed the swinging door open to the pub and there he was, his hands in his pockets and his back to the bar top. He turned at the sound of my footsteps.

For a brief moment, a spell was cast wherein only Patrick and I existed—the rest of the universe reduced to a slither. He grinned and offered his hand. I blushed as I reached to take it.

And then the illusion was blown to pieces.

From some distant rooftop, a familiar siren whirred.

The sound grew, stampeding down the lanes, permeating walls and rib cages. It droned outward, upward, pitching.

I was transported back to childhood, sitting beneath a kitchen table, my back mashed against a brick wall.

Patrick’s face drained of color.

On the street, voices shouted, “Collapse!”

“Collapse,” Patrick whispered.

And sprinted for the door.

CHAPTER 44PATRICK

When Patrick was a boy and the siren sounded, he thought of monsters rising from the depths of vast seas and swallowing ships, fire raining from the sky, titanic gods slinging bolts of lightning to the anthill towns beneath.

His thoughts weren’t so different as a man. That sound, it rendered muscle from bone. Squeezed your heart of every last drop of blood.

The door’s window popped on its recoil, his boots hitting the cobblestones in the next moment. Someone shouted to him, “East mine, Pat!East!” As though he couldn’t see the frantic crowd funneling in that direction, disappearing down alleyways, shovels already in hand, screaming to the windows above. “East!” they shouted.“Hurry! Hurry!”

How many would be lost this time? Ten? Twenty? Would Gunner be among them?No, Patrick thought, over and over.

He cleared one alley, ran full out down Citadel Street, then Penance. The siren droned, doors crashed open, and people erupted from the depths of buildings with pails and spades and anything that could break earth. All of it was carried to the edge of town, to the foot of a yellow hill. Already there were people racing up its side to the pit above. Patrick ran to do the same. The people trapped below had minutes, seconds left in the hourglass. No air to breathe. Just the thin hope that someone would dig deep enough.Even from this distance, Patrick could see the frame of the pit entrance had caved inward, the ground beneath it bowled.

And suddenly the yellow hill came alive. It shifted, awakening from a long, deadened sleep, shelves of grass sliding away. The entire fabric of the hill distorting before Patrick’s eyes. A wave of black hurtled toward them, flowing from the summit, slipping down, down.

“LANDSLIDE!” Patrick bellowed at the same time as twenty others, fifty.

Patrick grabbed the jacket of a man running by to pull him back. There were already too many on the hill, too many falling as the earth beneath them fluxed. Soon, they’d be trapped, too, devoured by the mud swarming their ankles.

“RUN!” Patrick shouted. For the wall of mud wouldn’t stop there. It would barrage over the fence and through the alleys, through windows and doors. It would buckle walls and bury those, too.

He saw Scottie struck dumb, mouth horribly agape. “Holy fuckin’ God,” he intoned as Patrick grabbed his arm.

“GO!” Patrick begged, pushing, herding as many as his arm span would allow. He shoved them backward until their minds caught up with their feet. Screams rent the drums in his ears.Back over the fence. Fall. Stand up. Run.The roar of a terrible beast intoned behind them, harrying its prey.