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The stranger ignored my question, same as he had when I’d last seen him in an abandoned subway tunnel. He’d saved my rear end then, and he was saving it again now. How did he manage to be in the right place at the right time so often? It can’t be just coincidence.
Instead of answering, he fired a pair of pistols into the mêlée behind us. The sunlight brought out indigo highlights in his inky hair and drew warm undertones from his deep-amber skin. A jagged lock of hair swept across his forehead, hiding most of his face from view.
“I’ll hold them off,” he said in his raspy voice. “Get your sister home as fast as you can go.” He paced backward beside me, firing a steady shot on every other step. I didn’t stop to judge his accuracy but shoved a shoulder under Bloom’s armpit and carted her the rest of the way home.
After Bloom and I brought down our ladder, Bloom scrambled up the steps, and I turned back to watch our mysterious rescuer’s progress. He had laid down enough bodies to build a stumbling block for the pursuing hordes, and the ungainly dead tripped and fell over the bodies piling beneath their feet. When one managed to get past, Mysterious Rescuer volleyed another shot and brought it down.
I hadn’t come out unarmed, by the way, not after what happened the other day, but it was impossible to run fast and get off a decent shot at the same time. Running and helping Bloom had been my first priority. But now, with my home at my back and Bloom tucked safely away, I whipped my Colt from my apron, braced myself, and took aim.
The Colt had a mean kickback. Bloom said the pistols gave me such a hard time because of my small frame, but I’d never let my stature keep me from doing anything I put my mind to. My rifle accuracy far surpassed my Colt shooting, but I supposed no one would bicker over body counts at the end of the day. After taking a deep, calming breath, I raised my gun, gave the trigger a firm squeeze, and...
Bang!
I dropped an emaciated man wearing a pair of saggy red long johns. “Right in the kisser!”
“Quit showing off,” Bloom said, calling down from the fire escape. “Get your rear up this ladder, right now.”
Ignoring my sister, I squeezed off another round and socked a tall guy in the shoulder. He wore a soldier’s uniform—likely fought, and died, in the Dead Wars, poor schmuck. He stumbled back but kept his feet. My mystifying, black-cloaked stranger finished him with another shot.
“That’s it.” He kept his back to me, and his black coat billowed in the rising winds. “I’m out of rounds. Get up the ladder, Sera.”
How does he know my name?
He stood close enough to touch, but my hands were filled with guns, and I wasn’t going to put them away just so I could feel up a stranger—not even one who had a nice jawline and a sturdy set of shoulders. He kept a close watch on the progressing herd, which had slowed to a shamble since we’d gone on the offensive. There was no better way to ensure a Rotter will chase you than to take off running. I’d heard the same was true for wolves and other natural predators.
Without another moment of hesitation, I flew up the ladder rungs and stopped to catch my breath on the landing while I waited for M.R. to join us.
“Where’d he go?” Bloom asked, squatting next to the ladder opening in the landing’s grated floor.
“Who?”
“The guy who helped us. He’s gone.”
I peered over the railing, and a horde of undead stared back at me. M.R., however, had disappeared into the same thin air from which he had appeared. Bloom and I scanned the encroaching multitude, but there was no sign of a living soul among them. Not totally convinced M.R. is a living soul. He behaves more like a ghost.
“Who is he?” Bloom asked, obviously baffled.
I told Bloom about the day M.R. had rescued me by leading me through the subway tunnels and giving me his lighter. After tugging the lighter from my apron pocket, I presented it to Bloom as proof of my story. The engraving on one side showed a logo for one of the Sandhog unions, the guys who dug the subway tunnels.
“Weird,” Bloom said and wound the ladder up from the street with another of her geared mechanisms. She locked it in place with a combination padlock and gave everything a good shake to make sure it stayed in place.
“You can say that again,” I said as I followed her through the office window.
“I was really looking forward to those bluegills for dinner.”
My stomach grumbled. “Me too. And we lost our tackle.”
“At least fishing poles don’t rot. We can find more. Quackenbush’s had a ton of them last time we checked.”
If you couldn’t eat it or kill half-rotted corpses with it, then there was a chance you could find whatever you needed easily enough, clothes especially. I’d found my beloved leather apron hanging on a peg in a blacksmith’s shop on the edge of the city. Its giant front pocket kept my guns and knives handy, but I had first started wearing it to add a layer of protection between my vital organs and the dead’s gnashing teeth. Under the apron, I wore a heavy pair of canvas pants like the ones gold miners preferred. I also wore leather work boots with thick soles. Considering how much time I spent running for my life, a good pair of boots made all the difference, especially when broken glass, rubble, and debris littered so much of the city’s streets. The outfit suited me—I never liked petticoats anyway.
We were safely ensconced in our basement vault by the time the rain hit. Leaks dripped into buckets placed strategically around the room. Later, we’d use that water for sponge baths. Bloom lit a lantern and leaned back on her cot. She pulled her harmonica out from someplace and tooted out a slow, rambling version of “Yankee Doodle.”
“Sounds like a funeral dirge.” I stretched out on my cot with a tattered copy of my favorite dime novel—a Western about a lady gunslinger named Bullets Boyette. “Did Yankee Doodle die or something?”
Bloom paused her song. “Didn’t you hear? Yankee Doodle’s a Rotter now.” Bloom heaved a sigh. “I’m mourning the loss of my supper—and the loss of beer. That stuff John Brown makes tastes like cleaning spirits. I want a mug of stout so thick you can stand a spoon in it. I want beer with a head so foamy it leaves you with a mustache.”
“I want a strawberry shortcake,” I said. “With lemon curd and whipped cream.”
And that’s how we fell asleep, as we had many nights, torturing each other with all the things we missed the most.