“Rats,” said Titus. “A majority in the bins now. Only takes a pair to tumble down to birth a hive. With no exit they’re chomping their way to the floor of all that forgotten grain. When they arrive there they’ll have at each other. Don’t go falling in, Icaruses. After nothing but stale wheat berries for decades, they’ll be game for some protein.”
They trudged Outside through muddy snow, past the towering disused iron-ore dock and the shuttered shipbuilding yard down by the river mouth. During the walk, Titus fell quiet, carefully planting his crutch in the slush. Soon they passed another elevator, like Pool 6 in design, but smaller.
Titus pointed his crutch upward. “I toiled down here as a whelp. A single of those bins can hide the yearly output of a hundred farms. That’s millions of bushels—all told,” he said asthmatically. “During the war, we were the only zone shipping wheat anywhere. Feeding the entire sphere! How’s that, Icaruses?”
“Fascinating,” said Jonah, and Will was relieved that Titus’s particular insanity made him mostly numb to sarcasm.
“Now look at us,” Titus said, gesturing incomprehensibly. Will wasn’t sure if he was referring to himself or Thunder Bay. “Only enough grain to keep the Butler’s stills going.”
“Wait, you worked here? In the elevators? My uncle and my grandfather both did, too,” Will said as they walked. “Did you know my uncle, Charlie Cardiel?”
Titus nodded and dropped his gaze.
“What was he like?”
“Oh,” Titus said, “he was tethered. And he banged up some of the populace he shouldn’t have. But he was just a colt. And would’ve atoned for it if allowed the timeline.” After that he fell quiet again. They pressed farther, crossing a rail junction where some men with a few large dogs communed next to a pile of burning garbage near the tracks, stealing predatory glances at their group.
“Is that the Butler?” Will said, flash frozen, hazarding a glance in their direction.
“Nope,” Titus said without looking over. “Those hobgoblins don’t exist.” Then he coughed loudly, his breathing a burst air mattress. “This is us here,” he said, leading them into an abandoned structure of crumbling brick, a hundred feet back from the lake. Inside was a busted ecosystem of garbage and gears and decomposing gulls and rusty clutter, as though the factory had been perfectly repurposed to manufacture squalor. They passed through a warren of unlit hallways and came to a steel door, on top of it a small window.
“Who yearns for a boost?” Titus said.
Will and Jonah regarded each other.
“Is this the job Marcus was supposed to do for you?” said Jonah.
“A fashion like it,” Titus said.
“Well,” Jonah said, “let’s get this over with. Safer in there than out here with you two nutters.” Will lifted Jonah’s foot, and he vaulted gracefully through the opening above.
Will stood in the hallway, body tensed and ready to sprint, while Titus swayed like a chopped-at tree.
“You needed Marcus to unlock this from the other side, huh?” Jonah said when he opened the door before them, but Titus didn’t answer as he plunged Inside. Long tables and rusty chairs crowded the big room, which may have once been a cafeteria. Some windows overlooked the junk-drawer factory floor through which they’d just passed. “Those rubber?” Titus said, pointing at their wrecked skateboard shoes that they insisted on wearing throughout winter. “Hope so,” he said. “Still some living wires snaking about.”
Titus hobbled over to a tarp and drew it back to reveal a large stash of garden hoses—mostly green, some black, and a few orange—coiled neatly together. “I need you Icaruses to link these up. The lot of them. These go betwixt,” he said, tossing a paper bag of what looked like hundreds of rubber gaskets. “At conclusion I want a mythic snake. No leaks, so make sure to twist tight.”
“Marcus got you all these?” Jonah said.
“He was a persistent helper.”
“But what’re they for?” asked Will.
Titus turned to the wall. “A chore I should’ve perpetuated a long time ago,” he said with an empty look, as though reading some instructions on the inside surface of his eyes. “But I got an agenda to communicate with,” he said making for the door as the boys began untangling lengths of hose. “Rally in the workhouse when you’re through. The work should do you a kindness,” he said, leaving.
Wordlessly the boys set to their task. Maneuvering the hoses while keeping them from kinking or twisting was difficult, and getting the threads to match up required more precision than they’d expected.
“I knew it would be the hoses,” Will said, thrilled.
“We’re still leaving after this,” Jonah said, lifting a heavy coil.
“Would you rather be listening to Mrs. Gustavson talk about how creative her cats are right now?” Will asked, referring to the art class they’d endured the last time they’d attended school for a full day, two weeks ago now.
They worked through lunch, until hunger left them and their stomachs fell into an eerie quiet. “You ever sleep Outside in the woods like Marcus?” Will asked, to keep his mind occupied.
“No,” Jonah said. “Gideon always wants to take me up into the bush to teach me stories and hunting and traditional medicines, but I don’t like camping. It’s too creepy. Too exposed. Skateboarding and school are the only reason I go out.”
Exhausted, they left the job partly done and didn’t see Titus again that day. The boys cut school for two consecutive days to finish the project, their forearms deadened from hand-screwing the hundreds of coils together. On the last day, they discovered six crisp hundred-dollar bills rolled up and tucked in the final hose. They jammed the money into their underwear before gathering their skateboards and venturing back out onto the harborfront.
“The real mystery here is what Darth Hobo plans to do with the mother of all hoses,” Jonah said.
“That’s what I can’t figure out. Maybe he’s going to turn Pool Six into one big vegetable garden,” Will joked.
“Pffffffttt,” said Jonah as they turned the corner against a brick structure, its paint detaching in scales. “Not likely.”
“Be careful there, boys!” a man said sharply after they’d nearly run into him. “What’s the big hurry?” He had white hair and a soft voice and two leashless wolves panting at his heels. The Bald Man was beside him, shovels clutched in each of their hands, sharpened silver by use, bright as starlight. Near them another man pushed a wheelbarrow with something large in it, covered by an electric blue tarp. Will mumbled an apology and made to go around.
“You two boys look tired,” the Butler said, stepping in front of Will with a look of concern. His skin was pale as halibut, his hair, a tempest of ivory cowlicks, like an illustrated ocean in one of Will’s old storybooks. Despite his age, his face was strangely boyish, with an underlying pinkness and baby-soft cheeks that appeared polished. “Don’t they look tired?” he said to the Bald Man. “Been working hard, have you boys?” asked the Butler. “Parched? Would you care for some water?”
Worried the Bald Man would recognize him from his encounter with the wolf, Will tucked in his chin, taking the opportunity to note nothing boot-like on either of their feet: the Butler in dress shoes and the Bald Man in trashed sneakers. “We’re fine, thanks,” said Will. When he made to take another step around their group, one of the wolves growled with the same lawnmower chugging as the one that bit him, electrifying Will’s scalp.
“Sss … tas … stas … niabo … bo … vich,” a voice from the wheelbarrow murmured, a leg hanging out from beneath the tarp. It sounded like the deliveryman who used to come to Will’s house who was from a country that ended in ia.
“Sorry you have to see this, boys,” the Butler said. “I don’t want to judge … however, I’m afraid this particular fella has overdone his schnapps. But gosh, it sure is good to see some fresh young men down here, isn’t it Claymore?” said the Butler. “Hard at work. Just like the old Thunder Bay.” He stuck his long owlish nose, stiff with cartilage, into Will’s face. His gaze sharp and fearsome, and the high smell of Neverclear seeped through his teeth. Then the Butler raised a long, parsnip-white finger. “Say,” he said, “you wouldn’t happen to know a fella, lives down here somewhere—can’t breathe too well, unfortunately—was having a little trouble with his legs?”