Doomsday Rebirth novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: The Claw

On the seventh morning after the rain, I told Ezra I was going to the Terminal.

He was sitting on the bottom stair with a mug of tea, and Tuck's incense smoked beside him.

He looked at me for a long time over the rim.

"That's the worst idea you've had," he said.

"I'm going to look. I'm not going in."

"Look at what?"

"The sub-basement." I tightened the strap on my boots.

"The cage was built on day twelve last time. If it's already half built, they knew about a man like you before the rain."

"And if it's built?"

"Then we have five days."

He put the mug down.

He stood up slowly, with a hand on the wall.

He straightened the collar of my canvas jacket with two fingers.

His knuckles brushed my neck.

It lasted about a second, and I felt it all the way down my back.

"Take Tuck," he said.

"Tuck is watching the hatch."

"Then take the axe."

"I always take the axe."

"Don't do anything brave," Ezra said, so quietly it was almost to himself. "Please. I'm a very light sleeper when it comes to that."

I laughed.

I thought I was laughing at him.

It was nine miles to the lake, along streets I had known all my life.

I had never seen the city in daylight from this side of the rain.

Cars sat with their doors open and their windshields stained brown.

There were no birds.

Twice I saw grey shapes standing very still in the doorways of closed shops.

Their heads turned toward me, and twice I walked past them quietly.

Hollows hunted by sound, and I had cooked for ninety-one days in a building whose rules were all about silence.

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