dollars or better between them, accumulated from the California miners cashing in their nuggets and heading north in search of more.
Scores of innocent bystanders were killed indoors as they stood in line for deposits or withdrawals. Many more died outside on the street, crushed by the leaning, trembling walls as they gave up their mortar and crashed heavily down.
Citizens clamored for safety, but where could it be found? The earth itself opened up and swallowed them, here and there where the Drill Engine’s tunnel was too shallow to maintain even the thinnest crust of land. The quaking, rolling street flung itself like a rug being flapped before beaten clean. It moved hard from side to side, and in waves. And wherever the machine had gone, there came the sounds of crumbling and boring from the underground passages left by its passing.
To call the scene a disaster does it a terrific disservice. The final death toll was never fully calculated, for heaven only knew how many bodies might lie wedged in the rubble. And alas, there was no time for excavation.
For after Dr. Blue lodged his machine back beneath his own home, and after the wails of the injured were tended, and the first of the angry questions were being shouted from the remaining rooftops, a second wave of horror would come to afflict the city. It was difficult for Seattle’s residents to conclude that this second wave was unrelated to the first wave, but the details of their suspicions have never been explained to anyone’s collective satisfaction.
Only the observable facts can be recorded now, and perhaps in time a future analyst may provide a better answer than can presently be guessed at.
This much is known: In the aftermath of the Drill Engine’s astonishing trail of destruction, a peculiar illness afflicted the reconstruction workers nearest the wreckage of the bank blocks. By all reports this illness was eventually traced to the Drill Engine tunnels, and to a gas which came from them. At first, this gas appeared odorless and colorless, but over time it built up to such an extent that it could be discerned by the human eye, if spied through a bit of polarized glass.
Through trial and error, a few particulars of the gas were determined. It was a thick, slow-moving substance that killed by contamination, and it could be generally halted or stilled by simple barriers. Temporary stopgap measures cropped up across the city as an evacuation was organized. Tents were disassembled and treated with pitch in order to form makeshift walls.
As these barriers failed one ring at a time, and as thousands more of the city’s inhabitants fell fatally ill, sterner measures were called for. Hasty plans were drawn up and enacted, and within one year from the incident with Dr. Blue’s Incredible Bone-Shaking Drill Engine, the entire downtown area was surrounded by an immense brick, mortar, and stone wall.
The wall stands approximately two hundred feet high—depending on the city’s diverse geographic constraints—and it averages a width of fifteen to twenty feet. It wholly encircles the damaged blocks, containing an area of nearly two square miles. Truly, it is a marvel of engineering.
However, within this wall the city spoils, utterly dead except for the rats and crows that are rumored to be there. The gas which still seeps from the ground ruins everything it touches. What once was a bustling metropolis is now a ghost town, surrounded by the surviving and resettled population. These people are fugitives from their hometown, and although many of them relocated north to Vancouver, or south to Tacoma or Portland, a significant number have stayed close to the wall.
They live on the mudflats and up against the hills, in a sprawling nontown most often called the Outskirts; and there, they have begun their lives anew.
One
She saw him, and she stopped a few feet from the stairs.
“I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
The woman in the dull black overcoat didn’t blink and didn’t move. “What do you want?”
He’d prepared a speech, but he couldn’t remember it. “To talk. To you. I want to talk to you.”
Briar Wilkes closed her eyes hard. When she opened them again, she asked, “Is it about Zeke? What’s he done now?”
“No, no, it’s not about him,” he insisted. “Ma’am, I was hoping we could talk about your father.”
Her shoulders lost their stiff, defensive right angles, and she shook her head. “That figures. I swear to God, all the men in my life, they…” She