Joe Golem and the Drowning City: An Illustrated Novel (6 page)

A couple had spread a picnic on the roof, a guy and a girl, maybe twentyish. They were looking Uptown, probably dreaming of a life beyond the poverty and ruin of the Drowning City, making the best of a faded blanket, a bottle of homemade wine, and some meager sandwiches, until they saw the fear on Molly’s face.

“Hey. What are you—”

“Get away,” she said, flapping her hands to shoo them like they were gulls. “Hide. Or run. Just don’t try to stop him!”

“Stop who?” the girl asked.

But her guy seemed to get it right away, to understand the only part of this that he needed to be concerned about. Someone was coming that could hurt them, and he wouldn’t let anything happen to his girlfriend. He broke the wine bottle against a chimney, standing up and brandishing the jagged glass, his eyes full of dark expectation.

Molly raced past him, running to the rear of the building. The one behind it, on Twenty-seventh Street, was only a ten-foot drop below. Wooden stairs had been built decades before, but they were rickety and unreliable, and a heavy cable hung nearby. Molly stripped off her shirt, wrapped it around the cable, and held tight as she rappelled the short drop and kept running, her hair flying behind her, trying to drag her shirt back on without falling.

Back on the last roof, the girl started to scream. Her boyfriend made not a sound, and Molly wondered if he was as dead as the Mendehlsons.

At the edge of the building, she slowed, the width of Twenty-seventh Street stretching out in front of her. A wood and rope bridge hung across the gap, but it had been built recently and she had never crossed it, did not know if it could be trusted. Yet she had come this way knowing that she would have to rely on it, and so she did not stop.

She gathered up the guide ropes on either side in her hands and ran, the ropes burning her palms. The bridge swayed and the boards rattled underfoot, but it was sturdy and well-built. Molly released her grip and reached within herself to find a fresh burst of speed, hurtling toward the opposite roof. If she could reach Twenty-fifth Street she would find one of the busiest parts of the Drowning City, the street a web of bridges, a busy marketplace above the water, taverns in the upper floors of well-preserved buildings.

A crash came from behind her. Startled, Molly began to turn and caught her foot, falling. Throwing out her arms, she landed on her belly and scrabbled to get a grip, praying she wouldn’t slide off the bridge. Catching herself, heart thundering, she turned to see the massive gas-man climbing from the wreckage of the ruined steps back on the last roof. His weight had made them give way beneath him.

Could she jump? Swim beneath the waves and find somewhere to hide?

Then he leaped, hurtling through the air above the bridge, and landed ahead of her, on the roof at the end of the bridge. Impossible. Yet there he was.

Molly fell to her knees on the bridge, grabbed one of the guide ropes to which the wooden slats were attached, and dropped over the edge. She weighed barely ninety pounds, but the bridge swayed as she began to swing with all her strength … once, twice, a third time, and then she let go, arms flailing, legs tucked up to her chest.

Molly crashed down onto the metal catwalk below the bridge and slammed into the building. From above she could hear the sticky, snuffling breathing of the gas-man. Molly pushed off the wall and bolted along the catwalk, running to the corner of the building and turning into the narrow, shaded alley where the fire escape descended down and into the water.

She had no time to be careful now. Caution would kill her. She threw one leg over the railing, slid down, and searched with her feet for the railing below. There was no time left to take the stairs. Instead she climbed down, agile from a lifetime of surviving in this strange, flooded jungle of stone and iron.

Glancing down, Molly let go and dropped to an ornate wooden walkway built just above the high-tide line. The water washed against the buildings but never reached the bridge, with its Chinese lanterns and little altar shrines spaced at intervals along its length. The walkway led between buildings, from Twenty-seventh Street through to Twenty-sixth, where a small enclave of Chinese lived apart from the much larger community farther Downtown.

At night the walkway would be beautiful, gaslights burning inside the colored-glass lanterns, casting a rainbow of soft hues against the walls on either side. This morning it was just the path to survival.

Something struck the wooden walkway, shaking the boards beneath her feet, and she didn’t have to look back to know it was the gas-man. A rush of fury swept through her. For a moment she had let herself believe that she might make it, but once again the hulking man had closed the gap. Molly had let Felix down. Dying, she would let him down yet again.

Tears burned at the corners of her eyes, making her angrier. She would not cry. And yet the tears came despite her refusal.

She glanced back, still running, her footfalls echoing on the wood and off the walls. The gas-man was gaining, only twenty feet behind her now.

Molly collided with a huge man and staggered backward, disoriented, beating at his arms as his powerful hands locked on her shoulders and held her still. The hulking gas-man … but it couldn’t be; he was right behind her.

She looked up into cold gray eyes, sad but wise, set into a scarred, grizzled face. The newcomer had the solid, imposing build of an old-time boxer, or some back-alley legbreaker. With his huge neck and square jaw, flat nose, and ears that looked too small for his head, he was an ugly man, to be sure. But he had a quiet, inner nobility Molly sensed instantly. Though he had no jacket or tie, his trousers were clean and pressed and his suspenders harkened back to an earlier era. In the first moment, she thought he might be fifty, but then decided he couldn’t be much more than thirty. But it had been a rough thirty years, from the look of him.

“I’m sorry, I—”

“You’re Molly McHugh?” he said, his voice a low rumble, full of sandpaper grit.

Surprised he knew her name, she flinched away from him. “Who the hell are you?”

“Joe.”

He said this like it was the only answer required, then paused a moment, as if memorizing her face. When she opened her mouth to ask for more explanation, he shoved her out of the way. Molly hit the railing, twisting in time to see the hulking gas-man barreling toward them along the Chinese walkway.

The huge man—Joe—slipped out of his long coat, clenching his enormous hands into fists. The gas-man thundered ahead, reaching for him, but Joe only smiled.

Chapter Four

Joe took one step forward and hit the hulking gas-man so hard that yellow mist puffed from the seams of his slick yellow bodysuit with a hiss like a steam engine. As Molly stumbled back against the railing of the bridge, she realized it was the same gas she’d seen escaping from beneath the creature’s mask.

Poison. Oh-God-what-if-it’s-poison?

She grabbed Joe by the cuff of his rolled-up shirtsleeve and tried to pull him back, but his strength was such that she could not tug him even an inch toward her. She hooked her fingers on his suspenders, but with the flick of a wrist, he shoved her away. Then the gas-man lunged at him, swinging a fist with unnatural speed. The blow struck Joe in the temple with such ferocious power that for a second Molly held her breath, sure he would topple over dead.

Joe shook it off, then waded in, swinging his fists. He took as many blows as he gave, but though the gas-man was staggered by his assault, Joe only seemed more determined every time his opponent landed a punch. The gas-man turned as if to flee, but instead he grabbed hold of one of the posts holding up a Chinese lantern and snapped it off, twisting to swing the lantern.

“Watch out!” Molly shouted, caught between fear for her rescuer and the urge to flee for her life. But the man had intervened to save her—she couldn’t just run away.

She needn’t have worried. Joe dodged the lantern, then stepped in and punched the gas-man twice more in the abdomen. More yellow mist jetted from the seams of his clothing. The gas-man began to moan, and Molly thought she saw his flesh ripple underneath the rubber casing. He spun around again, with even greater speed, and this time he found his target. The Chinese lantern shattered against Joe’s jaw, and the big man stumbled backward, momentarily stunned.

The gas-man clutched the broken lamppost in his gloved hands and charged, aiming for Joe’s heart. But Joe sidestepped, and the jagged post never touched him. He grabbed hold of the post and pulled his attacker nearer, stepping inside the gas-man’s reach. He caught the gas-man’s wrist and twisted it hard enough to snap bone, though no sound issued from within the wet suit. The gas-man let out a kind of shriek, muffled by his mask, and lunged for Joe’s throat. Molly watched in horror as Joe tightened his grip on the gas-man’s wrist and yanked, moving him as if he were some kind of puppet.

The wetsuit split along the shoulder seam. Blood and sickly yellow mist jetted from the rip in the material, and Joe twisted with such strength that he tore the gas-man’s arm off with a wet rip of tendon and fabric.

Molly let out a small cry of revulsion.

As the broken lamppost clattered to the bridge, Joe turned to look at her, holding the severed arm in his hand.

“What did you do?” Molly breathed.

The gas-man collapsed to the planks of the bridge, and they both turned and stared as the huge gas-man deflated, a wilting balloon in the rapidly diminishing shape of a man. Something shuddered inside the wetsuit and then it—and the gas-man’s long coat—flopped to the ground, something undulating inside of it.

“Good question,” Joe said, staring at the thing flopping inside the wetsuit.

Now that the gas had escaped from within that slick suit, whatever remained bucked and shook inside like an enormous eel. It lunged toward the edge of the bridge, dragging the suit around it. Joe bent to reach for it, muscles straining the threads of his expensive shirt, but he was not fast enough. The thing dropped over the side and into the water below, vanishing into the sea, leaving only its ugly gas mask behind.

“Son of a bitch,” the big man rumbled.

Joe stood watching the rippling sea where the strange, eel-like thing had gone into the water, but it did not emerge. Molly tried not to look at the severed arm that he still clutched in his hand. Her thundering heart began slowly to calm, but she could not help remembering the glimpse she had gotten of the face inside the gas-man’s mask, and she shuddered

The gas mask lay on the planks of the bridge as if waiting to be picked up.

Joe picked up his discarded jacket and shrugged it back on. His gray eyes turned stormy as he glanced at Molly. When he started toward her, she took a step back, but she didn’t run. Despite the limb in its tattered sheath that dangled from Joe’s grasp, the worry and kindness in his stony eyes made her feel safe in a way that was entirely foreign to her. Even living with Felix, generous and caring as he’d been, she had always feared the perils of the world. But this man, with his scars and his monstrous size, set her at ease.