As he fell, he yelped and complained, accompanied by the sound of straining metal stretching, breaking, and crumbling. As they waited for him to hit bottom, Rector and Houjin were petrified—their hands over their mouths, blocking their filters—but only for a moment.

Houjin said, “We had a story!”

And Rector replied, “I forgot it!”

“Me, too!”

“Oh, Jesus, we have to go!”

They scrambled to the other exit, Rector picking up one last stick of dynamite on his way, and Houjin nabbing a smaller coil of wire, one he could carry without breaking his back. Down the stairs they stampeded, no longer worried about the sound of their passage—worried only about escape.

“Is he following us?” Houjin wheezed as he threw himself out the door and into the creeping, thickening shadow of the wall.

Rector didn’t know, so he said, “No!” and kept running.

“Wait!”

“Are you crazy?”

“Wait,” Houjin said again—and with a halfhearted effort to regain his quiet and composure, he gasped to catch his breath. They were still alone, with nothing but the sound of their own breathing filling their ears. “He’s stuck down there, or out cold, or something. We’ve got a minute, I think.”

“What are you doing?” Rector demanded, still ready to run headlong down the hill and right back into the Vaults without pause. He didn’t want a minute. He wanted out of there.

“The diesel,” he said.

“Too heavy to carry with us!” Rector insisted.

“I know! I don’t want to take it all the way.” Houjin knocked the nearest steel drum onto its side and gave it a shove. It rolled and sloshed, heavily lumbering over the uneven ground. “Help me with this.”

“I thought we were running—”

“Just help me,” he insisted, shoving his weapon into the back of his belt. “I have an idea. For later.”

Rector joined him at the side of the drum, planting his hands on it to help with the shoving, rolling, and guiding. “If anybody sees us, we’re dead! If we get caught, I’m running, and I’m leaving you here. I’m going back underground.”

“We might be dead already,” Houjin huffed. “If we get spotted, we drop it. All right?”

“Fine,” Rector grumbled, halfway praying that someone would see them so he could resume his flight to safety.

Both of them were almost faint with fright and exertion; their air supply came too thin to support so much running and hollering. But they pressed onward and pushed harder, manhandling the metal barrel over the hill’s edge and down onto one of the curved walkways, where it could roll more smoothly, so long as it followed the path.

But then Houjin pushed it off the path, along the wall’s edge. The way was harder going, but they kept at it.

“Where are we going with this thing?” Rector demanded. “It’s heavy as hell!”