If the footsteps, scrapes, and ragged breaths from deep within the fog could be believed, the sasquatch trailed them. Not closely, but without much space between them, either. “How much farther to the jail?” Rector asked.

“Not so far, Red. Keep your calm. The sasquatch don’t want to hurt you.”

“Then why’d he try in the first place?”

“Don’t know. Maybe he didn’t.”

There she went, harping on that again. Well, she wasn’t there when it happened. Rector was there, and he knew when something or somebody wanted to tear off his head and play catch with it. Frankly, the sasquatch hadn’t been the first to consider it.

Inch by inch, foot by foot, they clustered and sidled and ambled along, no one breaking from the group. When it seemed as though the sasquatch might be falling behind, or losing interest in armed prey that outnumbered him, Angeline reminded him of the fish. She urged Houjin to hold it up and let it sway back and forth.

“Come on, big fellow,” she told him. “Don’t you smell that? Don’t you want to come in close, and take a big bite of it? There ain’t much to eat inside the wall, I know. You must be hungry as can be.”

Houjin waved the fish like a pendulum, his arms straining against its weight. “You think he can actually smell this?” he asked.

“Don’t see why not.”

“Because the Blight smells like rotten eggs and cat piss, that’s why,” Rector murmured. “If he can smell the fish through the gas, then his nose deserves a blue ribbon.” You didn’t have to breathe the stuff day in and day out to know the reek of it. The odor permeated everything—clothing, wood, and supplies. And of course, Rector had burned enough sap to have a much more intimate familiarity with the concentrated stink.

“He can see the fish, even if he can’t smell it,” Zeke tried.

“Then his eyes need a blue ribbon, too.” Rector couldn’t see more than a dozen feet in any direction, and sometimes not even that far.

“Boys, don’t argue. The jail’s just at the end of this street. Keep yourselves focused. We’ve almost got him.”

Rector didn’t recognize the street. It looked like any other neighborhood inside the swamped city: low, squat buildings that were sometimes houses, sometimes stores, and occasionally something else. The taller structures were all farther to the southwest, down nearer to the water. There weren’t any hotels this far up the hill, or train stations, either.