It was not the worst plan he’d ever had. It didn’t rank among the finest, either, but the end of Rector’s rope was dangling near, and it was this or nothing. It might even redeem him a little bit if his last act on earth was an attempt at recompense, in case of pearly gates or skeptical angels.

A short, sparkling pang of guilt poked through the muffling layers of sap and jabbed him in the chest. “Zeke, I’m coming, goddammit. Isn’t that enough?” he said under his breath. “Christ, that’s all I can do now, ain’t it?” He trudged through darkness over the mudflats, to the wall looming blacker than any starless midnight—a false horizon created from something thicker and worse than the mere absence of illumination.

He could see the wall best when he did not look at it directly. It was most apparent from the corner of his eyes, from a sideways gaze as he hiked past ramshackle clusters of houses and businesses.

Over at the waterworks plant a steam whistle blew and something heavy clanked, like a large clock’s gears tipping together. One shift was ending, and another would soon begin. The plant ran day and night because there’d never be enough clean water if it didn’t—and without clean water, the Blight truly would have wiped out the Sound.

Rector remembered a stray, sharp fact in an uninvited flash: Briar Wilkes, Zeke’s mother, used to work there. She’d gone inside the wall after her son. She’d never come out, and, like her son, she was almost certainly dead. It weighed on Rector somewhat less than Zeke’s untimely passing, as he hadn’t liked Briar at all: the last time he’d seen her, she’d threatened him with bodily and spiritual harm, so if she was gone, well, that didn’t keep him up at night—and neither did her ghost.

The churning cranks and hisses of steam from the waterworks plant faded as he hiked farther away from the Sound, higher up the ungroomed hills, and along the worn dirt roads that had settled into uncomfortable ruts. He left the ruts and took to the grassy spots between the houses and sheds and barns. As these buildings thinned out, the open spaces became wider, more open, and almost more frightening because they gave him nowhere to hide.

Standing out in the wet scrub with mossy rocks and trees that rotted where they’d fallen, Rector felt small and conspicuous as he approached the looming monolith of the Seattle city wall.