“He writes things down just fine, and he signs with his hands. I don’t read it too good yet, but I’m learning. Anyway, I’m pretty sure this is the wall. We overshot our turnoff.”

“I think maybe you could be forgiven. It’s goddamn dark out here.”

“We should really be quiet.”

“I know, I know.” Rector swallowed hard, and dragged his hand along the wall. “I just wish we were using lanterns. Or we could break out these stupid spotlights. They’re heavy, I swear to God.”

“If we had lanterns, we’d be real easy targets.”

“I know,” he said again. “But how far off course do you think we went?”

“Can’t be that far.” Zeke stepped around him and put his free hand on the wall. “The wall runs in one big circle, so it’s not like we’ll get lost now. If we follow it north and east, we’ll run right into the park.”

“That’s not the world’s most comforting thought in the world.”

“At least we’ll know where we are.”

What Zeke didn’t say, and Rector didn’t bring up, was that they had no idea where along the wall they were—and they had only a few hours worth of filters in their bags. If they didn’t find the breach, or the tower, or some other landmark soon, they’d be in trouble.

Both boys knew it, and they thought about it.

It was the only thing that kept them quiet for the next fifteen minutes.

Fifteen minutes was long enough. It gave them time to determine that yes, this was the wall, and not a wall belonging to some oversized building; and it gave them time to get within earshot of the great breach, the broken place where poisonous air oozed out into the Washington Territory. Out near the breach the Blight thinned, becoming less dense from the leak that spooled out into the woods like sludge running down a drain. Their candlelight went farther. The boys took pains to cover the glass with their gloved hands, and then Zeke blew out his own light entirely.

At the breach, there were people talking, but it was too quiet, too distant yet, to recognize any of the voices. “Take the tail of my jacket,” Rector whispered. “Crouch down low behind me. We don’t want to get separated.”

“Are they from the tower?”

“Don’t know.”

They drew up closer, knowing that their allies ought to be approaching the big, ugly break in the wall as well—but not knowing if they’d arrived ahead of them, or if these were other men coming inside from the Outskirts to reinforce the impending fray.