run? If it wasn’t for the Tick-Tock Man, I’d bugger you right here and cut yer throat while I did it, ay, so I would!”
Jake ran in a red daze where there was only pain and the frequent thud of Gasher’s fists coming down on his shoulders or the back of his head. At last, when he was sure he could run no longer, Gasher grabbed him by the neck and yanked him to a stop so fiercely that Jake crashed into him with a strangled squawk.
“Here’s a tricky little bit!” Gasher panted jovially. “Look straight ahead and you’ll see two wires what cross in an X low to the ground. Do yer see em?”
At first Jake didn’t. It was very gloomy here; heaps of huge copper kettles were piled up to the left, and to the right were stacks of steel tanks that looked like scuba-diving gear. Jake thought he could turn these latter into an avalanche with one strong breath. He swiped his forearm across his eyes, brushing away tangles of hair, and tried not to think about how he’d look with about sixteen tons of those tanks piled on top of him. He squinted in the direction Gasher was pointing. Yes, he could make out—barely—two thin, silvery lines that looked like guitar or banjo strings. They came down from opposite sides of the passageway and crossed about two feet above the pavement.
“Crawl under, dear heart. And be ever so careful, for if you so much as twang one of those wires, harf the steel and cement puke in the city’ll come down on your dear little head. Mine, too, although I doubt if that’d disturb you much, would it? Now crawl!”
Jake shrugged out of his pack, lay down, and pushed it through the gap ahead of him. And as he eased his way under the thin, taut wires, he discovered that he wanted to live a little longer after all. It seemed that he could actually feel all those tons of carefully balanced junk waiting to come down on him. These wires are probably holding a couple of carefully chosen keystones in place, he thought. If one of them breaks . . . ashes, ashes, we all fall down. His back brushed one of the wires, and high overhead, something creaked.
“Careful, cully!” Gasher almost moaned. “Be oh so careful!”
Jake pushed himself beneath the crisscrossing wires, using his feet and his elbows. His stinking, sweat-clogged hair fell in his eyes again, but he did not dare brush it away.
“You’re clear,” Gasher grunted at last, and slipped beneath the tripwires himself with the ease of long practice. He stood up and snatched Jake’s pack before Jake could reshoulder it. “What’s in here, cully?” he asked, undoing the straps and peering in. “Got any treats for yer old pal? For the Gasherman loves his treaties, so he does!”
“There’s nothing in there but—”
Gasher’s hand flashed out and rocked Jake’s head back with a hard slap that sent a fresh spray of bloody froth flying from the boy’s nose.
“What did you do that for?” Jake cried, hurt and outraged.
“For tellin me what my own beshitted eyes can see!” Gasher yelled, and cast Jake’s pack aside. He bared his remaining teeth at the boy in a dangerous, terrible grin. “And fer almost bringin the whole beshitted works down on us!” He paused, then added in a quieter voice: “And because I felt like it—I must admit that. Your stupid sheep’s face puts me wery much in a slappin temper, so it does.” The grin widened, revealing his oozing whitish gums, a sight Jake could have done without. “If your hardcase friend follows us this far, he’ll have a surprise when he runs into those wires, won’t he?” Gasher looked up, still grinning. “There’s a city bus balanced up there someplace, as I remember.”
Jake began to weep—tired, hopeless tears that cut through the dirt on his cheeks in narrow channels.
Gasher raised an open, threatening hand. “Get moving, cully, before I start cryin myself . . . for a wery sentermental fellow is yer old pal, so he is, and when he starts to grieve and mourn, a little slappin is the only thing to put a smile on his face again. Run!”
They ran. Gasher chose pathways leading deeper into the smelly, creaking maze seemingly at random, indicating his choices with hard whacks to the shoulders. At some point the sound of the drums began. It seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, and for