I wasn’t so sure about that. I’d seen hands rising from the ground, the dead reaching into the living world, and I’d also heard the squall of rusty hinges, as though something were emerging from the crypts and tombs. Maybe several somethings.
“Rats is all.” That was Mesel. He was trying to sound authoritative. “Maybe voles. Or ferrets. Anything else, just stories to frighten children. Like she says.”
I didn’t really think they could get through the tile wall between us and them, but I was still grateful when we left the scratching behind. If it had been the graveyard, I had at least a rough idea of where we were, and if I was right, we were indeed close to the gate.
As we reached another flight of stairs, steep and long, the lantern began to gutter.
“Leave me, leave me,” Freed moaned. “I’m done.”
“Shut up or I’ll do you m’sel’，” Eye panted, and started up the stairs with Freed in his arms. I followed and the rest followed me. At the top was a little room with benches on either side and a door. It was locked, and this time not on the inside. That would have been too easy. The handle was a rusty lever. Ammit seized it, turned it, and pulled with all his might. It broke off.
“Fuck!” He dropped it and examined his bleeding hand. “Eye, get with me! Right beside me and hump it!”
Eye passed Doc Freed to Cammit and Quilly, then crowded in beside Ammit, shoulder to shoulder. The flame inside the lantern gave a final jump, like a dying man’s last gasp. For a moment I could see our shadows on the white tiles, and then we were plunged into utter darkness. Jaya moaned.
“With me!” Ammit snarled. “On three, hit it as dammit hard as you ever hit anything in your dammit life! One… two… THREE!”
For a moment there was a bit of light as the door shuddered in its frame, then we were in the dark again.
“Oh, you can hit harder than that, you fucking—” Pussy? Cunt? I heard both, overlapping. “On three! One… two… THREE!”
The door’s bolts must have been sturdy, because they held. It was the hinges that gave way, sending the door flying back. Iota and Ammit stumbled out. Eye went to his knees and Ammit hauled him to his feet. The rest of us followed.
“Thank the high gods!” Ocka cried. His voice echoed back from some vast space: ank-ank and odds-odds. A moment later we were enveloped in a cloud of leathery wings.
3
Eris and Jaya shrieked in perfect harmony. They weren’t the only ones to cry out; I think most of us yelled or screamed in terror. I know I did. I dropped the lantern to cover my head and heard it shatter on the stone floor.
“Bats,” Freed wheezed. “Just bats. They roost…” He began to cough and couldn’t finish, but pointed up into the deep shadows.
Ammit heard him and bellowed it. “Bats! They won’t hurt ye! Stand your ground and swat em away!”
We swung our arms, me hoping they weren’t vampire bats, because they were huge, like the ones in the tunnel between Illinois and Empis. I could glimpse them as they swooped and turned, because faint light—I think cloud-shrouded moonlight—was coming through a line of small high windows. I could see most of the others, all waving their arms madly. Cammit and Quilly were carrying Freed, so they couldn’t swat, but Doc himself was waving his arms feebly and coughing up a storm.
The colony swooped away, back to the heights of the enormous room in which we found ourselves. This part of Trolley House appeared to be a garage. There were at least twenty trolleys in neat rows. Painted on their blunt snouts were their destinations: SEAFRONT, DEESK, ULLUM, TAYVO NORTH, TAYVO SOUTH, GREEN ISLES. The posts on their roofs, meant to draw power from the overhead wires （most of those now down in the streets）， hung limp and dispirited. On the sides of the ones I could see, in gold flake, were words decidedly out of vogue in Empis these days: FRIENDSHIP, AMITY, KINDNESS, and LOVE.
“How do we get out?” Stooks asked.
Eris said, “Did you never learn to read?”
“As well as any plowboy, I guess,” Stooks said, sounding grumpy. Of course I’d be grumpy, too, if I had to hold my cheek with my hand to keep the food from squirting out.
“Read that, then,” Eris said, pointing above a high central arch on the far side of the garage.
Printed above it was WAY OUT.
We went through the arch, thirteen would-be escapees falling in behind their clueless prince. We came out in a room almost as big as the garage, with a row of what had to be ticketing stations on one side and a number of smaller arches with destinations painted over them on the other. The glass of the ticket windows had been shattered, a giant butterfly centerpiece had been broken to bits, and a mural of monarchs had been splashed with paint, but the vandals hadn’t been able to deface all the butterflies: high above, running all around the room, were bright yellow tiles with a monarch on each one. Seeing what Elden’s cronies hadn’t been able to destroy brought me comfort, and if I was right, there might be something I could use nearby.