The Six Messiahs - Mark Frost [80]
Doyle diverted his path to the street side edge of the rooftop and glanced uneasily down through the soupy night air; the main pack of Dusters was keeping pace with them below, others sprinting ahead trying to anticipate where they could enter a building, climb up, and cut off their line of retreat. Doyle thought the Dusters, shouting taunts and whooping battle cries up at their quarry on the roof, looked and sounded like Stone Age savages on a hunt, which in many ways was exactly what they were.
"Handy fellow to have along, your Jack," said Innes, joining him at the edge.
"Quite," said Doyle.
"Wish I had my Enfield," said Innes, squeezing off an imaginary shot at the Dusters in the street: anger in his eyes. In his element, Doyle noted with pride.
"This way," said Stern.
The roof of the next tenement turned out to be the last on the block; the top of the building on the street running to their left stood across a ten-foot gap with a drop of fifty disappearing below into darkness. They stopped and looked two roofs back where the pursuing Dusters, with their profound native ingenuity, had formed a human pyramid; half their platoon, already elevated up the ladderless wall, were pulling the others up behind them.
"We'll have to jump," said Jack.
"Is that really necessary?" said Doyle.
"Unless you have any other suggestions," said Jack, laying a loose board on the bricks edging the roof, creating a small ramp.
"What about the books?" asked Stern, who had done nothing to tarnish the sturdy impression of his mettle Doyle had formed on the Elbe.
"I'll manage it," said Jack.
Jack took both books from the men, stepped back, made a measured run up the ramp, and spanned the gap easily, landing nimbly on his feet.
"You go next," said Doyle.
"Don't fancy heights much, do you, Arthur?" said Innes, making his run. "You'll be fine."
Stern followed: Jack and Innes caught him as he fell slightly short and hauled him over the lip.
Doyle stepped back as far as he could for his try at the jump, steeled himself, wished he wasn't wearing his smooth-soled brogans, took a dead run, and closed his eyes as he went airborne. His crash landing put a dent in the roof and knocked out his wind.
"All right then, Arthur?" asked Innes, as they lifted him to his feet.
Doyle nodded, gasping for air.
They caught up to Stern, standing at the edge of the next roof, staring apprehensively at the building a few steps below them.
"What's wrong?" asked Innes.
"The Gates of Hell," said Stern.
"Here? In New York?" said Innes. "I thought they were in Wapping."
"What do you mean?" asked Jack.
"That's what this building is called. It's the most notorious slum in the city; over a thousand people live in there."
Even viewed from above, amid the squalor of its neighbor tenements, this one stood out Tents and shabby huts congested the rooftop, and a solid column of stench that was nearly unendurable rose from the borders of the place; filth, ordure, disease, decaying meat.
Whooping cries from the gap behind them, answered from the ground below, heralded the imminent arrival of the Dusters; there was nowhere to go but forward.
As they ran across the roof, faces peered out at them from the huts; bone-white, starving, dispossessed. Inside the flimsy structures, they saw shadowy figures huddled around small ash can fires, waiting passively for more misfortune. As they neared the far side of the roof, the cries of the trailing Dusters were echoed by identical voices directly ahead; the vanguard of the pack on the street had outflanked them and climbed to the next roof, pinching them in. Following Stern's lead, the men doubled back and found a door leading down into the Gates of Hell.
As dreadful as the smell had been on the roof, what they encountered inside was disabling: an abattoir, a battlefield left to rot in the sun. Each man was forced to cover his mouth and nose and fight a constant struggle to keep his gorge from rising. Stern moaned involuntarily. Jack distributed small capsules of ammonia, which they snapped into their