Dead Boys Read Online Free Page A

Remington chose his steps with deep attentiveness, and stopped when he needed to consider his next move. Most unexpected was his newfound silence, which persisted until they were near enough to the streets of Rottening Green to hear the barked complaints of its inhabitants and feel the hourly ringing of its bell tower vibrate in their bones.
    The path Jacob chose did not end so much as it spewed Southheap into the street. “Let’s hurry to my flat,” said Jacob as they clambered down. “I hate to deprive you of a proper tour, but I’ve spent years in preparation for this moment, and I’ll need to pack before we depart. So: to the Preservative District we go!”
    “To the Preservative District!” cried Remington, careening down several blind alleys before Jacob convinced him to follow.
    The word “street,” in these neighborhoods, was a euphemism: Jacob and Remington clambered over the mud-packed roofs, walls, and corners of underground buildings, some of which offered views into their inhabitants’ conversations through open windows. “There are people down there!” cried Remington, leaning down and calling his greetings into a buried flat where three bone-bags cursed him extensively in an ancient dialect, the burlap sacks that covered their bodies rustling with disgruntlement.
    “Wherever a body can fit, you’re bound to find two,” said Jacob, “and there are plenty of nooks and crannies in this chaos. The city buries itself once or twice each generation, when the floods add new buildings to the pile. The deepest levels are rumored to contain corpses who haven’t seen daylight since the days of Tutankhamen.”
    It was hard to imagine that corpses any older than the ones walking by could still be standing. Although Remington saw, here and there, a body whose bloom was still passing, the streets were overwhelmed by those whose decrepitude was only matched by the ends they employed to cover it up. There were corpses dressed in plastic from head to toe, others sewn into patchwork body-bags, and some who coated themselves in river clay to keep the bones from showing.
    Though the Preservative District was architecturally indistinguishable from any other heap of ruins in the area, it was clearly demarcated by the rickety stalls that thronged its streets, stalls whose owners were hawking everything from embalming to plastination.
    “What they call embalming is nothing more than a chemical bath that softens you up for tears and abrasions, and as for plastination, it’s the biggest scam in the business,” Jacob explained to Remington. “Any preservationist worth his salt has a proper flat, but few can afford our services, so they flock to these stalls for stopgap measures.”
    They passed a crumpled hot-dog stand whose sign had been daubed with muddy letters reading “HIDE YR BONES.” Its proprietor, who glared at Jacob as they passed, was stuffing shreds of newspaper into the ruptured skin of a client whose face was buried in his hands, hidden from the disapproval of passersby.
    “As for your own preservation, Remington, while I’d love to offer you the full Campbell Treatment, I’m afraid we’ll have to be quick about it. I’ll harden your skin and replace your elbows, knees, armpits, and so forth with a supple material, one of the more recent artificial leathers, perhaps. Then I’ll pack the necessary materials to replace your innards when they liquefy, so that as we travel—”
    “I’m fine the way I am, Jake.”
    Jacob glanced up and down the street to ensure that no one he knew had overheard. Stopping beside a brick-walled elementary school wounded on one side by a wrecking ball, beside which a pair of headless corpses leaned against each other for support, Jacob whispered, “If you’re worried about owing me, Remy, rest assured: there will be ample opportunity for you to assist me on our journey. You’ll never be in debt to me. Think of the treatment as a gift! After all, the ward of Dead