“No.” The man shrugged. It was a glass bottle with the remnants of a black-and-white label stuck raggedly to its side. “I never heard of anyone getting shot with a bottle. I just wanted to make sure.”

“Make sure of what?”

“That you understood,” he said vaguely, and sat down against the wall with a sliding, slumping motion that implied he was reinstating the position he’d held when Zeke had interrupted him.

The man was masked as a matter of necessity, and he was wearing at least one fatly knitted sweater and two coats — the outer one of which was a very dark blue, or maybe black. A row of buttons pocked the front, and a pair of dark, oversized pants lurked beneath it. His boots were mismatched: One was tall and brown; the other was shorter and black. At his feet lay an oddly shaped cane. He picked it up and gave it a twist, then set it in his lap.

“What’s wrong with you?” Zeke demanded. “Why’d you scare me like that?”

“Because you were there,” he said, and there didn’t seem to be any smirk or smugness behind it. “And why were you, anyway?”

“Why was I what?”

“Why were you there? I mean, why are you here? This ain’t no place for a boy, even if you are Maynard’s. Shit, it might be a worse place for you, if you run around firing off claims like that, whether they’re true or not. You’re lucky, I guess,” the man said.

“Lucky? How you figure?”

“You’re lucky it’s me who found you, and not somebody else.”

“How was that lucky?” Zeke asked.

He wiggled the bottle that still swung from his hand. “I didn’t stick you up with anything that’d hurt you.”

Zeke didn’t see anything on the man that might have actually hurt him, but he didn’t mention it. He picked up his lantern again, adjusted his bag, and scowled. “It’s a good thing for you I didn’t have my gun out.”

“You’ve got a gun?”

“Yeah, I do,” he said, standing up straighter.

“Where is it?”

Zeke patted the bag.

“You’re an idiot,” said the seated man with the bottle and the bulky clothes. Then he brought the mouth of the bottle up to the edge of his mouth, where it knocked loudly against his gas mask.

He gazed sadly at the bottle and swirled its last few drops around in the bottom.

“I’m an idiot? My momma has an expression about a pot and a kettle, you jackass.”

The man looked as if he were about to say something ungallant about Zeke’s mother, but he didn’t. He said, “I don’t think I caught your name, kid.”

“I didn’t offer it.”

“Do so now,” he said. There was a hint of menace underlying the command.

Zeke didn’t like it. “No. You tell me yours first, and I’ll think about telling you mine. I don’t know you, and I don’t know what you’re doing here. And I…” He fumbled with his bag until he’d pulled his grandfather’s old revolver out. It took about twenty seconds, during which the man on the roof didn’t bother to budge. “I have a gun.”

“So you do,” the man said. But he didn’t sound impressed this time. “And now you’ve got it in your hands, at least. Ain’t you got a belt? A holster?”

“Don’t need one.”

“Fine,” he said. “Now what’s your name?”

“Zeke. Zeke Wilkes. And what’s yours?” he demanded.

Inside his mask, the man grinned, presumably because he’d gotten the boy’s name before giving away his own. Zeke could only see the smile because of the way his eyes crinkled behind the visor. “Zeke. Wilkes, even. Can’t say I blame you for dropping the color, kid.” And before Zeke could complain or retort, he added, “I’m Alistair Mayhem Osterude, but you can join the rest of the world in calling me Rudy, if you want.”

“Your middle name is Mayhem?”

“It is if I say it is. And if you don’t mind my asking, Zeke Wilkes, what the hell are you doing inside this place? Shouldn’t you be in school, or at work, or something? And better yet, does your momma know you’re here? I hear she’s a real firecracker of a lady. I bet she wouldn’t like it if she knew you done took off.”

“My mother’s working. She won’t be home for hours, and I’ll be home by then. What she don’t know won’t hurt her,” he said. “And I’m wasting time here talking to you, so if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be on my way.“

He stuffed the gun back into his bag and turned his back on Rudy. He breathed slowly and evenly through his mask’s filters and tried to remember exactly where he was, and exactly where he was trying to go.

Rudy asked, from his spot up against the wall, “Where you going?”

“None of your business.”

“Fair, and all right. But if you tell me what you’re looking for, I might be able to tell you how to get there.”

Zeke walked to the edge and looked down, but he didn’t see anything through the thick, sticky air. His lantern revealed nothing except more of the tainted fog in all directions. He said, “You could tell me how to get to Denny Hill.”

And Rudy said, “I could, yeah.” Then he asked, “But where on Denny Hill? It wraps around this whole area. Oh. I get it. You’re trying to go home.”

Before he could think to argue or be vague, Zeke said, “It ain’t home. It never was. I never saw it.”

“I did,” Rudy told him. “It was a nice house.”

“Was? Is it gone now?”

He shook his head, “No, I don’t think so. As far as I know it’s still standing. I only meant that it’s not nice no more. Nothing inside here is. The Blight eats up paint and fixings, and makes everything go yellow-brown.”

“But you know where it is?”

“Roughly.” Rudy untangled his legs and stood, leaning on his cane and wobbling. “I could get you there, easily. If that’s where you want to go.”

“That’s where I want to go.” He nodded. “But what do you want for helping me?”

Rudy considered his response, or maybe he only waited for his head to clear. He said, “I want to go looking through that house. Your pa was a rich man, and I don’t know if it’s been cleaned out good or not, yet.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Exactly what it sounds like,” Rudy almost snapped. “These houses, and these businesses — nobody owns them no more, or at least nobody’s coming back inside after them. Half the people who used to live here are dead, anyhow. So those of us who are left, we…” He hunted for a word that sounded less direct than the truth. “Scavenge. Or we salvage, anyway. We ain’t got much choice.”

Something about the logic sounded wrong, but Zeke couldn’t put his finger on it. Rudy was looking to bargain, but Zeke didn’t have anything to counter with. This might be the perfect opportunity, if he played it right. He said, “I guess that’s fair. If you take me to the house, you could take some of the things you find left there.”

Rudy snorted. “I’m glad to have your permission, young Mr. Wilkes. That’s mighty big of you.”

Zeke knew when he was being made fun of, and he didn’t care for it. “Fine, then. If you’re going to act like that, maybe I don’t need a guide at all. Maybe I can find it on my own. I told you, I’ve got maps.”

“And a gun, yes. I believe you mentioned it. That makes you a big man ready to take on the Blight, and the rotters, and all the other outlaws like myself. I’d say you’re all ready to go.” He sat down on the roof’s edge as if he’d changed his mind.

“I can find it on my own!” Zeke insisted, too loudly.

Rudy made a hushing motion with his hands and said, “Keep it low, boy. I’m telling you for your own good, and for mine. Keep your voice low. There are worse things out here than me by a long shot, and you don’t want to meet any of them, I promise.”