Christopher Buehlman - The Lesser Dead

We spent hours and hours combing the tunnels, all of us together, moving fast and quiet. Margaret with her shovel, Old Boy just out front, running point. We scared the shit out of the Hunchers we ran across, asked them about the kids, charmed them to forget they saw us. Long story short, we didn’t find them. Not that day. Not that night.

We went as a group to the 18th Street station and the first thing we found was a bunch of new trespassing notices and rat poison warnings the MTA had stuck on the posts. Then we found the blood. A big pond of it near the edge of the platform, not fresh but not old, like half a day old. Still sticky in places. Margaret squatted down and tasted it. Then she did something I had never seen her do.

She screamed.

She found a small, bloody footprint.

She spat on it like a crazy person and screamed something in Irish. She loved Ruth, or came as close to loving as any of us could.

I couldn’t feel bad for the kids anymore, but I certainly didn’t envy them. I’d had Margaret come looking for me before, and I can tell you it wasn’t a situation you wanted to be in.

Ever.

We got back from our fool’s errand at four A.M. or so, all of us tired. It had been a grim night, except for one moment. We found some Hunchers sleeping in a boiler room under Grand Central, four of them, just runaway kids, and we fed on them all together, taking turns keeping watch. They’d been drinking, so we all knew we’d have a little misery when the alcohol came out of us later, but we needed our strength. Anyway, after we all slaked our thirst, Billy said, “Shit, man, the first time the whole family eats together and nobody says grace.”

When we got back to the common area near the pipes, we saw it.

A Raggedy Ann doll.

One of Camilla’s, clearly.

It lay in front of a worktable we used for folding laundry and counting out stolen money.

“They’ve been here,” said Chinchilla.

“Someone give Mr. Chinchilla a gold star,” Margaret said wearily.

Luna went to pick the doll up, but Old Boy stole up behind her fast, pulled her away by the belt. Motioned all of us back. Way back. Picked up a couple of poisoned rats from a stack of them Ruth had broomed together. Threw the first one at the doll and missed. The second one bumped it. It popped, yeah, but then it flared up so bright it hurt our eyes, hissed awfully, like a dragon. Filled the whole place with smoke, so much smoke. He saved Luna, maybe more of us, all because he knew about booby traps. Could smell one. The table was fucked, bright holes burning in it. White phosphorus doesn’t stop till it stops, water doesn’t help. Just burns right through everything. Sure, vampires are bad, but let’s not forget it was ordinary people who came up with the pure evil that was an incendiary grenade. I didn’t think it was possible to feel worse for Gua Gua, but now that I’d seen what got him, felt the heat on my face at even a good distance, I did. Him and the rest of the Latins. What a miserable way to go. Even the smoke smelled like poison and death.

Had the Hessian really killed Mapache and the others? Or was it the kids? Maybe someone we hadn’t even seen yet? Margaret was probably right, their story was bullshit. The Hessian might never have touched them, might have had nothing to do with this.

But a guy like that would have had the money and connections to get illegal grenades. Then, so would Baldy and his mob friends. Where was Dominic?

Old Boy probably knew where to get this stuff, too. I looked at him, how pale and tired he was from feeding them, and it still surprised me that he had done something so… soft . He was always off alone. Had he killed the Latins? No, I could almost hear Cvetko saying think —if he was in with the kids, why would he save us from the grenade?

Was something truly fucked-up going on here?

I had the deep-in-my-bones feeling that I just didn’t have a clue about what was really happening.

“Good ole Willy Pete,” Old Boy said, smiling a little. “I don’t think we’ve seen the last of him.”

Jesus, he liked this stuff. Booby traps, grenades, having an enemy.

I decided I was leaving the tunnels after all.

After I got Gonzalo out of this mess.

And got some sleep.

Did you know parrots don’t fly that well? It’s because people clip their wings. Makes sense, especially up in an apartment; you don’t want to open up a window to get a breath of fresh air and there goes your parrot saying, “So long, sucker!” all the way back to Africa or Central Park or wherever. Central Park was the first thing I thought, lots of trees and nuts, and maybe somebody would say, “Look, that’s a valuable parrot,” and come and get him out of the tree. I don’t know what with. Maybe just coax him down with egghead German and a bag of pistachios. Stupid idea, but remember I hadn’t slept and that messes with our heads as much as with yours.

So I took him to Central Park in a taxi. The cabbie didn’t like much about it, any of it, but he needed the fare. These weren’t great times in the city for most people, if you hadn’t noticed.

“Shouldn’t he be in a cage?”

The cabbie was an Indian fellow with horn-rimmed glasses and a fixed harelip.

“Yeah, but I lost it,” I said.

“Will he be making a mess in my taxi?”

Gonzalo just bobbed his head, his new bald spot standing out on his chest like a sheriff’s badge.

“No promises,” I said, and handed the cabbie a five-spot.

We didn’t talk anymore until he dropped me off.

I found some nice trees just off Fifth Avenue, across from the Plaza Hotel, and remembered it was supposed to be some kind of bird sanctuary anyway. I told the cabbie to keep the meter running, this shouldn’t take long, but I did want to say good-bye.

I walked Gonzalo up to the pond there and set him on my hand, tried to get him to look at me.

He did for a second, cocking his head, then said that German phrase again and nubbed out his tongue a couple of times.

“Listen, Gonz, this is serious. This is good-bye. I thought I’d be able to take care of you, but the tunnels are no place for a guy like you, and even if they were, I have to split. I’m sorry about your old master, he was better for you. Maybe you’ll get lucky and get somebody like that again. Funny how everything affects everything. If there were no vampires, you’d still be good and cozy and I’d be old somewhere. Maybe I’d have a parrot, turns out I like you guys. Maybe I would have beat Gary Combs to the bird store that day and you would have been my bird. Anyway, good luck to you and good luck to me.”

I tossed him up in the air, toward the trees, but he just flapped like hell and landed slowly, like a guy coming down in a parachute. I had never seen him do more than that, I just sort of assumed he could fly when he wanted to, but he was mostly in a cage. Then I remembered the expression “clipping your wings” and figured that was what happened to Gonzalo.

He walked around on the ground.

I picked him back up.

The cabdriver must have been watching me talk to the bird; he drove away. At least that’s what I thought just then, but I looked down at my shirt and saw how dirty it was, noticed a few drops of blood on my shirt from where we bled the runaways in the boiler room. It had been such a long night that it seemed like the night before. I spit-cleaned the bloody part of the shirt, got another cab, and had him take me to a pet store. I bet nobody ever broke into a pet store to leave a pet there. Or maybe they did. Either way, I left a note.

My name is Gonzalo. My wings have been clipped but you probably know that. I like pistachios. I’m your’s for free. I hope I’m worth more than your window.