Christopher Buehlman - The Lesser Dead

I opened the driver’s-side door, motioning angry hurt Greek guy back, but he saw I had the suitcase, correctly guessed I meant to make a run for it, tried to stop me from opening the door, but I gave it a good shove and knocked him on his ass. Bella Abzug tried to get out of the taxi, too, but I kicked her door shut. Here came the Goodhair guy, coming to his senses, slurring, “That’s my car!” through broken teeth. Here came the bicyclist with him, chicken-winging his hurt arm, trying to get a good look at my face. Here came the cop on the horse, the horse making crazy eyes at me; I knew it wanted to bite me or step on me, both at the same time if it could manage it.

“Fuck this.”

I hugged my suitcase and jumped up high, my butt on the roof of the car, and I rolled backward. This was ninja shit. I hit the sidewalk on my feet just as somebody yelled, “That’s the kid, grab him!” and somebody else yelled, “He tried to steal that car!” Michelangelo was way ahead, running in his out-of-season Christmas sweater, dragging his leash, and I ran that way, too. Up ahead, a crowd had gathered to see why the tree had fallen; I couldn’t run as fast as I wanted to, two Good Samaritans had almost caught me. This is New York, where a guy can stab a girl to death in front of thirty people, but let a harmless-looking kid try to steal something, ten guys form a posse. People want their name in the paper, but not if they’re going to get hurt.

I passed a telephone booth, heard the driver of the delivery truck saying, “… hit a tree, I’m okay, cops are on their—” and then he yelled, “HEY!” because I was turning him and his phone booth over to block the guys running after me. One stopped, knew a kid shouldn’t have been able to do that, but the other guy meant business, skip-stepped around Michelangelo, who had stopped to eat a French fry, hopped the booth, planting his size-twelve work boot right on the glass over the hysterical face of the horizontal truck driver. The guy was coming right at me in his brownish ’fro and sunglasses. He looked like a white Reggie Jackson, but that’s what happens when you watch too much TV, everybody looks like someone famous. I turned the corner; this sidewalk wasn’t crowded, I would turn on the jets now and burn this guy, but damn if my suitcase didn’t clip a trash can and pop open, all my best shirts and pants popping out and raining down. I stopped and grabbed some; I wanted my numchuks, but they had rolled out into the middle of the street and here came the lunkhead do-gooder. I smelled something shit-like but had no time to find out why. I tore down the sidewalk, vaulted over a bum, slapped a slice of folded pizza and its greasy paper plate out of a pimply teenaged guy’s hand just for the sheer fuck you of it—I mean my numchuks were gone—then I skittered up a ten-foot-high fence using just my feet and one hand. I left the Good Samaritan guy in the dust. I started to laugh, and then I realized that my clothes had fallen in shit with pieces of straw in it, probably that cop’s horse’s shit, and now I had it on the shirt I was wearing, too, because I had grabbed it all against my chest.

“Motherfucker,” I said, in my fouled shirt and my good-smelling hair.

So much for Pennsylvania.

I went down into the subway at 23rd and Avenue of the Americas, walked the tracks until I came to the service shaft leading down to a tunnel that led to our loops. I wanted to wash what remained of my laundry, talk to Cvetko, and think about what to do next. I didn’t really trust anybody but him, and Margaret. I guess I trusted Margaret. And Luna. Okay, and Billy Bang. Maybe I could get Cvetko and the rest to come away with me somewhere; Cvetko was better at planning things and Luna kept her cool better than I did. Billy just made me laugh. The four of us would get along okay, I thought. Hell, maybe even Margaret was ready to give the loops a rest and try something else. That grenade had really put the fear of Jesus in me, not really Jesus, but you know what I’m saying. That thing would melt your face off, just two bright seconds between undead and dead-dead. I could still hear Gua Gua yelling.

But I knew better. Margaret never had anything of her own in life and damned if she was letting anyone take this place from her. Her kingdom. Her loops.

A train rumbled overhead, shaking the walls. That was when I heard it. A kid laughed.

I never found out which kid.

I probably should have looked for him, or her, but I ran.

“Hey, short stuff!” somebody stage-whispered above me.

I looked up and saw Billy Bang spidered against the roof, looking down at me. “Anybody following you?” he said.

“Maybe.”

He dropped down, took a good long look down the tunnel behind me. Then he got close enough for me to smell the fear under his aftershave, whispered into my ear. “Margaret’s looking for you. She wants all hands on deck, keeping lookout at choke points. She’s got Old Boy combing the tunnels in a loop; whoever finds them bangs on pipes: Bang in threes means we all go there, fast. Just keep banging means they’re coming and we should play defense. No fuckin’ around this time, she says. We got to peel ’em. You ready to do that?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said, “well, that’s my official story, too. But all this war shit? Man, I just bite necks and play guitar. Billy Bang might not be around much after this.”

“She home?”

“Far as I know.”

“Better go see what she wants me to do.”

He gave me an ironic salute.

“And hey,” he said. I turned around. “Watch yourself. We found Ruth. I found her. She was fucked-up, man.”

“Fucked-up how?”

“Let’s just leave it at fucked-up.”

Being afraid isn’t all bad. It wakes you up. You notice things. I saw Sammy from a long way off, his red bob of hair standing out against the darker walls behind him. He was walking the tracks between stations, just above where you go down to get to Margaret’s loops. As far away as he was, though, he knew I was behind him. I think he had been waiting for me to catch up. I thought about trying to find a pipe to bang on, but it was just him. I could handle just him.

“Sammy,” I said, walking faster. “Come here.”

He stopped. He turned around to face me. His clothes were bloody as hell, and he had tacky, half-dried blood smeared around his mouth, like a kid in Central Park in the summer with a Kool-Aid face. Was eating all they did? It was… animalistic. At just that moment I was sure I wasn’t like them, that they were a different kind of vampire altogether. A worse kind.

“What are you going to do, Joey?” he said, smiling a little. “Are you going to kill me now for being bad?” He let me walk right up on him. I didn’t like this. “At least do it quickly,” he said. “I shall be very brave.”

He closed his eyes now, or pretended to, keeping one slitted open as though he were cheating saying grace. The wind kicked up in the tunnel; a train was coming, I could see its light. I put my hand on his chin and grabbed the back of his hair with the other. One good twist with all I had, and even if I couldn’t uncrown him, I might fuck him up enough to lay him down in front of the train. I might even be able to throw him on the third rail.

Maybe he can do those same things to you.

I gave his head a little jerk, like a dry run. He was trying not to giggle. He was drooling a little, too.