Christopher Buehlman - The Lesser Dead

Luna.

We were moving through active tunnels, heading for Union Square station; it wasn’t far off now.

We found Luna stumbling along the wall, her hair singed, her hands cupped over her eyes. She wasn’t sobbing or anything, she was past that.

“Luna,” I said.

She said my name.

“What happened?”

“They killed everyone. Or did you mean to me? Oh. Yes, of course to me.”

Old Boy grabbed her elbow so she knew he was there.

“Um. Fire. Sammy had a spray can and a lighter. He held me down. Would have killed me, but they needed him. To fight Margaret. She was clobbering them, she and Billy. But she must be tired by now. Yes. I don’t think my eyes are coming back, are they? No, of course not.”

Old Boy whispered, “Get her off the live track.” And he sprinted after the awful sounds farther down. I tried to pick her up, but that was when she lost her shit.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING DON’T TOUCH ME! FOLLOW HIM KILL THEM GET THEM, JOEY, GET THEM!”

I tried to drag her but she flung herself down, groped till she had purchase on the track, held on.

“Let me get you out of here!” I said, yanking around her hips, crying.

“No,” she said, clutching the rails tighter, shaking now, keeping what was left of her face from me.

I let go of her hips.

“Go, Joey. Get them.”

I turned away from her, my wrist over my mouth.

“Protect your eyes,” she said, almost calmly. “They go after the eyes.”

I ran.

“They work together.”

That was the last thing I heard her say.

One backward glance showed me she was doing what I like to think I would have done. She was putting her neck on the running rails.

They were killing Chinchilla just as we got there. Manu and Alfie, I mean. Manu was on the ground, on his back, had Chinchilla’s arms cinched under his own armpits, kept a foot in Chinchilla’s chest, propping him up and anchoring him while Alfie twisted his head in violent spasms.

Old Boy ran at them. Past this, another fight, the four remaining kids were wearing down Margaret and Billy Bang, driving them back toward the light of the Union Square station.

All six of them? Had we lost so many without killing even one?

Chinchilla’s head came off in a spray of black blood. Alfie threw it at Old Boy’s feet and broke right fast as Old Boy dove for him; Old Boy stumbled, his knife gouged only air.

Yes. We lost so many without killing even one.

Hopelessness tried to wash over me but there was no time. Old Boy had caught Alfie but Alfie curled into a ball, protecting his neck with his arms. None of the truly awful things Old Boy did to him with that knife were enough to get through his arms or make him let go of the back of his own neck where his little fingers interlaced. Then here came Manu, straight for Old Boy’s eyes, gouging with his fingers. Old Boy had to cover up; he cut Manu now, flung him against the wall. I whaled on the side of Alfie’s head; he kicked me backward, broke a rib doing it, then Old Boy was on him again with that knife. I grabbed Alfie’s hands, tried to pry his arms down from around his neck so Old Boy could get at his head, but I wasn’t strong enough; it was like trying to pry a statue apart. Out of the corner of my eye, I glimpsed the fight at the tunnel’s mouth. Margaret and Billy were in trouble. They had put their backs against the wall so they couldn’t be surrounded. Margaret was working that shovel, had half decapitated Camilla, but only half; she was already healing, bent over in a caricature of someone with a migraine, using her little hands to fix her head in place. Meanwhile, Sammy flailed at Margaret’s eyes with his pencil, trying to clutch on the sleeve of her robe for purchase. No sooner had she swatted him away than here came Duncan, pitching a fistful of gravel at her eyes. Peter had broken Billy’s legs and now hacked at him with a machete; it was all Billy could do to protect his neck. One of Old Boy’s grenades fell near me; I leapt away from it, but then snatched it up and pocketed it when I saw it had the pin in it. I ran toward Margaret and Billy, keeping low and quiet.

I pulled the pin.

The children didn’t see me coming, had no wall at their backs.

Margaret’s shovel dug a groove in Sammy’s face, pushed him back toward me. There was no time for the words to form in my mind, but I was glad it was Sammy. I was so fucking glad it was nasty, blood-guzzling, eye-burning Sammy. I grabbed his waistband, jammed the grenade down the back of his pants, then pitched him toward the third rail like a bouncer evicting a drunk. He missed the rail, the bad part of it anyway, bounced off the wood covering on top. Landed on his feet like a cat. Drew his lips back and showed his fangs, blood from his shoveled-in but healing nose and cheek running into his mouth. Then he realized what was in his pants. He yelled, “NOT ME NOT ME!!!!” like he’d been chosen as “it” and might change the chooser’s mind. He reached down his trousers, but it was too late. It popped and the pain hit him, made him shriek; he ran at me but desperately, like he wanted help as he grew a tail of fire that quickly ate him. He screamed. Came at me like a torch, showering painful sparks and giving off vicious heat. Everyone jumped away from him.

He folded in half and burned like the dry, old thing he was. In a heap. By the wall.

He died.

Still burning, smoke gouting from him.

The fighting had stopped for a second, everybody getting an eyeful of Sammy’s big finish and a snootful of smoke, then Margaret punted Duncan’s head, I mean she was going for the goalposts, and the fight was on again. She drove her shovel into Peter, breaking an arm. I turned back to see if I could help Old Boy, but Manu jumped out of the smoke and clotheslined me, knocked me ass over tits.

Alfie stomped my spine on his way past; they were both fleeing Old Boy. Camilla was up now. She gasped at the ruin of Sammy and ran toward the light of Union Station. The rest of the children followed. Margaret stopped to help the wreck that was Billy to its feet.

We chased them.

I admit it was good to see them running.

From us.

Behind us, a light. A train was coming.

Luna.

I heard the squeal of its brakes, knew the driver saw her, would try to stop even though he knew he couldn’t, not in time.

Luna!

The train ground behind us slower, slower, raining sparks. People on board were yelling, they had seen the fire, might even have recognized that its fuel was boy-shaped. With the train and the fire blocking things up, we couldn’t go back in the tunnel if we wanted to. Whatever happened next was going to happen by the platform in Union Station, out in the open, under the lights. With an audience.

They turned. The children. They might have kept running, they ran like greyhounds, they could have left us farther and farther behind them until they dropped out of sight. They might have slipped like ghosts into one of the side paths or crawlways about which they seemed to have encyclopedic knowledge, but flight was not their goal. They were just regrouping, choosing their ground. They wanted us gone, all of us, the strong ones dead, the weak ones so badly frightened we’d never dream about returning, except perhaps years later, after they were gone again, to write a warning on the wall. NO, REALLY, DON’T TRUST THE CHILDREN.

So they turned.

Imagine you were on the platform that March night in 1978. Cold outside, so you were wearing a scarf, a jacket. If you’re a girl you probably had on tall boots, they were really in, maybe hair feathered back like Kristy McNichol or a Bee Gee. An older, heavyset guy with an unfeatherable comb-over blew sax, really good sax, but the crowd was cheap that night. Nobody wanted to take off their gloves or take their hands out of their pockets. He had a few crumpled dollars in his beret from the people who got on the last several trains, he had a few quarters and nickels, a strange abundance of dimes, but this particular crowd just wasn’t playing ball. Not the student-looking kid with the pile of Art-Garfunkel-kinky red hair, the big Adam’s apple, and the glasses that covered half his face. Not the blond guy in the powder-blue suit with his pants too short, showing just a little too much of the argyle socks that didn’t quite match the rest of him. Not the old lady clutching the purse with the strap like the St. Louis Arch against her stomach as if to stop someone from punching her there, and what was she doing out this late anyway? Not the black woman with the Dutch Chocolate lipstick and the opaque leopard-print scarf that looked too fragile to have ever been near a leopard. The guy on the horn wasn’t playing anything in particular, just letting it caterwaul like the soundtrack to some detective show. Over the horn, you heard something else, was it yelling? Next came the unmistakable squeal of a train’s brakes, and yes, definitely yelling. The sax stopped. Some looky-loos were actually crowding closer to the platform, stepping all over the beret full of dimes.