Kat Richardson - Underground

“In the tunnel.” He looked a little green.

“Yeah. I figured you didn’t need to see it.” I let the subject drop and changed direction. “I like your day better. How ‘bout you tell me more about puzzle boxes?”

“That one’s really unusual,” he started, pointing at the ball on the table beside me. His eyes began to shine as he went on. Will loved these sorts of odd old objects—and it had been the more accessible mysteries of things like this that had taken him to England and away from the uncomfortable quandary of my strangeness. “Most puzzle boxes are square- or cube-shaped, and the famous Japanese ones have intricately inlaid surface patterns to obscure the moving parts. Normally, I’d call something like this one—a round one—a burr puzzle, but those aren’t hollow and puzzle boxes aren’t usually round, so this is a hybrid.”

I sank into the warm rhythm of his speech, watched his pleasure in the conversation turn the aura around his head a bright gold, and didn’t think about dead men in tunnels for a while and wished this quiet moment wasn’t doomed to end.

As we left the restaurant, stepping back out into the deepened cold made more frigid by comparison with the cozy warmth we’d left, I tucked the puzzle ball into my bag. Beneath the restaurants doorway lights, a handful of moths trailed ghostly doubles in front of my face, making hash of my vision as we stepped onto the sidewalk and I slipped a little on the icy cement. Will caught my arm and kept me upright, the warmth of his touch spreading through me. The flutter of moth wings sounded like spectral whispers in my ears.

“Can I give you a lift back to your truck?” Will offered. “Mine’s just under the viaduct.”

He’d have been foolish to refuse a two-block walk to a comfortable ride in favor of walking the six frozen blocks to my parking structure or standing in the cold waiting for a bus. And having put a few patches over the rough spots of the morning and afternoon, the rest of the evening looked encouraging. I accepted and we began walking toward Elliot Bay.

The viaducts elevated double-decker road looms over the flatland of the waterfront like a concrete house of cards waiting to collapse onto the desolate parking lot wasteland beneath it. Blocks of old warehouse buildings on one side face the patchwork quilt of the waterfront businesses on the other. Crazed, pitted blacktop, striped with parking stalls and lane markers, stretches the width of the missing city block between them. An uneven fringe of stunted shrubs marks the edge of the old trolley line, but nothing else grows under the viaduct’s unloved shade.

I batted at the moths that muttered around my head and nearly missed the small animal that darted out from the scruffy hedge. Wan yellow light from the streetlamps on the waterfront gleamed on its russet fur. Doglike with huge pointed ears and a brush tail, it ran into the empty lane and then darted a few steps toward us before it cast a look over its shoulder and bounded away into darkness, dragging a shadow behind it.

Will stared after it and asked, “What was that?”

“A… fox, I think.” I didn’t know why, but a shiver of dread swept over me.

“Fox?” he questioned, taking a couple of steps away from me, following the vanished animal. “Where did it come from? We’re a long way from the zoo to be spotting an escapee.”

I turned to look where the fox had glanced and saw two vaguely human figures emerging from a shadow that should have been too small to hold them. The world around them boiled in the Grey and heaved layers of time like stacked plates in an earthquake. I faltered forward a step, and the figures moved into a thin slice of streetlight.

In the ordinary light, they looked like two men dressed in rags, stumbling a little from drink or debility, but as they moved forward into shadow again, they shed their normal aspect in my eyes. One was the shaggy creature that had braced me in Occidental Park and it was leading the other, shambling and putrescent, toward me. The clinging cowl of black threads and Grey strands like spider web wasn’t necessary for me to know that the thing was dead—a walking corpse. I gagged on the stink of decay the zombie carried with it.

The hairy man-thing held out a hand to me. “Help, lady. Free—”

Will pulled me back and stepped between us. “Don’t touch her,” he warned the scarred creature. “We don’t have anything for you. Go your way.”

“Will,” I started.

He put a protective arm up in front of me but kept his eyes on the two creatures. I knew he didn’t see what I did. He must have thought they were just a couple of bums panhandling a bit aggressively.

I began objecting again. “No, Will. Don’t!”

Will tried to push me back. The matted hair on the furry one’s head and neck rose like hackles on an angry dog. It lowered its head and growled. “No. Need lady!” Fury sparked in its green eyes and it jumped at Will, butting its head into his midsection.

Will tumbled backward and both the monstrosities rushed for him, voicing weird cries. Bright lines of Grey energy rippled around them as the three figures tangled on the ground, thrashing.

“No!” I shouted, plunging into the fray. I didn’t want to touch the Grey things and I didn’t want them to touch Will any more than they had. I grabbed onto him and hauled backward as hard as I could, pushing back on the Grey as I went. I shoved the edge between us and the shambling, furious things that flailed at Will. “Stop it!” I yelled at them. “Stop!”

Will’s hand connected with the zombie’s face and a chunk of rotten flesh fell away, trailing Grey strands on Will’s fingers like glue.

The dead mans jaw sagged open, unhinged on one side. Will recoiled with a shout, stumbling back and staring at the gaping thing and its feral companion. His shout turned into inarticulate sounds of horror, but I didn’t look back at him.

The shaggy thing lurched forward again and I slammed my forearm across its chest, shuddering at the touch of its matted hair and knotted body.

“Stop!” I ordered. “Stop now or I won’t help you.” I was panting from the adrenaline surge. “That’s what you want, isn’t it? My help?”

The thing whimpered with frustration but turned its gaze to me at last. “Yes. Help,” it whined. It reached for the undead man and drew him closer to me.

“Trapped. This spirit, tangled here. One of my people, before your kind. Free it.”

I peered at the standing dead man and saw a tangle of Grey threads, yellow, blue, and black under the unnatural spider web of soft Grey—similar to the stuff I’d seen in the train tunnel—that seemed to bind the rotting flesh together. The threads were inside the body, but the rot was well advanced and only the web of Grey held it to form. I’d pulled a living Grey thing apart before, deconstructed it by force, hating every burning instant. As I looked at it, I could make out a shadow of a face amid the tangled strands of energy and magic, a face that suffered and implored with a look where voice had long failed.

It was disgusting and repellent, but… I’d have to make the best of it. I didn’t know if I wanted the blue strand or the yellow one, but if I pulled them both out, I could disentangle them more easily. This old corpse shouldn’t have been walking around for any reason—he’d been dead a long, long time and deserved to lie down for good. My stomach lurched, but I braced myself to do it, sending a muttered “Gods help me…” to the sky as I pushed my hands into the rotten flesh.

The threads of spirit felt like live wires and burned my fingers. I gasped and bit off a yelp of pain as I hooked the living energy in my fists, squeezed my eyes closed against the coming flare of agony, and pulled. Fire and electric shocks jolted up my arms and down my spine, raging through my chest. And then the stands broke free. I staggered back, opening my clenched fists and closed eyes.