The Lesser Dead

by Christopher Buehlman

  “I got it,” Billy said.

  Then she stopped.

  I swear she tilted her head like a dog hearing a silent whistle, like she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

  “And who the fuck is this?”

  Baldy was standing near an actual bald guy. A very Italian-looking bald guy, clearly a fresh vampire, lots of scars. Shoulder muscles like he juggled engine blocks. Clearly good at getting places without being noticed; even Old Boy had missed him. Dominic stood on the other side. All of them had visible guns, one in a belt, two under the arm in shoulder holsters.

  Balducci said, “I figured the meeting was a good time to introduce my friend Paulie.”

  The Paulie guy nodded, barely. It’s the way you nod at somebody you’re probably going to try to kill later. Margaret just stood there for another second looking so outraged she was almost amused.

  Before I tell you what happened, I’m going to tell you what I think Baldy was thinking. The hardass on his left was none other than Paulo “The Screw” Milanese, a hit man with thirty jobs under his belt. His calling card was to twist a corkscrew into your head, what was left of it, you get the idea. This guy was in the papers. An FBI sting had busted six other guys in his immediate circle, but the Screw shot his way out and went to a safe house, Balducci figured out where. Gave him a proposition. This sounded like a good way to avoid prison and put off hell. Baldy kept him in hiding above-ground, taught him a thing or two, then figured he’d introduce him when Margaret was in trouble. Figured he was a good counterbalance to Old Boy, who wasn’t on top of his game just lately because he was letting the kids feed off him too much. He figured Margaret wouldn’t go to the mat with the odds evened up and the group divided.

  He figured wrong.

  Margaret pulled the gun out of the Screw’s holster and shot Baldy in the head. Fast. While he was stunned and the Screw was gunless, she grabbed her shovel. Dominic ran. Old Boy’s knife was out and he went to work on Milanese; they rolled into the water-pipe area, slammed against the moldy wall right next to where it said RUST. Before Baldy could recover, Margaret shot twice more and scrambled his brains again. She dropped the gun and launched herself. Her approach with the shovel was almost like ballet. Leap, leap, half leap, crouch, uppercut.

  Baldy was dead so fast his body took two steps and fell.

  Old Boy finished with his man, flung the hacked-off head against the wall. It was still trying to talk.

  I had never actually seen anybody get their head taken off before, now it was three in two days. I had to get out of the tunnels. Everything was going to hell.

  If you’re not a vampire yourself, or have never seen one move for real, you’re thinking, What was everybody doing standing around? If your experience is a little broader, however, you know how fast these things go down. As fast as two BOMP-BOMP-Shhs in Queen’s “We Will Rock You.” As fast as a car wreck.

  But I’m getting to that.

  Something else had happened.

  When Old Boy and Milanese went thumping up against the wall, they scraped a bunch of mold off it. It turns out some long-ago wall-scrawler had not written RUST near the busted pipe that served as our fountain. There was another letter there. Luna scraped more mold away to reveal a T.

  TRUST

  “Look there,” Billy Bang said, pointing where the Screw’s head had bounced off the wall at another point just to the right of TRUST. A tennis ball’s width of white paint shone through the caked-on greenish-black carpet of schmutz.

  Baldy’s dead hand was waving in the air, like Help me I’m headless, but everybody was more interested in the wall. Like we knew it was significant. Billy stepped forward, took the bloody shovel from Margaret, started scraping mold away.

  THE appeared.

  He went to the right of that.

  C

  “Cops!” the normally almost catatonic Sandy yelled, like she was playing Wheel of Fortune. Billy kept scraping. I stole a glance at Cvetko, saw his wheels turning.

  CHILD

  Billy stopped.

  “Keep going,” Luna said.

  He did.

  CHILDREN

  “Trust the Children,” Billy said. “I think they wrote that they own selves.”

  Most of them laughed. Not Cvetko. And not Margaret.

  Billy rested on his shovel.

  “Are ye an idiot?” Margaret said.

  Sounded like eedjeet.

  She took the shovel from Billy and walked to the left of the word TRUST. Scraped. The next word appeared and the whole message stood before us.

  DON’T TRUST THE CHILDREN

  Everyone gasped in chorus. Cvetko, too.

  Then he said something I didn’t understand.

  It sounded like Many, many tickle a parson.

  But it wasn’t in English.

  “I’m sick of shit I don’t understand,” I said, and walked away.

  * * *

  I spent a long time packing my suitcase; it was one of those 1940s ones with the delicate little latches, but real solid otherwise. Nothing a gorilla could jump up and down on, but classy, kind of an orangey color between a brick and a pumpkin, not that that’s important, I just like that color. I stuffed it as full as I could, even sat on it to press it down. I had no idea where I was going to end up, but doubted anybody sold nice vests and coats out in dog-on-a-trunk land with corn and Hee Haw and guys that stuck a piece of grass in their mouth while they talked to you. Margaret, Cvetko, and Billy had been talking about who wrote DON’T TRUST THE CHILDREN, but the crux of it was that Margaret was going to kill them tomorrow night, even though none of them could quite convince themselves the wall was talking about these children. That was like twenty years’ worth of mold we scraped off. Still, it seemed to superstitious Margaret like a sign, and she was all Off with their heads! Old Boy and Chinchilla would come with her, and she even had Billy halfway convinced. Cvetko wasn’t saying much about it, taking it all in and pondering. I just wanted to leave. The first time I walked out, though, Margaret stopped me, told me she wanted me to go tell Ruth what was up and that she should keep them there.

  I knew better than to buck a direct order, but I must have looked like I just got told to shovel out a Dumpster full of horse apples, because Cvetko spoke up and volunteered to go instead of me. I could have kissed him. Actually I did kiss him, right on the forehead, because I realized it might be my last chance. I gave him a look that I hoped let him know this was it. This was good-bye. I think he already knew. He patted my shoulder and gave my arm a hard squeeze. Margaret waved me off and I went to pack. There was no rule against anybody leaving, but I didn’t want to risk pissing her off so I didn’t announce my plans. I figured I’d send Cvets a postcard at his dummy address once I got to Peoria or wherever.

  I had it all planned out, as far as a guy like me plans anything. I would charm somebody with a car, get them to drive me out of the city, ditch them, get a hotel. Maybe Pennsylvania. I heard it was pretty. I could come back to the city or find another city, maybe Philly, when I ran out of dough. Anyway, I just couldn’t take any more peeling. Biting people was one thing, but I was going to feel the knife going through that kid’s neck bone for the rest of my nights. I knew I had to get a few hours’ sleep, it was already like ten A.M., but I had no idea how I was going to be able to stop thinking about it. Turns out it wasn’t so hard after all. I was exhausted. Only I didn’t get to sleep too long.

  * * *

  Cvetko came back with the news about three P.M.: Ruth was gone. The kids were gone. The platform at the 18th Street station was awash in vampire blood. Margaret woke the rest of us up. She’s not a gentle waker-upper, either; she banged on my fridge door with her sandal and said, “Rise and shine.” When I sat up, she cut her eyes to my suitcase and said, “Where d’ya think you’re goin’?” Before I could answer, and I didn’t really have an answer,
she said, “I’ll tell you where. You’re comin’ with us to find those little monsters and shorten ’em all a head.”

  Gonzalo flapped his wings real big; I don’t think he liked Margaret. I don’t think he liked living underground. I caught him pulling feathers out of his own chest; he was working on a little bald spot there.

  “I can’t, Margaret. I just can’t.”

  That was a mistake, but what do you want, I was sleepy. Next thing I knew she had me by both ears like she really wouldn’t mind ripping them off. “You can and you will. You’re the one brought those false, murderin’ little devils among us, and you’ll help us sort ’em out. Then you can go wherever you care to go, if you think anyone else’ll have you.”

  She kicked my suitcase over, making Gonzalo squawk, and left. And then she came back, still pissed. “I’ve known you forty years now, Joseph Peacock, and I’ll tell you somethin’ about yourself, whether you want to hear it or not. You start real strong but you finish like a runt. You’re forever getting yourself into messes you haven’t got the britches to get yourself out of, or else letting people walk on you. That little girlie that left you cold for bein’ a Jew-boy? I’d have peeled her.”

  “But you said . . .”

  “The devil with what I said. Do you think anything in this world would have tasted as good as her princess blood pourin’ hot down your throat? No matter who her fuckin’ daddy was? But you didn’t have the stones for it. And that boy, Freddie.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “You were stupid enough to tell him what you were, so what did he do?”

  “He didn’t believe me.”

  “Tried to let the blind up on you, put sunshine to you. Damn near did it, too, and that would have been the end of you.”

  I looked at the scar on my elbow.

  “He just didn’t believe. He wanted to see what would happen.”

  “He saw, all right. Did you ever wonder what happened to him?”

  “No. I never went around him anymore.”

  “Well, I went around him. I did him. I drank him dead on a tugboat while he begged me not to and I threw what was left of him in the East River.”

  I just blinked at her.

  She smiled an ugly smile.

  “Laws are for the stupid. That’s what I learned all them years ago, swimmin’ as hard as I could and still sinkin’. I never told you this, but there was just a little part of me that admired what you did to me, putting that necklace on me. Not at first, of course, I was for killin’ you, and I did. But later, on thinkin’ about it, I understood it better. Oh, it was a wretched bit of business, a spoiled child’s petty revenge. But here’s the thing. You wanted me out of the house and you got me out because you were willing to get dirty to do it. And that’s how the world is.”

  “I’m sorry for what I did, though. I was wrong.”

  She slapped me.

  She actually slapped me.

  “No, you weren’t. You were God’s instrument. I failed at everything but this. You made me this.” She squatted down close to me now, said the next bit practically into my ear.

  “Now, I don’t know if you’ve worked this out in your fond brain or not, but them children are no children, so don’t you be squeamish about hurtin’ ’em. They want what we have. This place. And they mean to take it. They fooled us all because they were willin’ to get dirty, and if we don’t get dirtier, they’ll kill us. All of us.”

  * * *

  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 br
eath 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.”