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Christopher Buehlman

THE LESSER DEAD

PART 1

FOR STARTERS

I’m going to tell you about a year. This year. 1978. A lot of shit is happening and I think somebody had better write it down before we all forget.

New York City is the place.

If you’re looking for a story about nice people doing nice things, this isn’t for you. You will be burdened with an unreliable narrator who will disappoint and repel you at every turn.

Still with me?

Too bad for you.

I can’t wait to break your heart.

I’m going to take you someplace dark and damp where good people don’t go. I’m going to introduce you to monsters. Real ones. I’m going to tell you stories about hurting people, and if you like those stories, it means you’re bad.

Shall we go on?

Good. I hate people who pretend they’re something they’re not.

We’re going into the tunnels.

We’ll start up here in Chelsea; there’s a bricked-up ground-level window with half the bricks out, not a big space but big enough, then we’ll go deeper, down where I stay.

Where we stay.

I hope bad smells don’t bother you.

I hope you brought your own light; I don’t need one.

I hope you’re not fat.

Here’s a little taste of what you’re in for, out of sequence, but I told you how unreliable I am. It’s not all this nasty, but this is probably rough if you’re not used to it.

We heard them before we saw them. Hunchers. That’s what we called people who hunched in the tunnels. We stayed in the tunnels too of course, the deeper tunnels where no sunlight came at all, but we weren’t Hunchers.

We weren’t even people anymore.

When Margaret saw that her home had been broken into, she didn’t hesitate. She tossed off her flip-flops and marched right for the open trapdoor with me behind her, not caring whether I followed, not caring how many of them there were, and there had to be at least two to pull the chain and get that trapdoor up—it was a big heavy bastard of a door made from part of an old subway car and broken-up seats. She walked with one hand balled on her hip, her stained bathrobe open enough to see her tit if you cared to. She was pissed. It was her place, after all. She was our duly elected mayor.

“Goddamn it,” she whispered, kicking a peeping shower of rats out of her way. She picked up and threw down a shred of a hamburger wrapper in disgust. Whoever they were, they had brought food. You don’t bring food into the loops.

They had tied belts together to lower themselves into the hole. A weak light danced down there, a flashlight, and I heard the sound of a lighter. Somebody sneezed a wet one. Somebody else laughed.

She didn’t bother with the belts. Just dropped down. I stayed up and watched. This was really a job for one vampire. Normally Old Boy or Ruth would have handled this. Old Boy was like her part-time bodyguard, lived in an abandoned train car just down the tracks past Purgatory, but he was a secretive fucker and you never knew where he was. Ruth was out hunting. She was always hungry.