Underground

The shapeless female nodded.

“You guys seeing more of those creeps down here?” Quinton asked.

“The bad ones? Not more’n normal.”

“Anything else? Critters? Walkers?”

One of the shapes rocked back and forth. “I seen a… a crawling thing, long as a snake, hairy like a yak.”

“A yak!” one of the other shapes said. “You ain’t never seen no yak.”

“Then hairy like a musk ox—I seen plenty musk ox when I was home in Alaska at that qiviut farm.”

“And a buncha rats,” another said. “We saw ‘em. Rats ru

They began chattering, throwing in comments in a flurry, and I couldn’t keep track of which lump of filthy cloth was talking when.

“Bugs. Been a lotta bugs for winter time.”

“And the shadow people.”

“Lotta rats, yeah. Big ‘uns!”

“That’s trouble—rats. Something’s stirred ‘em up.”

“It’s the cold.”

“Maybe they’s scared of the yak!”

“And the crows,” said Jay.

They got quiet and stared at Blue Jay.

“No birds down here, Jay.”

“I know that. But I seen a crow with Je

“Why didn’t you see no crow when Go-cart died?” “I ain’t no medicine man. I just seen the one crow.” “Do crows come out when people die?” I asked in a low voice.

I didn’t like the clutching feeling that rasped up my spine as I thought of those big crows and Go-cart or of the gleaming eyes of creatures in the tu

There was a glimmer in the Grey around them and one of the other lumps spoke in a slow, old voice, the voice of Grandpa Dan. “Sometimes. Crows are the messengers of gods and the spirits of our ancestors. They speak of death and magic. They say crows flew all day over Battleground back during the last days of the People—before the reservations. I did see Jay’s crow, but it said nothing I understood. Maybe it was a raven though. Ravens intercede for us in the world of the spirits—maybe that’s why it came here, to fight for Je

There was an uncomfortable silence before one of the others added, “My old grandma said the animals used to talk to us long ago, but now they’re afraid and they lose their power with all these white men around. You hardly see real animals anymore in the cities. ‘Cepting rats and dogs and mangy cats and they don’t talk so much.”

Grandpa Dan nodded. “Down here near the mud where we used to fish, maybe they talk more… Maybe they remember more what it was like to be real animals.”

Then he looked directly at me and something atavistic in me stirred and quailed at his fierce glance. “These mudflats, they were the life of our people. It is still ours, even if it is only a ghost place now, buried under this city. We can’t leave it. We’d do anything to protect it, if we could. We will do so when the need is on us.” Then he turned his filmed eyes back to Jay, releasing me to shiver a moment. “That’s why the animals and our ancestor spirits still come here—to keep the land safe. Maybe that’s why your raven came down here, Blue Jay.”

“Maybe that’s why Franks yak come here—to talk,” another voice bantered.

“Was a musk ox and musk ox don’t talk.”

“Do you remember what happened in 1949?” I asked Dan.

“When was that?” Dan asked. “That was after the war—the Second World War. I was just a boy then.”

The people around the circle watched with suspicion. I’d come with a friend, but that didn’t guarantee they’d trust me, especially interrogating an old man they respected. I pushed on, but I chose my questions with care.

“Did you live here in Seattle?”

Dan shook his head and shrugged, growing tiny and bent before my eyes. It seemed as if the wise old man had vanished with the movement, leaving a smaller, weaker substitute behind who mumbled in a quavering voice, “Nah, I lived on the rez. I never lived here then.” He seemed befuddled and I wasn’t sure it was an act.

“Did you hear about the earthquake here in April of 1949?”

“Oh, sure!” another piped up. “Buildings fell down. That’s why they torn down the old hotel and built that parking lot.”

“You suppose that’s where all them ghosts the medicine man drove away come from?” another asked.

“What ghosts?” old Dan asked.

“Them old ‘skins. You remember. Back in… what, ‘ninety-four? They used to raise hell up ‘n’ down the tu

The old man shook his head, deep in its blankets. “I don’t remember that.”

“Well, they did it. And he danced and chanted and burned some nasty-ass stuff and sent ‘em on their way.”

“Where was that?” I asked.

“First and Yesler. That’s the baddest corner. There’s an old dance hall girl there and her boyfriend. He was a bank clerk at the old bank there. Sometimes y’see ‘em there. And down Oxy. There’s a lotta ghosts down Oxy.”

That I could attest to myself. But that was about as far as we got. No matter how we asked—or who, when we moved on to the next group and the next—no one had any useful information about 1949 or the ghosts of natives or of zombies or monsters that ate people and set the dead to walking. The natives had a strange sense of proprietorship for the place; several talked about it as Grandpa Dan had, saying it was the closest you could get to the “old land.”

“Do you know what we called this place before your people came?” one had asked.

“No,” I replied.

“Duwamps. Fu

Another said something in a coughing, lilting language and the speaker answered back the same way. Then they laughed and the bottles passed again. And it was the same in every group that talked about the mudflats: a slightly drunken declaration of protectiveness and pride even as they huddled in the hollows of the ground, in the face of the amnesia and disdain of society that drew a pall over everyone down below and everything that crept there, consigning it to Lethe.

We had been up and down hidden stairs and through obscure doors, dragged or dropped or slid or crawled through holes and grates, and when Quinton and I finally reemerged at the end of our exploration, I was as ragged and filthy as any of the homeless.

And as tired. I tripped over a rough section of cobble and felt the heel of my dress boot snap off with a stabbing pain to my knee.

“Oh, well,” I muttered as Quinton caught me. “I didn’t really like these shoes.”

I did feel bad about my coat, though, since I’d torn one of the sleeves and it was so dirty that I doubted dry cleaning would save it.

Quinton held me upright for a second longer than he needed to, and I didn’t mind it at all. “You OK?” he asked, his voice a little husky.

I pulled my gaze from his before anything could get out of hand. “You keep asking me that. I’m not exactly a fragile flower of femininity,” I said, looking down at myself. I didn’t have the athletic, whipcord body I’d had as a dancer, but I didn’t think I’d lost much by adding a little padding over the muscles and trading in my jazz shoes for something more practical—if a bit clunky. And, of course, I now carried a gun as well.

“I know, but… I like the excuse to hold your hand.” Then he diffused the moment with a forced grin. “I’m a guy who lives in a bunker, remember? I don’t get to paw that many attractive women—any women, actually.”

“Well, that makes me feel special,” I answered back.

“I do my best.” Then he frowned. “But, damn, you need to get home.”

“Are you sick of my company already?”

“No, but you’re barely keeping on your feet—I got you up pretty early today. And you could really use a shower. You smell like basements and alleys.”