The Best of Subterranean

by William Schafer

  “It was bad enough when you slept with her,” she says, weeping. “That was practically incest. But I saw the tape. The one you gave [Yumiko]. The one she’s going to put up online. Don’t you understand? She’s me. He’s you. That’s us, on that tape, that’s us having sex.”

  “It was good enough for the Egyptians,” I say, trying to console her. “Besides, it isn’t us. Remember? They aren’t us.”

  I try to remember what it was like when it was just us. The Olds say we slept in the same crib. We had our own language. [Hero] cried when I fell down. [Hero] has always been the one who cries.

  “How did you know what I was planning?”

  “Oh, please, [ ],” [Hero] says. “I always know when you’re about to go off the deep end. You go around with this smile on your face, like the whole world is sucking you off. Besides, Darius told me you’d been asking about really bad shit. He likes me, you know. He likes me much better than you.”

  “He’s the only one,” I say.

  “Fuck you,” [Hero] says. “Anyway, it’s not like you were the only one with plans for tonight. I’m sick of this place. Sick of these people.”

  There is a martial line of shabti on a stone shelf. Our friends. People who would like to be our friends. Rock stars that the Olds used to hang out with, movie stars. Saudi princes who like fat, gloomy girls with money. She picks up a prince, throws it against the wall.

  “Fuck [Vyvienne] and all her unicorns,” [Hero] says.

  She picks up another shabti. “Fuck [Yumiko].”

  I take [Yumiko] from her. “I did,” I say. “I give her a three out of five. For enthusiasm.” I drop the shabti on the floor.

  “You are such a slut, [ ],” [Hero] says. “Have you ever been in love? Even once?”

  She’s fishing. She knows. My heart is broken, and [Hero] knows. Is that how it works?

  Why did you sleep with him? Are you in love with him? He’s me. Why aren’t I him? Fuck both of you.

  “Fuck our parents,” I say. I pick up the oil lamp and throw it at the shabti on the shelf.

  The room gets brighter for a moment, then darker.

  “It’s funny,” [Hero] says. “We used to do everything together. And then we didn’t. And right now, it’s weird. You planning on doing what you were going to do. And me, what I was planning. It’s like we were in each other’s brains again.”

  “You went out and bought a biological agent? We should have gone in on it together. Buy two and get one free.”

  “No,” [Hero] says. She looks shy, like she’s afraid I’ll laugh at her.

  I wait. Eventually she’ll tell me what she needs to tell me, and then I’ll hand over the little metal canister that Nikolay gave me, and she’ll unlock the door to the burial chamber. Then we’ll go back up into the world, and that video won’t be the end of the world. It will just be something that people talk about. Something to make the Olds crazy.

  “I was going to kill myself,” [Hero] says. “You know, down here. I was going to come down here during the party, and then I decided that I didn’t want to do it by myself.”

  My heart is broken, and so [Hero] wants to die. Is that how it works?

  “And then I found out what you were up to,” [Hero] says. “I thought I ought to stop you. Then I wouldn’t have to be alone. And I would finally live up to my name. I’d save everybody. Even if they never knew it.”

  “You were going to kill yourself,” I repeat. “How?”

  “Like this,” [Hero] says. She reaches into the jeweled box on her belt. There’s a little thing curled up in there, an enameled loop of chain, black and bronze. It uncoils in her hand, becomes a snake.

  * * *

  [Alicia] was the first of us to get a Face. I got mine when I was ten. I didn’t really know what was going on. I met all these boys my age, and then the Olds sat down and had a talk with me. They explained what was going on, said that I got to pick which Face I wanted. I picked the one who looked the nicest, the one who looked like he might be fun to hang out with. That’s how stupid I was back then.

  [Hero] couldn’t choose, so I did it for her. Pick her, I said. That’s how strange life is. I picked her out of all the others.

  * * *

  [Yumiko] said she’d already talked to her Face. (We talk to our Faces as little as possible, although sometimes we sleep with each others’. Forbidden fruit is always freakier. Is that why I did what I did? I don’t know. How am I supposed to know?) [Yumiko] said her Face agreed to sign a new contract when [Yumiko] turns eighteen. She doesn’t see any reason to give up having a Face.

  * * *

  [Nishi] is [Preeti]’s younger sister. They only broke ground on her pyramid last summer. Upper management teams from her father’s company came out to lay the first course of stones. A team-building exercise. Usually it’s prisoners from the Supermax prison out in Pelican Bay. Once they get to work, they mostly look the same. It’s hard work. We like to go out and watch.

  Every once in a while a consulting archeologist or an architect will come over and try to make conversation. They think we want context.

  They talk about grave goods, about how one day archeologists will know what life was like because a couple of girls decided they wanted to build their own pyramids.

  We think that’s funny.

  They like to complain about the climate. Apparently it isn’t ideal. “Of course, they may not be standing give or take a couple of hundred years. Once you factor in geological events. Earthquakes. There’s the geopolitical dimension. There’s graverobbers.”

  They go on and on about the cunning of graverobbers.

  We get them drunk. We ask them about the curse of the mummies just to see them get worked up. We ask them if they aren’t worried about the Olds. We ask what used to happen to the men who built the pyramids in Egypt. Didn’t they used to disappear, we ask? Just to make sure nobody knew where the good stuff was buried? We say there are one or two members of the consulting team who worked on [Alicia]’s pyramid that we were friendly with. We mention we haven’t been able to get hold of them in a while, not since the pyramid was finished.

  * * *

  They were up on the unfinished outer wall of [Nishi]’s pyramid. I guess they’d been up there all night. Talking. Making love. Making plans.

  They didn’t see me. Invisible, that’s what I am. I had my phone. I filmed them until my phone ran out of memory. There was a unicorn down in the meadow by a pyramid. [Alicia]’s pyramid. Two impossible things. Three things that shouldn’t exist. Four.

  That was when I gave up on becoming someone new, the running, the kale, the whole thing. That was when I gave up on becoming the new me. Somebody already was that person. Somebody already had the only thing I wanted.

  * * *

  “Give me the code.” I say it over and over again. I don’t know how long it’s been. [Hero]’s arm is greenish-black and blown up like a balloon. I tried sucking out the venom. Maybe that did some good. Maybe I didn’t think of it soon enough.

  “[ ]?,” [Hero] says. “I don’t want to die.”

  “I don’t want you to die either,” I say. I try to sound like I mean it. I do mean it. “Give me the code. Let me save you.”

  “I don’t want them to die,” [Hero] says. “If I give you the code, you’ll do it. And I’ll die down here by myself.”

  “You’re not going to die,” I say. I stroke her cheek. “I’m not going to kill anyone.”

  After a while she says, “Okay.” Then she tells me the code. Maybe it’s a string of numbers that means something to her. More likely it’s random. I told you she was smarter than me.

  I repeat the code back to her and she nods. I’ve covered her up with a shawl, because she’s so cold. I lay her head down on a pillow, brush her hair back.

  “I’ll be right back,” I say.

  She closes her eyes. Give me a horrible, blind smile.

  I go over to the door and enter the code.

  The door doesn’t open. I try agai
n and it still doesn’t open.

  “[Hero]? Tell me the code again?”

  She doesn’t say anything. She’s fallen asleep. I go over and shake her gently. “Tell me the code one more time. Come on. One more time.”

  Her eyes stay closed. Her mouth falls open. Her tongue is poking out.

  “[Hero]?”

  It takes me a while to realize that she’s dead. And now it’s a little bit later, and my sister is still dead, and I’m still trapped down here with my dead sister and a bunch of broken shabtis. No food. No good music. Just a small canister of something nasty cooked up by my good friend Nikolay, and some size four jeans and the dregs of a bottle of very expensive champagne.

  * * *

  The Egyptians believed that every night the spirit of the person buried in the pyramids rose up through the false doors to go out into the world. Their Ba. Your Ba can’t be confined in a small dark room at the bottom of a deep shaft hidden under some pile of stones. Maybe I’ll fly out some night, some part of me. I keep trying combinations, but I don’t know how many numbers [Hero] used, what combination. It’s an endless task. There’s not much oil left to light the lamps. Some air comes in through the bottom of the door, but not much. It smells bad in here. I wrapped [Hero] up in her shawls and hid her in the closet. She’s in there with [Noodles]. I put him in her arms. Every once in a while I fall asleep and when I wake up I realize I don’t know which numbers I’ve tried, which I haven’t.

  The Olds must wonder what happened. They’ll think it had something to do with that sex tape. Their publicists will be doing damage control. I wonder what will happen to my Face. What will happen to her. Maybe one night I’ll fly out. My Ba will fly right to her, like a bird.

  One day someone will open the door that I can’t. I’ll be alive or else I won’t. I can open the canister or I can leave it closed. What would you do? I talk about it with [Hero], down here in the dark. Sometimes I decide one thing, sometimes I decide another.

  Dying of thirst is a hard way to die.

  I don’t really want to drink my own urine.

  If I open the canister, I might die faster. It will be my curse on you, the one who opens the tomb.

  I don’t want you to know my name. It was his name, really.

  Tara.

  Sic Him, Hellhound! Kill! Kill!

  by Hal Duncan

  1.

  I wake curled up at the foot of the bed again, back snugged tight into the crook of my boy’s legs—tight enough to be on top of them really. He groans, slaps the alarm clock off, tries to pull the quilt over his head. Doesn’t work with me weighing it down, clambering up to lick his face.

  —Get up, I say. Get up get up get up.

  He shoves me away.

  —Get down, he says.

  I roll off the bed, grab whiffy boxers from the floor.

  —I’m hungry.

  He groans.

  A boy and his werewolf. Truest love there is.

  * * *

  —Breathe. Then eat, he says. Or eat, then breathe. You know you can’t do the two together.

  I raise my head from the bowl of cornflakes, give another cough as I lick milk from my lips then dive back in. I don’t have to look to know he’s shaking his head, smiling wryly. Hey, he knows it’s all part of the method anyway. Guzzling food, snuffling crotches, rolling in things he has to hose off. And that’s his part of the deal—to deal with that shit, to handle it, handle me.

  Every agent has a handler, don’t you know?

  * * *

  They tried it without handlers, I hear. Like, back in my alpha’s day, back before he became a recruiter, some bright spark figured they should try letting us off the leash. A lone hellhound on the road—he’d just be one more drifter, right? Like Kung Fu. Or maybe The Littlest Hobo. Things got kinda messy though, it seems; there were a few incidents; cops got eaten and, yes, they were fascist pigs, but it just wasn’t on.

  Don’t know why they were worried about the handlers in the first place. Like I’d ever let anything happen to my boy.

  * * *

  He sits on the edge of the bed, flicking through the file, glancing up now and then as I run the water in the shower.

  —You’re actually using the shower gel this time, yes? he calls.

  —Absolutely, I shout.

  I stand behind the half-open door, peeking at him through the crack. After ten minutes, I duck my head under the water, turn it off and come out towelling my hair. He puts the file down, open at the photograph, the missing kid. Dead kid.

  —I know you didn’t actually wash, he says. My sense of smell isn’t that bad.

  2.

  —You got your cover story down, right?

  I pick up a sleeveless tee, give it a sniff to make sure it’s good and stinky, then pull it on.

  —Yes, boss, I say.

  It’s the same story as ever, just different monickers: we’re poor orphaned brothers, just moved to town to be near an aged aunt. I got ADHD and other issues. Impulse control. Drugs. He’s the older bro sworn to raise me on his own, put me through school and all.

  With the regeneration that comes with the shifts, you’d never know I’ve got…well, a few years on him.

  * * *

  I got bitten as a pup, see—bitten in the metaphorical sense, that is. I mean, forget what you think you know about werewolves. Silver bullets? Came in with the silver screen, dude. Wolfsbane? Man, that’s poisonous to everyone. And all that contagion crap? Not how it works. No, how it works is ritual and magic—a wolfskin coat, a hipflask of dirty water drawn from lupine pawprints, and a bit of blood and dancing under the full moon. Being bitten might help, but it’s all in the mindset. Shifting is a fucking skill, motherfucker. Not something you can catch.

  * * *

  When exactly I got bitten—in the metaphorical sense—that’s a hard question though. Cause I remember a dream I had, age nine or so, of running across an old viaduct, a wolf pack at my heels. But I wasn’t being chased, dig; I was at the head of them, one of them. When I woke up sweating, it wasn’t with fear but with excitement. Was that when I got bit? Maybe it was years later, when my alpha took me in off the streets, turned this teenage stray into an initiate. But even at nine I had…that dream.

  * * *

  Reckon we’re born this way , my alpha used to say. It was important to him, the gruff old fuck, and I can kinda understand, what with every movie at the drive-in painting us as cursed abominations, beasts with monstrous appetites. Fuckin unnatural? he’d growl as he scratched his chest tat through the leather vest. This is who I fuckin am.

  Me, I’m sort of a bolshie bastard about it. No quarter. Ask me if it’s nature or nurture, and I’ll tell you it’s a choice. I’ll tell you it’s my fucking choice to make, right? So deal with it.

  3.

  I pull the wolfskin on over the tee. With the leather pants too, it’s gonna be hot as hell, but it’s a necessary part of the whole kit and kaboodle. Besides, the ensemble has a rockstar-cum-hustler bad boy chic that tickles my fancy. It doesn’t do me any favours with the PETA-loving emo kids, but it’s just awesome for starting fights with small town dickwads who think queer is an insult.

  My boy scruffles fingers through my hair, scratches my ear. I wonder what those dickwads would make of our rough-and-tumble playfights. Or sleeping arrangements.

  * * *

  I grab the car-keys from the coffee table and bring them to him, hold them out, take a step back as he reaches.

  —Give, he says.

  —Take them, I say.

  —We don’t have time for this.

  He makes a grab and I snatch the keys away, turning so he has to reach round me, try and prise them from my hand.

  —Give.

  I give them up. He’s the best handler ever, my boy, swear to God. There’s no way what happened to the Louisiana team will happen to us. That was a bad werewolf, a weak handler. We’re invincible.

  * * *

  I knew it from the first day
he came to the Pound, the way the truth didn’t even faze him. I mean whatever run-ins they’ve had with the nasties we track, the handler candidates always come out of it with a fucking iron will, else they’d wouldn’t be joining the cause; but usually the whole secret agency thing leaves them at least a little what the fuck? But he just strolled down the line of pups and returnees till he came to me. I saw it in his eyes.

  —What’s your name? he said.

  —You decide, I told him.

  * * *

  —You ready?

  As he pulls the car up at the gates of the school, I bring my head back in from the window, grin at him and throw my hands in the air.

  —Rub my tummy!

  —Behave, he says.

  I give him my best puppy eyes.

  —Not. Now. You have a job to do, so go on. Git.

  I climb out of the car, bathtime slow. When he drives away, he’ll be abandoning me, like, forever. He sighs, knowing what I need.

  —Where’s the vampire? he says. Go find the vampire, boy!

  And suddenly I’m as keen as his voice.

  4.

  One hundred million hours later—one bazillion trillion hours of History and French, or Maths and Geography, or fucking whatever later—I’m sitting in the school cafeteria, on my own at a table in a corner, eating burgers out of the buns and trying my best to be human about it. Not standing out is a lost cause—I’m the new kid, and a weird one at that—but we’re still in the avoidance stage; the freaks and geeks aren’t sure if I’m one of them yet, and the alpha jock’s still working up to his challenge.

  Then they arrive.

  * * *

  I take a furtive sip from my hipflask, not enough to spark a shift, but enough to boost my sense of smell. Because she’s all flowers and soap and chocolate and Bibles and need—so much need, so deep an aroma of insatiable yearning that it almost masks his stench. The smell of her longing fills the room, fills the school; shit, I’ve been smelling it all day, that perfume of victimhood. Without it I wouldn’t have to go through this bullshit to catch his trail, so I don’t think it’s too harsh to give a little growl, is it?