Free Underground by Kat Richardson Page A

unduemeasure of history. I gave a small gasp of surprise as I realized that this now-abandoned place had been the thriving heart of the city’s shopping and business district at one time, full of people at all hours where now there were only shadows and dust.
     
     
    “Do you see something?” Quinton asked. I shifted my focus back to him and saw he was a little nervous at his question. I considered lying—it was what I usually had to do—but if ever there was a time to risk disclosure, this seemed like the best chance I would ever have.
     
     
    “Ghosts,” I replied. “Lots of the city’s memory of itself.”
     
     
    He was curious. “The city’s memory? That’s a funny way to put it.”
     
     
    “It’s the best I can come up with. The things I’m seeing here aren’t aware of us. They’re just like recordings. But there’s a lot of them. Layers and layers. This must have been a popular corner.”
     
     
    “I don’t think so. This end of the city was built up later than the parts around Pioneer Square, though I think the fire started near here. . . .”
     
     
    “Hm.”
     
     
    I just looked at it a while longer, letting it flood in: the flickering images of the original buildings overlaid with the roar and rush of fire consuming the wooden city and the stop-motion play of the landscape as it became a towering canyon of brick and stone where dead generations shopped, visited, and caroused in helical time. This was not the low-down history I’d seen replayed on Occidental, but something more middle class that had risen with the streets, eventually, rather than being buried and disinterred only for tourist show-and-tell.
     
     
    “Do you want to continue?”
     
     
    I could feel my toes going numb from the cold seeping into my boots and I pulled myself out of the hypnotic depth of history. “Yes. These ghosts aren’t going anywhere and there’s probably a lot more of them around. Let’s go.”
     
     
    We went down the dank corridor and around a corner to a low door. Quinton tinkered with it a bit and opened it with care, looking around before he stepped out to let me through. We stepped out and headed uphill to First. The weather had driven people indoors, and none were looking out of McCormick and Schmick’s windows to see us emerge. We crossed between the old and new federal buildings and continued back toward Pioneer Square.
     

 
    FIVE
     
     
    The streets seemed to grow darker as we went south into the older environs of the city. The roads were narrower below Cherry Street, where the city plat bent to run truly north and south rather than northwest to southeast to match the shoreline. Cherry was also the northern boundary of the historic district where the darkness I saw was not entirely due to dimmer, cuter street lights.
     
     
    “Let’s go see who’s at BOLM,” Quinton suggested. It sounded like he’d said “balm.”
     
     
    “What?” I asked.
     
     
    “The Bread of Life Mission on Main and First. It’s the smallest shelter and they only take in men overnight, but they’re the closest to the Square. It’s where Zip was headed. We’ll try the Union Gospel Mission afterward.”
     
     
    “If these guys sleep in the shelters, how did they get killed on the street? Vampires wouldn’t be hunting in those places,” I objected.
     
     
    “They weren’t sleeping in the shelters. Some of them won’t sleep indoors or in certain buildings—some of the undergrounders are funny that way. Others can’t get in and some don’t even try. There aren’t enough beds—even when the Christian shelters like BOLM and UGM open the chapels in extreme weather. But there’s usually more food than beds, so people come for that and maybe an extra blanket, then go out again to see what they can find. But the beds fill up fast. That’s when people start getting into the staircases, doorways, and cellars if they can. That’s where the bodies have been found—near the underground