Ghostbusters (15 page)

“Certainly.”

Peck stepped through into the garage bay, followed by NYPD, Con Edison, and two New York county sheriffs deputies. He decided to ignore the receptionist and head directly for the basement, but she jumped up and blocked his path.

“I beg your pardon! Just where do you think you’re going?”

Peck was not to be trifled with. “Step aside, Miss, or I’ll have you arrested for interfering with a police officer.”

Janine looked to the bored captain, who nodded sourly, but held her ground. “Who do you think you’re talking to, Mister? Do I look like a child? You can’t come in here without some kind of warrant or writ or something.”

Peck held up a sheaf of papers and ticked them off with one finger. “Cease and Desist All Commerce Order. Seizure of Premises and Chattels. Ban on the Use of Public Utilities for Non-Licensed Waste Handlers. Federal Entry and Inspection Order. Satisfied?” He led the little troop down into the basement, Janine falling doggedly in behind. This is worse than Poland, she thought.

“Egon, I tried to stop them,” she called, but Spengler and Peck were already at it.

“You are dealing with something you don’t understand.”

“Then I’ll learn all about it as we dismantle your operation.”

“No, the damage that could be caused . . .”

“I knew you were using harmful chemicals!”

“It’s not chemicals. What’s wrong with you? Don’t you realize what we’re doing? Don’t you watch television?”

Peck sneered. “Not if I can help it.”

Throughout it all, Peck’s entourage had stood gaping at the workbenches, the reinforced containment wall with its warning stripes, the trap locks and recharge bins, the control panels and warning lights, Louis Tully, the Keymaster, stood in one corner, mumbling secret promises to Gozer between bites of a Twinkie. “This is impossible,” Spengler shouted.

“Now, look, you fraud—” Peck began, but Captain Bennett laid a restraining hand on his shoulder. “Watch it . . .”

Peck nodded. “Now, look,
Dr.
Spengler. You’ve seen the court orders. You are no longer in charge here. I am. Now, I want to see what’s in there. Either you shut off those beams or we’ll shut them off for you.”

Spengler tried a reasoned approach. “You can see what’s inside through the monitor if you wish. Here . . .” He reached up and turned it on. Peck shook his head.

“I told you, I’m not interested in television,” he scoffed.

Peter Venkman appeared on the stairs, disheveled and red-eyed. “At ease, Officers. I’m Peter Venkman. I think there’s been some kind of misunderstanding here, and I want to cooperate in any way that I can.”

Peck rounded on him. “Forget it, Venkman. You had your chance to cooperate, but you thought it was more fun to insult me. Now it’s my turn, smart guy.”

“He wants to shut down the storage grid,” Spengler cried. Janine ran to him and threw her arms around him protectively, and Tully, sensing what he assumed was a cue for action, huddled in to Spengler’s other side. They looked like some sort of very strange war memorial. Well, Venkman thought, it has been a very strange war. He turned to the police captain, who appeared to be the sanest of the lot.

“If you turn that thing off, we won’t be responsible for the consequences.”

“On the contrary,” Peck snapped. “You will be held completely responsible. Turn it off.”

But the Con Ed man had been looking through the monitor screen. He turned back, his face pale, and made no move to do anything. Venkman placed a hand on the man’s arm.

“Don’t do it! I’m warning you.”

The technician looked nervously around the room, then appealed to the police captain. “Maybe he’s right. I’ve never seen anything like this. I don’t know . . .”

“Just do it!” Peck shrilled. “Nobody asked for your opinion,”

The technician nodded, licked his lips nervously, then reached for the switch, but Venkman threw both arms around his waist. “Don’t be a jerk!”

The two deputy sheriffs moved in to break up the scuffle. Venkman glared at Peck. “You dumb jerk.”

“If he tries that again,” Peck replied. “Shoot him.”

“You do your own job, Pencilneck. Don’t tell me how to do mine.”

“Thank you, Officer,” Venkman said.

“You shut up too. You, Con Ed. Turn it off.”

The technician stepped up to the switch, took hold, and looked back nervously. Venkman, Spengler, Janine, and Tully had backed away toward the stairs. The two county cops were already gone. Spengler looked at the man, and mimed a huge explosion.

“Do it, now!”

Con Ed snapped down the huge knife switch, then jumped away as if he had been stung. There was the sudden sound of dying dynamos, a falling electrical hum, and the lights went out. Red warning bulbs began to flash, a siren started to scream, and a horrible tremor ran through the floor. The monitor screen exploded. The bricks in the containment wall began to loosen, emitting streams of blinding light and the hideous drip of ectoplasm. And under it all, one deep, terrifying sigh. A sigh of relief. A sigh of satisfaction. The sound of a monstrous creature that had just become uncaged.

That was enough. They fought their way up the stairs and out onto the street, pursued by coruscations of colored light, unearthly sounds, tremors in the very fabric of reality. The old firehouse shuddered, all of the windows blew out, light bulbs exploded, and the heavy floorboards danced like piano keys. With a crack the radio and monitoring tower on the roof gave a jerk and disappeared downward, sliding into the roof, and a second later a titanic geyser of glowing energy shot skyward, a hundred feet in the air. It hung there a second before bits and trails of light began to disperse to all points of the compass. “There they go,” Spengler said in awe. “I never thought I’d see it. A full four-dimensional crossrip.”

“It’s time. It’s coming. This is the sign,” whispered Louis the Keymaster, beside himself with joy.

“It’s a sign all right,” Janine moaned. “Going out of business.”

Peter Venkman had nothing to say. He simply turned and knocked Walter Peck on his ass.

We learn geology the morning after the earthquake.

—Emerson

Dozens of emergency vehicles converged on the old Mott Street firehouse, and soon the intersection was jammed with squad cars, fire engines, Con Ed trucks, ambulances, and civil defense vans. After Captain Bennett had separated Venkman and Peck and told them both to shut up, tactical command passed to Spengler. He was desperately trying to deal with dozens of “experts,” while enduring the quizzing of a bomb squad man in a bulky decontamination suit.

“Does it contain TCE, PCB, or tailings from styrene esters, or any poly fluoric groupings . . .?”

“What’s this slimy stuff all over everything?” a paramedic asked.

“. . . sulphur dioxide, lead alkyls, mercaptans . . .”

“That’s ectoplasm. It’s not dangerous.”

“Stinks though.”

“. . . radioisotopes, asbestos, mercuric compounds, industrial acids . . .”

“No, no, no. It’s . . .” Spengler started, then realized that he wasn’t sure how to explain psychic effluent to people who were used to dealing only with physical pollution. “You could call it a form of ectophenomenological fallout . . .”

“Fallout!?”

“No, psychic, not mineral. Like bad vibes.”

“. . . carcinogens, mutagens, teratogens, or synergistic poisons . . .”

“What are the pink particles?” a fire captain asked. “What will happen if we use water?”

Spengler shook his head. They were worse than graduate students. “No. No water. There’s nothing you can do.”

“
. .
. solanine, oxalic acid, cyanide, myristicin, pressor amines, copper sulphate, dihydrochalcones . . .”

Spengler took the man’s clipboard and pen and wrote the word
none
in large letters across the form. Then his ears caught a familiar, warbling moan and he looked up hopefully. Somehow the Ectomobile had found a path through the chaos and was pulling to a halt behind Peck’s car. Spengler elbowed his way to the door as Stantz stepped out, gaping at the geyser of ghostly energy soaring into the Manhattan sky.

“What happened?”

“The storage facility blew up,” Venkman replied. “That weasel Peck shut off the protection grid.” Then he stopped, suddenly aware of the number of things out of his control. “Where’s the Keymaster?”

“Oh, no,” Spengler gasped. “Janine, where’s Tully?” Janine, trying to fend off a group of reporters, shrugged helplessly. Stantz was thoroughly confused.

“Who’s the Keymaster?”

But Spengler and Venkman were already fighting their way through toward the street. Peck and Bennett were waiting at the police barrier.

“Stop them!” Peck ordered. “Captain, I want them arrested. These men have been acting in criminal violation of the Environmental Protection Act, and this explosion is a direct result.”

“You
turned off the power!” Venkman cried, again lunging for Peck’s throat, but the captain hauled him back.

“You can’t do that,” he said. “If you hit Mr. Peck again, I’ll have to charge you with assault.”

Venkman looked up at the towering ghostly gusher, spewing spirits all over Manhattan and spattering the neighborhood with slime. It didn’t frighten him half as much as the possibility that Tully and Dana might get together. Who knew what horror could be unleashed then? It had Egon scared white, and that really scared Peter Venkman. He made an effort to get himself coherently under control.

“Look, Captain, there was another man here . . . You’ve got to find him and bring him back. A short determined guy with the eyes of a happy zombie.”

“See!” Peck cried. “They are using drugs.”

“If you don’t shut up, I’m going to rip out your septum!” Egon Spengler screamed with uncharacteristic fury, causing everyone for a thirty-foot radius to fall silent and stare. Peck backed away. Bennett raised both hands.

“I don’t know what’s going on here, but I’m going to have to arrest you all. You can discuss it with the judge. I’m going to read you your rights now, so please listen carefully . . .”

No one noticed Vinz Clortho as he wandered uptown. He was just one more person gaping at the spectacular display of lights in the daytime sky, but probably the only one north of the Criminal Courts Building who guessed their true significance. At least initially. As the released ghosts made their way back to their haunting grounds, a lot of people were in for some rude shocks.

As the Keymaster passed the subway entrance at Broadway and Canal Street, he failed to notice an insidious vapor swirl into the ventilation grate that served the platform for the uptown line. No one did, which was not surprising, for insidious vapors were common enough in a city with New York’s air quality. But this was not air. A few minutes later the stampede started as people trampled over one another in an attempt to reach the street, their clothes blown by a raging whirlwind and splattered by ectoplasm. A uniformed patrolman responded, hurrying to see what sort of commotion was going on, and grabbed a running youth by one arm. The boy wore a red beret and a Guardian Angels T-shirt.

“What’s going on, man?” the cop asked. “I thought you Angels were pretty tough.”

“Not against
that
I ain’t,” the boy cried, shaking off the man’s hand and sprinting up the street. The cop drew his gun and turned, to find a hideous green demon rising from the stairwell. It opened its mouth, exposing foot-long teeth, and let loose an ungodly scream. The cop caught up with and passed the Guardian Angel a block and a half to the north.

J. M. Shupp was standing in front of the Hotel Sedgewick, enjoying the late October sunshine. Things had been quiet since the night those men had removed the ghost. Of course the owners had had a fit over the damage and the publicity, but somehow Shupp had kept his job. And things had turned around. When the word got out that the Sedgewick had been the site of the Ghostbusters’ first case, their bookings had filled to capacity. The owners were pleased, Shupp was pleased, and the hotel was now a tourist attraction. There was even a brass plaque in the refurbished ballroom with details of the battle.

He watched as the Sabrett man arrived with his hot dog cart and set up for the lunch rush. As usual, the man had parked within the area serving the Sedgewick’s loading zone, but Shupp felt charitable today. I won’t ask him to move. Instead, I’ll buy one of his weiners and chat about the weather. Or perhaps baseball. A perfectly New York experience.

“What’ll it be today?” the vendor asked warily, expecting Shupp to roust him, but the manager smiled.

“A hot dog, with mustard.”

“Comin’ up.” He reached into the cart. “Anything to drink?”

“I don’t think so. Uh, what’s wrong?” The hot dog man was feeling about inside the cart. He withdrew his hand and came up with two inches of weiner, the end badly chewed.

“I know I had more dogs in there. I just put ’em in.”

“Oh, my.”

The cart began to rock back and forth, and hot water sloshed out. The two men jumped back.

“Oh, no, not again,” Shupp gasped as the Hotel Sedgewick’s resident free-roaming vapor, newly sprung from captivity, appeared with a mouthful of footlongs and spicy Polish. It belched loudly, spit up half a bun, and streaked for the front door of its old home, the pushcart turning and following in its wake. The vapor passed straight through the glass door, leaving only a blob of ectoplasm and several hot dog fragments, but the pushcart was not so agile. It crashed into the door and overturned in a shower of glass and hot water, leaving its blue and orange umbrella spinning on the pavement. The vendor’s jaw dropped.

“Didja ever see anything like that?”

But J. M. Shupp was unable to answer. He had passed out.

A class-four free-repeating geist was streaking up the Avenue of the Americas, bursting street lights, when it spotted the marquee of the Radio City Music Hall. It did an ecstatic whirl in the air, enthralled at the number of light bulbs that the thing must contain. Now
this
was the big time.

Roger Hubbard was late for his business meeting. His secretary called ahead to make amends while he raced for the lobby and a cab. As luck would have it, there was only one, and an elderly lady was about to grab it, but he elbowed her out of the way and jumped in. “Gulf and Western Building!” he snapped, “And I’m in a hurry, so step on it.”