Underground Vampire (11 page)

Finkelstein clucked his
disappointment but moved closer, supporting Arabella’s wishes.

“I was afraid you might want
something a little shady, but as it turns out its straight up crime with some
murder to boot.  Oh yeah, count me in.”

“Tactics always the difficult
part,” observed Finkelstein, pleased with the progress, “you two will need to coordinate
your activities.”

“Let’s coordinate,” said Ortega
grinning at Arabella.

 Slithering down the narrow
tunnel, Ratman felt safe with the velvet of his tribe brushing his cheek as the
horde again moved its home nest.  Creeping through narrow crevices, the
river of felt engulfing him, he led them to pockets deep within the earth safe
from the marauding Vampires.  Setting home so far from the refuse of the
City meant foraging far for food, but the breeding mothers and offspring would
be safe.  Able to breed their way out of catastrophe, the horde faced the
latest calamity with a vengeance, producing the soldiers necessary for
survival.  Grown fat on the garbage of the city above, sleek in the safety
of the underground, the pack had reconstituted from the disaster of the fire
many times over until Rattus Norvegicus was master of the basements and
everything below. 

Until the scourge arrived that
is.  Once they arrived, everything changed and the horde became the
hunted.  At first there were the disappearances, normal losses that the
vermin naturally suffered in an urban environment due to poison, trapping and
predation, generating a sustainable population loss. The selective breeding
program he’d instituted more than made up for the loss and, if anything,
relieved him of the continuous challenges to his rule since young males were
most likely to push to the boundaries and hence most likely to die.  It
had not been surprising or even noteworthy when a few didn’t come home. 
That all changed when the scourge descended on the nest, invading and feasting
upon the plump bodies of his brethren as they panicked, scrambling to
escape. 

Now, they had an ally if she was to
be trusted. Many of the rats resisted and he’d had to be quite harsh disciplining
the several who balked at his orders. Relations with the Vampire community had
never recovered after the fire; the Queen’s uncertain role in the blaze not
fully understood, the horde chose to remove any contact lest they draw her
attention and suffer from her erratic policies.

Summoning his subordinates, he
commanded the scouts to leave the nest and return to the deep below. The
reports had been disturbing and Arabella had been insistent that he locate the
home of the scourge, that and an accurate count of their numbers.  Find
the invaders, he ordered, seek them out, discover where they nest at night;
determine the size of their pack. 

Counting was a more complicated
task than hide and seek, a game all young rats excelled at from birth. 
Rat math focused on greater or lesser; when the horde sensed a numerical
advantage it attacked, when less it retreated.  Strategy and tactics were
solely a function of a chemically linked perception of numbers.

Ratman knew his part was to come;
once the patrols located the enemy he would have to go; go and count
them.  Instructing the scouts to search, locate and return, Ratman turned
his attention to securing multiple home bases within the underground accessible
by tunnels too small for Vampires to access. The horde would survive, though
many would starve and many more would lose their lives foraging for food until
Arabella fulfilled her commitment and rid the Underground of the plague.

Already, disturbing reports of bold
and aggressive incursions into the Underground were filtering back.  A
group of yearlings foraging into tunnels recently explored brought back tales
of the Vampire scourge foraging in the open. He questioned them as best he
could, eliciting a frenzy of squeaks and chitterrings which spoke of humans
running and screaming through tunnels pursued by the Scourge, of blood and
feedings with blood spurting until the very ground, and here it became hazy as
they used the word for rain, and ceiling were drenched in blood and it dropped
down on their heads like they had never seen blood before and food abandoned by
the Vampires.  Food they were afraid to approach let alone eat. 

He could make no sense of what they
said and ordered them to take him to the scene. Nearly all were afraid, but two
of the braver agreed and they scurried off until they came upon the first body,
a mutilated corpse with its throat savagely mutilated.  It was lying in
the tunnel still holding what Ratman thought to be a toy gun in its grip. 
More bodies were farther down the tunnel culminating in two that were close
together.  These had guns near them and seemed, from the bites about their
arms and necks and bodies, to have been consumed by a ravenous pack.

He tried to communicate as best he
could that the bodies drained of blood were no longer food to the Vampires but
the concept was beyond his children, who insisted that the bodies were
food.  

He could do nothing but wait and
plan, wait for his scouts to locate the home nest of the Vampires and plan for
their final destruction. That, and practice his numbers as Arabella had
suggested; he was up to seventy-six and wondered how far he should go. 
When asked, she vaguely replied, “I think you will need to reach into the
hundreds.”

Crawling from the depths up through
secret or forgotten passages, they came with eyes not yet fully opened. 
Their tactile touch felt the vibrations deep in the rock that was their home.
 At first, they cowered until one then another left the rest, following up
through the tortured earth.  None had been to the surface since the time
of their making; stolen and spirited to the Underworld, they lived in darkness,
anonymous and forgotten.  Subsisting on the blood of vermin and the hope
of redemption, they waited for the call.

 Summoned from deep spaces undiscovered
by Humans and forgotten by most Vampires, the drum brought them to a cavern lit
by Christmas lights strung on rocky walls.  Most were naked, clothed in
dirt, decorated in filth; many dangled rat skulls, even skeletons, as
jewelry.  A few had managed to scavenge a rag or an actual shirt or pair
of trousers, which they wore with pride, a badge of their prowess and symbol of
their strength.  If Humans had upside and Vampires the Underground, theirs
was whatever was left, the depths. 

The twinkling, blinking lights hurt
their eyes, causing them to cower submissively as they funneled between two
lines of Vampires resplendent in tuxedos and shiny shoes and shirts so white
the glare hurt their eyes and almost burned their skin to reach the front,
where the one they waited for might be.  The sight of the Vampires
startled them; well fed, clean and powerful, they were a vision of what the
future might be, serving to remind them of what they were.  Made by Oliver
as his private army, they’d been forced into hiding on his disappearance, lest
the Queen exterminate them.

Hidden for a century, fed lies and
inferior rat blood, they’d warped into beasts concerned with survival, haunted
by the memory of human blood.  All remembered Upside, for they had all
been human once.  Now they were nothing, hiding in the depths lest Her
Majesty the Queen learn of them and hunt them down.  The long years of
deprivation and cold and darkness had stunted them so that prior lives were
conflated with feeding, until they were driven by hatred and manipulated by
hunger.

At the edges deep within the rock,
timorous noses peeked from cover anxiously watching.  Frightened, the rats
flattened their bodies till they resembled dirt accumulated in cracks rather
than living beings.  Hyper alert senses fueled by constant hunger led many
of the weakling Vampires to stop as they caught a whiff of the rats, but the
constant call urged them on and they passed, ignoring the hint of food.

Jason had staged the show well,
thought Oliver, as the cavern filled with the Weakling creatures. 
Miserable for now, but soon they would be the vanguard of his new world. 
Truly, there was nothing like creatures with no hope and no future, desperate
beyond hope they existed, for you could not call what they had a life,
scrabbling through the dark to trap vermin, then defending the tattered rat
from the others.  Without the power of Vampires still, they were stronger
than Man and compliant.  These that had survived were tough.  He
stood in the wings, waiting to mount the elevated stage once they’d assembled
and waited for a time.  Time to know that they were subordinate but not
too long that attention wandered and boredom set in.

At a signal, the blood red banners
dropped from the ceiling to the stage; the crowd surged forward subliminally
hungered at the sight.  Music blared from speaker stacks, Wagner dubbed to
the best parts.  At the triumphal moment, Jason signaled and searchlights
swept the crowd, dazzling the pathetic creatures who howled at the pain,
dropping to the floor to escape the white hot heat burning retinas through
clenched eyelids. Across the chamber the Vampires covered their eyes with
glasses. Fashion forward Jason had secured a supply of Julbo glacier glasses
from REI that provided the otherworldly menace he adored along with protection
from the burning light.

Oliver crossed the stage, ignoring
the swelling susurration from the crowd.  Stopping in the middle of the
stage, three spots hit him, casting sharp shadows of his open legged stance
against the bloody backdrop.  Silent blowers engaged, rippling the
shadowed curtains so that they resembled nothing so much as rivers of blood
flowing down the rocks.  On cue, images of war and death, dismemberment
and mutilation played on the rippling red screens; across the frenzied crowd
video projectors played bloody corpses, using their bodies as screens.

 After a moment Oliver stepped
forward, raising his arms and booming his voice, welcoming his brothers to
their day of freedom, telling them emancipation had arrived.  He thanked
them for their sacred solidarity of struggle while he was imprisoned but now,
now that he was free, he had returned to lead them to their rightful place in
the world above where food was free and abundant and they could feed as they
desired.

This was, thought Jason, too much,
but you would not have known it from the response Oliver received. 
Repeatedly throughout his performance Vampires surged toward the stage, only to
be repulsed by his thugs.  Weakened by years of neglect and malnourishment,
he and his cohorts easily handled the mob but, he thought, once they have
tasted humans we might not be able to contain them, as he smashed his baton
into the face of a particularly aggressive Vampire.  Oliver continued for
over an hour outlining his plans, exhorting the masses and railing against the
Queen and her despicable minions.  It was, Jason thought, as much pep
rally as ego adoration moment.

Finally, Oliver reached the
ultimate moment in his performance and his assistants wheeled out the cage,
forcing the delirious Vampires to make way by liberal use of the cattle prods
purchased special for the occasion.  Once they’d forced a way into the
middle of the hall, Oliver intoned his love for them, promising always to be
there for them, to lead them and feed them forever.  As they expectantly
looked toward the stage, the cavern went black and then a single beam lit the
crimson shroud covering the cage.  “For you, my brothers,” screamed
Oliver, and the shroud was pulled off and the cage opened upon the humans
kidnapped for the purpose.

For a moment all froze, the humans
in terror, the Vampires in shock.  Then tentatively, at first one then
another Vampire reached out to touch the plump naked flesh of the Humans. 
Those further back could not touch but could smell the Humans, and they crowded
closer until a Human shrieked, breaking the spell and Oliver crowed, “eat, eat,
they are for you,”  and instantly a swarm covered the hapless Humans and
the starving Vampires first tasted Human blood in an orgy  of
feeding.  As the swarm of Vampires covered the Humans, Oliver continued
speaking, “Taste the future,” till the Humans were reduced to a pile of obscene
bones.

“What’s your next trick going to
be?” asked Jason, as Oliver left the stage, “This will be hard to top.”

“I own them,” replied Oliver,
“every one of them is mine.”

Unnoticed in the frenzy of the mob,
anguished rats slipped from the cracks scurrying off into the tunnels to report
what they’d seen. Their minds warped by fear and revulsion, the accounts they
gave made little sense, lacking precision and facts.  Ratman had little to
communicate when next he met Arabella except the concepts of many and
terror.  That, and Oliver was back.

In the caves under Highland Street
the plastic sheets flashed alive with images of horror. Jacked into the
nightmare, Trogs in the midst of horrible dreams agonized.  Unable to
disconnect, with no one to look out for them, they passively lay surfing the
data wave to hell.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she snapped,
annoyed again.

“What’s so ridiculous?  I just
asked you to go get something to eat,” said Jesse, wallowing in the chair she’d
pointed at when he came in.  “You do eat, don’t you?  I mean besides
the, you know.”

Stopping in front of the windows with
the view of the entire harbor she said, “I don’t date cops,” slow and explicit
in case he might think there was room for negotiation.

“And by ‘you know,’ I take it you
are referring to blood?”

He wiggled around in the chair,
sliding his hands along the metal framework.  He felt like he was lounging
and he liked to be sitting up, especially when she was standing.  “Right,
like regular food.”

“Stop squirming,” she said. “What
is the matter with you?  If you have to go to the bathroom, raise your
hand and I’ll give you permission.  Otherwise, sit still.”

“I feel like I’m sitting in a
bucket in this thing,” he groused.  Looking around the room he could see a
chair that resembled a curved S lying on its side and two boxy leather
chairs.  Over by the window was a wood and leather chair that looked real
and it had a matching ottoman.  He really would like to sit there and
admire the view, if he could just get out of the damn chair she put him in.

“Why don’t you have a couch,” he
blurted out, astonished that someone could furnish a room obviously meant for
sitting without a couch.

“Chairs are architecture, sofas are
bourgeois.”

“Oh, of course.”

“The man who designed all these
chairs,” indicating the room, “said that.  You’re sitting in the LC1;
that,” pointing for the benefit of the uninformed, “is the chaise lounge, the
LC4, and these two are easy chairs, LC3’s.”

Pointing at the one that looked
like a classy recliner and ottoman, like a docent volunteering her afternoon at
the museum, she said, “That one was designed by a husband and wife team named
Eames.”

Bracing his hands on the steel
tubes so he could hoist himself up, he said, “This one feels like it was made
out of an erector set.”

“Yes, it’s one of his first. 
He used bolts to hold it together; since then, the tubes are welded.”

Collapsing into one of the boxy
chairs he said, “Oh, this is like a real chair.”  Snuggling down into the
leather he said, “After shooting you, I thought the least I could do was take
you out, buy you lunch.”

“Time out, big boy, the only reason
you’re here is Finkelstein.”

“I can help.”

“Thank you,” she replied, “But, I
don’t need much from you, a little intelligence is all.”

“Well, we could talk about it over
lunch as well as here,” he said persistent.

“No police,” she replied, her voice
gone flat, “Let’s get that settled.”

“Ouch,” Jesse said.  He tried
his boyish grin on her, the one that always worked with women.  “Sounds
like discrimination.”

Looking at him, “No cops, it’s a
simple rule.”

“Any particular reason?”

“Cops lie.”

“That’s it, thought you’d been
around some, thought you knew how things work,” patronizing.

“I know how things work; the
problem is, you don’t”

“That doesn’t mean I lie.”

“Oh?”

“It’s not telling lies when it’s
your job”

“You lie to the press, you lie to
protect fellow police officers, you lie in court when you are under oath?”

“Wait a minute.  Now you are
accusing me of a felony; perjury is serious if you don’t know.”

“Testalying, I believe it is. 
It is a joke with the Courts and the District Attorney and the police.”

“Prove it.”

“I don’t need to, I only need to
avoid it.”

“You don’t understand what it is to
be a cop,” defending himself, ‘the pressures we have, the people we deal with
every day, they’re all cheats and thieves; that’s how we do our jobs, protect
the public.”

“Ever seen the film Dirty
Harry?  You know it?”

“Of course, it’s a classic, love
it.”

“Cop as victim, of course you do.”

“Wait a minute, lady.”

“It’s alright, but that’s why I
don’t do police,” she smiled sweetly.

He looked at her, his baffled face
more attractive to her than what he thought of as his boyish, cute look.

“No, I do my job, I protect
citizens.”

“Means and ends?”

“At least you see I’m doing good
when I lie.”

“If you understood maybe, but you
don’t.”

“You know I’m a damn good
detective, whatever else you think of me, I can do my job.”

She looked at him.

“The Department doesn’t care what I
do, as long as I don’t get in trouble.  I’ve got nothing to do, so you
might as well use me.”

She continued staring.

“I will never lie to you.”

“Maybe.”

 “I don’t get it,” he replied,
“I only wanted to get something to eat. I’m really hungry.”

“This is not a date, we are
working,” she said getting her jacket.

“How’s about Italian?”

“Eww no, garlic.”

“Garlic, so that part’s true,
garlic and Vampires?”

“Bad breath,” she said, “gives you
bad breath and I’m going out later.”

“Out, like working on our case,
out?”

“Out, like I have a date, out.”

“Oh, so you do go on dates?
Vampires date?”

“This one does.”

“Is this guy a Vampire or a regular
guy?”

“Ortega.”

“What?”

“He’s a ‘none of your business’
guy.”

“OK, Italian it is, my treat.”