Campanelli: Siege of the Nighthunter

by Frederick H. Crook

  The FROG reached out with his implant, but found that he was unable to find Campanelli’s device. At once, it became clear. The detective’s unit was deactivated, which was the explanation for the white cane. A blind man’s cane.

  “Of course,” he whispered. He stood and stared across the expanse between the tracks and the policeman’s patio. The FROG marveled at the rarity he witnessed before him. A policeman so revered that even blindness did not stop him from doing his job. It was no wonder that Detective Kirby McLain had brought him in on the case.

  The Marine grinned darkly as the wind flittered through the tails of the overcoat.

  ***

  A gust ran through Frank’s patio and lifted the right half of his unfastened coat. The movement forced him abruptly awake as his right hand shot out to catch the glass that was on its way to the tile. His fingers saved the majority of the drink, but he felt some splash onto his hand.

  “Damn,” he muttered, which dropped the inch-long stretch of ash onto his coat and shirt. This he did not notice, let alone prevent.

  A whisper on the wind froze him in place.

  It was only for a moment, but he swore that he heard the hint of a voice. Nonchalantly, he took a puff of the burned down tobacco, noted the nearness of the heat and squashed the butt onto the floor of the patio with his foot. He switched the glass to his left hand and gave the other a lick before wiping the remainder on his pant leg.

  Another gust, another whisper.

  What the hell? This time he stood, turned to the north, and listened hard. He wondered how long it had been since the implant had shut down. He thought the command to activate it.

  “Intriguing,” the wind seemed to say.

  “Come on,” Frank grunted through gritted teeth. The implant failed to boot, which meant that it had not yet achieved fifteen percent of its total battery capacity.

  ***

  The FROG watched as the policeman’s eyes searched the darkness. Though the man saw nothing, his expression portrayed fearlessness. He decided he would not attack this man, as it seemed undignified, at least for the moment. The Marine knew he would have decided differently had the detective’s implant been activated.

  He remained still as the detective, clearly deciding that his ears had betrayed him, unfolded his white cane and disappeared into his apartment.

  Smiling, he turned from the residence and walked over the tracks. He stopped and crouched for a few moments, regarding the police station across the street. The facility was well-lit and he watched a police cruiser drive out of the parking lot with mild interest. The grumbling in his stomach spurned him into action. Looking about the street below, he waited for an eastbound vehicle.

  Five minutes went by with only the occasional passing car. To commandeer a coupe or sedan so close to a police station would be unwise, he felt. A few minutes later, the perfect vehicle approached. A large gray van was rolling east at a nice, easy pace. With precision, the killer launched himself from the L platform and landed upon its roof with his hands and feet splayed to minimize the sound. Despite his care, the uneven road surface jarred the van and caused his entire body to flatten loudly against its metal surface. Fortunately, since the cab was separate from the cargo section, it dampened the blow enough so that the driver took no notice.

  The van drove on into the night with its deadly passenger undetected.

  ***

  Thinking himself overtired, Frank turned and tapped the cane against the glass door. He picked up his glass and lighter from the table and went inside. He closed the sliding door behind him and shivered.

  “Chilly out?” Tamara called from the couch.

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Huh? Sure, why?” he asked as he made his way to the kitchen.

  “You looked confused, frowny-face.”

  “I did? Sorry,” Frank said over his shoulder as he hung his overcoat in the closet. “I think this damn case is getting to me.”

  “Noooo, really? You?” Tamara giggled over her sarcasm.

  “Cute.”

  Frank prepared himself for bed and turned in. It was early for him, but as his implant was recharging, he had nothing better to do. He lay in bed for a long time, it seemed, and though he was exhausted, his thoughts were a cyclic storm of restless turmoil that turned to nightmare when consciousness finally released him.

  When Tamara Billingsley finally came to bed at past two in the morning, she noted Frank’s conflicted sleep with a sigh. She knew better than to wake him as he often could not get back to sleep. She slipped under the covers and felt the bed tremble with his jittery arm and leg movements. In time, she slept.

  ***

  Kirby McLain was awakened from an uneven sleep by the telephone’s electronic warble. He sat up and set his feet to the cold wooden floor as he reached for the cordless handset.

  “McLain,” he croaked and cleared his throat. He listened to the voice of Detective Daryl Davies, Hank Lyman’s partner, for a few seconds and slapped his knee with his free hand out of deep frustration. “Is it on the blotter, yet?”

  He stood and reached into the open closet for the next suit in line. He tossed it on the bed and dug through a drawer as he continued to listen.

  “All right,” he said while reaching into the shower stall to turn on the hot water. “I’ll get there soon. Tape off the area and get Gherling over there. You did? Good. Okay.”

  McLain ended the call and set the phone on the vanity. He cursed the cold water as he jumped in the shower. There was no time to wait for the hot water to make its way up to his floor.

  He finished washing quickly and dried himself off with hurried abandon. He strode into his bedroom and began to dress. With his white shirt partially buttoned, he put his legs into his pants and pulled them up. A metallic click from the living room paralyzed him. The distinct sound of his door being closed pressed him into movement. He zipped and buttoned his fly as he turned and snatched his nine-millimeter from the nightstand while he accessed the building’s security computer with his implant.

  There was no record of his door being accessed this day. The portal remained locked.

  Kirby released the handgun’s safety and, barefoot, stepped into the hallway. From his bedroom’s doorway, he could see his kitchen and front door. It was closed. He had begun to think that he was mistaken when the sound of his floor creaking came to his augmented ears.

  “I don’t know who the hell you are,” McLain said calmly, though his heart was pounding, “but you’ve just broken into a cop’s apartment.”

  Silence.

  Kirby brought the handgun’s sights to eye level, but kept it close to him with bent elbows.

  “And I don’t think you’re gonna make it outta here alive,” he added in his most intimidating baritone as he took a few steps toward the room. Behind him was the den, truly a second bedroom, but the door was shut. He stopped to listen anyway with his bio-electronic audio receptors turned up to maximum.

  “You’ve one chance,” Kirby called again. “Show yourself with your hands up. I’m armed and I will shoot your ass.”

  Instead of silence, his ears picked up a passel of cars on Indiana Avenue and a hint of white noise that could have been breathing.

  As he stepped into the living room, he caught movement from his left. Before he could turn, his recliner flew up from the floor and struck him hard. The force of the hit threw the big policeman back and his trigger finger involuntarily flinched. A round fired next to his head, but the blast was partially muffled by the cushion of the chair which was now in his face. His receptors reacted to the gunshot, but his left ear rung anyway as it could only react, not prevent the sound from doing harm.

  The weight and force of the flying piece of furniture carried him into the kitchen and, off balance, he landed hard on the tiled floor. The back of his head and shoulders struck the cabinets, darkening his vision as pain exploded and reverberated throughout his skull.

  For a ful
l second, McLain laid there underneath his ruined recliner, too dazed and shocked to think about his next move or even comprehend how the heavy item could have been propelled so hard.

  In an instant, the chair disappeared. It crashed against the far wall of the living room, breaking several items. Kirby saw a dark figure of a man standing above him, smiling wickedly with horrifically sharp off-white teeth and eyes of orange and yellow that stood out from the unnaturally gray scaly skin of the face around them.

  With a slashing motion from his attacker’s left arm, Kirby’s firearm flew from his fingers, which flared in intense pain. His thumb and forefinger had been broken.

  Without hesitation, McLain struck back. The heel of his hand collided with the intruder’s nose, sending him back and away from Kirby long enough for the tough detective to scramble to his shaky feet. Immediately, he pursued the man in the black overcoat and hat, who had turned his back to nurse his broken nose in one hand.

  Among the sounds of combat, there was laughter. Raspy, deep, sinister, the intruder exuded amusement.

  Infuriated, Kirby carried his attack to the man, back turned or not, and tackled the gray-skinned freak of nature. The two combatants impacted with the balance of the living room furnishings, ending with the holovision set’s plastic cabinet, which shattered into hundreds of pieces.

  McLain landed on his attacker’s back and pummeled his head with lefts. His right hand could do nothing more than hold the squirming intruder down. Blow after blow landed squarely, bending the brim of the black hat and impacting upon the cheek and left ear of the man pinned to the remnants of the broken HV.

  The growling, menacing laughter continued.

  As Kirby’s fist drew back for another strike, he found that the creep was far from done. With great strength, the prone figure lifted himself and McLain from the floor and managed to spin, throwing Kirby from his back and dumping him into the bare spot where his recliner had once been. His already concussed skull struck the wall, stunning him and leaving him lying on his left side, wincing.

  “That was great!” the intruder howled delightfully through a face full of blood as he removed the hat and tossed it to the floor. “You know, that’s the second time in the past few days my nose has been broken! How fun!” he screeched gleefully and smiled in grotesque delight, showing his blood-stained teeth.

  Kirby stared into the face of the enigma in front of him as he struggled to regain his feet. Underneath the flowing blood, the grayness of his skin fluttered and transformed through a mosaic of colors. At first, McLain thought the knocking on his noggin was causing a hallucination, but after seeing the intruder’s skin tone settle into a light brown, he discarded it. The transformation seemed too real. The creature’s eyes transformed from the harsh mustard yellow into an emerald green that caught the light of the sun flowing into the apartment from the front windows.

  “You’re also the only one that’s been able to land any blows to me since my hand-to-hand training,” he or it continued in the same tone. “Congratulations, Detective McLain, you’re doing quite well, indeed!”

  “What the hell are you supposed to be?” Kirby managed to say through wheezes. “It’s a little early for a Halloween freak show.” The policeman stood at his full height and found little solace in the discovery that he was at least four inches taller than his assailant. He thought the command for his implant to connect to an internet server in the den. He needed help and reached out to the CPD server.

  The intruder threw his head back and laughed. It was all McLain needed. He charged, though with his shortness of breath, he realized it was not as robust as his first tackle.

  Catching the detective’s movement well in time, the Marine crouched slightly and flung out his right leg in a flying roundhouse kick. His foot landed squarely on McLain’s jaw and had the added benefit of moving him to the right of the man’s charge.

  Kirby, sans a few teeth, landed on his couch with a frame-breaking crunch. The room spun and spun while he tried to deal with the rolling fields of pain his body had been dealt. Somewhere in that passing few seconds, he discovered his implant was unable to connect to anything.

  “Good for you, Kirby McLain!” the FROG commended as if the man had won a prize. “This has been most entertaining!”

  He moved to the detective and loomed over him triumphantly, only to receive another blow from McLain’s left fist, followed by a right, which was far less potent given the broken appendages. Kirby howled in pain after that strike, but still managed to give the intruder a hard kick in the abdomen which drove the nutcase to the other side of the room with an audible crack of his ribs.

  Like a drunk on a Friday night bender, McLain scrambled clumsily from the couch and fell more than leaped onto the floor of the small foyer. His blurry vision caught sight of his nine-millimeter, which he was able to pick up with his left. With a great amount of pain flowering in his chest and back, he spun to take aim of the freak and he fired three times.

  The first round looked to have found its mark, but he could not be sure. The target was incredibly fast, and had tumbled to Kirby’s left and out of the way of the next two.

  At some point during that tumble, McLain felt something strike him hard and deep, though he could not comprehend what it was, considering the distance between himself and the man in the black overcoat. A wave of fresh pain erupted in his upper chest and left shoulder, resulting in his pistol falling from his fingers against his will. His suddenly powerless arm dropped, too, but struck something on the way down, which cranked up the pain to never-before-experienced levels. Kirby’s world dimmed when he screamed until his breath ran out. He rolled and fell back against his foyer closet’s door which only added to the agony. Looking down, he solved the mystery of the new pain. The intruder had somehow thrown the bayonet into him. It had entered his side just below his armpit at an upward angle, given McLain’s prone position. The blade had done something to his shoulder from within, ending the usefulness of his left arm.

  “Now, that’s shooting,” the intruder remarked while searching for the place he had been hit. “Damn fine work, Detective McLain!” he mocked.

  Kirby watched, defeated, as the intruder removed the newly-holed black coat and patted the tan pullover sweater which bore a patch of fresh blood at his lower abdomen. Laughing, the attacker flashed a winning smile as he shook his head and winked at Kirby.

  “Who…who are…you?” McLain could only whisper.

  “You know something,” the other answered. “You, my good man, truly deserve to know.” Wearily, he took a couple of steps toward the fallen policeman and dropped to the floor in front of him with his legs crossed Indian-style. He patted his knees and took a few deep breaths. “My given name is Elliot. I don’t have a surname, per se. The military gave me a number. Imagine that shit. A fucking number for a name.”

  Elliot’s eyes, now light blue, searched the ceiling for something, perhaps a memory. His skin paled before Kirby’s widening eyes. Together with the greasy, curly black hair, which so far had not changed color, Elliot’s appearance became that of a teenager. Young and perfect in its porcelain finish despite the blood trickling from the nose. The youthful blue eyes gazed into Kirby’s own. A thin smile crossed his lips, mercifully hiding the predatory teeth.

  “What…,” McLain started, but was interrupted by a watery cough. “What are you?”

  “Elliot Three-dash-Seven,” the young man continued while he tilted his head up and snorted blood back up into his sinuses. He turned away and spat the bloody mess across the room. “The dash is silent.” He cackled insanely for a brief second before turning solemn once again. “I was a Marine attached to Force Recon. Part of their Optimized Genetics squad.”

  Abruptly, Elliot Three-Seven popped up on his feet and closed the distance between himself and McLain. He scooped up the pistol and tossed it to the hallway, placed his left foot upon the detective’s chest and yanked the bayonet free.

  Kirby screamed, though it was short
and weak. Heat washed over his chest and lower abdomen.

  “Ooo…yuck,” Three-Seven commented through a faux grimace. “That doesn’t look good, Kirby, old buddy.” A laugh overtook him while he wiped the blood from the triangular blade onto a couch cushion. “You should get that looked at!” He gave a short, wicked cackle.

  Kirby groaned and grunted in pain. He discovered he was unable to move, save for his legs, but even that caused pain.

  “Oh, but there’s good news!” Elliot called brightly after returning from the kitchen. He had retrieved an apple and was devouring it as he came near Kirby and crouched. “Becawza yer can’her,” he said while chewing, “I’m not gonna eachoo. I ha’e a phobia.” He swallowed and continued. “Don’t want cancerous meats.”

  Kirby stared at his killer and the killer stared back. There was no animosity in the face of either man, only fading strength in one and childlike curiosity in the other.

  “You’re so funny,” Elliot granted with a chuckle as he flung the core away to the sink. “You’re trying to figure out, even now, as you lay there dying, how the hell I got in here, how I found you, and why you can’t seem to use your ‘plant.”

  McLain gave a brief, weak nod.

  Three-Seven tapped his temple. “It’s all up here. State-of-the-art-type shit, old bean. I hacked the CPD computer and matched up your face and that of Detective Frank Campanelli’s. Saw him last night.”

  Kirby squirmed and grunted in pain. He squinted with renewed anger at the mention of his co-worker.

  “Oh, no worries,” Elliot provided as if he had been asked. “I didn’t kill him. You know, that’s one interesting motherfucker. A blind cop…a detective, no less. Now, I’ve seen every fuckin’ thing, huh?” He cackled high and loud again while his eyes turned from blue to black. “I was watching you two when you came to check out the car I wrecked. He’s got an interesting style about him. An air, if you will. Luckily, I was able to procure similar stylish threads the other night. Kinda wish you hadn’t put a hole in the coat, though. Not nice, Kirbinator.” He wagged his finger and feigned fatherly disappointment.