The Howling Twenties

by Fennel Steuert

  Desks scattered as the wolf tried to get at her. Roger had barely gotten a glimpse of Doris, but he knew the wolf must have been above her. He lit up a flare and threw it at the back of the wolf’s head.

  Flame singed the wolf’s back. As it turned around, Doris picked up a desk and swung it into its chest in one fluid move. As it fell backward, the wolf swiped at her. Doris tumbled backward into a bunch of overturned desks.

  Desmond managed to pry Mab’s grip from his shoulders, but as he did she sliced at his chest and pushed him back. Roger went tumbling back into the elevator as Desmond fell into him.

  A hundred feet away, the wolf was growling. Mab appeared at the door. She pressed a floor number, and the doors began to slowly close. She waved her hand with the missing finger. Roger tossed a bunch of garlic at her, just before the door closed.

  The elevator went down half a floor, away from Doris but not so far that Roger couldn’t hear the wolf.

  Roger looked up. “We can climb up there, can’t we, Desmond?”

  In the corner, Desmond was holding his chest.

  “Roger,” said Desmond. “I’m starving.”

  15

  Weight of Pumpkins

  As Gesine rode the motorcycle up the stairs, Lorraine clung to the body of the motorcycle with both legs.

  Up ahead, Gray held a pumpkin in his hand as the motorcycle bobbled violently up the stairs. Gesine drove over a ghoul that stood eerily in the middle of one landing. As they passed landing after landing, Lorraine could see ghouls diverting their eyes from the light and then trying to rush her until she used her free hand to wave a pumpkin in their face. It bought just enough time to leave them behind.

  When they got to the seventeenth floor, Lorraine yelled out: “It’s the next one.”

  Gesine bust through the doors. Lorraine was surprised by how much brighter it looked at night. When the earthquakes were happening, things had begun to seem more clinical. Even as Mr. Argall had ensured that she and the other bio-tech people had more resources, the floor became sparser … until Doris had showed up, shooing away Argall as he tried to give her a tour and asking Lorraine about the book she’d left her on desk instead.

  But that was another department.

  The department that developed tech was on the other side of the floor. Lorraine pointed toward its glass doors. The floor looked entirely empty.

  Gesine rode the motorcycle ahead for a moment, then quickly stopped short.

  “Gray,” she said. “Can you get up?”

  Gray did what Gesine asked of him.

  “You as well.”

  That hurt Lorraine a little. ‘You’?

  As soon as Lorraine was off the motorcycle, Gesine hit the gas and rode through the department’s glass doors. Lorraine and Gray ran after her, crunching on broken glass as they looked up and down the space between cubicle walls. Figures were approaching them.

  “Try to look away from us,” said Lorraine. She took a pumpkin from Gray’s bag.

  Gray still had one in hand.

  “What are we looking for?” said Gesine. “Life, I guess. They’ll have somebody guarding it who’s alive. In the traditional sense. Can you smell that?”

  Gesine sniffed the air. “I smell death .. and life.”

  Lorraine nodded and glanced up. The ceiling’s plating had been removed, leaving the metal framework. A vampire in a light-blue suit smiled down at her, holding a gun.

  “When you cheat,” he said, “you force us to cheat, too.”

  He shot the pumpkin out of Gray’s hand. Lorraine coddled her own pumpkin as Gesine took off. Lorraine reached around her to pass Gray the pumpkin in her hand.

  The ghouls in front of Gesine paused as she drove over them.

  A blonde woman afflicted by ghoulism managed to grab onto one of the motorcycle’s exhaust pipes.

  Lorraine kicked at the blonde woman’s hand. She was not well-fed; the skin came off easily. But the blonde ghoul held onto until Gesine turned a corner and gravity sent her flying into it.

  They had lost the ghouls for a little while, but bullets still whizzed past their heads. The vampires gliding along the ceiling’s framework were still shooting at them.

  Gesine rode toward a door with a dimly lit maintenance sign on it. She hammered the doorknob down in one swift motion. Then she stood the motorcycle up for cover, leaning it partially against a wall, as Gray barged into the room.

  Gesine flinched, seemingly at some sound Lorraine couldn’t make out. What she could make out, however, was the sound of someone cocking a gun. Her family had been big on hunting.

  “Shit!” said a woman inside the room. “You’re human.”

  Gray nodded. “I’m pretty sure.”

  Lorraine peeked over his shoulder. The woman, pistol in hand, had half-turned in her seat by what seemed to be both a desk and an anachronistic machine. A large, rotting pumpkin was on top of it.

  “I can’t shoot a human being,” said the woman. She held one hand up to her brow, pinching the bridge of her nose. “They didn’t tell me I’ve have to do that.”

  As the woman lowered the gun, Gray suddenly dropped his pumpkin. He ran over and snatched it from her.

  Lorraine picked up the half-together pumpkin. A bullet whizzed over her head – close enough for her to think she felt the wisp of air. She punched her chest so that she could start breathing again.

  Gesine herself looked like she was hyperventilating. As Lorraine looked into her big black pupils, Gesine pulled a stake from around her back. She tried to nudge Lorraine inside the room with Gray and the woman.

  “No,” said Lorraine. “Someone’s got to watch your back.”

  To their left and right, a queue of ghouls had formed. They climbed over each other only to stop at the sight of the messy pumpkin Lorraine was holding in her hand.

  A gun shot came from almost directly above, narrowly grazing Lorraine’s wrist. Gesine twitched as a bullet hit her in the shoulder. Her eyesight shifted toward the pumpkin in Lorraine’s hands.

  It was like she was trying to lift her head against 50 mph winds – the way Gesine looked up from the pumpkin to Lorraine’s face.

  Gesine’s eyes narrowed. “This won’t be long.”

  She jumped up, meeting the vampire in the light-blue suit on its level.

  “Keep an eye on her, Gray,” Lorraine said.

  With two piles of moaning ghouls on either side of her, Lorraine held the pumpkin aloft so that it was visible in each direction. The ghouls behind the ones that could see the pumpkin ended up pushing over each other further and further, so that a wall of bodies with hands began to close in on Lorraine. Above her, a gun fired repeatedly.

  Lorraine saw glimpses of Gesine’s long black hair as she clashed with the figure in the light blue suit.

  “Come on,” said Lorraine.

  The ghouls kept getting closer. As the ones facing her leered at the pumpkin, Lorraine could feel the air as others’ hands clawed at it.

  “Get inside,” said the woman in the room behind her. “They’ve been instructed to eat anyone still in the building. Me included. Only Argall and Mab can change the instructions, and if I cut it off, they may hurt my family, or turn them into those things.”

  “She’s right,” said Gray. “I’m about to come over there and pull you in here myself.”

  “No,” said Lorraine. “Just make sure you bash that thing in there to bits, Gray.”

  Lorraine was determined to not leave her friends again. She lowered herself to the ground so that, as she began to lower her right arm to try to reach for the doorknob, it still distracted the closest ghoul on that side from her torso. “Gray,” she said.

  Lorraine heard metal crunch and then a loud thump. She closed her eyes. Cold, clammy hands grabbed her and pushed against her body, and she fell backward into the room. Lorraine heard the chomping of jaws, but nothing bit her. She opened her eyes.

  Gesine, bloodied, her shoulders and arms gnawed on, pushed the door behind her an
d locked it.

  “I can’t hold it forever,” she said. “Plus, I’m starving.”

  Lorraine scrambled up. “You heard her,” she told the woman. “Make them stop.”

  “Maybe,” said the woman, “you should make your friend stop.”

  Gray was holding his head and rocking back and forth. He had the gun in his hand.

  “I’m afraid I can’t let you do that,” said Gray. He pointed the gun at the woman. “You need to instruct those ghouls that, after they do their part for Robin, they’ll be free.”

  Lorraine shook her head. “Oh, come on, Gray.” Her eyes teared up as she looked into his eyes.

  Gray’s hand with the gun was shaking. “I’m sorry, Lorraine. I …”

  Lorraine ran toward him, being careful to grab his armed hand with both of hers as she pushed him on top of the machine. She managed to grab it from him and then empty all the bullets from it – except on in the chamber. Next to her, Gray struggled to grab the gun. She’d never wanted to fire a gun, but she did then – straight into the roots of a plant in the corner.

  The woman yelped. She had inched by the window and even opened it, though they were almost twenty stories up.

  Gray continued to clawed at Lorraine’s hands.

  Lorraine took a deep breath. She was exhausted. As Gray pulled the gun away from her, she punched him in the face. Hard. He fell off the machine and didn’t make another sound. She hoped he was alive, that he would stay down.

  Gesine stopped holding the door. She tilted her head, listening to the metal sounded like the creaky wood of a ship in rough seas. When she seemed satisfied that it would hold, Gesine ran toward the woman at the window, her jaws open.

  “I could bite you,” she said, grabbing the woman. “And you could join them. Maybe if you’re lucky, you’ll be like me or someone else I know. Though it’s a very strange kind of luck. If you don’t want any of that, stop the static you honed inside their heads.”

  Shuddering, the woman went over to the desk-sized machine and turned a dial all the way down. As soon as she did, the moaning stopped.

  Gesine smashed the machine with her fist, even as her stomach growled. Then she pulled a piece of something covered in light-blue cloth from her back-pocket and collapsed in the corner, devouring it. Before Gesine could finish, with wide eyes, she looked to the window.

  Lorraine got up and looked out of it. A hundred ghouls were pouring out of the place from the first floor entrance.

  The woman in the room inched her way toward the doorway. She looked outside the room, then took off.

  Gesine’s mouth was bloody from whatever she’d just devoured. She dropped the light blue cloth, now stained red, and began to breathe heavily. She moved to the other side of the room, held herself and kicked the wall. Then she slowly edged toward the door again.

  Lorraine went over to the door, slammed it shut, and blocked it with her body. “I’ve got you,” she told Gesine. “You don’t have to go with them.”

  As Gesine approached, her eyes looked almost teary. She reached out to Lorraine like she wanted to push her aside.

  Lorraine grabbed her hand. “Look at me. Look me in the eyes.”

  As Gesine almost turned her head toward the window, Lorraine put her hands on each of her cheeks. “Stay here,” she said. “You’re here, okay? With me.”

  Gesine’s breathing slowly became almost inaudible again.

  ***

  Doris woke up on one side of a titan’s shoulder. She was in her favorite dress – a navy blue number with red stripes throughout. She looked down and the city from what must have been 150 stories up. Everything looked tiny. The city seemed to shift beneath the giant’s feet.

  This isn’t real, thought Doris.

  “No,” said the custodian in her head. “Not entirely.” She looked up at the giant, dark head that seemed to regard nothing in particular as it walked through the night air – with the moon as its guide.

  “Hey,” said Simon from the other shoulder.

  Doris was surprised by how elated she was to see him. She trampled over the titan’s neck so that she was on the same shoulder as him, Roger’s great uncle.

  “You and Roger could have taken better care of my house,” he said warmly.

  “I’m sorry,” she replied. “Kind of. It wasn’t quite our fault.”

  He gazed down at where that house would be with red eyes. Doris reached out and touched Simon with a single finger. She could feel him in the same way she was able to feel anything that was really there – overwhelmingly. Her senses, always on overdrive, were tuned into this faint vampiric heartbeat, as well as the cold crisp night air. At this height, it made even her shiver.

  “It’s good to see you again,” Simon told her.

  “You, too.” Doris shifted her pupils toward the titan’s head. “What does he want? Does being torn to shreds finally make me hopeful enough for you to care that I exist?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” said the custodian as he peaked at her from the other shoulder.

  “Maybe you should let me get back to not being eaten,” said Doris.

  “Your being unconscious will not be any longer for your being here,” said the custodian. “But what happens if you survive? Will you just go back to your basement while Robin and his old world brood co-run the company with you?”

  “I don’t know,” said Doris. “I haven’t thought that far. I don’t even know why the old ones want it. If it were a few stories tall, they probably wouldn’t care.”

  “A few stories tall,” repeated Simon. “That could probably be arranged.”

  Doris looked over at the custodian, but he was gone.

  Simon closed his eyes. He lifted his head up, seeming to relish the cool night air. “Tell Roger I’m ...”

  Doris felt herself waking up. “Okay?” she asked.

  “Not quite. But sure, something like that.”

  16

  Measures

  Desmond repeatedly punched the wall of the elevator. Once he got through the wood paneling, he pulled away a window-sized portion of it – revealing concrete behind it. Desmond turned around and stood there, looking past Roger in a daze.

  Roger thought he took a lot of breaths for someone who was supposed to be undead.

  With his bloodied hand, Desmond tore at the flesh where Mab had struck him. He peeled back a layer of flesh and ate it.

  Roger closed his eyes. “Desmond, I’m sorry. You, Gesine … God. You all deserve more than this.”

  Desmond clinched his stomach and groaned. His eyes finally seemed to fix themselves on Roger.

  Suddenly Desmond began to punch through the concrete.

  “Wait,” said Roger.

  Desmond continued punching away, until once again, he stopped and picked at the flesh from his chest. Then he resumed bashing a hole into the wall. When it was big enough, he stopped.

  “We’ll think of another way,” said Roger. “Look man, use this stake. Cut away a piece of me.”

  Roger put his hand on Desmond’s shoulder.

  “Don’t touch me!” screamed Desmond, right before he scrambled out of the hole.

  Roger felt like the elevator had started again, speeding upward as his stomach tried to cling to the first floor. A cold wind ripped in the elevator through the hole. Roger slowly went to it and peeked downward.

  A flood of people were leaving the building.

  The elevator started working again. It was taking him further away from Doris. He began to hit the wall with the stake.

  When the elevator finally stopped, a white-haired vampire in a dirty suit was standing there. He had a slight crook in his back.

  “You,” said Argall.

  Doris woke up as the wolf’s claws nestled into the flesh of her shoulder. She was still in a pile of cubicles. The wolf’s paws weren’t ambidextrous enough to clear them all away, but it continued to shift things around and reach for her when the opportunity presented itself. As the cubicles shifted, she clung
to the wall of a cubicle that was still stationary. Doris started clawing her way through its mesh wall. She heard gunshots from somewhere in the building, and then as the wolf yanked away the desk on top of her, she heard gunshots that were much closer.

  The wolf took a hit in the shoulder. It trampled on Doris as it belted through the cubicle wall.

  Hazily, Doris got up. Robin and his comrades were all fanning out throughout the floor. Feeling an intense craving for blood, Doris collapsed again.

  In a flash, the lights went off and the vampires who’d been on the floor pushed off it with such force that it looked like they were flying.

  Mab was still in the awning upstairs, with less vampires on her side than the old world had in the building.

  The lights began to flicker. Doris could make out Robin’s silhouette appearing before her. He had a pistol in his hand, one that anachronistically was only only capable of a few shots.

  “Please,” said Doris. “Don’t kill any of them.”

  “Whom?” said Robin. “If the wolf survives, I’ll let it continue with what passes for its life. For you. Why is the building sinking? Is it Mab’s doing?”

  Doris shook her head. A vampire’s body fell onto the floor next to her. As Doris rolled closer to it, Robin sighed. She took the corpse’s necktie and wrapped it around her arm and shoulder.

  “Whatever is going on with the building,” said Robin, “it’s too late for Mab and the lackeys she has left that purport to be vampires.”

  “No,” said Doris. “If you think that, it’s too late for whatever you really wanted from this company.”

  Robin offered her his hand. “Won’t you just let me help you? I have no desire to own a company, or to lead one.”

  The lights flickered on and off again, then when they held themselves together and remained on, the building sunk by another floor.

  “You’re already going to have to create a whole new entrance,” she said. “It’s just … it doesn’t want to go into business, Robin, and it doesn’t see your old friends as anything better.”