Code 61

by Donald Harstad

  Lamar nodded. “Two hours, easy.” It was almost funny, the way he tried not to talk, and lost.

  “Last night, Mr. William Chester made an appearance. Up in here.” I pointed to the general area, and then to the ravine. “Came up that ravine where we spotted him Monday. His car was parked down at the bottom. We followed him, not too far from this place, and Sally and I went down the ravine, and we sent Borman around the bottom. We lost him.”

  Lamar looked surprised.

  “Yeah. Well, anyway, while we were chasing the goddamned vampire hunter, the vampire was paying a visit to the house. Far as I can tell.”

  Lamar shook his head. “Too bad,” he managed to get out.

  “No shit. I dunno, though. The silver lining might be that I don't think Dan Peale knew we were up here last night. I think he might think he's gotten away with something. That he has some time to play with.” I looked at him squarely. “But, no. No, I don't know if he's down there. But I think he is.”

  We decided that Byng, Borman, Sally, and I would go down, two at a time, via the shaft. Another group headed by Lamar would try to enter at the main mine entrance, about a mile south of the shaft, at the bottom of the bluff. We'd have two troopers at the house, and two troopers at the upper end of the elevator shaft to the mine.

  “Hey, Lamar?”

  “Yeah?” He barely got it out. He really should have been home in bed.

  “If you run across that idiot William Chester, super vampire hunter, see if you can arrest his ass for something, will ya?” I meant it. “Anything. Just keep him the hell out of our way.”

  “Sure, Carl.”

  “And, if somebody can get ahold of Hester or Harry, get 'em headed back here, too. If we get our boy, they're both gonna want to talk to him ASAP.”

  As we waited for the night scope, I thought about what we'd been told earlier about Dan wanting to “experience” Edie's death secondhand. The more I thought about that, the more I thought I knew why he'd taken Huck out of the house. He needed the time to “experience” her terror, by ingesting her blood while he … Jesus. It made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

  The briefing at the top of the shaft was short and sweet.

  “Okay, listen up,” I said. “We won't have any radio contact down there. Don't even try. There also might be blasting caps and stuff in the mine, and radio transmissions can set them off. Got that?”

  Sally, Byng, and Borman nodded.

  “We're in a real hurry, here. I think she's being kept alive for a little while, but I can't say for sure. If we find her, don't move her unless you have to. She might have an IV stick in her neck, or something, and she could bleed to death if it pulls out. Understood?”

  It was.

  “This son of a bitch is about as delusional as you can get, and might really believe he's a vampire, and that he's immortal. He's very likely high on meth, or ecstasy or some sort of combination of the stuff. That means fast and strong. Don't count on stopping him just by sticking a gun in his face. Be prepared to shoot.” I took a breath. “Ready?”

  Byng and I went first. The next pair was to be Sally and Borman.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Thursday, October 12, 2000

  05:28

  We pulled the lever on the electrical box, and the mechanism immediately started to rumble and grind. Not too loud, though. Great.

  The cab took about a minute to crawl its way to the top, and when I saw it I wasn't so damned sure it was a good idea to get into the rickety thing. It was old, rusty, riveted iron bands holding old, rotting wood together. Top, sides, and floor. No door. To give you some idea about the cramped quarters, once we were jammed in, Byng was able to easily reach out and reverse the lever on the junction box. That started us rumbling and grinding toward the bottom of the shaft. There was no light in the thing, either. That was just as well, as we were going to have to dark-adapt as quickly as we could. But I could almost feel damp limestone running by about six inches from my face. I guess you just don't appreciate elevator doors until you don't have them.

  It was noticeably cold when we ground to a halt at the bottom of the shaft. Cold, but not as damp as I'd expected. That was a plus.

  But it damned sure was dark. There was a faint glimmer of yellowish light, though, off to the right. One point for Toby.

  Byng put his hand over his flashlight, and just opened a small crack between his fingers to let a thin beam play over the wall nearest us. His hand glowed red over the lens. Spooky. He found a companion junction box, and pulled the lever down. The elevator car started its labored climb back to the top.

  We moved toward the faint yellow light. The surface underfoot was silica sand, packed down into a pretty smooth surface by lots and lots of traffic. Silica sand is about as fine as table salt, or finer. It packs well, and doesn't impede movement the way beach sand would. It's quiet to walk on, too.

  We'd gone about thirty feet, slowly, when the motor stopped, the elevator having reached the top. It was the first opportunity we'd had to actually listen for any sounds in the mine, and the faint strains of some music reached us.

  “Music,” said Byng.

  “Umm,” I said. “From where?” We couldn't really tell. “Close one eye,” I said to him. “I'm turning on a flashlight.”

  I followed my own advice, which would enable me to have one eye that had begun to adapt to the dark while I used the other one to follow the beam around our area.

  It helped get our bearings, and it also gave us some sense of the size of the place.

  We were standing in a chamber about thirty feet high, by about sixty feet square. There was an enormous pillar just to our left, that seemed the same size as our chamber. Past it, my light reflected off the far wall of an adjacent chamber and pillar. That was about 180 feet, and it appeared to just keep going on and on, although the light was damned faint that far off.

  Ahead of us was a similar arrangement, and to our right, the pillar-chamber sequence seemed to continue for as far as the beam would reach.

  “Big place,” I said, quietly.

  “Goes for several miles,” whispered Byng, “north and south. Only about three chambers deep, though. Maybe four, I hear. In places.”

  We were in an older part, for sure. The walls and ceiling were covered with little troughs and gouges, made by hand-wielded picks.

  I put my hand over the light, letting a small beam escape. I found that, while I could see fairly well out of the eye I'd closed, the red-yellow afterglow in the other eye was very bothersome. Not such a good idea, after all. The darkness was just too complete.

  It was still very quiet, and I was beginning to wonder if the elevator had broken, leaving Borman and Sally stuck on top. Even as I was wondering about it, the electric motor started up.

  “Sally and Borman,” said Byng.

  The four of us assembled, and I came up with a plan. I decided to move toward the light, and see what we found.

  “Quite a plan,” whispered Byng, his amusement evident in his voice.

  “This isn't exactly D-Day,” I said.

  “What's that smell?” whispered Byng.

  “What smell?” I really didn't smell anything out of the ordinary at all.

  “Reminds me of an Italian restaurant,” said Byng.

  “Ah,” I said softly. “That's Sally.”

  “What?”

  “I've got some fuckin' garlic,” she hissed. “All right?”

  Byng cleared his throat. “Yeah. Sure.”

  We moved toward the light, and the symphonic music got increasingly louder as we went. The lighted chamber turned out to be at right angles to the right of the one directly ahead of us. Maybe I just hadn't understood what Toby meant.

  We crept along one of the enormous pillars, attempting to stay in the dark as long as we could. We paused, squatting or kneeling down, at the entrance to the lighted chamber.

  Two overhead fluorescent units, of the type you'd find in a home workshop, suspended about twenty
feet off the floor, lighted that entire chamber. The light was dim, but not as bad as it could have been, given the vast area they were lighting. It was certainly good enough to let us see the furnishings.

  Along the walls were large, predominantly reddish, Oriental-style carpets, hanging from lengths of iron pipe that were wired into rings about fifteen feet off the floor. The hangings were around all three sides of the chamber that were visible to us, and it looked to me as if they were hung across the entrances to other chambers on all three sides.

  The floor was covered with new wooden planking that peaked out from under more carpeting that covered most of the floor area of the chamber. The ceiling was formed from transparent plastic drop cloth that was suspended from the iron pipe that supported the wall hangings.

  “Lot of carpet, there,” said Sally.

  There certainly was. Lots of planking, too.

  On the floor were several overstuffed chairs, in two clusters, between which was set a long dining table complete with chairs and a large china cabinet that stood against a wall. The chamber was divided by an enormous breakfront, a good thirty feet long and about eight feet high. Hanging carpets at each end made it an effective wall, splitting the chamber in two.

  “That's where that went,” murmured Byng.

  “What?”

  “That long thing. That was in that hotel, the Larabee, that was torn down about ten years ago.”

  Ah. Sure. It had been behind the hotel bar, loaded with liquor bottles and glasses. I'd seen it at more than one fight call.

  “That sure as hell didn't come down that little elevator,” said Borman.

  Good point. That implied fairly easy access to the main entrance.

  “I thought Toby said it was beautiful,” said Byng.

  “Well,” I whispered, “it was dark, and he was probably stoned.”

  The main point, though, was that there was nobody home. At least, not in this half of the chamber. The music was louder in here, as well. Almost too loud.

  “Where is he?” asked Sally, underscoring the point.

  “Best bet,” I said, very quietly, “is the other half of the chamber.”

  It looked as though there were two logical paths to whatever lay behind that looming old breakfront, one around each end.

  “Two around the left, two the right,” I said. “Be fast, but don't make any noise.”

  “Be vewy, vewy quiet,” said Sally. “We are hunting wampires.”

  We all smiled at that. It helped.

  Byng and I went right, Sally and Borman left. We crossed the chamber by moving as close as possible to the walls, skirting the furnishings in the middle. Byng and I reached our end of the breakfront first.

  Gun in hand, I took a deep breath, gently moved the edge of the hanging carpet aside, and stepped through.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Thursday, October 12, 2000

  05:46

  Inside, there were three separate rooms, of a sort. Tall, maybe six and a half foot, walls with openings in the middle. Cubicles, right out of an office supply catalogue. These were a dark, uneven red. I stepped closer to the nearest one. It looked to me as though it had been sloppily spray-painted. I heard Byng come through behind me.

  The rooms seemed to be raised on old wooden cargo pallets.

  It was much quieter in this area, the music being muted by the intervening carpets.

  I heard a click to my left, and looked toward the sound. Borman and Sally were just rounding their end of the breakfront. They apparently had heard it, too, as all four of us froze for a moment.

  There was a hollow metallic sound, barely audible above the music. Like somebody striking two large pots together.

  “Please don't,” said a quavering, contralto voice. “I didn't tell anybody, please don't, please.” It wasn't a scream, or a yell for help. It was in an eerily normal, almost conversational tone of a woman speaking to someone in the same room. It was Huck.

  I heard a deeper, male voice that seemed to reply, but couldn't quite make out the words. But he laughed. Nothing demonic or anything of the sort. That would have been easier to take, I think. This laugh was kind of quiet, polite almost. He was amused.

  We all started to move at once. It was impossible to tell which of the three rooms the sound had come from, so each pair took the one closest. We had him trapped, I was sure.

  Byng and I won. I stepped into the room on my right, and saw a workbench with wide, sheepskin straps that were restraining a supine Huck, and a man clad only in running shorts standing near her.

  I pointed my gun at his back, and said, “Freeze.”

  Things just sort of stopped at that point. In that instant, I took in the fact that there was a transparent length of surgical tubing leading from the side of Huck's neck into a stainless steel basin on the floor; that there was a forceps clamping the tubing off; that his hand was on the forceps; that the tubing was secured to her neck with a tape wrap.

  He froze, exactly what I'd told him to do. Looking at his back, I could see his shoulder muscles twitching. I remember thinking that he had great definition.

  I moved to my left, toward Huck's head, keeping my gun pointed at him. I felt Byng come in behind me.

  “Cover him from there, Byng,” I said. “He moves, shoot him.”

  “Yep,” said Byng, sounding very matter-of-fact.

  “Your bullets,” said Dan Peale, with an excellent upper class English accent, “cannot harm me.”

  There was something very disconcerting about the way he said that. Calm, informative, with absolutely no doubt in his mind. He didn't turn.

  “Step slowly back away from her,” I said. “Don't make any sudden moves. We don't want to put that theory to the test, do we? … ”

  He was obedient. As he began to step back, slowly, he very deliberately squeezed the forceps, and then released it. Blood flowed instantly from Huck's neck, down the tube, and into the basin. Before I could stop him, he continued his motion by raising his left hand, and almost casually flipping the forceps over the back wall of the cubicle. Then he completed his step back from her.

  Huck started to make gasping sounds, and strained at her straps. Dan Peale made a series of hissing noises, sucking air deep into his lungs, and forcing it out. Ventilating. He turned his head, farther than would have seemed normal, and I saw his face for the first time.

  Dan Peale had a longish face, with pronounced musculature at the jaws. Dark hair and dark brown eyes. No facial hair except the eyebrows. And fangs, nearly an inch long, made more prominent by a wide, predatory grin. Even knowing that they were prostheses, they were startling. There was a smear of blood on his lips and chin.

  I'd never seen him before in my life, but I felt I knew him.

  “Put your hands behind your back,” I said. “Now!” I had to get to that tube….

  “Bleeding…. ” came from Huck.

  Dan Peale grimaced and hissed again.

  I reached down without taking my eyes from Peale, and got my left hand on the tube. I fumbled and felt the warm liquid running over my hand. Now the tube was slick, and I couldn't get a grip on it without looking down. I glanced at it for an instant, got a purchase, and squeezed it as hard as I could between my thumb and forefinger. It greatly reduced the flow, if not cutting it off completely.

  “Cuff him,” I said to Byng.

  Dan Peale had a fine sense of timing. Byng, out of his view, had glanced down at his holster, as he put his gun away so he'd have both hands free for using the cuffs. I had relaxed just a tad, having succeeded in nearly stopping the blood pouring from the tube in Huck's neck. And Dan Peale just lifted his knees, dropped way down, straightened abruptly, leaped up onto Huck's table, and jumped over the back wall of the cubicle. One, smooth motion, and he was gone.

  I got off one shot, and thought I might have hit him.

  I dimly heard a “Hey!” from outside. Borman. I had been nearly deafened by the sound of the shot.

  Byng, taking the best action h
e could, jumped back through the door, and took off around the back of the little room. I saw Sally and Borman going by, and I hollered “Sally!”

  I looked down at Huck. “We'll get you out now,” I said.

  She was gulping shuddering breaths, trying to hold still. Her eyes were wide, and I don't think she understood a word I said.

  Sally came in behind me. “Holy shit,” she said. It was like I was hearing underwater, with the addition of a monotonous squeal. That shot had been really loud.

  “You want to kink this tube, and squeeze it for a minute? Don't let go, and don't try to remove the needle from her neck.”

  “Right.” She reached out, hesitated. “Gloves?”

  “Later. Unless you got a cut on your hand. I'm going to try to find a clamp or something, and we can start getting her out of here.”

  “Right.”

  As Sally took over the job of closing off the tube, I released the restraints from Huck's wrists and ankles. She was wearing faded green sweatpants, and her feet were bare. They looked very pale and cold.

  She had on a thin, dark blue T-shirt. She was shivering, a combination of the cold air and blood loss. The only thing I could find was a large roll of paper toweling. I unrolled strips about as long as she was, and placed several layers over her.

  “Do you feel strong enough to walk?” I asked her.

  “Nuh, nuh, no.”

  Great. Well, I wouldn't have, either. I had no idea how much blood she'd lost, but I suspected it had been quite a bit. The basin at my feet was just about full.

  “We'll get him,” I said. “You're going to be fine.”

  “Yeah,” she said, weakly, and her head bumped softly back against the bench. “Sure.”

  Borman stuck his head in the cubicle. “Where'd he go?”

  “I don't know,” I said. “Did you see a forceps laying on the ground outside here?”

  He looked down.

  “Out that way,” I said, pointing to where he'd come from.