The Nymphos of Rocky Flats

by Mario Acevedo

  "What if these vânätori are already here?"

  Bob's gaze cut to me. "What do you mean?"

  I shared what Jenny had told me. The more I talked, the more Bob's aura acquired a prickly surface indicating alarm.

  "Why didn't you say something before?"

  "Because it had to do with my investigation. You've already blabbed to Wendy Teagarden and I don't want to make what I'm doing any of Ziggy's business."

  "Don't you worry, unless it involves engorged genitalia, it won't ever be Ziggy's business," Bob said. "I'll pass along what you told me to the Araneum. In the meantime, I'll need proof about the vânätori."

  "What Jenny told me is proof."

  "What Jenny told you was the talk of a medicated crazy woman. That's what Ziggy would say. Felix, bring me proof. Something I can show to the nidus."

  "Proof? Bob, I've got my own investigation to run."

  "This takes priority."

  "To you maybe, not me," I said. "If I run into the vânätori, I'll see what I can get as a souvenir."

  "I'm surrounded by comedians. Go, then. Do what you have to." Bob turned to the table and sorted through the wine. "The hell with this. I can't solve these problems with grape juice. Where's the scotch?"

  Chapter 12

  MRS. ANGELA FINAMORE, civil servant level GS-13, managed the Rocky Flats Personnel Records Department. She was the custodian of Dr. Wong's file. Documents that could lead me to the secret Tiger Team report and the truth behind the outbreak. I'd corner Finamore in her office, put her under vampire hypnosis, and make her show me Dr. Wong's file.

  Surprisingly, when I arrived, the Records Department was unoccupied except for a fellow at the front desk. Boxes bulging with files surrounded him. Behind his desk stood rows of steel filing cabinets and empty desks. In his late twenties and wearing a light-blue oxford shirt hanging limply on his trim body, he exuded the clean-cut and overworked demeanor one expected from a trustee of federal records. His badge read Gary Higby.

  I asked, "Where's Angela Finamore?"

  "Ms. Finamore is not here"—Gary Higby's eyes focused on my badge—"Mr. Gomez."

  "Do you know when she'll be back?"

  "No, she's out with the sickness." He studied me a bit too intently.

  I fixed my gaze into his. "The sickness?"

  Higby blushed and averted his eyes. "You know," he hesitated and whispered, "the nymphomania. It affected the women in the office, and I'm here alone to cope with all this." He waved to the mounds of documents awaiting his attention. Dots of perspiration shined along his brow. What the hell was heating him up?

  So what if he wasn't Angela Finamore; I'd give him a good dose of vampire hypnosis and have him hand over Dr. Wong's file.

  Higby abruptly swiveled in his chair toward the cabinet behind him, as if he were hiding something and I had made him uncomfortable. No problem, I'd uncover his secrets soon enough.

  With his back turned to me, I quietly closed the door and removed my contacts to expose my tapetum lucidum.

  I cleared my throat to get his attention.

  His aura flashed, yet he remained still, ignoring me.

  I rushed around the desk, seized his arm, and jerked his face toward mine.

  His eyes closed, Higby sprang from his chair and embraced me. He kissed my lips.

  Turning my face to avoid his mouth, I pushed him away. "What the hell?"

  He clung to me. "You made me so hot the second I saw you. I was praying you felt the same way."

  Was the nymphomania turning into homosexual satyriasis?

  Higby clasped the back of my neck. "Why should the women here have all the fun?"

  Higby unbuckled his trousers and let them drop past his knees. His erection formed a tent inside his royal blue briefs. He swept the files off his desk and scooted his butt onto the desk. I needed to put him under before he tried to bone me.

  But Higby wouldn't open his eyes for me to hypnotize him. I tugged at the collar button of his shirt, hoping to subdue him with a bite of my vampire saliva.

  Caressing my back, Higby tilted his head to one side as if expecting me to nuzzle him. I sank my fangs into the jugular of his warm neck. Gasping with desire, he squeezed me hard. His blood spurted into my mouth. I spit into a wad of tissue—no telling what contaminated him.

  Holding him still, I sucked at his neck again and worked my saliva into the wound. His grip loosened. The tent inside his briefs began to deflate. With my mouth still attached to his neck, I lay his relaxed body across the desk. His hairy, naked legs dangled over the edge, his trousers bunched at his ankles.

  The door opened, and a security guard entered. He hollered in surprise and reached for his pistol.

  I released Higby. His head thumped on the desk.

  I froze the guard with my vampire glare. Leading him into the office, I locked the door. At the rate things were going with these interruptions, I'd have to hypnotize all of Rocky Flats. In order to erase his memory of me with Higby, I'd have to bite the guard as well.

  I sat the guard in a chair and bit him. I tried not to gag on his Aqua Velva aftershave.

  With Higby and the guard sedated, I searched for Wong's file in the cabinets. Meanwhile the phones rang and rang. Someone jiggled the doorknob. Whoever it was beat on the door for several minutes and then left, cussing, "Goddamn lazy-ass records people are never here."

  When I couldn't find the file, I revived Higby just enough for him to give me his computer password. His spreadsheet listed an entry for Wong dated two weeks ago and noted that his file was stored in Building 371, inside the Protected Area.

  I had found the trail. Dr. Wong's otherwise innocuous personnel file contained something worth keeping secret.

  Before I left the Records Department, I put my contacts back in. I dropped the guard's trousers and sat Higby on his lap. When the two men came around, I'd let them sort the situation out for themselves. Maybe they'd start dating.

  I was hoping that Higby had attacked me because he mistakenly got the gay hots for my body; otherwise the outbreak had made the jump to those of us with XY chromosomes.

  Getting into the Protected Area was routine, considering that I had the appropriate clearance. I entered the concrete tunnel building straddling the perimeter wire. In the locker room I stripped to my skivvies and socks. I grabbed a set of baggy, white overalls from the laundry cart and put them on. Blots of grease on the legs and yellow circles under the armpits stained the fabric. I sorted through a pile of work boots until I found the only pair my size. The stink from the boots was so bad it made my toes curl. Whoever wore them before hadn't been familiar with the concept of hygiene. Hell, a strong dose of radiation would probably have done this pair some good.

  I took off my watch and set it on the shelf in the locker. The rule was don't take anything into the Protected Area that you can't afford to lose, in case it gets contaminated.

  Properly attired as an anonymous worker ant, I presented my badge to the guard. He slid it over the scanner and when the indicator flashed green, he motioned me to proceed through the metal detector.

  The tunnel connected to Building 371. A sign in the foyer gave directions to the materials containment facilities and the archives office.

  The dilapidated appearance inside Building 371 startled me. In the movies, nuclear facilities are always futuristic beehives made of stainless steel and glass tubes filled with glowing liquids. Everything runs with the precision of a European racing car.

  The reality was that Rocky Flats, including within the Protected Area, where plutonium manufacture had taken place, had the feel of an old factory mill that had seen better days. The rough edges from layers of paint applied to the walls and floors revealed the constant battle against decay. Capped, discolored pipes hung from the ceiling.

  All the workers, exclusively men, had shaggy mustaches and proud bellies that strained the waistbands of their overalls. Several of them had their sleeves rolled up, showing arms covered with tattoos. Again, in
the movies, nuclear workers look and act like buff robots. These guys at Rocky Flats had this ambling beer-guzzling, blue-collar manner about themselves. It was as if America's nuclear arsenal had been entrusted to bikers.

  A worker turned into the hall too sharply with his supply cart and bashed into a protruding corner, adding another gouge to the already scarred surface. He backed away from the corner and continued, crunching over chips of plaster that he had knocked loose.

  Down the hall I found the archives office, entered, and locked the door. The two male clerks on duty heard the click and turned toward me. One was as skinny as the other was fat. Standing next to each other they looked like the number 10.

  I removed my contacts and hypnotized them both. I left them standing like a couple of zombies who had forgotten what to do next. Spit drooled from their open mouths. I unhooked the key rings from their belts.

  Banks of file cabinets shared floor space with stacks of safes. I asked the skinny clerk for Dr. Wong's file.

  He twitched and gagged in the effort to answer me. "Redlight."

  I asked him what "Redlight" meant but he was too stupefied to reply. The fat clerk wasn't any more coherent.

  I could bite them and let my saliva do its work, but for the moment I wanted to keep my lips off another man's body.

  Scanning the cabinets, I bypassed those labeled PERSON-NEL. Too obvious. At the far end, against the wall, stood a gray cabinet with a TOP SECRET placard. It took two different keys to unlock the cabinet, a safeguard to prevent any one individual from getting access. Fortunately, between the clerks I had both keys, and within a minute I was rustling through the drawers, looking for anything marked "Redlight."

  I thumbed through the folders and felt my anxiety rise as the minutes ticked by. Nothing mentioned Redlight.

  At the back end of the bottom cabinet I discovered Dr. Wong's file. After feeding his papers through a copy machine, I returned the originals to their place and tucked my copies, which I had neatly folded, into the waistband of my underwear. I'd study the documents later.

  Confident that this case was starting to break open, I walked back to the tunnel. I joined a group of five workers waiting to exit through the metal detector and radiation monitors.

  An alarm shrieked, sending a grating, pulsating blare through the building. Lights along the walls flashed.

  The worker in front of me spun around. His braided ponytail smacked me in the face. "Holy shit, that's the criticality alarm."

  That meant there was plutonium nearby that was ready to explode. The deafening scream of the alarms gripped my ears with their shrill cry of doom.

  One guard stepped in front of the metal detector to block our passage through the tunnel. He pointed to the nearest door inside Building 371 and shouted, "Everybody outside."

  The six of us rushed outside. We slipped on the dirt and gravel surrounding the building. We remained trapped inside the wire of the Protected Area. The wail of the alarms echoed around us, screaming of danger.

  The man behind me went, "Uff," and he sagged against the wall. A red blot appeared on his chest.

  Bullets tore at the wall. I grabbed the collars of the two closest men and yanked them to the ground. We flattened our bodies against the dirt. One slug ricocheted in front of me.

  What the hell was going on? First the criticality alarms. Now a crossfire. Were we under attack by terrorists?

  Another volley of bullets stitched the wall above me.

  The guy with the ponytail began to sob. "We're going to die, man. If we don't get crapped up from the plutonium, we're going to eat lead."

  "No one's going to die," I shouted to him. "Stay calm."

  The wounded man lay on his back. I crawled over to him and unbuttoned the torso of his overalls. Warm blood bubbled from a hole in the left side of his chest. I slid my hand through the blood and crammed my index finger into the hole. The smell of the fresh human blood excited my vampire hunger. My fangs grew. I wanted to attack, to feed.

  Then I remembered the other time I had done this, had washed my hands in human blood. The wail of the Iraqi girl tore into my skull. My arms tensed and I fought the urge to spring up and run away. My left hand trembled and started to slip away from the wound. I grasped my left wrist and kept my hands steady.

  The wounded man clasped my shoulder and gave a weak squeeze.

  I patted his head and left clumps of blood in his hair. "Stay with me. We'll get out of this."

  We lay still and waited for another volley of bullets. The scream of the alarms overwhelmed my vampire hearing. I might as well have been deaf.

  My breath puffed into the dirt. Blood ran down my sleeve. The folded copies of Dr. Wong's file dug into my belly. Was this a terrorist attack or simply the work of a lousy shot gunning for me?

  The alarms abruptly became silent. From inside the building, someone shouted, "All clear!"

  "You see?" I told the group. "We're okay." I patted the wounded man on the forehead.

  "Don't move, any of you," growled a voice. "Stay on the ground. Put your hands behind your head."

  Two pairs of black combat boots tramped around my head. The blast deflector of an M16 rifle knocked against my temple. "You—I said to put your hands behind your head."

  I arched my neck and stared up the barrel of the rifle. Both guards looked like demons in their black helmets, hoods, and tinted goggles.

  "But this man has a serious wound."

  The guard rapped the rifle muzzle against my forehead again. "I didn't tell you to look up. Do like you're told. Let us worry about that bastard."

  Dropping my head, I withdrew my bloodied hand.

  The guard nudged my cheek with his boot. "All right, Florence Nightingale, give me your badge."

  I scraped my hand under me and pulled my badge free.

  The guard took my badge. "So you're Felix Gomez? Get up." He grabbed my collar. "You're coming with us."

  Chapter 13

  TWO SECURITY GUARDS LED me to the plant manager's office. The taller of the guards hurried ahead and opened the door. Cradling his HK submachine gun in his left arm, he beckoned us to proceed.

  I entered the office and walked across a plush maroon carpet to a chair in front of a massive wooden desk.

  The plant manager, Herbert Hoover Merriweather, sat in a high-backed leather chair behind the desk. This was the first time I'd seen him in person, though I recognized his face from the official DOE photos that hung about the plant. Merriweather was a retired U.S. Navy captain, a former nuclear submariner—what DOE wags called a "sewer-pipe driver."

  Merriweather's black complexion was as dark and bumpy as the creosote on a wharf piling. He had a squat face, a low crinkled brow, and a nappy flattop haircut that made you think that at least once in his naval career someone had slammed a deck hatch on his head and squashed his skull. His flat nose and wide nostrils accentuated the horizontal impression of his features.

  He wore a navy-blue polo shirt that fit snug around his broad chest. The silhouette of a submarine and the designation "SSN 42" in gold thread decorated the left breast of his shirt. Like most newly retired officers, the beginnings of a paunch swelled his belly.

  On the wall over his left shoulder hung a gold submariner's badge, two dolphins flanking the cylindrical conning tower of a submarine. To the untutored eye it looked like a couple of carp fighting over a garbage can.

  A tall glass case stood against the wall, next to a large picture window covered with slat blinds. Inside the case hung a white naval officer's uniform with four gold stripes on the sleeve cuffs indicating the rank of captain. Badges and rows of military ribbons decorated the left breast of the coat.

  Merriweather's dark pupils tracked me as I approached the pea-green leather chair centered before his desk. He nodded to the guard, who turned sharply on his heels and left the office, closing the door.

  I sat in the chair, careful so as to not cause the papers tucked inside my overalls to bend and crackle.

  "
Do you know why you're here, Mr. Gomez?" Merriweather asked in a voice that sounded like gravel rattling down a pipe.

  He was playing with me. This theater of bringing me into his office, with a couple of heavily armed goons outside the door was an intense mind-squeeze. He knew why I was here. They had caught me stealing the file and rather than confront me outright, they tightened the psychological screws.

  I could remove my contacts and use vampire hypnosis to control him, but I was certain that I was under video surveillance. One suspicious move and those two guards would rush in like Dobermans and blast me to pieces with their submachine guns.

  The papers hidden inside my overalls felt as hot as plutonium. I rubbed my sweaty palms across the dirty knees of my overalls. "I'm not sure."

  "Can you tell me what happened?"

  His question came at me with the intensity of a magnesium flare. So certain was I that he was referring to Dr. Wong's file that I thought the papers in my shorts would burst into flames.

  "I brought you here to broaden your perspective of what happened today. I don't want you to report the wrong information to Lawrence Livermore." Merriweather drew a deep breath and exhaled. His nostrils fluttered. "We experienced the unfortunate confluence of two separate situations. A criticality alarm and a live-fire terrorist drill."

  "You're talking about the shooting?"

  "There was the discharge of weapons. Yes."

  "What about the guy in front of me who got hit?"

  "There were three…injuries," he elaborated.

  "Injuries? The man had a sucking chest wound."

  Merriweather knit his fingers together and leaned on his desk. "Are you a medical doctor?"

  "No. I'm a health physicist."

  "Then you would appreciate the need to let a medical expert render the proper judgment."

  "The man didn't have a sucking chest wound?" I held up my right index finger that was smeared with dried blood. "I used this finger to plug the hole."

  "Your point?"