Down side, of course, is that it’s kinda like going inside the hive of a bunch of really nasty hornets. Still, public safety is first and foremost. To protect and to serve.
I glance at my watch again. I’ve got eleven thirty on the dot. I’m pushing it in terms of Boner Blast-off. I’m on the edge tonight. I hope we wrap this up, right quick. Else I might have to excuse myself, mid-siege, and take care of business in the damn car. I wonder if I should share this with Hanson, but decide against it. Tension is already high.
We move like a single unit for the main entrance, which we see, to our great consternation, is partially open. Probably left so by the other four cops that no doubt already entered for prelim Intel. I tap my communications link-up.
“Units four and six, this is MV-12, on the perimeter,” I say, in a half whisper. “You guys okay in there?”
No answer. Not good.
“I repeat, four and six, this is Monster Vice, number 12, On Station, come in,” I repeated fervently.
Hanson stops. So do I. We listen. Nothing.
“They’re dead,” he says and I tend to agree.
Somewhere, distantly, I hear the tak-tak-tak of the SWAT choppers moving in on our position. A rotating swathe of light suddenly appears, as Miller and Brokowsky in car five, screech around the corner. They’re young, been in Vice now for about a month, full of piss and shitting steel to kill as may Tutis and Lyckers they can shake a Stake at. So far, they’ve collared some Corpse Eaters and a few Reanimators, but that’s it.
This will be their first Fang Detail.
Regis and Kellerman (the latter a rather fine piece of female police officer I would have no objections indoctrinating into the fine art of Tellerman’s Maneuver) arrive next, quieter, without the fanfare of the two youngsters parking next to our POS Sedan.
All officers exit their vehicles, and flank us, standing operating procedure for Siege Assault.
Everyone looks to me. I’m the oldest guy in Vice. The Senior Honcho. Hansen, with a gut the size of Rhode Island courtesy of Burger King and Anheuser Busch looks ten years my senior, but he won’t see 42 for another three months.
As it turns out, after tonight, he won’t see 42 at all.
The SWAT choppers hover overhead, looking to me for some kind of signal. I again gaze at the entrance looming before me, an abyss of horror, a chasm of certain death and fates worse than death.
Seven minutes have passed since Monster Vice got the 666 call.
Someone may still (conceivably, unbelievably) be alive in this warehouse. Frightened, hiding, fearful and rightfully so, of things that should exist only in nightmares, but now have been translated into bloodsucking reality. A security guard, perhaps, some poor stray cleaning lady, maybe a kid ... having the bad luck or poor judgment to be in the wrong place, at the wrong time, when the herd of Tutis decided to wing in and set up shop.
It’s eleven thirty seven, and I have twenty minutes within which to safely secure this location and Shoot My Load, lest I transform into one of the enemy and turn everyone’s night into Shit On A Bloody Stick.
“It’s time,” I say with false conviction. “Hanson, on my right, everyone else, on rear point. Let’s go Stake some Fangs.”
CHAPTER THREE
I sound braver than I feel.
When I was younger, when the world was sane, when I dealt with mere mortal men and women who also happened to be murderers, deviants and/or sexual predators, I seemed to possess more intestinal fortitude. I had no equal, I was A Number One, Captain Courageous. Compared to me, Dirty Harry was a girlie-man, Tofu-eating fairy, whining for his .44. Han Solo was a space faring pansy who secretly mated with Chewey when he wasn’t running away from the mean old Empire. And John Wayne -- well, he was nothing more than a limp-wristed, bow-legged, horse-buggering cross-dresser who sat to pee.
You get the picture -- these guys couldn’t touch me in the Balls department. I could eat them all for breakfast.
I was Tops.
I was He Who Knew No Fear.
I was Big Dog of LAPD Homicide — youngest, hottest Inspector on the block. I had thirty collars under my belt by New Years 24 months ago and had four silver stars (with cluster) from the Mayor of Los Angeles for Courage Under Fire. Lightning shot out of my ass when I walked the streets; women dreamed of me, men yearned to be cloned after my likeness.
I was a Star.
And then the world changed. The Popov Meteor Shower ended the party a little over two years ago. Twenty-four hours of atmospheric pyrotechnics, coupled with a bizarro solar flare, and the next morning, The Dead Walked. Vampires came out of nowhere, sucking whole populations dead, thus creating other vampires, Fresh Kills that murdered and plundered without purpose. Werewolves, once a Lon Chaney chuckle on Late Nite USA, stormed the land, literally “wolfing” down the good people of America (and abroad). These were the New Killers (Osama was history), The Most Recent Bad Boys On The Block, and conventional law enforcement was at first hamstrung by the epidemic and overwhelming tide of supernatural evil that cloaked the globe like a shroud. The lesser evils followed; Demons from Hell, Walking Corpses, Ghouls, and others — but none were so vile, so directly a threat to human existence, as the Nosferatu (Tutis) and the Lycanthropes (Lyckers). The Tuti/Lyckers killed indiscriminately and for pleasure, as much as for survival. Later, as the Tutis fed, their collective intelligence soared, making them the most dangerous life form on Earth.
Now, in every city on the planet, local law enforcement, state and federal protection agencies have special divisions to deal with the Monster Situation, which has become a globally endemic nightmare. In the beginning, it was generally thought that Armageddon had arrived -- the end of all Mankind.
I didn’t share that notion. Not at first.
I was a King. I was Super Dick. Six feet of Bad-Ass Kicking Hell on Two Feet. I moved from Homicide into Monster Vice with the speed of an ICBM full-tilt boogey for its primary target, still possessed of the old one-two, simply ready to kick a different kind of Bad Guy’s ass. I called the Monster Bluff, and I called it loud: Look out Nosferatu, Dick Pitts is your new nightmare in town. And as for you, Lycker slobbering bastards, well ... the Wolf-Bullshit is over, finished and done with. The drool stops here.
That was then. This is now.
My bravado has been tempered by time, experience and personal tragedy. I have been Bit, and I have gazed into the Maw of Evil. My very life, my very continuance as a human being, is contingent on the timely effectiveness (and sometimes, imaginative technique) of Swat The Salami, a critical function to be performed every twenty-four hours before midnight. I have lost friends and associates on the battlefield of this new kind of campaign against the Undead. It is a war we are losing, albeit slowly, and the knowledge troubles me to the core.
I am a soldier.
But I no longer feel brave.
And on occasion, after a particularly bad night of Fang Detail, I sit to pee.
There was a time I would say proudly: I am Homicide.
But now, I am Monster Vice. And Monster Vice is my home, the last bastion of personal sanity, a sanctuary of work and purpose. I fight the good fight. But I do so with fear in my heart.
I enter the warehouse and my blood freezes.
Like my need to Flog Little Freddie, not for the first time.
***
The Fangs throw four Fresh Kills at us right off.
The four cops, in fact, that had arrived On Station first. They’re pretty well gnawed, insane from the death experience and the re-animation - an inevitable curse to being fed on by Nosferatu. The poor bastards don’t have a soul anymore; they are starved chunks of cold vicious meat, fueled by a mysterious cosmic evil that defies conventional science, Newtonian physics and any kind of basic Cartesian reality. Their eyes are balls of wide, bloodshot jelly, inflamed in the sockets; their torn throats, replete with hanging shards of chewed flesh and severed arteries, dangle pitifully as they charge us. Their smell is the most offensive, the galvan
izingly worst part of this whole insanity. Once Bit, the Fresh Kills issue an ammonia-based gas, pungent with the commingled odors of sulfur dioxide and glucose. It’s one big Shit-O-Rama in here — and on top of it all, I’ve got an inexplicable standing erection. Probably my close proximity to Kellerman, who I have (forgive the crass colloquialism) wanted to bone from Day One.
Thoughts of coupling with Kellerman are dashed in a micro-second as one of the Fresh Kills tackles her from the right, slashing her throat with his newly grown two inch incisors. I cry for her pain, I cry in fury; we’re two feet in the door, and already sustaining unacceptable casualties.
“Lay down a suppressing fire, ASAP!” I yell, hoping my people are together enough to follow orders.
I fire into one of the Fresh Kills, aiming for the head. My aim is good and true, and brains paint the wall nearest me. Hanson has taken out another FK, while the two rookies deal with the remaining lot. I call into the SWAT Unit overhead.
“Officer down. We need Medical Evac,” I yell, as another sound begins to drown out my own voice. A sound that fills all of us with a deep terror, a primal terror that defies experience and time in the Kill Zone of Combat.
The hiss. The chilling whine of things with no pulse, and teeth the length of my dick. We don’t see them yet, but they are here. Around us. Not just two, three or four. No, we sense Multiples, taken to the next exponential level of fun and horror, courtesy of Popov’s Meteor Extravaganza two years back.
“Heads up,” I call out, though the warning is superfluous. Everyone is frosty, on the watch. I continue to hold Kellerman’s head in my hands, as she stares at me in astonishment and pain. Regis, her partner, gazes at me with an uncharacteristically dull, bovine and hopeful expression on his face ... as if perhaps I held the power to Eternal Life in my palms. I return the helpless gaze, and a moment later, as if to confirm my painful inadequacy as God Almighty, Kellerman dies. The physical damage is too great to hope for any kind of treatment; her carotid and jugular veins are masticated cords of useless tissue. Blood cascades out of her body like the Great Niagara. Death is a certainty. Yet with this in mind, I take one of my stakes and make the sign of the cross. Regis makes a sound reminiscent of a whimper, then takes a step back.
I drive my Stake into Kellerman’s heart. Her eyes open suddenly, and they are no longer the eyes of a human being. Nor is the scream that explodes from her mouth, further chilling my blood, and by the way, shrinking my ten-dollar Hard-On of moments before into a frightened little pup that’s gone to hide. I’ll have to lure that bad boy out with crackers later and the thought reminds me that I have a deadline to Pound Porky, lest I become one of Legion with a peckish hankering for human plasma.
I despair as Kellerman dies (again). Her protestations at my stake sticking out of her chest, like some erstwhile new appendage that astonishes her, are minimal. She jerks and jolts beneath my grip, attempting a feeble paw at my hands, but that is all. Another moment, and there is only a shudder and a rattle, then nothing. Kellerman is gone. I will flirt with her nor more in the halls of Rampart’s Monster Vice. I will lust no more after that splendid body nor dream of a candlelight dinner with her on some nameless night in a brighter future. Rather, I will weep when I think of the beautiful young officer on this most horrible of nights.
“Dick,” Hanson calls out to me. “I make two, maybe three Tutis on the upper level. We gotta move, buddy.”
There are tears in my eyes, and I wipe them clean. I look to Hanson, and he nods. Pure, unabashed empathy stares back at me. There is no shame in weeping for a fallen comrade, a doomed officer, a friend. We cry openly in Monster Vice, as do we drink, smoke, shoot up if necessary. It’s not strictly By The Book, but IA never quips on us about that.
They know what we do.
And what we deal with.
“Everyone else clean?” I ask, hoping the answer is in the affirmative.
My people nod. No one is Bit. Not even a scratch.
Only Kellerman.
I hate Fang Detail. Really.
“Let’s move out,” I say tonelessly.
I have fifteen minutes before Masturbation Mania.
Wonder if I’ll make it.
* * *
Our comlinks crackle. Dispatch notifies us that we have substantial backup out front, also in the rear. The warehouse is completely surrounded. Nothing leaves unless it flies — and if one of the Tutis even tries to “bat out” the SWAT choppers would torch it. We ostensibly have our bloodsucking friends outnumbered twenty to one ... assuming, of course, there are only three or four of them hiding here inside. Vampires don’t travel in huge groups, a single nest of them never exceeding half a dozen.
Three or four is enough, believe me. Six months back in Macy’s, one vampire killed five Monster Vice officers inside of five minutes. I feel my hand tighten on my Stakes, remembering the carnage well. I was the only survivor that night.
The rookies finish staking the remaining Fresh Kills that attacked us. I listen to the accompanying hiss and gurgle of vampire disintegration, wondering vaguely, from someplace far away, how I came to be in such a grizzly line of work.
A shadow moves on an upper level, and my attention snaps to the blur of motion. I then begin to hear hissing. Coming from nigh on above us.
“Somebody’s home,” Hanson mutters, eyes focused upwards.
I nod, then look to the remaining three officers in back of Hanson.
“Let’s spread out, people,” I say in a low whisper. “Watch your necks.” MV humor. Ha, ha, ha. No one laughs.
I then see the green stream of iridescent smoke tendril out from around a corner on the level above us. It moves as if it is alive, probing, thinking, understanding. I know what it is, so does Hanson.
“Oh, Jesus,” he mutters and I shudder, truly fucking petrified.
“What is it?” one of the rookies ask, fascinated by the twinkling mass of steam.
“It’s a Master,” I say, choking on the last word.
One of the rookies is familiar with the term. He stops in his tracks, looks at me, courage and bravado draining out of his face. “Maybe we should withdraw and just level the place.”
The idea is appealing to me. One good Comp B incendiary bomb, and everything for a square block roasts for half an hour. I know it is not realistically an option. Whoever made the Monster Vice call may still be in here, alive, in need of our help. The ominous green contrail continues to snake downward.
“What’s a Master?” the other rookie presses.
“Master Vampire,” I say quickly. “A shape changer. He can move through walls, become any animal he pleases. And he has the strength of a baby dinosaur.”
Hanson has already pulled a Stake. “This could get ugly.”
I say nothing. Whenever a Monster Vice team has confronted a Master Vampire in the past ... that squad has been wiped out to a man. Our best recourse would be to run now, before the Master has a chance to reincorporate into solid form. Still, standing orders, even with Masters, are clear: Kill, kill, kill. We look above, and see three Tutis, hovering together, snarling at us. Females. The Master’s harem. I again wonder who made the initial Distress call to MV.
The serpentine stream of smoke — the supernatural essence of the Master Vampire — continues to rove deliberately down the staircase. Leisurely, without hurry.
“Don’t fire until he forms completely,” I advise.
I glance at the rookies, their eyes blazing with the thrill of an impending kill. Regis, eyes tear stained from the loss of his partner, Kellerman, looks to me and swallows hard. Hanson’s eyes remain fixed on the hypnotically fascinating smoke stream of the discorporated Master Vampire.
I glance at my watch. I have five minutes to kill a Master Vampire, along with his snarling entourage of bloodsucking bitches upstairs, then find a nice corner someplace to beat off. I am not overly optimistic about being able to accomplish these tasks in that time frame.
The smoke stream stops about ten feet away. I
t begins to fluctuate in place, expanding, contracting, pulsating.
“Here he comes,” Hanson announces, fury in his voice.
I bark commands. “Cartwright, you and Regis watch the stairs. The girls may want to come down and help.”
Cartwright is one of the rookies, and he looks disappointed. Clearly, he wanted a shot at the Master. But he’s a fine young officer and doesn’t hesitate in following orders. He and Regis move close to the base of the stairs, glancing up at the females, who gesticulate wildly with claws fully extended. This means that it’s me, Jennings (the other rookie), and Hanson who will take on Old Smokey.
Things happen quickly and tragically.
The Master Vampire’s transformation finishes sooner than I anticipated. He’s enormous, standing six foot nine and easily weighing four hundred pounds on the hoof. Wingspan is twenty feet, easy, maybe more. He doesn’t wait to study his surroundings. Hanson fires first, his pump-action repeater rifle blazing. The Master takes three good slugs in the chest, and is lifted bodily off the ground and slammed into the nearest wall. Which is where, unfortunately for them, Jennings and Cartwright are positioned. The Master Vampire lands hard, and without missing a beat, slashes outward, his arm almost mystically extending beyond the limits of its socket. The move disembowels Cartwright, as he sinks to his knees, suddenly finding his hands filled with his own intestines. A mask of gray agony covers his face, his mouth open in a silent scream. In the same motion, Regis’s head is severed from his body. It flies through the air and lands at my feet. Regis’ mouth and eyes still move, and I realize horribly that his brain remains alive, so instantaneous is the decapitation. His eyes tell me that he’s afraid and astonished. Is this really happening? the eyes seem to say.
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