Night Life

by Ray Garton

  "How long have you been a private investigator?"

  "Twenty years. Almost twenty-one."

  "Ever do anything else?"

  Keoph shook his head. "Nothing else ever interested me. I'm not sure I could do something else if I had to."

  They arrived at Davey's house and went inside. "I'm a little too wound up to sleep," Keoph said. "I think I'll take one of those sleeping pills."

  Davey got it for him and he drank it down with a glass of water. He wished Davey a good night, and went to bed. He lay naked in bed, staring into the darkness, unable to think of anything other than what they were going to do tomorrow, and Karen. Keoph was not a hero. He typically was not the kind to walk into a dangerous situation. But neither was he the kind to walk away from one if someone's life was in danger. He hoped Karen was okay. He felt responsible for her abduction, for the whole investigation. He'd had a weird feeling about it from the beginning and he should have said no—maybe Karen would have declined then, too.

  The pill kicked in half an hour later, and Keoph drifted off to sleep.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  The next morning, Davey drove them to Mrs. Dupassie's. On the way, he kept yawning.

  "You look tired," Keoph said.

  "Like I said, this isn't the best time of day for us," Davey said. "I drank more coffee than usual, but I still feel tired, weak."

  "Are you guys going to be up to this?" Keoph said.

  "Don't worry, as long as we can shoot those guns, we'll be fine."

  The plans of the Royal Arms Hotel were in the backseat. Davey took the rolled up sheet with him when they got out of the car.

  Mrs. Dupassie had had a new screen door installed, and Davey knocked on it when they arrived.

  The old woman came to the door slowly and looked heavy with fatigue.

  "I just woke up," Mrs. Dupassie said as she let them in, "so you'll have to forgive me if I'm a bit muddy. Coffee's on if you want some."

  Once inside the apartment, Davey said, "Have you picked up anything more, Mrs. Dupassie?"

  "I just gave it another try," Mrs. Dupassie said. "I'm afraid it's not good. Your friend feels filthy, defiled. It seems she's been raped multiple times, from what I can tell. She feels lost, abandoned. She assumes you have no idea where she is, and will never be able to come get her."

  Keoph sighed. Once again, he wished they hadn't taken on the investigation.

  Hearing that Karen Moffett had been repeatedly raped made Davey wonder what Casey had gone through before they killed her. He felt another hole rip open inside him when he thought about Casey. He tried to keep his mind on the task at hand.

  "Tell me something," Mrs. Dupassie said. "Are you boys sure you know what the fuck you're doing?"

  "We're going to be fine, Mrs. Dupassie," Davey said. "We'll be armed to the teeth, and we have surprise on our side."

  Keoph said, "What can you tell us about Victor Barna, Mrs. Dupassie?"

  She led them over to the dining table, where they sat down.

  "You want coffee?" Mrs. Dupassie said. When they both said yes, she poured for them and took the mugs to the table. "Victor Barna. That rat-prick. You won't run into him at the hotel. He keeps his distance and has others running things for him there. He stays in his office and penthouse in the city. Of course, he doesn't want to be connected to the Royal Arms, and he's gone to great lengths to see that he isn't. He may show up there once in awhile for all I know, but it's probably fucking rare, and probably only in the middle of the night."

  Norman, Darin, Steve, and Neil arrived about fifteen minutes after Davey and Keoph.

  Norman sat at the dining table while the other three stood nearby. They yawned repeatedly. Mrs. Dupassie poured coffee for them.

  "Out in the car," Davey said, "I've got your guns, ammo, and stun grenades in canvas satchels. That way, we won't have to carry the guns out in the open when going from the car to the manhole."

  "How do we get in there, Davey?" Norman said.

  Davey put the plans on the table and Keoph helped him unroll them. They put a coffee mug at each end.

  Davey said, "We go down the manhole. We find our way to this sub-basement," he said, pointing to the sub-basement on the sheet.

  "What if we can't get in?" Neil said.

  Davey sighed. "That's a very good question. I'm afraid we haven't gone down there and planned this thing out that carefully. We'll figure that out when we get down there. We get into the sub-basement and climb up to the basement. From there, we take an elevator. Norman, I want you on the second floor, Steve and Darin the third, and Neil the fourth. Gavin and I will take the top floor. The woman we're looking for is on one of those floors. Mrs. Dupassie has determined that she's not on the first floor, so we won't even bother with it."

  "How do we find her?" Darin asked.

  Keoph said, "Davey and I have decided our only choice is to go down the hall calling her name. That'll draw attention. Since all the victims are most likely locked up, you're probably going to see nothing but vampires. When you do, shoot them. Keep shooting them until they go down and stop moving. You know as well as I do that just a few bullets won't cut it. We have to keep shooting so they don't have time to heal up, keep shooting until they're dead."

  "Boys," said Mrs. Dupassie, "I want to make sure you understand how dangerous this is."

  "Don't worry, Mrs. Dupassie," Norman said. "We do. We've talked about it. It's okay. We don't get a chance to take out brutals very often. We all want to do this."

  Mrs. Dupassie looked at the other boys. "Is that true? You all want to do this?"

  Darin said, "Yes, ma'am," and Neil said, "Yep," and Steve said, "Uh-huh," all at once.

  "All right," she said with a tilt of her head. "I just wanna make sure you know what the fuck you're doing."

  "Do you all feel confident you can handle the guns?" Davey said.

  They all agreed that they did.

  "Well, then," Davey said, "that's it. Let's go." He rolled up the plans. "Mind if I leave this here, Mrs. Dupassie?"

  "Fine with me," she said. "Soon as you leave, I'm hittin' the fucking sack."

  Darin scratched his head and said, "Mind if I go to the bathroom before we leave?"

  Davey said, "All of you should. We won't have time for bathroom breaks once we get in there."

  Norman, Darin, Steve, and Neil squeezed into the backseat of the Mercedes, and Davey drove away from the Hollywood Palms Apartments.

  Keoph looked back at them and said, "Where did you guys meet?"

  "At the gym," Norman said. "The 24/7 Gym in Sherman Oaks."

  "A lot of vampires go there at night," Steve said.

  "Is it owned and operated by vampires?" Keoph asked.

  Neil nodded and said, "Yeah, but plenty of mortals go there, too. They don't know about us, of course, they just go there to work out."

  Keoph faced front again. He wondered how many times he had come in contact with vampires without knowing it. He wondered if anyone he knew was a vampire. He knew a guy named Andy Cork in San Francisco who had a night job as a security guard— could Andy be a vampire?

  Knowing vampires really existed made everything look a little different.

  Davey parked the Mercedes at the curb on Halley, near the manhole, and took a flashlight from the glovebox and handed it to Keoph. They all got out of the car and, after getting the crowbar from behind his seat and handing it to Norman, Davey went to the rear of the car and opened the trunk. He handed the satchels out to them and they hitched the straps over their shoulders. He took out his shotgun, the strap, and the purse filled with cartridges, which he slung over his shoulder, and closed the trunk. He held the shotgun down, parallel with his right leg as he led them to the manhole.

  Norman handed the crowbar to Steve, who lifted the manhole cover with it. Norman put a hand on each side of it and pulled it off the hole. It clunked heavily on the pavement when he let go of it.

  "Okay, quick now," Davey said. "I'm going first, then
Gavin, then you guys. Norman, I want you to go down last and pull the cover back in place, okay?"

  Norman nodded.

  After looking around to make sure no one was watching them, Davey climbed down the rungs first and Keoph followed. The sound of running water got louder as they went down the metal rungs.

  When he reached the bottom, Davey waited for Keoph. Once he was down, Davey said, "Turn on the flashlight, then help me with this strap."

  Keoph clicked on the flashlight, but looked up at the open hole and wondered if Norman was going to fit through it. He attached Davey's strap to the gun and put it over his head onto his left shoulder. Davey slipped his left hand through the loop and Keoph cinched the Velcro. The shotgun was already loaded, and he had plenty of cartridges on the strap and in the purse.

  There was a sound somewhere in the dark— something skittered and splashed through water. Keoph turned to Davey.

  They whispered when they spoke.

  "You hear that?" Keoph said.

  Frowning, Davey said, "Yeah."

  A minute later, they heard the crunching clatter of the manhole cover being dragged back over the hole. When it fell into place, it became very dark.

  There was another sound—like something being dragged through the water.

  "What the hell is that?" Davey whispered.

  "Which way do we go?" Norman said.

  Keoph closed his eyes a moment and saw the plans in his head. "This way," he said, pointing to the left. "The door to the sub-basement should be close by."

  Davey said, "I think it might be a good idea to get your guns out now. I don't like those sounds."

  They opened their satchels and removed the submachine guns.

  The air was damp and dank. Exposed pipes ran overhead and on the sides.

  They trudged through the flowing water as Keoph's flashlight cut through the darkness in the narrow tunnel like a sword.

  Something splashed behind them and Keoph swung around and pointed the flashlight toward the sound. The light fell on the flowing water, swept back and forth up the concrete walls, but revealed nothing.

  Another sound, this time in the direction they'd been going. Keoph spun around again, but found nothing with his light.

  "What the hell is that?" Darin whispered.

  "Rats?" Steve said.

  "Too big to be rats," Keoph said.

  "Come on," Davey said. As they walked on, Keoph kept shining the light on the wall to their left, until it fell on a door. They stopped.

  It was a heavy steel door, and it was open inward a few inches.

  "I think this is it," Davey whispered. The hinges squealed when he pushed the door the rest of the way open.

  Keoph went in first with the light, and Davey and the others were right behind him. They stood so close, they kept bumping into each other.

  Keoph's shoes and feet were soaking wet, but he hardly noticed. He was tense and trembling a little. He held his gun down, like the others, but was ready to use it at a moment's notice.

  Once they were all inside the sub-basement, they stopped as Keoph moved his flashlight around.

  There were shuffling sounds in the room, the sound of breathing.

  "Hello," a voice hissed from the dark. "Have you come to feeeed ussss?"

  The light fell on a small figure hanging upside down from one of the pipes overhead. It was a child with a badly disfigured face—half his face appeared to be melting—an arm on the left side and a single wing folded up on the right. It smiled around a mouthful of fangs. It dropped from the pipe and landed on its feet, which were not feet at all, but large talons.

  The sounds of movement came from all around the room.

  "Oh, Jesus help us," Davey whispered. "It's the mutants."

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  “Oh, my god," Keoph said as he watched the darkness move.

  "Everybody step back out of the room," Davey said. "Gavin, reach into your satchel and get a grenade."

  Keoph eased his hand into his satchel, afraid to move too fast. He pulled out one of the grenades.

  "Go ahead, pull the pin," Davey said, "and throw it in there. Everybody out."

  Keoph waited until the others had left the sub-basement, then he pulled the pin and tossed the grenade underhanded into the room. He quickly went out the door and joined the others in the storm drain waiting for the explosion.

  When it came, it made Keoph's ears ring.

  They slowly made their way back to the sub-basement door. Keoph and Davey went in first.

  The grenade left behind a sound—screaming. The creatures in the basement screamed high, shrill screams, throaty guttural screams, and some just whimpered loudly.

  Rather than being stunned by the grenade, it seemed to do nothing more than piss them off.

  Davey passed the flashlight over them slowly. Deformed faces, twisted claws, pink tails, bulbous eyes—they screamed and hissed and groaned.

  Fear gripped Keoph and he found he could not move as his heart thundered in his throat. Gooseflesh rose on his arms and shoulders as he watched them move through the darkness.

  A beautiful woman with useless legs pulled herself forward over the filthy concrete floor with webbed hands. Something small hopped up onto one of a few dark barrels, something with a hunched back and short limbs and eyes that bulged from their sockets. A thing with a bloated face and no arms rose up from behind a stack of wooden crates. Something that dragged a tail crawled crablike over the floor. A creature lowered itself from the web of pipes overhead and dropped to the floor—its face was covered with hair and it had a pronounced brow and a flat-nosed snout. Something with a gelatinous face, no eyes, and a yawning mouth crawled around one of the barrels. All the while, they whispered.

  "Hungry ... I'm sooo hungry ..."

  "Deeelicious..."

  "Company! I looove company."

  Others made garbled, guttural sounds—their faces were so disfigured, they could not speak clearly, or their minds were no longer functioning.

  The darkness was alive with them, and they all moved forward, toward Keoph and Davey, Norman, Darin, Steve, and Neil.

  Something short, with a large mouth full of fangs, flew out of the darkness on leathery wings and latched onto the front of Steve. He started to cry out, but before he could make a sound, the thing closed its jaws on his throat and ripped it out. Steve made a harsh gurgling sound as blood gushed down his grey shirt. He fell backward, and his gun skittered over the floor as the creature continued to slurp and chew at his throat. Steve kicked his legs and tried to push the creature off, but it held on and its wings spread over him.

  Keoph surprised himself when he stepped forward and kicked the creature once, then a second time. With the third kick, the creature let go, slid over the floor, and slammed into one of the barrels. Norman aimed and fired his gun at the thing. The sound of the submachine gun was deafening in the small sub-basement. Shell casings jingled musically on the concrete floor as the creature jerked and jittered.

  Norman stopped firing. The damp air carried the acrid odor of cordite. The creature was a torn-up, bloody mess and lay still on the floor, its wings destroyed by the bullets.

  Keoph quickly went to Steve and turned the flashlight on him. The creature had nearly decapitated him. His trachea had been torn in half and the wound went all the way back to the base of his neck. Steve's eyes were open, but he did not move. His skin quickly turned a greyish-yellow and began to crack and peel.

  "Shit," Darin said, distress in his voice. "He's ... dead"

  Keoph picked up Steve's gun and stuffed it into his satchel. He didn't like the idea of one of them getting its hands on a machine gun.

  Spinning around, Davey faced the group of creatures. "Anybody comes any closer, and you get the same," he said.

  The things fell silent and stopped moving. Eyes stared from the dark. The glow of Keoph's flashlight glimmered on moist fangs.

  The small, short-limbed thing on the barrel made a vomiting sound and d
ove from the barrel toward them. Neil and Keoph fired together, and the thing slapped to the floor in a splash of blood. They fired at it a moment longer.

  "I'm not kidding," Davey said. "Move back or we start firing."

  "What did we ever do to you?" one of them said in a gurgling whisper.

  "Nothing," Davey said. "And let's keep it that way." He shone the flashlight all around the room until it fell on rungs that went up the wall to their left. "See it?" he said.

  Keoph nodded. "I see it. But with these things down here, you know it's going to be locked."

  "Shit, you're right," Davey said. "Norman."

  "Yeah?"

  "We've got to climb those rungs over there and get out through that door in the ceiling. But it's going to be locked. Think you can do something about that?"

  "If not," Norman said, "I'll just shoot it till it's not locked anymore."

  Darin said, "But Steve's dead."

  "I'm sorry, Darin," Davey said, "but we'll just have to leave him here for now."

  The things in the dark watched and waited, but they did not move.

  Davey said, "Blow 'em away."

  Keoph, Darin, and Norman sprayed the darkness with bullets. There was a great rush among the creatures to move backward and hide, while some of them fell to the floor. Shell casings rained down noisily onto the concrete.

  "Come on," Davey said once the firing stopped. He moved fast as he led the way across the room to the rungs on the wall. "Get up there, Norman, and get us through that door."

  "Here," Norman said as he handed his gun to Keoph. He climbed the rungs with his satchel over his left shoulder.

  Something moved close behind them, and Davey spun around and fired his shotgun blindly. The creature made a horrible gagging sound and hit the floor. It tried to crawl away, but Neil fired his machine gun at it until it stopped moving.

  At the top of the rungs, Norman pushed on the door. It opened about an inch, but was locked from above, perhaps by a padlock in a hasp on the front edge of the door. Norman lowered his head, put the back of his shoulders against the door, and pushed. But that was too awkward. He reached up with his right arm, put his hand flat against the door, and shoved as hard as he could. It did not work—he couldn't get any leverage on the rungs. Norman climbed down a few rungs and said, "Hand me the gun."