Vamp-Hire

by Rice, Gerald Dean

  He put it out of his mind. It wouldn’t help him get out of this cruiser any faster. Eventually, another officer opened the car door.

  “Okay, we’re gonna let you go,” a burly cop said. Nick didn’t care to read his name tag. He’d been sitting on his butt for the greater part of two hours and he was hungry. He took the handcuffs off, handed Nick a card and a pen along with his bag. “Write your name and number on there in case we need to get in contact.” Nick scribbled his name and number and wished he’d thought to give them fake contact info. How would they know?

  The officer took the card and pen back and walked away. Nick felt like there should have been something more formal, but he was already out of the stream of the processing of this crime scene. Maybe he should count himself as lucky. Officers and what he guessed were detectives and lab techs milled about. Nobody was paying attention to him. It seemed like a lot of people for a simple robbery, even with someone getting hurt.

  He turned into the small crowd that had gathered. It probably would have been a larger gathering had it been after work hours. He dug out his phone from his bag and checked his call log. He’d call Lucky after. Nick saw he’d gotten a call from Lucky and that he’d called back. The first call had lasted thirty-three seconds, the second a little more than two minutes.

  So it was safe to assume they’d checked through his phone. He didn’t know, hoping this wasn’t going to result in a complication between him and Phoebe. Another kink in the works was the last thing they needed. He wondered why they hadn’t called her, maybe they hadn’t had enough time before that vamp had cleared him.

  He called Lucky again. The phone picked up mid-first ring.

  “Hello?” Lucky said in a too-cheery a tone.

  “Lucky, it’s me.”

  “Lucky for you. I almost tossed this phone.” He knew Lucky wasn’t on the up-and-up so far as how he made his living and realized the police calling him wasn’t a happy occasion. “Where are you?”

  “About thirty feet away from the Big Pig. A couple people tried to rob the place while I was in it.”

  “Figures. I kept telling management to get those cameras fixed. What they take?”

  “Money, I guess. One of them took a couple of candy bars.”

  “Well, now that somebody’s going to jail I guess those fixes will be coming soon.”

  “What do you mean?” Nick hadn’t told him anyone had been arrested.

  “Not keeping security measures up-to-date is a pretty serious offense. Punishable by fines and prison time. Add to that the Big Pig being federally owned puts the screws to the manager even more.”

  Nick didn’t really care about that end of it. He was still tender from the baton.

  “The kid who was working got hurt pretty bad. They took him away in an ambulance.”

  “That’s a shame. Kip is pretty cool. I hope he’s all right.”

  Nick wanted to ask how he knew who was working, and figured that Lucky could have known the schedule. “They caught one of them, but I think the guy’s a vegetable or something now.”

  “Really? That’s weird.”

  “I think it might have something to do with his partner being a vamp. She got away.”

  Nick had hoped Lucky knew something that might illuminate that for him a little. Lucky didn’t respond.

  “Hey, look, do you need a place to stay tonight?”

  “Yeah. I was actually about to ask you.”

  “Okay, well you can. Get in.”

  Nick was just about to ask what he meant when a black two-door Pontiac Grand Prix pulled to a stop and the passenger door swung open. Nick walked across the narrow strip of grass and climbed into the car. When Nick had last seen Lucky they had been walking. He wondered whose car this was.

  “My friend let me use his car,” he said as if hearing Nick’s thoughts.

  There was that friend again. Nick wondered if it was supposed to be the same one who let Lucky house sit. The one who came home and didn’t seem to know who he was. “I’m staying at a place near here.”

  Nick didn’t ask about the place. The less he knew, the more deniability he had.

  Once they made it to the ‘place’, a second floor apartment with a fully stocked refrigerator, flat screen television with basic cable and two furnished bedrooms, Nick gave him the rundown of the first part of his day.

  “Murder, huh?” Lucky said. “I’m not surprised.”

  “What do you mean?” Nick wanted to feel offended at the comment considering the murderer in question was more than likely a vamp like him.

  “Well, look at us, man. I mean mankind. We’re barely on our feet right now. There’s every likelihood that if you don’t get caught in the act on any crime, you won’t get caught. There’s probably a dozen more like it every day. As thin and as spread out as all resources are, especially public safety, crime is at an all-time high. It’s the Wild, Wild West out there, you know?”

  Nick shrugged.

  “The real question is why they’re doing something so elaborate. I mean, you go to some off-label super-secret military facility with all kinds of crazy security and they have you examine the body? I mean, think about it—the coroner’s office is still open. They could have taken her down there. And why is the military even involved?”

  Lucky had said a mouthful. All things Nick hadn’t thought to ask Dolph. He wondered if there was anything on the dead woman on the news. Nick turned the TV to Channel 2. The news was almost always on now. Save for a paltry few reality shows it was the only original programming around. Everything else was old stuff from before the Conflict; Mash, Seinfeld, The Simpsons, anything that didn’t remind people of the world around them unless it was a report on the world around them.

  The pretty reporter was in the middle of a story on President Carver. Apparently, he’d announced the beginning of some big initiative to take place somewhere in Arizona. Even though mankind had won, there were still loyalists to vampires. They went by many different names—Renfieldians, Morrisites, Irvinians, the Sons of Nosferatu to name a few. The initiative was to be called Operation Sun Sweep and the reporter said that all people in the little town of Clarkdale, a town of fewer than three thousand people, had been advised to approach the western border by 4 PM Friday with nothing but the clothes they wore or face on-the-spot execution.

  The reporter read the story, and the screen transitioned to b-roll of a montage of the president giving fiery speeches. Nick recognized the one from Hart Plaza in downtown Detroit. He’d been in a coma at the time, the speech being given along the final leg of the Conflict, just before mankind had broken the back of the vampire uprising.

  They watched the rest of the news in relative silence, commenting here and there on what the anchorwoman told them was going on in the world. No news of a dead woman. Nick had assumed she’d been local. It would have been odd for the military to truck a dead body up from Ohio even if they did have something they were hiding. There was no news of any dead people. Nick had seen his share of violence since he’d been out and always avoided it. A woman being mugged, a couple of teens being beaten by several other teens, a man walking up to a small crowd of people and firing into them. He hadn’t watched the news often and wondered if this was how the news typically was. The stories they had heard about were life-saving pets, a mudslide in California, some gunmen who’d been caught holding up a bank, and the President announcing Operation Sun Sweep.

  “Is it always this way?” Nick asked. “The news, I mean.”

  Lucky turned to him. “What, doesn’t it make you feel safe?”

  Nick met his eyes, realizing the sarcasm in his question. “No. It seems… I dunno, fake.”

  “The government learned a long time ago the value of a news system engineered to report on what they are told to. It helps to anaesthetize the people.”

  “Anaesthetize us from what?”

  “The truth.” Lucky grabbed the remote and thumbed off the TV, a look of disgust on his face. “Whatever t
hat is. The Conflict put a hard reset on society, man. And we’re barely past being cave dwellers. So tell me more about this woman. The dead one.”

  Nick shrugged. “What’s to tell?”

  Lucky shook his head. “Like I told you, people die every day. Unless they have a warehouse full of corpses you didn’t see in there, there had to be something particular about her they wanted someone like you to see.”

  Nick thought about it. Sure, she’d looked familiar to him because of the dream. “Oh, I dreamed about her, I think.”

  Lucky sat up.

  “I saw her walk out of a house and across the street… naked. In the dream, I mean. She walked right up to me—the killer and he—”

  “Gave her the hickey to end all hickeys.”

  “Yeah.” Lucky narrowed his eyes in thought. Nick watched him a moment, wondering what was going on in there. There was so much the man played close to the vest.

  “I’ve heard of this. Well, something like it, maybe. Urban legend type stuff, so don’t take any of it as gospel. But I heard vampires had this ability—well, not all, but some—to call people.” He stared at Nick for a moment as if waiting for him to respond. Nick stared back. “Anyway, this call thing, once a vampire had tuned into your head, he could make you do practically anything, operate you like a puppet on remote control. He’d be vulnerable at the time, but once he had control of you it would be like you were in the passenger seat of your own body. It sounds crazy, I know.”

  “It does.” It had rung true, bringing back more of the dream to him. He could remember something in his ear—the killer’s—moving like… like antennas or something. He’d felt the woman and knew where she had been without seeing or hearing her. “I think you may be on to something.”

  Nick explained his newly remembered details.

  “The vampires are all dead, though,” Lucky said.

  “Says who?”

  Lucky smiled and tapped his temple. “Now you’re thinking. The question is, if this guy is a for real vampire, where in the world is he hiding? I mean, I’ve seen a few up close and they got faces that would make their mommas sick.”

  Nick cocked an eyebrow. “You’ve seen a few up close?” He knew enough about the man to know he was extremely averse to violence.

  “Oh, go to hell, so they were dead already.” Lucky smiled wider. “Still counts.” The smile slid off his face and he said, “That still doesn’t answer the question, even if this guy is a vampire. What was so special about this girl?”

  Nick shook his head. He realized, they weren’t going to figure it out in this apartment. Maybe he could call Dolph and tell him what had been jogged out of his memory. His stomach groaned.

  “You hungry or something?” Lucky asked, looking at his midsection.

  “No.” Nick folded his arms low. He’d been all set to eat about three hours ago, had actually been looking forward to it. He should have something. It would be good to try to keep his diet on track. “I should probably eat, though.”

  “Help yourself.” Lucky thumbed over his shoulder toward the kitchen. “Fridge is stocked.”

  Stocked by whom was the question Nick didn’t ask. He didn’t feel comfortable eating someone else’s food without their permission. That paled in comparison to his discomfort being in someone else’s home without them knowing. Nick highly doubted Lucky had gotten here through violence—at least direct violence—that didn’t mean that the people who slept under this roof would be okay with them visiting, though.

  Nick’s stomach groaned again. There were bottles of cola on the top shelf. He didn’t particularly like pop, but despised drinking water. He set a bottle filled with clear bubbly liquid on the counter. There was also cranberry sauce, stuffing, a bowl of what looked like gravy and half a turkey covered in aluminum foil on a platter.

  He took everything out and commenced to making a plate for himself. Once he had nuked a plateful of food he added two slices of cranberry sauce. Lucky was waiting for him, one elbow propped up on the table, stroking his pencil-thin mustache.

  “I was thinking…” he began. “You told them about the dream, right? What you remembered at the time?”

  “Yeah.” Nick took a healthy forkful of stuffing into his mouth. It was… delicious.

  “What if they had a good idea you could do that?”

  “I don’t see how. I never met that lieutenant guy before and I only met Dolph the day before.”

  “That’s not what I mean. Had you ever done that before? I mean, tune into somebody through a dream?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, so what if that’s an innate ability of at least some vamps?”

  “I suppose that’s possible. I knew a guy at the Center who could talk to people through his mind. It was really limited stuff, though. So they brought me in because they thought there was a possibility I could glean something off the killer. And with that big hole in her neck, they made a reasonable assumption he was something more than human.”

  “Right. Any chance they were expecting you to be able to sense something, though? You said you’d already had a dream. They couldn’t have known about that unless you’d told someone before. What could they have expected you to learn from a dead body?”

  Nick put his fork down. He wasn’t really interested in having this conversation right now. “I don’t know.”

  “If they brought you in to take a look they were looking for you to be able to do something other than a coroner could do.”

  “I don’t think they had a coroner there. At least they hadn’t done an autopsy yet.”

  “How do you know?”

  “You know, they do that Y incision thing. Other than the bite on her neck she was pretty much intact.”

  Lucky was staring. Nick was uncomfortable.

  “You ever heard the term ‘necromancy’ before?”

  “Yes, and I can tell you I can’t do that. I don’t know anybody who can, either.”

  Lucky sat back a little.

  “They tested us for that at the Center. They’d bring in dead animals every couple days and tell us to tell them what the animal was thinking.”

  “That was just an animal.”

  “And they weren’t thinking anything. They were dead.”

  “Even so, they must have thought you might be able to something and you just so happened to have information through different means.”

  “Okay, Lucky, where is this going? I’m starting to lose the little bit of the appetite I actually have.”

  “They had you come in for one thing, you actually came through with another. Don’t be surprised if they might be curious about what else you can do.”

  Nick shrugged. Dolph had said pretty much the same. He took a big bite out of the turkey leg on his plate and chewed. He swallowed and put the leg down. Something about what Lucky had said to him was sticking in his mind. What had been special about her? And why had they brought Nick in to figure it out?

  “What if they were testing me? What if they wanted to see if a vamp could do something?”

  “Okay,” Lucky said.

  “We had this game we used to play at the Center. It was a locating game. You’d cover your eyes and try to figure out where the other person was standing in the room.”

  “Were you any good?”

  “No. I sucked. This other kid, though, Willis, he was pretty decent. I think she was a vamp. The dead girl, I mean.”

  Lucky seemed to consider this.

  “Any chance your minders knew about the game?”

  “I suppose.” Nick shrugged.

  “So if they knew, odds are people in other parts of the military did too.”

  “Yeah, but to what purpose?”

  “Think about this. They brought you there to examine the girl. Instead, you gave them information on the killer. And then—”

  “Then they hustled us right out of there, almost like they didn’t care to catch her killer.”

  “Something still isn’t fitting here. Sure,
she’s some sort of vamp squatter, that doesn’t explain all the production, though. Either they care or they don’t. Can’t have it both ways.”

  All this supposition was starting to make Nick’s head spin. He forced himself to eat the rest of the turkey leg and gobbled the first slab of cranberry sauce. So what if they were hiding something? So what if they weren’t? Nick had to figure there were a bazillion conspiracies going on in the world right now and more to follow.

  “Why should I care about any of this?” he asked.

  Lucky didn’t miss a beat. “Because if they got something to hide, they got reason to pony up.” He grabbed the other slice of cranberry sauce and slurped it down.

  Okay, that was reason enough for Nick to care.

  “How do I know they won’t just shoot me in the face?”

  Lucky rolled his eyes. “Killing people is an extreme step. And if we’re talking military, we’re talking going way up the chain before a decision like that gets made. Besides, it’s way easier to buy somebody off.”

  “But I—”

  “—don’t know anything. All we’re doing right now is making guesses.”

  Nick sat back in relief. He felt like he could do just that and come out a little richer for it. However, his curiosity was itching.

  “I still would like to know for sure if she was a vamp.”

  “Then ask.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That guy you came with. Ask him if he knows.”

  “Dolph?” Nick thought a moment. Could it be that simple?

  “Yeah, call him. Tell him what you remembered about your dream. Flat out ask him while you’re talking.”

  He nodded. It made enough sense.

  “And that other guy, tell him too.” That didn’t sound like such a great idea and it must have shown on Nick’s face. “What? How else do you think you’re gonna get any dough out of this?”

  “Well, what do I do?”

  “You contact him. Tell him you remember something. That you can tell Dolph if he’d prefer, but thought it would be best to tell him first. It doesn’t matter that you already told Dolph, the guys hate each other’s guts and info probably isn’t exactly free-flowing between them. Also tell him your information has monetary value, and that you can’t share this or future information without compensation.”