by Jeff Seats
He closed his eyes. “I can still feel its warmth from when I was a child, before . . . well, at any rate, I cannot experience the sun as you can. However, you see this? This is the path of the next solar eclipse,” he said with some excitement, and uncovered a map buried on the table. Alexei traced the path of the sun with a finger. “Totality will be passing almost directly over the reservation here. It is my chance for two whole minutes to look up and stare directly at my nemesis.”
“You sure that’s a good idea?” Paul asked with genuine concern.
Alexei walked closer to the collage of photos and pointed to one of them. “This is what the sun looks like in totality, when the moon fully covers that big dangerous ball of burning plasma. It is only at this time I can safely stand outside during the day without being wrapped in layers of protection. In fact, at the moment of totality, I will be surrounded by a three-hundred-sixtydegree sunset as I look straight into the sun and see its corona. Well, not without these.” He picked up a pair of paper framed dark glasses. “My eyes are more sensitive than a human’s and the chance of blinding even greater.”
He touched one of the photos depicting a total eclipse, almost lovingly tracing the filigree of tendrils swimming in the cosmos from behind the moon. “I have been alive for so long. It is amazing I have never been anywhere close enough to see this wonderful phenomenon. But then that would have been when I was younger, and my thought processes tended to revolve around staying focused on the future and not dwelling on a past that cannot be re-attained.” He stared at the photos. “Imagine standing outside during the day . . ..”
Ellie cleared her throat, not wanting to interrupt. “I’m sorry sir, but I’m pretty certain that this is not why you called us here.”
Alexei snapped out of his fixated trance and came back into the moment. “Of course, you are correct.” He stepped over to a chair and picked up a ragged stuffed duck. “I asked Craig, Agent Wright, to get this for me to give to Cindra. She was having such a difficult time adjusting, so I thought maybe this toy would help her.” He turned the yellow bird wearing a short green shirt over in his hands then let a wistful smile cross his face. “He chose this duck. Said it would bring her luck.”
“Oh, how is she doing?” Ellie asked. “Can we see her?”
Alexei didn’t answer. He looked everywhere except at the two agents before he slowly spoke in a low tone, “I am sorry to say she . . . died. The transition was too much for her. Humanity had a powerful grip on that child. I found her dead in the kitchen of the bar. She was sitting on the floor with several open food cans around her. A piece of pound cake still in her hands.” He grinned weakly. “A sweet tooth.” Alexei caressed the duck lovingly, imagining Cindra being there with them, and handed it to Ellie. “Please give this back to Craig and let him know. She always had it with her. I found it on the shelf with the canned food.”
Ellie took the plush toy in hand solemnly.
“But Cindra’s death isn’t the only reason why you asked for face-to-face. Tragic as it is, that message could have been sent by email or on the phone,” Paul suggested softly.
Alexei began to roam around the room. Wistfully he touched objects as he passed them, contemplating; clearly wanting to say something more, but hesitating. He continued to wander as though he was taking a mental snapshot of all this he had accumulated. He paused in front of a painting of a meadow in the late afternoon, pulled a book off a shelf, fingered the handtooled leather cover, stopped at a globe of the earth. He slowly spun around by walking his fingers over the surface. The table lamp next to him cast a light up on to his face illuminating it with a warmth that belied his pale white skin.
“Do you know of my request to join the CSC as a part of the effort in locating my brother?” He asked hesitantly.
“It hasn’t been mentioned since the time you appeared in the CSC compound and asked Craig in front of the two of us,” Ellie said. She looked to Paul for any different information he might have heard.
Paul shook his head no.
“I was hoping for a new partnership with humans in the spirit of the treaty I signed with Theodore . . . I am not surprised, but I can wait no longer. My brother is a danger to us all. I know where Vladimir is, and I plan on stopping him.”
Ellie leaned in closer to Alex. “He wouldn’t be in Portland, would he?”
“What makes you say that?” he asked, surprised.
Ellie smiled, “Lucky guess.”
“Please inform Commander Cole whether or not I succeed, there is a change coming. The status-quo is over.”
COMMANDER COLE SIGHED heavily. There was no point in waiting any longer. She had let a few months go by, hoping Vlad could be found and then put back into his bottle, or staked through his putrid heart in his coffin, or wherever the hell he slept during the day. But if an organization operated on hopes and prayers not much would get accomplished, whether you believed in a higher power—higher than the country you swore an oath to serve, defend and protect—or not. However, an organization also needed funding to maintain its mission. And at this point, the organization she worked for was in danger of having its budget cut; making it all but impossible to protect the population from the plague that would be unleashed if it closed its doors. Like turning the power off to the refrigeration units in the CDC and watching all the killer bugs let loose into the world.
Since its founding, the CSC had done a reasonably good job of keeping the blood-eaters apart from the blood-suppliers— successfully relegating the principal offenders to the fictional worlds of folklore, urban legends and pop culture amusements made famous by the likes of Anne Rice, Universal Studios, and the X Files.
But it took money to maintain the status-quo. And while it was good the general population could live with the fantasy version of vampires, werewolves, and mutants, the number of people who knew the real story, and kept funding flowing through the secret government pipelines, were becoming fewer. It was foreseeable that at some point those with the institutional memory of the horrors hidden away across the country could disappear from government service. The needed funding to run the organization could be shut off, and the fantasy monsters that had been a construct of the entertainment industry could return as an all-too-deadly reality.
During her stint as a field agent, Cole hadn’t noticed the shrinking budgets. Frankly, the cuts were microscopic back then. Who cared if the office furniture was a hodgepodge from different eras? Heavy metal desks from the forties, old oak behemoths from the thirties, or those nineteen-sixties avocado mid-century-modern numbers all blended comfortably together and seemed to make the place homey and not as institutional as one would expect a secret government organization to be. Her boss at the time, commander Wilson, was a skillful juggler of finances; making sure his people never felt the pinch. The latest in technology and weaponry was always available. And in the end, that was what kept people alive, and the monsters safely tucked away from the world.
But when she was promoted to the position of commander, the financial realities hit her smack in the face like gale-force winds. The belt-tightening became obvious to all in the organization. But she coped, finding the managerial skills she had no idea were needed to work in this job and didn’t know she possessed. Cole became a master at shifting dollars from unimportant things (such as the newest projectors or copy machines), to things her people needed, like the latest body armor and detection gear. The workstations in the control room may have been ten years old, but they connected to a state-of-the-art mainframe that was always kept in top shape. And, in keeping with the tradition of her successors, the office furniture remained the same. Any replacements came from the same government warehouse they stored the Ark of the Covenant, or at least it seemed that way judging from the layers of dust.
Cole herself sat at the very same wooden desk all directors had since the 1940s. The same held true for the facility itself. Nothing had been updated since the early 70s. The color schemes in many of the common areas still
had the institutional green many mental health facilities tended to have, not that there was any connection between the two. She was even able to secure the two Osprey (not inexpensive from an acquisition or maintenance point of view) for the task of managing the network of reservations. —It seems that with the longest running wars in U.S. history going on there was great opportunity in snagging equipment that either had been listed as ‘damaged’ inventory or ‘crashed’ and out of commission. It helped to know people who knew people. Cole knew how to get her hands on a couple of tanks too but as fun as that would be she acknowledged it would be considered over-kill.— The work of the mission carried on and never took a back seat to anything else. Until now.
Faced with a spending freeze, she was unable to hire replacements for the devastating loss of several longtime operatives. It was now time to be that stick in the eye to her superiors. A usually bad career move, drawing all kinds of negative attention to the person who complained, getting labeled as “trouble.” But her career wasn’t what was important at this point. It was past time someone performed this task, and she decided it was up to her to poke the bear.
Cole pulled out a sheet of paper and stared at its stark white emptiness. She picked up her pen and began the task of writing. She would later digitize and encrypt it, but for now, the old-school-pen-to-page gave what she was about to write more weight, and a slower pace to better consider her word choice.
General Marcus Aurelius Bryant
Director, CSC
Washington DC
Sir: There are several developments regarding CSC West I
wish to address in this letter. Not the least of which is our continued budget deficiencies, and my concern about further cuts to funding based upon public statements made by our new President. As frightening as it is to learn that the science of the EPA, NOA, and NASA may be considered questionable, it is hard for me to believe the CSC, which monitors all things about as unscientific as it gets, wouldn’t be considered in budget readjustments. Because our essential agency to the national security is hidden within the Bureau of Land Management and further masked under the Department of Indian Affairs, we are at serious risk. Considering how poorly that department has been funded over the years, I would not be surprised to learn the new administration planned to defund it all together and let Native Americans go it alone.
She paused and reread this last part. Yes, a pen was a good idea. No way would she send this with the opening statement intact.
Before I address the actual accounting details, I would like to give you an overall assessment of how I currently see the agency.
When Theodore Roosevelt established the Center for Specter Control, he was only considering the vampire threat to humanity. While there was some indication, he also was faintly aware of the existence of the other monsters menacing the world, he best understood what vampires could do to a city and by extension, to a country—reference: his stint as NYC Police Commissioner.
It didn’t take long after the establishment of the CSC for this agency to begin to confront the other ‘specters’ that terrorized the earth. Of the three main varieties of monsters—mutants, werewolves, and vampires—it is with the vampires we have seen the reservation system fail to handle, as they call it, their captivity.
Mutants require constant human monitoring. They have to be held in cells that would resemble zoos in the outside world. Werewolves seem to understand the need for their confinement and are grateful to be able to live without the fear of harming innocents. The only time we see activity that needs increased human presence is during full moon cycles when they have no control over their affliction. Otherwise, they can be left in their communities to enjoy a life of leisure. A great many of them have found farming, handicrafts, and the arts as fulfilling as a hectic life in modern society.
The vampires, however, are a singular problem. These beings are immortal. The ones who were initially brought onto the reservation had already lived more lifetimes than the mortals who were their guards, protectors, and providers of food (blood supply). While it might have been expedient in 1890 to agree to the treaty to—
Cole paused again and rubbed her tired eyes. She shook her head, realizing what she had written so far was all too wellknown by the general. Some serious editing was in store for this before it saw the light of day. Staring at the words, she wondered where this letter was going to end up. What was she writing anyway, a resignation letter? A damaging failure had happened on her watch. The most ruthless vampire, Vladimir Rurik, was loose and threatening to bring the fragile CSC down around them.
A knock on her office door took her out of letter-writing focus.
“Yes? Come in.”
Ellie and Paul entered the room and stood at the front of her desk.
“Ma’am, we know where Vlad is.”
Cole smiled for the first time in days.
“And Alex has a message for you.”
WITH COFFEE FIRMLY in hand, Ellie idly spun her desk chair; pivoting around and around, kicking her legs up as though she were a little girl again in her grandfather’s office. “We told commander Cole where Vlad was and she sent us back here to the control room like she’s punishing us for something we did wrong.” She launched herself into one more rotation in the swivel chair. “All this tension is getting to me.”
“You don’t look very tense,” Paul observed as her face turned away from him.
“This is how I deal with it.”
“You could do more internet research. Maybe other news articles could help pinpoint his exact location.”
“My mind is just too distracted. Can’t focus,” Ellie said.
“We only told her this morning. Besides, Craig and Liz won’t be back until tomorrow. I don’t think Vlad will be in any great hurry to leave Portland, even if he did know we are on to him. That cocky son of a bitch.”
Ellie kicked out her legs causing her chair to spin around one more time.
“Okay, then think of something not work-related and see if that helps.”
Ellie stopped her merry-go-round and sat perfectly still. Then a sly smile came across her face. “So, have you given any more thought to where you want to go for dinner Saturday?”
“No.” Paul turned his attention back to the monitor. “It’s too far away for me to be thinking about shit like that.” He kept his eyes dutifully on the screen, scrolling through images and clicking on files.
Ellie put her coffee cup down with an emphatic clack, “It’s Thursday.”
A playful smile began to form at the corners of his mouth, yet he kept his eyes focused on pretend work. “Anyway, how many good places are there to go in Mountain Home? Applebee’s should have plenty of room, no need for reservations if that’s what you’re getting at.”
She rolled up close to Paul and placed her mouth near his right ear. “If you think Applebee’s is what you promised to celebrate our anniversary of joining this outfit, then you, sir, were sailing under false colors when you made it!” She then pushed against his desk and shoved herself back over to her workstation.
“By the way, technically our anniversary isn’t until June. So Applebee’s will do perfectly well,” Paul said with a devious grin. Then he pulled up an email screen hidden behind some work on his monitor and hit send. Instantly Ellie saw an email had arrived for her and she opened it. She scrolled down and was looking at a mouthwatering picture of a plate of baked cod. Below that was the name: Epi’s Basque Restaurant.
Ellie smiled. This place had been all the talk from others in the CSC though it was in Boise, not Mountain Home.
“It’ll be a long drive at night after a couple of bottles of wine,” she threw out playfully.
“Keep scrolling.”
Another picture moved up into view. It was an artist rendering showing the Idaho state capitol building in the upper right and a hotel in the foreground. A red sign stood out against its French-styled roof. It read 500. Ellie continued scrolling down the screen looking at a few pict
ures of the nicely appointed interior. The last photo was of a room labeled “Standard King.”
A wary smirk broke across her face, and she turned to see the beaming grin on Paul’s face. “You shit. How long were you thinking you could keep me hanging?”
“Just about as long as you took. I was kinda afraid you might begin to get violent and I did not want you to hit me.”
She turned back at her monitor. “Inn at 500? You seem to be mighty confident, soldier.”
“Well, I thought . . . it’s not as if we haven’t . . . Oh, hell.” Now he was the one who was being played out on the line.
She rolled herself back to him with the grace of an astronaut on a spacewalk gently shoving off from the side of a shuttle. Leaning her head on his shoulder and grabbing his arm she replied, “Got-ya!”
A loud ping came from the room speakers, drawing their attention immediately to the large monitor at the front of the room. The maps of the country and the west coast had disappeared, the screen had gone completely black.
“What the . . .?” Paul’s voice trailed off as he looked down at his work screen and saw that his monitor had gone black as well. “What the fuck?”
“It looks the same on my screen too,” Ellie said as she scrolled her mouse over the intruding blackness trying to find a way to click out of it. “What’s going on?” In fact, all the other dormant monitors at the other workstations in the control room had snapped on, all showing the same black window.