by Jeff Seats
Once through the opening and inside the space, Terry’s body came to a stop, rigid, unmoving.
The interior reminded him of the pictures he had seen in National Geographic of ancient catacombs with dark nooks and crannies and odd cut-outs into the side walls. The shape of the room had a random quality, like it was not a planned or purpose-built space, but one that occurred at the confluence of one construction project with another. An unintentional cavity formed as the result of one building foundation angling into another and broken through by street maintenance and sewer repairs. The surfaces that formed the walls of this chamber were made up, variously, of raw dirt, brick, cement block, and poured concrete—the imprint of 1x6 wood forms permanently cast into the surface. Columns or pilings sprung up from the floor supporting beams and unseen structures above. A tangle of pipes hung from the ceiling and hugged the walls, presumably carrying water to faucets and waste to be treated.
The center of the space was lit by oil lanterns and candles, the brightness of the illumination falling off into dark shadows around its perimeter; emphasizing the bizarre layout of the place.
Terry thought he saw the dark outline of bodies crouching in the shadows inching towards him—eyes aglow from the lantern light, declaring their corrupt appetite.
Naomi had entered the chamber in front of Terry obscuring his view, but when he stopped, she continued forward, and approached a man sitting—no, more like roosting—on an old, ratty armchair as though it were a throne from which he lorded over his cowering minions. She took his hand and kissed it as she knelt before that motherfucker Terry had come to Portland to find. Of course, it was Vladimir.
“JR . . . or is it Jack? Or are you going by Master Sergeant these days?”
Vladimir placed his hand on top of Naomi’s head and stroked her hair. “I enjoyed listening to your internal dialogue as you were brought to me. I didn’t want to ruin the surprise of our reunion. But really, ‘Bend Over Here It Comes?’ You military types and the need for such vulgarities. It must make you feel more invincible.”
Terry felt the desire to kill. He glared at Vlad who merely looked at him with indifference.
“Ah, yes I see it now.” Vladimir gave a mental nudge, and Terry felt himself being compelled to walk closer to the throne. “Welcome to my home, Agent Terry.”
Ah shit . . ..
A LAMP CLICKED on. Light filled the room with the intent of deceiving Craig’s brain into thinking it was sunrise and time to wake up. His gimmick of setting a lamp on a timer to precede the obnoxious blare from the alarm clock by several minutes worked again. It didn’t always. But this time it did. And as he gradually let sleep slip away, he remembered a dream he was in the middle of before he was harshly yanked out of it.
He savored these moments. Not quite awake but also still not exactly asleep either. The in-between moment of the morning where he wished he could remain for the rest of his life. Craig closed his eyes. A feeling of warmth washed over him as the pieces of the dream came back then dissolved into the electrical flashes that made up conscious thought. But the memory of embracing and kissing the woman felt real and comfortable, and he knew he would long for that feeling again even if it were just a figment of his imagination.
Bleat! Bleat! Bleat!
The alarm broke through the hazy blanket of sleep. Then he remembered the woman who had been in his dream. His partner—Liz Adams. Now why the heck did he dream of her, and doing that with her? Damned subconscious BS.
The disturbing thing about dreams was that sometimes they felt so real. Even separate incidents within a dream the conscious-self knew was a staged show, in between the fantastical activities and disconnected logic of time and place, there were moments—moments in which it all could seem so present. The colors and lighting. The tenderness of the touch. The passionate kiss that could still be felt and tasted after waking. The lingering memory you couldn’t shake even a day later, possibly two. So real it made you question if reality only existed once asleep not during that interval we called being awake. These dream-state encounters sometimes occurred with people from out of the past, or they could be complete strangers. Whatever the mysterious spark conjuring them up, it would be hiding in the ether of the subconscious waiting to cast the characters for the next night’s performance. However, when a dream as real as this happened, and the encounter was with someone so familiar, even closely working with, well, that can suggest certain things —things usually buried in the lockbox of the dreamer’s mind.
He was in NO WAY attracted to Adams. So why the dream?
There was something else at the end of the dream. But in the first part, there was a vampire attacking him. No. A vampire was attacking him AND Liz outside a nest. No. It wasn’t Liz, it was Kathrine, his partner before Liz, and she was heading into the nest alone. He had yelled at her, “Stop! Wait for the team.” But she ran on in, not hearing. He put the vamp down and charged into the nest after her. He saw her, back turned. Her red hair blazing as rays of sunlight caught it coming through the cracks of the boarded-up windows. A vampire she didn’t see was about to bite into her neck. He shot his weapon, and the vamp went down, and then another materialized, and he shot that one too. Then another came and anoth… This continued for what seemed like hours. And yet they kept coming, and he fired, and never ran out of ammo, and Kathrine never moved to him. Finally, he emptied his magazine into the last of the bloodsuckers and only then did she turn to look at him. But it wasn’t Kathrine. Now it was Liz. She looked him in the eye. Tears of relief flowed down her cheeks. He had saved Liz except it was supposed to be Katherine in the nest and he hadn’t saved her. He had to put her down, bitten as she was. But Liz—Liz stood looking at Craig, her red hair cascading over her shoulders, and collapsed into his arms. He held her in a loving embrace, relieved that he had saved her and then they kissed. And then. Click. The timer rolled over to 6 a.m., and the light flashed on to life. And the dream was over. Kathrine was still dead, killed by his own hands. But Liz Adams was alive and waiting for him in the mobile control van.
««« ‡ »»» THE SIDE DOOR slid open with a smooth rumbling swoosh. “Got any ideas where your master sergeant is?” Craig asked handing Liz a coffee.
Liz swiveled her chair around facing the open door, accepted the caffeine and took a sip. “He’s not MINE. And besides, I’m not in charge of his movements.” She turned back to the computer screen and resumed looking through some docs that had been sent from Mountain Home. “Anyway, he said he had some family business to attend to.”
“When was that?” Craig asked.
“A few hours ago.” Liz looked at the clock on the desktop. 7:35 AM! “I mean, last night. Why? Isn’t he here?”
“Nope. I gave his door a good hard rap or two. Figured the old guy needed to catch some extra Z’s. Didn’t answer his room phone either.”
“Try his cell?”
“Nada on that too.”
“Well, he’s a big boy he’ll turn up soon.”
“Soon was for our 7:30 get-the-day-started meeting, a time we all agreed to after our group Skype yesterday.” Craig sat on the edge of the open door and leaned against the frame. “And before you ask, one of the rentals is gone.”
“That only means he used it to go back into town to see his niece.”
They had taken rooms at the Airport Hilton, located thirteen unlucky miles from downtown Portland. (The airport was just off Interstate 84, which was the highway they had driven west out of Idaho on.) They usually situated their command centers near the local airport, where they could always find hotels, cheap food and other services such as car rentals—and bars. And, of course, the airport facilities themselves if they needed to fly in any reinforcements.
“Well, he should have been back by now for the meeting. Dude impresses me as having a permanent stick up his ass regarding procedures especially being on time—no, early.”
“You could say something like that,” she replied, smiling. Then paused and thought a moment.
“But you’re right. He would have at least called to say he was running late. Shit, now you have me a little concerned.” She fingered the bottlecap-sized pin attached to the front of her blouse. “You say these things are always on and recording?”
“I didn’t say, but the IT guy from D.C. did. Supposed to monitor everything we do in the field. It instantly uploads images to the cloud, and then the keyboard monkeys can review our actions later or watch us real time.”
“Let’s see if anyone’s awake back there.” She typed and clicked and moused.
Good morning. Came a reply.
She typed: We seem to be missing one master sergeant. You got anything on him from his body cam?
Will check and get back to you.
She responded: Thanks. Skype me when you find something. Thnx.
Liz turned back to Craig. “So, while we wait, you haven’t said anything about the visit to your mom’s.”
“What’s there to say?”
“OH, something like: That was sure a nice visit. I miss her. Should do it more often,” she prodded. “Or: Thanks Liz for being there. Your presence really covered my ass.”
Craig stared into his cup and said nothing. The cream still had not integrated entirely into the steaming liquid. Somehow, maybe, the dissipating swirling pattern might reveal the best response to the question he couldn’t answer for himself. “I guess you could tell it wasn’t a comfortable experience—for her and for me.”
This revelation softened him somehow, made him seem a bit vulnerable, more human.
“Anyway, thanks for coming along. You did make it easier for me. I owe you.”
“Well, I needed to get away. At least the weather was nice. Though you could have allowed more time. It was a very quick turnaround.”
“That was not my doing. Cole called for the meeting after I had told mom I was coming. Otherwise, I wanted to drive you back to Portland by going up the coast. It’s a pretty drive.”
She smiled. Was he hitting on her? “That would have been nice. Raincheck for another shot at it?”
“You got it. And rain is probably what you’ll get too,” he said, giving her a wink.
THE NEW TECHNOLOGIES the CSC were being exposed to were intended to offset the loss of funding for the human side of the organization, as if technology alone could monitor, contain, and search for all the monsters the agency had been tasked to do since its founding. The theory seemed to go that even though technology was pricey, it didn’t need vacations, hospital stays, maternity leaves, pensions or death benefit payouts.
As a result, Paul and Ellie, who were among the newest of the human assets added to the organization, were also among the fewest added in a very long time. They had to do more than learn how to hunt and fight vampires, lycans, and mutants, they also had to master the intel side of things as well as the new tech wizardry—all of which had been distinct departments with their own staffs up until now. So, instead of traveling west with Craig, Liz, and Terry, they had to sit in the windowless, climate-moderated Control Center. Locked away in the secret facility that was CSC West, inside the secured Garden Home Air Force base, in the middle of nowhere, Idaho. It was like being the babushka in the heart of a set of Russian nesting dolls.
On the big screen, Ellie and Paul were watching the feed from the body cams. The button-sized cameras also contained microphones for audio recording as well as GPS chips for keeping tabs on agent’s movements.
Since the body cams were always turned on when worn in the field, every single moment in an agent’s daily activity could be observed live. And yes, every moment. Some genius had determined that giving agents the option to turn the device off would also provide them with the opportunity to forget to turn it on. So, no off switch was provided. All material captured by these intrusive appliances uploaded continually and stored in the allpowerful cloud where it was accessible for after-action review. An ill-conceived procedural protocol (not to mention a tremendous drain on batteries), but one that came in handy when trying to find out what had happened to the Master Sergeant.
Fortunately, Terry was a stickler for following the rules. He was told to wear the camera at all times outside of his room. And wear it he did. Because of the GPS signal they easily located where he was. The disturbing thing about the signal, however, was that there was no indication it had moved location since 9 p.m. last night, meaning the device was still pinging away from inside the bar Terry had entered.
The video playback would give them more specific information regarding Terry’s fate. But not all technologies provided instant answers, and like this, required some moments to find and retrieve the correct files. When waiting to receive vital information regarding the safety of a friend, any amount of time it took was too much time, and Liz was becoming impatient.
“What’s taking so long?” Liz demanded glaring into the camera above the monitor.
“First, I’m new to this. Second, it’s only been a minute. And third—” Paul stopped. “Okay, I’ve got the files downloaded from the Master Sergeant’s cam and cued up. Ready?”
Before hearing an answer, the video playback began to roll.
On the screen in front of Liz and Craig, an image of Terry appeared in a mirror after putting on his jacket in the hotel room. They watched him adjust the button cam to make sure it was focused in the right direction. Timestamp at bottom right corner said that it was 7:43 p.m. the night before.
“At least he’s not so old school as to not have paid attention to the tech briefing we gave him,” Craig interjected.
Then Terry grabbed the room keycard from the dresser top in front of him and turned for the door.
“Fast forward through this stuff Paul. Will you?” Liz asked voice tinged with impatience.
They then watched a sped-up version of Terry getting into the rental, driving on the freeway and into town, fight evening traffic, looking for on-street parking, and finally giving up, pulling into a pay lot.
“Paul, you have a location of that parking lot?” Craig asked.
“Uh, yeah, Google maps has it listed as Diamond Parking, Lot EP61. S.W. First and Ankeny.”
The video resumed. Terry left the lot and was now walking past revelers, a couple homeless looking for handouts, and a derelict drunk whose liver had to be too shot to handle even a can of beer relieving himself on the side of a building and stopped in front of a bar.
««« ‡ »»» LIKE VOYEURS, THE four watched Terry enter. The street level was compact, but Terry did not linger there. They watched him continue down a set of stairs to the main bar in the basement. It was dark, low-ceilinged, and lit by soft-colored, paper-shaded pendants. The wide-angle lens on the camera gave a distorted, one-hundred-eighty-degree view of the surroundings. Several people were drinking and having a good time, but it appeared Terry hadn’t seen the person he was trying to meet so he walked up to the bar and sat at the empty corner. The bartender—hipster girl, multiple tats, and piercings, with half her hair shaved and the other half a deep purple fading out to white at the ends—approached, acknowledged his order, and gathered the ingredients to make whatever concoction Terry had asked for.
Terry resumed a visual sweep of the room, maybe to give anyone who was watching the lay of the land, but more than likely he was just trying to see if his friend had arrived.
Then he suddenly turned, and the camera showed the face of an African American woman before the image went out of focus and blacked out as the two came together in a hug.
“Let’s have the audio feed on this,” Liz requested. “Uncle Jack!”
“Hey princess,” Terry paused, which turned into an awkward
silence. “Look, Naomi . . . I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, Uncle. No apologies.” Naomi put her finger up to
Terry’s lips to silence him. It was an almost alluring gesture.
“I’m a big girl now. I know how the world works.” “Don’t be mad at your mother. She didn’t ask me to talk to
you. My idea.
”
Naomi looked around the bar. “Well, if talk is what you want
we should find a quieter spot.” She flashed a beguiling smile,
held out her hand for Terry to grab and she led him into a dark
hall off the main room.
“What’s she playing at?” Craig asked.
Liz shook her head in disbelief, “It looks like his niece is trying
to . . . seduce him?”
The voice of Ellie was heard from the speakers. “I wish we
could see the master sergeant’s face.”
“Why?”
“I’m betting that his mind is being manipulated. Remember
the Bucket of Blood in Vamp Town? The look on his face would
give that away for sure.”
“Fuck! You’re right. Terry wouldn’t go anywhere that might
compromise his position. Not after drilling tactical awareness
into our brains like he did,” Liz said.
Paul added, “Unless he’s being given a light touch, you know,
Vlad just reaching into his head just enough to make him feel
like he is doing something not against better judgment.” Craig wasn’t so sure about the analysis. “Wow! Slow down
there, cowboys. This is a big jump from meeting his niece, albeit
under very weird circumstances, to something Vlad is actually
controlling.”
“Terry was on the SITE-ALPHA detail long before you got to
the Asylum, right Craig?” Ellie asked. “He said that he coined
the name Vamp Town. So he knows Vlad.”
“It’s still a mighty big jump to connect Terry’s niece with Vlad.
Funky actions aside.”
Their attention was drawn back to the screen. Naomi had just
stopped at a heavy metal door—one of those old fire doors with
the multiple segments of sheet metal welded together. She was
in the process of unlocking it. After the key turned, she pushed
on the door and it swung into a black void.