“Anybody got any contacts with the local trash company?”
Nobody did. Neither did Paulding.
Snyder did, though. And when I called he admitted that he owed me a favor. Michael Oshiro was, apparently, while a serious bad person, easier to work around than Inoue. Inoue had been bringing in loads of heroin and expanding that market. Oshiro was just providing not pushing. Overall, better with Oshiro. And while he didn’t have specifics, he’d heard that a “gaijin had sent Inoue’s remains to the Fathers” in Japan as a message. So Seattle and even FBI OrgCrime liked me.
Very odd.
He put me in touch with a friend in the garbage business. Which was how I found myself sitting outside a rainwater outlet, by an immense pile of garbage, in the dark, wearing my gas mask, at around midnight on a rainy night. Not that there were many clear ones in Seattle.
The guy from the garbage company had been hesitant at first. They didn’t want to get in trouble for illegal dumping. But he acceded to my request.
“Why from the fish market?” he asked.
“I need it as nasty and stinky as possible,” I said. “Preferably the oldest and stinkiest garbage they’ve got.”
“It’s pretty nasty when it’s fresh. But okay.”
I sat still. I knew the gnolls knew I was there. But that huge, beautiful, pile of stinky, rotting, nasty, fish was just too tempting. Finally one, then another, then another, then a mass of the little creatures came creeping out of the outlet, all of them chittering in their high, guttural language.
What they looked like was…variable. They literally covered themselves in various sorts of debris as camouflage. Many a sewer worker has walked right past a gnoll and never seen them. They just look like another pile of garbage. A few, clearing blockages, have accidentally pushed one and gotten the shock of their life when the pile of garbage stands up and runs away.
Their basic body is a thin humanoid with a fairly human face. Bit like a ghoul’s, somewhat twisted and deformed. Possibly more like an australopithecus. But you rarely can get a good look for all the junk hanging on them. They don’t wear clothes but the garbage pretty much covers everything up.
I just sat there and listened, comparing the language to the ones I’d studied in England. I was surprised that it was a variant of German gnoll as opposed to English. I hadn’t studied that as carefully. It took me a while to get some basic vowels and nouns. And I couldn’t for the life of me remember the German gnoll for vampires.
The gnolls were diving into the garbage with relish, the pile covered in them.
“Stinky fish!” was the main comment. One word. Basically “Urgkh!” in a high, excited tone.
“Herring!” a special favorite, especially rotten. “Ghlackt!” Choked up from the back of your throat like clearing a loogie. Sort of like Hebrew or Arabic “Ch.” “Lach-hayim!” That sort of “ch.” I finally got “Suck,” basically the noise itself, “sluckt.” And blood. “Thchut!” So I sort of had “blood-suck.” “Find.” Need. Love or at least “good.”
It took a few hours and I was nowhere near fluent. But the sun was going to be coming up, soon, and the garbage pile was quickly dwindling.
“Need help, I,” I said in broken gnoll.
The gnolls all froze then several scuttled back into the sewer.
“Friend am. Talk, speak, King. Good, good, talk.”
I was probably saying something entirely different but they got the picture.
“Gnoll speak?” one of them said, creeping closer.
“English gnoll speak,” I said. “Gnoll speak here not good. Good food bring.”
“Good rotten food,” the gnoll said. One word, again. “Urgkh!”
“Much Urghk!” I said. “More urghk bring. Need help.”
“What help need?”
Getting across that I was looking for some vampires was tough. But it got across. I learned one of their words for vampire. They had several. I didn’t understand them all. I wished later I had. They had their own categorizations for vampires and if I’d understood it better then, well…
I promised that if I could find the vampires I was looking for I’d bring them more stinky garbage. That was exciting. The problem being the opening was nowhere near the University District and their understanding of the Seattle Underground was based on words, most of which I didn’t understand yet, that were based on smells and taste. Some of them I never did understand. Humans don’t have their senses. A werewolf would understand gnoll better but the two groups avoided each other assiduously.
I had obtained a basic map of the Seattle sewer system that had a route from the outlet to the UD. I asked if I could lead one of their number to the place I needed. One of them, a young “searcher” was assigned.
His name was basically unpronounceable. “Yechtzumblrogeckt” is as close as I can get. I called him Todd. He was fine with that.
Just before dawn, Todd and I set off through the sewers. I’d come prepared with a pair of waders, bunker gear and spare filters for my gas mask. We’d started off by Gas Works Park on Lake Union. I led Todd through the sewers for hours. The route was nowhere near direct. We had to go all the way up by Woodland Park Zoo to get over to the UD.
I would ask him names as I’d get to areas I knew where I was. Wallingford was “house people shit” and some words based on area to delineate it from other areas that were “house people shit,” basically any suburb. This was “suburb between the north water and the south water away from the highway to the east and near some docks to the south.” That was surprisingly few words and some of them were polysynthetic. I also picked up more American gnoll. That was to come in useful as hell in my entire career.
Pro-tip: IF you’ve got any fluency in languages, try to learn gnoll. You can order my brief dictionary of colloquial American gnoll through Oxford University Press if you have the clearance. Seriously useful contacts. But be prepared to take a lot of showers and buy lemons.
Several times he told me we had to detour to avoid something. I knew very few of the words but it was clear there were more monsters in the underground than we’d realized. We got lost a couple of times but I would point in the general direction I thought we needed to go and eventually we found the correct route. We finally got to the University district near dark which was “young people eating many types of food with good shits.” Also “smells like young people (teen) urine.”
When we got to the designated exit point I told him I’d meet him at dawn the next day, there. Then we’d find the vampires. He knew which ones I was talking about but couldn’t explain it on a map. We’d find them tomorrow.
City works was holding open the manhole in an alleyway near my apartment and had been there all day. They didn’t know why and when I came lumbering out wanted to know why an unauthorized person was allowed in the sewer system and where the hell I’d been. It was clear I’d been down there for a while. I was covered in shit. I told them it was classified and that they’d be back here tomorrow. Get over it.
I debriefed Doctor Lucius, briefly, and we agreed the full team would meet up, here, tomorrow before dawn.
Then I got out of the gear, went home and took a long shower. Then another one. It was no use. I was just going to stink for a long time. I’m not even sure it was purely the sewer. I think it was spending all day in the presence of Todd the Gnoll.
* * *
“Todd says there are about ten human women and a few vampires. He said there are other things, about four, but I don’t know what the words mean,” I said to the assembled team. We were kitted up in full vamp gear as the city works people got the manhole open again. “Not vamps but some sort of undead would be my guess. He can’t tell exactly where they are. But he can get us close.”
“Todd?” Timmy said, yawning.
“His real name is…” and I let out the series of grunts and clicks that was Todd’s name. “So I call him Todd. He’s good with that. He calls me Blupurckht!gagafump! Which basically translates as ‘br
ings-smelly-fish-garbage-not-evil-male-human.’ His name means ‘finder-of-big-smelly-rotten-fish-meat-garbage-shit-pile.’”
“Gotta love those gnolls,” Louis said, laughing.
“They know Seattle like the back of your hand,” I argued. “And from some of the spots he avoided, there’s stuff under there we never realized. I think he’s going to be a really good, if smelly, contact.”
“Hole’s open,” the foreman said walking over. “I don’t know what is going on here, but we are not liable for any injury you may sustain while in those tunnels. I don’t see why the hell untrained people are being allowed down there and I do not want to know why you’re armed like a damned commando team.”
“You really don’t,” Doctor Joan said, smiling.
Lieutenant Snyder knew the FBI Special Agent in charge of the University District Serial Killer Task Force. The SAIC knew damned well that it was an MCB operation and that they were just cover. It was one of the crosses that Violent Crimes had to bear. They generally got public credit when a “serial killer” was apprehended or “died during arrest.” That was the good part. The bad part was they got less credit in real serial killer cases ’cause the important people in-the-know assumed that it was all Supernatural and gave MCB credit where it wasn’t due.
And most of the time the people who took down the actual monster were hunters who got no credit at all.
But the SAIC had made the arrangements for the city works support. I don’t know if MCB was involved or not. But any tip that might lead to the “apprehension” of the UD Serial Killer was a good thing from the POV of the SAIC.
And we were prepared to do just that.
Right at dawn there was a chittering from the hole. Todd was back.
We clambered down into the hole and I made contact with Todd. After a bit of back and forth we started off.
The walk wasn’t far but it also wasn’t as useful as I’d hoped. Todd just led us to an outflow pipe.
“There,” he said. “Many blood suck. One…” Unknown word. “Ten human female-child. Very sick human female child. Four…” Did not have that word and could not figure it out.
“They’re wherever that outflow is coming from,” I said.
“We need that foreman,” Doctor Lucius said. “Honey…”
“I’ll go get him,” Doctor Joan said, smiling through her gas mask.
“Thank you, Todd,” I said. There was no word for “thank you” so I used the Chinese “good-good.” “Stinky garbage, same place, tomorrow night. Much stinky garbage.”
“Stinky garbage good,” Todd said.
“You can go,” I said. “Thank you.”
Todd scuttled off under his pile of refuse and disappeared.
“If I get taken out,” I said “somebody owes his clan two truckloads of the stinkiest garbage, long dead fish by preference, they can get. Drop it at the same place.”
“We’ll take care of it,” Doctor Lucius said.
The foreman finally showed up bearing a bunch of charts.
“That one?” he said, not even looking at the paper. “What do you want with the library?”
“Library?” Doctor Joan said. “Which one?”
“The University Library,” the foreman said as if talking to a not particularly bright child. “That’s the outflow for the University Library.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Jesse said. “It can’t be.”
“Listen, cowboy, I know this area like the back of my hand,” the guy said, angrily. “That is the outflow for the University of Washington Odegaard Student Library.”
The vamps were in the library I spent half my time in off-duty.
Son-of-a-bitch.
“We’re going to need to talk to MCB on this one,” Louis said. “We’re not going to be able to just stroll into the library kitted up.”
“Maybe not,” I said. “We could bypass them and talk to the SAIC.”
“Either way, we’re out of the sewers for now,” Doctor Lucius said. “And we need to hurry. We’re burning daylight.”
* * *
The Special Agent in charge of the UD Killer TF was Supervisory Special Agent Robert McCormick. Forty-five, with balding brown hair, he was not the happiest camper when I turned up wearing a polo shirt and khakis but still smelling like a sewer. But he agreed to meet.
“Special Agent,” I said, shaking his hand. “Sorry about the smell. We were looking in the sewers. This is my team lead, Doctor Lucius Nelson, PhD.”
“Doctor,” the SSA said, shaking his hand. “Thank you for your support in searching for the missing students.”
“Which we’ve found,” Doctor Nelson said. “Through a Confidential Informant.”
“CIs never help in serial killer cases, Doctor,” the SSA said, making a grimace.
“We have special CIs. We’ve definitely found the students. But. You’re aware this is not, actually, a VC case, Special Agent. It’s MCB.”
“I was hoping it wasn’t,” he said, making another grimace. “You’re sure?”
“Absolutely sure,” I said.
“I’m not read in on exactly what MCB does and I don’t want to be,” he said, frowning. “I know it. Everybody in Violent Crimes knows it. I just don’t officially. And if it’s MCB why are you talking to me?”
“The relationship between our organizations and MCB is…fraught,” Doctor Nelson said. “Contentious would be another word. In this case, we need official help to end this scourge. Because the serial killers were clever enough to use a location that is virtually inaccessible. At least during the day.”
“Where?”
“They’re somewhere in the University Library,” I said.
“You have to be kidding,” the SSA said with a snort. “Or your CI is nuts.”
“Our CI is…very good. He’s more of a tracker. An extremely accurate one. You know/don’t know what MCB does. He’s that sort of tracker. And he led us to the Library.
“Problem being, we have to get in there and…manage the issue without it becoming a major incident. And you can’t use HRT or anything similar. MCB could, possibly, bring in a strike team. But getting one of those is pulling hen’s teeth. The killers will probably kill again, tonight. If the killers find out we’ve located them they’ll move. If you use your usual surveillance they’ll detect it and either kill your agents or move. We have to hit them now. During daylight. And fast. And we have to carry in a great deal of gear. Thus the issue.”
“You don’t have to know a single thing about what’s actually going on,” Doctor Nelson said. “Just get us in and let us do our job.”
“Any suggestions?” the SSA asked. “MCB is the one with all the good lies up its sleeve.”
“We call in a bomb threat,” I said. “VC verifies that it’s a credible threat and rolls a team in to check it out. We go in as the ‘bomb threat team.’ You hold the perimeter and keep people out. We’ll try to keep the rest of it discreet. Possibly a ‘bomb’ goes off in the basement. Then we tell MCB.”
“If MCB thinks I’m poaching on their turf they can get really nasty.”
“How many more undead kids do you want?” Doctor Nelson said. “Sorry, make that dead. Of course. Vampires don’t exist.”
“Let me get this straight,” the SSA said, rubbing his face. “You, Doctor, are actually a vampire hunter?”
“You know what MCB stands for, right?” I asked.
“So why doesn’t MCB handle this stuff?” the SSA asked.
“Monsters don’t, officially, exist,” Doctor Nelson said. “There are a variety of secret treaties on the subject. There are reasons. I won’t get into them because they are complicated. Private companies are paid to deal with them. MCB does cover-up almost purely and things that are bigger than a minor vampire outbreak. This is the…” He thought about it.
“Third vampire group we’ve dealt with this year,” I added usefully. “Seattle is vampire central. The ‘serial killer’ hitting homeless in downtown last year? Vampires.�
��
“Shit,” the SSA said. “I wondered why that just dried up.”
“We used your analysis to track them down, sir,” I said. “But in this case, they’ve been smart. We can’t go strolling into the library wearing full fighting gear.”
“And you’re sure they’re in the library?” he asked, again.
“Pretty sure,” I said. “We had a gnoll tracker track them down. He pointed out the OUL outflow pipe. Ten hostages, a few vampires and four ‘other’ things. Not sure what.”
“Gnoll?”
“Harmless sewer dwellers. No threat. We pay them in garbage for tips. Incredible sense of smell. They call the UD ‘place where young people shit lots of interesting food.’ So, we good on the bomb threat?”
“No,” the SSA said. “And yes. It’s a good plan. Where’s your team?”
“Waiting in our van,” Doctor Nelson said. “Let us get kitted up, send them the threat, evacuate the library, get us in and let us handle this.”
“You said hostages.”
“We’ll get as many out alive as we can,” Doctor Nelson said. “Won’t know how many we get until it’s done. But we usually get them all. Then the MCB threatens them with jail time and psychiatric time and or death if they talk.”
“Things I don’t want to know,” the SSA said, shaking his head. “We’ll need to get your team into one of our vans. Any issue?”
“We’ll bring ours into the garage and switch there,” Doctor Nelson said. “If you’re good for that.”
“We’re good. MCB is going to flip. Fuck them. They’re a bunch of black-ops prima donnas anyway.”
“Glad we have some agreement on that subject,” Doctor Nelson said, grinning.
* * *
“The building is clear,” the Special Agent who was “handling” us said. “And we’re backed up to a back door. You have the plans?”
“Got them, thank you, young man,” Doctor Joan said, dimpling. “We’ll take it from here.”
We unloaded and piled through the door before too many people saw us.
The upper floors of OUL were an open plan rectangle with multiple stairs on every side. It was also well lit by large windows. There was no way the vamps were up there.
Grunge (ARC) Page 18
