by Greg Taylor
The sound had come from one of the security TV monitors in Harvey’s basement office, monitors that relayed images from the pizza shop, upstairs office, storage room, and back alley. When Harvey walked into his office he literally got goose bumps from what he saw on one of the monitors. Two hooded people had broken into Killer Pizza!
One man—burly, large forearms—and one woman were on the pizza shop screen, prowling about in the kitchen. Harvey’s first thought was, how did they manage to get in without setting off the alarm? He didn’t have a clue, but he did know the two intruders were guttata. They had that look about them. Even in human form, guttata had a certain way of walking. Slow, assured, no unnecessary movements, as though to preserve their strength for more important things.
But were there just two of them? Harvey checked the screen that scanned the back alley. The monitor showed two large, hulking black vehicles. A cluster of figures—just their dark shapes visible—stood in the shadows near the SUVs.
Okay, Harvey thought. Game’s on. He was calm and composed as he took out his cell phone and called Steve. Steve was to come to Killer Pizza immediately. He was to park on Hazel Street, fifty yards from the Industrial Avenue turnoff, and wait until he saw a black Hummer and a black Yukon appear from the dead-end street. He was to follow the Hummer. Wherever it went, Steve must not let it out of his sight. Steve said he’d be there in five minutes.
“Make it four,” Harvey replied.
Four minutes later the two human guttata were in the storage room, ripping it apart in an attempt to find some indication of where Child had been taken. Harvey called Steve to make sure he was in place, then tapped a few numbers into the phone after Steve hung up.
The alarm for the KP building started to blare. The guttata had been clever enough to get into KP without tripping the main alarm, but they couldn’t do anything about the backup system, which Harvey had activated with his cell.
The intruders stopped in their tracks. Harvey watched them hesitate, then slowly retreat from the storage room to the pizza shop, and finally to the back alley.
Ten figures huddled in the darkness before getting into the SUVs. When the large vehicles moved off down the alley and disappeared from sight, Harvey nodded. Just like that, he had countered the guttata’s first move.
“Why’s the alarm on?” Toby asked from the doorway, shielding his eyes from the bright light in the office.
“Everything’s fine,” Harvey replied. “Go back to sleep.”
“But …” Toby suddenly noticed the trashed storage room on the monitor. “Uh-oh. Is that what I think it is?”
“Yes. They’ve found us. But we … are about to find them.”
2
“It’s about time! What are we waiting for? Let’s go get ’em!”
Strobe, along with Annabel, had just received the news that Steve was currently staking out a house in Brentwood Hills, where the black Hummer had immediately gone after the alarm went off. It was now afternoon and the driver—the burly man who had broken into Killer Pizza—had not reappeared from the house since going inside the previous night.
As for the rest of the guttata, they had scattered and driven off into the night and were now waiting somewhere in the city for the Gathering to begin. Which is right where the burly man would lead them, come nightfall.
“I’ve done a background check on this man,” Harvey said. “His name is Thomas Gome. He’s second-in-command in the Brentwood Hills Police Department.”
Strobe whistled through his teeth. “They do have people in high places, don’t they?”
Harvey nodded. “I’ve called headquarters. Reinforcements will be here any time now.”
Strobe frowned at this news. “Reinforcements? What are you talking about?”
“Ten of KP’s best officers are coming in from New York.”
“Wait a second. You’re not saying we’re being replaced, are you?”
“I am. You will not be going out in the field with us tonight, Strobe.”
“But this is our case.”
“It’s too dangerous. I need my most experienced officers on this one.”
“We’re experienced. We took on those guttata.”
“Yes, you did. But they were child’s play compared to an Alpha.”
“I know I’m ready for this, Harvey.”
“And I know you’re not. You’re still a rookie, after all. The people coming in have completed their advanced training in New York. They have years of experience in the field.”
“Advanced training in New York? You never mentioned anything about advanced training in New York.”
“That’s because you haven’t even finished your initial training here in Hidden Hills.”
“What’s with this advanced training? What more could you teach us?”
“Let’s just say that what you’re into here is like trying out for a police force. Advanced training is the equivalent of trying out for the CIA.”
Intriguing …
“Wait … . I get it. You’ve been planning this all along, haven’t you? We do the preliminary, boring stakeout work, then you call in the big boys.”
“You’ll get your shot, Strobe. Now’s not the time. But I do think you should hang around. Meet the officers. Steve and a few of them will be monitoring the situation from my office tonight while we’re out in the field. It’d be a good thing for you to observe.”
“No way am I sitting here like some little kid while the big boys are off having all the fun.” With that, Strobe brushed past Harvey on his way out of the office. Annabel gave Harvey an apologetic shrug.
“He’s just a really gung-ho kind of guy.”
“And bullheaded. It’ll be a while before the troops arrive and things get going. You can stick around here if you want. If not, keep an eye out. See you around six o’clock.” With that, Harvey turned and walked out of his office.
Toby and Annabel were silent after Harvey left, each with their own thoughts. Annabel didn’t love the idea of being replaced by more experienced officers, either. She was surprised how strongly she felt about that. She could have never guessed how eager an officer she would become when she first signed up for the MCO Academy.
As for Toby, he didn’t mind the “big boys” coming in and taking over. Not after what he’d just been through. Matter-of-fact, Toby was looking forward to taking in the action from Harvey’s office. It’d be like observing a football game from the announcer’s booth. Nice and safe, with no chance of getting your head bashed in.
3
Strobe sat in an abandoned forklift in the littered field at the end of Industrial Avenue, keeping a watch on Killer Pizza. He was waiting for the KP troops to arrive. He couldn’t help himself. He was intensely curious about Harvey’s veteran MCOs. What would they look like? Would their experience show in their faces? In the way they moved? Strobe knew he had to find out.
So, unlike Toby and Annabel, who had gone home for a few hours until things got going later in the afternoon, Strobe waited in the heat of the afternoon until he saw two black sedans appear at the end of the street. As they disappeared into the alley that ran behind the buildings on the right side of the avenue, Strobe hopped from the forklift and headed for Killer Pizza.
Pushing through the front door, Strobe walked under a banner that had recently been strung across the shop.
WHEN IS YOUR NEXT KILLER PIZZA ALL-NIGHTER?
The banner referred to the all-night horror movie marathon parties that some teens had begun having around Hidden Hills. Ever the smart businessman, Harvey immediately installed the banner when word got back to him about the parties. He especially liked the part where the kids ordered plenty of Killer Pizzas and side dishes before settling in for their dusk-till-dawn screamfests. To extract as much money from the kids as possible, Harvey had stocked several shelves with classic horror films by the take-out counter as part of the “All-Nighter” package.
I’m about to have a horror party myself, Strobe thought as he
swung over the counter and entered the kitchen. The new trio of pizza chefs Harvey had recently hired was buzzing wildly around the kitchen. It was five o’clock, the beginning of the busy dinner hours. Strobe was about to head down the hall to the storage room when the counter phone rang.
“Strobe! Can you get that?”
Everyone working “aboveground” thought Strobe, Toby, and Annabel were assistant managers for KP. It allowed the trio to come and go without suspicion. But it also allowed the kitchen workers to ask for help from the trio from time to time.
“Please?” the girl with the disheveled hairnet implored Strobe as the phone continued to ring.
Strobe reluctantly retreated back to the phone. “Killer Pizza … Uh-huh … Right … You want any Mummy Wraps with that? Vampire Stakes? … You got it. It’ll be there in half an hour.”
“Forty-five minutes!” the girl yelled from the kitchen.
“Forty-five minutes,” Strobe said, correcting himself. He was placing the order on the wheel in the kitchen when the phone started up again.
“Don’t even think about it!” Strobe said.
“C’mon, Strobe! We need some help here!”
“Talk to Harvey about that.”
“We have. Besides, what’re you doing right now that’s so important?”
“Saving our fair city from imminent destruction.”
The girl was not amused at Strobe’s comeback. Strobe smiled, exited the kitchen, went down the hall, and entered the storeroom, which he and Toby and Annabel had helped restore to order after the invasion the night before. He opened the secret pizza-sauce door and closed it firmly behind him.
Walking down the spiral staircase, Strobe was surprised to see that the Killer Pizza basement was already a beehive of activity, Harvey’s reinforcements having wasted no time gearing up for the looming battle.
Several of the officers were assembling, checking, and lining up artillery on the two examination tables in the forensics room.
Several more MCOs walked briskly into Harvey’s office …
… just as two other black-T-shirt-clad officers came out, gesturing to each other as they talked.
The young men and women—early to mid-twenties, Strobe guessed—were focused and intense as they went about their business. They definitely carried an aura of experience, of confidence, about them. Strobe was instantly jealous. He wanted to be part of this group. Wanted to feel what it felt like, having so much “out in the field” experience.
An odd thought suddenly hit Strobe. He wondered if all of the officers gathered in the KP basement had put in their time at Killer Pizza—had twirled the dough in hot kitchens—before being tapped for the KP program.
Pizza and monsters. From the very beginning, a very odd and unexpected mix.
The distracting thought evaporated as Strobe focused on the two officers who were assembling the weapons.
“You one of the rookies?” the officer nearest Strobe asked. Strobe didn’t like the guy’s tone, but he nodded in reply. “Look pretty young. Just stay out of our way and maybe we’ll let you stick around.”
Strobe felt his temper flare, like it was an actual thing inside his body, with a fuse. It took all his willpower to harness his anger and not go at the guy with the slightly long, shaggy hair. That’s what the dude probably wanted, Strobe figured. Lay the “rookie” out. Show him who was boss.
So instead of confronting the muscled officer, Strobe walked past him to Harvey’s office, stood outside the door, and eavesdropped on the activity inside.
He had arrived just in time. A cluster of MCOs was gathered around Harvey’s desk, watching a GPS-equipped monitor that was focused on Brentwood Hills. A blinking blue light—representing Thomas Gome’s Hummer, which Steve had bugged during the night—was moving slowly along the twisting streets of Hidden Hills’ neighboring community.
Strobe felt his heart rate jump a few notches. Gome was off to the Gathering! Very soon, Killer Pizza would know the location of the Alpha’s “lair.” Then, come nightfall—the Gathering officially beginning at sunset—the siege would begin.
Strobe felt worse than ever that he was not going to be a part of it.
As Harvey instructed several of his officers to take one of the KP vehicles and put a tail on Gome, Annabel was sitting at her kitchen table and having something to eat before heading back to Killer Pizza. Actually, Annabel was only picking at her food as she stared out the window at the backyard, where the large pool reflected the late afternoon summer sun, breaking it into thousands of glittering pieces. She was too excited, thinking about the coming evening, to really concentrate on her meal.
The rest of the house was quiet. Annabel’s dad was still at work, her mother off shopping somewhere. Fossie, the Oshiros’ live-in maid, was usually around, but this was her day off.
The sparkling pool suddenly went dull, the result of a bank of clouds bullying into view on the horizon and blotting out the sun. At the same time, the front doorbell rang. Annabel slid off her chair, went to the door, and opened it. Two men were standing on the front porch. They both wore suits and sunglasses.
“Hello,” said the taller man. “We’re collecting signatures for a resolution to halt development along Turtle Creek.”
“Did you know that there is more pollution—”
“I can’t sign that, can I?” Annabel asked, interrupting the second man. “I’m only fourteen.”
“Are your parents home?”
That gave Annabel pause. She didn’t want to tell these guys that she was home alone. Come to think of it, she really didn’t like the look of either of them. They gave her the creeps.
“Yes, my father is. I’ll go get him.”
Annabel gave the men a smile, then slammed the door in their faces! It was just a gut feeling, but Annabel had the unnerving notion that the two men standing on her front porch were guttata!
Her immediate thought was to call Harvey. As she spun away from the front door …
… she came face-to-face with the luminous blue-eyed woman.
A flash of white. An instant of intense pain. Then Annabel collapsed to the tile floor, unconscious.
4
Unaware of what had happened to Annabel, Toby grabbed the house keys from the hook next to the kitchen phone and stuffed them in his pocket.
“I need to get back to Killer Pizza, guys. Be sure to lock up when you leave, okay?”
Toby had biked home to check up on the two workers Harvey had sent to repair the damages in his house. They were almost done replacing the basement door that Child had obliterated. Considering what was going on down at Killer Pizza, fixing up the mess in the house didn’t seem quite as important to Toby. But of course it had to be done, and quickly. His parents were due home in a couple of days. After asking when the new sofa would be arriving—any day now was the reply—Toby headed for the garage.
He was gingerly getting on his bike—his leg still hurt from the talon slash—when Strobe ran into view at the end of the driveway. Seeing Toby, he ran toward the garage and pulled the door shut behind him after entering.
“What’s goin’ on?” Toby asked, clearly perplexed at Strobe’s sudden appearance, not to mention the fact that he was carrying several backpacks and had a long, hefty circular aluminum tube strapped across his back.
Strobe couldn’t talk. He had run all the way from Killer Pizza in the hot sun and couldn’t catch his breath. Toby went into the house and got a glass of water. After draining it in a single gulp, Strobe was finally able to say—
“They got our girl.”
It wasn’t long after Gome had started for the Gathering, Strobe revealed, and Harvey had sent his two men to tail him, when the call came into Killer Pizza. It was the pack’s head honcho.
Alpha Man.
The leader of the pack’s demands were simple. If Harvey didn’t back off, he’d never see Annabel again. If the guttata were left alone to have their Gathering in peace, she would be returned safe and sound to K
iller Pizza the following morning. Not only that, but the pack would disappear from the city. Never to be heard from again.
Toby felt light-headed after hearing this. Annabel, kidnapped! How could this have happened? Strobe knocked Toby back into the here and now with his declaration that the two of them were going to go and get Annabel.
“What?” Toby asked. “What was that, again?”
“We’re gonna track Annabel down and get her back.”
“What are you talking about?”
“What’s not to understand? We’re gonna find out where she is and go rescue her.”
“Does Harvey know we’re doing this?”
“No.”
“I’m confused. Rescuing Annabel is Harvey territory, isn’t it?”
“Did you hear a word of what I just told you? Harvey has to go along with the Alpha’s demands. His hands are tied, man. The place is like a tomb down there. The Killer Pizza building is being watched, for sure. But us, you think any of those monsters will be watching us? Two teenagers? What harm could we possibly be?”
“Just the question I was about to ask.”
“C’mon, Tobe. Don’t let me down here.”
“Back up a second, Strobe. Who’s to say this guy won’t keep his promise? Maybe Annabel will be returned tomorrow morning. We could mess up the whole deal, going after her.”
“Look me in the eye and tell me you actually think some gargoyle psycho dude is gonna keep his word.”
“I can look you in the eye and say … I don’t know.”
“Are you afraid to do this, Tobe?”
Strobe’s question caught Toby off guard. He cleared his throat. Checked the stitches on his thigh.
“Don’t worry about it. So am I.”
Toby wasn’t sure if he heard Strobe correctly.
“Only a fool wouldn’t be,” Strobe continued. “I mean, are you kidding? Going after one of the most feared fiends in the monster universe? A thing that stands more than ten feet tall and can snap your neck like a toothpick?”
