Deader Still

by Anton Strout

  Connor didn’t look convinced.

  “Just make sure you’re thinking with the right head when it comes to your girlfriend,” he said. “She’s working for Wesker now, and in the Black Stacks. That’s gonna change a girl.”

  Before I could defend my choice further, the Inspectre appeared at the corner of my eye and put an arm on both of our shoulders.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, “I’m sure the two of you could go on for hours about the finer points of today’s fiasco, but let’s call it even, shall we? Given the sabotage, I think Simon did a commendable job. His time with the F.O.G.gies seems to have paid off, and I for one see nothing wrong with being resourceful in dire circumstances. Congratulations, my boy. You passed the Oubliette.”

  I was thrilled to hear I had passed, and I appreciated the Inspectre coming to my defense, but at the same time his sticking up for me was driving a wedge farther between me and my partner. Lately, anytime Connor attempted to correct me on anything, the Inspectre would intervene, and it was like an annoying Get Out of Jail Free card.

  “Thank you, sir,” I said with humility. It felt like a bittersweet victory with the unresolved issue of sabotage tainting it.

  The Inspectre turned to Connor. “As the two of you will be sitting and manning the booth, this would be a perfect time to get Simon to do his performance appraisal, don’t you think?”

  At the words “performance appraisal,” I withered.

  With a final pat on the back, the Inspectre turned and walked off to engage a group of bespectacled cyborgs that had gathered at the front of our booth.

  “We could just go cover me with rat goo again instead,” I offered.

  Connor shook his head. “Sit down, kid. You’ve been avoiding it for weeks.”

  “I’ve been focused on the Oubliette. I forgot about it. Plus, I don’t get why we need them. Isn’t being thrown into a pit full of perils performance appraisal enough? I mean, I’ve never really held a job where I was graded on my performance before, you know, having been a career criminal. The idea of actually reviewing myself mystifies me.”

  Connor pulled out a chair, laid the blank forms down on a table, and handed me a number two pencil.

  “What the hell am I supposed to write?” I asked.

  Connor shrugged.

  “I’ve got no idea, kid. The Inspectre’s still riding me about mine. I’m working on it, but at least he’s letting me ride you about yours in the meantime.”

  “Well, that takes the pressure off,” I said.

  “Easy,” he said. “Wesker will be by in an hour to collect them for the Enchancellors, so be happy you only have me to deal with right now. Just hurry up and finish it.”

  Finish it? I hadn’t even started it. Oh, how I already missed my rat-filled pit!

  A man can produce a surprising amount of writing in sixty minutes when the pressure is on. Sadly, I wasn’t that man, and I found easy distraction checking out scantily clad “booth babes” and the tantalizing collectibles I couldn’t wait to get my hands on. Before I knew it, forty-five minutes had passed and I was staring at the still-blank pages before me when I was interrupted by the sound of the Inspectre’s phone ringing. He motioned Connor over to him and they conferred, leaving me to a final fifteen minutes of staring.

  “Wrap it up, kid,” Connor said, patting me on the shoulder. “We’ve got a case to check out.”

  I shied the pages away from him, hiding the fact that they were still blank. Great. Wesker would be back any minute, and now I had to leave.

  “Stop hanging over my shoulder, would ya?” I said. “Give me a second to finish up.”

  “Simon . . .” Connor said impatiently and, at the sound of my name, I decided the least I could do was write it down on the sheet.

  NAME: Simon Canderous

  DIVISION: Other

  Then I scanned down the first page until I hit the only essay question:

  HOW DO YOU FEEL YOU PERFORMED THE DUTIES ASSIGNED TO YOU WITHIN THE CAPACITY OF YOUR DIVISION?

  I stared at it for a moment longer, then hastily scrawled:

  Didn’t die.

  I snapped the number two pencil in half, stood up, and headed off toward Connor. He handed me back my retractable bat and we pushed through a crowd of Sand People as we headed for the door. I resisted the urge to take my bat to them.

  3

  We stopped at a deli to fill my pockets with Life Savers, Connor’s treat. The guy behind the counter didn’t even blink an eye, but this was no surprise. We were only a block away from the Javits Center, and with two Spider-Men, one Co-nan, and three cross-dressing Buffy’s in line behind us, buying eighteen packs of Life Savers looked pretty normal.

  When we were done, we headed west toward the water, the cool wind of the river intensifying as we got closer.

  “You sure I’m going to need all these?” I asked. I looked down at my bulging pockets. I felt like a squirrel storing up nuts for the long winter.

  “Not sure, kid,” he said, darkness in his voice. “Just want you to be ready. We don’t want you sending your body into hypoglycemic shock.”

  If Connor was stocking me up with this much life-savery sugar, we were probably heading for something big.

  “You mind telling me what’s going on?” I asked.

  Connor shook his head.

  “I’d rather you see for yourself. I don’t want to put any ideas in your head before you get a chance to check out the scene.”

  We crossed the West Side Highway and headed north toward Pier 84. Police tape ran across the entrance to the pier and a few cops were lingering nearby, but none of them would make any sort of direct eye contact with either of us, which was unusual. More often than not, the regular cops regarded the Department of Extraordinary Affairs as a bullshit operation, and we were constantly the butt of their derisive jokes. This time, however, there was a cloud of quiet hanging over the cops that I liked even less than their usual disdain.

  Luckily, David Davidson, our liaison with City Hall, was waiting for us outside a small office complex farther along the pier. He was politics personified, but with one foot in our paranormal world, he was also the best friend we had when we wanted to get anything done in this city—when he wasn’t busy being just as helpful to a million other (and often evil) interests.

  After showing our badges to the cops manning the police tape line, we ducked under it and headed toward Davidson. The wind blew his tan trench coat out behind him like a superhero cape, making me wonder if he might be heading over to the Javits Center later to hang with that crowd.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, forcing a practiced smile. He shook hands with both of us, but the smile disappeared in a grim flash.

  Connor seemed unfazed by it all. “Still aiding and abetting the enemy, Davidson?” he said. “The Office of Plausible Deniability keeping you busy?”

  “Listen,” Davidson answered with smoothness in his voice. “The mayor has the interests of all his constituents to consider. Politics is a slippery slope. You know that, Connor. And when we took up the clarion call of the Sectarians Rights Movement, well . . . Even we make missteps sometimes.”

  I looked back over my shoulder at the somber faces of cops.

  “What’s got everyone so spooked?” I asked.

  Davidson cleared his throat and looked at me with eyes that often held a hypnotic quality, but didn’t today. “Harbor patrol dragged one of those booze cruise boats in today after the boating company reported that it hadn’t returned to port last night. Party boarded at six thirty; ship left at seven and should have been back around ten after circling Manhattan.”

  “A three-hour tour,” Connor said, trying to sound like Thurston Howell but failing on every level. “Were the Professor and Mary Ann on board?”

  Davidson gave him a look that shut him down. I reminded myself to thank him later. If I had to hear Connor call me “Lovey” one more time . . .

  The sound of footsteps coming from farther down the dock made me turn, an
d I saw a familiar figure from the D.E.A. heading toward us. Godfrey Candella was in a suit, as usual, with his dark hair neatly parted but threatening to fall down over his black horn-rims.

  “Godfrey?”

  “Hello, Simon . . . Connor,” he said, fidgeting with a notebook in his hands. His face looked grave.

  “You get what you need?” Davidson called out to him.

  Godfrey nodded. “For now,” he said, and looked at Connor and me. “I’ll need to talk to you both back at the office when you’re done checking out the scene. For the Gauntlet archives, of course.”

  “You okay?” I said, noticing how green around the gills he was. Not that he wasn’t normally a little sickly looking, but today he somehow looked worse.

  “I’ll be fine,” he said. “I’m just not used to such gruesomeness.”

  Connor turned to Davidson. “Since when do you call the Gauntlet in before the investigators get a look at the scene? I’m all for the paper hounds getting things down for historical records, for future generations and all. Hell, I’ll even nominate Godfrey for sainthood just for archiving Simon’s rambling oral history of the whole Sectarians Surrealist Underground thing at the Met, but there’s a protocol for an investigation. Members of the Gauntlet do not do field investigation, only reporting.”

  Davidson held up his hands. “Whoa, now. I didn’t call him.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Suit yourself,” Davidson said, giving up.

  Connor was clearly gearing up to lay into him, but Godfrey cleared his throat.

  “Actually,” he said, “I just happened to be in the neighborhood. I was following up on some leads we have in the archives on old ghost-pirate sightings on the river and one of them led to an old boathouse nearby. That’s when I spotted Davidson and his officers and I came over.” He gave a grim smile. “I’m lucky like that, I guess. Anyway, I thought I’d just get down some reporting notes since I was here. I know my job as an archivist is to observe and nothing more. I didn’t even touch the crime scene, I swear.”

  “I told you,” Davidson interrupted, the impatience thick in his voice. He walked farther out onto the pier, leaving the three of us behind.

  “You’ll stop by after you’ve had a look?” Godfrey asked. “I should get back to the Gauntlet.”

  I nodded. Godfrey gave a quick smile and headed toward the city.

  “Are you two going to check this out or not?” Davidson called out.

  “Keep yer panties on,” Connor said. We started toward the end of the dock, where a boat was moored.

  “I’ll warn you,” Davidson said, “you may want to strengthen your resolve before stepping on board.”

  The party boat had two short decks and was the length of maybe four city buses. Long windows for sightseeing lined both levels, but from the outside they looked dark, and I couldn’t see through the tempered glass. We boarded at the back of the boat and I stopped dead in my tracks. Inside the main section of the boat there were bodies all over the place, pale limbs sticking up from a sea of colorful suit coats and party dresses.

  The deck of the boat was thick with the dead. As we picked our way toward the doors to the interior, I had to step with caution. Unfortunately, my eyes settled on those of a lifeless dark-haired woman in a green, swirly-patterned dress and my balance faltered. I grabbed for the railing and steadied myself before I could peel my eyes away from the blank glare of hers. Her sheer stillness creeped me out to the nth degree. It was surreal, like being in some sort of macabre fever-dream. I had never seen so many dead bodies in one place before.

  Connor and I pushed through the first set of doors, with Davidson following behind us. The main level of the ship’s interior was a large oval dance floor surrounded by a second-story balcony overlooking it. Bodies were draped haphazardly over the railing, and the faint copper stench of blood was in the air. I fought back the urge to throw up.

  “Jesus,” I said.

  Connor shook his head. “I don’t think Jesus had jack to do with this, kid.”

  I crossed to the one thing left standing along the edge of the dance floor, the spot where a DJ had set up his sound system. A young man in a skewed trucker’s cap, most likely the DJ himself, was slumped over the console, as lifeless as everything else on the ship. I positioned my hands to examine him and then looked to Davidson.

  “May I?” I asked.

  He nodded. “None of those cops out there could make heads or tails of it. Be my guest.”

  Connor stepped up next to me. A dried spot of blood was on the mixing board below, and it lined up with a tear of chewed-up skin at the base of the man’s neck.

  “You know,” Connor said, “for the number of bodies at this crime scene, doesn’t the place seem sorta bloodless to you?”

  I checked the floor for blood. Connor was right—there was very little. With this many bodies, the place should have been slick with it.

  “Vampires?” Connor said, sounding slightly hopeful despite the fact that we were standing in the middle of a slaughterhouse.

  Even though the Department had government tedium written all over it, at its heart we were all closet cryptozoological nerds eager to spot any number of oddities. While the motto of the NYPD was “To Serve and Protect,” I had always thought our motto should be “To Gawk and Appreciate.”

  “I don’t want to jump to any conclusions,” Connor continued, “but everyone from the Inspectre on down has been chomping at the bit for any sign of vampiric activity.”

  I nodded and thought of the dry-erase board mounted high over the bull pen in our office. It read: “It has been 736 days since our last vampire incursion.”

  “I don’t want to go all Code Bela over all this,” I said, “but it’s a possibility.” I turned to David Davidson. “Are there any witnesses?”

  He shook his head. “Not anyone who survived,” Davidson said. “They even fished a few people out of the water who looked like they had jumped to escape whatever did this. They weren’t bitten, though. They simply drowned.”

  “I doubt there’s anything simple about drowning,” Connor said, and his face went dark. I remembered that his own brother had gone missing from a beach when they were kids, and it was likely he had drowned.

  Connor squatted next to the DJ’s equipment and examined two women who looked like they had been clutching each other for dear life before they had died. He pulled a vial from one of his pockets and flipped the lid on it, releasing the scent of patchouli into the air.

  “What the hell is he doing?” Davidson asked, covering his nose. “Trying to attract hippies?”

  “Quiet,” I whispered. “He’s attempting to bait any lingering spirits.”

  I waited as long as I could before speaking again.

  “You getting anything?”

  He shook his head, scanning the roomful of bodies. “Nothing. Not a soul in the room right now. Don’t know how I’m supposed to talk to the dead if they’ve scattered off already . . .”

  Davidson stood there watching the two of us, making me self-conscious on top of already being creeped out.

  Finally, Connor looked up. “You ready to dig in, kid?”

  “Not really,” I said. I pulled out a roll of Life Savers, unwrapped it, and crunched the whole thing down in three bites. “But we owe it to these people to get to the bottom of it, so . . . let’s find out why this whole mess has landed in the hands of Other Division, shall we?”

  With my gloves on, I gently lifted the DJ off his array of turntables and lowered him to the floor with care. There were a lot of things that Connor and I had yet to try in my training, but I wasn’t about to start taking psychometric readings off corpses. I couldn’t read clothes, anyway. Objects had always been the trigger for me, so I pulled off my gloves and started with one of the turntables.

  I willed my power into action without a problem. The turntable was ripe with fresh information. I could feel it arcing into me as the electric hum of connection to the object hit the center o
f my mind’s eye. As I popped into the vision, I found myself standing in the exact same spot; the only exception was that, in my vision, all of these dead bodies were still alive and dancing. My heart ached at how full of life, movement, and sound the room was.

  I was the DJ in this scenario, feeling whatever he felt last night. At the moment, he was charged with the energy of the deep bass he was pumping out and I found myself caught up in his sensations, his heart rushing in time with the music.

  I looked down and caught his reflection off one of the CD cases lying on the edge of his equipment tower. I wore headphones, each the size of a cinnamon bun, giving the DJ a Princess Leia-like quality as he worked his sound equipment. While one song played out over the crowd, he was busy cuing the next with the use of the headphones. His concentration was so fixed on his job that it was no wonder he didn’t notice much of what was happening around him.