Running with the Horde (Book 2): Delusions of Monsters

by Joseph K. Richard

  This particular high roller kept two bottles of the emerald head scrambler on consignment at the illegal club to enjoy at his leisure when he was in town which was apparently tonight. In the process of retrieving one of the bootlegged liquor bottles, both of which had been hidden on a shelf behind a row of wooden casks, something startled Eva so badly she slipped off the footstool and landed rather hard on her ass. She said something quite unladylike as she sat in a growing puddle of green liquid and waited for her tail bone to stop smarting. She was pissed. I could tell her tears were angry rather than scared as she figured she would get fired for dropping the bottle, which was awful because the money was good here. She was at least going to give the source of that noise a piece of her mind. She leaned back on her arms, let out a disgusted sigh and closed her eyes.

  “Eva, you okay, doll?”

  It was that damn creep, Manny Tulio. He must have been in the back of the almost pitch-black room for some reason before she’d come down. Figures it’d be him down here scaring folks just trying to do their jobs. Him with his wandering eyes and hands. She had been careful around him since she started the job three months ago, recognizing what kind of man he was from day one.

  Life in a speakeasy was one entered through connection only. It wasn’t like a person walked in the front door and answered a help wanted sign from the window. Her connection was her roommate Jasmine. She was nobody’s niece or cousin, nobody’s daughter, which meant she had no protection from the criminal element that both ran and frequented the joint.

  She opened her eyes to find Manny leaning casually on the shelf leering down at her mid-section, his tuxedo pristine and his smile lecherous. Eva glanced down to find her dress had crept high enough during her tumble for Manny to get a good gander at her mystery parts. She grunted and shot a hand down to her thigh to address the problem. Then came the attempt to stand in her high heeled shoes which ended in failure, green goop sluicing through the air as she slipped again. Her hands and legs were a sticky mess and she’d nicked her thumb on a broken piece of glass. Manny only chuckled and stood there another beat doing nothing until he sauntered forward.

  “Let me help you, doll,” he said in his choppy tough guy accent. The help wasn’t optional as he reached down and yanked Eva to her feet with one meaty paw. She winced but tried not to show it.

  He used both hands to steady her and then wiped his soiled palms gently down the sides of her dress along her ribcage, menace evident in his beady dark eyes. She willed herself not to tremble but it came anyway, a slow shiver originating from her toes and ending just at the shoulder blades. They both knew he was in control in this dank cellar. Even if the folks upstairs knew, no one would come because nobody cared. She wasn’t connected.

  “Gotta be more careful, doll,” he whispered into the gloomy silence of the storage room. “See, you’ve gone and dirtied up your pretty dress. We can’t have you upstairs looking like a ragamuffin, can we? Nah! The boss wouldn’t like that, we’re gonna have to take this one off, doll. Get you a new one. Besides, you’ve been avoiding me for weeks now, don’t ya think it’s time we got better acquainted?”

  She began to fidget but Manny’s grip just got tighter. Her arms were starting to hurt. The big man drew her in closer and moved an arm to the small of her back. Eva felt her heels slide through the spill. With his left arm firmly around her waist, he used his right index finger like a letter opener starting at her neckline and moving south. The delicate black pearl buttons of her one good dress began popping off like traitorous little sailors abandoning ship.

  “Manny, don’t!”

  “Don’t?” he chuckled. “Don’t, she says!” he said this to the room as though there were an audience around to appreciate his outrage at Eva’s insolence.

  He didn’t stop until all the buttons were gone and she was standing there in her undergarments, her dress hanging on her shoulders like a flimsy open robe. His finger was just above her panty line making tickling circles on her abdomen.

  “Please,” she stammered. Her body was in full revolt mode by this point and she was shaking like a leaf.

  Manny wasn’t the brightest bulb in the room, not even all that cunning for a bad guy. He was interpreting Eva’s pleas and shaking body for someone who was terrified and therefore harmless, hoping someone would come to her rescue.

  He was wrong.

  He leaned forward and took a big whiff of her musk and then she felt the giant hand around her waist relax just a little as he used his free hand to unbuckle his trousers. Perhaps it was the excitement of what was to come but for a moment poor old Manny forgot about Eva as he wrestled with the stubborn clasp on his pants. That was all the time she needed as she jammed the broken end of the bottle top she’d been holding into his exposed neck. There was so much rage and fear directed into that swing, the broken glass sliced through skin and cartilage like it was nothing, severing Manny’s jugular in the process. He bled out on his feet staring into Eva’s hate-filled eyes with an expression of stunned surprise. His knees buckled and he was dead before he hit the floor.

  Guilt, revulsion and relief all flushed through Eva’s mind as she stared down at Manny’s corpse. His eyes were still open, still surprised. She stood there frozen, unable to fully grasp what she’d done. Transported back in time to another terrible memory in the kitchen of her childhood home. Only that time it was her mother who’d done the cutting and her father lying dead on the floor. The words her wild-eyed mother spoke to her that night came flying back to her from across the void,he ain’t nothing but a cold dead pig now, girl. Don’t trouble yourself no more ‘bout him, you hear?

  She did hear. She heard then and she heard it again now as she snapped out of her daze and spit on the lifeless body.

  “Just a cold dead pig,” she said to no one in particular.

  She turned, almost fell again and stumbled toward the rickety wooden stairs. It was then she looked down and remembered her dress and general state of appearance. After a moment of panic she calmed herself with a few deep breaths.I can fix this long enough to walk out of here alive.

  If she pulled it off, she would leave the club and never come back. Maybe head south and start over where it was warmer. But first things first.

  Fetching her lantern where she’d left it by the shelf she did a quick damage assessment. The body, the broken bottle and the absinthe blood stew, all things she had to make disappear. First the body.

  The feeble light wasn’t much but it enabled her to explore the cellar which turned out to be much deeper than she thought. Row after row of shelves filled with wooden casks and glass bottles led to a rear wall with a small but solid looking door. A secondary storage room perhaps? Eva had to admit she was deeply curious, cats be damned. This most likely was where Manny had come from and, if she had her way, where he would be laid to rest at least until he was discovered. She tried the door. The heavy bronze knob wouldn’t budge. Leaning an ear against the wood she tried to discern if there were any sounds coming from the other side. It wouldn’t do to open it up to a room full of wise guys counting money. There were no voices but she thought she could detect running water as though someone were drawing a bath.

  She hurried back to Manny’s body and rifled through his pockets until she found a large iron key. Back at the door she slid it into the hole as slow as possible which wasn’t easy because the locking mechanism was stiff. The bolt finally gave with a satisfying thunk and she turned the handle and eased the door open. A cold, damp breeze greeted her as she stood in shocked silence on the threshold of the room. Only it wasn’t a room, it was a long, dark, earthen hallway lit by the occasional torch.

  The wavering light seemed to go on for quite a ways into the distance and she couldn’t tell just how long the hallway was. The immediate area by the door was wider than the passage beyond and did indeed appear to serve as a secondary storeroom filled with barrels. The air was almost tangy with an aftertaste of dead fish. The sound of running water amplified as she ste
pped further inside. A quick investigation revealed a large pile of burlap sacks moldering in one dark corner behind the barrels. The sacks would suit her intended purpose for Manny. She took a few steps further down the passage before she realized she should go no further. It was only a matter of time before someone came looking for Manny or for her. After all, that prized customer wouldn’t wait all night for his libations. With a sad sigh she turned her back on the passage and hustled back out to the body. Kicking off her shoes, she did her best to avoid the spill and the glass, grabbed Manny with both hands around the shirt collar and began tugging him toward the open door a few torturous inches at a time.

  By the time she had dragged him through the door and sufficiently hidden him under the pile of burlap sacks she was an exhausted sweaty mess. Eva took a moment to breathe and thank her lucky stars nobody had come down the stairs or through the mysterious cave-like passage yet. Back in the main storage room she snagged a big push broom from a dusty corner and hastily swept the glass and the goop under the nearest shelf. The hard packed dirt floor looked damp from the blood and the liquor but perhaps nobody would notice unless they looked closely. Another moment was spent retrieving the second bottle of absinthe and her shoes. Then she stopped at the base of the stairs and fixed her hair the best she could under the circumstances. One hand held her dress closed while the other held the liquor bottle in a death grip. After one last look of longing toward the door at the back of the room she inhaled and began hustling up the stairs. It was time to act the part of a timid, but fun-loving cocktail waitress, at least for a few more minutes.

  I popped out of my Eva trance with a profound sense of triumph and more than a little melancholy, startling Mark, Sam and Jacob in the process as I scrambled out of the easy chair. I would have dearly loved to see how Eva Goldstein got out of that speakeasy in one piece. Clearly she did as she was a very old woman before the Sickness turned her into a zombie in the very same neighborhood she’d once shilled drinks during prohibition. I was triumphant because my hunch had been right! There was a tunnel under the river or at least it was very likely. There was really only one way to find out.

  I wished I could have willed Eva to obey her desire to follow the passage so I could know for sure but then maybe she would have been killed way back then. The thought of that made me feel bad. I wondered at this. Wondered what effect these memory movies were having on my psyche. Just like with Linus the Pharmacist and Tegan, I now felt a close kinship to Eva. These thoughts were assailing me as I struggled into my boots which I had taken off for comfort. My watchers huddled close by waiting impatiently for news.

  “I think I was right, Mark, there is a tunnel,” I told him with a cheesy grin. I was way too excited over the prospect of a passage under the river connecting Northeast Minneapolis with downtown.

  “Yeah?” he said. He didn’t return my smile. I think he was not so secretly creeped out by me.

  “Yep!” I said.

  “I guess we’ll have to go check it out then, huh?” he asked.

  “Oh, you bet. You should have been there, Mark, she was incredible!” I said as I got to my feet and headed for the door with the boys in tow.

  “Who was incredible?” he asked.

  “Eva was.”

  “Right. Eva.”

  I had just opened the door to the outer room allowing the sound of a group argument to pollute the air when Mark asked me another question. “Hey, George, who is Manny?”

  “Oh him?” I paused as I thought about it, “He ain’t nothing but a cold dead pig.”

  The boys were looking at me funny and I noticed the outer room had gone deathly quiet and everyone was staring at me. Hell, I was surprised myself. I had just done a spot on impression of Eva Goldstein. Almost as though she had spoken the words through me all the way from the ghost of a 1927 memory. The lingering silence was too much for me. I could worry about what was going on in my head another time. Might as well commit to the bit. I snapped my fingers and sashayed my pert little ass to the center of their chaotic circle. “Listen up boys and girls, mammas got a plan!”

  When in the midst of an awkward situation, always try to make it more awkward. Words to live by.

  Chapter 10: Simon Lite

  The Past

  “I need to see Lab Culture SB-201, please, John.” Andrew said quietly to Dr. Reynolds who had been assigned to help him and Todd speed the process along. In the months since his agreement with Dick, Andrew had given a real effort to engineer the correct mutation for the Simon virus. Progress had been made and today was show and tell.

  The bones in his legs and arms felt hollow and he couldn’t stop sweating. The nerves were getting to him. Every time he had to present their progress to Dick, he was sure he would wind up in a box next to Dr. Farnsworth because they weren’t far enough along.

  Nothing had happened yet with his coded blankets but still he was relatively happy knowing his mother finally had proof he was still kicking around somewhere on Planet Earth. The video footage gave him great pleasure seeing his mother fawn over the blankets that came in the mail. Although he couldn’t hear her, he watched her having animated conversations with his stepdad, Chip. He could almost imagine her endless fussing about how she knew they were Drew’s blankets. Chip would tune her out of course. He had to if he wanted to avoid insanity.

  “Are you ready for the presentation? We only have a few minutes.” Dick said as he entered the lab like he was on a mission. Andrew didn’t hear him as he was busy taking the culture from an irritated John Reynolds. He was in the middle of prepping the sample for the powerful microscope when Dick spoke up again.

  “Hey, dingus, I’m talking to you,” Dick said and Andrew almost dropped the virus culture on the floor.

  Andrew sighed and carefully placed the culture in the bio container. “Yes, Dick, it would appear we’ve made some decent progress.”

  “Well, that is fantastic news, my friend, at this rate you will be knitting mittens with mommy in time for Christmas. But that isn’t what I asked you. Are you ready for the presentation?” Dick asked again, walking over to join Andrew by his workspace.

  “You aren’t going to understand it. Why can’t you just take my word for it that we are almost ready?”

  “It doesn’t work that way. You know that so just humor me, Doc,” he replied without a hint of humor in his voice.

  “Fine, Todd, prep the projector please so we can do our presentation for Dick.”

  Todd grunted and gave Andrew the finger but went about attaching the projector to the laptop in the corner of the lab designated for video review. “Johnnie boy,” Todd said. “Put your party hat on; Dr. Penisrod is getting ready to lecture.” Todd and Dick both enjoyed a laugh at that one.

  “Hey, it’s no sweat off my back, Dick. I have plenty of work to do if you aren’t interested in hearing what I have to say.”

  “Relax, Doc, don’t let this yahoo get you down. Besides, you’re not really doing this for me; I was never really much for lectures anyway. We are going to have a remote audience for this.”

  “Why? You said it would just be you?” Andrew asked. He was suddenly a shade paler. He knew who the remote audience would be. He could never stomach the idea of the unseen Syndicate audience scrutinizing his every word. He didn’t know why the idea of it made him so upset, it’s not like he could see them and they never asked questions. “You could’ve given me some notice.”

  “And have you fall to pieces on me? No way, bub. I learned that lesson last time. As far as why, let’s just say they are quite eager to hear what you have to tell them and they want to hear it from the donkey’s mouth. Be sure you give them the full treatment unabridged. Got it?”

  “As you wish,” Andrew said as everyone took a chair around the table and John projected the images from the laptop to the projector. “Shall I begin?” he asked Dick. He cast a nervous glance at the cameras in the room not sure which one to focus on.

  “Don’t worry about the cameras, Dr.
Penrod, just present to the room and yes, you may begin already.”

  Andrew took a hasty sip of water to clear his throat, “Hello,” he said loudly and with far more confidence than he actually felt. “As you are aware, my colleagues and predecessors spent a lot of time over the years with the ship and its occupant. Um, I and my colleagues now believe the pilot to be an early form of prehistoric man. A close ancestor to human beings but not the same exactly.” He took a nervous glance at Dick who was giving him a death stare. This information was not what Dick was expecting though he didn’t appear to be shocked by Andrew’s revelation.

  “Move on to the virus, Doctor,” Dick said in a flat tone.

  “Um, yes, as I was saying. The ship, the pilot, the technology and the virus all appear, however inexplicably, to have existed well before recorded time. I would say this virus could have very well been the cause of an extinction-level event for life on the planet sometime in the past. The virus itself is quite volatile. Genetically it shares a lot of DNA with the modern day Canadian goose. Dr. Tims and Dr. Dharmesh have theorized the virus was likely engineered in part by using the DNA strand of a predatory prehistoric cousin of the goose. In fact, that may explain some of the hive-like properties it exhibits. John, if you could move to slide two.”

  The slide showed a time progression of the virus inside of a newly infected cluster of cells.

  “You will notice it not only hijacks the host cells but changes them over a period of time to a mirror image of itself. Its basic function, like any virus, is aggressive replication. But this replicates not only at the cellular level but at the host level. If I were to give an educated guess, I would say at some point in the history of Earth, a highly advanced civilization was doing some pretty cutting-edge viral manipulation and something went terribly wrong.”