Hard Day's Knight

by Hartness, John G.

  “I do,” she replied. She stepped forward, badge in hand, and yelled “Lower your weapons, boys! Stand down, we’ve got it under control.” One of the guys in body armor came over, and she huddled together with him for a few seconds. Whatever she was selling, he was buying, because in no time at all he had guys running back through the woods for stretchers and ambulances. I looked over at Greg, and he shrugged back at me helplessly. Looked like we were going to be stuck in the woods with the cops while our bun-headed magical psychopath got away. Again.

  Chapter 20

  “Hey Detective, do you think we can get a handle on some of that reward money?” I asked as Greg, Detective Law and I sipped coffee at a small table the SWAT boys had set up.

  “Maybe. It’s not like you weren’t investigating, and you did help in recovering the kids, so I guess you’re entitled.” She looked disappointed somehow, and that bothered me a little.

  “You know, it’s not a big deal, I was just thinking…”

  She cut me off with a wave of her hand “No, you’re right. You guys deserve some recognition for the work you’ve done.” That set off an alarm bell or two. The last thing we wanted was recognition. Okay, the last thing we wanted was a nice summer vacation in Phoenix, but recognition from any authorities was pretty low on our list of desires, too. Really I just wanted a few bucks to get the new Madden NFL game. I was really tired of playing Brett Favre in a Packers jersey. While I was flagellating myself for opening my big mouth, she walked over to a guy in a suit and started gesturing towards us.

  Greg leaned over to me and asked, “What did you do?”

  “Something stupid.”

  “So what else is new? Would you care to be more specific?”

  “I mentioned the reward.”

  “You’re an idiot.”

  “I know. I think we should leave now before we have to fill out forms or answer questions.”

  “The first girl you talk to in fifteen years, and you run her off because you’re a greedy putz. Well done.”

  “She is not! I talked to that girl at Phil’s the other night.”

  “Okay, the first human girl that you weren’t putting a dollar in her garter.” He had me there. We double-checked to make sure Detective Law and her boss were looking the other way, and slid off into the night. Greg’s car was still at the bowling alley, and the keys were still in the pocket of a lady cop who was not in a mood to look kindly on me, so we mojo’d a cop into giving us a ride. He pulled up in front of our place, and Greg convinced him that he needed to get to the hospital, ASAP.

  “What does he think he’s going to the hospital for?” I asked as I unlocked our front door.

  “He thinks his appendix has ruptured.”

  “That’s a good one. What if he gets there and he doesn’t have his appendix?”

  “Then he won’t have to worry about that anymore, will he?” I plopped down on the couch and tossed my shoes across the room. Greg grabbed a blood bag for each of us and we settled in for a marathon Gears of War session. All in all, it had been a pretty good night. We rescued the little girls, I talked to a human girl, we beat the baddy, and we made it home before sunrise. Then my cell phone rang and the night went right to crap all over again.

  Chapter 21

  The display on my phone read “Father Mike,” so I answered the way I always answer my best living friend. “Hi Dad.”

  “Jimmy, where are you?” He sounded out of breath, and I was a little worried. Mike’s pretty unflappable most days, something about having vampires for best friends, so anything that had him running around breathless was bound to not be good.

  “Home. What’s up?” I waved for Greg to turn off the TV. I had a bad feeling that we were going to be heading back up. I got up and headed over to my shoes, cradling the phone between my ear and shoulder.

  “Is Greg with you?” Mike asked.

  “Yeah, he’s here. I’ll put you on speaker. Now, Mike. What’s going on?” I was really starting to worry now. Whenever Mike wanted to make sure we were together, it meant things were really, really bad.

  “I’m outside. I’ll be down in a minute.” He hung up on me. I stood there for a few seconds looking at my phone, before I relayed the message to Greg. We straightened up a bit, basically just taking the time to throw away the empty blood bags and stash the more egregiously violent video game cases. Mike knew all about us, but he was still a man of the cloth, so we tried not to be too “in your face” about it around him. Except when we were trying to get a rise out of him, which we’d never managed to do.

  I was in the kitchen with the last of the garbage when I saw Mike’s feet on the stairs. “Want a drink, Dad?” I called out, trying to keep my voice cheerful.

  That ended as soon as I saw how pale he was. “Scotch. Make it a double. And you’ll want one, too, I believe.” He sat on the couch and I brought over our drinks.

  “Where’s mine?” Greg asked from his armchair.

  “Still in the bottle, dork. I might have mad vampire skills, but I still only have two hands.”

  He stomped over to the kitchen and made himself a stout screwdriver. “You never would have survived in the restaurant business.”

  “Good thing I didn’t survive, then.” I retorted. “Now, Mike. You look like crap. What’s wrong?”

  “You really know how to warm a man’s heart, Jimmy. But you’re right, it’s terrible out there. I think it might be…” he hesitated for a moment and I saw real fear in his eyes. “I think it might be the end times.”

  “Whoa, Mike!” I stood up and went for more scotch. After a brief debate, I came back to the couch with the whole bottle. “Now let’s take this from the beginning. What makes you think that this could be the Apocalypse?”

  “Oh, Jimmy, I’ve seen things in my life that no man should see, and you know this.” He started.

  “Yeah, I know. We’re the ones that showed you most of them.” Greg piped up. I shot him a dirty look and he mumbled “sorry,” and shut up.

  Mike continued. “I’ve seen plenty of terrible things in my time, but nothing compares to what I’ve seen tonight. The dead are walking, Jimmy! The newly buried dead have risen from their graves and are walking the town. I don’t know what to think but that these are the times of Revelation!” Mike got a look in his eyes that was part fear, part excitement. I guess this would be like Christmas, the Super Bowl and WrestleMania all rolled into one for a priest.

  “Where are the risen dead coming from, Mike?” Greg asked.

  “Why, the graveyard, of course. Three corpses, all dead less than a month, have risen tonight alone!” He reached for the bottle, and I passed it over. He touched the neck to the rim of his glass, but his hands were shaking. He glanced an apology at me, and turned the bottle up. We’d been friends long enough that I didn’t begrudge him drinking from the bottle, and it’s not like I was worried about germs.

  “How many dead people are in your cemetery, Mike?” Greg continued.

  “Why, hundreds, but what does that matter?”

  “I’m wondering why only three have risen, is all.”

  “Well, they were the most recently deceased. And all of their bodies were intact. There was one man, Alan Rice, who passed away in the same time period, but he died in a horrible automobile accident. He has yet to rise.”

  “Or his body wasn’t chosen.” Greg mused. “Let me make a couple of phone calls.” He grabbed his phone and went into his bedroom. I heard one side of the conversations as he made a couple of calls in quick succession, asking the same questions each time.

  “Alright, I have a theory,” he announced, rejoining us and taking a healthy slug of scotch himself. “and if I’m right, we’re going to need more booze. And more ammo. And maybe an extra priest.” Mike and I just stared at him until he went on.

  “I made a couple of phone calls to a friend at the county morgue, and a couple of hospitals. These are not guys who get rattled easily, and they
’ve seen enough of our world to believe in the unbelievable.”

  I raised my hand. “Excuse me Professor Doofenstein, is there a point coming anytime in the next week?”

  Greg shot me the bird and went on. “You’re not the only one missing a bunch of dead people, Mike. The morgue has lost four corpses, the hospitals have lost three, and I’d be willing to bet that at least one more church has seen a rash of breakouts from the graveyard tonight. As far as I can tell, there are nearly a dozen dead people that decided to pull a Thriller on us, and they all made that decision about 11:30PM.”

  “That’s what time the graves at my churchyard began to issue forth, how did you know?” Mike exclaimed.

  “Because that’s when Jimmy and I set eleven angry souls loose on the greater Charlotte area.”

  Suddenly a very, very bad light came on for me. “Oh crap. The girls.” I said in a very small voice.

  “Yep, buddy. The girls.” Greg confirmed.

  “What girls?” Mike asked. So we told him all about fighting the little kidnapped girls, and the salt, and banishing them.

  “But we forgot one important thing,” I said. “We forgot to send the souls back to wherever they came from.”

  “So when they got out of the girls, with no unoccupied bodies around, and no spell to bind them into a body, they went looking for bodies that weren’t being used.” Greg confirmed.

  “So they inhabited corpses.” Mike said. He looked a little relieved and a little disappointed all at the same time. I suppose that’s how it would be for someone who believed they were about to meet their maker, and had reason to look forward to the meeting, then found out that they weren’t getting that appointment after all.

  “Yep, that’s what it looks like.” Greg said. He looked altogether too pleased with himself for my taste, but I had to admit it was brilliant bit of logic.

  “So now what?” I asked my suddenly brilliant partner.

  “I don’t know.” He admitted, sitting on the other side of Mike on the couch.

  “We have to return these bodies to their proper rest!” Mike said. “We cannot stand by and allow this evil to be perpetrated.”

  “Yeah, we got that but. It’s the ‘how’ we’re a little fuzzy on.” I told him.

  “Oh.” Mike sat back down and had another sip of scotch.

  “Alright,” I said, “Let’s look at what we know. One: there are a total of eleven zombies running around the city. Two: If we don’t stop them, at some point between now and tomorrow night, these zombies are going to grab a kid and the witch that raised them is going to finish some humongous ritual that will mean very bad things for everyone in Charlotte. Three: The witch, who seems to be possessed by a demon named Belial, looks like an exceedingly retro advertisement for cookware.”

  I went on, “Now let’s take a look at what we don’t know. We don’t know what they’re trying to do in the first place. So we also don’t know if there’s someplace specific they have to do whatever it is they’re trying to do. We don’t know where the zombies are now. We don’t know what little girl they’re going to kidnap to finish out their baker’s dozen. And we don’t know who the crazy lady with the bun is.”

  “Okay,” said Greg. “Now that we know that we don’t know anything helpful, what do we do?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “I do.” We both looked at Mike, who looked a little embarrassed. “I have a friend who practices a religion that the Church…um…frowns upon. She may be able to be of assistance, at least in the matter of ceremony and those questions.”

  “Mike, are you consorting with Wiccans again? You keep this up and I’m going to put a COEXIST bumper sticker on your station wagon.” I teased.

  “Actually, I am. She’s a local High Priestess. She’s part of a comparative theology breakfast I attend each month. We’ve gotten to be fairly friendly over the years.” I looked over at Greg and his jaw was as close to the floor as my own. In all the time we’ve been friends with Mike, and he certainly shows the years a lot more than we do, we never would have believed that our straight-laced buddy would have breakfast every month with a real live witch. Of course, most of his parishioners would have a harder time believing he was drinking scotch in the basement of a halfway house with two vampires, so I suppose it’s only fair.

  “Do you think you could call her tonight?” Greg asked. “I know it’s getting late, but this is pretty important.”

  “She once told me that I could call her any time if I had issues that needed her assistance.” Mike told us. Greg and I exchanged a glance, and I bit back any comments I might have thought about making regarding Mike’s vows of celibacy. He went upstairs to make the call, and was only gone a few minutes. He came down the steps holding his cell phone over his head like he was going to spike a football.

  “I assume that means she’s on her way?” Greg asked.

  “Yes, boys, it does. She’ll be here in fifteen minutes. I hope you don’t mind meeting her here. After all, the whole ‘invite me in’ thing could become awkward if we went to her apartment.”

  “Fair enough, I suppose. Greg, you wanna tidy up a bit before we have another guest?” I asked from my seat on the couch.

  “Um, no. Those are your socks, bro. You pick up the toxic waste. I’ll give the kitchen a lick and a promise, but the footwear funk-factory is all you.” He headed off to wipe down the counters and put the blood in the crisper so our culinary restrictions wouldn’t be immediately apparent while I got to work picking up the dirty clothes in the den.

  Admittedly, my idea of picking up the clothes was to toss all the laundry on the floor of my room and close the door, but it made the den look better. Mike straightened up the video game equipment, and actually found a scented candle to put out on the coffee table. After about ten minutes, the place smelled significantly less like a locker room and Mike had ceased to make comments about us having the hygiene of a pack of feral dogs.

  Chapter 22

  A knock at the top of the stairs announced the arrival of our guest, followed immediately by a trim pair of legs coming into view on the steps. The legs were, as is the norm, attached to a woman who looked nothing like my mental picture of an overweight gypsy woman with three teeth and a mole on her nose that had its own zip code. Instead, the woman in our living room was medium height, slim, with straight blonde hair that hung halfway down her back. She was younger than I expected, and very pretty in a blonde Sandra Bullock kinda way.

  She wore Birkenstocks (of course) and socks under a flowing skirt, and I was pretty sure I caught a glimpse of legging as well. A bulky sweater was her only concession to the late October chill, and I remembered suddenly that humans still felt cold, and that folks that didn’t need to hide shoulder holsters could wear things like sweaters. I promised myself that I would go completely unarmed for a night when this case was over, just to see how it felt.

  “Hello,” she said, her warm voice filling the room with a sense of well-being. “I’m Anna. How are you, Mike? You sounded worried on the phone.”

  “I was worried, my dear, but I feel much better now that you’re here.” Mike’s accent had slipped, and a little of the old South he grew up in had dropped into his words as he gave the pretty witch a brief, and chaste, hug. Good to know my old friend was celibate, but not blind. “These are my friends, Jimmy and Greg.” He pointed to each of us in turn, and I stepped forward to shake her hand.

  I was surprised when she pulled back, reaching quickly inside her sweater to drop a pentagram necklace out into view. It began to glow, and I took a quick step back. “Hey now, no need to get all magical in my den, lady.” I exclaimed.

  “I know you, vampire.” She said, and when I looked up at her eyes, they were a cold blue, staring right into my soul. If I had one left. The jury’s been out on that one for a while.

  “Nope, pretty sure we’ve never met.” I replied. “But if you want to get together sometime for a quick bite, just let me k
now.” I bared a little fang at her, and paid close attention to where Greg was moving behind me. I heard his pistol clear the holster and knew that he had my back. I guessed he was still in the kitchen with the gun hidden below the counter. As long as I kept her attention on me, my partner could keep her covered. “Mike, you want to explain to Mrs. Broomstick here that we’re the good guys?”

  “It’s true, Anna. These boys have been friends of mine since before I entered the seminary. I’ve known them since we were boys in school together, and they’re good lads. They have their problems, sure, but good lads nonetheless.”