The Fanciers & Realizers MEGAPACK

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  “If you’ve finished your rhetoric, Mendoza,” said Fairchild, “you might try putting yourself and your loved ones, if you have any, in the place of those butchered six millions, and thinking over the reasons why the world must never forget—”

  “Why the hell NOT?” screamed the Butterscotch girl. “How could Hitler have gotten away with it in the first place, if the whole damn Christian world hadn’t spent nineteen centuries chanting, ‘We Must Never Forget That The Jews Killed Jesus’? What are we going to do, spend the next nineteen centuries chanting, ‘We Must Never Forget That The Germans—””

  “Okay, okay, okay!” Maklowski held up his hand. “I’m sure all this is a very interesting philosophical debate, but let’s leave it for the courts to argue out. We’re just here to do our job, so if you’ll tell us where—”

  “Yes, ‘Pater,’” said Mendoza, turning glittering eyes to Fairchild, “where have you been keeping April ‘Wolf Cub Wagner’ Greenhill ready for these heroic hunters?”

  “I can’t produce her right at this moment,” Fairchild began, “but if you’ll come around to my own residence tomorrow morning—”

  “Hey! Hey, down there!” a new voice shouted from above. The stormcellar doors were still open, and next instant somebody stepped through, missed the second step down, and came crash-rolling the rest of the way, ending at the bottom in a tangle of khaki-clad arms and legs. Maklowski cleared out of the way just in time.

  Brushing Hartwick’s helping arm aside, the newcomer picked herself up as if it was an everyday thing, recentered the wire-rim spectacles in a more or less straight line across her round face, blinked around once at everybody, and announced:

  “Lieutenant C. W. Thursday in charge here. All right, Sergeant Tomlinson, you can come on down!”

  XXII

  (From the Memoirs of Sylvia Tomlinson Marlene)

  Theda was obviously eager to jump down with me, but I held her back. We had spotted Valentino’s car on our way around to the basement. It was parked across the lawn, as near as they could have driven to the house without the sound rousing suspicions; it was turned in the right direction for a getaway; and I guessed they would have left the ignition keyed up. Nevertheless, we had decided when I gave Theda the extra keys to our rented car that it might prove best for her to wait above the confusion. And the basement already looked crowded enough for quite a bit of confusion.

  Descending the stairs after Cagey, though in a more regular way, I counted ten people: Cagey herself; Fairchild—with a large patch or bruise on his cheek—and his three hunters—Fletcher, Drinkwater, and Strewwelpeter; along with Keiko, Mendoza, and Val; and two conservatively-dressed men we hadn’t seen before, one of them heavyset and starting to grow a little potbelly, the other tall, lean, and springy, with huge eyes and a nervous mouth.

  “See, Hartsy?” the heavyset one was saying to the other. “I told you it was her in that other Avertz car we passed!”

  That jogged my memory as to where I’d seen the plaid station wagon before; and the fact that the heavyset man and presumably the springy one as well knew Cagey—and, by the tone of his voice, admired her—made me feel better about thrusting ourselves and our highly questionable mock authority into this situation. It also helped reassure me that with Cagey, Keiko, Mendoza, Val, Theda (just above us) and I, our side outnumbered Fairchild and his three lads…though I doubted we outweighed them, and it all depended whose side the two strangers would fall in on.

  And ... where was Clement Czarny? He had left the restaurant with Stallion Clearwater Drinkwater, presumably to come here, and there was Stallion, scowling beside Mendoza, but ...

  “Let me introduce everybody,” Dr. Fairchild was saying. By the way he never so much as raised an eyebrow at the invasion of still more uninvited women into the forbidden Pi Rho basement, I thought he seemed somehow grateful for the interruption.

  “Thanks,” said Cagey. “Most of you we’ve already met. All except these two, and they seem to have the drop on us.”

  “Maklowski, ma’am.” The heavyset man stepped forward and extended his hand to her. “Jason Demos Maklowski, and this other floater is my ... uh, associate, Lance H. Hartwick. Honored to meet you.”

  Cagey answered Jason Maklowski with a nod and handshake before looking at his partner.

  Hartwick seemed less enthusiastic than Maklowski. “We’ve admired some of your amateur work, M. Warrington,” he said, drawing a frown from her. “Ourselves, we’re with the Secret Service of these Reformed States of North America, so we’re in a position to judge.” For some reason, his second statement drew a frown from Maklowski; and when Lance Hartwick finally offered Cagey his hand, she ignored it. I could almost have felt sorry for him, if I hadn’t been worrying about the words “Secret Service” and the holstered gun only half hidden by his sweater jacket.

  Turning back to Fairchild, Cagey went on, “We dropped by looking for your dracula, Professor.”

  “Dracula?” Hartwick murmured softly. I may have been the only one who heard him.

  “Clement Czarny,” Cagey was adding. “Batory, if you like the family name better.”

  “Haven’t seen him,” Spuds Struwwelpeter muttered at us, staring toward the floor. I thought that both Fairchild and Stallion shot dark glances in the football hero’s direction.

  “You can’t give us that,” said Cagey. “We saw him leave with Clearwater Drinkwater there. Purportedly to accompany him here. You don’t mind if we take a look around.” She started across the floor toward the far side of the basement, where there were a number of siderooms with doors. I noticed that one door, the one she was heading for, was barred with a beam that looked like something out of an old movie set.

  Fairchild stepped into her way. “All those rooms are private, Lieutenant Thursday.”

  Mendoza almost growled. “One houses the climate control, and two are for the storage of junk.”

  “Pretty wild junk,” Cagey observed, “if you have to keep it barred in. Or is that barred room the climate control?”

  Following my leader, I took hold of Dr. Fairchild’s sleeve and tried to tug him out of her path.

  Maklowski was saying, “Yeah, Professor, I was getting ready to insist on a glance into that room myself. You still owe us one third-generation war criminal, y’know.”

  “To be delivered up in good condition,” Hartwick added. “Uninjured, unmolested, and well treated in every way.”

  “Ha!” Mendoza ejaculated with exquisite scorn.

  “Go on!” shouted Keiko. “Go on! Let them open it up, you—you Nazi, Fairsquare! Let’s see what you’re hiding!”

  Fairchild flushed, started to reply, glanced at the S.S. men, compressed his lips, and allowed me to pull him out of Cagey’s way.

  Stale Clearwater, however, took a spinning step and planted his back firmly against the barred door, folding his arms across his chest and glaring at us.

  “Let them open it, Clearwater,” Dr. Fairchild told him with the sigh of a broken soul.

  “No.”

  “Let them open it,” the faculty advisor repeated.

  “No, sir.”

  Spuds Struwwelpeter, possibly the only single person in the room who could have done it alone and unassisted, went over, grabbed his fraternity brother around the waist, and wrestled him out of the way.

  “Thank you,” Cagey told him with a nod. She took the last few steps forward, put her hands beneath the bar, lifted it with a little jerk, leaned it up on the wall beside the jamb, and swung the door open.

  Inside, a naked red-haired girl lay spreadeagled on a bare table. Her face was turned away from the door, her pale Vanilla skin was mottled all over with blood, blood seemed to be welling from her throat, and she lay perfectly still and stiff.

  I gasped and started forward to reach her.

  And he was in my way. All at once—he must have sprun
g out from the inner wall beside the doorway—my first impression was of a big black animal thing that snarled and hissed and clawed at me.

  I jumped back and ... I swear, I saw his fangs! Dripping blood, drenched in blood, not only those sick-shining fangs, but all of him—he seemed to be blood all over, his shirtfront lace drenched in blood, blood seeping down from his sleeves, dripping from beneath the cloak as he flapped it and snarled at me—

  Cagey grabbed me and pulled me back from the door. I don’t believe I started screaming until we were a meter away. And yet, all the time I was screaming, the only words I can remember going through my head were, So much for the critics: he must have been terrific in the part.

  Fairchild sprang forward, brandishing a huge gold and silver crucifix he must have had within reach. Czarny cowered back from it, then in one desperate movement leaped up and hit his cloak-wrapped forearm hard against Fairchild’s wrist. The crucifix went flying.

  Czarny leaped forward—not too far, just clearing the doorway—and glared around at us, gnashing his teeth. Really gnashing. Fangs and all. I had never understood that word before hearing the sound that night.

  The lights in the wheel candelabra overhead went out. They’d never been terribly bright to begin with, but now we had only the light from the little bare room with the bloody girl on the table; and the vampire stood against that light, shaking his cloak at us, clearly choosing his next victim.

  The whole basement was in confusion. It was almost as if Czarny were the most nearly fixed point in the mass of moving, shouting, scurrying bodies. Some part of me had a fleeting glimpse…and I hesitate to mention it here, because I’m sure it was only afterward that I understood what I’d glimpsed ... of something dark moving into that horrible room behind Czarny and then out again, a second cloak that looked too large to have just one person beneath it.

  Where every individual one of us had gotten to by this time, I could never pretend to say. But Cagey was still hauling me away; and Lance Hartwick had a similar hold on Keiko, dragging her in a sort of “V” angle to Cagey’s direction. After another look around—as we could see by the turning of his outspread arms—Czarny gave an awful cry and lunged toward Keiko and Hartwick.

  The report of a gun can’t be mistaken for anything else. Not at close range. Czarny dropped.

  “You see, Mak?” Hartwick’s voice rang triumphant above the confusion. “Silver bullets!”

  I hadn’t been the only one to see Czarny’s fangs.

  The lights came on, as suddenly as they had gone out. They came back on in time to show us Ramon Mendoza and, wrapped in his cloak, April Greenhill, at the top of the stairs to the outside. They must have paused at the gunshot.

  “Wagner’s daughter!” shrieked Fairchild. “There she is! Wulf Wagner’s daughter!”

  Hartwick—holstering his gun, I saw to my relief—and Maklowski started up the stairs after them. Mendoza turned and hauled April up and out, but she was staggering. I thought, They’ll never make it—oh, hurry, kids! They’ll never make it!

  “Hey!” shouted Cagey. Letting me go, she dived after the S.S. men and somehow pushed up between them to get herself into the lead, shouting, “Halt! In the name of the Law!” And, of course, missed her footing on one of the top treads and fell, heavily, lunging from side to side, managing to bring both Maklowski and Hartwick down with her.

  “Ooops,” she observed innocently at the bottom, without budging from where she had ended up half sitting, half lying on top of them. “Sorry, fellas. Just wanted to help you out. Too bad everybody knows I’m such a clumsy clouseau.”

  “Hey!” someone shouted.

  Feeling suddenly guilty, I looked around. While the rest of us were concerned with Mendoza and April, Keiko had thrown herself on the floor beside the vampire. Her own mouth was bloody now—it turned out she had been giving him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation—and she was pressing a wad of his cloak to his shoulder where the silver bullet had hit. Tears were rolling down both her cheeks. “Call the ambulance, somebody!” she went on. “Anybody! For the love of God!”

  As we later learned, Spuds had taken both her wristphone and Theda’s when he locked them in the hunting cabin. Aunt Cherky had lent Theda an old one of April’s; but that had been the only working spare they had, and Keiko had been with Mendoza and Val, both of whom had their own personal phones…and both of whom were gone now.

  Jason Maklowski jabbed 911 on his wristphone and said, “Yeah, we need an ambulance. ... Of course, right away! ... The Pi Rho fraternity house, basement. ... Well, in Greektown, let’s see, it’s on Madden Drive ...”

  “Seven twenty-two,” said Spuds.

  Maklowski repeated the number to his phone and added, “Gunshot wound. Pretty bad, he’ll probably need blood. ... Well, I’m not sure if it matters all that much what type—”

  “O negative,” said Keiko, “for direct-to-vein transfusion. Oh, Clement, Clement, pull through!”

  Maklowski repeated, “Yeah, O negative,” gave the operator his own name and personal phone number in lieu of the house’s, and signed off. Next he looked over at Dr. Fairchild and said, “Okay, Professor, who shot you?”

  Fairchild was sitting slumped over the table. Raising his head from his arms, he eyed the group at the foot of the stairs—Maklowski standing with his wristphone only half lowered from his mouth, Cagey and Hartwick sitting side by side on the bottom steps—and he said, “My life’s work. Adolf Wagner, the Wolf Cub of Dachau…dead. Wulf himself—”

  “Even deader,” Maklowski said firmly.

  “And their spawn, the young woman ... I suppose you aren’t even going to make a token chase after her now?”

  Hartwick started to say, “Well, maybe ...”

  Simultaneously, Maklowski said, “No, probably not.”

  Hartwick finished, rather weakly, “…a token search.”

  Fairchild heaved a deep sigh. He looked like a broken old man.

  “All right!” Cagey said impatiently. “You want a criminal against humanity? Here, take me! I had two great-grandparents in Hitler Youth, and one of them probably went on to be a Nazi for a few years. Come on, take me!” She held her wrists out melodramatically.

  I think that for a moment Fairchild was tempted. A gleam appeared to light up his face, and his smile looked dead earnest.

  Hartwick might have been tempted, too.

  Maklowski, however, barked a laugh and shook his head. “Cagey Warrington Thursday? The woman who uncovered the mad medic of Marltown and the Cyclops killer of Boonesburg? The heiress to the Warrington tribillions? Put her in the war crimes dock? Criminetly, I almost wish you’d try it! She’d make a three-ring circus out of the whole doggone Commemorative Trial, and maybe what the world needs now is a good laugh about it.”

  Without looking up from her vampire, Keiko said, “Oh, you bunch of idiots!”

  She was obviously too good at first aid to need any of the rest of us getting in her way, so we stood or sat around in awkward silence for the next few moments watching her, all of us who were left. We later learned that Mendoza had gotten April to Val’s car and made the getaway, stopping only for Aunt Cherky and the suitcases. Theda and Val were gone, too, off in another direction in Cagey’s and my rented car to confuse the chase that, as things turned out, never came off. In all the confusion, Fred Fletcher had sneaked away, too; but, in a sense, that led to poetic justice. He wasn’t captured until after the others had already been convicted, when it was too late for him to weasel out by turning state’s evidence.

  For the moment, I noticed that Spuds Struwwelpeter had vanished from the basement, too; but he soon returned, bringing a blanket and pillows from upstairs to help make Czarny more comfortable. By that time, though, we were hearing the ambulance wailer in the distance.

  Poor Spuds! It was he who had found the light control and turned the lights back on, after Mendoza had turned t
hem out to facilitate escaping with April under cover of Czarny’s vampire attack. Spuds had been the most nearly innocent of Fairchild’s hunters. The football hero never even learned that Tallpines and Goldfein had actually been murdered until the same time Clement Czarny learned it; and yet he refused to turn state’s evidence against his fraternity brothers. At least Spuds drew a much lighter sentence, five years as opposed to mandatory life for both Stallion C. Drinkwater and Fred Fletcher. And he got to serve his five years in one of the new maximum luxury prisons. Cagey contributed to the fund drive for him. He used his time in prison to finish his degree and start a few more, ending as a respected academician and author of both scholarly studies and philosophical novels.

  What sentence Dr. Fairchild might have drawn, we can only speculate. He hadn’t known about the two murders in advance. Indeed, acting on his own suspicions and using his own “fatherly” methods, he had learned the truth about Solly Goldfein’s death only hours before we did. But he had definitely accessoried both murders after the fact, and he had engineered what was done that night to April and Clement.

  While the rest of us were seeing Czarny into the ambulance and following it to the hospital, Dr. Fairchild persuaded Maklowski and Hartwick to let him go home for an hour to pack his case for jail. He used that hour to boot up his PC with a copy of “Lest We Forget” and then cut his own throat with a kitchen knife.

  They interpreted it as a final refusal to let his own trial for involvement in what he considered collateral “friendly fire” deaths prejudice public opinion against the upcoming Centenary Commemorative Crimes Against Humanity Trial.

  No other Pi Rho or Sigh had been involved. If they had, I am quite sure Fletcher would have named them when he was finally caught.

  * * * *

  Epilogue

  * * * *

  (From the Memoirs of Sylvia Tomlinson Marlene)