Dead on my Feet - The Halflife Trilogy Book II

by Wm. Mark Simmons

  Maybe my luck had turned, but I’d lived and died long enough to know the importance of making safety your first priority. I jacked the silver loads into the Glock, holstered it, and pulled my jacket across the forward thrust of the butt as I walked back toward the front entrance.

  * * *

  I had been gone only—what? Thirty, forty minutes?

  During that time there had been a “sea change” in the main ballroom. The crowd had diminished by a good third or more, but it seemed more a result than a causal factor. It felt as though the air had been pumped out of the room and replaced with some thicker, viscous gas. The lights seemed dimmer, the music more harsh and edged. Last night’s air of unease was a feeble precursor to tonight’s atmosphere of dread.

  The murmur of conversation had doubled in volume even as the numbers of conversants had dropped. Here and there, high-pitched laughs verging on hysteria spiked above the noise like an auditory flare requesting rescue.

  “ . . . Mosquitoes!” an old man was saying. “All that spraying and larvicide just a couple of years back and they’re saying the numbers are twice what they were during the encephalitis epidemic!”

  “But no viruses so far,” Dr. Stoli responded.

  Stoli taught American History at the university and reminded everyone but his students of a jovial Russian bear. “No West Nile, no Equine or St. Louis.” He wasn’t Russian, and Stoli wasn’t actually his name. Lithuanian by birth, “Stoli” was an approximation of the first two syllables of his first name. “Mosquitoes are tiny down here. Up in Michigan they are huge. Bite through blue jean denim. Carry off babies!” He made a large gesture that threatened to slosh his drink in a ten-foot arc.

  “Been to Michigan,” the old man argued. “Ours may be small but they’ve got way more attitude. Travel in larger packs. Some carry switchblades. . . .”

  As I passed beyond their orbit and set course for the crowd’s epicenter, I saw a maelstrom of bodies rotating slowly at the center of the room, circling some eye of social power at its center. I thought about Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death as I moved deeper into the melee and started trolling for Chalice and Deirdre.

  “Sure, a lot of their work is theoretical,” my banker opined, off to my left, “but there’s government money involved and that most likely means biological counteragent development in the back rooms. If there’s another terrorist incident you’ll see BioWeb stock go through the roof!”

  Mrs. Stein, old and rich and thrice widowed cocked a silvery eyebrow. “You’re so sure the government would only be interested in counteragents?”

  Sweat sheened the faces of those false vampires I passed as I nodded pleasantly to nothing in particular to maintain some social camouflage. The real vamps seemed to have thinned out but the two I passed within a ten-minute interval were clearly affected, as well. They stood still, eyes closed and nostrils flared open, oblivious to the press of the throng around them.

  “For God sake,” a young, thin man was ardently protesting, “you people think every instance of misfortune is some external conspiracy to oppress you and keep you down! It’s the flu, for God sake!”

  An elderly black man stood stiffly, staring back at him, through him, beyond him, as if contemplating some ancient fork in the road that led to different and alien landscapes.

  I stopped a little ways beyond them.

  Closed my eyes.

  Sniffed.

  A kaleidoscope of scents thundered through my head: the sweat and musk of a hundred bodies overlaid by a multitude of perfumes, colognes, and aftershaves, all lubricated with various soaps and powders, deodorants and antiperspirants. Makeup: foundation and lipstick and gloss and polish and spray with tobacco chasers tucked away in pockets, pouches, and cases. The food bar, the alcohol with three-dozen different blends spilling atomized distillations across my olfactory nerves.

  And something else. Something sweet and sharp and exciting and familiar but—

  It came to me.

  The lunar cycle was not the only tidal force at play this night. Other cycles had converged for some of the female attendees. The sweetest perfume yet.

  Yet . . .

  Something more.

  Something greater than the possible cyclic alignment of every woman on the premises . . .

  I turned my head, searching.

  The perfume wafted from the center of the social storm.

  I turned and began a slow approach trajectory designed to bring me there in a great, arcing curve.

  “All I know is the Social Security trust fund was in enough trouble before Bush instituted that irresponsible tax cut. The subsequent war footing has done so much damage to the economy and the surplus that my own kids are never going to see one dime of their retirement, never mind my grandkids . . .”

  I had initially worried about making a spectacle of myself upon reentering the party. My clothes were rumpled, my knees stained, elbow scorched—if the vampires didn’t take notice, I figured the social mavens would.

  But no one did.

  It was as if they were distracted by their own conversations, trying desperately not to look around. Some appeared to be listening to music that no one else could hear. Darkness seemed to be gathering in the corners of the room like shadowy dust bunnies.

  Why do we do this? I wondered. Dress up and surround ourselves with the trappings of evil and pain and death?

  Is it ancient mummery, designed to appease the elder gods with ritual obeisance? Or the modern trend of mocking that which we fear? Over the years I had rolled my eyes with every fundamentalist letter to the editorial page bemoaning the pagan observance of Halloween. Prissy, self-righteous, ultraconservative Christians with their panties in a wad over children in costumes going door-to-door to extort candy on October thirty-first. Satan worship, they railed. And the rest of us wondered who was really giving the devil his due: children embracing a yearly opportunity to dress up and collect free goodies or pinch-faced adults who feared such activities would lead them down the path of sin and degradation?

  We honor that which we fear.

  And in fearing something, we grant it power over us.

  But perhaps we are wise to leave our bonfires dark on All Hallows E’en. If we light no fires we leave the shadows trapped in the greater darkness. When we burn, we call them to the edge of our guttering light.

  Where they wait their opportunities . . .

  I was closing in on the center of the room now and found Chalice first. A tall, thin, bald man stood beside her and had one arm twined with hers while the other hand gripped her wrist in what could be a simple gesture of affection or an artful pose to prevent her leaving. The bald guy was in animated conversation with a woman wearing a man’s black tuxedo. “Government entitlements are like a lifeboat,” he was saying. “Try to load too many people on board and it sinks: everybody drowns!” The woman wore her tux much better than he wore his. I wasn’t sure about her but my client definitely looked as though she needed rescuing.

  “Ah, there you are!” I said, working my way toward my last hope for humanity. “What about that dance you promised me?”

  Chalice jerked her head toward the sound of my voice but the relief in her eyes was veiled by caution.

  I got more enthusiasm from Chrome-dome the Cadaverous. “Ms. Delacroix, could this be our mystery man?”

  She shook her head as I shook his hand. “Name’s Haim,” I said as I pumped his fishlike hand, allowing Chalice the opportunity to disengage. “Samuel Haim, private eye.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Haim,” he answered. His voice had a nasal quality that would have rendered it unpleasant even without the rest of him showing up to put you off your feed. “Would you be our mystery donor?”

  “I solve mysteries,” I answered in my most chipper tones, “I don’t donate them. Ms. Delacroix has hired me to look into a family matter for her.”

  “Oh really? What sort of case is it?” he asked.

  “A sort of a private case,” I answe
red with a smile. “Which makes it serendipitous as I am a private investigator.”

  His smile held but his eyes had a bit of a blank look pass across them. “Ah! Well! Perhaps we might avail ourselves of your services . . .”

  “Getting divorced?”

  “What? No. What I mean is we have a bit of a mystery here in our own laboratories.”

  “Ah,” I said, nodding as if I were contemplating the Great Mysteries, myself: “research.”

  “Well, yes, of course,” Baldy dissembled. He peered at me closely. It was like being examined by a suspicious vulture. With halitosis. “But the mystery that we are currently discussing has to do with some blood samples.”

  “Oh,” I said, “now that I can probably help you with.”

  “You can?” He smiled. Yep, a vulture.

  “Most assuredly. For example, it’s standard practice to collect at least two five-milliliter tubes of blood in purple-top tubes with EDTA as an anticoagulant for DNA analysis. For drug or alcohol testing one collects blood samples in gray-top tubes with sodium fluoride. I always identify each tube with the date, time, subject’s name, location, my name, case number, and evidence number.” Baldy was trying to get a word in but I wasn’t about to let him. “But procedure doesn’t end there,” I continued with scarcely a breath. “You have to refrigerate, being careful to not freeze your blood samples. And when you have to ship or transport them, you pack the liquid blood tubes individually in Styrofoam or cylindrical tube containers with absorbent material surrounding the tubes, layered with cold packs, not dry ice.” I paused and when he opened his mouth to speak, I added: “It’s important to label the outer container with phrases like ‘Keep in a cool dry place,’ ‘Refrigerate upon arrival,’ and ‘Biohazard’.”

  “That’s not what we’re talking about!” the dome sputtered when I finally ran down.

  “It’s not?” I replied, all innocence.

  “Dr. Krakovski is the Head of our Viral Mutagens Division,” Chalice explained. My dumb and annoying act seemed to be serving some purpose: Krakovski was off-balance and Chalice looked a little steadier than she had upon my arrival.

  “We’re dealing with unknown blood samples,” the “Head” clarified.

  “Oh!” I said, “why didn’t you say so up front instead of letting me go on and on about something so irrelevant as collecting known blood samples?”

  “Well—” he began.

  “Now collecting unknown blood samples—that’s a real challenge!” I was off and gauging my rhythms and pauses to Krakovski’s vain attempts to get this conversation back on track. “For instance, you got two kinds of blood when you’re collecting it from a person—living or dead. For your liquid blood, you use a clean cotton cloth or swab—but you gotta leave a portion of it unstained as a control. Then you air-dry the cloth or swab and pack it in clean paper or an envelope with sealed corners. You don’t use plastic containers—this is one of the mistakes you commonly see on TV.”

  The woman in the tux started backing away.

  “Now dried blood is pretty much the same, believe it or not. You still use a clean cotton cloth or swab only you moisten it with distilled water. And, of course—” He chimed in with me on: “—you gotta leave a portion of it unstained as a control.”

  “Right,” I said.

  “Then you air dry the cloth or swab and pack it in clean paper or an envelope with sealed corners,” he continued sourly.

  “You don’t use plastic containers,” I reminded.

  “It’s one of the mistakes you commonly see on TV,” he concluded. “Are we done?”

  “Don’t you want to know how to collect blood samples from various kinds of materials or surfaces?”

  “Not really.”

  “Or in snow or water?”

  He shook his head.

  “Well,” I said, “there are some variations, mostly in storing and transporting. But you’ve got the bulk of it with the cotton cloth or swab technique.” I joined Krakovski in looking around. “Where did Ms. Delacroix go?”

  “You’re the private eye,” he said with ill-conceived contempt, “why don’t you go detect or something.” He turned away and stalked off in a huff. I stared after him: I hadn’t actually seen someone leave “in a huff” since I was back on the playground in grade school recess.

  A hand fell on my shoulder. I turned and looked into undead eyes.

  Bluffing was out of the question. It was obvious from first glance that this guy knew who I was and had sought me out deliberately. Worse, I’ve seen scary-looking vampires but this guy would super-size your goose bumps even if he was still human. Built like a muscular bowling ball, he was all heft and weight and hardness—nothing soft about this Bloody Harry.

  “So,” I said with the most pleasant smile I could barely muster, “every vampire I know was bit on the neck when they were turned. Since you haven’t got one, how does that work, exactly?”

  He linked his arm through mine. It was like being handcuffed to a steel I-beam. “She wants to meet you,” he growled.

  There was never even the slightest question of whom he was talking about.

  “Growling? You’re a hyper-mesomorph with fangs and, on top of all that, you’re growling? I think someone is overcompensating.”

  He tugged and there was also no question of whether I would come along or balk: I staggered and the floor began polishing the soles of my shoes.

  “Tell me the truth . . .” I whispered, “ . . . you’ve got a little one, don’t you?”

  As he dragged me toward the center of the maelstrom of flesh and fear, I glanced down to see if I’d wet my pants yet.

  So far, so dry.

  The night, however, was still young.

  * * *

  A woman stood at the center of the room, her back turned toward me.

  I knew even before she turned in profile that I was in the presence of the Blood Countess, the Witch of Cachtice. The fact that she bore little resemblance to the blurry images provided by surviving woodcuts was of no importance. Her aura of power and menace marked her more surely than any forensic technology of the twenty-first century.

  Deirdre and Chalice stood beside her, one on each side, but I couldn’t focus on them because her presence demanded my attention. She wore a black leather dress that blended well with her long, black hair and blacker eyes. It had a vulgar cut that seemed well matched to the woman wearing it. Individually, her features suggested that she should be beautiful. The combined effect had been spoiled, somehow, as if her beauty was skin deep and something unspeakable lurked just beneath her epidermis.

  The neckline of her dress plunged and narrowed to the nexus of her cleavage then parted again, angling out to form an hourglass-shaped cutout baring her pale midriff. As if the “black widow” motif was too obscure, there were additional spiderweb cutouts on either side, artfully designed to show a great deal of flesh as she stood and even more when she moved.

  I tried not to stare but failed miserably. It wasn’t sexy; it was a crude attempt at sensuality that came close to failing as even a caricature. She turned as I approached and gave me one of those stagy “come hither” looks that just about completed the whole tacky tableau.

  I arrived, “dragged” hither more than anything else.

  Her eyes looked me up and down and then invited me to reciprocate.

  I reciprocated. Smiled. “Wow,” I said, “did Madonna have a garage sale?”

  The bowling ball’s hand tightened painfully on my biceps. “You will show respect to your betters!” he hissed.

  “Sure, sure,” I agreed quickly, my knees starting the transformation from solids to liquids. “Just trot ‘em out here—”

  “Sandor, be nice.” Her voice was low and husky and triggered an involuntary shiver down my spine. I like it when a woman has a little more testosterone than estrogen jazzing her hormonal balance. But I’m still insecure enough to prefer that my T-levels be higher than hers—I’d met pre-op transsexuals who were more
feminine than Sandor’s lady boss.

  I looked over at Deirdre. She only had eyes for the lady in leather. Ditto Chalice. Beside me Sandor the bowling ball was practically a-quiver like some great mastiff whose mistress has promised him a yummy doggie-treat if he will obediently sit until she tells him to move.

  Which meant that, until then, I wouldn’t be moving either.

  “Mr. Cséjthe, I have been looking forward to meeting you for such a long time,” the lady in leather said, extending her arm. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Elizabeth Cachtice.”

  Sandor extended my arm for me. “That’s not your real name,” I said sullenly. A startled expression passed across her features so quickly that I almost missed it.

  “Really? What makes you say that?”

  “You’re Erzsébet Báthory. Ouch.”

  Sandor had involuntarily tightened his grip but the Witch of Cachtice was more prepared. Her eyebrows rose politely and she said: “What an amusing idea. But please, call me Liz.”

  “How about I call you ‘next week’?” I growled. I’d been taking lessons from Sandor.

  “What?” Nice lift of the eyebrows again. “Oh. I see.” She smiled. “Your reputation precedes you, Chris.”

  I smiled back. “As does yours, Bitch.”

  Sandor squeezed and it felt as if my radius and ulna were rubbing together. I forced my smile up a notch but couldn’t do anything about the beads of perspiration that were erupting across my forehead.

  “Mr. Cséjthe, I would love to continue our little conversation after I finish some business here. So, please stay for awhile,” she said, her voice echoing in my ears, in my head.

  And—that simply—I suddenly had no desire to leave. Sandor released my arm and I stood there, even more trapped that I had been a minute before.

  Spiderwoman turned her attention back to a gray-haired gentleman in a gray suit who appeared to be in his late fifties. The fact that he wasn’t wearing a tuxedo or fangs should have made him a standout in this crowd, but his nondescript appearance had the opposite effect: he seemed to fade into the background as if gray was the ultimate color scheme in camouflage and protective coloration. “You were saying, General?” she said.