Monster City

by Kevin Wright

  * * * *

  The carbon dioxide hissed, and foam gushed from the beer bottle as Carmine cracked it open. He flipped the top toward the trash in the kitchen; it clinked across the linoleum.

  “Leave it,” he muttered, waving a hand.

  Plunging into his leather recliner, he took a long breath, pulled the handle, and his feet sprang up.

  Beer, it was his friend, his best friend. Reliability, the true test of friendship. Throughout most of his forty-seven years, beer was the only thing he could consistently rely upon through the good, the bad, and the horrid and still name friend.

  “Here’s to you.”

  He saluted, raised the bottle to his lips, drained it, and clunked it on the table, immediately reaching for another.

  It suffered a similar fate, only faster. Carmine was going for the record. It was all he had. He took another one, cracked it. “Abso-fucking-lutely nothing, nothing like pounding a case of beers first thing in the morning after a friend’s funeral.

  “To reliability.”

  He saluted again.

  He clicked the television on with the remote, settling into the flickering images.

  “This is a good one, the best.”

  The Duke got his bell rung by Victor McLaglen.

  A hard night … it had been. All those men, it was definitely worse, much worse, and the Padre. Carmine had known only a few of the SWAT team and then only in passing. The Padre’d been a friend, though. A good friend. As reliable as beer, just without the charming intoxicative qualities. He took a slug. Certainly not as fun to be with, certainly more foreboding, but he was about the best friend Carmine had in this damn city, besides Shotgun, and beer. Another empty clunked on the table.

  He cracked another. They weren’t touching him yet, but they would. He’d make sure of that. He could always make sure of that.

  And then there was the kid. Carmine felt worse about last night than everything else. Worse … worse because it was all his fault. Worse because the others were all players in the game, willing players. They all knew the stakes, the score, the rules, the bullshit, and they still played. Not Pete, though. Pete’d been sucked in, like Carmine.

  “God damn it!” Carmine pounded another empty onto his table. He wiped his mouth with his hand and stared at the ceiling. He closed his eyes and was back on the rooftop of the Immortal Jade Palace, yelling at Peter.

  “So, now what the hell do I do?” Peter stared down at the puddle of Billy Rubin spooge. “It’s a fucking wild-goose chase! I’m, goddamnit, I’m so fucked.” He was wild with rage and his gun was in hand.

  “Kid, put the gun down,” Carmine said. “We find this Pussywillow-chick. She gets us to the queen. Put the gun down.”

  “Whatever,” Peter said. “I’m screwed, and that’s it. It’s probably not even going to work, even if we do find this fucking bitch and stake her. Jesus, I’m—”

  “Put that fucking gun down!” Carmine yelled. “You made him jump! You almost killed every-fucking-person on this roof. So put it away. Put it away.”

  Peter glared at Carmine then at the gun, and he forced it down, slowly, into his pocket. He glanced back at Elliot and the Gurkha, both silent.

  “Look, I’m sorry about that. I … I don’t know what the hell I was doing. I lost it, okay? I know. I’m sorry. It’s just, I’m scared. Okay?”

  “God-damnit, Peter! It’s not just about you!” Carmine seethed, gripping the silver knife in his pocket. “You only think it is, but you’re wrong.”

  “Then you tell me what it’s about, Carmine!” Peter said. “Huh? What’s this all about? You’re not dying! Are you? You’re not changing? Do you have any idea what I’m going through? Huh? Are you the fat-fucking-ghoul expert?”

  “Yeah, I am!”

  “Why? What makes—”

  “Dominick Royal,” Carmine said. “My first partner. For five years we rode through this town. Good friends, kid, best friends. I didn’t know what the hell was going on in this town, but he did, and he taught me. Hell, my first day he told me to get out of EMS altogether. Said it was a trap. I should’ve listened, but I was young, and I thought I knew everything. I had a wife and kid to support.”

  Peter said nothing.

  “Dom got bit, Pete. Just like you. Fucking junky-suck. And just like you, Dom asked me to help him. But do you know what help he asked for? Huh? Take a guess, a wild-fucking-guess.” Carmine rubbed his stubbly chin. “He asked me to kill him, Pete. And do you have any idea what that’s like? Your best friend?” Carmine just stared at him. “Told him I couldn’t, so he begged me. He fucking begged me to do it. Begged me to fucking kill him. And do you know what I did?”

  “What?”

  “I … I did nothing.” Carmine looked away. “Cause I was too weak, too stupid. I couldn’t, not my best friend. How do you kill your best friend? I didn’t do it, couldn’t do it, and you know what happened? Do you know what a ghoul does when it realizes it’s a ghoul? When its hunger awakens, and only one thing will satisfy it?”

  Peter shook his head.

  Carmine’s eyes watered over. “It starts killing and starts feeding on people. That’s a given, though. The trick is, it starts on the people it knows, people close to it, people it cared about most in life. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because it’s all they know, maybe instinct. Hell, maybe it’s just because they’re just sick, evil fucks, and they want to cause as much pain as they can. I don’t know, but that’s what they do, and that’s what he did.

  “First he killed his wife, his two kids, and then their fucking pet dog. I was working that night, got the call, and I went there, responded, saw what he’d done.” Carmine took a deep breath. “Realized what I had done to his family. What I had to do.” Tears streamed down his pudgy cheeks as he stared Peter in the eye. He nodded. “And so I did it. I found him. That same night, I knew where he would go, where I’d find him, and I found him there, and I killed him. Animal.” He took a deep breath and gazed at the stars. “I killed him in my own fucking bedroom, Pete, standing over my … my Gloria, and my daughter, God, Susie. I’m so sorry.”

  Peter looked down. “I’m sorry, Carmine. I didn’t—”

  “Your sorry doesn’t fucking matter,” Carmine spat. He was crying then. “Not now. And sorry won’t be worth shit later. In this town, who do you know? Huh, Pete? Who do you fucking know?”

  Peter looked up.

  “Us, you know us. Me, Elliot, the Gurkha, and his family. So you know who you’re coming after if we don’t finish it? Us. Me. Him. And him. So don’t fucking tell me it’s all about you, cause it ain’t. And don’t tell me you’re sorry because you’re nothing but a fucking death sentence for everyone standing here!”

  * * * *

  Carmine opened his eyes.

  The Duke was dragging Maureen O’Hara now, kicking and screaming, five miles to Innisfree.

  “I’m sorry, too, kid,” Carmine said to the television. The Duke paid him no heed.

  The chair creaked as he fumbled out of it and made his way to the kitchen, arms full of empties. Clinking and clanking, he dropped them into the trash barrel. They don’t recycle in Colton Falls.

  Not bottles, anyhow.

  Chapter 25.

  “YOU ALLOWED HIM into the apartment.” Detective Winters strode down the hall. Behind walked the apartment manager.

  “I … I didn’t,” Officer Smith said.

  “You are lying to me, Officer Smith.” Detective Winters sniffed. He recognized that scent, that slow, ignorant scent. “The key.” He held his hand out to the apartment manager.

  Officer Smith cringed like a beat dog. “It was … I had to let him in.”

  “No, you did not.” Detective Winters took the key. “Is he still here?”

  “N-no, sir.”

  “How long was he in there?”

  “Uh, ten — no, fifteen minutes, or so.”

  “Did he take anything?”

  “Umm, not that I could see,” Smith said, after
a pause.

  “Did he say anything?” Detective Winters caught Smith’s eye and held it. His gaze then shifted to the apartment door. Across it was yellow, ‘Police — Do Not Cross’ tape.

  “Uh, he said the guy was a sick fucking bastard, I think,” Smith said.

  “I’m going in, Smith,” Detective Winters said. “Forensics will be here in about,” he looked at his watch, “five minutes. Tell them to wait outside. Can you handle that?”

  “Y-yes, sir.”

  “And if anyone else comes along,” Detective Winters said, “perhaps some six-year-old blind-girl, please see if you can possibly keep her from entering and contaminating my scene further.”

  Officer Smith just looked down.

  Detective Winters pulled on a pair of gloves and pulled the tape off the door. “You ever have complaints about this tenant?” Detective Winters asked the apartment manager.

  “A … a few times,” the apartment manager said. “Loud banging noises, screaming, mostly from the back room in there, supposedly.”

  “Ever report it?”

  The manager looked at his feet.

  Detective Winters’s frown contorted to a grimace.

  The manager fled.

  Detective Winters turned. He unlocked the door and stepped inside. He paused; then he closed the door behind, locking it.

  A large television stood against the wall, a stack of VHS tapes and DVD’s beneath. Lining the walls from floor to ceiling were bookshelves. Stacked neatly, their edges precisely lined up, meticulously ordered chronologically according to episode number, on each shelf stood, with not a speck of dust, and in pristine condition, wrapped in plastic, the original shrink-wrap plastic even, none rewrapped, were every episode of Star Trek ever produced. Every movie, DVD, every VHS tape ever made.

  Detective Winters inspected the collection.

  “Beowulf’s thunder,” Detective Winters froze, “the entire Betamax collection…”

  * * * *

  Peter shielded his eyes with his hand. Damn, sun’s bright today. It burned his eyes even when he wasn’t looking up. His exposed skin, too, burned from the glare. He needed to get back in his apartment. It’d be cool there, dark and safe and cool.

  The embankment he had crouched on for the past hour was muddy, as it had been the night he had bolted out. Trash still littered the backyard. No one had gone into or out of the house in the hour that Peter had been watching. Cops had cruised by twice. No cars were parked in the driveway, especially his. Bastards. I don’t give a shit. Going in. What’s the worst they can do?

  Peter stood, started forward. Locking his fingers in the chain link fence, he hauled himself up and over, landing with a muffled thump on the other side. Beer bottles, broken and whole, lay in abundance in the crabgrass. Lucky. Didn’t cut my feet.

  The back door was unlocked.

  Into the hallway and up the stairs he went, stopping on the landing of his apartment. The door was closed. Someone, probably Carlo, had spray-painted a bunch of A’s and 8’s and even some 9’s all over the door and floor, intermingled with black spades. Some were expertly done, with a 3-d effect. Peter couldn’t appreciate it, though. Michelle’s gonna kill me.

  He gripped the doorknob in his left hand and with his right, the butt of his gun. It was a comfort to him.

  He turned the knob and pushed, letting the door swing open until the wall stopped it. Gun drawn, he stood there listening, waiting.

  “Winthrop…?” Peter finally whispered. The white Persian was not in sight. “Screw him,” Peter said under his breath as he stepped in. He closed the door behind and locked it. His Louisville slugger lay on the linoleum in a puddle of water.

  The kitchen was ransacked.

  He moved into the living room.

  A tornado of spray paint and razor blades had apparently blown through the apartment. Nothing lay untouched.

  The rugs and furniture in the living room were torn up, the same in the bedrooms. Everything of apparent value was gone or lay in a million little pieces on the floor.

  “She is so gonna kill me.”

  His stomach growled.

  When was the last time I ate?

  He had no answer and stepped into the kitchen.

  The freezer door hung open, dripping, feeding the huge puddle on the linoleum. Mercifully, the freezer was empty, though something still reeked. He closed it and opened the refrigerator.

  “What the hell?”

  The stench came from one of the crisper drawers, and despite better judgment he opened it, a blast of revulsion hitting him full in the nostrils, infesting his brain, dropping straight to his stomach. Sweat poured from his skin. His nostrils burned as though soldering irons had been shoved into his brain.

  With a smash, he slammed the drawer shut and stumbled back. Over the sink he curled, retching, heaving without effect, without result. “Urrgg.”

  Soaking his face with cool water almost helped. He waited for the nausea and burning to pass.

  A long while later it did, though the reek hung still in the air.

  Should call Michelle … what do I tell her? She has homeowner’s insurance, right? Or does she rent? Renter’s insurance? He picked up the phone. It was dead. He put it down.

  “Got to eat something.”

  Dried noodles, mixed with tap water, cooked over the stove was his dinner. He ate five packages, and none even touched his hunger. Worse, he vomited again, this time, with effect.

  Rummaging through the rooms, Peter pieced together some of his belongings: socks, sunglasses, gloves, underwear. Unfortunately, his luggage was gone, and he was forced to use Kenny junior’s Mighty Morphin Power Rangers backpack. Peter frowned as he stuffed the small pack full of his things.

  Meandering back and forth through the room and grabbing what little of his he could find, he stepped on a shard of mirror, crushing it.

  “Great,” he stooped, “more bad luck.” Most of the mirror lay in three great pieces. Only a small piece still hung.

  He picked up one of the great shards, “Holy shit!” He dropped it.

  It shattered on the floor.

  His legs went weak, his head buzzing as he stepped back,

  reaching for, then sitting, on the bed.

  Blinking, shaking his head, he tried to clear his mind, to shake away the tunnel vision. The room spun, and he steadied himself.

  “Whoa.”

  Long moments passed as he breathed deep, head in his hands, clenching his eyes shut, refusing to believe the mirror. What he had seen within the mirror, what he had not seen within the mirror. Vampires and mirrors, vampires and mirrors…

  The dark cloud beneath his skin had engulfed his whole torso now and had spread down his other arm. He knew because he could feel it. Feel it pulse within, a second heartbeat, an unlife of its own. It felt dirty, an oily slickness that infected upon, in, and under, his skin, his blood, his bones, a fungus that consumed him, revulsed him, engulfed him. He couldn’t wash it off, though he had scrubbed and scrubbed.

  He stepped on the mirror shards, grinding them to dust.

  It was three-thirty in the afternoon, and orange sunlight still peeked through the cracks and rips and tears he could not cover up. He was tired. Tomorrow. Tomorrow, I’m gone. Get a bus ticket or train, and I’m gone. Shit. I have no money. Patting his pockets, he realized he had no wallet. On the kitchen counter, he’d left it when he’d got home from work that night.

  He patted his coat and pants again and felt something. From his hip pocket on his coat, he withdrew the envelope Carmine had given him in the back of the ambulance. He opened it. There was a note, and, “Whoa.” One thousand dollars in hundreds. The note said:

  We’re not even yet, Kid. I’ll pay you back.

  Reading the note, and then rereading it, Peter just stood there, regretting.

  * * * *

  Seagulls wheel, climb, screech, and dive as the sun casts its last rays upon Colton Falls. The sea is far off, some fifteen miles, but seagulls may a
s well be called dump gulls. They jabber and squawk loudly, valiantly bullying smaller gulls away from the trash that is edible. Seagulls are not particular in what they eat.

  Nor is Lord Brudnoy.

  Atop a mountain of refuse sits the Lord of Tara. The river runs below and the Joyce Bridge across. Collared in silver, his vast chain trailing, he sits like some prehistoric god, watching over the sunset. Absently, he munches upon some remains of a submarine sandwich that someone has thrown away, perhaps three days ago. Like the seagulls, it, too, has traveled far to be here.

  The sky grows gradually from red to indigo across its great expanse. Lord Brudnoy glares down the refuse mountain as he hears a noise. Eyes squinting, he peers into the shadow of the hill. It is his nose, and not his eyes, that tells him who made the noise.

  “Hello, old boy,” Lord Brudnoy says to his friend.

  “Ahem, hello, Lord Brudnoy,” Salazar says. He wears the same beat-up, mismatched three-piece suit he has worn for the past twenty years. His lens-less glasses perch upon his long nose, and his brown briefcase is, as always, at hand. “You wished to speak with me?”

  Lord Brudnoy shakes his great shaggy head. “No, I most certainly did not, but why don’t you come up here so we can chat?”

  Salazar gulps, looks up in fear, and then nods and starts climbing the hill, quite unsuccessfully. Briefcase in hand, poised above his head, knee deep in trash, he flounders at the bottom.

  “See here, old boy,” Lord Brudnoy says, “mayhap you should leave the briefcase. I believe it’s mucking things up.”

  “But … my documents and the scrolls are in it.” Salazar stares up the considerable precipice. “Important confidential papers. The contracts. They’ll be stolen.”

  “Hmmmm?” Lord Brudnoy paws his chin thoughtfully. “Perhaps by removing your suspenders, splicing them together using a carrick bend knot, and then attaching said cord to your briefcase handle, perhaps a surgeon’s knot? No, a half hitch, you can use the briefcase as a grappling hook and shimmy up here.”