Christopher Moore - Bite Me

Drew sparked up the bong, bubbled a long hit, then handed it to Barry, the balding scuba diver, who inhaled the extra off the top.

“We’re cops, you know?” said Cavuto, not sounding that sure of it himself.

Drew shrugged and exhaled a skunky blast. “S’okay, it’s medical.”

“What medical? You have a card? What’s your condition?”

Drew produced a blue card from his shirt pocket and held it up. “I’m anxious.”

“That’s not a condition,” said Cavuto, snapping the card out of Drew’s hand. “And this is a library card.”

“ Reading makes him anxious,” said Lash.

“It’s a condition,” said Jeff, trying to look somber.

“It’s for arthritis,” said Troy Lee.

“He doesn’t have arthritis. It’s not a thing.” Cavuto was pulling handcuffs out of the pouch on his belt.

“She does,” said Troy Lee, pointing to his grandmother.

The old woman grinned, held up her card, flashed an arthritic “West Coast” gang sign, and said, “What’s up, my nigga?”

“I’m not giving her a pound,” said Cavuto.

“She’s like ninety. You must. It is our way,” said Troy Lee in his mysterious ancient Chinese secret voice. From his sitting position, he bowed a little at the end for effect.

Cavuto had to bend down to give the old woman a pound. “You know you’ll never escape the killer cats in those giant shoes,” he said.

“She doesn’t understand,” said Barry.

“No comprende English,” said Gustavo.

“Cats?” said Rivera. “Your message.”

“Yeah, you said to call if anything weird happened,” said Troy Lee.

“Actually, we said not to call us,” said Cavuto.

“Really? Whatever. Anyway, the Emperor came banging on the store windows last night all freaked out about vampire cats.”

“Did you see them?”

“Yeah, there were shitloads. And I don’t know how you’re going to take them down. That’s why it’s pretty obvious that it’s the Apocalypse.”

Clint, the born-again, now looked up. “I figure that the number of the beast is a number of how many. So, there were like six hundred sixty-six at least.”

“Although it was hard to count,” said Drew. “They were in a cloud.”

Rivera looked to Troy Lee for explanation.

“It was like they’d all gone to vapor, like we saw the old vampire trying to do that night we blew up his yacht. Except they were all merged into one, big-ass vampire cloud.”

“Yeah, it started coming into the store, even with the door locked,” said Jeff, now at the foul line, sinking his fourth swish in a row.

“How’d you stop it?” Cavuto asked.

“Wet towel under the door,” said Barry. “It’s what you do when you’re smoking weed in a hotel and you don’t want everyone calling security. You’re always supposed to have a towel. I read about it in a guide for hitchhiking through the galaxy.”

“Skills,” said Drew, a little glassy-eyed now.

“But, if not for the wet towel, it was the Apocalypse,” said Troy Lee. “Clint is looking in the book of Revelation for the part about the towel now.”

“I hope it’s like Thunder Dome Apocalypse,” said Jeff. “Not zombies trying to eat your brain Apocalypse.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s going to be, city-wiped-out-by-vampire-cats Apocalypse,” said Barry. “You know, just going on what we know.”

“It’s not the Apocalypse,” said Cavuto.

“So, what happened?” Rivera asked. “The cloud just went away?”

“Yeah, it sort of distilled to a big herd of cats and they went running every which way. But what do we do tonight if it comes back? The Emperor led it right to us.”

“Where is the Emperor?”

“He went off this morning with his dogs. Said he thought he knew where the prime vampire cat might be and that he and the men would dispatch it and save his city.”

“And you let him?”

“He’s the Emperor, Inspector. You can’t tell him shit.”

Rivera looked at Cavuto. “Call dispatch to post a bulletin to call us if anyone sees the Emperor.”

“We’re not getting off work today, are we?” said Cavuto.

“Take an Apocalypse day,” said Barry. “Woo-hoo! Apocalypse day!”

Troy Lee’s grandma fired off a barrage of Cantonese to her grandson, who replied with the same. The old woman shrugged and looked up at Cavuto and Rivera and spoke for about thirty seconds, then went and took the ball from Jeff, then shot a complete air ball, at which everyone cheered.

“What? What?” said Cavuto.

“She wanted to know what Barry was woo-hooing about, so I told her.”

“What did she say?”

“She said no big deal. They had vampire cats in Beijing when she was a girl. She said their shit is weak.”

“She said that?”

“The idiom is different, but basically, yeah.”

“Oh good,” said Cavuto, “I feel better.”

“We need to find the Emperor,” Rivera said.

Cavuto pulled the car keys out of his jacket. “And pick up our Apocalypse jackets.”

“What about us?” asked Lash.

Rivera didn’t even look back when he said, “You guys have more experience fighting vampires than anyone on the planet…”

“We do, don’t we?” said Troy Lee.

“Oh, we are so fucked,” said Lash.

“That’s sad,” said Drew, repacking the bowl of the bong. “Really sad.”

Darkness. He waited a moment, listening to his pulse beat in his ears before striking another match. “Courage,” he whispered to himself, a mantra, an affirmation, a sound to keep him from jumping out of his own skin at every creak or rustle in the dark. He lit the match, held it aloft.

He pulled at the big steel door, throwing his weight, and it moved a few inches. Perhaps this was the other way out. It was clear that all these cats hadn’t come in through the window, not with the plywood blocking it. He elbowed the door aside, feeling the resistance of a drift of dormant vampire cats piled up against it. When the opening was wide enough to squeeze through, he put his shoulder inside, then paused as the match went out from the movement.

He was inside, and the floor seemed clear at his feet, although it felt as if he was standing on powder. As he lit the next match he hoped to see a stairway, a hallway, perhaps another boarded-up window, but in fact what he saw was that he was in a small storeroom fitted with wide metal shelves. The floor was indeed covered with a thick layer of dust, and among it, rumpled clothing. Ragged overcoats, jeans, and work boots, but also brightly colored satin garments, hot pants, and halter tops, tall platform shoes in fluorescent colors, dingy under the dust and darkness.

These had been people. Homeless people and hookers. The fiends had actually dragged people down here and fed on them-sucked them to dust, as the little Goth girl had termed it. But how? No matter how strong or ravenous, the cats were still just housecats before they had turned. And they hadn’t seemed cooperative. He couldn’t imagine a pack of twenty vampire cats dragging a fully grown person down here. It didn’t make sense.

The match burned his finger and he tossed it aside, then pulled the knife from his belt before lighting the next. When the next match flared, he saw something on one of the high shelves at the far side of the room. Something quite a bit larger than a housecat. Perhaps it was one of their victims who had survived.

He adjusted his grip on the knife and moved forward, trying not to cringe as the dusty clothing clung to his feet and ankles.

No, not a cat. At least not a housecat. But it had fur. And a tail. But it was the size of an eight-year-old child, and it was snuggled up against something even larger. The Emperor raised the knife and stepped forward, then stopped.