Josh Roseman - The Clockwork Russian and Other Stories

Just knowing that we’re the ones who have to do the dirty work makes me grumpy. “You’d think even the Blue Knight would know how to deal with vamps properly.”

“Huh?” Jerry practically scampers to catch up with me. “He stopped ’em, didn’t he?”

“He stopped them,” I tell Jerry, “but he didn’t necessarily kill them.”

Jerry’s thin face looks confused.

“Stake through the heart, or decapitated, or killed with fire. Preferably all three. That’s the only way.”

A pause. Then: “oh.” He shrugs. “I wonder why the Blue Knight didn’t do that.”

I don’t have an answer for that one. The Rainbow Brigade — and do they ever hate that nickname, which is why I use it whenever I can — isn’t much for being proactive or learning about their enemies. They just wait to get called in, wreak havoc, destroy whatever they can destroy, and then get the hell out of there without even waiting for us to show up and fix what they’ve broken. And pigs might fly before they ever offer to help.

No, that would be beneath the Chromatic Knights — no one with superpowers ever needs to do such menial things, and especially not the Blue Knight. He’s basically Superman, as long as the sun is down: super-strength, super-speed, and if he can’t fly then at least he does a pretty good job faking it with some epic long-jumps. When the sun’s up, he’s powerless, but that doesn’t stop him from being a smarmy asshat even during the day.

Jason and Becky join me in the back stock area. Cleaning up scattered office supplies is tedious, but I always keep the worst jobs to myself. And I can already tell this is going to be a doozy.

“He chased this one back here and beat on him for a little while,” Jerry says, standing back while I assess the situation. “Then he…” He gestures. “Well, you get the idea.”

“Yeah. I do.” I eye the brownish-red stain creeping out from under the forklift — the forklift that’s on its side, of course, because woe betide the Blue Knight making my job even the slightest bit easier. “Please tell me you have another one of these.”

Jerry nods and points to the far end of the stock area. “Why?”

“Because I don’t think all of us working together will be able to lift this thing.”

“Oh. Good point.” Jerry fishes a key out of his pocket. “Here,” he says.

“Thanks.” I take the key and toss it to Becky. “Drive that one over here, will you?”

“Sure thing, boss.” She jogs in that direction.

“She’s going to fork under the roof part here,” I tell Jason, pointing at the driver’s compartment of the toppled forklift. “Once she gets it up enough, we’ll push it the rest of the way.”

“What about…” He swallows hard, his face a little pale. “Well, you know.”

“Just try not to think about it. And remember it was a murderer.”

“Doesn’t help.”

I shrug. “Best I got.”

It takes a second for Becky to get her forklift positioned. “Lift it slow,” I say. “Don’t want to tip yours in the process, right?”

“Right.” She nudges the vehicle forward, a few jolting inches at a time, until I give her the thumbs-up. Then she pulls gently on the handle at her right and the forklift’s electric motor starts to whine. It’s the normal ‘I’m lifting heavy things’ sound at first, but as the other forklift starts to rise, Becky’s makes grinding, protesting noises.

Fortunately she doesn’t have to lift it very far; once there’s about three feet of clearance under the toppled forklift, Jason and I reach underneath and shove as hard as we can.

It turns out to be almost too hard; the forklift rights itself, hitting the concrete floor with an enormous CLANG that reverberates through the entire store.

Becky throws up.

Jason claps his hand to his mouth and makes a run for the bathrooms, probably just barely controlling his own vomit.

Jerry sits down hard, then passes out.

I’m the only one still standing, the only one who can stomach seeing the remains of the vampire that the Blue Knight smashed into so much chunky, multi-colored jelly.

The remains that I’ll now be cleaning up on my own.

Awesome.

It’s well past three in the morning when we finally walk out of the store and into the mostly-dark parking lot. Jerry’s the only employee still there when we finally do. I can’t fault his people for having left — they just got attacked by vampires; why would they want to hang around if they didn’t have to? My team is ready to go home too; I don’t know about everyone else, but my eyes are pretty gummy and I’m jittery from all the terrible coffee Jerry kept brewing for us.

We wait for Jerry to lock the doors and the security gate, and then Rodrigo escorts him to his car. The rest of us wait by our vehicles — Monique and I came in her ancient Chevy Caprice, and everyone else rode in the van. All our cleaning materials — and the five non-pulverized bodies — are in the trailer hitched to the wood-paneled Chrysler. “You guys good to go?” I ask.

“No problem, boss.” Becky’s leaning against the driver’s side door. She gives me a weak smile. “Sorry about the mess.”

“Not your fault.” Compared to scraping up the remains of a vampire that was crushed into salsa, mopping her vomit was like a walk in the park. “Burn the bodies, get the stuff ready for the morning crew, and then take off, okay? It’s late enough.”

“No shit,” Dave says. “Hey, no offense, but let’s not do this again tomorrow night, huh?”

“Right there with you.” I give the crew a half-hearted wave and then climb into the passenger seat.

Monique’s already got the motor running by the time my seatbelt is on. “Hey, you okay?”

“I’ll live.” I reach across the bench seat and take her right hand in my left. “Just, it’s a long day, y’know?”

“I know.” Her skin is dark against mine, even in the dim, sodium-yellow lights of the parking lot. She raises our joined hands to her mouth, as if to brush her lips over my skin, but I resist. “What is it?”

“I just mopped up chunky vampire remains and whatever Becky had for dinner. Are you sure you want to do that?”

I hear the hint of a smile in her voice. “I guess you’re right.” She settles for resting her cheek on my wrist. “You’re shaking,” she says softly. “You sure you’re all right?”

“I’m fine. It’s the crappy coffee, that’s all. Let’s just go home.” I release her hand so I can try to get comfortable in the crevice between the seat and the door, my head cradled in the shoulder strap of the seatbelt. “Wake me up when we get there. Then we’ll get…” I can’t stop a small grin. “We’ll get cleaned up.”

This story is one of the winnersof the first Triple Word Score contest from The Dunesteef Audio Fiction Magazine , in which each entrant got a personalized prompt of three words that had to appear in a story of 2000 words or fewer. Mine were “knight”, “forklift”, and “jelly”. The scene itself is loosely based on part of a vampire novel a friend and I tried to write some years ago, where a human fought a vampire in an Office Depot (both of us happened to work there at the time). I’m told that the concept of the superhero cleanup crew isn’t a new one, and that in fact Marvel has a team called Damage Controlwho does just that. But I wouldn’t know; I haven’t read very many Marvel — or any other — comics.

When I originally wrote this story, I gave two versions of it to my writing group — one from the store manager’s point of view, and one from the head of the cleanup crew. Everyone agreed this one was better, including me.