Anton Strout - Deader Still

I fought back the urge as I staggered for the doors at the far end of the room. My feet slammed into several of the bodies as I went, repulsing me even further, but by the time I ran out onto the back deck of the ship my only concern was not throwing up all over them. I jumped over the railing and onto the pier, fell to my knees, and emptied the contents of my stomach into the Hudson River.

I felt better the moment I was done, except for the shaking. I collapsed on my side. Although the idea of eating anything right now seemed impossible, I fished out another roll of Life Savers.

“You okay, honey?” a voice said from behind me. I rolled over. A woman in her fifties stood there in a white, button-down shirt and blue sailor pants that rose a good two inches above her navel. A tiny gold badge from the cruise line proclaimed that I should “Come Sail Away with . . . Maggie!” Her blond hair was done up in a fifties beehive, making her look like an ancient version of the cruise director from The Love Boat .

I nodded and rolled to my knees. The sugar replenished itself in my body, and I eventually stopped shaking. By the time I was on my feet, Connor and Davidson had joined me.

“This,” Davidson said, “is Maggie, the woman who called in the missing boat last night.”

“Our condolences,” Connor said. “To your guests and your crew.”

She pursed her lips and shook her head, on the verge of tears. “Thank you.”

“Is there anything you can tell us?” Connor continued. “Anything you saw that might have been out of the ordinary?”

Maggie thought a moment. “It was very late,” she said, “and when they towed the ship back to dock, there was a heavy fog. When it pulled in, I could hear some of the stray dogs we get down here on the dock going wild. I just assumed they sensed death or whatever . . . whatever had happened to all those people. Then they went silent and when I caught sight of them, there was a strange one I had never seen before, just standing there menacing the whole crowd of them until they all shied away. Then it ran off toward the city. And then I realized everyone on the boat was dead. Who could have done something like this?”

The woman burst into hysterical sobs. There was nothing I could say. Davidson put an arm around her. I gave Connor a look and moved him away from them to talk.

“Are we talking werewolves here?” I asked. I had read at least three of our pamphlets on lycanthropy, and thanks to one Five O’ Clock Shadow or Something More? I knew how rare they were in an urban environment.

Connor shook his head. “I don’t think so, kid. If that boat was the work of werewolves, those bodies would have been half-eaten and there’d be blood everywhere. What did you see in your vision?”

“Not much,” I said, “but enough to freak me out—that’s for sure. Everybody was panicking, so it was hard to focus on just what the hell was going on. I caught a glimpse of what killed the DJ, though. Red eyes, fangs, went straight for his throat. Drained him almost completely. This gives us enough to call it in, right?”

“As long as you’re sure, kid.”

I nodded. “When we get back to the office, we’ll call it in as a vampire.”

“ A vampire?” Connor said. “A single vampire couldn’t have drunk all that blood. We’re talking about a good-sized nest of them.”

I nodded, just a little excited by the prospect, despite the tragedy I had witnessed. Being part of Other Division, you had to get off a little on the extraordinary things you ended up dealing with. Vampires were certainly high on the list.

Davidson walked off with Maggie, escorting her back to the boating company’s office.

“Are they going to do anything for her?” I asked.

“For her?”

“I think she might be a little traumatized by all this,” I said. “I know I am.”

“It’s New York City,” Connor said with a shrug. “She’ll write it off mentally. Weird shit happens. Most people ignore it.”

I stared at him. “That’s it? We’re just going to leave her mental stability to chance?”

Connor stared at me a minute, but I refused to look away.

“Fine,” he finally said. “I’ll put a Shadower team on her. If there’s any signs she’s flipping out, we’ll bring her in and put her through counseling. Happy?”

I nodded. Davidson returned from the offices alone.

“She’s okay,” Davidson said, his smile returning as he joined us. “I was testing out some of the spin I’m going to have to use with the media on this one. She seemed to be buying the ‘bad shrimp’ story I was planning on going with.”

“Deadly shrimp-poisoning?” I said. “People are going to buy that?”

Davidson nodded. “It seems a lot easier to buy than, say, vampires, doesn’t it?”

He had a point.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “That’s for the Office of Plausible Deniability to contend with. Besides, on the plus side of this case, at least we got lucky in one respect . . .”

I felt my anger twitch in. “What the hell’s lucky about a boatload of people dying?” I asked.

“It could have been worse, gentlemen,” he said. “This could have been far more tragic. Luckily, the cruise was booked as an office party for a bunch of litigators. Mostly legal counsel for oil companies.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “We’ve got a boatful of dead lawyers ?”

Connor actually grinned. “So one set of bloodsuckers took out another set of bloodsuckers?”

“Exactly,” Davidson said.

The three of us started back up the dock. All things considered, I suddenly didn’t feel as bad as I had. Still, whoever or whatever had done this had to be stopped. Connor and I parted ways with Davidson at the end of the pier, grabbed a cab, and headed downtown toward the office.

The cab dropped us off in the East Village on Eleventh Street in front of the Lovecraft Café.

Up front was our cover operation—a coffee shop, its exposed brick walls covered with a variety of old movie posters. The furniture was a mishmash that ranged from hideous to vomitous, but there was a soothing charm to the room. A mix of regular customers and Departmental agents filled the room, and, as usual, Mrs. Teasley was reading someone’s fortune using a soggy pile of coffee grounds.

“You okay, kid?” Connor asked. I looked down and noticed that my gloved hands were shaking.

“I guess not,” I said. “I’m guess I’m still bothered by what I saw.”

“Good,” Connor said, sounding almost cheerful.

“Good?” I said. “What the hell is good about that?”

He put his arm around my shoulder conspiratorially and steered me toward the coffee bar that ran along the entire right side of the room.

“It’s good,” he said, lowering his voice, “because the second you see something like what we saw on that boat and it doesn’t affect you, it’s time to get out of this business. You remember that.”

“You don’t look so spooked,” I countered.

“I’ve got years of practice at hiding it, kid. Believe me, there’s nothing I saw there that doesn’t have me shaking on the inside.”

Connor stepped to the counter and bought two iced mochas. He slipped one over to me. I wondered how the caffeine and sugar was supposed to reduce my shaking, but it seemed to work. We headed toward the back of the coffeehouse and entered the curtained-off movie theater that lay behind it. The old-world style of the 1930s architecture always took my breath away, and this time was no exception. The enormous and ornate chandelier high overhead sparkled as light from the movie projector danced among its many crystals. On the screen, Sigourney Weaver was sneaking around a metallic Gigeresque spaceship in a tank top and undies.