It was 4 am and Collins still couldn’t sleep. The Exterminator, as the killer called himself, had been keeping the forensics expert up at night for over a week. Yesterday he had claimed his seventh victim, Sarah Motts, 17. She had been HHV+ for only a year and, with the latest anti-viral medications, could have led a relatively normal life (albeit with some minor reactions to sunlight and garlic). Instead she was found dead, half-frozen by the East River. On her back were carved the words “Another vamp-to-be gone. On the house.” That was his calling card. “No charge” or “You’re welcome New York.” The profilers had a field day with his messages. Clearly he believed himself a righteous savior, destroying the hemophage plague by killing those infected with the virus. He manipulated location, temperature, even insect activity to obscure time of death. The law left no choice but to immediately destroy each body before it could possibly reanimate as a true hemophage. Collins and his team had an impossible task—no time for autopsies, just a few photos snapped. All the clues were on, or in, the bodies, and all the bodies were gone.
Collins knocked loudly on his partner’s apartment door. After a minute of this, Locke finally opened the door, bleary-eyed and confused. “What-the-f—”
“No time, I need you dressed and ready to go.” Collins followed a confused Locke into the apartment.
“What’s going on? Another crime scene?” he asked pulling on his pants. “Isn’t there anybody else on shift?”
“Not that I can trust.”
***
Locke wasn’t fully awake until halfway through the car ride. Collins had shared a thermos of coffee and reviewed his frustrations with the case. Locke just nodded.
“Where the hell are we?” he asked as Collins stopped the car. There were no police lights or tape, no sounds of an investigation. There was only an abandoned-looking building, which Collins was leading him into.
“You want to catch the Exterminator, right?”
Locke nodded.
“And I can trust you?”
He nodded again, with some hesitation. He could hear something inside the building and they were heading toward it. It sounded inhuman, feral beyond anything he had encountered in urban life. Locke was shaking as they approached a large steel door. He wanted to run, but the curiosity that led him to be a crime scene investigator kept him moving. Collins unbolted the door and heaved it open. Locke peered past Collins into a bare concrete room, lit by a single harsh bulb. The creature in the room, it had once been human, female, Locke realized, was manacled to the floor, hands, feet, and neck. It hissed violently at them, showing long fangs and a mask of pink-tinged saliva.
“They used to use this place as holding area, illegal, but effective.”
“Collins, this is insane.”
“Maybe,” he shrugged. “Get your examination kit ready. Sun’s almost up. She’ll sleep soon and we’ll get to work.”
(c) 2009 Michael Gordon
Michael Gordon lives in and writes about New York City (with vampires, werewolves, and magic added for good measure). He currently spends less time writing his first novel (set in the Abraham Van Helsing Medical Center) and more time running the Real-Time Dracula Project on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/RealTimeDracula).
August 14th, 2009 at 11:24 am
Very well written and creepy. Wonderful voice and flow.
–dj
August 15th, 2009 at 9:44 am
Read like the first part of a serial. I enjoyed this.
August 15th, 2009 at 7:59 pm
I am considering writing at least one follow up, but I keep over-thinking it and ending up with a novel-length plot.