However, I had never before come to him with explicitly otherworldly problems. That would be flaunting the fact that we had gotten around rule number one. Big no-no.
“Lennox. I was wondering when you would show up,” he said.
I saw the jagged scar that cut across his chin, memento of the night we had met. It looked like something had mauled him. “Have time for an old friend?” I asked.
He held out his arms. “But, of course. I know why you are here.” He looked around a second to make sure no one was eavesdropping. “‘When a form of superstition is prevalent everywhere, and in all ages,’” he said, “‘it must rest upon a foundation of fact.’ Am I right or am I right?”
“Sabine Baring-Gould,” I said, recognizing the quote. “Will you help me?”
“What d’you need?” he said.
* * *
He gave me everything: logbooks, crime scene photographs, reports of responding officers... news clippings... I was amazed at his thoroughness. Included was a series of autopsy reports from The Office of the Medical Examiner. This would detail exact cause of death, plus list any pertinent facts about the condition of the bodies. There was also a criminal profile that had been done, of who to look out for. I looked at Moretti. “Thanks, man.”
“Just make sure you don’t let those fall into anyone else’s hands.” He looked around again. “Especially that reporter.”
I could only imagine he meant Miss Skarborough. “You don’t have to worry about me,” I said. “I’ll let you know if I find anything. Congratulations on making lieutenant.”
He nodded. “Take care.”
* * *
As I was leaving, I caught the scent of her blood. Halsey Rookmaaker was exiting the front of the Questura, a look of disappointment on her face. I waited for her to come this way. Instead, she got onto an orange moped, and put her helmet on. Intrigued, I waited for her to pass and began to follow her.
Occam’s Charger was too big to follow behind her for very long. She got into a pack of other tourists on mopeds and I lost her. She was heading towards Trastevere. That was somewhere I avoided when possible.
But her blood smell. It dredged up memories of her from the night before. I could taste her in my mouth––without having tasted her.
The old V8 idled thirstily. I could smell the rot of the corpse I had in the back. I was not looking forward to dealing with it. Occam had kept it for a reason. I didn’t think I could stomach it much longer, so I headed across the Sisto bridge and back to Campo de’ Fiori. The refracting light off the Tiber made my eyes ache and burn, even behind the tinted glass.
As I approached Occam’s place, I picked up the infrared device which activated the cruel iron gate. It rattled aside and I entered through a pass in the large building leading to the sequestered courtyard. The gate rolled smoothly back into place. I got out of the Charger. Only direct midday sun could penetrate the courtyard. The rest of the time it was tranquil. Occam liked to barbecue.
I was fatigued and thirsty; when I didn’t sleep my muscles protested. Something about vampirism required a vampire pass the daylight hours in well-fortified repose. My bedroom had more defenses than just curtains and a locking door.
I heard it. The infected revenant from two nights before, rattling around in the back of the car.
It now had the Suck.
That’s why I wanted to check the morgue. I went upstairs, passing through corridors––they went off in every direction––to the library Occam and I used as our base of operations. I passed through the stacks on feet of silence. They were vertical and stuffed full of books. Occam put a high premium on knowing things.
A series of notebooks held our discoveries so far. I took down the first volume, marked INCUBATION. We had documented and photographed everything.
The things Moretti had given me I offloaded onto the rich mahogany desk with the green lawyer lamps. It was a large enough desk that I could spread everything out. This helped give an overview of things.
I had papers going everywhere.
“Regular time course, barring outside influence, typically forty-eight hours,” I read in the Incubation notebook. That was the time it took for the Suck to reach equilibrium in the blood plasma. There was no steady-state, however, such as happened with the introduction of any foreign substance into the bloodstream, a flu shot, for example. From there, the contagion began to spread. It destroyed red blood cells, wreaking havoc inside the host body.
“Left unchecked,” wrote Occam, “this represents a potential worldwide pandemic several orders above the HIV virus or Black Plague. Indeed, it threatens to wipe out both human and vampire civilizations. So far, my assistant and I have managed to keep it under wraps. Whoever this boker may be, if he is not stopped, he just may institute the Zombie Apocalypse.”
I fetched a microwaved blood cup from the kitchen down the hall and returned, thinking about the Zombie Apocalypse.
The Zombie Apocalypse was this theory, much like The Singularity was a theory that computers would one day rule the world.
Instead of supercomputers destroying human civilization, our very bodies destroyed us from within, which made the Zombie Apocalypse far, far scarier. Carriers passed it wholesale to every non-infected individual through biting. Examination of the disease revealed striking similarities to the rabies virus.
So far, Occam and I had studied six cases of individuals infected with the Suck. All six were revenants––previously dead individuals, who had been brought back to life. It was Occam who hypothesized their saliva was spreading the disease. A disease which made them extraordinarily fast and crazy fighting machines.
The victim in the Dodge Charger was unique in that he was the only living human being to have been infected. I remembered how he had tried to attack me. Had he succeeded in biting me, I would not have got the Suck. A carrier could not become infected to the degree that it could spread the virus until the first forty-eight hours had elapsed. Downstairs, I heard him rattling around, which meant he was fully infected.
The dying and being reborn phases had passed. It was not unlike becoming a vampire, I realized.
Occam and I had experimented on rats. A rat was physiologically similar to a human being but not the same. Which was how we had arrived at the forty-eight hour incubation period.
As for the rabies similarity, we noticed early that the infected patients had begun to twitch and froth at their mouths a few hours after the delivery into the bloodstream of the contagion. This was put down to shock at first.
The body immediately began to die.
What we realized soon after was that it was neuroinvasive, that is, it attacked the central nervous system of the new carrier. They were being rewired.
Among their new attributes seemed to be an insatiable desire to cause maximal spread by attacking and killing uninfected individuals.
The infected rats would turn on their cagemates, killing them instantly. I wrote it all down.
“We believe this is to accelerate the turning process. The quicker they die, the sooner they can be resurrected. And kill.”
Occam didn’t like that. He wrote: “It all rests on this boker. If his intentions are genocidal, we must prepare for the Apocalypse. If, however, his intentions are tactical, like some smart bomb, and he has a specific target in mind, unintended fallout may result in the Apocalypse anyhow. At all costs we must find and destroy the boker. He is the brain, the head. If we kill him, it may not be too late to stop the spread of this sucking disease.”
It made thinking about some random murderer named Peter Panico almost pointless. I just wanted to make sure whoever was killing, the victims weren’t coming down with the Suck. I suspected Peter Panico to be a vampire, as I suspected the boker to potentially be a vampire––as the Suck was too similar to vampirism itself. What I feared was that there might be some connection between them, linking the two.
I took Infester’s guide, The 411, out of my jacket pocket, and laid it on top of the
table next to the other documents. I had a lot of reading ahead of me, and I had to see about the morgue tonight, after hours, to check on the bodies. I just hoped it wasn’t what I thought it was.
I would be able to tell by the bite mark. Occam and I had developed a special kit that allowed field-testing for the Suck. If any of them were infected, cremation facilities were located on the premises. I could quickly get rid of the evidence.
I had made a habit out of going to the morgue. I went there every night. It was only murder victims that I checked. They went to the pathologist, who checked for unnatural death. The rest I could forget about.
It was still too early to enlist the help of others. There was no way that we were going to ask the Lenoir for help.
Something threatening vampires. A contagion specifically targeting blood drinkers. Their response would have been to quarantine the city and destroy all life, rather than risk it spreading.
Find the boker. Kill the boker. I picked up The 411. “Welcome to the Zombie Apocalypse,” it said. I turned the page, and began to read. There was a note from the author.
“Vigilance is the difference from falling (being bitten) in the first wave, and surviving the onslaught to regroup. In any simulation of the Apocalypse, the first seventy-two hours is like Nagasaki and Hiroshima combined. It is like Chernobyl and the Aswan Dam. Like the outbreak of some terrible new Plague and the Communist witch-hunts of the 1950s. Only a coolheaded mind will prevail. It is important foremost to have no affection for those coming down with a case of the Suck––
“Kill them, cut their heads off, scorch their bodies. Otherwise, they will enlist you in their ranks. A zombie doesn’t care if it used to go to church with you. It doesn’t care if you used to call it ‘Mom’ or ‘Dad’ or ‘Cousin’ or ‘Brother,’ ‘Wife,’ ‘Sister,’ etc. It is a ravenous fast-moving death bringer. Crush its skull in with a vice. That is your first warning.
“Before you continue,” he wrote, “swear the following: I, insert your name, being of sound unsucked mind, uninfected by any Fast Walker, swear to battle the Armies of Hell, if such be unleashed, and will pass on my knowledge to any worthy, uninitiated, human member of the species. So help me, state your religious figure. Sign and date.”
I couldn’t reasonably sign it, as I was no longer human, but there was an asterisk, recommending all signees do so in their own blood. “For, as everyone knows, Zombie blood is always black.”
It was a way of telling who your friends were.
I wasn’t looking forward to dragging him out of the trunk of the car. Just how fast did they move, anyway?
The boker seemed to have a mind connection to his zombies. Hadn’t the last one veered off, when it was called; hissed at, rather? It was like Sid and his progeny. They had to do what Sid said. That was the only thing saving us from the Zombie Apocalypse. They were doing what the boker said. Which, for the moment, was not much.
If the boker died with his zombies still unaccounted for... It would be like a free-for-all... they would be let loose––free to go wherever they pleased and eat everybody.
This required some serious thinking on my part. I flipped through The 411. It was loaded. Weapons, tracking the king-sire....
King-sire....
I flipped to the glossary at the back.
King-sire [ki ing sīr] n: 1. the origin point, the Infector-In-Chief, the primary root of any infectious outbreak, the number one zombie; the only zombie with the power of thought; some king-sires may appear as outwardly human 2. The one responsible.
The boker.
Chapter 7 – Halsey
Lia chewed her gum, waiting for one of us to tell her what was going on. The family dynamic was immediately apparent; she was Big Sis. Ballard looked at her and then at me. “You should come in,” he said.
“Just a minute,” said Lia, not unkindly. “Who is this? And what is she doing here?”
Ballard just shrugged. “I’m his pen pal,” I said; it wasn’t a lie. Cottoning on, Ballard said, “I’m allowed to have friends, aren’t I?”
She looked at us dubiously.
“I swear, Lia is so old-fashioned sometimes. It’s like she thinks I’m going to put a move on you,” he said, as he led me through the garage. I saw bikes and cars being worked on. There was a lot of chrome. I didn’t know much about motorcycles, but I wanted to learn. I enjoyed the wind in my hair. “Don’t let how she looks fool you. Ever since Risky died, she’s become like this matriarch.” He tried the word on like an unusual taste he was thinking of acquiring.
“Who’s Risky?” I asked, following behind him. He walked really fast.
He turned around. I had had to shout, he had gotten so far ahead. “Sorry about that,” he said.
“That’s okay.”
He smiled. Talking to him was very easy. He put a rag he was carrying in his back pocket, pointing to a picture framed on the wall of the bike shop. “That is Risky,” he said. “My uncle.”
I saw a picture of a distinguished-looking older man with salt-and-pepper stubble on his face. He had a twinkle in his eye, like he knew things.
“I know,” said Ballard, approving of the way I looked at him. Lia was still watching us from outside. She put on her helmet and got ready to leave.
“Do they just ride around all day?” I wondered out loud.
“And at night,” said Ballard. He opened a door, and held it open for me unselfconsciously. I passed through. We were in what must have been their home––Lia’s and Ballard’s.
It was attached to the shop. The hallways were very narrow. I saw a small kitchen down the hall. It had a draining board at the sink, and a white towel with sunflowers to dry the dishes. There were curios and other things on spindle-legged tables and family photographs on the walls. Ballard followed behind with his hands in his back pockets. I turned around. He nearly bumped into me. “Sorry,” I apologized. I had to look up at him.
He wasn’t as tall as his brothers. Which was another thing.
“Are all of those guys related to you?” I asked.
He got a quizzical look. “You mean them? No. Why?”
“I just wondered,” I said.
“This is my family.” He pointed at all of the photographs. “My mother and father. They’re retired now. They’re living in Greece. You know those white cliffs?”
I assumed he was talking about all of Greece’s coastline on the Mediterranean.
“Yeah those. They live in a little place. It has no running water. They have to fetch it in buckets. But they do their own thing.”
“So you and Lia?”
“There are two others of us,” said Ballard, “but they moved to the States.” He pointed to his two older brothers.
“So Lia...”
“Lia is popular,” he said, immediately grasping what I was getting at. It made me blush, slightly. I looked down. He seemed nervous. One foot was standing on the toes of the other.
“It must be hard, running this shop, with just the two of you.”
“You have no idea,” said Ballard. He offered me a grattachecca. It was a delicious concoction he whipped up in their tiny kitchen. I sat at a table while he worked. There was a lovely lemon scent to their small home. If I peeked over the edge of the window I could just see the street from where we were at. I saw Lia disappearing down the alleyway on her motorcycle, her legs straddling the chassis, in a group of all the Six Nine Guys.
“Grattachecca,” he said, in his lovely Italian. It was like a slurpee, but better, very refreshing. He sat down at the table, taking a bite of his own grattachecca. It was blue-colored flavored ice. “So….”
I knew what he meant. “I bet you’re wondering why I’m here,” I said. None of my fear at meeting him remained. He just had a face: so young, so innocent....
I knew, in that moment, that I could tell him anything, just as I was equally sure that there would be no ridicule, no censure, in his eyes. It was like I had been floating––he was my bright horizon. I was leaving th
e abyss.
I unzipped my backpack and took out the strange book. He looked warily at the cover of the nondescript volume.
It was very old.
Black leather encased it, although in some places it had been worn so thin, the binder’s board showed through. But that wasn’t the most interesting feature. The most interesting feature––without having opened it first––was the symbol, a pentacle within a pentacle, wrapped in a circle, surrounded by glyphs––magic symbols.
And when one opened it....
“Do you know what this is?” I asked him.
He ate his blue, flavored ice, his dark eyes seeming to bore into mine. He captured some of it from running down his lip with his tongue, and said, “Yeah.”
It was like we had made a secret pact, right there, in the kitchen.
“I know a little, not everything. The Internet is full of rumor––half-truths, false leads. I looked into it while Lia wasn’t looking. Sometimes she noses,” he said. “From what I understand, isn’t it something like the Munich Manual or some other ‘grimoire’––?” He put the word in quotes, careful not to drop his grattachecca.
I opened the book. It was thick with dust. I blew some of it away, revealing the signatures, written in different hands, and at different times––
I saw those of my father, my mother––someone else’s. They were faded with age. My mother’s hand looked the newest. “A grimoire, a book of magic,” said Ballard.
“I couldn’t believe you found me,” I said.
“Like I said, I only read the inscription,” he said.
I looked at it again. His uncle had written, in a hurried hand, “If I die, Ballard, find her––find Halsey Rookmaaker; she is the last of her line; the final Rookmaaker. This is her copy of The Magus Codex. ‘It being different, accordingly.’”