Jacob Russell's Fiction Blog

The Monsters of Steel City April 18, 2011

Posted by jacobsrussell in Uncategorized.
Tags: fiction, super-heroes, superheroes, suspense
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Part 1: The Vampire

Mordecai was cold.  Cold and lying on cold, clammy stone.  His mouth was dry and it hurt behind his eyes, like he was hung over.  But he hadn’t been drinking.  It didn’t hurt in one spot on his head like he’d been hit.  Had he been knocked out by a blow to the head?  No.  He hadn’t been hit, but he’d been stabbed or stuck with something.  He’d been stuck by that guy… that… thing…

“Oh sh–” Mordecai cut himself off for fear that something might hear him.  Someone, he quickly corrected himself.  Not something.  He didn’t need to get crazy.

Mordecai rushed to get to his feet, and banged his head on a stone table on the way up.  “OW F***!” he yelled at the top of his lungs.  Everything in the room moved and swayed for a moment.  Mordecai wondered whether that was from his head hitting the table, or something else.  He felt sick, like he was going to vomit.  Questions started to flood his mind.  Where was he?  How did he get here?  He found his two dollar fedora on the floor and put it on.  That always helped steady him when he was drunk or sick.

The room was dark and light at the same time.  But how could that be?  Looking around he saw that shapes and shadows were playing tricks on his eyes.  The light in the room was coming from one oil lamp on the stone table he hit with his head.  The table was against the wall at one end of the room.  At the other end was a door.  It was open.  There was a faint light, like moonlight, coming from it.  It was his way out.  As soon as his eyes and brain figured that shape out, it figured out the bigger shape between him and the door.  It was a coffin.  Not one of those plain wood jobs, like the one they buried his brother in.  This was one of those big stone ones like in the movies.  The scary ones.

That… guy…  That crazy freak had stabbed Mordecai with something in his left side, just below the ribs.  Mordy rubbed at his side and felt the soreness and the hole in his jacket and shirt.  Beneath that hole he found a small, fresh scab.  It felt like he’d been stabbed with something narrow and sharp, like a needle.  It hadn’t been a knife, he could remember that.  What could he remember?  He and the boys were playing poker.  They were guarding Saul Cohen’s shipment in the warehouse before Big Saul could come get it.

Mordecai was one of four guys in a waterfront warehouse played poker while two guys stood outside on lookout.  All six were packing heat.  Cole Kubic went all in on two-pair – aces and sixes – thinking his aces had to be better than whatever top pair ol’ Mordy was drawing to.  Cole just didn’t realize that Mordy was drawing to a flush.  For the next hour Mordy was too busy laughing, counting his money, telling everyone what he was going to buy, and that Cole Kubic was a real twit.  He didn’t notice that neither of the guys that Cole should have relieved came back.

Mordy knew it was an hour because of Big Saul’s drinking rule.  Every hour on the hour, they got one minute to drink.  They could drink anything they wanted, and as much as they wanted provided they drank it within one minute.  Big Saul knew that if he’d said no booze, they’d just drink anyway and try to keep it secret which would just make him mad.  This way they didn’t drink so much they’d be too drunk to be useful and it was a good way for them to mark the time.

“Mordy,” Joe Kurtz said.  “Go find out what’s taking them so long.”

Mordy figured Cole was asking them for a loan, or giving them some booshwash about how Mordy cheated.  It shouldn’t take Cole that long to bump his gums, but what else could it be?  So Mordy wasn’t expecting anything, but he was cautious.  He opened the door without stepping through.  He saw all three men standing there, not moving.  Their backs were to him.  They were holding their hands in front of them somewhere so Mordy couldn’t see them.

“Hey!” Mordy called to them.  “What’s the big idea?”

They neither moved nor spoke.

Mordy grabbed Cole by the shoulder and gave him a hard tug.  “I said, what’s the big –“

Cole fell to the floor like a mannequin.  It was then that Mordy saw that Cole’s hands where held up in front of him as if trying to stop or block something.  His eyes were wide and fearful.  His mouth was open and drool had been dribbling out of it and down his neck.  Once on the floor, Cole’s body didn’t change its pose.  All of the muscles and joints were locked into place, somehow.  Mordy looked up with a start.  He’d heard a faint, distant rustling.  Something had moved.

The doorway faced the parking lot where trucks were lined up waiting to take shipments of goods to their proper destination.  There was a single lane of clearance, enough for Big Saul’s sedan, beyond which were the trucks.  Mordy saw something in the shadows between the trucks.  Was it a face?  A pale face on a head with no hair and red eyes?  It was there for only a second before it retreated into the utter darkness created when bright lights tried in vain to illuminate the dingy concrete which reflected nothing.  The dingy concrete which to Mordy suddenly seemed like his entire life.  Mordy’s heart began to pound so hard he could feel the pulse in his temples.

Mordy ran back into the warehouse screaming.  Something was wrong with the guys, dammit.  And he was not screaming.  He was yelling, dammit.  Something was wrong, as in not right.  Not right at all.  They were sick or something.  They weren’t coughing.  They were stuck in place like statues.  What the Hell could do that?  And something was in the shadows.  Joe yelled at Mordy to shut up and stop drinking cheap rot gut because it was messing up his noggin.  Didn’t he know Prohibition was over already?  Joe talked a lot of smack until he looked out the door.  Then he told Mordy to shut up again, and for him and Jerry Klein to get out their guns.

Mordy, Joe, and Jerry went out together to look at Cole and the other two guys.  Joe looked at the bodies while Mordy and Jerry pointed their guns at every shadow.  Joe said that they were still breathing, but had never seen anything like this.  Were they cold?  It was November, but Steel City didn’t get below freezing until December.  And this wasn’t frost bite or hypo-whatever-it-is when people get too cold.  All of them grew up poor enough to know what that looked like, even if they didn’t know what doctors called it.

Jerry saw something, but Joe told them not to shoot before Mordy could get a slug out.  No shooting until they knew what they were shooting at, Joe told them.  One shot could bring on John Law and Big Saul would not like it if he found himself driving his sedan up to a crime scene.  Jerry thought that Big Saul would prefer that they’d shoot whatever it was that was spoiling his pickup.  Jerry thought that they’d better start shooting before they wound up like Cole and the other two.  Then Jerry wondered why they were carrying guns anyway, if they didn’t shoot them once in a while.  And what did Joe think of that?  Joe?

Joe Kurtz was still crouched next to Cole.  Joe Kurtz was as still as Cole.  He had two puncture wounds in his neck with a single drop of blood coagulating beneath.  Mordy and Jerry noticed for the first time that Cole had similar puncture wounds in his neck.  Mordy and Jerry spent the next several minutes firing their guns into shadows.  When their guns ran dry, Mordy stopped and started to breathe again.  Once he caught his breath he asked Jerry if he hit anything.  Jerry didn’t answer.  That’s when Mordy felt the pain in his side.  His memory stopped there.

The light from the lamp cast long, black shadows across the room.  Mordecai heard something shuffle in the darkness and went for a gun that was no longer there.

“Who’s there!” he demanded of the darkness.

The lid of the sarcophagus rumbled as it slid open.  It slid towards Mordecai making an opening at the far end of the coffin, in the darkness.  Mordecai hurled a series of threats, insults, and an impressive list of gang connections at the dark opening.  Slowly, deliberately, soundlessly, two hands grabbed the edges of the sarcophagus.  As far as Mordecai could tell, whoever was in the sarcophagus wore all black, making it impossible to distinguish from the shadow.  It seemed to take forever before the head became visible.  It seemed to wear some sort of skull mask.  The skull of this mask was without mandibles, but instead had long fangs.  The eyes reflected redly, like a wolf’s, back at Mordecai.

Mordecai screamed in dumb rage and lunged at the dark thing.  A hand clutched his neck and held him back like a child.  Mordecai was six-two and weighed two bills easy.  He could handle any man this size.  Any normal man.  Any living man.  This… man… held him easy like his arm was made of iron.  Mordecai fumbled trying to break free.  Was he still too weak from whatever made him pass out, or was this guy really that strong?  Mordecai knew he was helpless, but struggled anyway.

“Mordecai Greenberg,” the man said.  His voice creaked like the old hinges of a basement door.  “You are a wicked man.”  The man leaned in closely and took an audible sniff at Mordecai’s neck.  Mordecai suddenly remembered a drunk Irish girl who wandered into the alley behind his apartment building on Saint Patrick’s Day.  He now knew how she felt.  “I can tell,” the man said.

“G-g-g-get stuffed, freak,” Mordecai stuttered out.

“I feed upon the wicked, Mordecai.”

Mordecai wet himself.  “N-n-no.”

“Then tell me where to find someone more wicked.  Tell me about Saul Cohen.  Tell me everything.”