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Zombie Rats And Revelations

M arisol jiggled the spare key in the lock of Annie’s apartment door. She nudged it open with her shoulder. Tobias trailed close behind, holding her garbage bag.

Annie’s apartment seemed stuck in time. Except for the sunlight through the blinds, it was the same as the night she half carried a drunken Annie inside. A stack of magazines needed to be recycled; a cup of partially evaporated coffee begged to be taken to the sink. Marisol moved to smooth over the crease in Annie’s unmade bed. Her hand paused over the sheet. It still felt like Annie lived here, like any moment she’d walk through the door and all Marisol’s grief would be fixed.

Tobias sighed and stared at the door. “What are we doing here?”

“She has something we could use.” Marisol crossed the bedroom to the closet and groped around the top shelf. Her outstretched pinky brushed against a shoebox. She stood higher on tiptoe. “It should be up here.”

Tobias snatched the shoebox with one hand and gave it to Marisol with an annoying amount of ease compared to her tiptoeing and stretching.

“Thanks.”

“What’s in it?” he asked.

She set the box on Annie’s dresser and popped the lid. From inside, she pulled out a tranquilizer pistol and a dart with a feathery end. “Annie would sometimes take work home with her and that included critters that needed tranquilizing.”

She led Tobias to the kitchen. There, she fished out a double boiler from a box, filling one pot with water and stacking both on the stove. With a turn of the knob, she fired up the burner. As the water heated, she rifled through boxes, cabinets, and drawers, acquiring a pestle, bowl, and funnel. Tobias handed her the garbage bag of drugs. She emptied it across the counter and popped her bottles of painkillers. The capsule broke open with a snap into the bowl. Marisol ground the other pills with a pestle. Once she collected the powder, she dumped it into the pot nestled over the boiling water. The powder bubbled into a liquid, melting into a potent cocktail that she’d funnel into the dart. If this thing was like Vincent, perhaps enough tranquilizer to flatten ten mice could sedate it. The reinforced trap would hold it.

Tobias loaded the pistol with the dart and extended his arm, appearing to test his aim. “Sure the tranq’s necessary? A spring trap could crush the critter as we speak.”

“Not this one. When you see it, you won’t believe your eyes.”

“Access denied,” the computer voice said after Marisol tapped her keycard against the alley entry to the labs.

“What?!” Marisol cracked a knuckle, preparing to punch the screen. Did Vincent do this to punish her for leaving? What a petty brick of shit.

“I got an idea.” Tobias jogged to the back of his car. On the trunk was a silver foil sticker, a parody of a cop’s badge. It said, Coupon for Free Donuts. He scraped the edges with his car keys and peeled the rest of it off. “How long do people look at badges, anyway?” He stuffed the sticker into a plastic window of his wallet.

At the information desk of the hospital, Tobias asked the volunteer to let him inside the labs to review details of the crime. When he said “a mnemonic memory technique,” the volunteer nodded, a sign of how much he impressed her. He flicked out his wallet, handed his business card, flashed the silly sticker, and shoved it back inside his pocket.

“I’ll see what I can do.” The volunteer disappeared into the bowels of the hospital.

Marisol leaned against the desk and tapped her foot. The mousetrap poked into her, stored in a flimsy draw-string backpack. If she were pacing the floor in her scrubs, she’d feel right back at home, but on the other side of things, she felt adrift. “Are you sure this will work?”

“Nope.” Tobias scratched the back of his head.

The volunteer returned with an exasperated Dr. Foster.

Their plan was doomed.

Tobias greeted her with a handshake. Her frown did not budge. As Tobias rattled off, “a part of an ongoing homicide investigation,” and “mnemonic memory technique,” Dr. Foster stood with her arms firmly crossed. Tobias did the business card and badge maneuver. With the way she blinked, there was no way she bought that little piece of foil.

“Follow me,” she said. “The labs haven’t been open since what happened to Dr. Park. I think the scientists can’t bring themselves to come in. Some say they hear strange noises there.”

Strange noises? Must be the mouse.

Dr. Foster’s key card hovered over the security pad. One swipe, and they’d be in. “Dr. Park was your friend.” Dr. Foster smiled and quirked her eyebrows as if she studied a clown expressing sympathy. “Sorry, is . I suppose she will always be your friend.”

“Yes.” Marisol sighed. She needed Dr. Foster off her back as well as that mousetrap .

Dr. Foster swiped the card, and the doors to the lab unlocked. Marisol crossed to the other side while Tobias held the door open. They had made it.

“Wait!” Dr. Foster called after her. Uh oh, did she finally notice Tobias’s complete lack of authority? What gave it away? Donut?

Marisol froze, preparing for the worst. “Yes?”

“The system automatically booted you for two no-call/no-shows.”

Fantastic to know work held an inverse relationship with her. She did everything for them, and the system spit her out when she was broken and scared. Perhaps her unbridled rage would ruin their cover instead.

Dr. Foster continued, “But I can talk to people and explain your situation. This weekend is the Rooks’ Legacy game. Half the city gets blind drunk, and we’ll need all the help we can get. Could you work the second shift?”

Marisol’s mouth dropped open, so she turned to Tobias for some help out of the situation.

He shrugged.

“I can work,” she replied with a wince.

Dr. Foster held out her smartphone and clicked through it. “Great! I’ll have the supervising nurse schedule you.” She followed them into the lab.

“Sorry. For this mnemonic thing to work, we need as few people as possible,” Tobias said.

Suddenly, Marisol and Tobias smelled fishy. Dr. Foster wiggled her nose. “Okay?” Then her pager beeped. She checked the message. “Let yourself out.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” Tobias said. The doors clicked behind them. Marisol waited for Dr. Foster’s footsteps to disappear. Then they tiptoed through the darkened hallway of the labs, lit only by the exit signs and emergency lights.

As they turned the corner near Annie’s lab, it felt like someone else’s legs carried Marisol as her limbs trembled numb. She placed a shaking hand against the lab’s window. Her pulse pounded in her ears. In a blink, she could see pooling blood, Annie’s lifeless hand, but in another blink, she saw the sheen of the clean tile. The memory of Annie was washed away. She closed her eyes and rested her forehead against the locked entrance.

Vincent’s voice echoed in her memory, soothing her. “You’re having a panic attack. I’m going to hold you. Copy my breathing.” She could hear his slow heartbeat and controlled breathing. She opened her eyes, that level of control now coursed through her.

Marisol turned the lab’s door handle to confirm that the security program kept the door locked. It didn’t budge. Of course, security locked it. The only time she was allowed in was when Annie opened it from the other side.

From the inside.

Annie had opened the door to the Bloodsucker. She knew him! Not only knew him but also trusted him enough to open the door of her lab at three a.m. Annie, how could you? And now, Marisol was the asshole, victim-blaming her best friend to absolve her ex of guilt.

A shriek traveled from the hollows of the basement. The mouse. Tobias turned on the flashlight function on his phone and led them down the stairs. Marisol used her phone as a flashlight, too, as they inched down the cave-like hallway toward the screeches.

“If that doc checks in with the precinct, she’ll figure out that we’re full of shit,” Tobias said. They followed screeching noises, but that’s what bothered him?

“I’m in mourning, and you’re helping me out. The story’s got legs. Besides, I know the person whose name is on the building.” Though if her keycard situation was any indication, name-dropping Vincent Varian might not be the “Get Out of Jail Free” card she was hoping for. They’d definitely be charged with trespassing and the worst crime of all: admitting she needed Vincent.

“Yeah, know him to be a real tool.” Tobias stopped. He furrowed his brow and lifted a finger to his lips. “Sh.”

She braced herself yet heard nothing. Then a few clicks, and the heating system thundered through the building. She sighed with relief. “The heating.”

Tobias shook his head.

Scratch. Scratch. Scratch .

“What was that?” Tobias shined his flashlight in the direction of the claw sounds. Nothing. He tilted his head toward the sounds and gripped Marisol by the wrist, pulling her down the hallway.

The scratching led them to the door to the boiler room. Tobias jimmied the handle. No movement. It was a dead end.

“Didn’t think far enough ahead. Damn.” Mouse-duty would have to go to Vincent. She did need him.

Tobias moved his flashlight up and down the walls of the hallway. He stroked his chin and settled the light over a fire extinguisher. Using the base of the extinguisher and brute force, he bent the door handle of the boiler room, busting the door free. “We’ll get Mr. Name on the Building to buy a new door.”

A stench wafted from the room. It was a wave of sulfur and the bacterial farts of rotting animal carcasses.

“Think it’s in here?” Tobias asked. He held a hand to his nose.

She stretched the neck of her sweatshirt across her nose. She moved the flashlight over the expanse of the room. Its beams captured small chunks of fur and flesh. Annie’s mouse had been down here devouring whatever poor rodents made their way into the room. “Yep. Definitely looks like it made a home here.”

They crossed the threshold into the boiler room. Their phones shut down. Tobias violently tapped the power button to restart his phone. Without a light source, only the faint aura of the exit sign lit the room. She backed into the wall. It served as her guide as she moved in the red-tinted darkness with shaking limbs.

“I think something just crawled over my foot,” Tobias announced.

“Don’t say that!”

“I’m not saying it to freak you out. Something actually did.”

The screen on her phone lightly glowed as the power returned, and she aimed the weak beam toward Tobias.

“It bit my foot!” Tobias kicked his leg and launched an object toward the wall.

She tapped the frozen flashlight function on her phone, and a light finally shot out. She pointed it at the wall.

Annie’s mouse stood, its spine crushed from hitting the wall. Its back popped into place, and with hair on end, it arched like an angry cat, releasing a guttural growl of a predator twenty times its size. As it leaned forward, its jaws opened with a screech. Marisol dropped her phone and pinned her arms against her ears. The piercing noise transported her to that night. The light projected shadows of large claws and spiny fur over the boiler room .

“Pick up the light!” Tobias ordered. He raised the tranquilizer pistol and steadied his arm with his other hand.

Marisol ran her thumb over her pendant and shone her flashlight toward the mouse. It rocked its weight back onto its haunches.

“Keep it steady!”

She held her phone with both hands. Another roar. A flash of oversized teeth. The mouse leaped. Click. Hiss. The dart met it in midair. The mouse tumbled to the ground on its side. Out cold.

Marisol broke into nervous laughter. “Nice shot.”

The intensity of Tobias’s glare didn’t break.

Her laughing morphed into teeth grinding. She fished the trap from her bag, scooped the super-mouse into the steel box, and pocketed the spent dart.

In the dark, Tobias’s eyes were as black as a predator’s. A sadness lingered in them, too, like he was an apex predator who mourned for his prey. Had his mind taken him back to the hospital when he killed that man? Or some other place and time? He certainly wasn’t present in the boiler room. At least, not until he tucked the gun in his waistband and scratched the back of his head. Then his pupils shrunk, and he was a man again.

Marisol wrapped her freezer with duct tape. The satisfying rip! suddenly became a disappointing pfft! when she reached the tape’s cardboard ring.

Tobias pushed the refrigerator back to its spot. “Think that will keep Cujo in place?”

“Sure. Cryostasis ala Novotny. Should hold until I can hand it off to someone more capable.” More capable meant Vincent, and her stomach clenched at the thought. She needed something to take the edge off. Marisol grabbed the last of her beers out of her fridge, popped the tops off, and handed one to Tobias.

“To our friend.” Tobias clinked his bottle against hers and downed it.

Marisol slid to the floor, resting her back against the refrigerator. “Cujo’s a rabid dog.”

Tobias grunted as he lowered himself to sit next to her. “I stand by my reference.” He licked a drop of beer off his lips. “We make a good team, kid.”

“We do.” She tugged at her sweatshirt as it suddenly became too warm. In the lowlight of her kitchen, his speckled eyes settled on blue, not like stained glass but enough of an echo of Vincent’s shade to psychosomatically fissure her ribs.

Maybe this pain came from resisting good enough. Warming herself in Tobias’s heat and bolstered by his strength, she could make the easy choice. He was someone who saved her, accepted her, and protected her and her family. He was someone who could grow old with her. She inhaled his essence: the sweat of hard work with a hint of fried dough, wood shavings, and beer.

He smelled like home.

Maybe, just maybe, she’d never have to admit about mistaken identities or mixed signals. Maybe the mistake was an opportunity.

He sighed, turning his head to face her. He looked at her like he had this morning. The gleam in his eye said she wasn’t a freak magically on two legs again; she was a promise.

She rolled the sleeves of her sweatshirt up. Tobias didn’t cause the hair on her arm to stand on end. Around him, she sensed her heart going on autopilot, operating with words like should and never want. Around him, she’d rub the scar above her knee and ache for the man who healed her, not the one who found her broken.

With him, there was no magic.

She darted her gaze to the floor. “She had to have known the Bloodsucker.”

“What?”

“I couldn’t save her because her lab is always locked. She’s the one that lets you in. She let him in. She trusted him.”

“Like a boyfriend or something?”

“Something. She was pretty tight-lipped about her love life. She got messages from someone but wouldn’t talk about it. I guess she was too ashamed to tell me.” Her throat tightened. If that were true, what kind of friend did that make Marisol ?

He emptied his beer and winced. “That’s assuming the security program worked. Data shows something wiped the memory of all the network computers. And I mean all. We’re talking from the thermostat to pocket calculators. Security only logged Annie’s keycard entry. We didn’t know you were in the building until we found you.”

Computers malfunctioning or not, the door was locked that night. Of this, she was sure. Everything in her had fought to bust open that door, to break open those windows. Her everything wasn’t good enough. She was unable to stop them. That memory she’d carry like a jagged scar. “The door was locked.”

He shook the empty bottle in his hand. “Do you got any more of these? I could stick around. Pick your brain for leads. Or find a radioactive spider to bomb and nail in a cabinet.”

Marisol eyed the orange and purple sky outside her window. The sun was setting. Night. Night meant Vincent. “No. Those were my last.” Her failure felt like it wedged the fissure in her ribs wide. She failed to help Annie and blamed Vincent for it. She picked at the label on her bottle.

“They collected her phone as evidence. I could tell them to unlock and check it. Follow that lead if they haven’t already.” Tobias stretched and headed for the door. “If you need anything, call me.”

She stopped picking the label and attempted a slight turn of her mouth. “Tobias?” She verged on saying it—the truth .

His hand lingered over the dead bolt.

I thought you were him. “I never really thanked you for all you’ve done.”

He turned his head back. His crooked smile cut into his laugh lines. “My pleasure.” He flicked the dead bolt and turned the doorknob. “I find it funny that you think all this weird stuff that’s been happening lately stems from a zombie rat rather than the obvious.”

“What’s that?”

“Our friend. I saw him early this morning. He told me you left the safe house, and he needed help keeping an eye out for you. Oh, and his gloves? Had blood all over them.”

Marisol squinted. “I’m not following.”

“You say magic serum. I’m sayin’—disappearing Izzy? Ripping up the Mob and the Bratva?” Tobias opened the door. “Maybe our friend’s getting to be a little too extra for the city.” He stepped one foot in the hallway. “Alas, if I see him tonight, I’ll send him right over to collect the zombie rat.”

The door closed behind him. She ripped the label clean off. Annie may have let the Bloodsucker in, but their mouse misadventure hadn’t changed the truth: Vincent was always dangerous.