Chapter 18

The funeral home was a white clapboard sided thing with black shutters and a curved driveway. Sort of a grim Georgian rancher left over from the prefab homes of the 1950s. It had a utilitarian, matter-of-factness to it that fit in well with the blue-collar neighborhood.

We walked in the front door. Inside, the industrial carpet was a delightful shade of turquoise green and the place smelled of floral deodorizer.

There was a red door with a slide-y sign in black plastic that read “Director”. I knocked gently and the door swung open.

The director’s desk sat empty.

“No one seems to be home,” I remarked.

We stood in silence for a moment.

“I suppose the polite thing to do would be to wait inside his office for him to return.”

“That seems like the only polite thing,” replied Killian.

“Perhaps you’d like to wait outside the door in case he returns.”

“I think perhaps I would.”

I slipped inside and began searching through the tidily stacked papers on his desk. In his outbox, I found an invoice for yesterday’s service. I didn’t want to screw over the guy. I know what a pain it is when you’re sure you left an important paper somewhere, so I just copied down the billing information and then slipped back out into the hall.

“Did you see him?”

“Not a soul,” said Killian.

We stood there for a few more moments.

“This is strange, isn’t it? Just that the door would be open, his office would be open, and no one would be here…” I got that old heebie-jeebie feeling again, “We have to go down and check the mortuary, don’t we?”

I could see Killian didn’t like it any more than me, “Yes, I believe we do.”

“Crap.”

I unholstered my gun and palmed a stake. We walked to the end of the hall and pressed the elevator button going down.

The doors opened with a ding.

We exited into a white morgue, cold storage lockers fitted into the walls.

“You as creeped out as I am?” I asked.

“Yes,” he replied.

All the lights were on, but no one appeared to be home.

I walked over to the first locker and pulled on the handle. It was locked, but I didn’t see a keyhole.

“I can’t open it.”

Killian came over and had no more luck than I did on any of the units.

“Well,” I said. “It appears to be a dead end.” I looked over at Killian, “I am COMPLETELY okay with that.”

“As am I,” he said, his shoulders relaxing below his earlobes for the first time since we came into the basement.

“I guess we do have an afternoon free to fill up with bad talk shows after all.”

“It sounds more appealing with each passing moment.”

We started walking towards the elevator and, out of my little green energy habit, I flipped the lights off.

And that was when I heard every single one of those sixteen cold storage lockers open at once and the sound of sixteen tray tables slide out.

“Fuck!”

I flipped on the light.

Sitting up in each of the tray tables was a dead person. Except, not dead anymore. Vampires. Young, hungry vampires. Older vampires have a little more wisdom and maturity to their undead years. The young ones were missing basic table manners, like, “Don’t eat your guests.”

In unison, they hissed and then were coming at us.

I banged at the “up” button but the elevator door was not opening. I swung around and caught a vamp with my stake as I grabbed a scalpel from a table and plunged it into the heart of another.

“Killian, there are too many of them!”

I grabbed Killian and we ran up the steps of the emergency exit. I sure wished the fire marshal had a nice little “in case of vampire attack, break glass” box, but we were on our own. I fired off a round and it connected with something that was coming at us fast.

We ran out onto the first floor, tore down the hall, and made it outside into the safety of daylight.

“WHAT THE FUCK??!” I shouted, breathing heavily.

Killian looked at his arm. He had a scrape that was bleeding pretty good. I brought him over to the car and pulled out a first aid kit, “They get you?”

He shook his head, “I am merely grazed.”

I got him wrapped up and gave him a sympathetic pat.

Then, I pulled out a tourniquet tube from the kit and popped open my gas tank. After a quick search around the back of the building, I found a watering can that the gardener forgot to put away. Probably because something tried to eat him.

The surgeon general warns not to do this, but with a couple sucks, I had the gas flowing through the tube into the watering can at a steady rate. Thank god I filled up before we left. I carried the can over to the funeral home and sprinkled it everywhere I could find. I then took out a match and flicked it at the building.

It went up like a roman candle.

Killian stood next to me as we watched the place burn down like the Atlanta scene in Gone with the Wind , “We should probably leave before we’re spotted.”

“Let’s hope the South doesn’t rise again,” I replied.