Free Underground Vampire by David Lee Page B

the area had upgraded from
brothels and opium dens to art galleries and tourist museums she had lost her
taste for the area, although she particularly liked the Totem Pole the City had
purchased from the Tlingit to replace the one they’d stolen and been forced to
return to its rightful owners. 
    As usual, people were clustered
about the base of the 60-foot Totem craning their necks to see the top. 
She stood off admiring the raven guarding First Avenue when a woman wearing a
pilled orange sweater and blue stretch pants sausaging her significant behind,
with a watch cap pulled over her head like a navy blue condom covering a red
fire hydrant handed her a camera and told her to take her family’s picture and
be sure to get the Totem Pole in the shot.  Complying, she maneuvered the
herd so that the hook nosed figure on the Totem appeared poised to gouge out
the tops of their heads and snapped away. 
    Returning the camera, she realized
where she needed to go to find the Ratman.   Continuing through the
Square, she turned left on Jackson and walked towards the International
District, one of the downtown areas clinging to the old ways.  At an
intersection she watched as the WALK/DON’T WALK crazily flashed, the people
beside her stepped off the curb then back confused by the erratic
behavior.  Watching she realized there was a pattern although what it
meant was beyond her. Her cell phone buzzed and answering the phone a machine
voice said, “Morse Code.” 
    “I don’t remember the code, if I
ever actually knew it,” she said. 
     After a moment the voice said
“Would you like to learn?”  
    “No,” she barked. 
    After a long moment the voice said,
“We found an anomaly in the data.”
    “Are you going to tell me about
it?” 
    “It involves a spike in data to and
from a source in the Underground.”
    Trog communication was slow when
limited to language, she thought, “Who is it and what are they talking about?”
    “This would go faster if you would
allow us to install a plug in your head, we could give you wireless capability
and do a data dump whenever we had something,” said the voice, “think of it.”
    She did, the thought of the Trogs
dumping data indiscriminately into her brain creepy and repulsive, “No thank
you,” she said as politely as possible.
    “Who, what?”
    “Jason at Blood Simple seems to be
acquiring more, much more, than his existence requires.”
    “Send me a list of what he is
purchasing and copies of his email.”
    “Done,” said the voice as the line
went dead.
    Spotting the neon sign up the
block, she crossed the street and strolled along the sidewalk, a tourist
wandering the spicier part of town to a bar she hadn’t been in for almost a
century.
    Satisfied that the street was not
under any surveillance either from the Humans or the Underground, she turned
her attention to the Blue Anchor and extended her senses, feeling for power
radiating from an unseen but malignant source.  Satisfied, she waited at
the light, crossing with the signal.  Seattle police were enamored with
jaywalking citations and frequently issued them as prelude to altercation, a
fact that made her miss New York every time she went for a walk.  Casually
wandering down the sidewalk, she pushed through the door of the Blue Anchor, a
tourist soaking up Seattle’s seedier side.  
    The bar looked unchanged from the
last time she’d been in it and, although she knew it couldn’t be the same
Human, the elderly gentlemen stocking the coolers deeply resembled the Human
who’d helped her all those years ago.   Ignoring him, she walked
through the bar to the back where she entered first the men’s room then the
women’s, satisfying herself that they were both empty.
    Returning, she turned her attention
to the only patron, a large, enigmatic Indian standing passively at the
shuffleboard table watching her through sharp, dark eyes. His hair was thick
and lustrous, pulled back into a ponytail