Book: The First - Part: Two - Chapter: 16 - Installment: i

        The next thought Bev had was the startled sensation that someone was in her home.

        Laying in bed, eyes suddenly wide open, getting her bearings, clawing out of the fog of sleep she recognized the sound of the TV coming from the main room and she relaxed as she recalled her illegal guests.

They were illegal – something she would have to deal with sooner or later.  And with that thought she wasn’t so relaxed again.

        Edmond was sitting up on the couch again.  Slouching, really.  Eyes sunken, lids heavy. Carly sat beside him, watching Scooby-Doo un-mask an apparent ghoul that looked more lively than Edmond.

        “I don’t really know what to say.” Edmond mumbled.

        “Don’t apologize.”

        “I don’t think I was.”

        “I totally forgot about that bottle when I said you could stay here.”

        “Thank you.”

        “That hardly seems appropriate.”

        “For taking care of me last night. Generally and specifically.”

        “Well I’m sorry.”

        “I swear. I’m never going to drink again.” He managed a wry smile.

        “Shhhh!” Carly hushed them. The cartoon was approaching its climax.

        Edmond and Bev shared a smile. They both knew that as much as he had best intentions, his pattern was not promising. He might be capable of quashing the urge for a long time, but the urge always seemed stronger than he was.

        Beverly crossed into the kitchen and dug out the coffee. Scott was going to need it. For his part, he watched the last few minutes of Carly’s TV show and then cleared his throat.

        “Look, we should get out of your way. I’ve been thinking. We’re just going to get you in trouble. There’s no reason that the shit I’ve got myself in should be your problem too. No one even need know we were here.”

        “Yeah, about that...”

“If I can keep moving for another day or so, the idea of quarantining us – Carly in particular – will be ridiculous. I suspect I’ll be looking at a different small room for a little while at the very least.”

        “You can’t go out in your condition. You look like hell. Christ, you’ve got newsprint smeared all over your face.”

        “And I’m betting my face is smeared all over news-print.”

        “That too. But right now you look like the world’s worst hangover. Any authorities see you like this they aren’t going to think you’re healthy. I’m not saying you can stay long, but you owe me an on-the-record discussion, and you need liquids – internally and externally administered – and probably a nap after you’re totally sobered up. You aren’t in any danger of being found here.”

        She made coffee and ran out around the corner to get some bacon and eggs.  The entire time she was structuring questions in her head – the whole gamut; how long were Edmond and Shale partners?; how did he and Carly escape from the hospital, presumably unscathed?; where did they go to escape the authorities, before her?; what, if anything, more did he know about Tanya Meyers?

It wasn’t until she got back to her house that she thought about her necessary return to the hospital – to the story as the world saw it.  Somehow, having one of the key aspects of the event right in her living room made her forget that she was one step ahead of the story on TV and that until she could bring it to light safely, she still had to have the appearance of being wrapped up in the breaking news.

It was the breaking news on her TV as she walked in her door that brought her back to the present.

“Human rights activists are taking up the case of the quarantined staff and patients in the hospital.”

        The report cut directly to a sound bite from a tall albino.  “None of these people have exhibited any symptoms.  The police officer who went on the rampage went mad after hours.  These people’s liberty is being denied due to the paranoia of the scientific establishment.”

        Edmond muttered, “Tanya Meyers took a week from when she last saw her husband.  He took at least that long too.  The scientific establishment has damned good reason to be paranoid, Henry.”

        “Henry Visserman’s always good for a quote.  Even when he isn’t pithy he’s interesting to watch.  He’s so freaky looking.  He is good TV.”

        “I’m betting City Hall wishes you’d use him less.  We sure do in the department.”

        “Captain Anderson isn’t afraid to let us know.  So hey, I’ve got to call the news director and make like everything is normal – so if I can entreat you two to keep it quiet for a few minutes so I can do some effective lying...”

#

        “You can stay as long as you need,” she shouted from her bedroom.  “I’ll be back in about 12 hours or so, things have settled a bit at the hospital and they’ll have the news team into a groove by now.  So unless things get really crazy I’ll be on rotation from here out.”

        Edmond stepped into her door way.  A fleece blanket wrapped around him.

        “Thanks again.”

        “You cold?”

        “I’m fine.  Really.  Except for the... sorry about that.”

        “It was stupid of me.  But that’s one more way here is safe.  You won’t find any more.  I’ve got to go.  Eat whatever you like.  Be prepared when I get back, neither of us is sleeping until we’ve gone at it.”  An awkward pause.  “I swear that wasn’t Freudian.”

        “I understood what you meant.”

Chapter 17

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Catching up in many ways

I WAS SO FAR AHEAD!

So very very far ahead.  But since early spring I have been doing virtually nothing but losing ground.  Sometimes I'd stem the flow a bit, but more often than not since April I've been letting entire weeks go by without adding anything to the buffer of written material I had.  Bah.

I kind of knew that once I got to this date that I would have the opportunity to get back on the horse, so to speak.  Well, here I am.

My film has finished up most of it's intense business - I mentioned in other posts that we had broadcast, DVD and Theatrical deals to do a bunch of work on.  We have agreed to more theatrical dates in October and will be doing the international DVDs soon, but all of that is relatively small-beans and is built upon work done previously.  Meanwhile my daughter has turned one year old and her Mum is finished with maternity leave which leaves me as Mr. Mom three days a week and working at my day job considerably less.

I am hoping that this will allow me to get more done.  Tonight for example, after dinner I figured Jodie would like to take an hour or so to play with December one on one.  That works well for me to take some time here to get some writing done.

I have no buffer left.  I ran out this week.  I had managed in the past few weeks to add a couple of installments which just barely got me to this date... but kind of not - I should have posted one more installment earlier this week in order to keep on schedule.  I actually did have something ready, but I wasn't happy with it.  I figured it was better to take another run at it than post something I wasn't satisfied with.

So, I'm going to go update some internal links and fix up that installment now.  I may even get to posting it tonight.  Failing that it'll probably be a few days.

It'll take a few weeks I expect before I can begin to predict how my new writing schedule will really be.  How often I can post, or if I'll actually make enough headway that I'll get ahead again and be able to post on a pre-determined schedule.  I'll check in with another note once the picture starts to coalesce.

Book: The First - Part: Two - Chapter: 15 - Installment: ii

        Simon cursed his ill-reasoned choice to exercise his independence.  He could have taken one of the Lazarus’ fleet of vehicles when he left for the evening, but instead he had chosen to not be in anyway beholden to the organization’s resources.  He had bussed into the city from the farm.  That had not been a big inconvenience in the light of day, but after midnight he was limited to night busses with considerably reduced schedules and reach.  It had been necessary to transfer twice already and even so, the last bus would still leave him with a significant walk to the farm.

        He didn’t bother wondering how much faster he could have made the trip had been able to use hyper-time.  That had already been dispelled for him in training.

        “Hyper-time will work for sprints, but not any extended distance.  You can’t access it long enough.  You could cover several blocks perhaps,” instructed Sylvette. “I can make it roughly a dozen.  It’s been a long time since I’ve bothered.  Hyper-time is best used for ending things quickly.  If you want to get somewhere fast, use a car and hope the traffic isn’t too bad.”

        The bell to signal for a stop rang.  Someone else had rung it.  Simon snapped out of his deep thought and looked up to see a young woman rising out of her seat, crumpling an empty potato chip bag.  It was his stop too – as close as the bus would get to the farm.  He would have a bit of a walk first.  Perhaps a short enough walk that he could effectively cover it in hyper-time, but he had been strictly counselled to not waste hyper-time on trivia, you never knew when you were going to need it.

        He stepped down off the bus behind the woman.  She had already set off at a determined pace in the same direction he was going.  If his night vision hadn’t been improved by the transformation she would already hardly be visible in the dark.

        The first driveway passed and she walked on ahead of him.  There weren’t many options out here.  She couldn’t be going much further than where he would turn, or she would have got off at a later stop.

        A second driveway disappeared behind them.  The woman glanced over her shoulder at Simon.  She too was aware of their coincidental proximity.  Simon realised that he was effectively following her and slackened his pace.  He didn’t want to seem to be in any way threatening.

        When she turned up the same side road he had to turn up in order to get to the Lazarus’ training complex, his intention to avoid creeping her out fell apart.  As he himself arrived at the foot of the road he stopped and watched as she walked on ahead of him.  As he watched in consternation the woman turned and looked back – probably to see if he was still following her.  She did not get the answer she was looking for.  She turned and kept walking, the up-tick in her pace perceptible to Simon from the distance between them.

        Shit.  Now what?

        His answer turned out to be that he would wait.  His night vision was keener than a normal human, so he waited until she had disappeared into the night by the measure of his ability to see, then he followed after her, content that he could not be perceived to be following her any longer.

        Thirty minutes later he was approaching the disguised entrance to the training complex – an actual equipment barn with a concealed inner door – when from behind a rusty pick-up truck sprung a voice.

        “You don’t look like much of a farmer.”

Simon barked out a startled cry.

        “And I’d say that settles it; you aren’t following me.”

        A thin young woman, stepped out from behind the truck.  It was the woman who had got off the bus.  She stood in the damp grass shivering.  For the first time Simon noticed that she had no shoes.  She stood in her stocking feet.

        “You’re one of them, aren’t you?  I think you call yourselves ‘Lazarus’?”

        Swallowing deeply, Simon couldn’t begin to figure out how to respond.

        “I don’t know who is in charge of hiding your tracks on the internet, but it seems you could use some help.  Perhaps we could make an exchange.  There is a vampire after me.”

Chapter 16

Book: The First - Part: Two - Chapter: 15 - Installment: i

     Fifteen dollars and fifty one cents. Sarah had expected there would be more. The donation box had one ten dollar bill, two two-dollar coins, one loonie, five dimes and a penny.

     What kind of cheap bastard ditches a penny in a collection box? There’s a fine line between ‘every penny counts’ and insult. Of course who am I to judge?

     There had been three cheques as well. Two for five and ten dollars respectively, the third for fifty. But she had no way of cashing them. Certainly no legal way, not that she’d acquired them legally.

Eleven dollars had bought a cheap single gig USB drive at a convenience store. Two dollars paid for an hour of time on their back-room computer. The rest had paid for the ubiquitous soft drink and bag of chips special. She pocketed the chips for later and sipped at the rootbeer while she worked.

     She used the internet connection to connect to the University server and download from her account some code she had been working on. She ran the program from the USB stick and really got busy.

     The program was the current version of something she’d been tinkering with for a directed studies course she was taking. She had already staked out territory, intellectually speaking, at school as the girl who knew more than anyone about searching the internet. Clearly it was her specialty, and her advisor was already talking about the potential for the digital gizmo in question to be the cornerstone of her graduate studies. That was still two years away.

     Complex search strings were a game for her. A puzzle. How could she craft a query to ferret out precisely what she was looking for with as little search noise as possible? Of course there was also interesting information to be discovered in the noise. Sarah’s understanding of searches had developed to the point where she could glean nearly as much useful information from the background data in some cases as from the most relevant hits.

     The program bordered upon breaking privacy laws. It accessed her standing accounts with over two dozen general and specialized search engines and compared the data on who – or at least what IP addresses – were searching for what and looked for patterns.

     First she honed a search for vampires, eliminating as much obvious fiction as possible. Of course to the world at large everything to do with vampires was fiction – and that was the catch. What she had to find were people who, like her, knew vampires were real. Making this even more complicated were the large number of deluded and fantasy prone people – like far too many of Ruthven’s peers – who couldn’t tell the difference between their imaginary vampires and the real world. Developing segments to filter out those hits could only be marginally successful in the time she had.

     Sarah had no idea what to do with the vast number of recent news items about the “Vampire Virus Outbreak” at VGH, fortunately it was easy to filter out with a simple time-based function, so she could run comparisons both with and without. It was a good thing she did.

     There was a natural spike in relevant worldwide results over the past forty-eight hours. The local results were understandably above the mean due to the outbreak being Vancouver based news. Focussing even closer on those results revealed a minor spike from one related set of IPs. Some pedestrian investigation revealed that the results came from the downtown head office of the Lancaster Corporation. Someone in the Lancaster building was following the outbreak developments very closely. This in itself was not remarkable. It became more interesting when she compared the historical results. This is where the time she had spent crafting her program paid off. The automated comparison search she had built into the code ferreted out a result that wouldn’t have seemed too remarkable if it were not for the outstanding recent spike from the Lancaster Corporation. She would not have given much more than curious notice to the number of searches that were attributed to companies across the lower mainland – barely statistically significant – that were owned under the umbrella of Lancaster Holdings.

     Bingo.


Installment ii


I

Book: The First - Part: Two - Chapter: 14 - Installment: i

      The decision had been made.

      “You’ve never done anything like this before.”

      “We’ve never had an opportunity like this before.” Marcel answered Lancaster. “You have no argument.”

      “I don’t make it my business to dictate your choices. I merely fund the organization and make suggestions as they occur to me.”

      “Very well. I’ll release the Nosferatu once we hang up.”

      “What do you intend to do with him?”

      “Do? I don’t think we should pretend we can control him. I expect he will set his own agenda.”

      “Indeed. But we should have plans of our own. How and when do we reconnect with him?

      “He is a public figure. Sylvette has been to his apartment. Contacting him is not an issue. Our priority has been making a decision so as to get him back into the world before his absence is conspicuous. He went to rather extraordinary lengths to bring us to him. I anticipate he has spent a long time considering how he will benefit us. Once we’ve extended an olive branch he’ll provide us options. We will have the relative luxury of an extended duration to consider our options.  Right now, we have to act in order to preserve the opportunity.”

      “Very well.”

      “Do you wish to be here? Would you like to meet him?”

      “Let’s not. Best to keep some cards close to our chest. I too am a public figure. Better he not know that, should this turn into some imbroglio.”

      “As you wish.”

      “Though...”

      “Yes?”

      “This is separate, but relates. It would render my connection moot.”

      “What are you thinking?”

      “I want you to consider the possibility of going public.”

      “Seriously?”

      “Absolutely.  I’ve been thinking about it for some time, and this hospital outbreak only strengthens my line of thinking.”

      “We don’t believe the outbreak has any connection to our concerns.”

      “Nonetheless, if we were public our perspective could influence the proceedings and should it prove that it is related... do you not think that being involved could be critical?”

      “How am I supposed to argue against that?”

      “Think about it. I am planning to run for election. ”

      “Upcoming?”

      “Yes. For Mayor. Anchoring my candidacy on an announcement of this magnitude would be a political coup of enormous proportion.”

      “Very. Manipulatively so.”

      “If you are surprised by my ambition, Marcel, I am surprised by your observational failure.”

      “Not surprised by your ambition. It just strikes me as a cynical way of achieving it.”

      “I’ve been planning this for some time. It hadn’t intersected with your interest ‘til now, so I haven’t mentioned it. This opportunity is just good timing. It would be ridiculous not to capitalize on it.”

      Marcel drew a long breath as he considered his patron’s expression – a visage of solid commitment.

      “I cannot make such a choice without grave consideration.”

      “I wouldn’t expect otherwise.”

#

  
      The difference in air pressure equalized with a hiss as the cell door opened. The metal rods that prevented the door from opening more than a crack had been removed and the old vault opened wide.

      The nosferatu stood facing the door as if he had been waiting with eternal patience for the door to open. He certainly would have had the required patience, but it could be just as simple for him to have leapt into position as soon as the door began to cycle.

      Marcel found that through the roil of his loathing he had nothing to say. The conflict he felt between his compulsion to destroy the vampire and the strategic logic of keeping it alive bound his tongue.

      Nikolai cocked his head curiously as if inviting, if not challenging the leader of the Lazarus to engage him. But there was no response forthcoming. He almost shrugged, then with an amused twitch of his mouth that approximated a sly fragment of a smile he stepped out of the cell and stepped around Marcel.

      The Lazarus’ commander raised his hand, and placed it forcefully on the vampire’s chest.

      Nikolai looked coolly at the hand, then up to Marcel.

      “The human touch is so unique. Are you a dualist? Do you see the vampire’s absence of soul as being at the core of our curse? I don’t see how that can be. If we require mind and soul to operate, then how is it I am still here?”

      “Do not be distracted from our deal, vampire.”

      “Hmmm... and what of morality? Good. Evil. Am I inherently evil if I have no soul? Or am I simply in an irresolvable position? You cannot tell me that men with souls commit no evil. How can I not be capable of good? Ah, but that is your gamble, isn’t it? You look into yourself. You measure your capacity for good and evil and you see there is hope for me.”

      “Don’t waste your time getting around to paying dividends on our trust. My patience will be short.”

      Nikolai looked back at Marcel’s hand and shrugged it away.

      “I have no doubt.”

      As he reached the door that led into the night the vampire turned back to Marcel.

      “The Trinity is meeting... here. I trust you understand the implication.”


Chapter 15

Book: The First - Part: Two - Chapter: 13 - Installment: i

Simon’s first foray into the world had been cut short by the call to action from Lazarus dispatch. Sylvette had decided upon a random impromptu mission which had served as his first field experience and had resulted in the capture of a vampire.

Truth be told, Simon had been rather relieved. His first taste of the world at large with his new senses had been a bit overwhelming. Not frightening. He had no resistance to getting back on the horse the next evening and heading back into society.  But his first taste, that previous evening had overwhelmed him quickly.

This time was already different. He wanted to get out in the world, but he also needed to cool his jets. Perhaps he was being unreasonable, but being left out of the loop of the Lazarus’ plans for the vampire, Nikolai, rubbed him wrong.

I was right there when it happened. It’s a lousy secret. Obviously I’m a part of the team, they wouldn’t give just anyone this kind of power.

It had not taken him long to find a willing partner, he could practically smell her interest. Was that an unfair advantage? Certainly not. She wanted him, that was obvious. He was merely obliging her desire.

The sex was a curious mixed bag. On one hand the sensation was in a completely different world from his former life. Not his earliest, uber-excited romps of his late teens, not even the intimate and precisely tailored loving of his marriage at its best could compare to the aurora of sensation he felt now. His own performance, he knew, was Olympic in the least. The vitality he brought to the table would leave his young partner spoiled, and that in its own right was perversely exciting to him. Yet, there remained a reciprocal void. He couldn’t blame her for her perfectly natural human inability to match him. She certainly wasn’t Sylvette.

“Oh my god! Good thing we started early. We have got to do that again.” She confirmed everything he already knew. “It’s like you knew exactly where and how to touch me.”

It wasn’t in fact that way, but it had been close. His ability to sense whether what he was doing was working and how well gave him the right answers practically as quickly as she knew it herself. It was as though he was playing “hotter/colder” with her nervous system. He figured he wasn’t even that good at it yet.

It had been fun. But it was lacking. As he would leave her forever wanting to return to that experience, he too had been left with a new notion of how high the bar could be set and she was not matching up. He would have to try again.

“Hey wait. We aren’t finished.”

He snorted derisively.

“Yeah, Lady. We are.”


Chapter 14

NEWS: The Beast of Bottomless Lake

I previously mentioned that I have been very busy over the past few months.  Mostly I’ve been occupied by finishing the DVDs of the feature film I co-produced.  ...oh yeah... did I mention that?

I probably did, but let’s assume this is the first you’ve heard of it.

So yeah, I made a movie.  I’m multi-talented.  And not just some kind of student/practice/vanity/hack film, which for so many people seems to be the assumption.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people say “oh wow, that was a real movie” or similar sentiment.  Yep this is an honest-to-god professionally produced feature film.  Not all my creative endeavours are DIY endeavours like Necropolis.

The Beast of Bottomless Lake if I do say so myself, surpasses the constraints of its budget. We sold the film to SuperChannel and is available on DVD worldwide by order from our website.  Finalizing those deals was an enormous undertaking and it impinged anywhere from profoundly to completely upon my writing (depending on which week you put under the microscope) – which is to say nothing about the ongoing climb up the learning curve of being a new parent, or the distraction of the Vancouver Canucks’ ascent to the Stanley Cup.  In any case it took a lot of attention away from Necropolis.  Fortunately a lot was “in the can” while I lost more and more ground.  But recently I’ve been gradually easing back into it, so all is good.

But I am here to plug the film.

Don’t let the name fool you. The Beast of Bottomless Lake is not a horror film. It’s not even much of a creature-feature (though it wouldn’t be inappropriate to classify it as such). It is, in fact, a comedy.  If you go and look for bad reviews on line (and I freely admit they exist – though they are well outweighed by positive reviews – and many of those are characterized by a similar pleasant surprise to those who have declared it a “real movie”) you will find that they are fairly consistently posted by people who state that they are disgruntled by the fact that the film is not a horror.  So, mea culpa, the name is a bit misleading.   But that was never intentional. I am even going out of my way to steer you clear of that notion.  The Beast of Bottomless Lake is emphatically NOT a horror.  It is a comedy.  You should be  laughing at the antics of the characters and their circumstances, not at the quality (or lack thereof) the make-up and effects. Comedy.
If you are a Stargate fan, our lead actor is David Nykl – Dr. Zelenka from Stargate:Atlantis – and several other faces from the franchise make appearances in Beast...

The DVD is full of extras – a bunch of deleted scenes; two commentaries (one with the director, Craig March, and myself  and a second with David Nykl hosting our science advisor Stan Orchard and the editor of Jr. Skeptic Magazine, Daniel Loxton) there are also three behind the scenes featurettes and a link to additional on-line footage.

So by now, the question arises... what are you waiting for?  Get on over to our web page and order a copy now.