02. sorry, we're dead: a supernatural noir.
SORRY, WE’RE DEAD: a supernatural noir
featuring:
• Virgil Meriweather, a werepanther (Idris Elba). A sharp dresser with a broad sense of humor.
• Warrenwick Gam, a vampire (Byung Hun Lee). A bit of a curmudgeon and a dead shot with a Derringer.
• Abigail LaVeau, a zombie slayer (Berenice Marlohe). Definition of a femme fatale.
• Stevie, a cabbie (Sung Kang). One of the best getaway drivers in the city, with dreams of opening a restaurant.
• Marian, a cigarette girl at a gambling hall (Kelly Reilly). Carries a torch for Warrenwick, and gladly passes on information to the pair of private eyes.
“This is beneath me.”
“Is eating and paying your bills beneath you, too? Because last I checked, those required money. And at least this asshole’s wife is paying your fees.”
“Man works in a shiny high-rise, wears a diamond tie pin, and this is where he brings his secretary for a romantic rendezvous.”
“Wealth is no hallmark for taste,” Stevie said sagely, finger tapping a staccato rhythm on the steering wheel. “Just look at me. Livin’ in a shoebox with three families of cockroaches. With those funds, I’d be a champagne and caviar aficionado. Baby grand in the front parlor. I’d throw the most sophisticated and artistic elbow-rubbing parties-”
“And instead you’re stuck driving me around. This your way of asking for a raise, Stevie?”
“You’re lucky I’ve got a taste for adventure, War. I pass up fat fares for you every time you call me.” He snapped his gum between his teeth, an old fidgeting tic.
“By now you should realize this job is hardly an adventure-and would you stop that?”
“What?”
“You know what. Every time you pop that gum I have to resist the urge to snatch it out of your mouth.”
“Hey, show a little sympathy-if anyone understands what it’s like to have an oral fixation-”
“Shut it,” Warrenwick hissed, shifting in his seat with a creak of springs and lifting his camera. “Looks like Mr. Greene and his lovely blonde secretary are done for the evening.”
Stevie glanced at his watch. “It’s only been twenty minutes. If I were Mrs. Greene, I wouldn’t care if he was straying-I’d just be disappointed that the girl he was two-timing with was settling for Mr. Greene.”
Warrenwick adjusted the lens of his camera, bringing the adulterous pair into sharper focus. The shutter whirred and clicked, capturing the embrace and kiss as they paused beneath the street light. “Okay, that should be proof enough for the client. Let’s-holy shit!”
“What, what?” Stevie exclaimed as he clawed the door open. “Hey, careful with that handle!”
There were a lot of preconceived notions about vampires thanks to popular fiction. That they could move faster than the human eye could follow. Transform into wolves or rats or bats. Fly. Had superhuman strength and hypnotizing eyes.
And sure, some of that wasn’t really an exaggeration. But not even a vampire could move fast enough, sometimes-especially when a horde of zombies had fixed their attention on a pair of hapless humans. For creatures most often referred to as lurchers, they could be surprisingly fast when they’d spotted a meal. The secretary had just begun to shriek when Warrenwick’s hands fell upon the first zombie, whipping it about so quickly the arm he held snapped like a brittle toothpick. His balled up fist struck its temple, caving in the bone with a wet crack, coating his fingers with gelatinous brain matter.
Before the shudder of revulsion could crawl down his spine, he’d grabbed the next lurcher and lifted it clear over his head, throwing it against the closest wall. It slid down to the concrete, limbs and back too mangled for it to do much more than groan and twitch. The third zombie had its hands around the secretary’s arm, inexorably drawing her towards its mouth; Warrenwick twisted its head around so sharply that there was a moment where its eyes locked with his and focused before the faint light behind the pupils flickered and died completely.
The fourth zombie was literally disarmed, the fifth bludgeoned by said arms until the eyesockets dimpled inwards with a meaty pop and it toppled backwards stiffly like a felled tree.
From the moment the pack had rounded the corner and lunged towards the couple to the second the last lurcher crumpled to the ground like a string-cut puppet, perhaps all of three minutes had passed. And in those three minutes Warrenwick’s second best suit had been utterly ruined by gore and the adulterous Mr. Greene’s throat had been ripped out by yellowed teeth.
The private eye, his chest heaving, looked down at the man and tried desperately to ignore the bittersweet tang billowing up from the body like a drugged cloud. He could feel his incisors lengthening-tugging at his sore gums, brushing the edge of his lip. The compulsion to crouch down amidst the rotted bodies and garbage of the street, to bury his face in the oozing wound and lap at the blood before it went cold and clotted, was very nearly overpowering.
The sharp crack of a gun snapped him out of the addict’s haze, and he pushed back his hunger as he turned. Stevie stood over the lurcher that had been crippled-now snuffed out entirely by a nine millimeter bullet to the head. The cabbie lowered his smoking revolver and fixed Warrenwick with a knowing eye. “This is certainly a fucked up mess.”
“Since when have you had a gun?”
“Since that harpy hitwoman almost ripped the roof off my cab trying to get to Virgil. Keep it in the glove box. Knew it’d come in handy sooner rather than later. Whaddaya wanna do, War? Cops are probably on their way-you really wanna spend the next two hours sitting under hot lights explaining yourself to Detective Joe Somebody?”
He glanced over at the secretary, standing frozen in obvious shock, the sleeve of her dress torn and fluttering in the breeze but otherwise unscathed. She gaped down at her ex-paramour with glazed eyes, jaw working like a landed fish. The chivalrous thing to do would be to comfort her, sit her down in the cab out of the wind, try and draw her out of her horror with some firm words and a warm hand to hold until the police arrived to take over.
But as far as Warrenwick was concerned, chivalry had died long before he had, and this was hardly the moment for noble gestures. He made a futile effort to wipe and shake the worst of the rotted splatter from his jacket and slacks, nodded at Stevie, and double-timed it back to the cab.
“God, I hope Mrs. Greene still pays me,” he muttered as they sped off into the night, the wail of sirens chasing the exhaust pipe.