The Vampire Murders: 24/?
by Nan Smith
Previously:
"Here." Clark indicated an inch square section of wall that, of course, wasn't wall at all. It was a white square of plastic set flush with the wall several inches above his eye level. If he hadn't been looking for it, he would never have seen it, and having X-ray vision certainly made it much easier to find.
"How did you see that?" Lois said. "Should we push it?"
That, of course, was the question. If they called the elevator, they would be able to reach the sub-basement. On the other hand, if someone happened to be in the elevator, they could be in trouble.
As the thought occurred to him, the wall started to move.
**********
And now, Part 24:
The afternoon was turning into early evening when William Henderson's phone rang. He restrained himself from snatching the receiver up too quickly. "Henderson."
"It's Jackson, sir," a voice said. "Our boys still report no sign of anything. Yet."
"I don't expect anything until it starts to get dark," Henderson said. "Just keep your eyes on things until then, just to be sure. And if you do see anything the least bit unusual, call me right away."
"Yes sir," Jackson said. "We've got the landing site that Superman spotted on camera from three directions. If they show up, we'll have it on video. No action around the cottage or parking lot yet, either. But --"
"But what?"
"Sergeant Schultz reports one of his men spotted Lane and Kent entering the Cost Mart by the main door about two hours ago. No one has seen them leave."
"Was it a positive ID?" Henderson quelled a faint sense of dismay, intermixed with exasperation. In his experience with Lois Lane, such a circumstance usually meant trouble.
"He was sure of Lane, and almost sure the guy with her was Kent."
"Hell --." Henderson bit off the expletive. "Well, if they've gotten into trouble, let's hope they can get themselves out of it. They know the risks. I'm not going to blow the one chance we've had to crack this operation open. Tell Schultz to pass along to his men to be aware that Lane and Kent are probably inside and may be prisoners." He didn't even want to contemplate the very real probability that if Church and his subordinates got hold of Lane and Kent, that they could wind up as two more "vampire victims" to add to the growing total, but considered it because he was a cop.
"Got it, boss." Jackson's voice was completely businesslike. Henderson hung up and reached for his jacket. It was close enough to evening, he decided, shrugging himself into the garment and glancing at his desk clock, which showed 16:36, that he should be on-scene, just in case. And if by chance, Lane and Kent did manage to come out of this unscathed, he would be strongly tempted to arrest both of them.
**********
The wall rolled smoothly aside, and behind it, the metal doors of an elevator parted smartly, to the soft "ting" of a bell. Two men, both in jeans and the green T-shirts, exited, glancing curiously at Clark.
Clark returned their look with one of the patented expressions of his alter-ego, designed to intimidate small-time law-breakers. Lois, standing directly behind him to present as little of herself to a clear view of the new arrivals as possible, fortunately was in a poor position to see his face.
It worked. The two men quickly looked downward at the carpet and moved past Clark with barely restrained haste. As they disappeared beyond the turn in the passageway and their voices faded, Lois released her breath in a faint sigh. She must have been holding it, Clark surmised, and probably wasn't nearly as sure of herself as she pretended, which didn't surprise him. The insane risks his partner sometimes took stemmed, he very well knew, not from overconfidence, but from a determination to prove to the world, and mostly to her father, that she deserved the reputation that she had established over the years she had worked at the Planet. Clark, of course, knew very well that she more than deserved the reputation and the awards that her derring-do had won her, but he also knew that no matter how many she earned, that her harshest critic, and one that would never be appeased, was herself.
But he never said so. He simply made it his business to keep her alive, because a world without Lois Lane in it was one he didn't want to contemplate.
"See?" Lois whispered. "The suit fooled them! I told you it would. Quick! Get in before it closes!"
Clark reached out to catch the closing door, and the two of them quickly entered the elevator.
"Better get behind me again," Clark said. "You should be wearing a green T-shirt and jeans to pass for a Cost Mart employee."
"I don't think it would matter," Lois said. "Did you notice the bulletin board when we came into the store?"
Clark hadn't. "What did you see?"
"My picture, in living color. I thought you saw it from what you said."
"I didn't, but I'm not surprised. Every criminal enterprise in Metropolis probably has your picture posted if they have any sense." Clark pressed the button for the bottom floor. "Okay; here goes nothing."
The doors closed and the car began to descend. Clark looked downward, lifting his glasses slightly in order to see below them. The hallway below seemed, at least for the moment, to be empty of life. Slightly relieved, he pushed his glasses back into place, but kept his super-hearing peeled for any changes.
At last, the car reached the sub-basement and came to a halt with a softly elegant, pneumatic sigh. The doors slid open to the discrete "ting" that announced its arrival.
Lois poked her head out from behind Clark's shoulder to survey the empty hallway. "I'd like carpet like this on my apartment's floor. You know, for a bunch of thugs, they sure do like the finer things in life. Who puts Persian carpet in one of these things?"
Clark could have said the same thing about her ex-fiance, but refrained. No one knew better than he how sensitive his partner was about that particular episode in her life, no matter how hard she tried to pass it off as a meaningless mistake. One day he intended to apologize sincerely to her for his own childish behavior, which, he freely admitted, had more or less pushed her into Luthor's arms, but he wasn't quite in the position to do that yet. A number of other things had to be resolved first, and then he might offer that apology. With luck, she wouldn't kill him first.
Slowly, he stepped out of the elevator into the hallway. Lois followed him.
**********
"Can you find the room where you were held?" Clark inquired softly.
"Yeah; I think so. It's this way." Lois took the lead, walking slowly, examining the wall on her left. It had been on this side, she recalled, and from the outside it showed no sign of a door. Partway down the hallway, she stopped. "I think it was about here."
Clark was fiddling with his glasses, as he frequently did for no reason she could discern. It was probably a nervous habit. Slowly, he reached forward and rapped softly on the wall.
"Shh!" Lois looked around quickly. "Do you want to let everybody know we're here?"
"I don't hear anybody," Clark said. He rapped on the wall a little farther down the way. "Hear that?"
"Hear what?"
"It rattled a little. I think your door is right here."
"Probably." Lois looked nervously up and down the hallway, but there was no sign anyone had heard the faint noise.
"How do you suppose they open it?" Clark stood back, surveying the wall. "Aha! Another camouflaged button." He reached up and pressed on another inch square of white plastic, slightly above his eye level.
The wall section slid smoothly open and Lois found herself looking in at a room she never wished to see again. "Yeah; that's it."
"Think you can find the way out from here?"
She shrugged. "I don't know. Our mysterious friend led me out, but there were so many turns I'm not sure I can find it."
"Well, which way did you go first?"
She pointed on down the hallway. "That way."
"Okay." Clark started slowly in the direction she had indicated. He was fiddling with his glasses again, she noticed. Then he reached into a pocket and produced an old fashioned compass.
"What's that for?" she inquired.
"It's a compass."
"I know that; but why do you have a compass?"
"I figured I could use it to tell which way we're going, so we know roughly which direction the parking lot tunnel is located."
"You know how to use one?" Lois inquired. "Because I don't."
"Sure."
"I've been meaning to get one of those new GPS systems for my car," she said irrelevantly. "They've been out for a couple of years now. My sister has one."
"Oh? How does it work?"
"I don't know. I haven't used it. Which way is the parking lot?"
Clark pointed, looking at his compass. "There's a place where the hallway turns ahead. I think we should go right."
"I hope you know what you're doing," Lois grumbled.
"So do I." Clark turned right. Lois followed, wishing that this place had some kind of landmarks, but all the walls were the same. They passed big double doors here and there in the walls, which must, she figured, open on storerooms for Cost Mart goods. And maybe, of course, other things not quite so legal, if Cost Mart were indeed a branch of Intergang. Which she was sure it was.
"How far away are we?" she asked, at last.
"I don't know for sure. There's another turn ahead. We need to turn left, this time."
"How do you know?"
"The parking lot is northwest of the main entrance," he explained, "and by the time we got into the back with the offices, it was mostly north of us. I'm trying to estimate roughly how far we've come, and where the tunnel should be from where we are. Maybe that'll be enough."
Lois hoped so, although she didn't have much faith in the little compass or in her partner's estimations, but since she had no better idea she followed along, her ears straining for any sound that might tell them that they weren't alone down here. Clark turned left and right, and left again and before long, as she had been the first time, Lois was completely turned around. Finally, Clark stopped.
"By my reckoning," he said, "the tunnel should be about a hundred feet that way." He pointed directly at a pair of doors that must open on one of the storerooms.
There was a sudden, loud click above them. Startled, Lois looked up in time to see a cloud of mist begin to spray from the vent in the ceiling, and at the same time, doors slid out of what had appeared to be blank walls, trapping them in a ten foot section of hallway.
She tried to push at the doors to the storeroom, beside her. Maybe if she and Clark could get into the larger space, the gas would be diluted. If they could make it to the tunnel.
Lois's eyes felt oddly unfocused, and her legs didn't want to work. She had a vague feeling that she was tipping forward into a swirling pit of blackness and mist and tried to save herself, but she couldn't lift her arms. From somewhere she heard Clark's voice, telling her to hold her breath, but she couldn't do that either.
Her last vague thought before she slid off into oblivion was that maybe this hadn't been such a good idea, after all.
**********
Clark saw Lois slump and tried to cushion her fall. They were probably on camera somewhere, he thought, which effectively barred Superman from going into action to save the day, so he allowed himself to fall to his knees and collapse to the floor.
As he did so, the hiss of gas stopped, and after a few seconds, the sections that blocked the tunnel slid silently back into the wall once more. Three men, wearing gas masks, who had been waiting on the other side, moved forward and one of them scooped Lois unceremoniously off the floor. The remaining two seized Clark by the arms and between them, dragged him after them along the floor, back in the direction they had come.
Moments later, they paused. Peeking under his lids, Clark saw the man carrying Lois over his shoulders like a sack of meal reach up and push the little plastic square above his eye level.
The wall slid open. He proceeded through and dumped his burden unceremoniously onto a chair. The two men dragging Clark followed and let him thump ungently to the carpet.
"That's it. Let's go," one of them said.
"Not yet," the man who had carried Lois said briefly. "The boss said there's one more." He chuckled softly. "Vampire's gonna be busy tonight."
There was a general laugh.
Clark didn't dare open his eyes now, as he was face up, and all three men were standing within feet of him. He concentrated on breathing naturally and listening to everything around him.
Footsteps were approaching, and a very familiar voice was speaking.
"Why are you doing this? I already promised I'll never tell anyone!"
"That's what we're going to make sure of," someone else said, sounding disinterested. "In there, now."
"My God! You've killed them!"
"They're not dead. Not yet, anyway." That was the voice of one of the men who had dragged him, Clark thought. "Sit down, Vlad. You got some time to kill."
"My name," the man addressed as Vlad said, "Is not Vlad!"
"Close enough," someone else said. "Let's go." That was evidently addressed to his companions. There was a general shuffle of feet, and then the soft click as the door slid shut. Clark opened his eyes.
Aloysius Filner, dressed once more in his vampire costume, stood staring at him. They were in the room where Lois had been imprisoned only a few days ago. And this time, Superman was imprisoned with them.
Great, Clark thought grimly. Just great.
**********
tbc
