Deader Still by Anton Strout

metallic Gigeresque spaceship in a tank top and undies.
    Connor and I continued down the movie theater aisle and keycarded our way through a door marked “H.P.,” heading into the Department proper. The general bull pen area of the front offices of the Department of Extraordinary Affairs was a spacious cubicle farm. The far wall was carved with arcane runes of warding and below them was a series of doors. I had no idea where most of them went, but with new divisions springing up every month, it was no wonder. Connor and I moved past the general bull pen and headed farther back to another section, where our improvised partners desk sat.
    I say “improvised” because in reality it was just two desks pushed together so we could face each other. It seemed to help out when we were bouncing ideas off each other on a case. We dropped our stuff off at our desks, and I slipped my bat off of its holster and slid it into my top-left desk drawer.
    I looked over at Connor and then we both turned to check out the whiteboard that hung higher up on the wall and overlooked the entire room. Behind it, arcane glyphs like the ones in the bull pen scrolled along the entire wall and radiated power. But the board, while not magic, had a power of a different kind.
    It now read: “It has been 737 days since our last vampire incursion.”
    I turned back to Connor. He nodded, then gestured toward the board. I crossed through the bustling activity of cube dwellers and investigators scurrying back and forth. Against the wall was a ladder that led up to the whiteboard. I started up it, only to have someone tug on my pant leg when I was about four rungs up.
    “Someone already changed it today, Simon,” a familiar voice said. I turned to see Godfrey Candella standing below me, looking the same as he had at the dock, the neat part of his black hair matching the perfect knot of his tie and his black horn-rim glasses.
    “Someone already did that today,” he repeated. “The number’s already been switched.”
    I smiled at him.
    “I’m sure they did, God, but I don’t think they were about to do this,” I said, and continued up the ladder, my nerves tingling.
    When I was twenty feet up, one by one, everyone in the room fell silent, until the only sound was that of my shoes against the rungs of the ladder. I reached the top and from the thin lip at the bottom of the whiteboard, I grabbed the eraser and ran it through the 737. A collective gasp rose from the rest of the agents. I picked up the marker and wrote a large zero in its place.
    A nervous cheer from the crowd broke the silence. It felt strange, given the dark implication of it, but part of me was also beaming with pride for being the one to have discovered the first sign of vampires in Manhattan in over two years. Divisional leaders and members of the Enchancellors Board came streaming out of doors and down the stairs, genuine concern on their faces. By the time I climbed down, Inspectre Quimbley stood waiting for me at the foot of the ladder along with Godfrey and Connor.
    “Are you sure, boy?” the Inspectre asked, serious as can be. “I trust you have three points of collaboration?”
    I nodded. Although I had only attended the afternoon seminar “Pains in the Neck” on the subject of vampires, the one thing I remembered was that we were required to have at least three solid signs of vampirism before calling for a Department-wide warning.
    “We didn’t have a direct sighting of the vampire,” I said, “but everything else seems to match up.”
    “Let’s hear them, then,” the Inspectre said, his eyes widening.
    Godfrey pulled out a Moleskine notebook and started writing like mad.
    “The event took place at night,” I said, “so that makes it a possibly nocturnal creature. Second, the victims exhibited blood loss accompanied by the puncture wounds on their necks, but there was very little blood at the scene. Third, it was a foggy night and the woman at the docks said she had