Ghostbusters: Chicago Division
Heat Rising
By Dan Shannon
Chapter 1: Strange Happenings
We come upon a dusty old firehouse in the midst of Chinatown. The firehouse was once booming with activity, vehicles of all kinds with loud sirens and flashing lights screeching out of the two garage doors in the front. Even while it no longer acted as an actual fire department, activities of the same nature still ran true to its original purpose. Well, almost.
The familiar logo in the middle of the top windows still sat, but at night the sign only lit halfway due to a broken florescent bulb in the middle of the sign's innards. Graffiti now littered the front of the building as well as the sides. If they could get to the roof, they'd do the same to that too. The locals have no problem with sticking door hanging signs on the side door's knob right where it obviously says, "No Solicitors."
The building was by no means abandoned. A man walking from the local Red Line walks up to the side door. As he went to put his key into the door he finds himself annoyed as he tears the door hangers off the graffiti-ridden door and unlocks his way inside. He flicks the switches next to the entrance and the main garage area of the building lit up completely, then 2 of the lights on the ceiling turned off again. "Great," says the man now walking his way past an SUV painted like a Chicago Police cruiser.
He walked back to another door on the other side of the garage. In the second garage parking bay was an empty space. Traces of another vehicle are present on the floor of the bay – oil and coolant stains fairly fresh in the cement. As he unlocked the door marked, "Danger – Authorized Personnel Only" he couldn't help but look back at the empty vehicle bay and shake his head. As he opened the door and stepped in, he sighed.
Once inside the door there were a set of steps leading down to the basement. A soft hum was heard as he approached the bottom. As he tread the floor he sees a very large green metal device in the far left corner of the basement. He approached the computer console on the side of the device and checked all the programming for it. It was holding up. All was safe.
After checking the vitals on the device, he sat at an orange counter on the other side of the room. As he sat upon the stool and swiveled around to look at the many strewn about parts on the counter, parts left behind by a friend years ago.
Dr. Zachary LaVoy shuffled parts around on the counter to reveal plans to some device Dan Shannon, Ghostbusters' Chicago office's resident engineer, was in the middle of building when business stopped. When the money ran out, there was nothing left but to close up shop until such time. Even then the only member of Chicago Division that stayed with the group the longest was Dan. Dr. Bryan Howell had quit to pursue his new life as a Meteorologist in St. Paul, Dr. Ed Ulatoski had went to fight in Iraq and had decided to stay with the military, Lynn Springsteed had a falling out with Dan over their relationship in both love and work and decided to leave to become a firefighter once again.
Dan, although the longest runner for keeping the group together with as little as hope possible, had left the franchise to Zach to take up a regular 9-5. Zach was the last of the group. In making sure the building and the equipment stayed the same way, he had to sell Bryan's pride and joy, the Ecto-CD – The original 1959 Cadillac Ambulance used by the division to cart their equipment around in. The vehicle, although very heartbreaking to sell, earned enough capital to keep the franchise fee up to date. It was getting harder and harder to keep the money man away. His Occult shop was close to bankruptcy using the capital from that to keep the building and the Ecto-Containment system online.
"What em I gonna do?" the occultist asked himself, "I'm so close so screwed I feel like I'm gonna be thrown into the spirit realm. At least there, I'll feel spared."
After thinking about it, Zach decided it was time to stop living in the past. In the end, he realized Dan was never going to come back. He adjourned upstairs to sit in the seat his sister occupied during college as secretary to wait by the phones as he hopefully did for years. There was only one thing he kept to mind, "Well, if today isn't the day, " he said, "there's always tomorrow."
Late June. It was a very hot time of year to be standing outside like a chump. Next to a large metal cabinet there was an AT&T truck parked in a parking lot of a CVS pharmacy. A large yellow umbrella was erected next to the box with the box's doors open. We can hear some rustling behind the doors as snips and grunts came from the person working inside. From under the doors of the open cabinet a set of small scissors hits the ground as a swear was heard, "Goddamnit." The feet of the person are clearly seen under the doors as we see the feet shift around as though he was going for the dropped tool.
In the mist of doing so, we hear a slam and a bang, "Damnit! Son-of-a-bitch!" He stood up and got caught in the umbrella, "Oh, come the fuck on!" As the man struggled under the umbrella, another pick-up truck with an AT&T logo on it approached the cabinet. A man dressed in a white embroidered AT&T shirt comes up to the cabinet kind of laughing as he approached.
Dan Shannon emerged from the umbrella wearing a white t-shirt with an orange safety vest over it, an AC/DC hat and a pair of aviator glasses. He saw the man approaching as he folded the umbrella up and tossed it to the side, "Oh, hey Dave. Didn't hear you come up" Dave Barbel was Dan's field manager for U-verse. He laughed a bit more as he saw Dan bend down to pick up his wire scissors, "Heard you had an issue with this customer's line."
"Yeah," Dan began, "needed installation and repair to find the pairs in the box. Nick's still at the house." "Well," his manager interjected, "I need you back at the garage for something, so I have Alex on his way over."
"Did I do something wrong?" Dan asked.
"Um... Actually, it has to do with your qualifications. I really need you to come back to the garage." Dave's face was no longer his normal, lad-back expression, but it was instead that of a nervous expression.
Back at the garage located in Rockdale, Il, Dave's pick-up pulled into the compound followed by Dan's truck. Dan parked his truck and saw his manager waving him to the side door to the garage. Dave stopped Dan short of going inside the door, "hold on. I just want you to know that this is between you, me, the other managers, and Robbie. Okay?"
"What happened," Dan asked, "Robbie find my nudie pen?"
Dave blinked a few times, "You have a Nudie Pen?"
"Aw, crap."
Dave shook his head, "No, that's not it. Um... Just look," he opened the door and allowed him to walk in. Next to the door was the ice maker that everyone used to load up their coolers with so they had cool water. On the right side of the garage was a cage filled with boxes, but it looked the cage was somewhat destroyed.
"Okay, so, Robbie needs to clean the stock cage. What the hell does that have to do with me?" Dave dragged him inside the cage to find all the boxes covered in a blue film. Dan slowly walked up to it and skimmed some of the material off the boxes and rubbed it in his fingers. It was cold. Extremely cold. It was smoking from the cold wave coming over it. "Oh, crap."
Dan walked his way out the door and to his car, passing Dave by. "Hey, where you going? Hey, wait a second!"
Dan walked to his beat up VW Jetta and proceeded to the trunk. He was rummaging around as Dave came to the trunk. "Is that... Is that one of those..."
Inside the trunk of Dan's car was a Proton Pack. "AT&T tells us to maintain our tools," Dan stated to his manager, "Ghostbusters International said the same thing. Help me get this thing on."
Dan walked in the door, Proton Pack strapped on and activated. Over his eyes was a set of Ecto-Goggles and in his hand was a PKE meter. Still wearing his orange vest, he looked rather ridiculous, but he went on inside the garage with caution. Dave followed behind him just to see what was going on.
"I have to ask," Dan started, "why did you call me out? Most of the time people who live around here call the Joliet Section Ghostbusters."
"The company didn't want the attention. We knew you were a Ghostbuster for Chicago, so..." "Got it," Dan filled in, "company confidentiality. Just get in the office and I'll take care of it." With that, Dave walked into the office and locked the door.
Dan walked around the empty garage floor and scanned. He was showing a class 5 on his equipment. Problem is the PKE was only reading the Ectoplasm. He lifted the goggles from his eyes and looked around. There was a sudden rumble and he turned to look where it was coming from. The ice machine was making noises. He approached the machine to check it out. He pulled his particle thrower from the pack and used the barrel of the thrower to open the hatch on the ice chute. There was a sudden clank. Dan jumped as he readied his thrower...
And a ton of ice dumped into the receptacle bin.
Dan relaxed, "Hell. I hate when tha..." Before he could finished, the ice machine started shooting ice at him. After getting pelted with enough ice, Dan opened fire. The more he shot into the device the more the device melted over.
Dan stopped shooting to see what damage he was doing. He pulled out his PKE meter and saw it climbing, "This can't be good." A mist started rolling out of the device and covered the floor. "What in hell's name?" For a moment, the mist started to coagulate into a human form then dissipated and flowed for the office door. Dan let loose the particles again in an attempt to capture it. The mist flowed under the door as Dan ripped through the door with the thrower.
He cut the fire and ran toward the door. Dan attempted to open the door, but the door was locked. About to kick the door down, Dave, the other 2 managers, and another tech ran out of the office and knocked Dan over. Dan looked up to find everyone running toward the other end of the garage, "Don't mind me, DON'T MIND ME!" The Ghostbuster got up and walked into the office door. With a careful look he saw nothing unusual.
"Huh. That's different," was all Dan could comment. After a moment or two, he noticed it was getting rather cold in the office. "Jesus Christ," he began to state, "it's like they cranked the A/C to Arctic and broke off the dial." Consulting the PKE meter again, he looked around with the device in hand to locate the specter in question. The signal was weak, but he found it was around the corner of the office where the conference room was located. The hallway was rather short. There wasn't much area to cover, but the readings were there.
As he passed the breakroom, the arms on the meter rose. Dan stopped and moved back and forth to get his bearings. "Naw," was all came out of the former Ghostbuster's mouth. He looked into the break room door and pointed the meter to the refrigerator and the indicator wings on the meter rose all the way up. "You can't be serious!" Holstering the meter, Dan pulled the thrower off his belt and once again used the tip to open the freezer door.
A large burst of steam and jagged ice shot from the freezer knocking Dan back into the counter behind him. The steam shot into the main office and seconds later a loud scream was heard. Dan ran into the main cubical space to find a misty figure of a woman standing between his manager's cubical and the main door to the garage area of the facility. Dan raised his thrower, "What the hell are you?"
"Beware the fire, for it shall consume the innocent," was all the figure said before bursting into smoke and flew out one of the open windows behind his manager's cubical. Dan ran to the window, then turned around to run out the office door outside to the motor pool. Taking out his meter to take another scan, the PKE in the immediate area disappeared. Dan walked to the middle of the driveway to the motor pool and looked at the gate leading into the compound. He saw nothing.
The two managers and the tech ran up behind Dan, "Did you get it?"
"Get it," Dan retorted, "I don't even know what the fuck it was!"
Out in the distance from the garage, there was a lone figure standing behind the chain-link fence of the building in front of the AT&T compound. It slinks back into the obscure as it makes itself vanish into the unknown.
Being released early for the day, Dan went to the supermarket to do some mandatory food shopping. Happy he was out of work early, hauntings – for lack of better description – came back from his past as he walked the isles of the Food 4 Less he was visiting. He was slightly unhappy for the fact he needed to pull the Proton Pack out of his trunk to go after that... THING. He had thought the last link he had to his former ambitions were all but gone, every frightening thought he had ever gained from that god-forsaken job just a mere dream to him flooded his memory like a wide awake nightmare.
Maybe it was just a fluke, he figured. Maybe he was just imagining things. Wouldn't be the first time he stood at an AT&T crossbox and thought something dead was chasing him. Then again, it was odd that his own manager asked him back into the garage to handle something weird.
But then there's the question of that plastic canister filled with an Ectoplasm sample in his cargo pocket. He felt it, it was colder than a box of green peas. Something wasn't right in the world. He always had a sense of things not exactly being right. It was at though something was trying to draw his attention back to something important. He saw a pattern forming.
As Dan stood in the soup aisle deciding on what soups he wanted, he heard a commotion. "Now what?" Leaving his cart behind he peered around the corner of the aisle to see a flock of people running away from something in a panic. Dan rolled his eyes, "Don't tell me," Out of one of the aisles a large goat-legged beast ran out behind the crowd and roared.
Dan sighed and he dishearteningly pushed his cart toward the front of the store, walked away from the cart to go outside, and as the beast made a mess of the place retrieved his Proton Pack from his car.
The beast made a rampage throughout the store smashing displays for Mountain Dew and crushing all the boxes of cereal in the front of the store. It made it's way toward one of the cashiers. He stood there in fright holding a barcode scanning gun as he looked up at the beast. It was like a demon from the game Doom staring him down. He grabbed him by the front of his work vest as he picked him up, "You shall be my sustenance, weakling! Prepare for my bowels!"
A yellow and blue beam of energy rang through the air as the end of the beam struck the beast in the back of the head. "Sorry, assgasket," a voice called out, "Lunch is on hold!" The demon screamed as he dropped the cashier. The kid ran as the demon turned around to find the AT&T employee armed with a nuclear accelerator who's attention is turned on the big gray beast in the middle of the checkout aisle. The demon laughed, "You think that puny magic wand will defeat Skerkipy, the worlds most dangerous predator?"
Dan smiled, "Seeing it isn't magic" he grabbed the intensity knob and turned it all the way up, "Yeah, I do."
The demon let a large bellow out as the beams alterations started to effect him. The beams thrashed back and forth as Dan pulled the demon left and right to ware down it's PKE accumulation. The Demon grabbed whatever it could to keep from losing its ground including cash registers, checkout aisle's candy racks, and even the indicator lights that tell what lanes are open. The AT&T tech thrashed the beast until he was able to fling him overhead and slam him head first into a Heinz ketchup condiment display.
Dan grabbed the trap from his belt and slid it underneath the beast as he was slightly dazed. Stomping on the trigger pedal, a cone of light shot from the small box as the beast started struggling against the protonic suction of the light. The beam was the only thing left holding the demon from truly being entrapped in the small box with black and yellow doors. He demon screamed, "I am the Ultimate Warrior!"
"Nope," Dan responded, "The Ultimate Warrior was a WWF Wrestler. Now, you're as washed up as him," With that, he released the pedal and the gray, goat-legged demon disappeared into the box, doors sealing with a "clunk" and confirming it's entrapment with three beeps. He walked up to the smoking box and grabbed the loaded device by it's remote cord. The people around him started clapping, applauding.
The applauding wasn't what caught Dan's attention. The fact that two times in the same day, Dan's old job came back to haunt him. Something was extremely wrong.
In Chicago's loop, more specifically the Chicago Water Maintenance roads beneath lower Michigan Avenue, a man with long dark brown hair, multiple piercings, and wearing a black and green jacket depicting the Green Lantern character from DC Comics walks along the underbelly of the main streets minding his own business. There was something about him. An aura. It was as though the air around him was sticky and uncomfortable. The man walked his way down the sidewalk of the maintenance road walking past all the vents of the buildings who's entrances lie above.
He felt the blasts of hot air shoot from the vents blowing his hair around in a wild fashion. As he walked through each blast of air from each corresponding vent, a look of slight euphoria came across his face as though he was welcoming the hot air greeting his senses. He had his eyes shut as he walked down the road...
He bumps into a bum staggering around in the walkway, pulling him out of his serenity. The bum – a man with long black hair under an orange and dark blue hat, dirty white trench coat and a dark blue hoodie – walked in front of the man and started screaming while holding up a Styrofoam cup, "CHANGE! You got change?" The man tried to walk sidestep to get around the gentleman just to be cut off again.
"Come on, help a guy out? Change! I want to see Hotel Transylvania! I hear it's about a group of classic monsters including Frankenstein, the Mummy, Dracula and the Werewolf who are hiding out in a hotel on the outskirts of Transylvania now that 21st century technology has seemingly made them irrelevant! It's like Van Helsing, but much lamer! CHANGE!"
The man started to shiver from this lunatics rantings. A single bead of sweat dripped from his brow as his anger grew. "Can I at least see Marvin the Martian? I hear it's as funny as all the other Looney Toon's cartoons!" There was a sudden temperature change. The bum started looking around as he started to sweat, "Is it me, or are the drugs kicking in a little quicker than usual?"
A distance from the alley, we see a sickly orange glow. As time quickly passes, the glow becomes blinding as a scream was heard.
Zach was face down on the desk. There was a pool of drool under his open mouth as a somber snore rang throughout the firehouse. He shifted back and forth on the invoice papers and final notice letters thrown about the desk as he made himself more comfortable. The door on the other side of the firehouse opened as a figure walked in, a smoke trail following behind him.
A loaded Ghost Trap dropped on a the desk with a loud thud as Zach woke up with start. He quickly sat up in the seat as he saw a man wearing a dark blue short sleeved AT&T work shirt standing in front of the desk. Zach put his glasses on to see who it was. "Dan," he said, sleep still lingering in his voice, "what the hell'er you doing here?"
"Take a good wiff," was all Dan said. The smoke coming from the loaded trap hit Zach's senses as suddenly he woke up. "What..." was all Zach could get out before Dan interrupted him, "You wouldn't believe the day I've had." He pulled out the plastic Ziplock sandwich container loaded with the blue slime in it. He tossed in on the desk next to the trap. At first there was simple condensation on it, but after a moment the condensation started to turn into frost.
Zach slumped back in his seat, "What in the flue buck?"