Vampire Hunting: The Dead Seeking the Undead
By: Kameka/Elf
Jake shook his head as he stood up wondering what had hit him. He looked around his surroundings. The park. Right, now he remembered. He'd gone drinking with Dante and tried to walk home. He glanced towards the lake, the top of which was covered with ducks.
"Man, I'm never gonna live that down. It's probably all over the station by now." He checked his pockets and groaned. "No badge, no gun, no phone. I'm gonna have to report them missing and get replacements." He pulled his wallet out of one of his pockets, wondering why he still had it. "Not a very efficient mugger." Jake shook his head and started the walk towards his apartment.
He had only taken a few steps when he realized that the sun was high in the sky. He was late for work! He longingly thought of the hot shower he had half-planned before trying to catch a cab to the station. It was definitely a good thing his wallet hadn't been stolen.
As it happens, having money didn't matter; none of the cabs would stop no matter how frantically Jake tried to wave them down. This inconvenience left a disgusted Jake running to work, his head pounding more with every step he took.
Finally he reached the precinct, blonde hair matted to his head and rivulets of sweat running down his red face. No officer would look at him, a fact he was happy about; no need to add to his problems, right? He slipped inside as the door swung shut, not wanting to go to the problem of opening it himself, and stepped up to the desk Sergeant, Officer Wallace, to report his missing gun and badge.
"Hey, man!" Wallace continued to ignore him.
"Yo, Wallace!" Why was he ignoring him? He hadn't done anything to insult him recently, had he?
"Wallace..Wally, Wally, Bing Bang. Is there anyone home?" Jake's voice took on the insipid sing-song tone all bachelors got when faced with small kids and he went to tap Wallace's head.
His hand never connected.
"Whoa!" Jake tried to touch Wallace again, his hand once again passing through the solid flesh and bone. "What a cool trick! Hey, anyone see that?"
No one turned to answer his question and he paled. "Wait-a-minute. How's this possible?" He moved over to try to touch another person and his hand passed through again.
He was turning, hoping to find someone looking at him, when he caught sight of a picture of himself on the bulletin board. A picture captioned by his dates of birth and.. DEATH?
"I'm not dead, am I?" Jake looked towards Wallace, remembering the freaky sensation of his hand passing through the other man's head. "Oh, man, I gotta tell someone."
With that thought in mind, he headed towards the basement where the morgue and the office of one Vicki Po was located. After all, if anyone was going to see a dead guy, it'd be a woman who worked with dead people, right?
It was a trip made in vain. Vicki not only couldn't see him, she walked right through him twice, each time holding a coffee mug full of bourbon.
"Why couldn't I tell that she was drinking? I'm a detective!" Jake looked around and sighed. "No one to report it to, me bein' dead and all." He watched with interest as Vicki went into the other room and opened one of the freezer doors. A tray with a very familiar body on it slid out.
Jake stumbled as he looked at his own face, dull blue with refrigeration. "What's she thinkin' of doin'?"
His question was answered as Vicki used the towel the body rested on to slide it over onto a gurney that had been resting against the wall. The gurney was rolled out into the main room and his body was put onto the examination table the same way. As it was being moved, the loose white towel slipped from the corpse's nether regions, causing a blush to rise on Jake's cheeks as he remembered the corpse was himself.
Vicki covered the exposed genitalia with both eyebrows arched. "No wonder he always tried to act so macho; a classic case of overcompensation. I'll have to tell Pez she was right."
The blush spread and burned his overheated skin as Vicki pulled a tray with her tools of trade over and started a tape recorder.
"This autopsy is on Jake McCartey, Caucasian male, 27 years of age. Apparent cause of death is blood loss caused by a blade. The wound is too deep for it to be a knife, speculation is the murder weapon was a sword." Vicki recited as she lifted a sharpened scalpel. "I am now doing the classic Y incision, hopefully I'll find something in the abdominal cavity."
The metal flashing as it descended was the last thing Jake remembered before he passed out.
*
Jake came to on the floor of the morgue. It was deserted; no body, living or dead, in sight, thank God. He looked towards the room containing the freezers. What was left of his body was there. Shivering, he instead decided to wander the hallways.
He wandered aimlessly, going this way and that, until he eventually reached the office he had shared with Sara. He paused in the doorway to see Sara hard at work in front of her computer. His own desk was empty, giving Jake a very masculine sense of satisfaction that he wasn't so easily replaced. "Heh. Wonder what bozo they'll get to be your partner now, Pez?"
Sara glanced towards the door, causing Jake to look behind him. She couldn't have heard him, right? Nah. That didn't stop a shiver of unease from tingling down his spine as he saw she was still looking at the doorway. At him.
"Sara?" Jake asked, catching sight of the swirling stone in the bracelet she always wore. Another thing he missed while he was alive?
"Danny!" Sara's tone made the summoning whisper a command.
An Asian man with long hair popped in, leaning back and putting his feet up on the desk in front of him. "You bellowed?"
"I did not bellow," she whispered furiously. "If I had, everyone in Homicide would've heard me."
Danny shrugged. "More like a tone then the volume, Pez. What's your problem? I hear you finally dispatched your rookie. Work's gotta be lookin' up."
Sara pointed to a spot behind him. "The rookie's my problem, Danny. I can't even get rid of him by killing him! You, I don't mind visiting me. Him, I do. Get rid of him!"
Danny twisted to see Jake standing in the doorway in rumpled clothes. "What're you doing here, Jake?"
Jake shook his head. "You're Danny Woo."
Danny nodded. "Yeah."
"But, but, you were killed by Gallo!"
Danny shrugged. "So? You were killed by Sara and you're still here. Why shouldn't I be?"
"But, but."
Danny sighed. "Listen, rookie, you gotta leave Sara alone, ok?"
Jake stared at Sara as if he'd never seen her before. "She can see us?"
Sara tossed the file folder down on the desk. "Yeah, rookie. Real quick here, aren't you? Yes, I can see you both. Even if I don't want to see you," was added under her breath.
"How?" Jake looked at both the live detective and the dead one, hoping they could explain some of this.
"Need to know basis, McCartey, and you don't."
Jake looked at the woman before him. "Geez, Pez, what's up with you?"
Sara stood up to get a cup of coffee. "Well, let's see. You drive me nuts on investigations, wake me up for one of the lamest reasons I've ever heard at 4 AM, and then, since you're dead, I get stuck with double the paperwork and no partner to push it off onto! And you ask me what's wrong?" She drained the cup in one long gulp and poured another.
"Hey, Pez," Danny told her, "if you don't lay off the coffee you're gonna get an ulcer."
"Jake's here, Danny. An ulcer is the least of my worries." She turned towards the blonde, "what are you doing here anyway?"
Jake shrugged. "Wandering."
"Well, wander away!" Sara sat back down with her full cup and lifted the folder so she wouldn't have to see him.
"Hey, Pez, I hear you've been checking out my package," he taunted, a smirk in his voice.
"Oh, boy," Danny exclaimed as he sat back down and shook his head.
"You know how it is when you get bored with paperwork, rookie."
"You can't say stuff like that to me!"
Sara laughed. "What're you gonna do? Report me to your buddy Dante?"
Jake pouted, realizing that he couldn't report her to anyone. "I can stick around and bug ya."
Sara shook her head. "Sorry. You don't honestly think you're the first ghost I've seen, right? Or even the second?" she gestured to Danny. "Ghosts can bleed, Jake. Trust me on this; I had to search my apartment for more after I found a drop left by Monsignor Bellamy."
Jake paled, Sara having knocked the idea that he could get away with anything out of his head.
Danny took pity on the recently deceased man and grabbed his arm. "C'mon, let's leave her alone." He led the blonde down the hall, weaving around people. Catching the look on Jake's face, he shrugged and explained, "I don't like people walking through me."
Jake nodded and followed, still shaken by the news that not only was he dead, but his former partner could see, talk to, and hurt him.
Eventually the dead duo reached the gym, another room in the busy building that was deserted.
"Uh, why're we here, Danny?"
Danny shrugged. "I miss the gym. Not too many people to spar with, you know."
Jake nodded and offered to spar with him.
Danny grinned. "Great! I have a lot of frustration to work out."
Jake hesitated, suddenly unsure this was a good idea. "Frustration?"
"Yeah! C'mon, Jake, I've been dead for months. I was murdered. Talk about repressed anger!"
Jake swallowed the lump in his throat. "Repressed anger?"
A foot meeting his neck was his answer, an answer that propelled him back into the wall.
"Uh, Danny?"
"You're already dead, Jake. I can't kill you." The kick was followed by a swift punch to the stomach.
"Danny?" Jake asked, wheezing from the air being forced out of his lungs.
The Asian wasted no time, grabbing the back of the blonde's neck with one hand, an easy feat because of the doubled up position he was in. Lifting one knee, it crunched again Jake's nose before the hand now holding the rookie up propelled him into the floor.
"Danny," he groaned from his sprawled position, "I don't think I want to spar anymore."
Danny sighed; sparring partners we so hard to find. "Alright, Jake." He moved next to Jake and gracefully folded his body until he was sitting Indian style next to the prone man. "What do you want to do?"
Jake breathed a sigh of relief. "Know anywhere I can find vampires?"
Danny thought for a moment before answering. "Sunnydale. It's a town in California. Everyone says it's the main vampire stomping grounds in the US."
Jake thought for a minute. "Sunnydale. Cool, thanks. I think I'm gonna go check that place out." He laboriously pulled himself to first a sitting position then upwards until he was standing. "Nice, uh, seeing you, Danny. Say goodbye to Pez for me, ok?" He left the gym, uncertain of how he would get to Sunnydale, but not wanting to stick around.
"Sure, Jake. Wish I could say the same," Danny muttered as he watched Jake gingerly walk away.
The End
Jake shook his head as he stood up wondering what had hit him. He looked around his surroundings. The park. Right, now he remembered. He'd gone drinking with Dante and tried to walk home. He glanced towards the lake, the top of which was covered with ducks.
"Man, I'm never gonna live that down. It's probably all over the station by now." He checked his pockets and groaned. "No badge, no gun, no phone. I'm gonna have to report them missing and get replacements." He pulled his wallet out of one of his pockets, wondering why he still had it. "Not a very efficient mugger." Jake shook his head and started the walk towards his apartment.
He had only taken a few steps when he realized that the sun was high in the sky. He was late for work! He longingly thought of the hot shower he had half-planned before trying to catch a cab to the station. It was definitely a good thing his wallet hadn't been stolen.
As it happens, having money didn't matter; none of the cabs would stop no matter how frantically Jake tried to wave them down. This inconvenience left a disgusted Jake running to work, his head pounding more with every step he took.
Finally he reached the precinct, blonde hair matted to his head and rivulets of sweat running down his red face. No officer would look at him, a fact he was happy about; no need to add to his problems, right? He slipped inside as the door swung shut, not wanting to go to the problem of opening it himself, and stepped up to the desk Sergeant, Officer Wallace, to report his missing gun and badge.
"Hey, man!" Wallace continued to ignore him.
"Yo, Wallace!" Why was he ignoring him? He hadn't done anything to insult him recently, had he?
"Wallace..Wally, Wally, Bing Bang. Is there anyone home?" Jake's voice took on the insipid sing-song tone all bachelors got when faced with small kids and he went to tap Wallace's head.
His hand never connected.
"Whoa!" Jake tried to touch Wallace again, his hand once again passing through the solid flesh and bone. "What a cool trick! Hey, anyone see that?"
No one turned to answer his question and he paled. "Wait-a-minute. How's this possible?" He moved over to try to touch another person and his hand passed through again.
He was turning, hoping to find someone looking at him, when he caught sight of a picture of himself on the bulletin board. A picture captioned by his dates of birth and.. DEATH?
"I'm not dead, am I?" Jake looked towards Wallace, remembering the freaky sensation of his hand passing through the other man's head. "Oh, man, I gotta tell someone."
With that thought in mind, he headed towards the basement where the morgue and the office of one Vicki Po was located. After all, if anyone was going to see a dead guy, it'd be a woman who worked with dead people, right?
It was a trip made in vain. Vicki not only couldn't see him, she walked right through him twice, each time holding a coffee mug full of bourbon.
"Why couldn't I tell that she was drinking? I'm a detective!" Jake looked around and sighed. "No one to report it to, me bein' dead and all." He watched with interest as Vicki went into the other room and opened one of the freezer doors. A tray with a very familiar body on it slid out.
Jake stumbled as he looked at his own face, dull blue with refrigeration. "What's she thinkin' of doin'?"
His question was answered as Vicki used the towel the body rested on to slide it over onto a gurney that had been resting against the wall. The gurney was rolled out into the main room and his body was put onto the examination table the same way. As it was being moved, the loose white towel slipped from the corpse's nether regions, causing a blush to rise on Jake's cheeks as he remembered the corpse was himself.
Vicki covered the exposed genitalia with both eyebrows arched. "No wonder he always tried to act so macho; a classic case of overcompensation. I'll have to tell Pez she was right."
The blush spread and burned his overheated skin as Vicki pulled a tray with her tools of trade over and started a tape recorder.
"This autopsy is on Jake McCartey, Caucasian male, 27 years of age. Apparent cause of death is blood loss caused by a blade. The wound is too deep for it to be a knife, speculation is the murder weapon was a sword." Vicki recited as she lifted a sharpened scalpel. "I am now doing the classic Y incision, hopefully I'll find something in the abdominal cavity."
The metal flashing as it descended was the last thing Jake remembered before he passed out.
*
Jake came to on the floor of the morgue. It was deserted; no body, living or dead, in sight, thank God. He looked towards the room containing the freezers. What was left of his body was there. Shivering, he instead decided to wander the hallways.
He wandered aimlessly, going this way and that, until he eventually reached the office he had shared with Sara. He paused in the doorway to see Sara hard at work in front of her computer. His own desk was empty, giving Jake a very masculine sense of satisfaction that he wasn't so easily replaced. "Heh. Wonder what bozo they'll get to be your partner now, Pez?"
Sara glanced towards the door, causing Jake to look behind him. She couldn't have heard him, right? Nah. That didn't stop a shiver of unease from tingling down his spine as he saw she was still looking at the doorway. At him.
"Sara?" Jake asked, catching sight of the swirling stone in the bracelet she always wore. Another thing he missed while he was alive?
"Danny!" Sara's tone made the summoning whisper a command.
An Asian man with long hair popped in, leaning back and putting his feet up on the desk in front of him. "You bellowed?"
"I did not bellow," she whispered furiously. "If I had, everyone in Homicide would've heard me."
Danny shrugged. "More like a tone then the volume, Pez. What's your problem? I hear you finally dispatched your rookie. Work's gotta be lookin' up."
Sara pointed to a spot behind him. "The rookie's my problem, Danny. I can't even get rid of him by killing him! You, I don't mind visiting me. Him, I do. Get rid of him!"
Danny twisted to see Jake standing in the doorway in rumpled clothes. "What're you doing here, Jake?"
Jake shook his head. "You're Danny Woo."
Danny nodded. "Yeah."
"But, but, you were killed by Gallo!"
Danny shrugged. "So? You were killed by Sara and you're still here. Why shouldn't I be?"
"But, but."
Danny sighed. "Listen, rookie, you gotta leave Sara alone, ok?"
Jake stared at Sara as if he'd never seen her before. "She can see us?"
Sara tossed the file folder down on the desk. "Yeah, rookie. Real quick here, aren't you? Yes, I can see you both. Even if I don't want to see you," was added under her breath.
"How?" Jake looked at both the live detective and the dead one, hoping they could explain some of this.
"Need to know basis, McCartey, and you don't."
Jake looked at the woman before him. "Geez, Pez, what's up with you?"
Sara stood up to get a cup of coffee. "Well, let's see. You drive me nuts on investigations, wake me up for one of the lamest reasons I've ever heard at 4 AM, and then, since you're dead, I get stuck with double the paperwork and no partner to push it off onto! And you ask me what's wrong?" She drained the cup in one long gulp and poured another.
"Hey, Pez," Danny told her, "if you don't lay off the coffee you're gonna get an ulcer."
"Jake's here, Danny. An ulcer is the least of my worries." She turned towards the blonde, "what are you doing here anyway?"
Jake shrugged. "Wandering."
"Well, wander away!" Sara sat back down with her full cup and lifted the folder so she wouldn't have to see him.
"Hey, Pez, I hear you've been checking out my package," he taunted, a smirk in his voice.
"Oh, boy," Danny exclaimed as he sat back down and shook his head.
"You know how it is when you get bored with paperwork, rookie."
"You can't say stuff like that to me!"
Sara laughed. "What're you gonna do? Report me to your buddy Dante?"
Jake pouted, realizing that he couldn't report her to anyone. "I can stick around and bug ya."
Sara shook her head. "Sorry. You don't honestly think you're the first ghost I've seen, right? Or even the second?" she gestured to Danny. "Ghosts can bleed, Jake. Trust me on this; I had to search my apartment for more after I found a drop left by Monsignor Bellamy."
Jake paled, Sara having knocked the idea that he could get away with anything out of his head.
Danny took pity on the recently deceased man and grabbed his arm. "C'mon, let's leave her alone." He led the blonde down the hall, weaving around people. Catching the look on Jake's face, he shrugged and explained, "I don't like people walking through me."
Jake nodded and followed, still shaken by the news that not only was he dead, but his former partner could see, talk to, and hurt him.
Eventually the dead duo reached the gym, another room in the busy building that was deserted.
"Uh, why're we here, Danny?"
Danny shrugged. "I miss the gym. Not too many people to spar with, you know."
Jake nodded and offered to spar with him.
Danny grinned. "Great! I have a lot of frustration to work out."
Jake hesitated, suddenly unsure this was a good idea. "Frustration?"
"Yeah! C'mon, Jake, I've been dead for months. I was murdered. Talk about repressed anger!"
Jake swallowed the lump in his throat. "Repressed anger?"
A foot meeting his neck was his answer, an answer that propelled him back into the wall.
"Uh, Danny?"
"You're already dead, Jake. I can't kill you." The kick was followed by a swift punch to the stomach.
"Danny?" Jake asked, wheezing from the air being forced out of his lungs.
The Asian wasted no time, grabbing the back of the blonde's neck with one hand, an easy feat because of the doubled up position he was in. Lifting one knee, it crunched again Jake's nose before the hand now holding the rookie up propelled him into the floor.
"Danny," he groaned from his sprawled position, "I don't think I want to spar anymore."
Danny sighed; sparring partners we so hard to find. "Alright, Jake." He moved next to Jake and gracefully folded his body until he was sitting Indian style next to the prone man. "What do you want to do?"
Jake breathed a sigh of relief. "Know anywhere I can find vampires?"
Danny thought for a moment before answering. "Sunnydale. It's a town in California. Everyone says it's the main vampire stomping grounds in the US."
Jake thought for a minute. "Sunnydale. Cool, thanks. I think I'm gonna go check that place out." He laboriously pulled himself to first a sitting position then upwards until he was standing. "Nice, uh, seeing you, Danny. Say goodbye to Pez for me, ok?" He left the gym, uncertain of how he would get to Sunnydale, but not wanting to stick around.
"Sure, Jake. Wish I could say the same," Danny muttered as he watched Jake gingerly walk away.
The End