702 Desert Avenue
St. Louis, Missouri
The elevator dinged and the doors slid open. Holger stuck his head out and took a big whiff of the second floor.
"No vurstreldamen here!" he said happily.
Holger pulled back into the elevator. The doors slid shut and the elevator began going up again.
702 Desert Avenue
St. Louis, Missouri
The elevator dinged and the doors slid open. Holger stuck his head out and sniffed the third floor air.
"No vurstreldamen here, either!" Holger said.
702 Desert Avenue
St. Louis, Missouri
Holger stuck his head out of the elevator again. He smelled the fourth floor.
"Well, we're vurstreldamen free!" he said happily. "Oh, but what if this is the wrong address? Holger worked so hard as Doctor Detective Cop to save patient Tina Bobina Florentina, girlfriend of Stupidhair!"
702 Desert Avenue
St. Louis, Missouri
"No, dude, seriously! You did this when I needed a fake enemy to infiltrate the Down With Lee Club, and now you're doing it again. Just tell me. What's wrong with my hair?" Lee asked as the elevator doors slid open.
"Is nothing wrong with your hair, Lee of Pings," Holger said. "Only that it is not long and glorious and uses tacky hair dye."
Lee opened his mouth to respond, then closed it and shook his head. "I'm not going to answer that. Any vampires here?"
Holger sniffed the air outside the elevator and then pulled his head back in. "Nope! No vurstreldamen on the fifth floor!"
702 Desert Avenue
St. Louis, Missouri
"Well, how do we know that your magic powers or whatever are even working?" Jenny asked.
Holger gasped. "How can you say that? Holger's magic powers always work! Always!" He stuck his head out and sniffed the air. "And there are no vurstreldamen on this floor either."
"I dunno, Holg," Lee said. "I mean, maybe your magic powers don't have anything to do with vampires. Seriously, you spent a lot of time trying to figure out what they even were, and you still haven't really figured any of them out."
Holger gasped. "Holger has too figured out his magic powers! He just no know what all of them do yet. That's all."
702 Desert Avenue
St. Louis, Missouri
"Holger is too magic! He knows it! And he knows how to find vurstreldamen with his magic powers! He'll prove it once vurstreldamen are found!" Holger said, upset. He sniffed the air. "And vurstreldamen will not be found here!"
The doors slid shut.
702 Desert Avenue
St. Louis, Missouri
The doors opened. Holger sniffed the air again.
"No vurstreldamen here, either," he said.
"Ugh!" Jenny groaned. "If I wasted a bunch of my life on this elevator because your magic powers don't work!"
Jenny didn't continue.
"Then..." Tina prompted.
"Then what?" Jenny asked.
"Then what'll you do?" she asked.
"Oh. Right," Jenny said. "Uh, I guess nothing. But I'll be really annoyed, buster!" she said, directing her last sentence at Holger.
"Holger is not buster!" Holger said, affronted. "Holger is Holgermiester! Or sometimes Jorf Borf! Or like today, Doctor Detective Cop!"
702 Desert Avenue
St. Louis, Missouri
The doors opened on the ninth floor. Holger stuck his head out and instantly recoiled.
"Oh, yes," he said, covering his nose. "This is most yesfinitely floor of vurstreldamen."
He stepped out of the elevator, sniffing the air cautiously. He frowned. "Yes, this is floor of vurstreldamen. Vurstreldamen here, vurstreldamen everywhere here! Holger is scary, friends!"
"Okay..." Jenny said. "But uh, not to be a downer, but...now what?"
"What do you mean?" Tina asked. "We stop the vampires. Duh."
"Yeah, I got that part," Jenny said. "But...how exactly are we going to do that?"
Lee slapped his forehead, annoyed.
"Alright," he sighed, "I assume none of us has any lockpicking skill?"
"Nope," Tina said.
"Uh-uh," Jenny said.
"Maybe Holger's magic powers?" Holger suggested. He pressed his fingers against his temple.
"No, Holg!" Lee said quickly, clapping a hand over Holger's mouth. "Let's not do anything loud that might wake them up."
"Okay, but uh, what do we do?" Jenny asked.
Tina shrugged and leaned against a door. The handle fell downward beneath her elbow, and the door opened. Tina only managed to avoid crashing to the floor by grabbing the door handle and holding onto it tightly. Once the door had stopped moving, she slowly pulled herself to her feet. It was only then that she looked back at her companions and saw that their eyes were as wide as dinner plates.
"I guess that's one answer," she whispered.
702 Desert Avenue
St. Louis, Missouri
The group slipped into the apartment as quietly as they could. Even Holger avoided singing sneaking music, although he had to clasp his hands over his mouth and concentrate very hard in order to avoid making any noise. They made their way over to the windows, which were covered with thick velvet curtains. Jenny peeked behind them, and rays of sunlight spilled out onto the floor. She pulled her head out and grinned at her friends. Tina smiled at her, and felt across the curtains. She found the point where they overlapped, and she and Jenny took one of the curtains while Lee and Holger took the other. Then, with a quick jerk, they pulled the curtains apart.
Sunlight came in, streaming through the windows. It hit the wall on the other side of the room and lit up the bed placed against the wall. The vampire sleeping there barely stirred as it instantly caught on fire, burning in its bed.
As the flames slowly licked at the mattress, the quartet ran out of the room, shutting the door behind them.
"Well," Tina said queasily, "I guess that's one of them."
Lee swallowed heavily. "That was disturbing."
"Yeah," Jenny said. "Are we–are we doing the right thing?"
Tina shivered. "That thing–I didn't even see its face, and he–it never did anything to us."
"This is so not like the robots," Lee muttered. "This is so not like the robots."
"But friends!" Holger said. "Are you forgetting how the vurstreldamen tried to eat us all?"
"Well, yeah, but that was only one of them," Lee said. "How do we know that this one wasn't–you know–innocent?"
"But, but their plans," Holger said. "The vurstreldamen, they were planning to take over a city. And eventually, the world! Oh, no, Holger is so scary! Vurstreldamen cannot take over the world! Is no right!"
"Holger, we don't know that we didn't just kill an innocent creature!" Tina said. "We can't know! We never saw it doing anything wrong! We just killed it because, because–"
"Because we were scared," Lee finished softly.
Holger's lips formed a hard line.
"Fine," he said angrily. "But Holger know what must be done about the vurstreldamen. Oh yes! Holger know!"
Holger set off towards the next room. Lee ran after him and put a hand on his shoulder to stop him.
"Holger," he said. "Are you sure this is the right thing to do?"
"Holger know it is," Holger said. "Holger know what vurstreldamen are capable of."
"Then we're behind you," Lee said. Tina nodded, and Jenny put a hand on Holger's other shoulder. "We just–we–it's not going to be easy. Okay?"
Holger nodded and smiled. "Thank you, Lee of Pings. But time for regrets is not now. Now is time for vurstreldamen to meet their fate!"
Holger pushed down on the door handle. The one was unlocked just like the previous door.
702 Desert Avenue
St. Louis, Missouri
There were twenty-five rooms in total on the ninth floor. Twelve on the west, thirteen on the east. By the time the group had finished with the last room on the east side, the sun had risen so high that the rays barely bathed the last vampire's bed in light.
Thirteen rooms, thirteen unlocked doors, thirteen burning vampire corpses. This was the record as the group exited the last of the eastern rooms.
"Can we take a break?" Lee asked. "We'll need to figure out what we do about the other vampires."
"Yeah," Tina said weakly. "I'm feeling nauseous." She sat down.
"But friends! We must press on!" Holger said. "We must save the world from vurstreldamen!"
"Not that I disagree with you," Lee said, "but uh, how? In case you didn't notice, all those rooms were on the east side of the building."
"Yes, so?" Holger said.
"So, it's still morning," Lee said.
"Yes," Holger agreed.
Lee paused for a few seconds to let Holger catch on. Jenny was not as kind.
"Holger, the sun won't kill them the instant we open the curtains," Jenny said. "We'll have to wait several hours and hope that nobody catches on."
Holger furrowed his brow. "Why?"
"Because the sun's on the other side of the building!" Jenny said exasperatedly.
Holger's eyes widened. "Oh, Holger is silly goosenghogen! How could Holger forget? Much apologies, friends!"
"Whoa, Holger, it's not the end of the world," Lee soothed. "We just–need to come up with a new plan. For the other vampires."
Holger calmed down slightly. "You think we can still stop the vurstreldamen even though sun is not on our side?"
"Yeah," Tina said. "I mean, the sun's going to go down eventually."
"Oh no!" Holger said. "That means vurstreldamen will wake up and eat us!"
"No, but Holger, it'll go down on the west," Lee said. "That means that if we open the curtains and wait, it should, uh, cook them–"
Tina's cheeks bulged. She rolled onto her hands and knees and puked right in front of a dead vampire's door. Holger ignored this, instead stroking his chin with a smile on his face.
"So, we play the waiting game and defeat vurstreldamen that way?" he asked. "Holger like Lee's ideacake!"
"Okay, but can we have fifteen minutes?" Jenny asked. "I don't know about you, but my breakfast feels like it's about to follow Tina's."
"Ew..." Tina said.
"Yeah, a little too much information there," Lee said.
"Fine," Holger said, slightly put out. "We will wait."