FANGS FOR THE MEMORIES
By: CindyR
Water dripped down the rough hewn walls, joining the shallow stream that ran just below boot level. No sunlight penetrated this far beneath the earth; from tunnel to tunnel there existed only the inky curtains of eternal night. Dark it was but not silent. The world was alive with sound, from soft squeaks to furtive scurrying as the inhabitants of the underground bustled about in their daily hunt for food. It may be imagined that it caused no little stir when five invaded this enclosed realm, shattering the gloom with light.
"Sewer. Again. Sewer. I hate it down here!"
Though the words were grumbled softly they elicited groans from all around. The single-file procession stopped in its tracks and turned in the direction of the speaker, illuminating him from two directions. A miner's hardhat bobbed atop one, wide blond curl as the leader placed both hands on his hips. "You've been saying that for almost an hour, Peter. Redundancy will not shorten our assignment by a single millisecond."
Peter Venkman, the grumbler, also came to a halt. He shoved a rifle-shaped particle thrower under one elbow, then tipped his own hardhat up off his forehead. This, unfortunately, served the dual task of revealing the low ceiling and disturbing the solid sheath of cockroaches that clung to the slimy stone. Peter shuddered and hurriedly looked away. "I don't care. I didn't want to take this lousy job anyway." He broke off, nostrils flaring. "I was wrong -- this place smells even worse than a catbox."
"Yucky. Yucky." A faintly glowing green blob also wearing a hardhat-plus- light floated nearer, nervously checking over its right shoulder before slinging a skinny arm around Peter's neck. "Place yucky. Scary. Slimer not like it here."
Peter dislodged the arm and wiped away a spot of green slime left behind. "Couldn't agree more, Spud. Not that I want to offend Dr. Spengler by griping."
Egon's blue eyes glittered with annoyance. "Like it or not, Peter, we're here and we've got a job to do." He brandished a jewelry-box sized object that was quietly beeping to itself; its fascia glowed red in the gloom. "According to the PKE meter, we're in an area of high psycho-kinetic energy. All indications so far read as a Class 7 or better, but with the walls blocking my equipment, I'm unable to tell precisely what spectral subdivision we're dealing with."
"That lady from the Sewer Authority seemed to know what type," a rich baritone voice interrupted from Venkman's right. The speaker was almost a shadow himself, dark skin making his face nearly invisible behind the glare of the lamps. Winston Zeddemore imitated Slimer's action of peering over his shoulder, examining walls, ceiling and ground with equal precision, his own weapon gripped securely in both hands. "According to her, what we're tracking down here is a ... vampire."
"I don't like vampires," Venkman complained, swiping sweaty dark hair out of his eyes. "Nasty things. Can't trust them. Remember '86? Lupusville? Our throwers barely knocked them down and we couldn't trap them at all."
"Count Vostok wasn't so bad," Zeddemore remarked fairly. "He seemed to be a pretty decent guy once we got to know him."
Spengler racked his thrower, using his now-free hand to adjust two dials on the meter. "Though I was unable to perform the experiments on Count Vostok that I would have liked, the readings I took from both him and the inhabitants of Lupusville, vampire and werewolf, seemed to indicate that none of them were true vampires -- at least not in the sense that Count Glutenborgen was. The others actually registered closer to the traditional Class 6 metamorphs we've faced in the past, possibly one a subspecies to the next. My theory is that Vostok and the others were simple shape- shifters who had somehow become locked into one or two options."
"Count Glutenborgen scarrrry!" Slimer announced, perching on Venkman's shoulder like a giant pigeon. "Didn't like him."
"He sure liked you, Spud. Too much." Winston scratched under his helmet, removing a beetle that had crawled up his collar and lodged in his short, curly hair. He grimaced and flicked it away. "Vostok did say he was the last of his kind even though there were a whole slew of vampires in Lupusville. Maybe he was talking about the last of his subspecies?"
Egon stroked his square jaw, eyes distracted behind his lenses. "If I could only have hooked him up to the plasmic electrometer for a few minutes...."
"You may get another chance," Peter grumbled, wiping his face on his sleeve. The humidity was high with so much water around though this far underground the temperature was cool. "If that lady was right, we may be facing a whole new set. Hope this doesn't mean some of those guys from Lupusville got loose. They were tough."
"What Mrs. Orsini said," the blond put in before Peter could launch an entirely new line of complaint, "is that two of her workers were attacked down her and bitten. We've met many nether-entities with teeth and claws who most assuredly did not qualify under nomenclature including the term vampire."
"That one guy got chomped right in the neck," Peter shot back, again swatting Slimer away. "That doesn't make you just a liiiiiitle bit suspicious?"
A fourth figure had been standing several yards farther down the tunnel waiting impatiently for the conversation to end. But now he stepped into the illuminated circle of the others and slapped Venkman on the arm. He was slightly shorter than the other three, with a smudged, youthful face made distinctive by large brown eyes and an infectuous smile. "Come on, guys! This place is neat! It's history! Do you know how old some of these tunnels are?" He turned and patted the nearest wall then jumped back with a cry of disgust when a six-inch waterbug strolled casually across his thumb. His smile, however, returned immediately. "This section alone could be a hundred years old! Thousands if we've accessed some of the natural caverns criss-crossing Manhattan! A lot of people even go spelunking down here!"
Visibly unimpressed, Venkman folded his arms across his chest, keeping his own distance from the pest-infested walls. "Oh, joy. Does that mean this is high-class sewage?"
"Yuck," Slimer repeated, as thrilled as was Venkman. Something outside the ring of lights caught his eye and he floated off, returning seconds later holding a squawling, wiggling brown shape in both hands. Happily he floated from one man to the next, thrusting it into each man's face, cooing, "Ohhhh, look! Mousey! Preeeeety mousey."
Cries of "Rat!" "Yeow!" and, "I HATE rats!" echoed through the narrow chamber during the general outrush. Peter retreated several yards and stopped, an expression of utmost disgust on his handsome face. "Slimer," he began in a calm voice, "Mousey doesn't like being held. Why don't you put Mousey down and let him go play with his mousey friends. Not there!" he added when Slimer made to comply next to his left foot. "Mousey's friends are down the tunnel ... waaaaaay down the tunnel."
"Okay!" Crooning pleasantly to his charge, the green ghost floated into the unlit portion of the tunnel and vanished.
"Nasty things," Winston shuddered, wiping his palms on his jumpsuit. "Never could stand rats."
"Most unsanitary." Egon adjusted his glasses and peered around, his white 'halo' describing a half-circle. "We'll probably all need booster shots to avoid infection." He again consulted his PKE meter, turning it in all directions. "Still nothing. We shall have to continue our random patrol."
"Watch out for bats!" Ray teased, a mischievous grin lighting his dirty face.
"I'm more worried about rabid cockroaches," Peter volleyed, giving the engineer a friendly shove. "You don't really think there are vampires down here, do you?"
Ray's chorus of, "But wouldn't that be neat?!" was interrupted when Winston gave him a silencing poke. Assaulted from two directions, the engineer protected his middle with crossed arms and stepped back out of range.
"I've got a question," the black Ghostbuster went on in a serious vein. "We're pretty confined down here; that means any attacks are going to be fought in close quarters. There's a chance we're gonna get tapped."
"You mean bitten?" Peter questioned, sobering.
Zeddemore nodded. "Remember what happened in Lupusville? Werewolves turning into vampires, and vampires into werewolves, and all because they were bitten." He fingered his collar nervously, then pulled the zipper up as high as it would go. "Frankly, brothers, I don't want to spend the rest of my days enjoying the nightlife." Both he and Peter fixed Egon with an inquiring look.
The physicist cleared his throat. "I would estimate the probability of that happening to be minuscule," he began in tones that declared himself none too sure on the subject. "The plasmic energy in such situations is believed to propagate unchecked upon the death of the host, imbuing some semblance of life to the body and maneuvering it through previously set patterns. Thus, the legends of bodies temporarily animated upon death."
"He means it's a lot like a disease," Ray translated, instinctively rejoining the circle. "Even if you're bitten, you can fight off the effects because ... well, you're still alive. But if you die thanks to the bite, your body is forced to mimic the patterns in the injected plasmic energy."
Peter jerked his thumb in the younger man's direction, addressing Winston. "Wasn't he supposed to make like baby words so we could understand this?"
Zeddemore nodded solemnly. "I think the boy's been hanging around Egon too long." He tapped his own temple. "Addles the brain."
"There is, of course, very little recent information on the phenomenon," Egon went on, ignoring both the interruption and Ray's protest. "The closest we've come to modern day effects is what happened in Lupusville."
Boyish enthusiasm lit Ray's face. He cocked his head, exchanging an interested look with Spengler. "Wow! If we go back we can take some readings off the transformed werewolves and vampires! Maybe one of them would even let us run some tests!"
Spengler was no less excited by the possibility. "Perhaps a return trip to Lupusville...."
Alarmed, Peter nipped that conversation in the bud. He kicked impatiently at the dirty water with one boot, liberally dousing both Spengler and Stantz. "Let's get going, bunkies. I don't want to spend the rest of my life down here."
"You got something better to do?" Winston taunted, following Egon into unexplored reaches.
"They're paying us double for this job," Ray added by way of encouragement.
Peter, bringing up the rear, danced backward, shaking his head pityingly when Stantz tripped over a submerged bit of flotsam. "I don't care if they are paying us quadruple," he groused, helping the younger man up with a hand under his elbow, "I do not want to miss my date with Sandra tonight."
"I'm pleased to see you've set your priorities to so professional an apex," Egon said dryly, absently brushing a corpse white centipede off his pantsleg. He moved a little ahead of the others, sloshing through the ankle deep waters of the old sewer tunnel with every evidence of distaste. "I had expected more, considering the fact that we need that $10,000 the mayor is willing to pay us for eliminating this particular N-E."
"Who's Sandra?" Ray asked, brushing himself down. "I thought you were seeing that operator lady...." He turned back to lay a sympathetic if dripping hand on Peter's shoulder. "It didn't work out? Gosh, Pete, I'm sorry. I hope it wasn't because of my boat or anything."
"Keeshar," Slimer quoted unexpectedly, clinging to Ray's neck. "Him bad dude."
Peter rolled his eyes drolly in the younger man's direction. "Ray, Sandra is Operator 23. The woman has a name, you know."
Ray shrugged and dropped his hand, resuming his place in line. "I didn't know you'd actually hooked up with her."
That won a moment's silence. "Welllll, we haven't actually 'connected' yet if that's what you mean. She wasn't able to get time off her job until tonight." He beamed invisibly to the others. "Tonight's the night! I finally get to meet Sandra face-to-face! She's already told me all about herself. Did you know Sandra used to be Miss Wiener Tot?...."
***
By: CindyR
Water dripped down the rough hewn walls, joining the shallow stream that ran just below boot level. No sunlight penetrated this far beneath the earth; from tunnel to tunnel there existed only the inky curtains of eternal night. Dark it was but not silent. The world was alive with sound, from soft squeaks to furtive scurrying as the inhabitants of the underground bustled about in their daily hunt for food. It may be imagined that it caused no little stir when five invaded this enclosed realm, shattering the gloom with light.
"Sewer. Again. Sewer. I hate it down here!"
Though the words were grumbled softly they elicited groans from all around. The single-file procession stopped in its tracks and turned in the direction of the speaker, illuminating him from two directions. A miner's hardhat bobbed atop one, wide blond curl as the leader placed both hands on his hips. "You've been saying that for almost an hour, Peter. Redundancy will not shorten our assignment by a single millisecond."
Peter Venkman, the grumbler, also came to a halt. He shoved a rifle-shaped particle thrower under one elbow, then tipped his own hardhat up off his forehead. This, unfortunately, served the dual task of revealing the low ceiling and disturbing the solid sheath of cockroaches that clung to the slimy stone. Peter shuddered and hurriedly looked away. "I don't care. I didn't want to take this lousy job anyway." He broke off, nostrils flaring. "I was wrong -- this place smells even worse than a catbox."
"Yucky. Yucky." A faintly glowing green blob also wearing a hardhat-plus- light floated nearer, nervously checking over its right shoulder before slinging a skinny arm around Peter's neck. "Place yucky. Scary. Slimer not like it here."
Peter dislodged the arm and wiped away a spot of green slime left behind. "Couldn't agree more, Spud. Not that I want to offend Dr. Spengler by griping."
Egon's blue eyes glittered with annoyance. "Like it or not, Peter, we're here and we've got a job to do." He brandished a jewelry-box sized object that was quietly beeping to itself; its fascia glowed red in the gloom. "According to the PKE meter, we're in an area of high psycho-kinetic energy. All indications so far read as a Class 7 or better, but with the walls blocking my equipment, I'm unable to tell precisely what spectral subdivision we're dealing with."
"That lady from the Sewer Authority seemed to know what type," a rich baritone voice interrupted from Venkman's right. The speaker was almost a shadow himself, dark skin making his face nearly invisible behind the glare of the lamps. Winston Zeddemore imitated Slimer's action of peering over his shoulder, examining walls, ceiling and ground with equal precision, his own weapon gripped securely in both hands. "According to her, what we're tracking down here is a ... vampire."
"I don't like vampires," Venkman complained, swiping sweaty dark hair out of his eyes. "Nasty things. Can't trust them. Remember '86? Lupusville? Our throwers barely knocked them down and we couldn't trap them at all."
"Count Vostok wasn't so bad," Zeddemore remarked fairly. "He seemed to be a pretty decent guy once we got to know him."
Spengler racked his thrower, using his now-free hand to adjust two dials on the meter. "Though I was unable to perform the experiments on Count Vostok that I would have liked, the readings I took from both him and the inhabitants of Lupusville, vampire and werewolf, seemed to indicate that none of them were true vampires -- at least not in the sense that Count Glutenborgen was. The others actually registered closer to the traditional Class 6 metamorphs we've faced in the past, possibly one a subspecies to the next. My theory is that Vostok and the others were simple shape- shifters who had somehow become locked into one or two options."
"Count Glutenborgen scarrrry!" Slimer announced, perching on Venkman's shoulder like a giant pigeon. "Didn't like him."
"He sure liked you, Spud. Too much." Winston scratched under his helmet, removing a beetle that had crawled up his collar and lodged in his short, curly hair. He grimaced and flicked it away. "Vostok did say he was the last of his kind even though there were a whole slew of vampires in Lupusville. Maybe he was talking about the last of his subspecies?"
Egon stroked his square jaw, eyes distracted behind his lenses. "If I could only have hooked him up to the plasmic electrometer for a few minutes...."
"You may get another chance," Peter grumbled, wiping his face on his sleeve. The humidity was high with so much water around though this far underground the temperature was cool. "If that lady was right, we may be facing a whole new set. Hope this doesn't mean some of those guys from Lupusville got loose. They were tough."
"What Mrs. Orsini said," the blond put in before Peter could launch an entirely new line of complaint, "is that two of her workers were attacked down her and bitten. We've met many nether-entities with teeth and claws who most assuredly did not qualify under nomenclature including the term vampire."
"That one guy got chomped right in the neck," Peter shot back, again swatting Slimer away. "That doesn't make you just a liiiiiitle bit suspicious?"
A fourth figure had been standing several yards farther down the tunnel waiting impatiently for the conversation to end. But now he stepped into the illuminated circle of the others and slapped Venkman on the arm. He was slightly shorter than the other three, with a smudged, youthful face made distinctive by large brown eyes and an infectuous smile. "Come on, guys! This place is neat! It's history! Do you know how old some of these tunnels are?" He turned and patted the nearest wall then jumped back with a cry of disgust when a six-inch waterbug strolled casually across his thumb. His smile, however, returned immediately. "This section alone could be a hundred years old! Thousands if we've accessed some of the natural caverns criss-crossing Manhattan! A lot of people even go spelunking down here!"
Visibly unimpressed, Venkman folded his arms across his chest, keeping his own distance from the pest-infested walls. "Oh, joy. Does that mean this is high-class sewage?"
"Yuck," Slimer repeated, as thrilled as was Venkman. Something outside the ring of lights caught his eye and he floated off, returning seconds later holding a squawling, wiggling brown shape in both hands. Happily he floated from one man to the next, thrusting it into each man's face, cooing, "Ohhhh, look! Mousey! Preeeeety mousey."
Cries of "Rat!" "Yeow!" and, "I HATE rats!" echoed through the narrow chamber during the general outrush. Peter retreated several yards and stopped, an expression of utmost disgust on his handsome face. "Slimer," he began in a calm voice, "Mousey doesn't like being held. Why don't you put Mousey down and let him go play with his mousey friends. Not there!" he added when Slimer made to comply next to his left foot. "Mousey's friends are down the tunnel ... waaaaaay down the tunnel."
"Okay!" Crooning pleasantly to his charge, the green ghost floated into the unlit portion of the tunnel and vanished.
"Nasty things," Winston shuddered, wiping his palms on his jumpsuit. "Never could stand rats."
"Most unsanitary." Egon adjusted his glasses and peered around, his white 'halo' describing a half-circle. "We'll probably all need booster shots to avoid infection." He again consulted his PKE meter, turning it in all directions. "Still nothing. We shall have to continue our random patrol."
"Watch out for bats!" Ray teased, a mischievous grin lighting his dirty face.
"I'm more worried about rabid cockroaches," Peter volleyed, giving the engineer a friendly shove. "You don't really think there are vampires down here, do you?"
Ray's chorus of, "But wouldn't that be neat?!" was interrupted when Winston gave him a silencing poke. Assaulted from two directions, the engineer protected his middle with crossed arms and stepped back out of range.
"I've got a question," the black Ghostbuster went on in a serious vein. "We're pretty confined down here; that means any attacks are going to be fought in close quarters. There's a chance we're gonna get tapped."
"You mean bitten?" Peter questioned, sobering.
Zeddemore nodded. "Remember what happened in Lupusville? Werewolves turning into vampires, and vampires into werewolves, and all because they were bitten." He fingered his collar nervously, then pulled the zipper up as high as it would go. "Frankly, brothers, I don't want to spend the rest of my days enjoying the nightlife." Both he and Peter fixed Egon with an inquiring look.
The physicist cleared his throat. "I would estimate the probability of that happening to be minuscule," he began in tones that declared himself none too sure on the subject. "The plasmic energy in such situations is believed to propagate unchecked upon the death of the host, imbuing some semblance of life to the body and maneuvering it through previously set patterns. Thus, the legends of bodies temporarily animated upon death."
"He means it's a lot like a disease," Ray translated, instinctively rejoining the circle. "Even if you're bitten, you can fight off the effects because ... well, you're still alive. But if you die thanks to the bite, your body is forced to mimic the patterns in the injected plasmic energy."
Peter jerked his thumb in the younger man's direction, addressing Winston. "Wasn't he supposed to make like baby words so we could understand this?"
Zeddemore nodded solemnly. "I think the boy's been hanging around Egon too long." He tapped his own temple. "Addles the brain."
"There is, of course, very little recent information on the phenomenon," Egon went on, ignoring both the interruption and Ray's protest. "The closest we've come to modern day effects is what happened in Lupusville."
Boyish enthusiasm lit Ray's face. He cocked his head, exchanging an interested look with Spengler. "Wow! If we go back we can take some readings off the transformed werewolves and vampires! Maybe one of them would even let us run some tests!"
Spengler was no less excited by the possibility. "Perhaps a return trip to Lupusville...."
Alarmed, Peter nipped that conversation in the bud. He kicked impatiently at the dirty water with one boot, liberally dousing both Spengler and Stantz. "Let's get going, bunkies. I don't want to spend the rest of my life down here."
"You got something better to do?" Winston taunted, following Egon into unexplored reaches.
"They're paying us double for this job," Ray added by way of encouragement.
Peter, bringing up the rear, danced backward, shaking his head pityingly when Stantz tripped over a submerged bit of flotsam. "I don't care if they are paying us quadruple," he groused, helping the younger man up with a hand under his elbow, "I do not want to miss my date with Sandra tonight."
"I'm pleased to see you've set your priorities to so professional an apex," Egon said dryly, absently brushing a corpse white centipede off his pantsleg. He moved a little ahead of the others, sloshing through the ankle deep waters of the old sewer tunnel with every evidence of distaste. "I had expected more, considering the fact that we need that $10,000 the mayor is willing to pay us for eliminating this particular N-E."
"Who's Sandra?" Ray asked, brushing himself down. "I thought you were seeing that operator lady...." He turned back to lay a sympathetic if dripping hand on Peter's shoulder. "It didn't work out? Gosh, Pete, I'm sorry. I hope it wasn't because of my boat or anything."
"Keeshar," Slimer quoted unexpectedly, clinging to Ray's neck. "Him bad dude."
Peter rolled his eyes drolly in the younger man's direction. "Ray, Sandra is Operator 23. The woman has a name, you know."
Ray shrugged and dropped his hand, resuming his place in line. "I didn't know you'd actually hooked up with her."
That won a moment's silence. "Welllll, we haven't actually 'connected' yet if that's what you mean. She wasn't able to get time off her job until tonight." He beamed invisibly to the others. "Tonight's the night! I finally get to meet Sandra face-to-face! She's already told me all about herself. Did you know Sandra used to be Miss Wiener Tot?...."
***