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“Well, look who’s here,” said Donny, dressed in a silk maroon-colored bathrobe, cheerfully opening the door to his and Travis’ apartment. It was 1992, Bill Clinton had won the election, Kurt Cobain was smelling like teen spirit, The Toronto Blue Jays had won the World Series, and the Mets sucked.
Accepting Donny’s welcome, I stepped inside and saw Travis coming out of the bedroom tying the belt of a matching bathrobe. I instantly wiped away the thought of what went on before I arrived.
“Well, well, it’s the Jersey boy,” said Travis. He actually looked pleased to see me. “What brings you to town, young man? Still checking up on that lovely little family of yours?”
Acceptance had set in by then. I was now an established member of the living dead society. That being said, letting go of the ones I loved was pretty much not an option. I wanted to remain close without upsetting their lives any further while remaining in compliance with Travis and Donny’s territorial boundaries. That’s how I wound up in Newark, where I worked out my routine of feeding on worthless rejects that didn’t conflict with my fanged neighbors’ borders.
Maintaining a territory isn’t easy. You need to respect the daytime life that you’re not a part of, while also tending to your own nocturnal needs. That means not creating too many missing persons cases and not leaving a trail of headless corpses in your surrounding area. To date I’ve been successful in not stirring up anything above the norm in our community. Even the nomads of our undead population have steered clear, understanding that North Jersey is mine the same way the five boroughs of New York are Travis and Donny’s.
Back during their little turf war in the prohibition era, when Simone failed to finish off Travis, he rose again knowing that Capelli’s men would go after Donny. Fearing that it might have been too late, Travis rushed back to his apartment to find his mate lying on the living room floor with six bullets in him. Without any hesitation, Travis clamped his fangs into Donny hoping to turn him before his life slipped away. When Donny joined the ranks of the undead, he also turned out to be genetically resistant, although his transition suffered some bumps in the road like mine did. That’s probably why he was more sympathetic about my conversion. Once Donny’s transformation was complete, the happy couple went hunting after Simone together, eventually finding their frequently unclothed maker gorging herself on another bedmate. This time it was a pretty music hall dancer.
The ensuing confrontation was a fierce one but ultimately, not yet having developed the dominant traits that she currently possesses, Simone found herself overmatched by the two-on-one lover boy advantage. A few more epic rematches followed over the next few months but Travis and Donny held their own, forcing Simone to concede the city and become the intruding nomad she currently is today, regularly returning with more capabilities and heightened powers. This war still isn’t over.
“What’s going on with Teresa Gunder?” I asked, slicing the mood of our friendly reunion like a sword-wielding Ninja.
Travis immediately transformed into the Travis I am more familiar with. “What do you know about Teresa Gunder?”
“The same as everyone else who reads the papers. But there’s more to her story and I don’t think I know everything there is to know. Don’t you think I should?”
“Yes, you should know,” said Travis with an edge to his voice. “She is a very dangerous woman to us, dangerous to us all. But if you’ve come across any knowledge about her it needs to come out now.”
I lied. “I haven’t. I know about her from her report and the media coverage but that’s all I know. That’s why I’m here to see you.” It wasn’t a complete lie. I did know about The Gunder Report and a little bit about her history, but when I came across her name on Dominic’s desk at the police station, the picture changed completely.
Earlier that night, Dominic, now an NYPD sergeant, was at his desk looking through his old files unaware that his undead brother-in-law was reading over his shoulder. He was going over my case—a case that never made any sense to him. Why would his brother-in-law suddenly just ditch his bosses without warning, to go with what most figured was some high-priced, redheaded call girl?
When Dominic’s shift ended, I was bored and looking for something to do so I swiped the files and took them to a Chock Full ‘O Nuts half a mile away. There, I settled into a booth, wishing I had a Bustelo, and laid the files out on the table, reading them at my leisure.
Dominic wasn’t allowed to work on my case because he was a close relative, but that didn’t stop him from staying informed on any developments. Knowing first-hand how much I loved Stefanie and how proud I was of having her as my wife, there was no way in his eyes that what happened was consistent with any part of my behavior. He repeated this many times to his devastated, heartbroken and humiliated sister. He just didn’t buy the official story. Not Nicky. Nicky would never do that. I wish I could believe that Stefanie shared that sentiment, but it was difficult to tell if the pain in her face was from the mourning or the betrayal.
Dominic was regularly reprimanded for interfering with the officers’ investigations regarding my case. When the time came that I was officially declared dead, he became even more consumed, putting additional strain on his marriage to Patti, which wasn’t the storybook kind to begin with.
The waitress brought over a corn muffin I had ordered and shook her head at the mess I had made. Files were spread all over the table; newspaper clippings, crime scene photographs, witness reports, and documents from similar disappearances throughout the country. There had to be something that was overlooked.
Who was this redhead? She was the only one who might have had any answers. Yet she was missing as well. At first they thought maybe she was also a victim, but that changed when the forensic reports revealed that only traces of my blood were found in the room. If she was abducted, then why was there no demand for any ransom? And why wasn’t anyone looking for her?
Even stranger was the fact that there were witness accounts of her entering the hotel without anyone seeing her leave. They went through every security tape over and over without finding any trace of her. Me, I was all over the tapes, talking to Greg, going to the pay phone and then sticking my tongue out, doing spastic Joe Cocker gyrations alone in the elevator (Thankfully those tapes were never released to the public. These days that shit would be all over YouTube). But with no videotape or photographs to identify her, all the police had of Simone were sketches that were made from witnesses’ descriptions of her. And since the room where I was found was not registered in anyone’s name, that added even more to the mystery.
But there was something else that bothered Dominic, and he couldn’t let go of it—the case of Ronnie Gunder’s disappearance near Syracuse University. It happened three years prior to my disappearance and the circumstances were too similar to ignore.
Ronnie had spent a night bingeing with some SU buddies at an upstate bar before leaving with an attractive older woman that had long, red hair. He was found the next morning in a motel room after a maid had heard a smoke alarm go off. When she saw the smoke coming out into the hallway, she banged loudly on the door and got no response. The room was finally unlocked by the hotel manager who heroically burrowed into the thickening smoke, only to find Ronnie’s body lying on the bed, engulfed in flames. The workers at the motel quickly got together and put out the fire, but when the smoke cleared, they were stricken by how quickly the body had burned. Only blood and ashes were left. The night before, a couple of the male workers remembered envying Ronnie when he came in with this sumptuous looking redhead. But in the morning she was nowhere to be seen.
When the investigators arrived they were completely baffled, as would be expected. They looked everywhere for evidence that could tell them how the fire was started. Yet nothing was found that they believed could have sparked an inferno that would burn someone to a crisp so fast. No matches. No gasoline. Nothing. And as far as anyone could tell, young Gunder was wearing no clothes so there was nothing on him that could have gone up so quickly in flames.
Ronald’s mother, Dr. Teresa Gunder, was a professor of epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania. When she learned what happened to her son, she was naturally devastated and drove to Syracuse to find answers. But as the investigations went on, she became more frustrated and agitated that the police, nor the fire inspectors, could provide any answers. The frustration then turned to obsession. She wanted to know who was to blame and more importantly, where the hell was this red-haired woman? With no developments coming up after she had returned to work, her behavior at the university became increasingly erratic and distracted. Her superiors at the university tried to convince her to take some time off. Anyone who had suffered such a loss couldn’t possibly have been expected to function normally without some time to heal, especially since she was alone, having been divorced for over fifteen years.
Caring little about anything else, the doctor continued her own personal investigation, looking deeper into any information that had anything to do with her son’s death. Tired of receiving well-meaning advice discouraging her from being so fixated, she withdrew from everyone around her and shut herself away from the outside world.
Without anyone to steer her away, Dr. Gunder spent all her time studying newspaper accounts and making constant calls to the Syracuse police, the fire department, and the medical examiner’s office. Her superiors at the university, having seen enough, as her emotional condition continued to deteriorate, finally demanded after a few weeks that she take some time off.
Initially she resisted but then came to realize that she could use that time to return to Syracuse and look deeper into the case. Her first stop was the motel. With the investigation still going on, no access to the possible crime scene was allowed, but using the motel manager’s sense of guilt, Dr. Gunder exploited his sympathy and gained entry to the room despite orders to the contrary.
In her notes, the doctor described how she walked in and was still able to smell the smoke from the fire. When it occurred to her that the smell was that of her son’s burnt flesh, she was overcome with tears. Considerate enough to allow the doctor a moment of privacy, the motel manager stepped out into the hall.
It was the break that she needed. Dr. Gunder took advantage of the motel manager’s courtesy and knelt down on the burnt carpet to fill a small jar with some of her son’s ashes. She also took a knife out and cut a one-inch square out of the blood-caked mattress, sealing it inside a zip-lock bag and stashing it in her purse along with the ashes.
With the little time that she had, and the prospect of the motel manager returning, there was nothing else she could come up with. The sheets were already gone. They had been taken to the lab by the police. What she had was going to have to do. Hopefully they would turn up something.
When the doctor returned home she convinced her superiors that working on a limited basis would be therapeutic for her. Unknown to them, she would be using that time to run her own tests with the evidence that she had collected.
Her first findings showed nothing out of the ordinary. From the dried blood on the piece she cut out from the mattress, she determined that Ronnie’s blood alcohol content was a little over 0.05—no surprise there since the reports already established that he had met the woman at a bar. It was a couple of tests later when something strange turned up from the results. It was a micro-organism—one that she, nor anyone, had never seen before. Was it a disease? Was her son sick and she didn’t know about it? To check heredity, the doctor ran tests on herself. The results showed that whatever that micro-organism was, it did not come from her. But comparative tests to other results raised another question.
A very odd one.
The doctor double-checked the declared time of death. Now she was really confused. Before these events, Dr. Gunder was considered one of the best in her field, yet her findings made hardly any sense. She ran the tests again. The results were the same. There was no one she could turn to. Everything Dr. Gunder was doing was unauthorized and there was considerable debate as to whether she should have been working even on a limited basis. And since the organism was one that was never scientifically documented, there was nowhere that Dr. Gunder could look for further research. It also bothered the doctor that there was no mention of any such findings in the coroner’s report. How did they miss it? Were they incompetent? Were they covering it up? Perhaps it was arrogant of her, she thought. Having once been considered one of the leading epidemiologists in the nation, was it fair for her to expect a coroner to have the same expertise?
In the eyes of those involved in the investigation, Ronnie Gunder burned to his death. There was no biological cause to speak of. But if they would have run the same tests Dr. Gunder did and had gotten the same results, one question could not have been ignored. How was it possible that the organism that she found was still alive almost four hours after her son’s death?
#
“The good doctor has accumulated a lot of knowledge,” said Travis with eyes of self-preservation.
Dominic had files on Dr. Gunder that could fill a milk crate so I hadn’t yet completed reading them. I had to bring them back to his desk so they wouldn’t be noticed missing. But I did make it over to Staples to run copies of what I lifted from his desk including:
THE GUNDER REPORT:
A SCIENTIFIC ANALYSIS OF VAMPIRE MYTHOLOGY.
“To date she has been discredited and is considered a tragic source of pity,” said Travis.
“But ever since Simone killed her son, she’s gone everywhere doing research,” added Donny.
“What do you mean everywhere?” I asked.
“The doctor found a biological substance in her boy’s remains that was not, well, it wasn’t human,” said Travis. That much I knew but I played dumb. Travis continued. “She researched for well over a year, neglecting her responsibilities at the university, and as I mentioned, losing her credibility and the respect of her peers. But she didn’t care. She wanted to know everything there was to know about her boy’s death.”
“I’m not trying to make a joke here,” I said, about my upcoming pun. “But this should have been a major red flag to anyone investigating my death.”
“It was, young man. The police are not blind to the fact that a similar woman was at the site of two similar deaths but there are so few answers, they don’t know what to do with the information that they do have. Our opinion is that young Mr. Gunder turned while she was feeding on him and he fought her off.”
“What? How is that possible?”
“It’s rare but it does happen,” said Donny. “We think he put up a fight with her and she fled. And since he was weakened from the fight and probably confused, he probably stayed in that room long enough to get hit with the sunlight coming in through the window. She was probably smart enough to give up the fight and let him burn on his own.”
“So when the doctor learned what she did from the results of her tests,” added Travis, “she looked everywhere to see if anything similar turned up in any medical reports around the world.”
“Did she find anything?” I asked.
Travis shook his head in grudging admiration. “She found traces of what was in her son in lab readings from a 15th century meteorite.”
“Meteorite? Are you fucking with me?” I looked at them both but, by then, I already knew that sense of humor was not one of Travis’ strong suits.
“And that’s not even the best part of it,” said Donny.
“What do you mean?”
“The meteorite was from Cluj County in the Mocs-Palatca region.”
“Where is that?”
“Romania,” replied Travis.
“Romania? What are you gonna start telling me, some Vlad-the-Impaler shit now?”
Donny smiled nervously. “The fact is that the doctor began researching mysterious deaths from that era and traced the beginning of our existence to that point in time.”
I was waiting for them to burst out laughing.
I waited a little more.
Nothing.
“C’mon guys!” They had to be pulling my leg.
Travis made it clear they weren’t. “What do you know about Teresa Gunder?”
“You’re afraid of her, aren’t you?”
Travis clenched his teeth. “Again Nicholas, do you know where she is?”
“No!” I snapped back. “What is it about this woman that’s got you all worked up? Nobody believes her anyway.”
Donny explained a little more patiently than his partner. “Dr. Gunder has made a lot of progress in her research, and that’s with no one taking her seriously. But now she knows how we began, how we evolved, and just about everything else there is to know about us. She’s looked back through history, police investigations, and scientific findings. And while she remains out of sight and difficult to find, we think she is well on her way to developing a way of identifying us while we’re out in public.”
“In other words, she is taking significant steps in learning everything she needs to know to eventually destroy us,” said Travis.
Oh, so that’s the problem.
“So, where is she now?” I asked.
Travis was never the easiest to convince of anything. “You really don’t know where she is?”
“No!”
“She’s gone into hiding,” said Donny. “But if you read her report, you’ll see that she knows our strengths and our weaknesses. Travis is right. She will soon know enough to be able to destroy us.”
“So what is she waiting for?” I asked.
“Well, obviously the woman needs people to help her,” said Travis. “This is not a battle she can win on her own. The second that one of us finds her, she is finished.”
“But no one believes her. You said it yourself.”
“She knows about genetic resistance,” said Donny. “She thinks that she can find one of us with a conscience that can help with her research.”
“In other words” said Travis, with his threatening eyes, “if she gets one of our kind on her side, we’re as good as done.”