With the Necromancer ruling NYC after dark, the night watch cops must battle vamps, mooners and frankies.

(This story was orignally published in Alien Skin Magazine in December 2005)

'Anthony Barbotta.'� Lt. Nagora flipped through several more pages of the employment file while mouthing my name. It was the only in-box item remaining on a desk as tightly cropped as her raven hair. Despite her Asian features, she maintained the ghostly pallor common to the night watch. When she looked back up at me, her otherwise engaging eyes were not pleasant.

'What in hell is a twelve year day shifter doing on my night watch?'�

I shifted uncomfortably in the small chair she allowed across from her. 'Captain Norod's orders, Ma'am.'�

'Captain Norod.'� That name came out of her mouth as if she were chewing it. 'That emasculated excuse for a cop wouldn't survive a single night shift. What did you do to piss him off, Barbotta?'�

'I cited his daughter, Ma'am. I didn't recognize her married name.'�

'Ha! You're not so bad for a skinny Italian kid.'� It seemed a fairly strange thing for a 5' 2'� 120 pound Japanese woman to say to a 5' 11'� 200 pound Italian guy. But who was I to argue with rank?

'The only thing that bothers me,'� Lt. Nagora continued, 'is that you didn't do so well during the night watch phase of your field training. I see here that a frankie gave you a broken wrist which put you on permanent day shift.'�

'Yes, Ma'am. They had me taking non-emergency telephone reports until I healed up. After that I just stayed on day shift patrol.'�

'Well, I'm stuck with you until Norod's g-string gets untwisted. Not that he has anything down there to get twisted.'�

I barely avoided mirroring her smile before she ordered me to finish suiting up and head to roll call. All the while I fantasized a dozen different ways to get back to the day shift, yet I knew that not a one of them would work. Norod meant me to pay his penance no matter what.

Down in the locker room I began a ritual I'd left off since field training. This one involved a number of snaps, buckles and Velcro closures. I hadn't worn this much armor since my last night watch. Eventually, I broke down and asked another officer to help me snap on the Kevlar breastplate, greaves and guards. The helmet, I tucked under one arm for the time being as I slipped into the long but rather narrow roll call room. I felt foolish sitting in the front row with the new recruits, but the veterans wouldn't allow me sit with them until I'd proved myself.

The briefing that followed the roll call seemed rather standard. Standard, that is, for night watch. We never talked about such things on day shift, unless public works was too slow to clean up the bloody remains. We dealt with robberies, homicides and assaults committed by normal people. And those normal criminals knew well enough to stay in doors at night, unless they wanted to become victims.

I felt a growing tightness in my chest while I listened to reports about a progressive series of blood plasma burglaries. Then the lieutenant reviewed the sightings about large packs of mooners roving through Central Park. Worst than that were the rumors about another ghoul turf war starting to surface. It seemed that the frankie gangs all wanted to control the new cemetery on the east side.

'We have roving patrol tonight,'� said Lt. Nagora concluding her briefing. 'Wherever it's the hottest is where we'll be. Now load up the egg crate my little chicks.'�

The egg crate was an armored cop carrier, aptly named for seating twelve and having six tires on each side. Our ride came supplied with plenty of weapons and a boosted communication link back to the precinct. Looking at it reminded me that I'd seen my last patrol car for a while. Such two officer units would be suicidal at night. I suddenly wished I had enough night watch seniority to be a gunner in one of the reinforced turrets. But I knew that I'd be out with the freaks just like any other new guy.

I lined up on one side of the double rows formed by the rest of the crew. The lines stood facing each other behind the cop carrier's lowered rear ramp. Lt. Nagora stalked between our ranks.

'All right boys and girls. It's time to make sure everyone is armed and charmed.'�

The Lt was meticulous. She inspected each MP5 submachine gun and Glock pistol; making sure that each of us carried plenty of silver tips for both. We displayed our tasers and Nagora verified every spare probe cartridge. Then she had us unsheathe our PR-24 side handle batons for her. She required us to activate the spring-loaded wooden spike that emerged out the far end. When mine failed to stiletto out with same force as all the others, Nagora made me a special example.

'Get him a new baton.'� Her eyes found me again. 'Don't expect to fend off the vamps with just your UV flashlight and garlic pepper spray. Are you listening to me, Barbotta?'�

'Yes, Ma'am!'� She took the replacement baton and activated it with a resounding snap to emphasize her next words.

'They will suck you dry once they get past that Kevlar collar. Remember your training mantra , Barbotta. 'You must impale or you will fail.''�

'Yes, Ma'am.'� She handed me the baton and looked me up and down while I sheathed it.

'I see your arms but where are your charms, boy?'�

'I don't have a personal charm, Lieutenant.'� I should've known this was coming when I saw the others clipping on their tiny horseshoes, shamrocks, charm bracelets, eyes of Horus, worry beads and what not.

'You aren't impressing me, Barbotta. Has twelve years of sun soaking day shift fried your frontal lobe? We are going down to freaky town, not handing out traffic tickets. Now will someone please bring me the charm box?'�

Corporal Laurice appeared with the shiny marble box and I dug through the various sprigs of garlic and barley until I found a black rabbit's foot. I clipped it to the designated spot on my tactical vest.

Nagora motioned me to lean in so that she could whisper in my ear. 'Don't foul up again, Barbotta. Or I'll really have a reason to kick Captain Norod in the numb nuts.'�

I could only nod and manage not to smile.

We loaded up and idled the diesel at the sally port until the drawbridge lowered enough to lock into place with the metal ramp leading to the street. The front row of halogens pierced dark roads devoid of all other traffic save armored transit buses and hummer taxis.

I instinctively looked toward the ceiling when the rear turret emitted an electrical whir during rotation. Even then I startled when the 37 mm opened up. The gas-powered recoil whispered a steady staccato in a vain effort to tag a vamp fly by. I'd used that very same riot gun on day shift. The only difference was that the night watch sharpened the blunt wooden dowels in hopes of making that always-lucky heart shot.

'Save your wood, boys,'� said Nagora from her command seat at the front of the carrier. From my backseat position, I could barely see the row of six-inch flat screens that relayed a video feed to Nagora from the micro-cams on each officer. 'We have a burglary in progress at the Santa Sangria Plasma Bank and Trust.'�

We sped through downtown, minus lights or siren, secure in the vacancy of the streets and desirous of catching the vamps literally red handed. Nagora directed both of our teams to make entry on the western front of the bank. Each team had a 37 mm and net guns. They trusted me with neither of those, but did allow me to take point.

Sgt. Bofox ordered us to overlap one another as we passed through a heavy security door barely hanging by one hinge. Clawed furrows grooved around the handle where superhuman leverage had been applied. In twos, Bofox stripped us away from the main element until my team was strung out guarding hallway junctions between laboratories. Team two continued on with their primary search and seizure mission. I found myself sharing a crossing with Agustina Salva.

Salva made it clear that she wanted me to stay in one spot unless she specifically told me to move. She made good use of the cover afforded by the entryway to a janitorial closet. I wondered if holding her net gun always at the ready caused her a lot of muscle strain. I never got to ask her.

From the dark recesses of a nearby lab a flurry of sight and sound burst through the shattering observation window. Shards of glass peppered and punctured the outer most layer of my armor. Despite the transparent shrapnel I reacted according to training. At the same time that Salva erupted an expanding netball, I activated my UV flashlight in the same direction. A grating scream and the futile flapping of leathery wings echoed in the bare hallway.

'Let's stake 'em, Barbotta!'� said Salva.

We charged forward, fingers hovering to activate our wooden stilettos into a bloodless heart. The tangle of net exploded back into us. Down on my back I lifted my PR-24 only to have it broken in half. Unnatural strength pinned me to the floor in the form of a barely dressed female. The exposed portion of her bosom matched the ivory sheen of her fangs. With spear tip fingernails she reached toward my Kevlar collar.

Within inches of her reaching my neck Salva's wooden spike emerged out of the she-vamp's chest. Fortunately, the auditory filters on my helmet muffled the worst of her death screech. In mere seconds she disintegrated into a blanket of moldy dust on top of my armor.

The she-vamp might have been ash, but her male counterpart revealed himself by lifting up Salva and ripping away her collar in one movement. Before I could get to my feet, fangs punctured her neck and my partner was suddenly on the fast track to total desanguinezation. My full discharge of garlic spray barely slowed the vamp until other officers arrived to force-feed him several 24-inch New York stakes.

No one said anything directly to me as we rushed Salva to the nearest hospital for a full blood transfusion. I wondered if they were thinking, as I did, how it might've all gone down differently if I hadn't allowed the vamp to break my baton. I soon had other concerns as we roared down to Central Park to stop an incursion of mooners on the south side.

With the loss of Salva the mood inside the carrier grew somber and silent. Not that anyone had really talked to me before that. As such, I had little to do but watch through a polycarbonate view port as the dark city passed by at 80 miles per hour. Closer to the park, lower buildings allowed me to see the half buried moon full-blown and steadily rising. I shook my head knowing that this was the worst time of month to get transferred to the night watch.

I hadn't been to Central Park since the necromancer first ruled the night fifteen years ago. Day shift doesn't patrol the park, but the PD keeps it ringed with substation outposts. The posts are the PD's eyes and ears to guard against the mooners running at large. Nagora passed the word that outpost 13 was in danger of being overrun.

I didn't need Nagora to tell me that the chattering machine guns were running low. They scattered the last of their silver loads while we dismounted out of the rear end of the carrier. An uncoordinated chorus of howls assaulted us along with the odor of burnt fur. We high kneed up the stairs and deployed along the firing line on top of the exterior wall. My breathing increased to match my heart rate. I slid into a firing position and watched the most recent wave of mooners climbing over the backs of fellow pack members enduring the full jolt of the inner electrical fence.

Somehow I'd missed encountering werewolves during my field training. Now I had dozens of different versions to view under the harsh floodlights. Most had jaws big enough to snap an officer's head off, Kevlar collar or not. Even the electrical fence barely slowed them.

I remembered to pace myself with two or three round bursts. Even with the height advantage I sometimes allowed the recoil to ride the barrel too high. Sgt. Bofox noticed it too. 'Keep it down, Barbotta!'� He slapped the top of my helmet to add emphasis.

We kept up a steady onslaught of silver tips until a reinforcement carrier resupplied and relieved the spent cops in outpost 13. Soon afterwards pyrotechnic tracers streaked the night from the revived machineguns. I knew that public works would have the unpleasant assignment of removing the riddled naked corpses the following morning.

Bofox herded us back into the carrier so we once again raced down city streets until reaching our lunch destination. Denny's kept a skeleton crew working all night just for cops and other civil servants in need of some hot chow after battling evil. They actually had more security guards than cooks and servers. We unloaded in the restaurant's secure sally port after surveillance cameras scanned us under and over for any vamps hitching a ride. None of the eateries were taking any chances after the night crew at an IHOP was found sucked dry.

The other officers cheered up a bit at the heaping plates of breakfast dishes, buffalo chicken melts, zesty nachos, and taco salads. I settled into a mushroom Swiss burger with all the trappings. The others avoided conversation with me like I was a diseased rat trying to take a bite out of their piece of cheese. I wondered how long it might take to fit in or if I'd live long enough to find out.

The hottest call of all hot calls for the night interrupted our gluttony. We left our half eaten plates of crispy, greasy, glory so that we could respond along with every other available unit to a gang war at the Happy Humus Eastside Cemetery. I suddenly felt that old ache in my wrist at the thought of cold flesh stitched over undead rage.

We rumbled over the broken down iron grating providing an inadequate perimeter for the dead zone. Even through the sides of the carrier I could hear the frankies slapping one another with head stones long before we even spotted the giant figures lurching in the dark.

These rotten gangsters were taller than the ones I recalled on my last ill-fated night watch. Upwards from ten to fifteen feet stretched these cobbled together monsters. Just the sight of them pushing and punching one another was enough to make my guts ball around the remains of my mushroom burger.

'Work with your squad mates and coordinate with the turret gunners,'� said Nagora through our earpieces when we cleared the ramp.

The carrier lurched into motion again, double-barreled tripods swiveling to replace the now useless 37 mm gas guns. The turbo tasers zeroed in on the nearest frankie. The monster's wide back took four arrow head probes trailing cables as thick as suspended phone lines. The simultaneous electrical discharge from both tripods danced across rotting flesh. Once the defibulation ran complete, the frankie tottered over, his spark of un-life disrupted.

This heartened me enough to keep up with my other three squad mates as we stalked a second battling frankie. We fired our hand held tasers, one in each hand as if we were 50,000 volt gunslingers. It took all eight hits in coordination to topple the undead giant. He flattened three headstones during his sprawl until he finally lay like a flesh puppet trailing strings.

We immediately stripped off our spent cartridges and latched on fresh probes for our next target. The behemoth came at us jerkily stumbling in his own retarded fashion.

Sixteen probes exploded out through the blast doors fronting the cartridges. They each stuck hard in the cold flesh and completed the circuit for our eight tasers. The monster's stagger became much more exaggerated; and before I quite realized it he fell towards us like a tree submitting to an axe.

We scattered from his length, all except a tripping Bofox. He screamed against the crushing pain when the cross-stitched head pinned his legs. I ran to free the sergeant only to have a final spasm from the frankenstein's out stretched hand send me flying. My Kevlar helmet absorbed most of the impact against the granite grave monument before I slipped past consciousness.

I awoke on the floor of the carrier in full acceleration toward the nearest hospital. Bofox lay nearby, his lower half submersed inside inflatable leg splints. A much smaller version encased my left wrist. The same one as last time.

'You didn't even make it through an entire night watch, Barbotta.'� Lt. Nagora leaned over me. 'That spoon fracture of yours might be your ticket back to day shift. Of course, if Norod is still pissed with you by the time you heal up, your ass just might be mine again. But I guess that I can live with that.'�

I allowed myself a weak smile in return.

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