The Nymphos of Rocky Flats Read online

  "Death would end the guilt." The stranger's grin threatened more than it reassured. "You want to die?"

  I forced myself to shake my head, since my body no longer felt like my own.

  He yanked my armor vest and pulled me off balance. I fell to my knees in front of him. He cradled my head in his rough hands and his thoughts materialized inside my head.

  "If not death, then suffering would appease this guilt. Is that what you want?"

  I whispered, "We didn't come here to slaughter children and their mothers. If someone must be punished, then make it me. Hold me accountable."

  "Punishment? How noble of you, soldier. Everyone else begs for mercy. I could make this pleasant, but you want to suffer."

  His face approached me. His lips parted. An intense creepiness overcame me, a horrid sensation like hundreds of spiders crawling over my skin. But I could do nothing except let him turn my head to expose the left side of my neck. Moist lips touched my skin. Two sharp points punctured my flesh. I clenched my fists to endure the pain.

  The drumming of my heartbeat slowed. My muscles relaxed. The maddening distress spinning in my head dissolved into a dreamy, pulsating haze. A coolness crept up my limbs to my torso. My toes and fingers began to tingle. The fog in my brain thickened. The shroud of death brushed over me.

  Then the stranger pressed his mouth against mine, and a salty ooze of blood washed over my tongue.

  My throat burned as if acid had been poured into me. My guts twisted and writhed like a snake set afire. I tried to retch but he held me tight against him. When I started to convulse, he let go and my body jerked in feverish spasms. I lay on my side and looked up at him. An orange aura—like the glow from hot coals—surrounded him. He wiped blood from his chin.

  I gasped for the words. "Who are you?"

  "I am the damned son of Nadilla, the undead queen of the Tigris and Euphrates." His answer was drenched in bitterness and self-loathing.

  I dragged myself away from him. The orange glow radiated from my hands as well. My insides thrashed in panic. "Undead?"

  He nodded. "And I've given you what you wanted. A punishment even worse than death. I've given you immortality. As a vampire."

  Chapter 2

  SOMETIME AFTER MY DISCHARGE from the army, I was driving my '62 Dodge Polara north on Highway 93. The rugged foothills of the Rocky Mountains were to my left, and in the distance to my right stretched the sprawl of the Denver metroplex. Here Highway 93 cuts through a grassy plain littered with cinder-block-sized rocks. Past the intersection with Highway 72, I turned right at the first traffic light and entered the Department of Energy's Rocky Flats Closure Project, formerly known as the Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Site, but always remembered by its original function—the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant.

  I halted by the shack alongside the entrance road. A guard wearing a gray camouflage uniform and a large black holster cinched to his dumpy waist greeted me. A sign on the guard shack listed prohibited items: guns, explosives, cameras, binoculars, all non-DOE-approved communications devices—whatever those were.

  The guard asked for my license. He examined my photo and growled, "Mr. Gomez, please remove your sunglasses."

  Despite the fact he had a gun and I didn't, he gave a frightened grimace when I removed my sunglasses. I expected the reaction. The dark rings surrounding my eyes gave me a hungry, predatory appearance. I squinted because of the sun and shielded my face with one hand.

  He would've crapped in his pants if I had removed my contacts. These special contacts masked the reflection from the mirror-like tapetum lucidum at the back of my eyes, which gave me a threatening, lupine gaze. The tapetum lucidum allowed me—and all vampires—both night vision and the ability to see the psychic energy auras that surrounded living things. I wore contacts to keep from spooking the humans.

  My vampire sense, a heightened awareness of my five other senses, which my brain processed into an intuitive sixth sense, detected his fear. Instinctively, I ran my tongue across my upper teeth, feeling my incisors start to grow. I smiled at him and replaced my sunglasses.

  The guard quickly returned my license. After checking his clipboard, he gave me a pink plastic ID tag stamped VISITOR. A dosimeter was affixed to one corner of the tag.

  He pointed to a black Humvee parked beyond the guard shack. "They'll escort you to your destination."

  Two more guards in gray camouflage climbed into the Humvee. Besides submachine guns, these guards donned police helmets and carried protective masks strapped to their thighs. The edginess in their manner made me wonder if this had something to do with the reason I had been summoned here.

  I followed them for a quarter-mile, taking in the desolate quality of Rocky Flats. From my reading of public documents about this place and its notorious past, I expected a giant industrial complex. Instead, rows of steel containers lay stacked together on asphalt pads, surrounded by sparse grass, dirt, and the ubiquitous rocks. Boxcars sat on rusted wheels, resting on segments of track leading to nowhere. Ahead of us stood the gray concrete buildings in the Protected Area, where DOE and its contractors used to manufacture plutonium. Rolls of razor wire glittered atop chain-link fencing that marked the perimeter.

  I lowered my window and let in the aroma of sagebrush. A mood of apprehension and restrained panic permeated the air. My vampire sense failed to pinpoint the cause, and this should've alerted me, but in my arrogance—I was in the company of blunt-toothed humans, after all—I dismissed any concern.

  My college roommate, Gilbert Odin, now the Rocky Flats Assistant Manager for Environmental Restoration, had asked for me. Hearing from him after losing touch for a long time surprised me, but not as much as the twenty-thousand-dollar check he had Fed-Exed as an enticement to consider his proposal. Which was? I didn't know, but the money was enough to tempt any private detective.

  The Humvee took the left fork of the road and continued until we ended in a gravel parking lot adjacent to a series of long office trailers.

  The guards dismounted, keeping their submachine guns handy, and pointed to the wooden steps of the trailer to my right. Did everyone get so much special attention?

  Removing my sunglasses, I climbed the short, creaking steps and entered a tiny, carpeted foyer lit by weak fluorescent lighting. The interior was of modular construction, with upholstered wall panels in alternating beige and gray. Along one wall hung photographs in cheap plastic frames, portraits of the President, the Secretary of the Department of Energy, and all the DOE management flunkies in the hierarchy between Washington, D.C., and Rocky Flats.

  The hall emptied into a receptionist's office. No one sat behind the desk. Stacks of papers and binders covered the surface, crowded against framed photos of a smiling middle-aged blonde posing with children and a man about her age. A pile of thick folders lay on the chair.

  The door behind the desk opened and Gilbert Odin stepped out. My friend stood as tall as I remembered him, at six foot four. His tie ended three-quarters of the way down his shirt. We hadn't seen each other in years, and while I recognized his thick mustache, the bald pate pushing through a crown of gray and brown hair was new. It was as if his worries had burnished the hair off his head. His gray eyes beamed pleasantly through the rimless glasses perched on a long, narrow nose. He carried a smell of cabbage, as if he'd just finished a plate of sauerkraut.

  We made eye contact.

  Gilbert's eyes opened wide, and his head tipped back in surprise.

  I gave him a practiced smile and offered my hand, ignoring his stare. "Hey, Gilbert, what's it been? Years and years?"

  He gave my hand a weak, hesitant shake while he continued to study my appearance. "Yeah, something like that."

  We went into his office and he shut the door. The office was what I expected for a mid-level government hack. More modular walls and fluorescent lighting. A desk and matching cabinets, finished in a fake teak veneer. Computer monitor and keyboard on the desk. An in-box overflowing with corresponden
ce.

  Gilbert put his hand up, indicating that I should halt. He pulled a black box the size of a cigarette pack from the pocket of his trousers. He pressed a button and red lights flashed along the box that I recognized as an electronic bug detector.

  Waving the box from side to side in front of me, Gilbert flicked his gaze from the box to my person. When he pointed at my ID tag, the lights flashed steadily and the box began to chirp.

  He retrieved a letter opener from his desk and pried the dosimeter from my ID tag to expose a silver capsule sprouting wires. A listening device.

  "Got you, ya bastard." Gilbert dropped the bug on the floor and crunched it under his heel.

  He motioned for me to sit in the chair before his desk. My gaze lingered on the broken remains of the miniature transmitter on the carpet. My vampire sense had missed the bug, and I felt uncomfortably naïve and paranoid. I wanted to start with my questions, but Gilbert put his fingers to his lips, so I kept quiet. He picked up the receiver of his phone and hollered into it, a yell so loud I winced.

  He returned the phone to its cradle. "Whenever I have a guest, those assholes in Security crank up the sensitivity of their snooper. I love to make their ears ring for the rest of the day."

  A black boom box rested on the credenza behind Gilbert's desk. He flicked the on switch and filled the room with the strains of a Metallica concert loud enough to drown the shriek of a turbine engine. How the hell were we going to talk?

  He opened the center panel of the credenza and placed both the boom box and his telephone inside. When he shut the panel, it turned the heavy metal guitar whine into a muffled drone.

  "Let's see those bastards try to eavesdrop now." He sat in his high-backed chair and folded his hands on his desk, smiling wryly.

  As a vampire and private detective, I should be used to the bizarre, but nothing in my experience had ever matched this loony display.

  I looked back at the destroyed bug on the floor. "If we're not safe to talk here, why not go off site?"

  "If I did that," Gilbert replied, "Security would get suspicious."

  "Seems to me they're already suspicious."

  "This is nothing. They're just covering their butts. It's the illusion of vigilance that comforts them. In these days after 9/11, any act of paranoia is justified."

  Gilbert's eyes shifted from my face to the bottom of my neck. He must have noticed the makeup smeared against the inside of my collar. According to popular lore, vampires aren't supposed to be able to endure sunlight. Thankfully, popular lore doesn't take into account the modern miracles of sunblock, vitamin supplements, and cosmetics.

  "If you don't mind me asking, what's with your eyes and the makeup?"

  "Gulf War Syndrome," I replied. "The second Gulf War. Operation Iraqi Freedom."

  His expression became anxious. "I read that it's not contagious. Is it?"

  Not unless I bit him. "No," I reassured him. "But I was exposed to every suspected agent. Got the notorious anthrax vaccine. The latest issue of the Gulf War Review says that I could have leishmaniasis or mycoplasma. During battle we drove through the smoke of burning enemy tanks that we had destroyed with depleted-uranium penetrators. God knows what we inhaled."

  "Try beryllium, americium, and plutonium besides the depleted uranium," he said. "Those rounds were made of U-238 dross from the enriched stuff we processed here."

  "So it's ironic that I'm here," I said.

  "Irony has nothing to do with it. And neither does depleted uranium, I don't think. I asked for you because of your credentials."

  "So I gathered. When you sent a check for twenty grand and a request for an interview, I figured there was more to it than you asking how I've been. This is about Rocky Flats, right?"

  "It is."

  "Then I don't understand how you expect a civilian investigator, an outsider, to accomplish anything here, considering your safeguards and security requirements."

  "Felix, it's precisely because you're an outsider. A known quantity I can trust. For example, three weeks after you took the Blanford case, you traced them to their hideout in St. Lucia and found their stash of embezzled monies on Vanuatu."

  "How'd you learn about that?" I asked.

  "The Patriot Act," Gilbert replied smugly. "Ask the right questions and it's amazing what can be learned. Your reputation is impressive."

  "Okay, so I do a good job," I said. "What does this have to do with me being here?"

  Gilbert walked over to a map of Rocky Flats on the wall adjacent to his desk. He pointed with his pen to a collection of black rectangles inside a crooked trapezoid on the map. "This is the Protected Area."

  "The 700 series of buildings," I said. "Where you manufactured plutonium detonators from enriched uranium. I did my homework."

  "Good. The situation…" he drawled, pausing to indicate that by situation he meant problem, "began here." He tapped his pen against the rectangle labeled Building 707.

  "And this situation is?"

  Gilbert turned from the map. "We were finishing the final survey of Building 707 for decontamination and demolition when…" Gilbert cleared his throat. "We had an outbreak of nymphomania."

  Nymphomania? Rocky Flats was getting weirder by the minute. I cupped my hand behind an ear and tipped my head. "What? Run that by me again."

  "It began with rumors of a few of our women employees rushing home to their significant others and leaving them exhausted. After a week or so, more of the women began engaging in coitus with their coworkers—in closets, conference rooms, secure chambers within the protected area. Even the most reticent were affected. My own secretary, a Sunday school teacher, is on administrative leave because of this."

  "I hope she's okay." Though I wasn't sure how she could've hurt herself, other than getting a sore vagina.

  "She's fine. It's her poor husband who couldn't keep up. Threw his back out."

  "My condolences."

  "We've worked hard at recruiting women, and damn if it hasn't backfired on us. Half of our guard force is female, and in case you didn't notice, none of them are on duty. It's played hell with our productivity, our morale, and our security. Two, make that three weeks ago, one of our female guards got the itch, which she satisfied at gunpoint with a victim."

  "Must've been one hell of a scandal."

  "You'd think so," Gilbert said. "But God watches out for drunks, fools, and DOE. Turns out the visitor was a senior auditor from the Office of Management and Budget. He was going to ream us about our property accountability—or lack thereof—when the guard pulled him over and had her way with him. What could have been a disaster for us became instead a delightful encounter for some wonk from OMB. On the street he'd pay five hundred bucks for treatment like that. Here he got it for free." Gilbert sighed. "That was the most extreme example."

  "So what'd you do?" I asked. "Let these women screw their brains out on government time?"

  "What was the alternative?" Gilbert replied. "Fire fifty percent of our workforce? DOE wants full disclosure of our activities—except for the embarrassing stuff." He fidgeted with the knot of his tie. "At first we thought we'd just let the women get it out of their systems. To accommodate their needs, as it were," he cleared his throat, "we had open purchase orders with every lifestyle store in the metroplex. Vibrators, dildos, lube by the gallon, condoms by the gross. We even had copies of the Kama Sutra delivered in bulk."

  "Fortunately, we discovered an ally among the pharmaceuticals." Gilbert opened a side drawer to his desk and produced a small plastic bottle. He shook the vial, rattling the green-and-white pills inside. "A daily dose of sixty grams of selective serotin reuptake inhibitors. Fluoxetine hydrochloride. Prozac."

  Gilbert put the bottle away. "Now we have plenty of happy women and very few horny ones. Rumor has it the holdouts were tramps to begin with."

  "So, is the outbreak, if you want to call it that, contained?"

  "Yes." Gilbert unfolded a paper from a folder. "This shows how the outbreak spread."
The chart was a spiderweb of lines linked to circles that denoted each affected individual. "Here in the center are the first three women contaminated. Since we didn't know they had been exposed to something transmittable, we didn't have the foresight to quarantine them."

  "How was it spread?"

  "We're not sure. Perhaps by casual contact, a handshake for example. Maybe by airborne transmission. The outbreak has been contained, meaning no new instances of, er, the nymphomania."

  "And the women contaminated now are under medical supervision?" I asked.

  "Yes. Fortunately the outbreak seems to have passed. Most of the women affected are on medical leave or have been transferred."

  "Then case closed. What do you need me for?"

  "To find the cause."

  "Gilbert, this sounds like a job for the Centers for Disease Control. You need teams of viral pathologists and microbiologists—not me."

  Gilbert returned to the map. He jabbed at Building 707. "Something happened here that triggered the outbreak. On Valentine's Day, no less. The first women infected were part of the survey team."

  "So what's keeping you from finding out?" I asked. "You're responsible for the goddamn cleanup. Right?"

  "Right. And wrong," Gilbert replied wearily. "The audit trail ends the day before the surveillance."

  "What do you mean, ends?"

  "The paperwork was done, all right. I just can't find it. All the files from the final phase of the Building 707 reclamation are gone."

  "This sounds like more than missing paperwork," I said. "This is a turf battle within DOE, and I've learned to stay out of family fights. If DOE is comfortable with this fabrication, then why do you care?"

  Gilbert's fist tightened. The heavy smell of cabbage—almost artificially strong—tainted his perspiration. He either needed to ease up on the kimchi or try a better deodorant.

  "I didn't come to DOE from a weapons background," he said. "I came from the environmental side. Believe it or not, some of us at DOE do care about the Earth. And besides that, I'm not going to hang for someone else's mistakes."