24. Where There Is One…

Harlow tried to not look at Foxx as they moved through the alleyways in broad fucking daylight, heading towards the warehouse where Hanes had supposedly died, but…it was just so…

"For fuck's sake, Foxx, did you have to pack that one?"

He eyed the monstrosity. The main color of the bear sunsuit was green, and was only one shade away from being fluorescent. With an equally bright pink flower on the left ear, there was a large belly pocket that was also pink with stitched in flowers.

Foxx huffed. "Well, I packed it when I thought we were going against humans! How the hell was I supposed to know we'd be going against a mob today?! Also… You know what, no! I am not explaining why it doesn't matter again. Because I am not having this conversation again! This is like the third time already, Harlow. We are literally entering bickering old married couple territory, and while we may be old, we sure as hell aren't bloody married."

His brow rose at that… Old married couple territory? Pursing his lips, Harlow said, "Some things need to be said multiple times."

"I refuse."

He smirked. "Oh, come on, just do it."

"No!"

Harlow sighed. "No fun at all."

"I'm not going to argue with you just because you find it fun, you psycho!"

"Right, because this is not considered arguing."

"Screw you, old man."

"Maybe later."

Foxx groaned.

"Anyway, people could have assumed we were just some randos walking around, but someone decided to be a green fucking bear," Harlow said with a chuckle.

"They may still assume that!"

They went silent as the building came into sight and they neared. Made of red brick that had been discolored by time and probably smog, it was tall but looked to be only one level. Like many warehouses, there were multiple loading bay doors for trucks. Though, from the case notes, this one had been abandoned then bought up by the criminals they were after. Under a fake name, of course.

"Unless there is an illusion in place…" the vampire hummed. "No one in there is alive. There are, however, dead bodies. A good number of them."

"Can you tell if any of the bodies are human?"

Foxx's head tilted as the man took a deep breath. "There is at least one…underneath the stench of dead vampire. Your not-friend at least took a bunch out before they got him."

"Wouldn't expect any less."

Hanes' body was in there then…hopefully. It wouldn't make sense for them to leave their associates bodies but take his when they left. "Let's check it out quickly, grab Hanes' body if it's there, and then torch the place."

"So, we are going to actually bring his body back with us?"

"No, we are going to take it to the closest city run morgue, and they will handle getting it back."

"Sounds like a plan, I guess."

Harlow was pretty sure Foxx was questioning why they were bothering with the body. Harlow could have explained that it was protocol, but as he couldn't explain further than that, he didn't. Because, considering how horribly mangled most of the bodies they found were, Harlow honestly didn't understand why they bothered to bring them back over just burning them. He didn't know if Hanes had any family, but he doubted they'd want to see or deal with that.

They approached a bay door on the far-right edge.

Harlow eyed it. "You can pry it open, right? It would be the easiest way in."

Well, they could find an actual door, but why waste time when there were so many other places to go after this?

Foxx crouched down, there was a screech of metal as the vampire dug his fingers underneath and bent the bottom a bit. "Either it will go up or break, regardless we'll get inside."

Pulling out one of his Desert Eagle pistols, he clicked the safety off and ordered, "Do it."

The door let out an ear-piercing sound of protest when the vampire yanked on it. At first, the door started to bend, looking like it was about to break, before finally sliding upwards.

The inside of the warehouse was apparently sectioned off, as all that was revealed was a bare brick room and two doors—one across, and one on the left wall.

Foxx popped up with a smile on his face, dimples flashing as he started to say, "Easy—", but the man cut off. Foxx's head tilting, a frown replaced the smile.

Harlow's brow rose in question, listening for whatever Foxx was hearing…and he did hear something. Was that…shuffling? "Someone's…"

"Something," Foxx corrected. "Get in and let me close the door. I"m not sure how many more of them there are."

"Many of what?" he asked as he walked in.

The vampire pulled the protesting door back into place and spun to say, "Zombies."

"Zombies? Are you fucking with me?"

"No," Foxx said, while eyeing the door to the left.

"Are you sure?"

"No heartbeat. Or breathing."

"Couldn't it just be an illusion?"

"It…could be," Foxx said hesitantly, before shaking his head. "I just have this feeling it's not. And being around Daydric as long as I was…just, you get this odd sense of knowing when one is around."

Well fuck, zombies…on top of a group of vampires playing mafia. Just what they needed, he thought sarcastically.

"Well, how do you kill a zombie? And can they…hear us?"

"It…depends if the creator is old enough to, or bothered to, give it some sort of consciousness. Or rather, whether they gave it the ability to think in some capacity.

"There are levels of zombies. At the highest, there are ones who look so real that it is impossible to tell them apart from any other living creature due to how perfectly they mimic life. To the point that even if I looked at their threads, I wouldn't be able to tell.

"At the lowest, there are your stereotypical zombies. They look like zombies, and are basically mindless drones who follow a single order. The second is easy enough to deal with, but the first…is an absolute nightmare to kill, as not only are they smart and strong, but normal fatal wounds barely register to them.

"Though, I suppose kill is the wrong word as they aren't even alive. They are powered through an energy connection between them and the one who rose them up. To render them dead again, you have to sever that connection."

Harlow frowned, eyeing the door that Foxx was still staring at. "Can you tell from here what we are dealing with?"

"No, and yes? I can't tell the exact level, but I can tell it's not the highest. There would be breathing and a heartbeat, as the goal is to be believable and deadly. To be honest, the only zombie I've seen of that level was one Daydric himself had created. There are few vampires alive who could pull that off. And the ones who can, well, no one that old would be this dumb.

"Daydric may not police his line as much as Moirai, but then he also hasn't created as many. And anyone dumb enough to try and set up a mafia would not have lived long enough to get that old.

"To be honest, it's not an easy power to control. Even a vampire of that line, of my age, wouldn't be able to create that level of undead."

He grinned at the slip. "And what age is that?"

Foxx blinked. "A hundred and twenty-five."

He scoffed. "One day you are going to tell me your real damn age, brat."

The vampire stared innocently up at him with his large aquamarine green eyes. "But I just did."

"Bullshit. Now, how do we kill it?"

"You injure it. Hurting a zombie, even if it can't feel anything, will often be enough to sever the energy connection keeping it animated. How much depends on how well it's constructed. For the ones that are at least semi-realistic…really, the only way is to incapacitate them, and then set them on fire… Which, I mean overall, the easiest solution is for us to walk our asses back out and just set the building ablaze."

It would be…and who knows what else they'd have to deal with today with all the buildings they had to check out, yet…

"Fucking hell, we have to at least attempt to find Hanes' body. It's protocol," he grumbled. "We have to both confirm his death, as well as his partner's, while attempting to retrieve their bodies if we can. We aren't supposed to risk death over it, but we have to at least try."

"Fineee. But I"m just going to add…where there is one zombie, there is likely more."

Harlow sighed. "Let's get this over with."

Foxx nodded and headed straight for the left door. They found it unlocked. Pushing in, they were hit with the stench of blood even before they saw it. The room was at first blocked by a row of shelving, filled with products of some kind, but after that first row, it opened up into a big fat nothing, besides…blood, and at least two dozen dead bodies. One of those bodies…was standing.

Foxx had told them they existed, but…maybe some part of him hadn't really believed it because he honestly felt slightly shocked—interesting. He frowned, eyeing the zombie as it hobbled.

Based on the suit, he was pretty sure it was one of the so-called mafia vampires. Or had been. Its suit was torn in various places from bullet wounds, the thing's head lolled to the side, its eyes white and completely rolled back. What killed the man was obvious—hard to miss the giant hole in the vampire's chest. It looked like someone had fired into the man until his heart was destroyed. Either way, Harlow could literally see through the zombie.

It started to shuffle forward…possibly hearing them. Harlow didn't think it could actually see with its eyes like that, but he wasn't sure. He had to say, it was stumbling as if it couldn't see, seeming to trip over each body while it slipped multiple times in the blood. There was no coordination whatsoever.

And soon enough…as Foxx predicted…it was not alone. The bodies it had been stumbling over rose up with a sloshing of fluids and blood, joints popping. Quite a few of them were headless. And mixed in with all the dead suit-wearing ‘mafia' zombies was…Hanes.

The human was easy to pick out, in his blue jeans and leather jacket. Well, that and the man was as thickly muscled as he remembered, and at least twice the size of the vampires, on top of being taller than them. Besides his hair being white now instead of blond, the man looked just as he had the last time Harlow had seen him—if one were to ignore that he was dead that was.

He eyed what had become of the hunter with irritation.

"Yep…that's what I thought," Foxx drawled stiffly behind him before oddly laughing.