Dracula Ergo Terror!



  Dracula, Ergo, Terror!

  Rob Marsh

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  Dingbat Publishing

  DRACULA, ERGO, TERROR!

  Copyright © 2016 by Rob Marsh

  Published by Dingbat Publishing

  Humble, Texas

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without written consent, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

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  This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of International Copyright Law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines and/or imprisonment. No part of this e-book can be reproduced or sold by any person or business without the express permission of the publisher.

  Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and events are entirely the produce of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to persons living or dead, actual locations, events, or organizations is coincidental.

  Chapter 1

  It was “lunch” time at Gustav Von Fracture Public school and Ergo was herded along with a hundred other student into the fluorescently-illuminated feeding area. Ergo was a mostly average teenage boy, other than the fact that he was covered with bright red fur and had a mysterious biological composition and a peculiar historical narrative spanning centuries. Strange indeed, considering here he was, just a teenager, trying to fit into a socialized world driven by the cold shove of dark science.

  Following the designated barricade that maintained the queue of medicated students, Ergo eventually made his way to the food service repository. Behind the counter, a large, morbidly obese man in filthy white scrubs and rubber gloves stood ready with a plate and a ladle. Before the students was a balanced array of ten silver platters, each filled with ten different-colored, evenly-blended food substances of mysterious nature. In fact, none of these trays were labeled, other than a tiny barcode followed by a cryptic series of numbers, letters, and characters. When a student wanted one of the substances, they merely pointed to the color that they wanted and the enormous man in the grubby clothes ladled a serving onto a plate and apathetically handed it to the student.

  Ergo went with a teal-colored food product today and padded over to a seat across from Chad, his chubby reluctant companion, who sat guardedly, his eyes alert like those of a hamster lost in a crowded cat shelter. Ergo noticed that Chad had selected the beige entrée that smelled faintly of ammonia, and he’d taken a couple bites. A rainbow sheen of oily residue reflected from the surface of the spoon. Chad’s beady eyes studied the room carefully for the presence of bullies and other humiliating forces. Sensing the atmosphere was for the moment safe, he broke into his daily routine, that being an endless dialogue about comic book characters he had unoriginally dreamed up and that he did nothing at all with.

  “Chad,” Ergo said, poking at his platter of substance, “every day you talk about these super hero characters and yet you do nothing at all with them. You don’t write it down, don’t sketch it, don’t do anything to actually realize it. You just talk about it.”

  Chad appeared mildly disturbed then completely changed the subject, pointing up at the observatory window above the cafeteria, behind which several scientists in white jackets and clipboards studied the students below.

  “They seem especially interested in the new vending machines today,” Chad noted.

  Across the room were two newly installed vending machines, at which the students were required to raise their wrist bracelets to identify themselves and then deposit money. The machines were filled with small packets of colorfully wrapped chemical compositions of artificial sweeteners and experimental additives. Whenever a student would purchase a product, Ergo noticed, the men in the observation booth seemed to engage in a flurry of activity.

  Both Chad and Ergo watched the flow of events but were oblivious to the arrival of Jeff and two of his bully friends. Jeff seized Chad and smushed his face directly into his platter of beige goop. The chubby kid jolted upright, screaming “My eyes!” and dashed from the room, leaving Ergo alone at the table. He shuddered in terror.

  “Hey, creature,” sneered Jeff. “You’re sitting at my table.”

  “I-I’ll just move to a different…” Ergo motioned to leave but Jeff stomped onto the table and kicked aside Ergo’s tray, sending it crashing messily to the floor.

  The two bullies moved in behind Ergo’s chair and cast a menacing shadow over the puppet boy.

  “Too late for that.” Jeff lifted a foot and readied a mighty kick to Ergo’s head when suddenly an alarm bell rang. Ergo breathed a sigh of relief… the school system must have an anti-bully system in place for situations like this. In fact he was wrong, and the alarm was actually for something far more sinister.

  “Attention all students…” blared the intercom in a robotic falsetto.

  “Attention all students… please assemble immediately in the adjacent testing grounds to be implanted with your updated tracking devices. Free soda and snack cakes will be provided for good behavior.”

  Jeff’s head was turned momentarily toward the intercom, his kicking foot still lifted, and Ergo didn’t miss his opportunity. He reached up, grabbed Jeff’s ankle, and gave it a mighty twist, sending the teenager spinning rapidly and slamming down hard on the table. Ergo then sprang away from the bullies by leaping over Jeff’s prone body, stomping mightily onto his stomach as he fled and deflating the stunned bully.

  Ahead was the only door leading out of the cafeteria and it was blocked by a steady flow of students leaving the lunchroom for their tracking devices. He was trapped!

  Behind him, Jeff was sitting up on the table and rubbing his head. The two bullies had their eye on Ergo and pointed angrily at him. Ergo frantically scanned the room, desperate for an exit. Jeff was now upright and staring with rage. Ergo looked about madly, then he remembered the observation window, roughly twenty feet above the ground. Was there a small opening leading inside? No time to lose… Jeff and his friends charged madly, fists clenched and teeth bared.

  Ergo jumped on a table then somersaulted onto a vending machine and then, with an enormous effort, sprang through the air and aimed at the small square opening of the observation window. He made it through — thankfully the window was open — but ran into a silver table bearing various beakers of chemicals, which his impact sent flying around the observation room. Surprised scientists scattered about like frenzied chickens.

  All except for one old man, who knelt beside the woozy Ergo as he gathered his bearings. The scientist reached two withered hands around the puppet boy’s head, the way one would grasp a ripe honeydew melon at a grocer.

  “I have a…” deep nasal inhalation “…a phrenological fascination with the shape of your head,” he muttered creepily. “Someday I wish to study your skull…”

  “There he is!” yelled a voice, and Ergo looked over at several armed school storm troopers, wearing thick armor and carrying electrified billy clubs. “How dare you flee when you’re required to be with the other students for mandatory tracking device day! Grab him!”

  Ergo shuffled to his feet and fled the lab into an adjacent research facility, which fascinatingly stretched a vast distance and was filled with countless towering mainframes that hummed and crackled with power, with thousands of multicolored lights flickering in a chilly haze. He wove between the machines, desperate to find some sort of exit.

  Clearing a monumental black wall of wires and blinking lights, he found a door and sprang towards it with great relief, but just at that moment the door swung open and more school troopers charged in, weapons drawn. Ergo backtracked and leaped onto the huge computers, head twisting as he frantically scanned for any exit. He was trapped!

  In tremendous panic, he searched everywhere, dodging around vast towering machines, when he accidentally stumbled across a highly disturbing sight. Isolated from the rest of the computers was one enormous server surrounded with various monitors, all of which depicted images of Ergo. Some screens displayed his face, some various images of him in the school halls, and some even ran bizarre vitals and statistics, ranging from his blood pressure to his blood content and basal body temperature.

  What sort of disturbing experimentation was going on here? But behind him, the noises of his pursuers grew louder, and he snapped back to reality and looked about. He realized the vast room of computers was cooled and ventilated, and this led his eyes to look upwards to the network of ventilation shafts above him, all conveniently the size of a human body. A short distance away was a grating leading into a vent.

  “Don’t let him escape!” yelled a voice, much louder now.

  Ergo hopped onto a mainframe, reaching the opening of the vent, and removed the grating (which was conveniently a snap-on screen) then, with a mighty jump, was suddenly inside a surprisingly clean ventilation system. There were voices from below yelling in rage, but Ergo ignored them and crawled as quickly as he could through the vents, desperate to find a way out.

  As he made his way farther, the light started to diminish, and he groped onward, uncertain of his destination, but fueled with a drive to get as far away from the lab as possible. He made out the rattling bangs and clanks of someone in pursuit and accelerated his frantic crawl. The vents twisted and tu
rned through metallic darkness, echoing the noises of his clanking as well as his labored breathing. He couldn’t give up.

  After sliding through another turn, he sighed with relief as suddenly there was a dim light ahead. He redoubled his effort and pushed with all his might towards the light, which grew steadily stronger. Finally he arrived at the source, which was a grating on the bottom of the vent leading into what looked like an empty classroom. Behind him, the noises grew louder, and the vent started shaking.

  He pushed the grating away and jumped down, landing in what on closer inspection appeared to be a teachers’ lounge, complete with expensive upholstered chairs and an enormous wet bar with a black lacquered finish. He ran for the door, but his gaze fell upon a clipboard on the table. On it was a list of student names, of which Ergo’s was at the top. Scanning it, he read names such as Chad’s and various others who could be considered “weaker” students, and beside each of these names was a monetary amount. Flipping a turned page, he read the title:

  STUDENT DEATH POOL — PREDICTIONS OF DEATHS FOR THE YEAR

  Ergo gasped in horror. The teachers had a betting pool on which students would die? Above him, the ventilation duct clattered loudly and he heard a voice yell something muttered yet emphatic. Wasting no more time, he cast aside the clipboard and dashed from the room, down the hall, and out of the school. He was immediately warmed and refreshed by the sunlight, but his relief was short-lived as several storm troopers charged out of the school and continued their pursuit beyond the grounds.

  They’re relentless, thought Ergo.

  He padded quickly down the sunny street, dodging pedestrians as voices continued to yell behind him. One of them blasted a whistle! Ergo rounded a corner and then, spotting an open door, he darted inside and moved as casually as possible behind a display of musty cardigans. Outside, the police charged past, yelling threats of terrible violence.

  Ergo waited, holding his breath, and finally the yells and pandemonium diminished in the distance. He exhaled deeply.

  He stepped clear of the clothing and looked around at the shop. It appeared to be little more than a dusty old thrift shop, packed with crumbly, forgotten garbage. He made his way around a counter stacked with piles of vinyl records and located a musty old bookshelf packed with yellowing books.

  He selected one of the titles, written by some guy named Rob, and shook his head as he leafed through some stupid story about a public television painter who went on a ridiculous cross-country adventure. For all of his recent and humiliating failures, at least, thought Ergo, he could take comfort in the fact that he wasn’t so pathetic as to be some guy who worked fulltime in IT and as a hobby wrote stupid and juvenile fiction that had no greater destiny than to yellow and crumble on the shelf of a thrift store, forgotten by time and good really only for lining the bottom of a chinchilla cage, or burning.

  He replaced the book on the shelf with a chuckle and continued to look around, determined to stay low and keep quiet until the threat of capture was gone. The shop, he noticed, was empty, silent, and smelled strongly of herbal tea and votive candles. The Persian rugs beneath his feet were worn and stained with age.

  Ergo eventually made his way to the back of the store and was examining a plastic container filled with battered, unmatching forks when he heard hushed voices speaking from behind a scarlet curtain.

  “She’s told me that it’s a constant, dreadful fear,” said a gravelly older voice with tinges of alarm. “Day after day, all residents of the village live in a nightmare. This creature is hideous, and no one is safe…”

  “And that is why, understandably, you hired me. I am curious, though, have these people contacted anyone for help?” spoke another voice, deeper in tone.

  “Who would believe them?” responded the first voice. “The village is already remote enough, and if anyone would show up to investigate the claims, these people would only be laughed at, and then once the investigators left, it would find out and would be angrier…”

  The curtain was suddenly ripped open, and two older men looked up from their chairs at Ergo, who stood awkwardly and smiled. One man was plump, with white hair and a long droopy moustache. The other was a picture of mystery, with a stern face etched with scars and shadowed by a broadbrimmed hat and dark glasses, and a body wearing a black leather trench. Both studied Ergo.