Zombie Raccoons & Killer Bunnies Read online

  The girl was definitely attractive, maybe only a few years younger than him, but right now, she looked a bit perturbed.

  “Yes . . . ?” he started, fishing around for a name in his head. Godfrey thought it might be Clarice.

  “Chloe,” she offered.

  So close, he thought. “Of course,” he nodded, causing his straight black hair to fall across the top of his black horn-rims. He pushed the hair away from his face. “Can I help you?”

  She hoisted up the stack of books in her hands. Against her tiny frame, they looked as if she had stolen them from a giant’s library. “These are for you. From those two guys up in Other Division. You know . . . the one with the stripe in his hair and that other guy who’s always in the leather jacket? He looks like one of the Village People.”

  Godfrey smiled. “That would be Connor and Simon.”

  Chloe stared at him blankly.

  “They’re two of the few people around here who treat us as something more than glorified librarians,” he said. “They’re okay. They were my personal saviors during that whole zombie debacle during Fashion Week, one of the few times I ever saw any action around here.” He stood up and took the books from her. “Thank you.”

  Pushing piles of notebooks, file folders, and other tomes out of the way, Godfrey placed the new pile on top of his desk. He arranged them carefully, making sure his view of the small glass terrarium wasn’t obstructed. Once Godfrey had sat back down, Chloe pulled the top book off the pile.

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you,” she said, holding it up. “Fairy tales? Since when does the Department of Extraordinary Affairs keep fiction on hand? Especially down here with all the serious research?”

  Godfrey pulled it away from her and placed it back on top of the pile. “Who says it’s fiction?”

  Chloe smiled at him.

  “Great,” she said. “When I get back to the coffee shop, I can’t wait to see what fairy tale creatures start chatting me up.”

  Godfrey laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous. The actual creatures from those books don’t really exist . . . that I know of, anyway. But the object lessons inside those stories . . . well, that’s a different matter. Some of our field agents could learn a thing or two about leaving a trail of breadcrumbs . . .”

  “With my luck, I’d end up getting the Three Little Pigs instead of Prince Charming,” Chloe said, giving Godfrey a look of bemused frustration. An awkward energy passed between them, one that Godfrey couldn’t quite put his finger on. All he noticed was how long and painful the sudden lull in the conversation was becoming and also how red Chloe’s face had become.

  Thankfully, Chloe’s eyes shifted to the terrarium as if noticing it for the first time, and Godfrey felt the sensation ease. She knelt down in front of it, searching for whatever was inside. Godfrey felt a swell of pride when she finally spied the tiny golden creature curled up in one corner.

  “Is that . . . a snake?”

  “Yes and no. More of a serpent, actually. If it can even truly be called that . . .”

  Chloe raised her hand to the glass and put it against the part where the creature was sleeping.

  “Do you remember that Glo-Worm toy from when you were a kid?” she asked.

  Godfrey had to stop and think a moment before a faint memory came to him.

  “Vaguely,” Godfrey said. “I had more books than toys as a child. Big surprise, I know.”

  “It looks like one of those, only tinier,” she said, her eyes wide with excitement and, if Godfrey was reading her right, nostalgia. “Not to mention the fact that it’s also not wearing one of those little sleeping bag outfits they used to come in.”

  The creature’s eyes fluttered open and it gave a sleepy look around. Chloe smiled and started making cooing noises at it. She turned her knuckles towards the terrarium and rapped at the glass.

  “Don’t tap on the glass, please,” Godfrey said. “Lizzie hates it.”

  Chloe paused, her fingers inches from the terrarium. “Sorry. Just what is it? What is she, I mean?”

  Godfrey perked up.

  “No one’s really sure,” he said with excitement in his voice. How could it not be? Here he was talking shop with one of the cutest archivists to come along in the past few years. “The earliest evidence of their kind that I could find in the archives was from 1756. An agent named Thaniel Graydon documented a sighting of one of them.”

  Chloe whistled. “The Department of Extraordinary Affairs is that old?”

  Godfrey shook his head.“Oh, no. The Fraternal Order of Goodness predates the underfunded bureaucracy of the Department by several hundred years, but Graydon spent years trying to track these little paper lovers hiding in the archives . . . with little success.”

  “Paper lovers?”

  Godfrey pulled a blank sheet from the moleskin notebook, crumpled it up, and dropped it into the terrarium. Immediately the creature slithered over to it, opened its tiny jaws, and happily began munching on it.

  “The perfect recycling program,” Godfrey said.“Works in nicely with the mandate from upstairs to ‘go green,’ but you can see why they would want to catch them before they could consume the whole archives. Graydon called them book wyrms in his notes, and so do I. Who knows what records have been lost to them?”

  Chloe stood back up, stretching. “Why not just get rid of them then?”

  Godfrey looked appalled at the idea. “For doing what they were made to do? Never. And what would we do with them? Release them into the city? Destroy them? They’re perfectly controllable and harmless when you know how to handle them.” He reached into the terrarium and extended one finger, and the tiny gold serpent wrapped its tail around it all the while continuing to munch on the paper. “Besides, Lizzie is a good companion.”

  Chloe put a hand on his shoulder and patted him. “Not much of a people person, huh?”

  Godfrey smiled up at her. “I’m somewhat particular about who I like to spend time with, I suppose.”

  Chloe blushed, her hand lingering on his shoulder, and even being as thick as he was, Godfrey put two and two together. Unsure of how to handle the situation, he twisted away from her hand back toward his open notebook. “A creature like this is better than people in some respects. She’s unconditional love. All she expects is to be fed, and with the amount of paper I go through in a day around here, food is in no short supply. And for that, she gives back so much more.”

  “That’s great, Godfrey, but isn’t there something more you want than that?” Chloe asked, a distinct tone of frustration in her voice. “I mean, look at this book of fairy tales. Do you see the prince hanging out all the time with the dragon, even if it’s just a miniature one? Don’t you think he should get out and check out some princesses?”

  “Married to the manuscripts,” he said, thumping his hand down on top of the newest pile of books. He paused, and his face grew somber. “You know, Emerson once wrote, ‘Art is a jealous mistress, and, if a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture, or philosophy, he makes a bad husband, and an ill provider.’ I suppose that applies to archivists as well.”

  Chloe’s frustration seemed to grow. “What we do is most certainly an art,” Chloe said, “extrapolating data, reworking it so it makes narrative sense for future generations of The Gauntlet. Okay, well, it sounds more technical than artistic when I put it that way, but you get what I mean . . .”

  Godfrey nodded.

  Godfrey felt Chloe lay her hand over his on top of the stack of books, felt the gentleness of it, and found a little shock of surprise rush through him. He looked up.

  When he did, Chloe looked away, flustered. Her hand drifted off his and came to rest next to his on the pile of books. She slid the top one out from under his hand.

  “Do you mind if I borrow this?” she asked, holding up the book of fairy tales.

  “I thought they weren’t really your thing?” Godfrey asked.

  “I’ll admit it’s nothing as chipper or uplifting a
s your Emerson,” she said, “but maybe I’ve had enough reality for one day and I just want to read up on what it’s like to be treated like a princess.”

  Chloe spun around, headed back past several of the other archivists and further off into the depths of The Gauntlet. Godfrey watched her as she went, confused and frustrated, and not quite sure exactly what had just happened there.

  Godfrey’s nose was so deep in transcribing an account of a living gargoyle sighting that he didn’t hear the echo of footfalls until they were upon him. He looked up with a start.

  “Chloe!” he said. He checked his watch. “It’s late. What are you doing here at this time of night?”

  “I know. Weird, right?” she said. She was holding the book of fairy tales. “I got kind of lost back in the archives when I stormed off . . . I mean, when I left earlier. This place goes on forever!”

  “So you’ve been lost this whole time?”

  Chloe shook her head. “Actually, I sat down and started reading some of the fairy tales. It’s fairly gruesome stuff.”

  Godfrey shrugged. “Did you think there was no price to be paid for happily ever after?”

  She returned the book to the top of the pile she had taken it from earlier, then picked up the entire stack and moved it out of the way on top of the back half of the open-topped terrarium. She leaned against the edge of Godfrey’s desk and shuddered. “Stepsisters slicing off toes to fit into glass slippers, little girls cutting their way out of wolves’ bellies . . . Happily ever after doesn’t come cheap, that’s for sure.”

  Godfrey nodded and turned back to his transcription, not really sure what to say after their awkward exchange earlier in the day. He tried to push out of his mind the fact that the two of them were alone in the Gauntlet right now, but it wasn’t working, and the best he could manage was to simply sit there keeping his mouth shut before he blew it again.

  “Godfrey?” Chloe said, finally breaking the silence in a whisper.

  Godfrey hrhmed in response without looking up from the moleskine notebook he was writing in. Here it comes, he thought, not sure how he’d handle her continued overture. Women were more mysterious to him than anything. What she said next, however, took him completely by surprise.

  “Where’s Lizzie?” she said.

  Godfrey looked up. The terrarium was full of torn and discarded pages from his day, but from where he sat, he saw no sign of the tiny gold serpent. He stood and walked to the corner of his desk, making sure to check the terrarium from all angles.

  Gingerly he picked up the arcane tomes lying over the back half of it, placing them back on the desk. Inside the terrarium, the paper had fallen in a perfect cascade that formed a path that reached to the very top of the terrarium’s lip, only the wyrm was nowhere to be found.

  “Maybe she’s underneath . . . ?” Chloe offered and started shifting the papers around.

  “Shh,” Godfrey said, grabbing her hands to silence her.

  A little charge of excitement ran up his arms.

  Then both of them heard it and dropped their eyes toward the recently moved pile of books.

  “Is that . . . chewing?” Chloe said.

  “I hope not. That bottom book is the Diobolica Arcanium.”

  “Is that bad?”

  “It’s not not bad,” Godfrey offered and scooped the book off of the table, knocking the others over. He flipped it over, revealing a half-dollar-sized hole.

  “She chewed through it,” he said fascinated. He went to poke his fingers into the hole, then paused. “You might want to step back. I’m not sure what to expect here.”

  When Chloe didn’t answer, he turned to look at her, but she wasn’t looking at him. Chloe was staring at the spot on the desk where the book had been.

  Godfrey spun around and looked also. A hole, this one slightly larger than the one in the book, was eaten through the top of the desk.

  “Oh no no no,” Godfrey said, heading for the corresponding drawer on the left side of the desk. He pulled open the drawer, yanking it completely free of the desk, scattering folders and books to the floor. All of them had soda-can-sized holes through them. This time, the edges of the holes were smoldering with tiny tendrils of smoke. Godfrey reached down to the bottom one and pulled it free. No creature, but an even larger hole was visible, the edges of it hot with tiny tendrils of flame. He pulled the drawer free from the desk, stomping at the flames, all the while examining the remaining hole in the desk bottom.

  As Godfrey leaned in, a traffic-coned-shaped blast of fire shot from the hole. He felt his eyelashes singe off, the smell of burned hair filling his nostrils. Thankfully, Chloe pulled him back away from it in the last second before Godfrey could find out what burned flesh smelled like.

  A skittering sound came from under the desk, heading off in the direction of the rest of the rows of endless archives.

  “What the hell is going on?” Chloe asked. Godfrey was impressed at how well she was holding her composure in check.

  “I think Lizzie is having a little indigestion.” Godfrey started off. “Stay behind me. We’ve got to stop her before she lights up the whole archive.”

  “Ummm, maybe we should start with your desk?” Chloe suggested.

  Godfrey stopped and turned back around. Flames licked higher and higher up the sides of the desk. He ran for one of the many extinguishers throughout the Gauntlet, but Chloe already had one in hand.

  “This rescue’s on me,” she said and hit the nozzle. White chemical foam shot out and coated the entirety of Godfrey’s desk. Some of the records might be damaged, but the fire was out. Godfrey could have kissed her and suddenly found that he actually wanted to. The realization was a little slow in coming. Before he could act, Chloe dashed past him into the archives, still brandishing the extinguisher. “You make a lousy damsel in distress,” she added.

  Chloe’s words slapped him out of his daze. He shook off the shock of the situation and raced off after her.

  When Godfrey caught up to her, she turned and said, “What the heck did you do, Godfrey? Feed it after midnight?”

  Godfrey stated at her blankly.

  “Gremlins? Hello?”

  The sounds continued off to the left, and as they hit the end of the row, they turned to follow it.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Don’t get out much. Archivist, remember?”

  “Right. Well, once we deal with this, maybe I’ll let you take me to one. You’d be surprised what you can learn from movies about surviving, as well as from fairy tale books, too.”

  Godfrey wasn’t sure, but it seemed as though Chloe was asking him on a date. He decided to stay quiet. The situation was already complex enough without having to contend with his awkward social skills at the same time.

  Chloe stopped and Godfrey did too. Off in the shadows, the sound of the fleeing creature changed. The slithering was replaced by the sound of feet. No, Godfrey thought, not feet. Claws.

  From out of the darkness, the creature half slithered, half crawled out from behind the bookcase, adjusting quickly to its newly formed feet.

  “Is that . . . ?”

  “Lizzie,” Godfrey finished. “Yes.”

  The gold of her body was deeper, her scales far more pronounced now that she was two hundred times her original size, but there was no mistaking the creature that had been Godfrey’s pet. Besides the feet, there was another new addition—a long, muscular tail that flicked books off the shelves as it flashed back and forth. Gone was the kind face he had known these past few years, replaced by deep-seated venom in its eyes.

  “Let’s go,” Chloe said, but Godfrey stood transfixed, looking for a hint of recognition in the creature’s eyes. Chloe grabbed him by the arm and started to drag him off to the safety of another aisle to her right.

  “No, wait . . .”

  Chloe ignored him and continued pulling at him until they were safely out of the creature’s sight. “Haven’t you ever heard about curiosity and the cat?”

  Godfrey peeked aro
und the corner. Lizzie was still there, watching him.

  “I think we have more of a St. George and the Dragon situation here, actually. Maybe if we could make it to the stairs . . .”

  Godfrey ran off across the aisle, or tried to. Before he was even halfway across, Lizzie let out a burst of flame, and Godfrey was forced back to the same side, but down a different aisle. He stopped, dropped, and rolled to make sure nothing was on fire but other than the wave of heat that had hit him, he seemed unharmed.

  “Dammit,” he shouted, then remembered Chloe was standing just on the other side of the bookshelf between them. He composed himself and shouted over to her, “This isn’t my forte! We’re researchers, librarians. We try to leave the extraordinary affairs to the people upstairs.”

  The half-walk, half-slither of the creature started up the aisle toward them. A shiver of fear ran up his spine. While he tried to shake it off, Godfrey heard Chloe straining herself in the next aisle over, and then saw the upper part of one of the book cases move ever so slightly.

  “Godfrey, get over here!” Chloe called out. “We’ve got to stop it before it sets the whole place ablaze. I can’t do this by myself. I can’t get enough strength behind this to topple it over onto her. You have to help me.”

  Godfrey checked the aisle. Lizzie was closing on them slowly but surely. He dashed out into the aisle and down the one Chloe was in before Lizzie could react.

  “Help me with this,” Chloe said.

  Godfrey shook his head, leaning it back against the bookcase. “I can’t. None of this is Lizzie’s fault. She’s not malicious. It’s the book she ate. The Diobolica Arcanium is making her do this . . .”

  Chloe grabbed him by the shoulders. “That may be, but you have to let go. Whatever that . . . thing is now, it’s not your pet anymore. We have to stop it. I’m not sure about you, but I know I don’t want to die!”

  Godfrey nodded. Chloe was right. He had known it all along, but hearing her say it gave the idea substance.

  He edged toward the main aisle. Lizzie was in a pocket of shadow, little flickers of flame showing where the corners of her mouth were.