Maggie on the Bounty by Kate Danley Page B

sheets of plywood painted military
grey.  All semblance of artsy-fartsy-ness replaced with industrial efficiency.
    The thing I noticed most, though,
was that this floor was eerily quiet.  I'd place cash money on the fact our
lady in black and her cohorts wanted to make sure no one figured out they had
some VIPs lounging by the pool.  It was brilliant, really.  Who was to notice
if a bunch of soldiers disappeared en route rather than on the battlefield? 
The only one who would care would be their commander and dollars to donuts,
their commander had developed an allergy to Vitamin D somewhere along the way.
    But Killian and I didn't have time
to worry about the bloodsuckers here.  Hopefully, if we played our cards right,
they'd all disappear into the netherworld in a paradoxical time conundrum. 
Actually, hopefully this whole entire alternate universe boat would blink out
and the only thing that would remain were the normal, grumpy ghosts in the
normal, grumpy timeline of modern day.  Mom would be so proud, me sweeping away
the riff raff to make space for some of her favorite buddies.
    "You doing okay,
Mortimer?" I asked over my shoulder as we jogged.
    "My!  Look at how things have
changed!" he replied, all wide-eyed and a little bewildered by it all. 
"I think that I like the world as it was before."
    "You and me both."  I
turned to Killian. "Thoughts on where you would hide a small child on a
boat full of strapping undead men?"
    "The one spot where she needs
us to go?" Killian replied.
    "The organ room," we both
said in unison. 
    "Do we just go barging in there
with guns blazing?"
    Killian shrugged.  "Strange as
it might be to believe, I have not been in this situation before."
    "Well, what good are
you?" I asked.
    "Dock my pay."
    "I am so charging Julio mileage
for all this time-travel," I commented.
    "What is the per diem for
seventy years?"
    "I'm thinking $.39 a minute,
which I think equals out to a billion dollars."
    "I shall prepare the
invoice," Killian replied.
    I heard a little girl's screams
from down the corridor. 
    "Come on.  This way," I
said.
    Thanks to Jackie, we were all on
high alert when we turned the corner, which is the only reason that we weren't
creamed by the vampires when they ambushed us.  Still, they cut our work out
for us.  Barbara was on the far end, but I lost sight of her behind the hulking
crew. There were twelve of them in a cramped hallway, all of them ex-military. 
The only thing we had going for us is that they weren't armed with guns.  The
bullets would have ricocheted inside the bulkhead like ping-pong balls inside a
lottery bubble.  But that meant they had big sharp knives and big pointy teeth
instead. Got me thinking that as soon as we wiped the floor with them, I might
get back into something a little sturdier than a maid's uniform.
    I saw Jackie curled in a doorjamb just
before a knife came flying at me.  I ducked to the side with about a hair's
breadth of space between me and permanent shishkabob-ness.  I winged my silver
stake and got the guy right in the heart.  The good news about the 1940's was
that the only folks wearing Kevlar were me and Killian.  The bad news was that
we were outnumbered six-to-one and my stake was now ten feet across the room
impaled in the chest of a bad guy. 
    I turned around and started yanking
the knife he threw at me out of the wall.  I mean, if he wasn't going to use
it, finders keepers and all that.  It was pretty well embedded and I had two
vampires on me before I could yank it out.  I elbowed one of them in the teeth
and caught the other one in the stomach with the tip of my steel-toed boot.  I
know they weren't quite regulation to the uniform, but I'd take the reprimand. 
I looked like a maid and I was cleaning up.  I don't see how anyone could
complain.
    Killian had two of the vampires
staked on either side of his pole and was lifting them up like a strongman
doing a clean-and-jerk at the same time he kicked a vampire