Blood Alley (3 page)

“And us?” Romulus asked, already knowing the answer.

“You and I, we are going to head over to the apartment and see if Conner is home.”

IV

Conner Witt was in pain, both physically and emotionally. He had spent almost his whole life with Alex and now his friend was gone. However, the pain from the loss of his best friend could not begin to compare to the pain that was racing through his body. Tendrils of the infection were spreading along his arteries and veins, spreading Freddy’s Disease throughout his body.

He knew from the stories and literature that he did not have very long. The incubation period for the disease was somewhere between five to twenty four hours. He knew he had to figure something out fast, before it was too late and he turned into one of the Infected.

Conner gazed across the darkened room, past the clothes scattered across the floor, towards the free standing fireplace in the corner. Thank God! There was no fire, he thought. He was burning up with a fever. He stood back up and started to shred off his clothes in an attempt to cool down. Standing up turned out to be a big mistake as his bowels clenched then loosened.

He gagged at the smell coming from off his body. “Oh dear God, I’ve shit myself,” he mumbled as he dropped back down on the sofa, and then slipped further down to the floor curling up in the fetal position.

Conner was having trouble remembering events that happened after he had been bit by the zombie. He remembered sprinting out of the alley, but after that things had become a blur. He knew that at one point during the early morning, he found himself standing in front of Emily Lawson’s house, his hand poised, ready to knock. He was going to tell her what had happened to Alex and that they were not going to be able to get married. He even thought, just for a second that might be good for him. Conner had always had a thing for Emily, but she belonged to Alex.

But no, if he told Emily what had happened to Alex then he would have to tell her that he had been bitten, too. Then what would have happened? Would Emily have then raised the alarm and called the militia? Would she have turned him in?

Conner had not waited to find out what her reaction would have been. For a second time that night, he sprinted off into the cold, dark streets of New Atlanta.

Sunrise found Conner back home, safe in the apartment that he, until earlier that morning, had shared with Alex. He was having trouble figuring out what to do. He knew the right thing was to go to the militia, tell them about the attack, about the zombie and what had happened. But he couldn’t do that. Life was not fair. He didn’t do anything wrong. Maybe the militia men would just let him go? Maybe they would just walk him to the front gates and let him walk right out of the city into the forest that was growing outside the city walls.

Yeah right, he thought. Maybe they would let him walk out the gate and then one of the guards would put a bullet through the back of his head, blowing his brains out before he could get ten steps beyond the wall. That’s what they did with the infected. They blew their heads off.

No. There was no way he was going to turn himself into the militia. If he was going to go, he was going to go his way. He remembered a place on the south side of the town, where the guards were less common. He and Alex had climbed over the wall there a few years back, when they had wanted to go exploring. He could go there and climb the wall. He could go climb the wall and disappear into the forest, lay back against a nice tree and wait for the disease to claim him. Hell, becoming a zombie would be far better than having your brains blown out by one of the militia and then having them burn your body in a pit.

A loud banging on his front door interrupted Conner’s thoughts. The banging went on for a few seconds then stopped. The banging was then repeated a second time, followed by a voice shouting through door. “Open up, Militia.”

“Shit, shit, shit!” Conner whispered as he sat up. “They’ve already found me.”

He got up, ran into the kitchen and grabbed a dirty, butcher knife that was sitting in the sink. Holding the knife up he started back towards the door. “Not taking me without a fight.”

“What the fuck am I doing? They’ll shoot me in the back of the head. My life, my terms,” he said as he dropped the knife and ran to the back of the apartment, down the hallway and into Alex’s room that faced the back street. He paused long enough to make sure there was nobody out back, then slipped open the window and dropped the four feet to the ground below.

He stopped long enough to make sure that nobody was watching and then sprinted off.

Conner knew the right thing to do would be to turn himself into the militia. He really did not want to infect anyone else. He did not want to bring this on others, but there was nothing he could do, there was no cure for Freddy’s. Or was there? Hadn’t one of the guys at the brickworks been talking about the old witch who lived down by the river? What had he been saying? Didn’t the guy say the old witch had made some concoction of herbs and plants that cured a friend’s brother or something like that? Didn’t he say that you had to get the medicine from her within the first couple of hours before it had a chance to take over your whole body? Maybe, Conner thought. Maybe he still had time.

Without hesitation, Conner Witt took off towards the river.

V

Odysseus Pawlowski had been with the militia for over ten years now. He found it to be an easy job with plenty of benefits not available to regular citizens of the apocalyptic world. Most of the time, he just had to stand around doing nothing but telling other people what to do. He was very good at that part of the job.

Pawlowski hated coming to the quarantine building. Working quarantine was the one job in the militia he did not like pulling. Quarantine was a thankless job, the detainees hated being placed in quarantine and made the job miserable on the guards assigned to work the building. The only time he liked to work to job was when one of the female detainees became amorous and made the shift pleasurable.

Now, Pawlowski stood outside quarantine, a one-story, cinder-block building with bars on its windows huddled beneath the outer walls of the city, trying to decide if he was actually going to go in and find out how the zombie got out or if he might just go back and tell Captain Walters that he didn’t find anything.

Duty eventually took over and Pawlowski walked up to the steel door and went into the building. The guard who normally sat at a tiny desk in the reception area was not at his post and the door leading into the cell block was wide open. The usual chatter amongst the detainees as they talked was also missing.

Pawlowski walked up to the open doorway, drew his revolver, and peered down the dark hallway. Eight doors lined the hallway four to a side facing each other. The doors were made of metal and had a small viewing port at eye level that could be opened and closed to see inside the cell. Another latch at the base of the door allowed the guards to slide food through to the people inside the cell. At the far end of the hallway was a ninth door which opened into the guard’s quarters and kitchen area.

As Pawlowski’s eyes adjusted to the hallway’s darkness, he noticed the last door on the right stood open, where it should have been closed.

“Hello,” he called out. “Anyone here?” Pawlowski walked down the hall, making sure he did not miss anything as he made his way to the first door on the right. He slid open the viewing port and looked into the cell. Darkness greeted his eyes. He reached down and plucked the flashlight from his belt and shined the beam into the small cell. The only thing in the room was a free standing toilet and two made up cots, nothing else stirred in the room.

Pawlowski crossed the hall to the door facing the room he had just inspected and threw back the view port and peered inside. The cell was just as empty as the first one had been.

When he reached the third door, Pawlowski heard movement behind the door, a shuffling sound. He reached up and slid the hatch back on the door. He peered in to the room and could once again only see darkness, but the room smelled foul, almost dead. He brought the flashlight up and shined the beam through the opening in the door.

The room was a mess. Both cots had been turned over, the sheets and blankets torn off. On the wall in what could have been blood or feces was written “Help Me”. Pawlowski holstered his revolver, reached down and tried the door. Jiggling the handle, he was satisfied the door was still locked; one of the guards would have the keys. Movement in the corner, left of the door, caught his attention from within the room. He tried to shine the flashlight’s beam over into the corner but could not get enough of an angle to illuminate the area.

“Hello,” Pawlowski called out, barely above a whisper. “Hello? Anyone in there?” he turned his head and pressed his eye against the view port to get a better look into the room.

Bloody teeth filled his view as a zombie stepped up to the door, the creature’s fetid breath washed over Pawlowski’s face, the smell making him gag. He fell back from the door and dropped the flashlight to the floor. The flashlight cut out as it struck the concrete and extinguished all light in the hallway.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” he exclaimed as he fell onto the door across the hallway from the zombie’s cell. He grabbed his gun from its holster and pointed it at the door with both hands. “Back the fuck off.”

A bang erupted from the door he leaned against as something hit it from the other side. Something moaned and growled from the other side of the locked door. Pawlowski retrieved the flashlight from the floor and knocked it against his thigh a few times to get it to work. He stood up and opened the port on the other door and found a second zombie trying to get at him from the small hole in the door. He slammed the port shut, cutting the creature off and moved to close the other door’s viewing port.

Four more doors remained in the hallway; he noticed the last door on the right was wide open. He crept up to the open door, drawn gun and flashlight pointed at the opening. He choked at the smell from the room, rotted meat combined with the coppery, metallic smell of blood.

“Hello, anyone in there?” he called once again as he halted just outside the door, as he waited for a response. Nothing, no response came back to him. He counted to ten in his head, pausing after each number, as he tried to take as much time as he could before entered the cell. Finally, not able to waste any more time, he rushed through the open door.

His flashlight played around the cell walls as he tripped across something inside the open door. He fell face first, his right cheek bounced off the floor as he struck the concrete. The air rushed from his lungs and the flashlight rolled from his grasped to crash into one of the legs from the cot. The beam of the light spun around the room as the flashlight twirled on the floor making him feel sick from its erratic movement around the room.

Pawlowski spun around to see what he tripped over and saw the body of one of the militia guards sprawled across the floor in front of the door. He screamed and crab walked backwards until his back hit the wall next to the toilet. He pointed his gun into the darkened corners of the room, eyes searching for one of the Infected before it could attack him.

Convinced he was alone in the room, Pawlowski grabbed the dropped flashlight from the floor and pointed the beam at the corpse by the door. He slowly crawled back across the room to inspect the body, his one hand not holding the light came away sticky from the congealed blood spread across the floor.

The body was a mess. He could not tell who the guard had been. His face was completely gone, chewed off, and a large hole existed where his stomach should have been. Bile rose in Pawlowski’s throat and he turned around away from the body and threw up on the floor.

When he had gathered himself, he turned towards the body and placed his gun to the corpse’s temple and pulled the trigger. The sound of the gun shot echoed throughout the quarantine building. One guard accounted for, where was the other?

Pawlowski stood back up and walked out into the hall. He raised his gun and opened the door at the end of the hallway that led into the guard’s area.

The zombie stumbled out of the room, arms outstretched, teeth barred as it tried to pull Pawlowski into its embrace. He pulled the trigger on his gun three times as he stepped backwards. The first shot ricocheted off the wall beside the creature’s head, the second caught the zombie in the right shoulder and spun the creature around, the third, hit the zombie in the side of the head and dropped the creature to the ground.

Pawlowski’s shoulders dropped as he realized the creature had been Dwight Simmons a longtime friend of his and militia buddy. Both guards were now accounted for.

“Hello,” a voice cried out from behind the closed door, opposite the door that was open. “Is someone out there? Dear God! Please help me.”

Pawlowski slid open the port on the door and shined his light into the opening. A clear set of blue eyes greeted the beam of light.

“Let me out of here,” the voice pleaded through the opening.

“You’re going to need to stay in there a little longer until we can sort this out,” replied Pawlowski.

“Let me out of here, man!”