Blood Alley (6 page)

He reached down, grabbed the broom and shoved it into the fire. When he was satisfied the broom was lit, Romulus used it as a torch. He first set the blanket over the chair on fire and then the curtains by the windows. He then torched the dried herbs hanging from the ceiling. When the zombie hunter was satisfied that the old shack would burn completely down, he dropped the broom next to Old Mattie. “I’m sorry this had to happen,” he whispered as he cleared the room.

He stood outside, his back to the blaze, the heat washing over him and stared at the river. Romulus was alone now, the Captain gone to get his men. He could easily steal the boat and be on his way. A bark at his feet brought his thoughts back around to the task at hand.

“You’ve got him, AJ?”

The dog gave another solitary bark in answer.

“Find!” Romulus commanded.

IX

Conner stumbled down the deserted street not knowing where he was heading. The crunch of the snow below his feet was the only sound that accompanied him. His mind was still reeling from what he had done to the old witch. He could feel Freddy’s disease taking over, changing his body and mind. Already, the hunger was growing inside him, just like it had at the old witch’s place. He could feel the hunger gnawing at the pit of his stomach. Soon he would need to satisfy the hunger again before it consumed his soul.

Dusk was approaching New Atlanta, but with the dark, snow filled sky the streets already seemed to be at rest for the day. Nobody was out and about at this time because of the earlier sirens and the all clear had not been sounded. He knew the lockdown was because of him.

As he rounded a corner in the street, pain racked his body, causing him to double up. He reached out and grabbed a lamppost for support. Conner’s stomach twisted, his body rejecting the contents of his stomach and he threw up all over the curb. Bits and pieces of the old witch, mixed with her blood, covered the street at his feet. With the back of his sleeve, he wiped the gore and bile from his lips. He no longer felt the cold and wondered if the fever was to blame.

Conner used the lamppost to straighten up and then froze as a rhythmic, squeal reached his ears. He could not identify the noise, but it drew his attention. He started to shuffle down the darkened street towards the noise, the sound drawing him forward like a magnet.

The sound stopped for a moment and Conner panicked, he needed the sound. As quickly as it was gone, the squeal started back up, more rhythmic this time. With it, a new sound rose adding a different kind of undertone, almost a harmony to go with the rhythm.

The road came to a dead end, opening to a small, snow covered park. Conner’s fevered mind could no longer appreciate the beauty of the snow covered park. The trees with their limbs all covered in white. Icicles were beginning to form on over hanging wires.

In the middle of the park, Conner’s eyes came to rest on the source of the sound. At some point in time, somebody had moved a children’s backyard swing set to the small park. Now, a young child sat in the lone swing, slow moving back and forth, gliding through the snow filled air. As the swing reached the top of its flight, it would fall back down, the other way with a rusty sound of metal on metal creating the sound that had drawn Conner this way.

Conner could not tell if the child was a boy or a girl. His sight had been getting worse throughout the day, besides, the lone figure was wrapped up in a jacket too big for its small frame. He realized the other sound he heard was the sound of the child humming.

Why was the child out here? Did the kid not know about the lockdown? New Atlanta was dangerous right now, there was a zombie loose in the city and that zombie was now standing here with the boy in the park. Could that be? Had he passed over the line from human to zombie? What kind of parent would let a child come out and play during a lockdown?

Conner could not change what he did to Old Mattie, but maybe he could make something right and help the kid get home before something bad happened.

He stepped out and moved across the park toward the child. As he approached, he watched as the child let go of the swing at the height of its arc and flew through the air to land and roll in the snow, laughter filled with joy burst from the child’s mouth as the figure popped back up, covered in snow. As he drew closer, Conner could tell the child was a boy, sparkling blue eyes peered out from beneath sandy blond hair. The hair pressed down by the knit cap he wore. The boy then flung himself back down in the snow and began working on a snow angel, his legs and arms moving back and forth in the snow.

“Hey, kid,” Conner called out as he approached. “What are you doing out here? It’s not safe out right now. Did you not hear the sirens this morning?”

The boy stopped immediately and stood back up, staring at Conner. His blue eyes locked on Conner and grew wide.

“What’s wrong kid?” Conner mumbled.

The kid stood there in the snow, frozen, eyes never leaving Conner. “Mister, are you alright? You don’t look so good.”

Conner had never been good at guessing ages, but he thought the boy might be somewhere between five and six years old. “You know you are not supposed to be out right now? Don’t you?”

“It’s snowing,” he said, the twinkle returning to his eyes.

“Yes, yes it is,” Conner replied as he felt the need to feed begin to grow in the pit of his stomach. The hunger was returning. “You need to go home now, kid. Your parents are probably worried sick about you.”

“Hey, Mister. You want to have a snowball fight?”

Conner felt the saliva forming in his mouth, the tightness growing in his body. He needed to feed. His arm reached out, on its own toward the boy. As quickly as his arm reached out, Conner brought it back down to his side. “You need to leave now. Run, kid.”

The boy ignored Conner. Instead, he dropped back down into the snow. “Come on, Mister. Let’s make snow angles.”

The longing increased with inside Conner. His body and soul ached for the boy. He wanted to sink his teeth into the boy’s flesh, to feel the blood flow into his mouth. Conner needed to feed the hunger. He sank to his knees in the snow, down beside the boy as the child flapped his arms in the snow.

“Come on, Mister! You can make one too,” the boy sang out, mistaking Conner’s actions.

“Jonathan!” a woman’s frantic voice called out from the gathering darkness. “Jonathan, where are you?”

“Mom, I’m,” his voice was cut off as Conner clamped his hand over the boy’s mouth, the child’s eyes growing wide in fear.

Conner leaned over the boy, and opened his mouth, saliva falling on the child’s face. The boy squirmed under his tightening grip. He tried to fight the urge, but the hunger forced Conner’s mouth closer to the boy’s face. The child’s movements became frantic the closer Conner’s face came to his own.

The boy’s fist rose up and he punched Conner in the face. The first blow caught Conner on the mouth, the second in the nose. Pain exploded in his head as he pulled back from the boy. His hand slipped from the child’s mouth.

“Mommy,” screamed the boy, his shrill voice splitting the snow, shrouded silence. “Mommy,” he screamed even louder the second time.

“Jonathan,” the woman’s frantic voice answered back from the growing darkness.

Conner heard running steps approaching the park. He completely let go of the boy and stood up. “Damn it! I told you to fucking run. Run!”

He did not wait to see if the boy obeyed him. Conner got up and ran on wobbly legs in the opposite direction of the approaching mother. He ran as fast as he could, not looking back. Tears flowed from his eyes as he fled the park. He had almost killed somebody else. He had almost killed a kid.

He ran until his lungs felt like they were going to burst, until the hunger made him stop. When the fog lifted from his mind, he found himself alone in another alley, behind Mulligan’s bar, one of the local drinking spots. Like most alleys in New Atlanta, this one was no different, garbage lay piled against the walls and cockroaches scurried back and forth amongst the piles of trash.

He stood in the alley, catching his breath, staring at the back door to Mulligan’s. A noise over to his left, by a dumpster caught his attention, a bottle falling over.

Conner moved quietly over to the large green container and peered behind the dumpster. There on the ground, amongst the debris from previous days, stood the biggest rat Conner had ever seen. The rodent scratched away at the snow searching for food, not caring about the danger the human presented.

Conner’s hand shot out and grabbed the rat’s body; the creature sunk its teeth into his hand and let out a loud squeal. Conner barely felt the pain in his hand as he shoved the rat into his mouth. With a satisfied crunch, he bit down on the rat’s head. The blood flowed down his throat and out the corner of his mouth. The hunger lessened with the blood but it did not go away. The hunger would never truly be satisfied ever again.

X

Mulligan’s was the local drinking hole for this section of New Atlanta. The bar was neatly tucked away between the dry grocers and an empty office space that had once belonged to an insurance agent.

Several darkened windows faced the street and the window closest to the door had been boarded over at some point in time. The door of Mulligan’s had once been covered with purple leather and brass buttons, but now the leather was cracked and faded and most of the buttons were missing. An old gas lamp burned on a pole outside the door pushing the darkness away.

Romulus stood across the street staring at the front door of the place. He had been standing there for the last fifteen minutes. During that time, nobody had entered the bar nor had anyone left the place. He feared for the worst, the bar could now be full of the Infected.

AJ had followed Conner’s trail to the bar. It was clear to Romulus that the man was getting close to changing. The trail had crossed a small park were it looked like Conner might have encountered someone. There had been no blood, nor any sign of struggle at the park. Hopefully the trails and snow angles in the snow had been made before Conner had arrived at the park. Witt’s trail went into the alley behind Mulligan’s where Romulus had found a torn apart rat, a sign that Conner had fed again. From the alley, the trail wandered around to the front of the bar, where it ended at the bar’s door.

Romulus stepped off the curb and began to walk across the street when one of Captain Walters’ men came around the corner.

“You!” Romulus called as he approached the man. “Go find Captain Walters, tell him that Witt is in Mulligans.”

The guardsmen hesitated for a moment, and then looked the zombie hunter over, eyes stopping on the chain mail and armor the man wore, finally resting on his weapons. “You Romulus Pike?” the man asked. “The Captain has been looking for you. He is really pissed. You were supposed to have stayed at the witch’s shack. You burnt it?”

“The place was infected. Now go get the Captain and let him know Witt is in Mulligan’s. If more people get bitten, it will be your fault.”

The threat hung in the air between the two men for just a moment and then did its trick. “You stay put right here, make sure the zombie don’t leave and I’ll go get the Captain,” the man said as he turned and ran back in the direction he came.

Confident the man was going to find Captain Walters, Romulus walked into the bar.

Mulligan’s was normally a happy place, or at least as happy a place as you could find in a land of death and destruction. The bar was the kind of place where people gathered after a hard day’s work, have a few drinks and blow off a little steam. The bar was a place where neighbors and coworkers could let their guard down for just a bit before returning to the upside down world they lived in since the Apocalypse.

When Romulus walked into the bar, it was a different place. The lockdown had changed the atmosphere of the bar. Most of the crowd that usually frequented Mulligans was now at home securely locked behind closed doors with their families as they waited for the “All Clear” siren to sound. But even with the lockdown, there were still the diehards that needed their fix of alcohol to numb away their thoughts and losses. Thirteen years after the Apocalypse most people had come to grips with what happened, but there were still the few that needed to forget on a daily bases.

What little conversation and merriment that had been going on in the bar stopped the moment the zombie hunter walked into the bar. All eyes turned to Romulus.

Romulus scanned the room looking from face to face to find Conner Witt. The room was not crowded; there were many open places to be found. His cold, steely eyes adjusted to the dimness and smoke of the bar, but even then, he could not see into the dark corners of the room. He breathed deeply, bringing in the smell of the bar, it was there. Behind the smell of stale beer, wood smoke and unwashed bodies Romulus could sense the smell of Freddy’s. If he could smell it, he was confident AJ would have no problem locating the man.

“Pike,” the burley barkeep called out from his place behind the bar. “We don’t need your type in here. There’s nobody in here but hardworking, honest folk. Now move along.”

“Ah, but you do, Duncan,” Romulus replied to the barkeep. “You do need my type. You have a problem, a zombie problem. He is here.”