Blood Alley, Page 5

  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.”

  Those patrons closest to Romulus stirred at the sound of the zombie hunter’s words, fear in their eyes.

  “Sit down,” Romulus called out as he brought up the crossbow. “Nobody move. This will be over in a minute.”

  The man closest to Romulus started to move towards the door.

  “I said, sit the fuck down,” Romulus said as he pointed the crossbow at the man. “You have something to hide? You been bitten?”

  “Nooo, no sir I ain’t been bitten,” the man replied as he stumbled back into his chair.

  “Good. Now, like I said, this will only take a minute or two. AJ, find!”

  The dog moved from table to table, stopping to smell each of the bar’s patrons before moving on to the next. Each time he stopped and smelled a person, that person fell back in fear and his friends moved further away.

  AJ finally worked his way to a booth in the back corner where a lone man hunched over a pint of beer. The dog sniffed at the seated man once and let out a bark that echoed across the silent room. Immediately chairs scraped across the floor as people stood to get away from the man.

  “Nobody move!” shouted Romulus, his voice carried over the sound of panic in the room. Everybody froze where they were as Romulus marched across the room, the crossbow aimed at the man in the booth.

  “Are you Conner Witt?” asked Romulus.

  The man turned his head towards Romulus, his face coming into the light. For some, the turn from human to zombie happened fast, in a matter of minutes. For others the turn took hours, sometimes days and it was a very horrifying experience. Conner Witt w
as one of the latter. His eyes had turned a yellowish white color, the pupils all but gone. The muscles in his face had begun to relax on the left side giving him the appearance of a stroke victim. Drool ran from the corner of his mouth into the untouched tankard of beer.

  “Whad?” he slurred.

  “I asked, are you Conner Witt?”

  “Just let me go, mister,” he pleaded as he tried to make his words sound clearer. “I don’t want to hurt no one. Just take me to the front gate. Let me walk out of New Atlanta.”

  “You know I can’t do that. You know it is too late for you.”

  Conner’s head lowered slightly in response. “Yeah I know. It’s only that,” the man’s words were cut off by the sound of the front door slamming open, boots tromping across the floor.

  “Pike, is that him? Did you find Conner Witt?” Captain Walter’s voiced boomed across the bar.

  Without turning his back on the infected man, Romulus replied. “Yeah, it’s him.”

  “Step aside, Pike. The militia will take it from here.”

  Ignoring Capitan Walters, Romulus looked at the man sitting at the table. “Son, I need to know something. Have you bitten anyone?” he asked as he kept the crossbow aimed at the young man.

  “No one, sir. Honest!”

  “No one?”

  Conner’s shoulders dipped slightly. “Well there was just one,” he replied.

  “Who? Who did you bite son?”

  “The old lady, the witch. She lives down by the water in the old hut. I didn’t mean to hurt her,” he pleaded. “She was going to turn me in to the militia. She made me so angry. Please, mister, just let me go. Take me outside the wall. I’ll go. Never come back here again. I promise.”

  “What about at the park? Did you hurt anyone there?”

  “No, Sir! There was a little boy playing there. I wanted to. I wanted to bite him real badly. I wanted to feed on him, but I didn’t. I swear, Mister. I didn’t hurt the boy.”

  Walters put his hand on Romulus’s shoulder. “We can take it from here, Pike. You’ve done your part.”

  “I’m sure you can, Captain. But the General asked me to help for a reason.”

  Romulus’s finger tightened on the crossbow trigger, the click of the weapon firing echoed across the room.

  Conner Witt’s head snapped back against the booth, his head pinned to the cushion as the crossbow bolt sank into his left eye. His boots drummed against the floor a couple times and then the room was quiet.

  “I said we had it, Pike!” barely contained anger filled the Captain’s voice.

  Romulus turned and his cold, steel blue eyes locked with those of the Captain. “You’ll want to put everyone in here in quarantine for at least five days and you will want to burn this place down. AJ, let’s go.”

  “What about you?” Captain Walters asked. “Why shouldn’t you be placed in quarantine?”

  “I wasn’t bitten, nor did Conner get any fluids on me. Plus I am heading out of town right now,” he replied. “I can’t vouch for anyone else in here. Do what you want with them.”

  Romulus turned and walked out of the bar.

  XI

  The night was silent outside the walls of New Atlanta. The snow that had started falling earlier during the day continued to fall and already several inches of the white powder covered the ground. The snow would be gone soon, it never stayed around long in Georgia, but for tonight it gave the forest outside New Atlanta a lonely feeling.

  The two men stood in a circle of light that came from the torches lining the outer wall of New Atlanta. Romulus sat astride his big Harley, the bike between his legs and the General stood next to him. AJ already lay nestled in a basket strapped behind the seat of the bike.

  “You sure you won’t stay?” the General asked.

  “You know I can’t,” Romulus replied.

  “At least stay the night, get started in the morning.”

  Romulus looked out in the darkness for a second. “I can’t. The Stratos brothers already have a two day start on me. They are incompetent as all shit, but even a moron can get it right occasionally.”

  “They’re gone, Romulus. It has been three years now.”

  Romulus froze at his friend’s words, pain clutched at his heart. “I know they are Lincoln. I know they are. But it doesn’t mean I should stop looking,” he replied as they started into the same old argument they had every time they got together. “If they’ve turned, I need to find them even more.”

  The General reached out and placed his hand on his friends arm. “Romulus, if your wife and daughter have turned, chances are you might never find them again. Somebody else could have already put them down. They could have fallen over a cliff or got stuck in a building somewhere. They could be lying frozen in a ditch somewhere up in Canada for all we know.”

  Romulus could feel his resolve beginning to crumble under the General’s onslaught. Maybe his friend was right. Maybe it was time to give up the hunt for Anya and Tatiana. It seemed doubtful that his wife and daughter could still be alive after all this time. But he still had the dreams, almost every night his daughter came to him in his sleep, imploring him for help. Why couldn’t he have been home the night the village was attacked? Why did he have to be off in Louisville that night?

  Romulus wiped away the tear that was forming in his eye. Hopefully Lincoln would think it was caused by the cold wind. If his friend did see the tear, the man did not say anything.

  Romulus shook his shoulders against the cold and grasped the General’s outstretched arm. “I appreciate what you are saying, Lincoln. I really do. But I can’t stay here. I can’t give up on my search for my family. If I did give up,” he continued. “I would be just like those men back there in Mulligan’s, drinking myself silly every night. Drinking away the pain until someday I drank enough courage to put Last Chance in my mouth and pull the trigger.

  “I know, Romulus.”

  “Searching for my family is the only thing that makes me not give up. The need to know makes me get up every day and continue on in this fucked up life we now live.”

  Romulus stood up, on the bike, his foot on the starter. He kicked the bike into life and the roar of the engine cut through the silence of the night. “I need to get going.”

  “I know, my friend. Take care of yourself. I don’t want to find your face amongst the hordes of zombies around my walls this spring,” the General said as he dropped his hand away from Romulus’s arm.

  “I will,” Romulus replied as he switched the Harley into gear. The bike fishtailed, sending a shower of snow and gravel towards the wall as he accelerated away. AJ poked his head over the basket to see what was happening.

  The General stood there in the falling snow and watched the Harley disappear into the night. He could still see the headlight shining on the ghostly trees after the bike was gone from his sight. He stood there for a little bit longer, till he could no longer hear the sounds of the bike.

  He took off his hat, dusted the snow from it and turned back to the two men by the gate. He could not help but feel some worry for his friend, but he put his worry aside as he approached the guards.

  “Good night, Gentlemen,” he said as he passed through the gate and entered the city.

  Thank you for reading Blood Alley, if you liked the story, please take a moment to write a quick review by clicking here. The feedback is greatly appreciated.

  - T.F. Hanson

  About The Author

  T. F. Hanson (Tim) is a budding writer who doesn’t really know what he is doing; however, he is an up and coming, brilliant writer, amongst the likes of Stephan King, Dean Koontz, Brian Keene and four other writers he can’t think of at the moment. He has never published anything until now, but has a couple of rejection notices from some well-known publications. However, his wife and daughter think that he is the best writer of all time. He writes fantasy, horror and science fiction. To his knowledge, he has never won a single award, but he does have an honorable mention in
third grade for almost having perfect attendance.

  T.F. does have a day job where he plays at being a SQL Server DBA (that is Database Administrator), and has been a software programmer for over 25 years. He likes backpacking, mountain biking, dressing up in armor and sword fighting in the Society of Creative Anachronism where he is known as Tor Magnusson. He also spends a good chunk of his time following his daughter around to soccer games.

  He lives in the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia with his wife and daughter, but secretly longs to return to the Pacific Northwest that he calls home.

  He currently has two novels in the works for the Romulus Pike series and has written numerous short stories about Romulus that he is planning on compiling into a single volume.

  Other eBooks available:

  Zombie Pride

  Look for IN THE BEGINNING, A Romulus Pike Novel, coming in February 2015

  Websites and links:

  T.F. Hanson: www.romuluspike.com

  On Twitter: @romuluspike

  About The Cover Artist

  S. Scott Smale is a self taught #Dark #Horror #Artist and Graphic Designer. The one man army at Triple-S Studios: The Home of Extremely Budget Friendly Graphic Design. He has designed many company logos, event fliers, a movie poster as well as the cover of the eBook you have just read. In his spare time he enjoys watching Horror movies, reading great fiction, cooking on the grill and spending time with his family in Mishawaka, Indiana, the town that he calls home.

  Websites and links:

  Triple-s Studios: www.triple-s-studios.com

  On Twitter: @triplesstudios

  On Facebook: TripSStudios