Chapter 6
I scurried across the dark street, doing my best to watch the shadows and alleys while ignoring the falling rain. Running through black puddles like a journalist in a war zone, I ducked into cover and stopped to peer around corners as though an enemy combatant might attack. It was a good thing I was ostensibly dead; fear induced running had me panting, and I didn’t even need to breathe. The realization almost made me laugh, and I forced myself to quit breathing altogether. Old habits die hard, I guess.
At each stop, I opened my newly heightened sense of smell to take in the surrounding stink. Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, depending on how you looked at it, that was all I could detect. Dust, more mildew, and the rotten smell of that damp glowing moss received my nostrils no matter where I went. Interestingly, I observed more nuance within those smells than before. It took me a little time to investigate, but I realized I could smell out the life cycle of the moss. When it glowed brighter, it had a more pungent or rather fresh smell, compared to the even more musty, less glow-y counterpart.
I’d never been to New York City before, but the shadowy place I found myself in appeared modeled after it. The architecture of the buildings varied in both size and design, creating a scene of an urban forest even in the shallow gloom of the subdued blue and pink lighting. Ever present pavement stretched in all directions and made walking uncomfortable for my scrap wrapped feet. A lack of sound contrasted with my expectation of the place. Buildings and streets of this magnitude were meant to be lived in, and the absence of noise freaked me out. Instead of a visitor to a grand metropolis, I was a trespasser in a crypt, with only the light patter of rain to accompany me.
An ever-present sense of danger poked me, and I decided I wanted off the wide, bare streets. I entered the first building I spotted, which turned out to be an old pizzeria. A sign hung over it that said, “Tower of Pizza since 1978”.
1978? That hotel is at least 25 years older than that. Does this place collect buildings from random decades? I wondered.
Upon entering the old restaurant, I encountered the familiar musty odor that I’d first come across when I woke up in this bizarre world. I suspected more mold but saw none growing. Only a few of the pink street flowers growing near the door and the ghostly blue moss signaled that life existed. I closed on a nice patch of the plant on a wall and gave it a nice big whiff. The moss didn’t have the odor, so something else had to be causing it.
The pizzeria remained in much better shape than the hotel. Most of the furniture looked serviceable, and all the windows sat intact. A layer of dust and grime still coated the room. It was a testament to my undead status that I hadn’t sneezed. Allergies plagued me since childhood, and I would not miss them.
With great care, and my monkey wrench in tow, I checked the ground level of the old pizzeria. I swept room by room in a defensive position, ready to strike at anything that came at me. The sensation of creeping around in the dark had not gotten less terrifying. Every shadow and nook seemed to possess some imaginary hidden danger. By the time I’d finished giving my due diligence to exploring, I wanted to have an excuse to hit something.
During the walk-through I found an old walk-in freezer I considered might serve as a place to rest. It would keep me safe from animals like the Colo Colo, but I ended up discarding the idea for fear of a person coming by and locking me in. Assuming there were other people out there. I hoped so.
After I cleared the bottom floor, I looked through the windows of the place for outside movement.
Nothing but rain, shadow, and stink. Just to be sure, I waited another half hour, watching and thinking about what I needed to do.
An unknown person had bolted the emergency back door shut, so I locked the front door and pulled a table in front of it to barricade myself in. I felt a little paranoid, sealing myself in the building, since I hadn’t finished checking it out, but under the circumstance’s hypervigilance seemed reasonable. I mean, I knew two Colo Colo lived close by. Blood washed away by rain followed my every step. If those creatures had even a modicum of tracking, they would find me eventually.
My initial check had been to look for obvious dangers. Now I wanted to find clues or something useful. After checking the drawers and shelves in the kitchen, it elated me to discover a large knife with a little rust. My hand-crafted mirror shank needed replacing, anyway. It concerned me that the shard no longer reflected what occurred on Earth. I broke it into two pieces big enough to fit in my pocket, just in case it began working later.
A utility closet had a large basket with lost and found items. Most of the crap I found seemed useless, but a beaten-up pair of work boots brightened my night. How someone had left behind a pair of boots at a restaurant was nearly as big a mystery as where I ended up. Either way, I was thankful. The boots were a tad tight, however; it felt much better than walking on wraps of cloth. A dusty and stinky brown workman’s jacket and an equally smelly “I Love Chicago” t-shirt two sizes too small replaced my ragged dress shirt. It wasn’t much, yet the garments made me feel less vulnerable.
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I stuffed a bunch of cleaning supplies, including a bottle of roach spray and WD-40, into a plastic Oscar the grouch backpack I’d also found in the lost and found bucket.
When I finished raiding the utility closet, I headed to an old office at the bottom of a dark stairwell. Both the stairwell and the office were dark enough that I debated entering. There wasn’t enough glowing moss in the building to light my way, so I had saved these two areas for last. A need for a defensible haven decided the debate for me.
Since I could hear nothing, nor catch a scent, from the doorway of the office, I checked it first. Feeling my way around the gloomy office and cringing at every noise I made, I went in a clockwise circle, going low and high. Each time I found something that had potential, either as a weapon or a clue, I stopped, then moved it to the light of the moss. In a file cabinet I found a bunch of foreclosure notices dated in the year 1996, and crap like tax information, and a set of keys which I assumed were for the building. The desk had a bunch of random office supplies that I didn’t find useful. I also found an old telephone on the desk, which almost made him laugh. Perhaps the landline rotary phone was destined to be my weapon of choice.
Once I felt there was more to see, I climbed the pitch-black stairwell. Each step creaked, but I found myself beyond caring. If someone or something didn’t know I was there by now, the noisy steps wouldn’t alert them.
As I ascended the stairs, I kept one hand on the railing and another, pointing the monkey wrench in a forward position like a blind man with a cane. On the last step, I softly thudded into a door. With gentle care, I slid the tips of my fingers over the wood of the barrier, mapping its integrity with my mind. After a few seconds, I realized that the middle of the door was a mess of haphazardly nailed in planks of wood. For a second, I considered that information.
Someone boarded this door shut and fast. I thought. The hair on my neck raised in the stillness of the black corridor. I knew something was wrong but couldn’t explain what. I took a few steps back down the stairs and listened. Lifting my head back, I took in the smells around, searching for scents like a dog.
An uncomfortable minute passed. I just thought I imagined it when—
Clink. I heard it. There was a sound.
What is that? I thought.
It didn’t take long for the sound to happen again. Clink.
I turned my head to look behind me.
Clink.
No, it was coming from the vicinity of the door.
Clink. Clink.
I understood.
The doorknob was being turned. I stepped back once down the stairs.
I doubt whatever is in there is a person, but maybe I should be sure? I pondered. What if they woke up in one of those summoning circles, like I did?
“Hello?” I whispered.
Another Clink. The sound clicked much faster now, frantic even.
“Okay, I’m leaving then.” I threatened.
This time, I got a response. A blood curdling animalistic scream was my reply, followed by something slamming into the door hard enough to shake the walls.
In my effort to get away from the door, I stumbled backward and tripped over my feet, rolling down the steps in a tumble. I ignored the pain, instead focusing all my senses on the sound of the door cracking as something unhinged screamed and beat into the barrier.
I fled the pizzeria and didn’t look back.
Several Hours Later
Pursuit never came from whatever chased me out of the Tower of Pizza. Though thinking about it, which was hard not to do, still frayed my nerves. The hatred and rage of the thing’s scream echoed in my mind. Every shadow made me even more nervous. I was sure that if I ever returned home, I would have a healthy fear of the dark for the rest of my years. Probably not a very good mental illness for a vampire.
Believing that I was being chased, I had left the pizzeria and ran down the street as fast as my undead legs could take me. Most of the buildings I passed in my flight looked like open carcasses and were too wide open for lying low. In my frantic flight, I had despaired of finding a haven until I saw a fire station on a street corner. Fire station 190 looked defensible, and I spotted a water tower on top of it, making it a straightforward choice for refuge. I hoped to get a better view of the area from on high.
Since then, I’d explored every nook and cranny of the old fire station. It had been emptied with nothing of genuine interest, except for a bunch of pornographic magazines from the 1980s I’d found hidden in a locker. I avoided looking at the naked women, still fearing that I was being judged in an afterlife and stuck to reading the articles in the dreary moss-glow. Also, I was more than a little afraid of what would happen if my undead state prohibited me from arousal. Drinking blood had been nice, I suppose, but nowhere like having an orgasm. Another lie of pop culture.
In the four- or six-hours’ time (I couldn’t be sure) I spent holed up, it had never stopped raining or being dark as night. The rain wasn’t always water. I discovered the mystery of the moldy aroma when an overwhelming, putrid storm of bone and bits of skin blasted through the city. I was sure that if I had been in the tempest, it would have flayed my skin from my bones. When it hit, I had been taking another shower on the roof. My only warning had been the pink flowers on the streets suddenly closing and going dark. Already paranoid from my misadventures, I ducked back into the fire station just in the nick of time.
Everything in this place wanted to kill me.
Compounding the problem was the fact that I needed to kill something. I didn’t know when I would need blood again, and the transformation from the blessing of the Ghoul seemed to have taken energy. At least, as the hunger seemed to grow stronger, that was what I was hoping.
After drinking enough water to make my stomach full, I packed my things and headed out to hunt. I knew it would be a mistake to wait longer; I could detect the unmistakable alien hunger growing by the moment. My plan was to go back to the hotel and try to isolate a Colo Colo.
But as is often the case in life, my plans didn’t amount to much. The moment I stepped out of the firehouse, I almost crashed into another person.