Blood Alley (7 page)

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 was 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
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- 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.