Seventeen
The alley wasn’t as dark as it had first looked. The ground was littered with trash and stones. Looked like someone in the apartment building on the righthand side didn’t feel like carting their bag of garbage down to the curb. They hadn’t felt like it for several months, apparently. Thankfully the rain had weighted down any smell and the stench was now just a low stink. Seth picked his way back into the narrow corridor, careful not to step on anything suspiciously dirty. The lights ran out on him and the alleyway dropped further into darkness.
Still stepping carefully, Seth noticed a large piece of paper over to one side moving slightly. The wind had calmed down greatly when the rain had quit, so he didn’t think it was the wind moving it. When he got closer he saw it was actually a refrigerator box with some newspaper sitting on top of it. The box was jerking every thirty seconds or so. Seth was now about twenty yards in from the headlights and knew he wouldn’t be able to see much — anything — but he bent down to look in the box.
A small yellow and orange bullet ripped out of the box and flew at him. He jumped back, yelling “Fuck!” The cat hit the wall, kicked off and shot off further down the alleyway. Seth’s heart was pounding in his chest and the next few breaths came slowly and painfully. A smile pulled at his face. He felt like he had nearly shit his pants. Over a cat! Where the hell was curiosity when you needed it? He turned around and waved at Ruth.
“Just a cat,” he called down the alleyway, one hand cupped around his mouth. She nodded back at him. Guess she heard. He waved again and turned back around. He thought he had heard something further on in the alley. Something that sounded like someone crying and moaning. Kicking himself for not being able to leave someone alone, live and let die and all that jazz, he took a few more steps into the alley.
The alley grew darker as he followed it until it hit a hard corner. The alley he was in ran out and a new one hit it from ninety degrees to the left. The new alley was a bit brighter, catching a few more rays of sunlight. He stopped at the intersection and peered down this new hall. Something was moving about thirty yards in front of him.
He took a step toward the mouth of the intersecting alley, then another. What was that? He heard another moan and he started to get an idea. Two lumps were in the shadows, one long and flatter, the other rounded and taller. The round one was moving slightly every few seconds. The flat one was the one moaning. “What the — ” He managed to catch the next word in his throat, but the first two were enough to prick the ears of shape number two. Its head raised from where it was, inches over the bottom shape, and turned to face him. He saw red running down the bottom half, the color standing out sharply against the pale whiteness of the rest of the shape. Its eyes were two bloody holes, but the nose and ears twitched at him. The body of the shape shifted and turned toward him, bringing its weight fully back onto the lower half, getting ready to rise. Something glinted in the soft light of the alleyway. A police badge.
The bottom shape lay still. No sounds came from their direction except a wet sniffing sound from the rising shape. Seth could barely make out the shape on the alley floor. It was the other cop. He could tell by a few scraps of blue cloth still wrapped around one of the outstretched arms. In the hand of that arm, he could just make out a red lump. The whole hand and lower arm were covered in red, but that lump had a few larger splotches of white. And a ring of blue that seemed to glow in the cloudy light. Seth could only guess that there was a matching lump in the other hand.
Seth’s mouth dropped open, his face going slack from shock. The officer — ex-officer — gained his feet and took a couple of blindly shambling steps towards Seth, then a third and a fourth, the latter two gaining speed over the first two. In six steps it was running down the alley toward him. Forgetting the gun in his hand, Seth spun to his side and ran as fas as he could down the alley.