The Romero Strain (Book 2): The Dead, The Damned & The Darkness

by Ts Alan

  “Dawd? You make funny face, purpose?”

  “No, Cat. I was trying to make a mean face.”

  “Mean face?” she asked, giving him a perplexed look. “You want help?”

  “You know how to make a mean face?”

  “I think so. Like from movie?”

  “Movie?”

  “Yes,” she announced, affirming. “Crow, dawd, like crow man.”

  “You mean Eric Draven, The Crow?”

  “Of course, dawd.”

  “But, Cat, this is crow face.”

  “No, dawd. You do all wrong. No green. Not Grinch. Just black. Dawd already white—I come back. Dawd stay, no go. Okay?” she told him as she bolted out of the bathroom.

  “Where are you going?” he asked as she ran out the door and into the hallway. All he heard was, “Dawd stay!”

  ***

  The movie, The Crow, was one of J.D.’s favorite films, and was based on a comic book series created by James O’Barr. The series was originally written by O’Barr as a means of dealing with the death of his girlfriend at the hands of a drunk driver.

  J.D. had watched the film with his daughter shortly after the death of Caitlin’s mother. It was not something a normal parent would allow a small child to watch, but then again J.D. was far from a normal parent and Caitlin was far from being a normal child. Though he had reservations about her viewing the mature themed film—she was a child no matter how mature her physical appearance and emotional state had developed—he felt the message of the film would outweigh its violent content.

  In the film a poetic guitarist, Eric Draven, is brought back from the dead by a crow a year after he and his fiancée were savagely tortured and murdered. Eric takes revenge for his death and the death of the woman he loves. When not on the hunt, Draven stays in the house he shared with his girlfriend, Shelly, spending most of his time there lost in memories of her; her absence is torture for him, and he is in emotional anguish.

  The Crow, he believed, paralleled his own life in many aspects and the emotions he was experiencing. It also showed the brutal acts of revenge committed by the main character were justified, and he hoped his daughter would understand that he was much like Eric Draven in his commitment and desire to avenge the death of her mother. He had hoped to better explain his own actions through the movie, since it was extremely difficult for him to express himself and his emotional trauma directly to Caitlin. But as they viewed it together all Caitlin wanted was silence from her father, not talk. She understood why he wanted her to see the film. Her words, ‘Dawd crow man,’ spoke volumes of her intellectual capacity.

  ***

  After several minutes, Caitlin ran anxiously back into the bathroom, and then promptly exited. She knocked on the door. She had forgotten her manners again.

  She presented her father with several makeup brushes and a black lip pencil.

  “Cat. Where did you get these?”

  “Katie,” she told him.

  “Katie? Did she give you these or did you take them?”

  “No dawd,” she said in a hurt tone. “Caitlin never take.”

  She frowned.

  “I’m sorry, Cat. Sometimes dad forgets what a Good Cat you are… Why did Katie give these to you?”

  “Katie teach Caitlin makeup,” she proudly announced.

  His voice reflected a tone of concern and anger when he asked her, “Katie puts makeup on you?”

  “No mad, dawd. Only Katie makeup. Not Caitlin. I help Katie!”

  “Okay. Dad sorry again… And what did Katie teach you?”

  “Proper application to enhance natural beauty. Not look like made up.”

  He couldn’t believe his ears. He had never heard his daughter speak such a well-constructed sentence, let alone one filled with words that were of at least an adolescence vocabulary.”

  “She did, did she?”

  “Okay. Now Caitlin helps.”

  J.D. sat impatiently on the bathroom floor. He doubted that his daughter had the ability to do what she so boldly and confidently told him she could. His daughter held her small hand under her father’s chin to steady him, her tiny claws poking his skin, scolding him to sit still. She drew lines vertically up and down his face from the center of the eyes. Then she painted his eyes with a larger brush, making sure to only take little dabs of black paint from her father’s camo makeup case, gently applying and reapplying, filling in the eyelids like she was applying eye shadow. The final step was to paint his lips.

  “No chap, Dawd,” she told him. “Vitamin E,” she declared. “Okay all done. Dawd look.”

  He stood and gazed into the mirror. He was amazed at the perfection in her craft. She had indeed done what she said she could do. The application was remarkable, a bit too remarkable. Caitlin must have spent a copious amount of time with Katie in order to be so perfect, even with her high intelligence.

  “Thank you,” he said, in a pleased tone, and then bent over toward her, “Give dad a kiss.”

  “No dawd, just hug. No smudge Caitlin’s mean face.”

  “Okay, just hug,” he spoke compliantly as his daughter squeezed him tightly around his torso, squatting to accommodate her.

  “Dawd. Please read story before go.”

  “Cat. There’s no time for a story now. Dad needs to go out into the dark. I’ll read to you when I come back.”

  “Dawd,” she pleaded. “No you won’t. You be gone all night. You never read to me anymore. You never sing to me anymore.”

  He looked at her sad face that was almost in tears. She knew how to pull heavy upon his heartstrings. He picked her up in his arms and embraced her tightly, kissing her on her cheek, and then gently placing her on his bed.

  “You’re right, Cat. I’m sorry. How about you sleep here tonight? And I’ll read you a little bit of your favorite.”

  “Good cats and bad cats,” she excitedly replied.

  “Yes, of course. But you have to promise to go to sleep and not be upset when I leave. Okay?”

  “Yes, dawd. I pomise.”

  “Pinky swear?”

  “Yes, dawd,” she agreed, holding out the clawed little baby finger of her right hand. “Pinky swear.”

  J.D. went to his dresser and removed a book from the top drawer. He returned to her side and sat down on the edge of the bed. He opened the old and beaten book and began:

  “Good and Bad Cats. Pictures and verses by Frederick White,” he gently spoke to her, as he watched her wonderment. “To Fuzzy Wuzzy. A perfectly good cat. Except when she is bad. Or (as is usually the case) utterly indifferent.”

  Caitlin settled back upon her pillow in anxious anticipation of the beginning verses.

  “A nicely mannered cat,

  At table,

  Behaves as well as she is able.

  And everybody says:

  “Why that

  Is really something

  Like a cat!”

  But when she gobbles bread and meat

  And uses hands for fork—

  Or feet—

  Then everybody says:

  “Oh, dear!

  Why do they have

  That creature here?”

  Good and Bad Cats had been a bedtime story his grandmother had read to him on a weekly basis as a child. Good and Bad Cats had been the fondest memory J.D. had of his grandmother, who, at the age of 82, had passed away in her sleep the August after his 27th birthday. J.D.’s mother had given him the book shortly after her death. Although he had never read it, or opened its pages since her passing—since he had no children to read it to, until now—it was the most cherished physical possession in his life. Far more treasured than even his beloved Thai fighting sticks which he had received as a gift from his first love, Bonita.

  J.D. didn’t read just the first few pages, he rea
d them all, showing her the accompanying black and white illustrations—the book having been published in 1911—of Fuzzy Wuzzy the cat.

  When the last few words trickled from his lips, his daughter looked up at him and smiled, then asked, “Dawd? Why you go every dark? Why does Elty be dawd?”

  In her broken words, he knew what she was asking. He had tried to be the best father he knew how after Luci’s death. He often read to her and played piano and sang. Then when spring came he focused most of his attention on locating Stone. Caitlin briefly regained her father’s attention back in mid-April, when the storms came, though at times the rain did not stop J.D. from venturing out on his quest. Now it was the third week of May and he had for the better part of the past three weeks nearly ignored her and placed her under the care of Ryan Duncan.

  “Honey. Dad goes out every night to get the bad men, remember? To make all the bad men pay for taking mommy from us. And to find the missing children.”

  Caitlin knew her mother was dead. J.D. had explained death to her and had told her what had happened to her mother. So, when her father told her that the bad men had taken her away from them, she knew she was never coming back.

  “You miss mawm?” she asked her father, with a longing voice and sad eyes.

  He placed his hand gently to her face, cupping it lightly as if he were holding a butterfly in his palm. “Yes, Cat. I miss mom. I miss mom very much.”

  “You love mawm?”

  He reassured her, “Of course. But why would you ask that?”

  “Cause of fodo.”

  “Photo? I don’t understand, Cat. What about photo?”

  “Fodo on drezzer,” she told him, and then pointed to her father’s tall set of dresser drawers, the one in which he kept his grandmother’s book.

  He understood which photo she had questioned him about. It had been the group photo Ryan had taken moments before J.D. had taken his friends to Pier 17 at the South Street Seaport, the morning they had left for England.

  “What about the photo?”

  “Who is girl dawd hugging?”

  “That was someone very special. Someone I miss very much.”

  “You love girl?

  “Yes, I did. But I met Marisol before I met mom. You understand?”

  Caitlin did not answer her father’s query, instead she said, “Caitlin miss mawm, too,” and then asked, “Mary Sol dead like mawm?”

  “No, honey. Marisol went away with all the people in the photo. They went far away to a place called England.”

  “Monster, too?”

  “Monster? I don’t understand. What monster?”

  “Short monster. By dawd’s feet.”

  J.D. now understood her reference to his German shepherd. “No sweetie. That’s not monster. That’s my dog, Max.”

  “Dogd? But he doesn’t look like Barky?”

  “No, Cat, Barkley,” he gently corrected his daughter with a smile. “Barkley is just one kind of dog. Before the plague there used to be all sorts. Max was my best friend, and he helped me rescue all the people in the photo from the zombies.”

  Caitlin had only known one canine, and that was Barkley, and she could not comprehend that there were other kinds of dogs. She gave him a confused look, and asked, “More dogds?”

  “It’s okay, sweetie. Max is gone, too. Max went to England.” He paused momentarily and gazed upon the odd but beautiful face of his daughter. He looked into her brilliant blue eyes. She indeed was a reflection of her mother. “Okay, Cat. Time for sleep.”

  He kissed her forehead, then kissed her tiny lips, and whispered, “I love you.” In response Caitlin grabbed him around his neck and held him tight for a moment, and whispered in his ear, “Please sing lullabee song to make me sleep.”

  As he tucked her in he began to sing “Lullabye (Goodnight My Angel)” by Billy Joel. Before he finished the second verse she had fallen asleep.

  It was time for J.D. to be a bad cat again. It was time to hunt.

  5

  Haunter of the Dark

  March 24, Day 350.

  Where J.D. had once gone out mainly with his men, he now went out mostly alone, hunting for Stone’s hideaway and the men who had killed Luci. Tonight his hunting had paid off, and he knew with relentless persistence he would find Stone, and where Stone was—that was where the prisoners were.

  He had found his tactical advantage, and he used the enemy’s need for light against them. He was transhuman and his enhancements were derived from the DNA of a spotted owl—and other genome resequencing the doctor refused to discuss. He was, therefore, a creature of the night, and the dark did not hinder him from prowling the city after sundown.

  The enemy’s use of light was useless unless he could see it, and wandering the city aimlessly would be pointless and futile, like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. Nonetheless there was one place, one vantage point, and one with a 360-degree view of the Manhattan skyline that would reveal where his enemy could be found—and that was the observation deck of the 102-story landmark Art Deco skyscraper, the Empire State Building.

  From his perch on the 86th floor he patiently watched the city below, first by searching for any light source. His tactical advantage he found was not simply restricted to scanning the dark. He realized that his enhanced vision also could be utilized during the day. Though his eyesight was not as acute as a true transmute or that of an owl, it was superior to any human. With this, and his knowledge of the city, he could approximate where his enemy was skulking.

  For two weeks he patiently watched and noted the areas in which he saw the telltale signs of moving vehicles or people. He observed in the southwest that, usually, after noontime until 8 or 9 p.m. there was a great deal of activity. At sunrise daily, he and Barkley made their way to the area where he had seen his enemy, and though his recons never revealed the enemy’s hideout, it did reveal the enemy was scavenging.

  With his intel, he was able to determine where his enemy was and where they were most likely to be. They were currently in the West Village at Sheridan Square, the area in which West 4th Street, Barrow Street, and West Washington Place intersected. By the direction J.D. had calculated, they were heading toward 14th Street.

  Patience and perseverance eventually paid off. He hit them three times, twice at night and once in the early afternoon. Weary from the hunt, he chose to return to his real home—his place on East 13th Street. This was not the first time he decided to rest at his pre-apocalypse residence instead of returning to the armory. His apartment was also a sanctuary away from his responsibilities and burdens as a commander. But he knew that spending more than two nights away from his men was detrimental to their morale and their physical well-being. He still led some of the day missions and he still, when his other duties allowed, stood vigil on the roof watching for refugees or anyone who dared attack.

  Tonight would be his only evening away for the week. There were duties that needed his attention back at base in the morning. Also, he wanted to tell his soldiers that there were three less threats they had to worry about.

  He was at the corner of 13th Street and Second Avenue about to step off the curb to cross to the west side when he saw a faint set of headlights coming from the south. He knew it wasn’t one of his patrols. There were strict orders that no patrol was to be out at night unless he was leading the team. He hadn’t scheduled a patrol for another two days, so he knew it had to be another of Stone’s. They must have found their men that he had ambushed earlier. The enemy was now hunting him.

  It wasn’t as if he had tried to hide the act; in fact, he had wanted Stone to know that he was the one who killed the three. Besides the talon markings left on his kills, he had left a note for Stone on one of his victims after the first surprise attack. It was a brief declaration he had written; it read: ‘I will not retreat in the face of battle. I will give no quarter to the fall
en. I will have no mercy for my enemies. I will never accept defeat. I will never quit.’ He signed the edict ‘Humpty Dumpty,’ as a taunt.

  J.D. was incensed and furious that Stone’s men were violating his memories and intruding upon his piece of the night. This was his neighborhood, his home turf, and his little slice of what good in his life he had once had. It angered him. How dare they violate it! These trespassers, these undesirables, were a blight and not welcome. He could see the spotlight cutting across the darkness, relentlessly searching back and forth like a badminton birdie in flight. He knew this wasn’t just any patrol; it was a search and destroy team and they were hunting for him. However the hunters were about to get a surprise. He had two fragmentation grenades that he hadn’t needed when he caught the last patrol scavenging through a small liquor store, having been more interested in what they had found than watching their backs. He lay down on the sidewalk next to the curb, using a car to obscure his presence. As the military Humvee passed he stood up and lobbed a grenade at them. It thudded on the hood of the truck next to the spotter, and then rolled off. There was no explosion.

  The truck abruptly stopped. The light swept around to his position. They had found him.

  ***

  “Don’t take any of those wet boxes of ammunition,” J.D. distinctly remembered telling his men as they looked over the cache of weapons and munitions they had discovered at the Javits Center. However, what he had ordered was either disregarded or they had brought back ones that they hadn’t realized were water damaged.

  ***

  The car shredded in front of him as 40mm rounds of a MK19-3 Grenade Machine Gun ripped through the vehicle’s metal fabrication. The front windshield exploded. Fragments of glass and other debris burst into the air. Unfortunately for J.D., the enemy gunner didn’t have to be a marksman to assure destruction of a target. The weapon was capable of major direct and indirect damage and it could penetrate through a vehicle and kill someone on the other side, if they were using it as cover. J.D. knew this, he had seen this, so he had been quick enough to get out of the way when the Humvee backed up and the gun turned in his direction. Except he had no place to go, but in a retreating direction. The spotlight swept through the dark in search of him. He had been lucky; it was night, and though the stars gave the streets some illumination, there was only a sliver of a moon this evening. Without the cover of darkness to make his escape, in all likelihood, he would have been gunned down.