"Dorhian...
" His own voice woke him. He lay on his back in an unnatural position. Crushed by pain.
Where am I...
Memories emerged as if in slow motion from the mists of his revitalized mind. He saw the deformed face of his last opponent. A wave of anxiety reminded him where he was. He retreated deeper into the chain of recent events. The warehouse at the end of the corridor. Bodies. The roof. The newcomers and the young female dog. Before, only a barrier over which he was about to plunge. The route through the sewers. Escape from the human part of the City. An afternoon with his buddies, beer, and the bitterness of discouragement poured into him.
A nervous mirth filled him at the thought of his last hours in the City.
He moved his jaw. Fuck, it hurts.
I have to get up.
Only now did he have the obvious idea of opening his eyes.
A flash of light. His left eye opened more slowly, probably because of the clotting blood in it.
The stairwell was shrouded in semi-darkness. Only now did he see the true interior of the building where he had spent almost the entire night. At the top of the stairs, where he must have fallen earlier, stood a small window with frosted glass. He guessed that at night it blocked out the light, but during the day, only a fraction of the sunlight could penetrate the dense glass. This explained the unnatural gloom on the stairs.
His thoughts drifted back to the last threat he remembered.
If I was still alive, it meant I had killed him... It meant they hadn't found me. It meant I still had a chance to escape the building.
He grabbed the railing, hovering just outside his reach, and with a mighty effort, he pushed himself to a sitting position.
The blood, slowly congealing on the stairs, was seeping into the dirty red that had coated the cold concrete for years. The walls were cracked and pale blue. Above everything hung an untouched fluorescent light, unlit for a long time.
With a soft groan, he stood. His hands, gripping the railing tightly, turned white with the effort. He wanted to scream, but he feared the New Ones were still nearby.
He panted loudly, gasping for air in his aching lungs. Despite the crushing sensation pulsing through his upper body, he felt he could continue.
His shirt and pants resembled the mingled shades of red on a palette abandoned by a deranged creator.
Looking at himself, his clothes, his bloody hands, touching his face and feeling the pain pulsing with every muscle movement—he felt satisfaction. He didn't yet fully understand his new emotions, didn't know if he was discovering a completely new side of himself or if he was teetering, insane, on the thin edge separating life from death. He felt as if he was still standing on the building's roof, always ready but never ready to jump. All these strange sensations gave him strength, urging him to get out of the building without questioning what would happen next. What felt like prolonged agony, for the first time in his over twenty years of existence, felt purposeless.
The weapon rested on the floor. He picked it up, momentarily losing his balance. But he knew his muscles simply needed movement to ease the pain and stop blocking the strength that lay dormant in his young body.
He was about to descend when the opaque window at the top of the stairs caught his attention again.
He began climbing the stairs, slowly, carefully, following the trail of blood he had left behind.
He saw the corridor where he had fought his hardest fight so far last night.
Halfway down the long, narrow room, a body lay propped against the wall, unnaturally twisted. Blood was everywhere. On the walls, on the floor, even on the ceiling.
The corridor turned out to be much shorter than he had imagined. Fear had a much larger eye that night than ever before.
Dorian tightened his grip on the weapon he held. A sense of invigorating, calm satisfaction washed over him again.
He felt no need to revisit the corpse. His mind was a mixture of respect for his defeated opponent and an overwhelming revulsion at the memory of the furious, unintelligent eye staring at him by the flickering light of a lighter.
A lighter.
He stood for a moment, trying to remember where in the fight he had lost it. But he quickly concluded it would be pointless to search for it. He had no intention of spending another night in this building.
Fighting the unrelenting pain, he began to carefully descend the stairs.
When, after half an hour, he stood before the glass doors of an exclusive restaurant, he decided it was high time for luck to smile on his face.
The doors, glassless for years, stood wide open. The interior of the room was flooded with bright, almost blinding light. The rays streamed into the room through a row of interconnected panes, forming a window that ran the length of the building.
He glanced around, slowly entering the exclusive interior of Rick's Cafe. Long rows of tables were adorned with expensive finishes, neglected gold still glinting in the morning sun. Nearby, the burgundy and blue threads of the intricately crafted upholstery shimmered, elegant despite the dust that covered them. Each table was adorned with heavy but exquisitely tasteful Tiffany-style lamps, their shades covered with cracked stained glass, creating irregular, graceful patterns.
Rick's Cafe was a neighborhood legend. Only now did Dorian recall the magnificent restaurant, remembered with nostalgia by anyone who remembered the days before the Mutation.
Before the Mutation, before the plague, damn it! He felt a sudden surge of irritation as he recalled all the overused phrases used to describe the old days. Irritation sparked a vague thought in his mind that he might be breaking free from the rigid divisions that had for years limited his imagination, dooming all his youthful dreams to failure.
He walked over to one of the tables and pulled out a heavy chair. It was heavier than he'd imagined, but he held back the tears of pain that welled up in his eyes.
"Nothing's wrong..." he said with a wry smile at the chair, as if someone were sitting in it. "It's from emotion. You look beautiful today..."
He closed it, then slowly and proudly walked around the table. Leaning over the chair opposite the one he'd just closed, he held his blood-soaked shirt in his hand, as if holding a dangling tie.
Sitting down, he tried to ignore the red liquid that had once again coated his hand.
He smiled over the top of the chair's backrest.
Complete silence reigned around them.
He saw her smiling at him. Against the backdrop of her dark hair, which fell in delicate waves to her shoulders, the distant skyscrapers of the City towered. Below them, like loyal squires, smaller buildings crowded in, hundreds, perhaps even thousands of them, seamlessly merging into the old tenements of a place that would one day be dubbed Suicide Quarter.
"What are you thinking about?" he heard a soft, noble voice, the voice of Joan Crawford, Ingrid Bergman, or Maureen O'Sullivan. He extended his hand toward her.
But just then, a waiter appeared, dressed in black trousers, a white shirt, and a blue tie. Politely, but with a touch of arrogance, he offered the typical "What can I get you?"
Dorian shifted his tired gaze from the back of his chair to his right, lifting his aching head.
"Wine for you, madam, a red semi-dry, the best you have." He glanced again over the ornate edge of the chair. "It's our second anniversary, but the wine isn't supposed to be two years old."
The waiter's face twisted into a fake, businesslike smile, but it vanished as quickly as it appeared.
"And for you?"
Dorian stared at the worn, threadbare tablecloth, a faded beige.
"Could be a Chivas, eighteen."
The waiter eyed him closely. Despite his best suit and the beautiful woman at his side, Dorian didn't look like someone who ordered the most expensive whiskey and decades-old wine. He was about to leave when the boy stopped him with another order.
"And ask Sam to play 'As Time Passes'..."
Dorian shifted his satisfied gaze back to his companion sitting across from him.
He had the impression she was squinting as she spoke to the waiter. She was lightly biting the edge of her lower lip, and a small strand of hair had escaped from her carefully styled hair onto her forehead.
However, when he looked ahead, she was gone.
Only now did he notice the gun lying on the table. His hand was still on the trigger.
The smile faded, turning into an ironic grimace.
"I didn't have anything to pay with anyway..."
He opened the magazine of his pistol. Three more bullets separated him from helplessness.
He looked around the vast, spacious room again. It was incredibly easy to forget that it was part of the District, even after so many years of slow decay.
He stood and began to pace the tables. But now his gaze no longer captured the immortal class of this place. He searched for a staff exit, a path leading to the kitchen.
And then, through a miraculously preserved pane of glass, something flashed in the window of one of the buildings opposite, slightly above him.
Below him stretched the street, a lazy afternoon of the living dead, growling at each other and searching for meat. But he knew the way they moved all too well. What he saw for a second in the distant window was nothing like their erratic, almost nervous movements.
Eighteen-year-old whiskey was one thing, but a blonde with a cigarette was something else. Once again in the past dozen or so hours, he was unsure of what was happening around him. It was impossible to see anyone in the window. The shock was all the greater because the sight of the girl resembled a normal day, a normal neighborhood, a normal reality. It must have been my imagination.
He stared out the window for a long moment, memorizing its exact location, calculating the distance from where he was. He didn't detect any further movement. Ignore the entire incident. That was the only option.
However, he quickly realized there was no other option. In the glass, he saw the reflection of a figure approaching him. It crept silently, likely intending to reveal its presence only with an attack.
He felt fear grip his aching chest anew. He was afraid of what he would see when he turned around. Yet he kept his eyes on the shadow, slowly moving across the dirty glass.
He figured the New One was at most three meters away. Almost enough distance to jump. The attack would come in a second, maybe two.
He could almost feel his brain kicking into overdrive.
In a moment, he'd realize I knew he was there... maybe he could already feel it. If I turned around, I wouldn't even have time to cock the gun... I couldn't jump to the side, because he'd catch me before I could get up. I had a second, maybe two.
With a calm but confident movement, he cocked the gun. He only hoped the New One didn't recognize that sound. He saw the reflection freeze, as if in anticipation. Or in preparation for an attack. He had a second at most.
He spun on his heel, trying desperately to memorize the spot where, according to the shadow on the window, the attacker should be.
Three bullets, damn it.
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught movement. The attack was truly swift—befitting a predator, not a physically challenged corpse. He instinctively jumped to the side.
He was about to fire when a sudden thought flashed through his mind.
With any luck, his weight would pierce the glass and send him flying out of the building.
Dorian fell onto the table, knocking the lamp off, but he desperately tried to keep the sights of his gun within the New One's body.
He miscalculated. The attacker struck the glass with the full force of his attack, but the glass didn't budge. Only a dense web of tiny cracks appeared.
Dorian knew that the sound of the shattering lamp and shattering glass must have been heard throughout the entire floor. He had to expect another attack within a few, perhaps a dozen, seconds.
This New One had to die instantly.
Concern for the state of his magazine gave him another idea.
He leaped at his opponent, who had not yet recovered from the impact with the glass. Red buds of dripping blood sprouted on his face. Dorian felt a paralyzing pain caused by the sudden muscular effort, but the momentum of his attack hit the corpse in the back, crushing him even further into the cracked glass.
The crack of weakened glass mingled with the animal's snarling and the sound of blood gushing from its mouth.
The boy kicked again, this time in the head. He knew it had to be at a frequency that wouldn't allow his opponent to recover from the previous blow.
He kicked for a long time. The corpse's head slammed into the shattered glass, impaling itself on thousands of sharp edges. When he struck for the final time, the glass was embedded several centimeters deep in the attacker's massive head. The boy himself didn't know where overzealousness ended and the desire to completely destroy the attacker began. The corpse lay in complete disarray, as if permanently connected to the window by its crushed head. The ubiquitous blood covered the mesh of glass cracks with thick threads of red.
He'd had enough. He wanted a break from the stench of bodies, the threat of terrible death hanging over him at any moment. He longed to get out into the open. But respite was still a long way off.
Dorian turned sharply, hearing quick footsteps behind him.
However, the next attacker hadn't managed to close the distance separating him from the possibility of a direct attack.
This time, it was a female. She must have smashed many shop windows in her life. She wore a pink dress covered in cheap sequins that barely covered very thin, sinewy legs. Her black blouse, revealing a deep scar on her stomach, only accentuated the whiteness of her skin, streaked with pale blue veins. Her once-black hair was half gray now, and it was obvious she was shedding it everywhere she set foot.
She looked terminally ill. Yet she remained dangerous.
She bared her large yellow teeth, emitting a weak, malevolent growl. Her eyes, like those of all New Ones, were drenched in blood. The fury emanating from them bred a determination similar to that of a drug addict—resentment and rage fueled by an unbearable, prolonged lack of fresh meat. She was too weak to obtain it, yet she kept trying.
She stopped when Dorian turned. He had the impression the female sensed that her opponent was human.
Seeing the animal's state, he gained confidence. He decided he could try to save another bullet.
Aiming steadily between the corpse's eyes, he bent down to grab the broken lamp. With a yank, he yanked it free, but the gesture was unnecessary—it wasn't plugged in.
The female backed away slightly, instinctively sensing who had the upper hand.
Nevertheless, she lunged at Dorian, furiously swinging her bony arms, clawing at her prey.
The impact of the heavy lamp's shaft knocked her off her feet. The crack of a skull cracking and the redness that stained the female's hair the wild color of blood gave the boy the satisfaction of saving another bullet. The female slumped to the ground, right next to Dorian. In her last moment of consciousness, she glared at him furiously, before more blood gushed from her eye sockets and mouth.
The boy stood still, staring at the corpse.
He was breathing heavily, but the adrenaline filling his body was dulling the pain.
He clutched the gun tightly in his right hand. Despite his certainty that he could handle it, he was tired of the endless battles, the constant fight for his life.
Animal. I am like an animal. Yet exhaustion didn't diminish his fascination with this new form of existence, with everything that had been driving him forward for the past several hours.
A cigarette...
He glanced around the room. It seemed empty again. He went behind the bar and found an eighteen-year-old Chivas. He didn't hear any footsteps, but he didn't relax his guard as he opened the bottle. He took a long swig. He felt the whiskey sting his split lips. And numbing them. He put the bottle to his lips again.
"Awful service..." he said to the bodies lying nearby.
He regretted not being able to take the whiskey with him. He said goodbye to it with a final sip and placed it on the shelf.
Only now did he see the brown door at the end of the bar. As he suspected, the kitchen lay beyond. Listening carefully, he found the knives. The smaller one, with a blade about four inches long, he put it in his pants pocket, hoping it wouldn't puncture the fabric or that he himself wouldn't bend too suddenly, jabbing the blade into an artery.
He felt himself weakening. For the moment, however, the whiskey effectively insulated him from the attacks of pain.
A few more floors...
He grabbed a heavy cleaver with a thick metal handle in his left hand and carefully left the kitchen, looking for the stairs.
Brak komentarzy:
Prześlij komentarz