Tracking Blood: Episode 11

An apocalyptic serial

Table of Contents

Note: The main story is free to read for everyone, however paid subscribers will have access to many longer episodes that include extra scenes, characters, and sub-plots. Consider subscribing to enjoy the expanded story, as well as to support the author.

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The streets were restless. There was a dangerous current in the air, like a black cloud choking the city. One too many kids looking for trouble. One too many cops called out sick. Who knew? Donegan didn’t care. He was in his apartment above the bail bond shop, sitting in his favorite chair with his favorite slippers on, and all he wanted to do was watch some damn fine television.

“Oh, lass, come on now. Don’t pick him. He doesn’t look at you the way Blake does.”

The rose ceremonies always got him worked up the most. All that build-up, all that emotion, all that dramatic music, just to cut to commercial at the last second.

“Fucking hell,” he muttered, leaving his chair to get a refill on his drink. As he filled up the glass with ice, a series of shouts rose up from the street. It sounded like two young punks trying to rip each other’s heads off. He’d heard plenty of ruckus earlier, but this time it was right under his window. He slammed his glass down on the counter, ran to the window, and threw it open.

“Knock it off, you dopes! If you don’t shut your gobs I’ll do it for you!”

Glass shattered below. It came from downstairs, and it didn’t sound like a car windshield. It sounded like a big, beautiful shop window he’d have to pay someone five hundred bucks cash just to come out and look at this late at night.

“Oh, that’s it.” He grabbed his shotgun from under the bed and shoved two shells in from the nightstand. “You want trouble, you got trouble.” He threw his door open and stormed downstairs.

The front window was intact, the unlit shop in perfect order. Donegan was a bit confused, but very relieved. “Huh. Will wonders never cease?”

Another tinkle of glass sounded from the street. Whatever was going on out there was still happening, and he wanted to catch the little punks in the act. Shotgun in tow, he ran around the counter, through the dark shop, and to the front door.

There was safety glass everywhere. Shards of it covered the sidewalk in front of the flower shop next door and trailed into the street. Sure enough, the shop’s window was gone. The store was wide open to the elements and anyone who came along.

The poor girl. Donegan had known her for four years now. She always shot down his advances, but at least she was nice enough about it.

The sound of someone running away came from behind him. Whoever had done this was just around the block, fleeing the scene like a gutless pansy. Donegan ran to the corner as fast as he could manage in slippers. If he caught them, he would give them the belting of their lives.

But they were gone. He lifted his shotgun over his head. “You bloody bastards! Come back and fight like a man!” he shouted. When they didn’t reply, he spit on the ground and turned back.

The street was an absolute mess. He’d have to call the police on this one, or maybe just the shop girl, and let her deal with the authorities. That sounded a little easier. And maybe he could commiserate with her over the bad luck, use it as a chance to take her out for a bit of late-night coffee. Donegan nodded. It was sounding like a better idea the more he thought of it.

A noise came from inside the flower shop, like someone was stirring oatmeal. Had one of those hooligans stayed behind to loot the place? If so, he didn’t know what the bastard was up to, but he was about to catch him in the act. He would be the shop girl’s hero then. She might forgo the coffee altogether and skip straight to the snogging.

He crept forward with the shotgun clutched in both hands, stepping carefully on the layer of safety glass. It crunched loudly under his slippers, but the noises inside the shop didn’t stop. It was something wet, and another sound, too, like the grunting of an animal. He took another step. As he drew closer, Donegan could make out a small figure crouched on the floor. He raised the shotgun and wedged the butt into his shoulder.

“I see you, you little brat. Why don’t you come out here so the two of us can get better acquainted, huh?”

The intruder looked up at him. It was dark inside the shop, and Donegan couldn’t see very well, but the intensity of the look was unnerving. The headlights of a passing car lit up the intruder’s face.

It was the shop girl, and yet it wasn’t. Her skin was pale and bruised, her eyes beyond bloodshot. And her mouth. It was a cavern of bloody teeth.

“Oh, sweet Jesus,” Donegan said. Lying on the floor beneath the shop girl was what was left of a man, twitching his final twitch. The creature with the shop girl’s face licked the blood from her lips as she rose to her feet, ready to pounce. She growled at Donegan hungrily.

“Now, now hold on there, lass,” he said, taking a step back on the bed of safety glass. The shop girl was having none of it. She let out a scream that turned his veins cold.

Donegan tried to run, but with no warning at all, the shop girl ran and launched at him through the broken window.

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Will’s eyes opened. “Damn it,” he mumbled.

Sometime around midnight, after retreating to his van, he had closed his eyes to give them a rest after a long day of abuse. The long drive, the snow blindness, the smoky diners and bars, it all hit him at once. He hadn’t gotten a chance to grab some coffee in town before he came out to the middle of nowhere, and now he was paying for it.

Will checked the time. It was just before six in the morning.

He sat up, his muscles stiff from sitting in the cold for so long. More snowfall had covered the windows. That clinched it. Pennsylvania just wasn’t for him. Back home, D.C. was enjoying mild April weather, the way it was meant to be.

After getting out and stretching a bit, he checked his surroundings. He was relieved to find the snowstorm had finally relented at some point overnight. The sun was trying to wake up through the trees, the sky above gray and cloudless. All told, it must have snowed a good ten inches before the storm gave out.

The cabin looked quiet, no signs of Stan. Will was running out of options and time. Tanya needed him back home and Donegan would be expecting an update. If he checked the cabin again and still didn’t see his brother through the window, he might have to flush him out. Shouting for help usually worked. So did small, contained fires. And if that didn’t do the trick, he would be forced to kick down the door and figure out the rest later.

But before he reached the cabin, he found blood in the snow.

Will stopped to look. The blood had soaked down into the snow, turning it shades of red and pink. There was a lot of it. It had been there for more than an hour, he guessed. A set of boot prints ran along the side of the blood and to the east, into a thicker area of the forest where the rising sun hadn’t reached yet.

Was it Stanley’s blood? Had he hurt himself, or had someone hurt him?

Had his brother killed someone?

There didn’t seem to be much choice, he had to see where the trail led. If someone was out there, in the cold, with the kind of serious injury that caused this much bleeding, time was extremely precious. They could bleed out or freeze to death in minutes, let alone hours.

Will followed the tracks toward the forest. Drops of blood mingled with the footprints, and a few handprints as well, signs of stumbling and falling, most likely. The handprints were stained pink.

As he walked further into the overwhelmingly white forest, he found signs of a struggle that had recently taken place. The snow had been rolled over, trampled down and stained by blood. One tree had had the snow knocked out of its branches by an impact to its trunk.

At the middle of it all was the bloodied carcass of a deer.

The animal’s ribcage lay splayed out to the sky, with the red and brown innards exposed and fallen free. Bite marks marred the deer’s brown fur. It looked like the aftermath of a brutal attack, but Will couldn’t imagine what kind if animal would make such a mess and not stick around to finish its meal. Maybe a pack of wolves. Still, it seemed like an awful lot of meat to leave behind.

And then Will looked up.

A man was staring at him from between two pine trees about a hundred feet away. Even in the dim light of the shaded forest, Will could tell he was horribly disfigured. His posture was all wrong, slouched low to the ground with his head tilted to the side.

“Are you alright?” Will asked.

In reply, the man let out the roar of a starving animal. Will froze. In all his years, all the crazy things he’d witnessed in his life, it ranked right up there at the top.

But the surprises weren’t over. The disfigured man surged forward and began charging at Will at full speed. His pants and boots were that of a hunter, but they were torn to shreds. He wore no shirt. Scratches and deep wounds riddled his pale skin. And he moved faster than any man Will had seen, with rage-filled eyes stained a deep, deep red.

Will stood his ground. The wind was to his back. He needed to wait until the man was less than fifteen feet away if he was going to get out alive.

Sixty feet. The hunter snarled and grunted as he continued to run straight at Will. Forty feet. His bleeding eyes burned with hunger. Thirty feet. Twenty feet. Ten.

The hunter jumped at Will, his open mouth like a window into hell. Will discharged the pepper spray. The stream struck his attacker’s face, splashing into his red eyes as Will ducked for cover.

With a scream, the hunter landed in the snow a few feet behind Will. He flailed and clawed at his burning eyes and nose as formerly dried blood ran down his face. Will would usually give the target a few minutes to catch their breath and regain themselves before taking them into custody, just as he’d done with Theo and fifty other guys before him.

This time was different. Within seconds the hunter had regained enough of his vision to pick out Will and growl at him like a cornered animal.

Will didn’t hesitate. He emptied the rest of the pepper spray into the wild man’s eyes, then ditched the empty canister and ran out of there.

Going back the way he came, Will shot out of the forest like the bullet from the barrel. The sun had risen, lighting up the snowy landscape. He ran in the tracks he’d already made so the snow wouldn’t slow him too much, but it was still rough terrain, and it slowed him down.

His truck was far off to the right, the cabin on the left. The truck was a way off, the cabin much closer. The hunter would be back on his feet in a matter of seconds, and Will had to make a choice.

Someone was standing in the cabin’s door. Stanley, his own little brother, was in the doorway- aiming a rifle in his direction.

With a snarl the hunter broke free of the forest. Will took a second to glance back. The bloodied man shielded his bloodshot eyes from the sun, choking and gagging on the pepper spray he was re-inhaling and forcing further down his nasal passage.

Will was still a good distance from the cabin when the hunter locked onto him. He ran hard, ran for his life as the sound of a monster running through the snow started behind him. The hunter closed in fast. Even slowed down as he was, he would catch up in no time.

“Shoot it!” Will shouted to his brother. “Shoot it now!”

But Stan didn’t shoot. Fear froze him, the rifle trembling slightly in his hands. Will put everything he had into the run. The hunter was only thirty feet back now. Twenty. Ten.

“Shut the door!” Will shouted as he barreled through the doorway and into the cabin, bashing right into the table. Stan snapped out of his daze just in time to slam the door closed. The hunter crashed into the door hard, screaming inhuman sounds of frustration. He furiously pounded and clawed at the door as Stan locked it.

Stan turned, unblinking, to face Will. “It’s here,” he said with a haunted look in his eyes.

Will walked right up to him and punched him in the face, knocking him to the floor. Standing over him, he looked down at his unconscious brother. “Sorry, kid,” he said.

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