by Alan, TS
The Romero Strain
(Author’s Edition)
TS Alan
Copyright © 2018 by TS Alan. All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. The characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are the products of the author’s imagination, or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to persons living, dead, undead, or mutated should be plainly apparent to them and those who know them, especially when the author has provided their names.
Published by TS Alan 09/24/2018
ISBN: 978-1-7328136-0-1 (softcover)
ISBN: 978-1-7328136-1-8 (mobi)
ISBN: 978-1-7328136-2-5 (epub)
Edited by Kevin Fern
Cover art by John Becaro
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
In Memoriam
David DiMinni
(1960 – 2003)
and to
The 69th Infantry Regiment
Special thanks to Kate, Paul, Kevin, and Naomi
Introduction and Acknowledgments
For me, getting creative story ideas from mind to paper isn’t hard. The difficult part is stringing the words together to make logical sentences that are entertaining—then having my editor tell me to go back and rewrite it so it makes sense.
I revised and expanded this novel because at the time I did not have an editor. The final corrections were to be done by my publisher. They were not. Eventually, the rights to The Romero Strain reverted back to me. I felt my fans deserved a better book.
I want to acknowledge my associated writers at Books of the Dead Press: Julie Hutchings, Weston Kincade, Bracken MacLeod, Mark Matthews, James Michael, Justin Robinson, and John F.D. Taff.
For without their encouragement and support through the early process, this new edition would not have come to fruition.
Thank you all.
And my dearest appreciation to the staff of McSorely’s Old Ale House.
Contents
WHEN DARKNESS FALLS
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
BENEATH THE CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
IN THE ABSENCE OF
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
About the Author
WHEN DARKNESS FALLS
Part I
I
A Virgin amongst the Living Dead
It began like any normal Monday morning in April, just a few days past my 28th birthday. It was a mild day in New York City—sunny skies, a light, cool breeze, and a few fluffy, white clouds. I was coming back from a walk with Max, my three-year-old German shepherd. I tried to give Max as much exercise as possible so he didn’t become bored. Being a working breed, we always went for our daily walks with packs strapped on our backs. Max didn’t carry much, just some essentials. I always carried too many items, even with my minimal go-bag. Being the city that it was, I needed to be prepared, even if I was walking the dog.
We had just come from the East Village Park along the East River, crossing over the pedestrian bridge at 10th Street and through the Jacob Riis Houses. As always, we turned north on Avenue D and headed toward 12th Street. There were other routes we could have taken, but that was the most peaceful, and in the spring, the most enjoyable. I liked to walk under the tall branches of the cherry tree that overhung the chain-link fence in front of Saint Emeric’s Church. I paused for a moment, looking up at the long limbs of the immense tree. Max, too, seemed to enjoy the tree, trying to catch a falling petal with his mouth. We cut through the Haven Plaza low-income housing courtyard which brought us to C Town Supermarket on Avenue C, known by people of Alphabet City as Loisaida Avenue; Spanglish for the Lower East Side. We were about to cross the street and head north when I heard a female voice screaming, “Help, help, he’s trying to kill me!”
She was a Catholic high school girl, made obvious by the school uniform she was wearing, though the uniform couldn’t hide her physical maturity. Her complexion was light brown. Her hair, a deep rich, shining brunette, was pulled into a ponytail. I could see her well-developed chest through her partly undone white Peter Pan collar blouse, bouncing vigorously on her slim frame as she sprinted toward me. For a moment I was fixated on her bounding attributes. That was until she drew within five yards of me. Then I felt like the creepy guy from the film The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane. She may have looked eighteen from afar but closer up she looked more like fifteen.
I saw him moving toward us as the girl grabbed my arm and hid behind me. His hurried approach was more borderline lumbering than running. Max’s fur along the back of his neck stood up. He was poised to lunge, snarling with his teeth bared, ready to protect me if necessary. I wasn’t too concerned. I had studied various martial arts styles since I was a child. I knew how to defend myself.
The approaching man looked ill. His face was pale, grey, and drawn with a few open sores. His eyes were sickly and glassy, but filled with a singular intensity of doing me harm. Max barked and growled wildly. I had never seen such an intensity of alarm from him. I gave his leash a tug and told him to be silent.
The sickly fellow drew within yards. I shouted for him to stop but he kept steadfast in his intent to apprehend the girl. When he refused to yield and reached out for me; I side-kicked him above the larynx, hard enough to put him down but not hard enough to break the hyoid bone or tear any thyroid cartilage. I expected him to drop to his knees, but he staggered back and lunged at me again. I snap-kicked him square in the testicles, but nothing. I became concerned, very concerned. If those two places didn’t bring him to his knees, he must have been completely tweaked out. I was able to sidestep him on his third lunge and kick him in the left kneecap. He went down hard, not even trying to brace his fall with his hands. I had to do something quick, and kicking him again wasn’t going to do it. I had the girl screaming in my ear and Max ready-to-go on my command, but I wanted this guy for myself.
“Achterzijde, blif,” I commanded, and Max stepped back. I stepped back a few feet and grabbed a municipal green mesh garbage can, which stood next to the crosswalk light. I hoisted it up and swung it, slamming it in the middle of his back. He went down again; his face slammed on the sidewalk.
As quickly as he fell he began to rise.
“Stay down!” I yelled, but he didn’t heed my warning. Again, I slammed him squarely in the upper lumbar region, but for a third time he began to rise. I couldn’t believe he was getting up again. I raised the receptacle higher and gave him a cross swing to the upper side of his skull. The impact of the hard metal bottom support ring slamming against his cranium was so devastating that it split his parietal bone open. He finally collapsed. He lay twitching on the ground, brain matter exposed, hemorrhaging a deep purple color.
“God damn it!” I yelled, and turned to the girl, who was still screaming. “Shut up!” I bellowed over her incessant, grating noise. I was pissed. My red ringer 10003 postal code t-shirt was ruined fr
om all the shit that had slid out of the trashcan while I was defending her, and all she could do was scream in my ear. She stopped screaming and cried, which was a lesser irritation but still damn annoying.
“What that hell is going on?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know,” she sobbed repeatedly, and began to mutter rapidly in Spanish. “Él intentó agarrarme. Él tenía ojos locos. Me separé de el y comencé a correr. ¡Pero él me sigio! Grité y grité. ¡Pero nadie me ayudaría! Entonces yo—”
“Hey, hey. Inglés, chica. Inglés.” I told her. “No puedo entenderte cuando hablas asi.”
I was surprised that a crowd hadn’t gathered. I looked around as I took out my cell phone to dial 9-1-1. It was only 7:00 a.m., but someone should have been sticking his or her nose into this.
“I want to report an emergency on Avenue C and 12th Street, Manhattan… Nichols, J.D. Nichols… 646-867-5309… What? No, I’m not being funny.” The operator asked me to state the nature of emergency. “There was an attempted assault on a young girl by an aggressive and delirious male, in which I interceded using a garbage can… No, just the assailant who is unconscious, unresponsive, and suffering—what? Did anyone come in physical contact with the assailant?” I repeated the operator’s question, which was an unusual response. “My foot to his balls. Does that count?” As usual, I was being a smart-ass. “What? Bit?!” I repeated, with astonishment and curiosity in my tone at such an unusual question. “Ah… I don’t know. I didn’t. Maybe the girl.”
That was a fucking weird question, I thought. I looked at the girl who Max was comforting, or I should say, who Max was sucking up to. “Max, afstammen. Broeden op.” He moved from the girl to me and sat down. “Logeren.”
The girl looked puzzled by what I was saying, and a bit pissed that I called the dog away from her. At least she had stopped sobbing.
“Señorita. ¿Cuál es tu nombre?”
“Marisol,” she said. “¿Por qué?”
Why? I thought. Why the hell not! I just saved your life and most likely killed someone, and you ask me why I want to know your name? “9-1-1 wants to know if you were bitten,” I said, holding my tongue.
“Él solamente me… on my arm. See,” she said as she revealed the small scratch on her forearm. “A small scratch, no bites,” she assured me.
“No. No bites, just a scratch on her arm. Yeah. Yeah, all right.”
“What did they say?” she asked, concern in her voice.
“He said wait here for a patrol car.”
“Why did he ask if I was bit?” Now she was being a smart-ass. A little spunk in her after all.
“Yeah. Weird, huh? Didn’t seem too interested in the assailant, just if we got bit. That is kind of weird.”
I could hear the police sirens growing closer.
II
Good Cop, Dead Cop
His name was Johnson, Lieutenant John Johnson from the 9th Precinct. He was tall with sandy-blonde hair, an attractive, well-groomed and well-built man in his thirties. His uniform held the regalia of a highly decorated officer. They had dispatched the patrol supervisor for me––a sensible, no frills, by-the-book, cop. I’d known the lieutenant for years; he had been my CPR instructor. Sometimes he could be a ball buster. He was tough but good-hearted, and I had admiration and respect for him even though he could come across as abrasive and curt at times.
John taught me to recognize the signs, symptoms, and how to treat people who were in shock. He also taught me the procedure for dealing with an emotionally disturbed patient. Obviously, that was something I had forgotten. He was a highly respected and qualified officer, as well as a highly qualified and respected emergency medical technician.
What, where, how, why, when… Had I seen the girl before. Had I seen the assailant before… Did either of us come in physical contact with our assailant? The charm of his personality was overwhelming. Meanwhile, Marisol was talking to a hot looking Spanish cop named Rodriquez, who despite her body armor filled out her uniform very nicely. Okay, so maybe that’s a sexist comment, but Rodriquez was as beautiful as she was commanding.
An ambulance finally arrived. It was a FDNY emergency vehicle. I expected the Beth Israel Hospital ambulance that parked on Avenue B between 13th and 14th Street, in front of Brother’s Candy & Grocery—the team I saw every morning as Max and I walked from 13th Street North on Avenue B to 14th Street—but it wasn’t.
“Look, John. I’m fine,” I repeated for the fourth time. “Can I go now? I have a job I need to go to.”
I lied. I didn’t have to go to work. I was on medical leave for several months due to a job-related injury I suffered during a collision when responding to a call. No, I wasn’t a cop. I wasn’t the heroic type. Well, let me rephrase that. I wasn’t heroic enough to constantly put myself in harm’s way, like my father, who had been a patrolman and later worked as a detective in the NYPD firearms lab. I was an EMT-P for Saint Vincent’s Manhattan.
Saint Vincent’s Hospital Manhattan was a member of the EMS Emergency Ambulance Service and responsible for ambulance and emergency services in a four and a half square mile area of the lower Westside. Saint Vincent’s was also a New York State designated Level I Trauma Center, the only trauma center on the lower Westside of Manhattan. The trauma center was the reason I chose to work at Saint Vincent’s. Seven years ago, I ended up in their emergency room. The how and why wasn’t important; just say it was a lack of any kind of judgment in my youth, which brought me there via ambulance. The incident was life altering, and I decided to get my shit together and focus on choosing a career path. I decided to become a first responder. I graduated at the top of my class in both EMT-B and EMT-P, a paramedic.
“No, not yet,” he sternly said. “I need to let the paramedics look you over first.”
Since he helped train me, I wanted to say, John, are you saying Beth Israel EMTs are more qualified to render a diagnosis than me? I didn’t. Instead, “I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine until Beth Israel gives you the clear. Once—”
He stopped speaking when he heard his radio. There was a disturbance a few avenues away.
“10-34. 10-34. 14th Street and First Avenue in front of the McDonald’s. All available units please respond. Possible—”
He turned his radio down.
A few people had finally gathered around while one ambulance attendant covered the body. Officer Rodriquez commanded the small crowd of onlookers to stand back. God she was hot when she was forceful. I was definitely going to get her cell phone number before she left.
Marisol was getting bandaged, a lot of gauze for such a little scratch. With all the weirdness going on, the insistence that I be examined for a non-existent injury, and the fact that John was more interested in what the perpetrator may have done to us, instead of what I had done to the assailant, the signs should have given me a clue.
I was wasting my time arguing with him. After all, he was a cop and I was the guy who just smashed someone’s head in. If he wanted me examined for an injury I didn’t have, I should shut up, before getting myself in real trouble… for killing someone.
As I approached the ambulance, I saw what appeared to be a man and woman briskly approaching the scene. I wasn’t sure if the man was chasing the woman or if they were advancing together. They were a block away, moving from the east toward us. Perhaps more gawkers; after all, accidents attract the morbidly curious. I waited for the paramedic to finish with Marisol. Rubber gloves, a mask and eye goggles? That was certainly overkill.
I looked again toward the on-comers. They had the same appearance as the one who attacked Marisol. “Oh, fuck,” I said in disbelief. “Hey, hey John!” I yelled and pointed. “Two more!” I grabbed Marisol and pulled her away from the back of the vehicle. Max growled. He could smell them.
“Wait! She has to go—”
They came toward the ambulance. The woman knocked Marisol’s paramedic down like a wolf bringing down its prey. He never had a chance to finish his sente
nce. She tore at his larynx with wild abandon and voraciousness. He screamed, but his screams quickly turned to muffled gurgles as his throat was ripped away from his neck.
III
Run Away, Run Away!
The man came at Officer Rodriquez in a frenzy; his eyes were slightly milky and his flesh was pale and blistered. She didn’t have time to reach for her sidearm. She was on the ground writhing in pain as the man bit into her throat. The crowd and the second EMT ran but were intercepted by another wild-eyed man coming from the other end of the street. Screams of terror and panic pierced the morning louder than Marisol’s had. Officer John tried to pull Rodriquez’s attacker off her, but he was too late. She laid victim to the predator; her throat ripped open, blood gurgling from a deep hole and the surrounding lacerations.
John didn’t know what he was in for. The crazed man turned from his meal and looked at John with disdain through his clouded eyes. John stepped back, pulled his duty carry pistol as the man stood up, and put four rounds into his chest. The man stepped a foot back but did not fall. Johnson again aimed, this time for the head, and with another loud report he connected with the kill zone. The man’s head blew apart as the 9mm bullet ripped a path through the frontal bone and out the parietal.
