They were everywhere. Humans. Covered in dirt and grime and wrapped in sad, tattered rags that hung from their boney limbs more like cobwebs than anything else. There were patches of space, or so it seemed, among them. For when one went to this patch, there, below the heads and moving skeletons, would be a body. An unmoving body. A dead body. A mother. A father. A sister. A brother. An adult. A child. An abandoned infant…or a baby and its mother, both equally cold, equally hungry, equally dead, clinging to one another until they were separated or tossed onto a pile when it was dusk, when bonfires melted and incinerated their flesh and bones, polluting the air with the stench. Then the ashes were collected and all of the miserable, dead mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers, adults and children, were carted away and buried beneath the earth, making it sterile. Innate fear of such agony and loss of life, the futures dashed effortless upon the hard ground, made many look away.
It was night. The humans and their dirt and rag bodies were hidden away within the buildings and gutters. A few scampered around like rats, forced to move and lose all sense of their humanity, degraded by hunger and adrenalin rushing desperation. The smaller shadows, like mice, small and quiet, moved to the pair that passed over the grime plastered cobblestones, moving along beneath dying streetlamps to fulfill their duties.
A hungry shadow attacked the one that wore the sun on her uniform and the sky in her eyes, clinging to her as if she were his mother and he her starving infant child. He whimpered into the cold body that matched his own temperature. The mouse could not speak. No longer human were the gripping, searching hands, and gaunt eyes, looking for something that could deter the demon within his stomach, in the girl's uniform.
Seras was frozen, like a figure of stone in the chilled air, unable to move, to look away from the creature that touched her clothes and whimpered with need. Blood reddened her vision, the film of tears creeping up and reaching for her eyelashes. They did not spill, only because Seras could not blink. Her mouth opened as if to give a cry or a sob, but nothing came from it. It remained as a twitching, pained gape of horror. She needed to move, but she also needed to hold this helpless thing in her arms and stroke his matted hair and give him sustenance to fill his thin cheeks. He couldn't have been more than five years old.
"Police Girl." Her eyes shot up to the crimson figure, a gasp sucking air into her gape, the breath pushing away the haze of panic in her mind. Alucard's gaze did not touch the child struggling to get at her pockets. "Let's go."
"M…mas…master…." She whispered, her sob rising to stop up her throat as she forced out the word. She swallowed it again and choked.
Alucard's coat moved in the direction they had been walking, caught up by a frigid breeze. The wide rim of his hat left his face hidden in a halo of darkness, out of which two orbs glowed, reflecting the sputtering meager lighting on their glass surface. "Let's go, Police Girl. We aren't there yet."
"But…Master." The girl gasped out and looked down at the whimpering child. "Th…the boy! We have to help him! Take him with us! We…!"
"Shut up!" Barked a hard voice that made the girl wince, while the child continued his search, oblivious to everything else around him. Alucard growled deep in his throat, his lips moving in a snarl he cast at the girl. "Be quiet, you fool!" He spoke in a harsh tone, but his voice was not loud. "If we were to help them we would have a whole school of children trailing along with us! Would you take him to where we are headed? Think, Police Girl! Get rid of him and let's go."
A small gloved hand, shaking with emotion and a silent struggle, wrestling against her master's will and her own, grabbed the boy and held him protectively to herself. "No. I'm taking him with us, Master. He'll die if he doesn't get some help!"
"Some help? To Hell with your naïve ideas, Police Girl. Shove him away and come. Now." His arms waited by his sides, but his fists clenched when the girl loudly professed her refusal.
"He needs to be fed! He is only a child! …I can save him Master!"
Her voice drew out the heads of the other mice and they scurried out of the shadows, surrounding her like a pack of hungry piranhas, hands reaching for her mercy. She let out a ragged dry sob that split her throat, and she reached for the tiny hands in return.
"Get rid of them, Police Girl! Now! I am ordering you!"
"No!" She gasped, catching the hand of a little girl, holding a wad of rags along with the frozen fingers.
Then…the rats slowly began to emerge. And then they swarmed. They're brains filled with more cunning, working for their survival and dispersing the cowering little mice.
"Miss…please! Feed a poor old man!"
"Please! I am ill! Hungry!"
"My child! My child has not eaten for days! Days!"
"My family! My family! There are but three of us left! We've lost our twins! They were only babies! Now my wife is sick!"
"Help!" "Help me!" "Mercy, child!" "Sweet girl, please!" "Save us too!"
Seras was crowded, the wave sweeping her back, tumbling some of the little mice that had collected behind her. She cried out weakly in despair. She could not help them all, and they were hurting each other now as they sought to reach her. She could not help them all. A child cried out as it was trampled beneath the clawed paws of the mice and rats, crowding and squeaking. All was a mess of despair.
"Police Girl!"
Seras barely heard the voice, but she caught it like a frayed lifeline. But then it snagged and broke on the voice of a child, and she began to cry with them. "Master!" Hands clutched at her, looking for their mother, their savior. But she could not help them. Not even one. Not now as she needed help herself as she was swarmed.
The echoing scream of gunfire dammed the rushing flood, and then scattered the vermin to their forsaken holes. To the walls and to the shadows they fled, all but the one crippled woman that lay crumpled on the cobblestones, her blood gushing from her head. She had collapsed and lay bent over herself, her boney limbs twisted together as her body had been thrown by the blast of the vampire's gun. Alucard still held the weapon in his hand, keeping the rats and mice at bay. After a moment he put it away and turned his body to the side, to show that it was time to go. The girl stared lifelessly at the dead human whose blood was seeping into the stones and flowing away with the woman's life.
"You…y..you kill…killed…" She gasped as her lips quivered and his hands trembled by her sides. "Oh…" Seras shuddered. "My God. Y…you killed her." She gazed at her Master, across the gloom, into his shadowed face, and she saw the two red orbs.
"She's better off that way. Let us go, Police Girl. We are wasting time." The wind tugged impatiently at his trench coat, and the moving air grazed the girl's exposed arms, but she did not notice.
"You…you monster." Terror and shock would not let her turn her head away from the dead man that stood before her. She could not move when her skin crawled as her ears heard his humor. He cackled and gave a demented, high pitched laugh, like something that wasn't human. It was wild and mad.
"Monster?" He approached her with gradual, purposeful steps. She was paralyzed, gazing at him, unable to recognize the being whose wicked, daggered smile shone out at her. "You call me a monster now? This." His hand swept around the area as he loomed over the girl who shook beneath him, huddling for a sense of protection from the glee in his face, in the red eyes that suddenly made their appearance behind his glasses. "Did I do this? Am I the cause of this war, this strife that did this to these people?"
She stiffly shook her head and let out a low whine that she tamed into a word. "No."
Alucard paused, his eyes piercing mercilessly into her own. He laughed at her, loud and ruthless with crazed amusement. Then he struck her across the face with the palm of his hand, all remnants of humor gone from his features. The girl caught her stinging cheek and tasted blood in her mouth as she bent, leaning away from her master, too terrified to do more. "I am not the one who should be called the monster here. It was a mercy that I killed that woman, she would have died soon anyway. She was starving to death, you fool." Then he turned, the wind billowing out his great coat for a moment, and he strode over the stones. The girl followed him slowly, and eventually dropped her hand from her face.
The vermin came out from their hiding places and soon all that was left in the place the dead cripple lay, was a streak of blood tracing back into the shadows.