Chapter 7

"Are we friends?"

Zach could've easily answered the question with a lie, but he had no problem telling the truth. "I don't have any friends," he answered.

"But what about that woman?" the voice asked.

If by woman, she meant Baby, than he had nothing else to say. Baby was obnoxious, clueless, reckless, impatient, stubborn, simple, naïve, innocent, kind . . . "She's nothing," Zach said. "Absolutely nothing."

"Like you?"

This truth was a little harder to admit. Zach's voice dropped down to a whisper. "Like me," he confessed.

The voice in the darkness contemplated this deeply before continuing. "I can make you something," it said.

The devil made a promise like that once.

"I can be your friend."

Zach wasn't sure he wanted any, but it felt good to talk to somebody, to talk to one voice in his head instead of so many. It was quieter this way, almost eerily so, and suddenly, Zach wasn't so sure he liked it. "I don't want any friends," he answered.

"I can take care of you," the voice explained.

"I can take care of myself." That was something Zach became proficient in ever since he dropped out of high school, but the voice wasn't listening. It had already made its decision in its own head, which scared Zach speechless because they were supposed to be in his.

"I choose you," the voice declared like some sort of master to its pokemon.

Zach tried to recoil from the voice, but there was nowhere for him to go. There was no one else to call out to.

"We will be friends," the voice determined, obsessed with its own decisions. It reached out to Zach, intruding deeper into his mind where the broken bits and pieces like to hide. "I will love you," it said, "and together we will be something."

Zach couldn't run. Not from himself. He couldn't escape, not when the voice came from within.

The voice rubbed against his neck, growing fangs and a smile. "Let me show you," it purred before suddenly biting into his neck.

Zach startled awake. He saw nothing in the dark. Not even the flat wall of the cardboard box he slept in. The rain had stopped and it was quiet. Too quiet for a city filled with trash diggers, gutter runners, and hazy street light scavengers. He was awake, but none of the voices in his head had woken with him. Either that, or they were too scared to talk. Zach's cold shiver turned into a sweat. This dark stillness felt too much like the place in his head where the voice had violated his subconscious. He was desperate to break the silence, but he was too afraid to move. If the darkness had followed him into reality, the fangs from his nightmare might have too.

Persian, the black devil cat, was still out there. The streets of Midtown weren't safe. They never were, but this was the first time in a long time that Zach was consciously aware of it. And just like his dream, there was no one to cry out to. No one to call upon for help or comfort.

And then there was that woman.

Baby was nothing to Zach, so it was only appropriate that her voice popped up in his head when there was nothing and nobody else to listen to. Her words of warning drifted along the top of his paranoia: It's not safe to be out here by yourself, she had said, but was he really by himself?

Zach twisted around to look behind him. The spot at the bottom of his back where Minun and Plusle liked to sleep was empty. So was the one near the top of his shoulders, beside his arm, and around his feet. The two pokemon were gone. Those parasites never missed an opportunity to sneak in when he was asleep, so where were they now? Zach felt around the box and then his persons. The two cheering pokemon weren't attached to his ankles, stashed under his coat, or tucked away in his pockets. He patted the inner lining of his jacket just to be sure and then rubbed his hand over the dry scratchy cardboard where the two pokemon should have been. If they weren't inside with him, then they were outside by themselves.

It's not safe to be out here by yourself

Zach's eyes drifted to the small opening between the flaps of the cardboard house. It was night time, but the wet nature of the ground outside reflected just enough light for his dilated eyes to see. The light was a pale grey and carried a hollow cold glow that Zach didn't want to disturb, much like the radiation of a tombstone under a full moon. If Minun and Plusle were indeed outside, then they were either lost or alone. Otherwise, their late night shenanigans would have woken him up hours ago. It was too quiet for a pair of cheering pokemon to be carousing around at midnight.

It's not safe.

Zach slowly pushed open the flap. The scratch of the cardboard echoed loudly in the silence. At this angle, he couldn't see anything beyond the low hanging tarp. He'd have to go outside if he wanted answers. Zach tried to hollow himself like the glow, keep himself cold and detached and unaffected by whatever he might discover, but his heart still pounded loudly in his chest. Minun and Plusle were small low ranking pokemon. Anything could snatch them up despite their special attack capabilities. That was the way of the streets, Zach reminded himself.

It was only a matter of time until something like this happened.

And yet he couldn't help but hope. Damn that Baby and her contagious virtues.

Zach crawled out from underneath the tarp and hit his hand against something soft and damp lying outside of his door. The alley was dark, especially when the tall shadows of the surrounding buildings blocked out the dim glow of the street lights farther on, but the wet shine of a rain soaked city glared offensively at him even in the night. The heap near his hand was relatively small but shapely, indicating it had form and substance. Several dark spots down the alley indicated there were more of them, all slightly different from one another. It wouldn't be the first time people dumped their garbage in his alley, but the heaps were too equally spaced to be the work of late night polluters.

Zach rose to his feet and the shadows rose with him, shedding more light onto the shapes. Feathers formed first. Then fur. Broken wings, glassy eyes, twisted limbs and finally the gapping mouths of voices that would never scream again. The spots darkening the ground weren't heaps of trash at all. They were bodies. Dead pokemon carried and dropped on his doorstep as if they were addressed to him. Zach looked down at the mangled face of the pokemon he bumped into on the ground. A rattata by the looks of what remained of its tail. Its pained expression was as frozen as its body, the horror of a bloody and violent end forever imprinted on its corpse. Zach stiffened in a shared rigor mortis, one induced by the sudden onset of an inescapable and undeniable fear.

At the far end of the carnage, where the clothesline cut across the pitch black gate of hell, the devil drew near. It stepped into the perimeter of Zach's vision, revealing itself simply because no human could ever hope to find it otherwise. Its body was made of palpable shadow. The hard glisten of the crown jewel in its head and the softer reflection of its muzzle were all that distinguished the devil's head from the darkness. The rest of its face was pitch black and its eye sockets were as empty as the holes in a skull. Something writhed in the devil cat's mouth. The way it struggled in pain twisted a grin around Persian's lips. She slowly squeezed her prey between her teeth until the body sparked. When it did, she added a new piece to her collection and dropped the heap on the ground. Her paws glistened in the pale light next to it almost as brightly as the wet ground.

It was then that Zach remembered that it hadn't rained for hours.

Persian lifted her head and her long white fangs seemed to stretch into needles. Black saliva ran along the bottom of her lip. Two tiny pin pricks of light became her eyes and she looked at Zach, stabbing his soul with an ice shard. Zach came to a sudden realization. He was going to die tonight and she was going to kill him. There was no doubt in his mind about that. These were the streets of Midtown.

It was only a matter of time.

Ten seconds, maybe two, if Persian decided to pounce instead of stalk her way to her next kill. Death would come in an instant. There was also one thing Zach knew to be faster than death: a no good rookie cop who thought she could save the world by sticking her nose into other people's business. A cop who stopped by earlier that day and slipped a canister of super repel in the bag of poke-treats she gave him because she knew he wouldn't accept it otherwise.

Zach pictured the bag in his mind. He knew exactly where it was: Two inches up and three inches back from his left hand, stuffed safely in the lining of his jacket where he knew Plusle and Minun couldn't get to it. When he first found the canister inside the bag, he refused to ever use it, but he also couldn't bring himself to throw it away. Persian flicked the tip of her tail into the cold light. It snapped like a whip against the stillness of the rest of her body. She was watching, waiting for him to make his move. Zach swallowed the bile rising in his throat. It would take five seconds to reach into the bag and grab the super repel. His chances of out pacing Persian were marginal, but he had to try. His survival depended on it.

Zach thrust his hand into his jacket pocket and Persian launched through the alley. She vanished right before his eyes, melting instantly into the dark with her sleek black fur, never to reappear again, even when she plowed into the center of Zach's chest. Together, they crashed backward into the tent, knocking several poles out of place, snapping wires, and crushing cardboard with the force of a two-ton wrecking ball. The hit knocked away what little breath Zach had clenched between his frozen lungs. When his back hit the ground, something cracked under the weight of the monolith pressing him into an early grave. He didn't feel anything, only the pinch of the repel trigger under his thumb when it slammed against his chest.

The super repel discharged into Persian's face with the spitting force of a seviper. Treat cubes splashed into nearby puddles, but it was Persian's voice that made the liquid shudder. She threw her head back in a roar and tore away from Zach, ripping through his heavy overcoat faster than tissue paper. He rolled over, gasping for breath, and dropped the empty can. It wasn't enough to keep the cat away for long, but it bought him time. How much, Zach didn't know, but he wasn't going to waste a millisecond of it. He scrambled to his feet and ran, tripping and kicking through the dead bodies without considering if any of them were still alive. Escape was all that mattered. Not the pain in his chest from the fall, the brush of blood against his ankles, or the warm smell of piss running down his trousers.

When the devil was at your back, close enough to lick the sweat from your neck, the physical world didn't matter. Nothing did. There was only fear. Pure and absolute terror.

Zach splashed through the compound as fast as his bad leg would go. His steps echoed for miles through the steel and concrete canyons rising up beside him. The city watched without pity or remorse as the hunted stumbled into a small breezeway between two of the buildings. It grew narrower the farther Zach went in, forcing his shoulders sideways in order for him to fit. Old construction materials littered the path, making it difficult to navigate, but if he had trouble, so could Persian.

Zach knocked over a stack of two-by-fours leaning against the wall behind him. They clattered across the opening, successfully blocking it from further entry, but not before Persian swiped a paw-full of his coat tails. She yanked Zach back, snarling and scratching at the wall until dust flew from the brick. Zach grabbed his coat with two hands and ripped himself free. He lost his balance and fell into several dry rotted pallets.

They broke underneath him, dislodging a pile of scrap farther up ahead. Various plastics and metal shreds rained down from above and he knocked them away to look back at the entrance. Persian remained hidden by the night, but the disturbing sounds she made trying to break through the obstruction revealed her presence. And when the sounds abruptly stopped, Zach knew better than to think she had given up the hunt. She was simply looking for another way around.

Fueled by another burst of adrenaline, Zach clambered out of the breezeway, dove under the broken chain link fence at the back, and scrambled to his feet. Something popped in his bad knee, his leg gave out, and he hit the ground hard, splashing into a muddied puddle of metal dust and weeds. Zach looked up and wiped the slime from his eyes. The pitch black spires of Reynold's Power Plant bit into the cloudy horizon high above him.

Thunder rumbled in the distance behind it. Lightning flashed in a growing plume of clouds beyond. The next wave of storms was quickly approaching. Electricity scared off Persian once before. Maybe it would do it again, but would lightning strike the plant before the devil cat caught up to him? The barbed wire fence around the perimeter would only hold her back for so long. Zach would have to go inside the plant and hide until the storm blew in to test his theory. The thought paralyzed him almost as quickly as Persian's stare. Even the worst degenerates and crack addicts the city had to offer knew better than to seek shelter behind those gates. Nobody went into Reynold's Power Plant and nobody came out. Not ever.

Not until recently.

Zach grunted, forced himself up, and hobbled closer to the plant. He shoved his way through the nearest door and stopped as an unfathomable darkness stole what was left of his vision. It even swallowed the sound of his arrival, making the dim light of a cloudy midnight behind him bright against its vast empty depths. It felt like the darkness of his dreams. The place where the voices in his head liked to talk to him. And as if summoned by his appearance, whispers trickled down through the darkness. They came and went like the swiveling of gossiping lips. So this was where the voices were hiding.

Oh, how he missed them, those curious, cautious, beautiful voices that broke the silence of his living nightmare. Zach had never been so relieved to hear them in all of his life. He swayed deeper into the darkness, shuffling across the floor and reaching with both hands to keep from running into anything. The shadows were so thick that not even Persian would be able to find him in here. All he had to do was find a good place to hide and the storm would take care of the rest. Lightning strobed outside, illuminating broken window panes along the far wall. The front was growing closer and each flash shaped the darkness into more navigable forms.

Zach felt his way between two large machines and stuffed himself inside. A series of cables blocked the way to complete isolation behind them, but any type of seclusion was better than being out in the open. Another flicker of light blinked across the ground at the end of the makeshift tunnel, and this time, thunder chased after it. The sound eased Zach's panic. It reminded him that he still lived and breathed in the real world. The voice from his nightmare couldn't be heard over the lingering buzz of electricity within the machines. Reynold's Power Plant still had power to it, an energy all of its own that resurfaced with every storm. It never truly died after the explosion. Zach could see that now. He could feel it, tingling his senses with a current that ran in a way so similar to his own.

From the outside, the plant intimidated mortal men, including himself, but when compared to the evil fornicating in the streets this night, Reynolds was a dream come true. A true testament to the power of life. Zach misjudged the place. He wondered how many years he could have spent sheltered inside getting to know the machines and how they worked. Maybe even giving them a purpose once again. Given the chance, he would explore the plant come daylight, but neither the sun nor the storm proved fast enough to save him.

The voices stopped speaking. They scattered as something far scarier than disembodied whispers approached. It had to be Persian. She must have entered the power plant the same way he did. Zach's fears rushed to life again. He stared at the opening between the machines, acutely aware that were no timbers or trash to block it. Narrow spacing wouldn't stop the devil from coming in and tearing him to shreds. Persian couldn't see in absolute darkness or smell after a dose of repellant, but she could still hear, and Zach's heart beat so loudly in his chest, he thought it might explode, just like the power plant. If he stayed still, she might find him. If he ran, the sound of his steps would give him away. There was no way to win or to fight.

All he could do was pray.

Another bolt of lightning flashed across the floor. A shadow darted across it faster than the sharp pitch of a horror movie. Zach held his breath, listening for the sound that would signal the beginning of the end, but the thunder rolled in too quickly. He couldn't hear anything.

But he could feel something.

Zach slowly peered over his shoulder at the line of cables strung up beside him. The darkness beyond grew heavy, so much so, that the night slowly dropped it like the first prick of blood from a needle stick. The devil's heavy chin formed first. Then, her massive maw, and finally, her head. It silently crept by along the cables. The jewel on Persian's head held the faintest of glows, too aroused with the thrill of the night's slaughter to stay dark and quiet during the hunt.

Zach watched her float by mere inches from his own head. Shadow slipped into shadow, and soon, the glow was gone. Silence returned. Zach removed his hand from his mouth and closed his eyes. It was the moment every predator waited for. Having seen the glint of Zach's eyes from the light of her jewel when she passed, Persian sprang into the cables with a snarl. Her white teeth materialized out of the dark and her claws severed through the wires. Some jerked out of place, sparking and popping with the latent energy stored within the machines' capacitors.

Old parts short-circuited. Motors churned and rusty flywheels began to spin again. They shrieked back to life, rattling the walls with triple digit decibels. Not even Persian's roar could be heard above the metallic screams. Zach slapped his hands over his ears and shimmied out of the cavity. It was his only chance to escape. He ran out into the open, blindly stumbling and tripping over parts and pieces of broken machinery. Behind him, the belt within the flywheel snapped and the machine went dead, but the screaming didn't stop. And neither did Zach. He raced out of the plant, tore across the property, and scaled the barbed wire fence without pain, or dignity, or care. Survival was all that mattered.

And this time, he didn't make the mistake of looking back.