Chapter 10
"Dead!"
"Dead!"
"They're all dead!"
The voices wouldn't stop.
"Murder!"
"Murder!"
"Come and see!"
They crashed against his sanity like the unending roar of a stormy ocean.
"Murder!"
"Murder!"
"And it's all because of me . . ."
Dozens of angry murkrow took flight as Zach pushed aside the clothesline that once marked off the alley he called home. A storm of black feathers barraged and berated him for the intrusion, circling and swirling about in a tumult of beaks and talons so thick that not even the rain could reach him. Zach ignored the screams of the living black cloud as it rose into the sky and looked down at the lake of blood lapping at his feet.
The bodies of a dozen pokemon rotted before him, twisted and broken and waiting on his doorstep for his return. The police had yet to discover the graveyard, but the stench of death would betray them soon, especially when it practically smoked from the ground. Zach wore a scarf around his face like a bandana to protect his senses, but the spheal imprinted fabric did little to stifle the smell. He stood still and heavy as the feathers brushed against him. His eyes were as glossy and distant as the ones at his feet.
The stiff crisp edges of his new jacket stood out sharply against his profile. They protruded from his innate inelegance like the monstrous fins or spikes of a malformed pokemon. The murkrow were wise to avoid them and quickly evacuated the alley, cawing and crowing all the while. A feast like this didn't come often. Zach quietly surveyed the scene before him. In the daylight, he saw every tooth and claw, every pound of uneaten flesh in perfect detail. Strangely enough, the morose topography wasn't as horrifying now as it was in the dark.
The murkrow had already devoured the most empathetic of parts, leaving behind hunks of meat not unlike those found in a slaughterhouse. Zach didn't know the faces or the names of the pokemon that died, but that was the case of every victim of the streets. Carnage was not new to him. Neither was scrounging through it. Zach carefully made his way through the bodies, stepping over and around the vague resemblances of pokemon, unable to find the ones he was looking for.
A strange gnawing tickled his stomach. It made him nauseous, especially when coupled with the hard ache in his ribs. Zach wrapped one arm around his chest to curb the sensation. Hope was unfamiliar to him. He shouldn't have felt it at all, but from beginning to end, he found no trace of Minun and Plusle within the butchery. They weren't hidden by wings or trapped underneath feet. Their disappearance was becoming increasingly unrelated to Pantera's killing crusade and the thought inspired escalating causality to the search.
Without a spark or jolt to pick up on, Zach focused on salvaging whatever supplies remained in the wreckage of his pipe and paper mansion. Even if he managed to clean up the bodies, he couldn't stay here anymore. The metallic stink of blood was so strong that he could taste it. The black devil had claimed this hell hole, and it was likely she would find him no matter where he went, but that didn't mean he had to make it easy for her. Surely, there was some shanty, slum, or breezeway still left unoccupied in Midtown.
He'd lay low and hide a while, just long enough for Baby and company to exorcise the devil for good. Zach drew the fallen tarp away and rummaged through the bent up cardboard. With the whole precinct on the case, he had no reason to stay involved. He just needed to survive. Maybe he'd find a better spot to settle down in. One where the smog wasn't so thick and it didn't rain all the time. One with enough space to fit a box big enough for three, not this ratty useless piece of garbage trash. Zach folded back the flaps of the refrigerator box and found what he was looking for. Minun and Plusle were inside.
"Dead!"
"Dead!"
"They're all dead," Zach whispered.
The two cheering pokemon didn't move. They didn't speak and they didn't breathe. Puncture marks riddle their bodies. Pantera's teeth had pierced straight through their tiny frames to the other side. Their little organs must have popped like ripe cherries in her fangs. They were probably ripped apart before the two helpless pokemon even knew what happened.
Minun had the worst of it. Enough blood bathed his skin to make him almost indistinguishable from his sister. He was dead long before Plusle ever found him and dragged him into the box, the only place they had ever felt safe. Her efforts left a bloody smear on the cardboard. It ended at the spot where her heart gave out. Zach dropped to his knees and pulled the scarf from his face.
The two cheering pokemon were dead, and had been for a while, but not before he had fled for his life from the alley. At least one of them had been alive when he ran through the bodies thinking only of himself. Zach slowly reached into the box and scooped the two pokemon into his hands. Their bones were crushed so thoroughly that the shapes of their bodies had concaved to unnatural proportions. Several bouts of shaking left their joints dislocated. Their ears, arms, and legs dangled limply over the sides of his hands.
The two cheering pokemon were nothing but broken bloody lifeless dolls in his hands.
Zach dropped the bodies so that he could hold himself up as he wretched over and over and over again. Even when there was nothing left, he coughed and hacked what was left of his hope into a slimy pile of acid and spit underneath him. The smell mingled with the sharp twang of iron and made him dizzy. Zach covered his eyes with one hand. He refused to cry. He hadn't in years, and if he did now, he'd never recover.
Who was he kidding?
Hope, happiness, escape from this horrid life, didn't exist. Even if he killed himself, right here, right now in grief, the souls of the underworld would send him back up again because this world was a living hell. Zach wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. His skin scratched against the stubble of his chin like sandpaper.
Those checkerboard fools would never catch the black devil cat. Pantera was out for blood and she wouldn't stop until the city drowned in it.
Zach slumped back to sit on his legs and winced as something pinched between his ribs. He wrapped an arm around his chest again and leaned back so that the rain could hit his face. If he couldn't cry, at least the storm could shed tears for him.
For them.
Something colorful caught the corner of Zach's eye. Baby's scarf remained clutched in his free hand. It was the same one he used at her apartment to wipe his face with. Taking it with him had been a natural reflex since there was nothing else to pinch.
Now, there was nothing left at all.
Pantera's appearance at the apartments wasn't by accident. That disturbingly cunning devil let him escape on purpose. She manipulated him into finding Baby so that she could kill them in one strike as originally planned. The plot failed, but their luck was running out. Baby couldn't help him. Zach could see that now. Pantera was a product of the streets and only something as evil and vile as herself would be able to stop her. Zach clutched the scarf tighter in his hand. If the devil couldn't be killed, he'd find the one responsible for letting her out and force them to put her back in, and thanks to Baby's picture book, he knew exactly where to start.
There was no evidence. There was no proof, but when Ace's picture showed up in the catalogue of potential suspects, Zach knew that damned sadist had something to do with it. He memorized the address on file and made no note of it to Baby. The cops were more likely to dish out a free pass than justice to a celebrity ace in this town. He'd take care of this himself, like he should have from the very beginning. That good-for-nothing knee smashing tyrant would taste the rancid justice of the streets he so despised.
"Murder!"
"Murder!"
The voices began again as the murkrow began to descend from the sky.
Zach pushed out of the cardboard, swayed heavily to his feet, and looked down into the cardboard box one last time. Minun and Plusle were dead. There was nothing more he could do for them. Their favorite cardboard box was the best grave they could get in this land of cement, steel, and rain. Zach turned away and limped off down the alley. There was nothing left for him here. The stench of death no longer bothered him, but he wrapped Baby's scarf around his face again anyway. After all, he'd need it where he was going.
Or better yet, for what he was about to do.