Chapter 2
Chapter two
Nico
Iscanned the street from the front steps of our building for any dangers.
Luis and Miguel were nearby doing the same.
Well, Miguel was. Luis had his face buried in his phone.
We might not be perfect, hell, we weren’t even particularly good men, but we looked out for our own, and this block was ours.
I would never let what happened two years ago happen again.
We were cocky back then, thought we were hot shit.
Losing one of our people who was in the wrong place at the wrong time humbles a man.
Now we were smarter, more careful with the turf wars we got involved in.
“Hey, man, look at this,” Luis said, showing me his phone. He was watching a live on TikTok that showed a man attacking another man, but not with his fists. It wasn’t a fight, it was... like an animal attack.
“Where is that?”
“That’s a few blocks away.”
I looked around at the people on the street. The kids playing on the sidewalks, the old couple three doors down out for their after-dinner stroll. It was evening, so there weren’t as many people around, but there were still plenty at risk. “Get everyone inside.”
Luis and Miguel started running down each side of the street, urging people to go inside.
Nobody put up much of a fuss. We were the law here, and if we said something was coming and it was dangerous, the neighborhood listened.
Once the street was clear, we met back at our building.
It was eerily silent for only a few minutes before the screams reached us.
A flood of people suddenly came around the corner.
“Let’s get inside,” Miguel said. We ran inside, and I glanced under the stairs to where Emery kept her bicycle, only it wasn’t there.
“Emery isn’t home yet!” I ran back outside, searching the crowd filling the street for her. People were screaming as they were tackled to the ground and ripped apart.
“Nico, we have to go inside!” Luis said as he grabbed me and started dragging me toward the door.
“Emery is out here somewhere!” I yelled, shaking him off.
“I know, man, but we can’t help her if we’re dead.”
I knew he was right. We could watch the street for Emery from inside. Just as I was turning to go back inside, I caught a glimpse of someone on a bike. Relief flooded through me when I realized it was Emery, but it was immediately replaced by panic when a man knocked her to the ground.
“No!” I shouted as I ran toward her, gun drawn. I shot the man on top of her in the head, and Miguel and I quickly pulled her to her feet. Together, we ran inside before anyone else could attack us. As soon as we were safe, Emery began freaking out as she ran her hands over her body.
“Did he bite me? Do you see any bite marks?”
I placed my hands on her shoulders to stop her erratic movements. “Emery, calm down.”
“Have I been bitten?” she asked again.
She stood still, her only movement was her chest rising and falling as she breathed heavily, while I checked her over. “You don’t have so much as a scratch on you,” I assured her.
“Thank God,” she sighed as she slumped against me.
I was taken aback by her behavior, but I chose not to complain. I’d been infatuated with Emery since high school. All three of us have. There was a time I thought she might have liked us too, but then the shooting happened. Since then, if she looked at us, it was always with hatred.
Just then, the door was ripped open and the guy from 3B ran inside, slamming the door shut behind him. The interruption caused Emery to jump away from me like she had been burned. That didn’t last long.
“Check him,” Emery ordered, blocking the stairs when 3B went to go up them.
“Get the hell out of my way, lady,” the man growled as he tried to push past her. Before he could even brush against her, though, Miguel had already grabbed him and was throwing him against the wall.
“Make sure he doesn’t have any bite marks,” Emery continued. “That’s how you turn into one of them. They bite you and then you die, except you don’t stay dead. I’ve watched it happen, and it’s happening all over the city, maybe even the country, I don’t know.”
“What the hell are you talking about. I’m fine,” 3B yelled. “You must be on something, because what you’re talking about is zombies, and zombies aren’t real.”
“You’ve been out there,” Emery countered. “I know you’ve seen it, too.” 3B didn’t reply, and when we didn’t find any bite marks on him, Emery stepped aside to let him go to his apartment.
“Zombies aren’t real,” I stated. I couldn’t explain what the hell I saw, but there was no way in hell that zombies were real.
Emery looked at me. “They are now.” She scowled at us one last time and then turned to run up the steps to her apartment. She was halfway up when she suddenly stopped. “Thanks for saving my life,” she said without turning around.
“It was our pleasure, Em,” Luis replied.
We watched her jog the rest of the way up the stairs and disappear behind her apartment door.
She blamed us for what happened to Eddie.
Hell, we blamed ourselves. Which was why we never asked for her forgiveness, no matter how desperately we wanted it.
If hating us was the price we had to pay in order for her to keep going, I’d pay it for all eternity in this life and the next.
“Ok,” I said, turning back to the door and turning the deadbolt on it. “Turn off the lights. We are only allowing residents in the building, and they can’t go upstairs until we have thoroughly checked them for bite marks. We protect our home.”
One of them killed the lights and joined me at the door as we watched complete chaos descend upon the neighborhood. It was going to be a long night, and I wasn’t sure what tomorrow would bring, if tomorrow ever came.
I glanced back up the stairs where Emery had disappeared. For a moment, it had felt like old times filled with casual touches. As I turned back to the door, I thought back to when I had seen Emery for the first time. We were just high school kids back then, though I’d felt like anything but.
“It’s ok, my grandparents said you could stay with us as long as you needed,” Luis said to me as I hesitated on the front steps of his building.
I doubted that was what they said. I knew they didn’t approve of me, or of what we did, but they loved their grandson.
Luis didn’t understand how lucky he was to have people in his life who wouldn’t give up on him, even if it meant bringing in his street urchin friends.
They probably thought with me under the same roof, they could guide us toward a brighter future.
I wasn’t going to tell them how wrong they were, I needed a place to stay.
“Well, if he’s moving in, so am I,” Miguel stated.
Miguel wasn’t much better off than I was, but he still had a house to go back to thanks to his Mom’s unconventional arrangement with the landlord.
My crackhead mother had kicked me out weeks ago.
I’d gone to my dad’s for a spell, but I became an unwelcome distraction.
The distraction being that his whores were more interested in sneaking into my bed instead of his when they weren’t working the corner.
So I came to Luis’s house, all of my belongings stuffed into the backpack slung over my shoulder.
Luis might not realize how lucky he was, but I did, and I was going to do everything in my power to make sure that his grandparents were taken care of—even if they didn’t approve of the things we did to do so.
“I’ll be up in a second,” I replied. We’d been to Luis’s house plenty of times, but now that it was becoming my house as well, I wanted to check out the neighborhood. My neighborhood.
It was a hot summer day, and the Fire Department had cracked open the fire hydrant, so everyone was outside.
I spotted a girl in a black one piece bathing suit near the hydrant with her friends.
You could tell they were trying to act like they were too cool to play in the water with the little kids, but they wanted too.
“Who is that?” I asked, pointing out the curly haired girl who had caught my eye.
“That’s Emery. She lives in 1A with her parents and brother, Eddie.
She’s fourteen. Eddie just turned eighteen.
Their dad is a garbage man and their mom makes the best cookies.
” Luis prattled off what he knew about Emery while my eyes stayed glued to her.
A boy ran up to her and her friends and sprayed her with a water gun, causing them to shriek and laugh.
As Emery tilted her head back and laughed, her eyes met mine.
We stared at each other for a few more seconds before her friend got her attention.
As I continued to watch her, her eyes shifted back to mine and I smiled at her.
Emery’s cheeks flushed as she looked away again, but it wasn’t long until she was looking at me again, as if there was a magnetic pull between us that kept her from looking away for too long.
I should stay away from her. She’s way too good for the likes of me. Even as I told myself this, I continued watching her. As long as I kept my distance, what was the harm in looking?
My plan at sixteen to keep my distance from Emery hadn’t lasted long.
I was entirely too selfish not to interject myself into her life where I could.
I grew to know Emery better than she knew herself, and in one afternoon, everything had fallen apart.
Now, I was back to doing what I should have done to begin with, watch from a distance and let Emery live her life.
But now? It felt like something bigger than all of us was happening, and I would do everything I could to keep the woman who I’d loved since I was sixteen safe. Even if she hated me.