Fortune Cookie

Part 6

Part 6

            At midnight, our train stopped at our station. In the early hours of the morning, the only people at the station were the homeless people taking shelter for the night. I followed Cody up the stairs to the surface. At the top of the stairs, Cody stopped, inhaled and exhaled before motioning me to follow behind him. When reached the corner of the street, he stopped again, closed his eyes and took a deep breath in. When he released it, he looked around. I had an idea of where we were and knew the train station we were heading to wasn’t a long walk from where we were.

            “Is something wrong?” I asked.

            Cody shook his head. “Nothing that we need to be overly concerned about,” he said as he abruptly started walking down the street. Despite how confident he sounded, I started to feel anxious. We were so close to our destination and nothing had happened despite what Cody implied earlier.

I was strumming with tension as I followed Cody through the streets. I could feel our destination getting closer, but it did nothing to calm my nerves down. Instead, I was starting to get paranoid. It felt like there was someone following us, but every time I looked back no one was there. Cody even looked tense and serious. That carefree go with the flow attitude he had exhibited all night was gone.

            Cody took us down an alleyway. Halfway, I heard the sound of footsteps. Cody stopped and turned around. “Finally decided to show yourself?” I turned to see who Cody was talking to and saw two guys at the opening of the alley.

            The shorter of the two guys laughed. “Guess it isn’t as easy to fool a werewolf as everyone claims.” He turned to his companion. “If I’m going to take a werewolf head on, I’m going to need a little boost.” Okay, I thought, we have crazy people chasing us.

The other guy sighed. He took out an illegal switchblade. I grimaced as I watched him slice his palm open. He passed his bloody hand over to the shorter guy. I gagged as the guy put the bloody palm to his mouth. It looked like he was sucking the blood. “What the hell is he doing?”

“Damn vampires, they always have to be a pain the ass,” mumbled Cody. I shot him a skeptical look. He turned his hat backwards. “I’ll explain later. You’re going have to hold off the zombie yourself until I’m finish with the vampire.” Before I could say word, Cody was off running to meet the ‘vampire’ who was rushing at us.

The other guy, the ‘zombie’ walked around the fight, his eyes on me, the switchblade still open. I looked him up and down. “You’re supposed to be a zombie? You don’t look like one.”

The guy laughed. “Damn Hollywood has everyone believing we’re rotting corpses.” The guy showed me the palm he had cut open. The wound was closed and healing. I eyed it skeptically, trying to figure out the trick. “Still don’t believe I’m a zombie? I guess I need to show a demonstration.”

I watched in horror as the guy sliced his right ear off. “You’re fucking crazy!” I shouted. The guy laughed hysterically as blood ran down his head and onto his shoulders. He lifted his sever ear back to where it should be. I couldn’t take my eyes off his ear. It was reattaching back to his head.

The guy smiled at my expression. “You see Zombies are living people. If parts of our bodies are severed, we can attach it right back on without the need of stitches or surgery. Our bodies almost heal instantaneously if we wield it to. Even a bullet to the heart or lung won’t kill us. That’s why we’re called the living dead.”

I wasn’t sure if I wasn’t imagining everything or if I was in some terrible nightmare. For all I knew, I could have gone crazy right at that instant and none of it was actually happening, it was all in my head. But it didn’t matter if I was imagining it or not. I would treat it like it was reality and protect myself.

The zombie came at me with the switchblade. I wasn’t sure how Cody expected me to defeat a Zombie, but then again, he didn’t say to defeat the guy, just to hold him off.