Free DarkWalker by John Urbancik

Death. The bum was dead . . . had been when Nick shot him.
    “He can’t answer you,” Jack said. “I . . . I don’t think his type have much by way of intelligence.”
    “Meat,” it said, spinning suddenly and grabbing for Nick’s head. Nick forced his knife through the thing’s throat and, with a good side kick to the dead man’s ribs, sent it and its head into the lake.
    “I didn’t recognize it,” Jack said. “I mean, I don’t always. I knew it was something. But when it got close enough, when I smelled it . . .”
    “Rank,” Nick said.
    “But normally,” Jack said, “they ignore me.”
    Nick narrowed his eyes. There was only one proper response to such a comment. “What?”
    “You’re a hunter,” Jack said. “You hunt . . . vampires, I imagine.” Nick said nothing, but tightened the grip on both his weapons. “I can’t hunt. I tried. Thought I could do something, but I can’t. I can only watch.”
    “You’re telling me this . . . why?” Nick asked.
    “Because tonight, I hit one of them,” Jack said. “The thing at the apartment. And now this.” He glanced over the edge of the lake, and then picked up his laptop computer. “Zombie, I think. Well, a variation.”
    He opened up his computer and turned it on. “Give me a moment, I’ll check. I know I’ve seen his type before.”
    “You’ll check?” Curious, Nick stepped around to see the computer screen.
    Jack called up a database, hit a few keys, scrolled down a few screens. Finally, he stopped, pointed at the screen, and said, “There. Last September. Three of them. Errant Zombies. They didn’t know they were dead, they thought they were . . . tramps, apparently. One had dried blood on the side of his head. They didn’t say much, didn’t do much, just sat in an alley. It was 60 degrees that night, cloudy, no rain. One caught a rat running too close, bit its head off and tossed the body aside. But most of the rats gave them plenty of room. Even the roaches ignored them.” He scrolled down the screen to keep reading, summarizing what he found. “A teenager turned down that alley. Drunk. Stupid. A bad ass, too, wanting to start trouble.” He paused a moment. “After bashing his head in, they scooped the brains from his head and feasted until they were done.” Done, he looked at Nick, his eyebrows furrowed. “Didn’t acknowledge me in the least.”
    “You . . . watched this?” Nick asked. His stomach churned. “And recorded it?”
    “That’s what I do, apparently,” Jack said. “You’re a hunter. I’m a watcher. It’s not by choice.”
    Nick stepped back, disturbed, bewildered, unsure of what to make of this. He could kill Jack here, now. He’d heard of voyeurism, but . . . this was sick.
    Jack shut the computer down. “That thing earlier, that I stopped at the apartment,” Jack said. “Did you kill it?”
    “Didn’t find it again,” Nick said. “What was it?”
    “I have no idea.”
    3.
     
    Jack stared a moment at the hunter. He’d said a lot, maybe more than he’d ever said at one time. A hunter was one of the few people who might listen to Jack and not suspect he’d escaped an asylum. Still, Jack didn’t know what would happen next. Wouldn’t take much effort for the hunter to put that knife through Jack’s throat and kick his headless body into the lake.
    “I’m Jack Harlow,” he finally said, though he didn’t step forward or offer a hand.
    “Nick Hunter,” the other said. “You have a file on hunters in there?”
    “Some,” Jack said. “Not you.”
    “You’ll add me after this, though, won’t you?”
    Jack shrugged. “That’s what I do. Like the ghost said, it’s my role.”
    “Ghost?”
    “There’s more to the dark than vampires,” Jack said. He motioned toward the lake, where the errant zombie’s body floated like any other dead man on the water.
    “You watch,” Nick said, wiping his blade clean on the grass. “You never get involved, is that