Crisis

Chapter One

Four Years Later

Four hard knocks sounded at Anthony Bartlett’s front door. Julian Castro, Jay for short, was standing in the exposed air during the highest concentration of toxic air in the day. Rush hour usually brought on the filth. With the vehicles speeding above the heads of the lower city, many below had to suffer the repercussions of their high fuel usage and disregard for life.

Again, Jay knocked at Anthony’s door four times. This time she managed to pop a knuckled and retreated her gloved hand back. Her toe was tapping at the cracked cement below as her patience grew smaller and smaller by the second. Normally, Anthony was a man of vigilance. He would not keep a person waiting, not unless there was a good reason. As of lately, she didn’t like his good reasoning.

“Bartlett, you open this door up or so help me…” she trailed of and listened for him stumbling around after his alarm hadn’t gone off or even shoeing a girl from his bed. When no sounds came, she began to kick at the flimsy front door. It was a thin barrier between Anthony and the rest of the world but as a freshly turned vamp with nothing better to do than loath his own existence, he rarely cared what stink came in. It didn’t affect their kind.

Jay went to kick the door again until she remembered the key she had made months ago in case he went AWOL again. While Bartlett was a man who would never deliberately do something to get himself thrown in jail, he also resented what he’d recently become and continued to resist the necessary daily duties to survive as a changed man. Not the sort of coward to walk into the sunlight and end it all, he forged on looking for ways to detour the inevitable. Soon, his change would be complete and he would have to come to terms with his new way of life.

In her opposite hand, Jay carried a large, sealed back of raw meat. She knew Bartlett hated it and tried his best to hold on to large cheeseburgers and fries but the reality of his situation as that if he continued to eat normal human food he would soon be dead. Even with his will being stronger than most, and his change not yet completely taking his normal digestive track, Jay took the liberty of forcing the meal down his throat at least once a month to prepare his body for the harsh final stages of vampirism.

It was going to be uglier than most changes, too. They both knew that. With his lack of care for his changing body and mental unpreparedness left him nothing stronger than a child. Opening the door to his home, she could already smell the gunpowder. He’d been making bullets for days to prepare for a raid he and the rest of the guards in their sector were going into. One of the busts in the lower city would be happening just hours from that point and he would be involved.

Jay placed the container of meat down. She knew the second she had driven up with it that he could smell it. His senses had developed early and nicely. It was also dark out already because his skin had become hypersensitive leaving him with burns and rashes when spending more than just a few moments to the exposed sky.

Bartlett raced across one of the doorways, shirtless and obviously scrambling to get ready as most of his morning was diverted towards other things. She wasn’t sure what it was he did while all alone in his apartment but she was also sure she would have rather not known.

“Come in here and eat this, ya prick!” She shouted in the small, wooden walled apartment. He had obviously heard her, a low grunt coming from his room after she said it, but he did not respond. She opened the container allowing the full scent of the raw, bloodied meat to fill the room. This was driving him nuts and she knew it. Jay was one of the few people in the world who felt comfortable enough around a changing vampire and raw meat in the same room. Her faith in her friend was enormous despite the vicious nature of a new bloodsucker, “It’s fresh. I know how much you like beef so I spent the last of my coin on it. First in line at the butcher.”