City of Night (Clover)

[Marty James]

What a long ****ing day, and Marry could not have been happier to see it over. So much was off about this city, mostly little things. Like how the place seemed more active at night. It was as if the streets population doubled after the sun had gone down. Where were all these people hiding all day? Though that only seemed the tip of the isburg weird compared to other things. The main one of the moment being the quarantined area he had come across, its walls closing off a section of the city. Marty has asked around but all seemed unwilling to give him any answers. Maybe they didn't even know, perhaps they did but were not keen on sharing such secrets of the city with him. It was not at all surprising that people we not keen on talking with a stranger. He knew how such could take time, he needed to get to know more of this city, get them to trust him and just maybe he could start getting some answers.

Marty had been walking back to his hotel room, his pace rushed as he was eager to wash the day away and get ready to go out for the evening. He was keen to get out just as the sun was setting, to watch this unexpected city of the night to wake. Most of his things would be shed in the chair beside the door. His jacket, overly long scarf, bag, and then his shoes were slipped off on the floor beside it. His glasses would be set on the bedside table as he undressed and made his way to the shower. The water was scolding, just enough pain to keep his mind clear for a moment, a reminder too that he was still alive. Stepping out a towel would be drawn around his waist, another used to dry his hair and the rest of him. Teeth brushed, hair combed and all the other things necessary to freshen up. He would pull on some clean clothing, and park himself on the side of his bed to use the room phone. The call would be placed to the front desk to see about having his mini bar restocked.

Once that was settled, a pair of clean socks would be followed by walking over to slip on his shoes. It seemed to be a dulling routine. Wandering over to slip on his glasses before heading back over to slip on his coat and wrap the scarf around his neck. Reaching he would pull a small digital camera from his bag, he had several different cameras. He would pocket it along with his wallet. Stepping out, the door would be locked behind him as his eyes drifted to the sky. Marty was pleased to see the sun hung low and he likely had just enough time to get to the other side of the river that ran along the quarantine area. His feet made way to the nearest transit. He had been considering renting a car, but walking always seemed to just be another way to experience a new place. He got off the transit closest to the place he was after and Marty would let his feet take him the rest of the way.

Marty would not stop until he neared the water's edge. The warm colors of the sun set painted an error glow over what he could see of the quarantined zone. Pulling out his camera he would zoom out the lense and began snapping pictures. Only once the sun sunk too low, and there was not enough light for quality images he would move away from the edge of the water. Marty would find the closest bench and park himself as he looked over the images on the digital. What was this city hiding? He would pocket the camera and move his hand over his face, he needed a drink. First things first though, he would phone Mike and check in. The phone rang only twice before being answered and Marty would talk before the man had a chance to speak first. *"Hey boss man, just checking in."* There was a short pause before hearing the voice at the other end and something didn't sound quite right. *"Hey Marty. Good to hear from you, though I can't talk now, I'm just about to head out."*

Marty knew there was something his friend didn't want to tell him, and he knew exactly what it likely involved. Mikes wife and Marty's ex had been friends for years, it's actually how he had met her. If Marty had to guess, Mike and his wife were likely having dinner with his ex wife. He didn't bother questioning, he didn't want to know. *"No problem boss man, I'll give you a call tomorrow. Have a nice night...."* With that said Marty would end the call. Holding his phone in hand he would look down at its blank screen. Trying hard to not think about her, to not think about Grace. Maybe Mike and his wife were going out on a double date with Grace and some new guy she was seeing. Marty had not so much as looked at another woman in such a way. He stood then, phone still in hand as he made was to the sidewalk. His designation was going to be the closest where he could get a few stiff drinks. Oddly he would trip over the curb as he went to cross the road. He had not even had a drink yet, but had somehow been so clumsy as to drop his phone. Catching himself, he would not tumble to the ground at least. Though there was little hope for the now cracked device on the pavement.

[Clover]

Words. Although actions were supposed to speak louder than words, Clover felt as if the opposite were true. At least, lately. Lately, she’d felt as if words were knives and swords, weapons used against her and used against the people she loved. The word love was used in place of more appropriate words, words that would have required a great deal of thought. To put it bluntly, Clover felt as if her world were slowly being ripped apart at the seams and sewn back together with a rusty needle. The rusty needle could have been any number of objects or any number of people. The needle only represented the fact that people were trying to control her with their words and their actions. Words. ******* words.

The stars had only just begun to flicker to life. The night sky had summoned them from their distant slumber and granted them the landscape and the strength to shine. Normally, Clo overlooked the sky. She focused on her destination, acknowledging that little else mattered. That night, Clo decided to devote herself to the sky. She’d left Third Circle and made the short voyage to the Quarantine Zone. It was easy for her to reach the gated area when she could use the water as her own walkway. She secretly enjoyed the fact that she’d mastered that much, at least.

Being outside felt like stepping into another world. For the past few months, she’d spent so much of her time indoors that she almost forgot something existed beyond the four walls of homes and apartments.She forgot that other people existed. Did other people lose themselves the way that she’d lost herself? The question brought up another question, which morphed into a series of questions. The radio silence she’d come to love and loathe had transformed into an explosion of noise that rattled her nerves. She’d lost contact with the ground and forgotten the sky. Why had she gone outside in the first place? Oh yes. She’d gone outside because it had been so long since she’d appreciated the world around her. Something else existed beyond her problems, beyond the selfish, egotistical people scattered around her.

Clover reached around to her lower back and removed her handgun from its holster. Her knife remained in its spot on her right ankle, successfully hidden by her black combat boot. Several feet away, a zombie noticed her presence and began lumbering toward her. The monster was missing its lower jaw and looked bloated, as if it had been in the waters nearby, or maybe it had been decomposing for that long. The weather had been warmer than expected, so it was possible that the sun only aided in the man’s decomposition. Clover turned the safety off on her gun and lined up her shot, but she didn’t shoot. She watched and waited, allowing the zombie to continue on its course. She wasn’t terrible with her aim, but she wasn’t a sharpshooter. At six feet away, the zombie stumbled over its own two feet and went down. Clover sent three bullets through its skull and then finished the creature off with her knife.

That was life. Shooting. Stabbing. The same violence extended beyond physical fights and bled into other types of altercations. Hadn’t she gone full-circle then? Perhaps the zombie represented everything wrong in her life. Perhaps it was just a zombie and she put way too much thought into things. She cleaned the blade of her knife on the zombie’s tattered clothing and then replaced it, but she left her gun out. Clover moved a good distance away and dropped down onto the grass. She lay on her back, her head supported by her right arm, and stared up at the sky. She had to relinquish her hold on her gun, so she set it next to her in the grass. Her crop top, one that proudly displayed a sad little robot, rode up to reveal more of her tattooed flesh and the faint scars from bullet wounds.

Rhett had been right to ask questions. The thought came to her rather suddenly. He had misunderstood, but he’d asked relevant questions, questions that she had wanted to know. What had happened to Grey? Where had the woman gone? As she thought, her eyes still trained on the night sky, Clover reached into the pocket of her skinny jeans and withdrew a crumpled pack of cigarettes and a lighter. She took her time placing the filter between her lips. She could imagine the taste the tobacco; she could smell the tobacco. She had to strike the lighter a few times before she got a flickering flame, but it was enough to light the end of her cigarette. With her cigarette lit, Clover lifted her left arm into the air and tossed the empty lighter toward the water. She didn’t care what happened to it then. Wasn’t that how it worked? Once something was empty, once something had outlived its use, no one cared what happened to the object. At that moment, if it weren’t for her remembering what the lighter looked like or how the lighter felt in her hand, no one would have believed it ever existed. Were they all little lighters?

Suddenly, the night sky didn’t look so mesmerizing. The sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach made her regret leaving the house. She just wanted to see the four walls around her. She wanted to lose herself in the ceiling and take refuge on the floor. Clover took a long drag from her cigarette and then crushed it out on a patch of dirt. She grabbed her gun and quickly got to her feet; her weapon immediately went back into her holster. Leaving Third Circle had been a mistake. As suffocated as she felt, she missed being inside. She’d become dependent on being hidden away, like some walking example of shame. After all, she knew what people were like. She knew how judgmental people were. If she wasn’t the victim, someone else was the victim. When she was human, she’d called them haters. The same was true. People were ugly. She was ugly. They were flawed. The sky was the best thing going.

Clover heard snippets of conversations, but one stood out. Who said “boss man” anymore? Clo took one long look in the direction of her home and then moved toward the voice. She watched a figure move away and she followed, expecting that the man would take her on a short journey. Instead, he tripped, and she heard the sound of something hitting the pavement. Clo rolled her eyes and walked for the fallen item. A phone. A cracked phone. She picked the phone up and turned it around in her hands.

“I think you dropped this,” she finally spoke, her voice light. She held out the phone, her fingers clutching the corner of the device. “It looks like you’d better get another one. You could ask your boss man to pay for it.” The last two words were said with some hint of sarcasm and a slight narrowing of her eyes. Boss man. What a strange character. And was he really so clumsy that he'd tripped over the curb or was he running from something? Clover understood running. She'd lived her entire life running from something or someone. As odd as it was, she wondered if she'd found some sort of kindred spirit. And yet he had a pulse. What a shame.

[Marty James]

If there was anything more embarrassing than being clumsy, it was having a witness to such actions. The woman seemed to come from nowhere. Best thing to do in such situations, was to own it and play like it was nothing at all. He would smile and reach for the phone as she held it out to him. ”Thanks, I meant to do that. It was time for an upgrade.” His tone would be joking, and he could not help but laugh a little at himself. ”Good thing the insurance fee I pay every month covers accidents…. No way would the boss man buy me a new phone though. He hates when I call him that.” The last line shared teasingly in the tone of a slight whisper.

His eyes took in the woman before him then, she wore a crop top and just the sight made him feel cold. She had to be freezing. ”Aren’t you cold? The words just sort of slipped out and he reached to pull the scarf from around his neck. His hand would pocket the broken device, and his other hand held the scarf to her. ”You can have my scarf if you like? I have tons…” Maybe he should have offered his jacket, though he had a sort of personal attachment to it. The scarf though, he had many of those and it would not be much but it would be better than nothing. The yarn was soft, not scratchy like some could be and it was overly long. The color was a mix of fuzzy greens and it likely smelled of his blue water cologne.

His eyes would glance over at the QZ, maybe she would know something about it. Though he didn’t get his hopes up that she would be willing to share. ”What happened in there? Why do they keep it walled off?” His words were shared to her, as much as to himself. It just didn’t add up…. Why all the secrecy? What could be something so terrible about one little area that they would do such a thing? He was a curious man by nature. This was something new entirely, Marty had never come across something like this before in his travels. Sure he had visited said haunted places. None of them had been walled off from the rest of civilization.

He couldn’t help but wonder if there was a way in, other than across the river that is. That posed another question in itself. Why only wall off on the three sides? They went to such extreme measures to barricade the other sides, yet the water side was left wide open. Someone could essentially just swim or take a boat over. Surely the water would freeze over at some point during the colder winter months and then one would be free to walk right over. Maybe there was a different type of security measures set up to keep people from getting in on the water side.

Marty knew he was here to look into the more tourist side of the city, the pleasurable enjoyable activities they had to offer. This though, it was a captivating mystery, one he could not help but want to unravel. There had to be some sort of way in….. The other night he could have sword he had seen something, but it was too far away. That’s why he had taken the pictures, maybe they would help him shed a little light on things.

[Clover]

Graceless. Uncoordinated. Clumsy. There were several words that quickly came to mind, and none of them were all that flattering. Clo really had to look beyond his words and actions to find anything that she found appealing. In the end, she decided that she liked his glasses. The man had nothing more going for him that his glasses. And he had a bit of a baby face. She edited her final opinion and settled on the face that he was cute, cute in the way that puppies were cute. Everyone loved puppies, she decided. She could find some enjoyment in looking at his face and imagining keeping him as a pet.

“Yes, insurance. Upgrades,” Clover agreed, her tone revealing her disinterest. She sounded bored. He’d rambled, whether he knew it or not. Clo knew about rambling--she rambled all of the time--but she hadn’t really been on the receiving end of someone rambling. His attempts at salvaging his reputation and making her laugh only sent her further into her word coma. “At least he’s cute,” she thought to herself. But he wasn’t cute enough for her to lose herself in his words. He wasn’t appealing enough for her to try and lure him into a pleasant conversation. Honestly, he was just the type of cute that made her want to snap his neck.

His question roused her from her thoughts and she found herself blinking at him, dumbfounded. The night air was chilly and she’d worn a crop top and skinny jeans; she’d dressed as if it were late spring or early summer. She forgot to update her wardrobe, yet again, and someone had noticed. Of course it had to be Clumsy Guy. That was her nickname for him: Clumsy Guy. “I must have left my coat in the park,” she lied. The thought of taking his scarf left her uncomfortable. She didn’t need a scarf. The cold had never really bothered her, even as a human. She’d always dressed in jeans and t-shirts, but she’d always had a jacket too. “Thanks.” Clo took the scarf from him and wound it around her neck, curling and knotting the warm fabric into a neat circle. She felt suffocated, but she offered him a grateful smile. He was nice. He was nice in the way that Anton was nice. She missed her Anton.

Humans were always curious. As a human, she had been curious; as a vampire, the trend continued. So when he asked her about the quarantine zone and everything that it concealed, she turned to look at the fences and the peaceful waterline separating the open side from the rest of the city. Everyone wanted to know about the quarantine zone. The only people that really knew about the quarantine zone and all that it had to offer were members of the groups responsible for constructing the zone, vampires, and the curious humans that decided they’d satisfy the itch and investigate on their own. One look at Clumsy Guy and Clover knew that he fell into the latter group.

“They keep it walled off to keep the zombies inside,” Clo replied. Her tone left no room for discussion. She sounded as if she were entirely serious, because she was very serious. Nothing prevented Clover from revealing knowledge to humans, whether the knowledge dealt with the city or with the city’s many inhabitants. Hadn’t she already proven her willingness to divulge information? To her, the masquerade was a joke, but a quick thought about her family had her sighing. “I'm kidding. It was an outbreak, I believe. They keep the infected inside. It’s the same as any other quarantine zone. The government’s trying to keep the area contained.”

The pout was evident on her face. She’d wanted to leave it at zombies and let the man fall victim to his own curiosity. Clover never got to have any fun. As an afterthought, she turned her attention from the quarantine zone back to him, “I could show you.” Her voice was playful, and she tried to add a creepy undertone.

[Marty James]

Marty had braced himself, expecting perhaps some elaborate story as to why it was walled off. Something like that was not done for the **** of it. Those walls were to make sure none got in, or none got out. Was anything even inside? He would swear he had seen something move the other night, but could not be sure. The moment the woman had mentioned zombies, Marty couldn’t help but laugh a little. Though the humor he found in such was lost as he looked back at her. She seemed so serious, her words sounded so sure now that he thought about it. Marty could likely have been fooled into such a shimmer of an idea from her. Yet at her confession of it being only a joke, his expression would soften a little. “You had me for a moment…” Shared as his gaze would drift back over to the QZ.

Had it been a time from his past, perhaps Marty would have studied more of the woman’s appearance. She was attractive, mysterious but looking at her all he noticed was the dark color of her hair. Nearly the same color as Grace’s, and Marty tried hard not to think of Grace. Yet his ex was never far from his thoughts. It still hurt, the pain of such a loss…. Gone. If he thought into it, he knew that was all the very reason for his drinking habits of late. There were nights though that no amount of alcohol would ever be enough. Give it time they said, but Marty could not see himself ever getting past this. It was hard to be hopeful, when he was still left so broken.
As he looked out other the walled in area, he could not help but feel a wave of questions building to ask the stranger. Yet he held his tongue, not wishing to overwhelm her with his mass of curiosity. There were people inside there? Were they contagious? Was the government taking care of them? So many questions, but he would share not a one. It likely showed in his expression, he had been told plenty of times in the past that he was easily read.

The woman’s last comment had his eyes shift back towards her. “You could show me?” Spoken with a slight undertone of surprise. Did she really know a way to get inside? Was that even wise? Part of him really wanted to accept the offer right away, but he knew that was unwise. She didn’t even have a jacket, surly she would want to head home for the evening, or maybe head back to the park she had mentioned, and retrieve her jacket. “Maybe another night? If that’s alright? Are you busy tomorrow evening? I could meet you back here and you could show me how to get in?” Marty was not hopeful, he was already taking up her time. He didn’t expect her to want to make plans with a stranger. ”Or maybe you could just tell me? So then tomorrow I’ll know how to get in?”

He didn’t expect her to go in with him, why put yourself in harm’s way just to show a stranger around that meant nothing to her. Going tonight just didn’t feel right for so many reasons, one being that he really needed a drink. He needed several upon several, like a forget his name amount. He had full intentions of such plans already before having met the woman. Perhaps it would have seem reasonable to ask her to join him, yet he doubted he was hardly decent company this evening, so he would not voice such.