The Pale: Volume One, Jacob Long [best beach reads TXT] 📗

the alley, trying to make his body as thin as possible. The ’90s sedan passed noisily, but harmlessly. When it was gone, Adam emerged from the corner and checked for other people. None appeared.

Adam’s hand wasn’t going to stop hurting any time soon, so he refocused on his task and examined the door. He didn’t want to cut his foot, but with a strong kick, he could probably dislodge the whole sheet. A dumb idea, he quickly decided. He needed something to strike it with, so he scanned his immediate area. It was disappointingly void of stray baseball bats and mauls. The nearby dumpster possessed mostly smelly old food that made Adam quickly retreat and refuse to take a second breath before he was well away. Adam nearly tripped over a loose rock while tactfully fleeing from the stench. The alley had fallen into disrepair long ago, and a large chunk of pavement had been crushed and extricated from the ground. It sat in place like a happy puzzle piece, and Adam lifted it out easily. The chunk was of decent size and weight. Adam needed to hold it with two hands. It wasn’t perfect, but it was more than enough to do the job, so Adam carried it back to the door. There he hoisted the chunk above his head and smashed the dislocated rubble into the glass door like a Neanderthal. The glass held yet again, but at least Adam didn’t have to worry about medical bills for the rock. He struck it a few more times, and the glass shattered, falling onto the carpet inside. One careful reach through the new hole, and the front door was unlocked.

It was a small place. A good deal of their inventory seemed to be freshly outdated women’s fashion. The glass display counter that occupied the left side of the store was filled with perfume and cologne bottles. As Adam had determined earlier, scant men’s fashions were hanging on the wall in the back. All the clothing items were either jeans with a little embroidering on the back pockets or silk button-up shirts. The kind of thing a metrosexual man could just barely get away with at a club playing bad music for drunk women. Dress shoes lined the floor.

Adam quickly proceeded to tear the clothing items from their racks and slide them on. It was difficult because Adam came to realize that it hurt to open and close his right hand. The pants, though Adam’s size, were a little tight in the crotch region. Slick black socks helped cushion the otherwise uncomfortable shoes. The only bright side to the whole exchange was that the buttoned dress-shirt was surprisingly well made and practical.

Freshly clothed, Adam made his way over to the register. Though having no retail experience, Adam didn’t even know what to do to open it. He hit random keys for a time but achieved nothing positive. Finally, he decided there was probably some code involved and let it be.

Adam closed his eyes and sighed. He just couldn’t catch any breaks, but he didn’t know just how bad it could get. Suddenly, there was the sound of a well-maintained engine winding down just outside the shop. Before Adam even opened his eyes, he could see the flickering red-and-blue pattern through the thin veil of his eyelids.

In a panic, Adam’s eyes darted around the room for an exit. In the intermittent flashes of light, Adam saw a single door at the far back of the shop. It was a fire exit, but Adam disregarded the warning about the loud, persistent alarm and sprang for it without hesitation. Strangely, when he shoved the door open, a loud, persistent alarm sounded, immediately giving away his position. To Adam, it didn’t matter because he thought he could get away, but it really didn’t matter because there was already a police officer waiting for him in the alley.

On the order of “Freeze!” Adam halted instantly, with the irritation apparent on his face. The heavy emergency door started swinging closed, and Adam slyly braced it open with his closest foot.

The officer stood several yards away from Adam. He was young. Adam couldn’t see in the darkness of the alley, but he could hear it in the guy’s voice.

“Let the door close!” the cop shouted over the deafening noise of the alarm.

Adam didn’t exactly have a clever way to ruse his escape plan, so he sprang into action, ducking back inside the building and yanking the door shut behind him. The alarm stopped, and Adam was left with the echoes of it in his head.

“Hey! Freeze! Damn it!” the cop cursed.

Already the cop who was in the car had gotten out, drawn his weapon, and moved expeditiously into the store. Adam was trapped. His face was hot and slick with panic. His breaths filled his ears, and his heart pounded away. He couldn’t go to jail. No way. People would start asking questions. They’d run his prints. Someone would recognize him, and his face would be run through a database or something. It wouldn’t take them long to contact the Army. No one could see him there. No one. But he was already so weak and tired. He couldn’t fight. He couldn’t flee. Despair quickly took hold, and his body urged him strongly to collapse to the floor in defeat. He could just await his inevitable incarceration. He could quit.

Adam heard the doorknob behind him jiggle. The officer in the alley had given chase but couldn’t get inside. The door was locked from outside entry. That gave Adam an idea. He couldn’t fight them both right then, but he did have one thing he could try. There was a chance none of it was a dream. There was a chance he really could harvest energy from other humans. There was a chance he really was the champion of the Wheel of Fate. That was a slim, crazy chance, but for Adam, it was better than quitting, and he didn’t have a moment to lose.

Adam pressed the crash bar and threw all his weight against the door. The alarm split the air once more as the door swung into the cop on the outside, who cried out in surprise as he was knocked to the ground. With an order to halt following him, Adam hurriedly dove on top of the officer sprawling on the pavement. He went for the cop’s gun, which the young man had managed to hold on to. Adam wrapped his hands around the weapon and squeezed his finger into the guard. His right hand was screaming for him to stop being so careless.

The two struggled for the gun. The cop was surprisingly strong, but Adam only wanted to aim the barrel in a general direction. He managed to point it into the opening of the back exit and squeeze off two shots. He didn’t want to hit the cop inside, only frighten him. He needed to the cop to believe the perp had control of his partner’s gun just long enough for Adam to take care of the cop he wrestled with on the ground.

The door closed a moment later, and only grunts of exertion occupied the dead air. Adam needed to end the fight quickly and incapacitate the cop so he wouldn’t be resisted when he tried to pull out a nice juicy portion of the guy’s soul. Luckily, the fight had already gone to the ground. It would be a problem for most people, but it was Adam’s home. The officer’s only concern was for the security of his gun, and he thought Adam wanted it. He was surprised when Adam arduously pressed the safety into place and took one hand out of the struggle. Adam bent his free arm and struck the young cop near the eye with a sharp elbow. When the cop didn’t show any signs of relenting, Adam hit him again.

Adam wished it weren’t so dark. He thought maybe he could feel the cop weaken in his resistance, but without being able to see the guy’s face, he didn’t know for certain if he was incapacitating him. All he could do was strike him in the skull a third time. On that last strike, the young officer’s body went suddenly limp. Adam’s occupied hand was suddenly less grappling for the gun and more holding up the young cop’s flaccid arm. The cop’s defeat was so sudden that Adam became concerned that he’d killed him. There was always a possibility that a hit could land a little too well. However, the cop’s body was still wriggling deliriously in a half-aware attempt to subdue his suspect. He was alive, mostly.

Adam hooked his free hand into the crook of the cop’s elbow and bent it, rolling into a more physically dominant position with the gun pointed in a safe direction. He mounted the cop’s chest, using one knee to subdue the cop’s thick left arm. The other knee he pressed into the cop’s chest to help hold him down. Adam then used both of his arms to wrest the pistol completely from the young cop’s weakening hand.

For good measure, Adam clicked the pistol’s safety off and fired two more shots into the sturdy emergency door in case the young cop’s partner was convincing himself it was safe to poke his head out of the fire exit. Adam actually heard one bullet ricochet off the building behind him, and he flinched, tucking his head into his shoulders like a turtle. He cringed inwardly for a brief moment. Then he sighed and took his leg off the poor officer’s chest. The cop’s consciousness was draining with every passing second. Adam had definitely given him a concussion. He hoped the cop would be all right, but it was time for the moment of truth. Adam rubbed his sore right hand briefly and then held the cop’s mouth open just as he had in death. The transference was effortless and immediate. The alleyway was illuminated by the green glow of the officer’s flowing soul, and Adam was filled with the warmth of pure life from his heart to the top of his scalp. But then, to Adam’s chagrin, the cop who he was victimizing opened his eyes. They focused in the exact way Adam hoped they wouldn’t, and the cop stared wide-eyed at the sight of the impossibility Adam was performing.

The cop began to struggle, and Adam held him down with all his strength, which was growing by the second. He didn’t know how much soul energy would be enough or too much. He didn’t know what would happen if the cop overpowered Adam or just moved in a way that vexed the process. Adam didn’t even know if the guy could survive having a piece of his soul taken after suffering a concussion. There was so much that Adam couldn’t account for, but in the back of his mind, it occurred to him that maybe he didn’t want the man to fight because he was enjoying the feast too much.

No longer content to wait, the officer inside the store kicked the emergency door open and beamed his flashlight right onto the scene of Adam feeding. The loud fire alarm split the night once more. The cop didn’t even know what he was looking at, but it froze him in the doorway. Startled, Adam cut his feeding short and looked into the light. His eyes had become freakishly green and luminescent, seen even against the intense beam of the large flashlight. They dimmed back to brown in another moment as Adam waited for the formless threat behind the light to make his move. Meanwhile, the young cop’s eyes rolled into the back of his head, and his eyelids fluttered closed.

The cop threatening Adam managed to speak. “Eh . . . um, freeze! Put your hands up!”

Adam hesitated. The cop was likely drawing down on him with a gun held just to the right of the overbearing flashlight, but Adam hesitated in following the order because he questioned internally if those kinds of things could even hurt him anymore.

“Put your hands up!” the cop repeated, louder and more forceful. “Get up and step away from the officer!”

Adam gave the silhouette a withering look. He’d learned to hate having orders barked at him somewhere along the line, but his cooler self prevailed. Grudgingly, Adam raised his hands to shoulder height and moved to release his unconscious foe. After standing, he faced the cop with the flashlight and backed away from the scene.

The intruding cop stepped closer to his fallen partner, allowing the fire door to close behind him. The resulting silence left Adam’s ears ringing, and when the officer shined his flashlight down on his partner, Adam blinked the photo-bleaching out of his eyes as fast as he could. He discerned first that the officer was a black man, older than his partner, and not as well muscled. His head had been shaven clean. The ambient light glow from the flashlight illuminated little else as the cop checked his partner’s pulse, but he used