17 – Chicago

SEVERAL WEEKS AGO

“What are you talking about?” I asked. I knew that being directly confrontational wasn’t necessarily the best of plans when the other person was holding a weapon.

“He came back,” the man beside me said, “from the dead.” An emphatic nod punctuated each word. “But when he did, something came back with him.”

I couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow at that. “Something came back… with him….” He nodded. the look on his face left no room for contradiction. “So if something came back with him, then where is it?”

The nodding ceased. He looked me up and down, before finally answering. “Whatever else came back didn’t have a body of its own–” I almost sighed in relief. “So of course it has to either make a new body for itself… or steal one.” No sigh there. Not anymore.

Make a new new body? Steal one?

“What on Earth are you talking about?”

He was shaking his head, a dark grin spreading across his face, yet never so much as touching his eyes. He gave one last shake of the head and there he was, back at the back door. With a single mighty effort, he threw both doors opened and stepped out into the night.

For a moment, I just stood and stared, my brain still reeling from the impact of the past few moments. The whole world was going mad, it seemed, starting with this very Church, with that men who had first barged in no more than a few minutes ago, waving a gun in my face, in search of a vanishing young man who may or may not have been his brother and may or may not have been previously diseased.

And there was really nothing I could do but to follow him.

The cops were gone, as I had both expected and feared–although I couldn’t really think of what I would have said to them had they still been there. It wasn’t actually possible to get a concealed carry permit in Illinois, so there would have been that at least.

But then again, I doubt he would have been that interested in complying. He had the air of someone that was both driven and on the edge to complete a mission. A mission that unfortunately at the moment seemed to involve a phantom brother search and destroy.

The man was already a block down the street when I stepped out and hastily locked the church’s main door behind me. I didn’t like to leave the church locked like that, with no way for passerby to get inside and pray, but with things going they way they had, it seemed prudent.

And with that I took off on foot into the darkness, against perhaps my better judgment, specifically chasing after a man with a gun.

It was going to be an interesting night.