Vigilante

The night had finally taken over and turned the city into a place of nightmares. Once the sun’s warm glow vanished from the sky, the city became a dangerous place; one of devils and demons, monsters and spooks, but none of them the type you might think. These were the monsters, not from imagination, but from reality. They looked just like you or me, or him, but they weren’t.

These creatures of the night preyed upon the weak and struck fear into their hearts. They thought nothing of cutting up a man’s soul and devouring it before him. They would steal one’s self respect and try to sell it back at top dollar, but by that time, no one wanted it back anyway.

The night wasn’t always like this. There was a time when people could walk out in the open or down an alley at night with nothing to fear but alley cat or two. People could once be seen milling around with nothing to do, but no more. They were jittery and shunned the darkness for the disease they knew it was. A malignant tumor that would eat away at you till you were nothing more then a heap of lost morals and stolen virtues.

Cops had no hope of stopping this, they were nothing when compared to how far a desperate man could go. For every person they arrested, ten more took his place. There was no stopping the crimes of the back alleys late at night when no one was around to stop it and no day light to ward off the attack.

No one really had the courage to fight the shadows themselves... no one that is until he showed up. He had seen and was literally sickened by the things the darkness hid. He knew it’s dangers, but that did little to detour him from putting a stop to it.

He was a vigilante of sorts. He didn’t crave vengeance, but he hated seeing people hurt for the mere fourteen dollars in their pocket. He had seen all the things that went on in the shadows and was going to do something about it.

He was fresh out of high school, working his way through college as a photographer in the local newspaper. His boss hired him when she’d seen the film he was hawking around. He’d managed to catch a few good shots of a man attempting to jack a car in Mid Town. She liked it and took him on immediately. She said it took guts to catch film like that, guts and a damn steady hand with a touch of bravado.

Well, he certainly fit the mold.

Derek, just nineteen and already on his second year of college, was the cities next great vigilante. He’d lived here all his life and knew every back alley and short cut. The shadows were just that to him, a shadow. He didn’t fear them as so many did. This was his city damn it! He wasn’t about to let some wankers take it away from the people.

Nightly, he would dawn his gear. Black jeans and black t shirt covered his perfectly chiseled physique. Around his waste was a belt that held an ancient weapon. The pair of sai he carried were finely honed weapons of steel. They sang through the night air with quiet efficiency of a sniper’s bullet, just closer.

His body had, over the last year, become a road map of abuse. Scars mutilated his rich skin, leaving discolored lacerations. Above his eye brow was a jagged cut, looking almost like a crescent moon. He’d been sliced up horribly in a knife fight six months ago. A gang banger had managed to get in close enough to slice him seven inches along his abs. That one was still tender some days.

Despite his wounds, he blended into the shadows perfectly. From his clothes to his near ebony skin, he faded into the darkness without a hint of having been there in the first place. Except for the thief neatly tied to a post.

The spring rain storms had finally come and were threatening to make a fuss when he got ready to hit the pavement. The soft perfume of rain mixed strangely with the stench of car exhaust. Derek was walking patrol in the southern quarter when he heard a
shout not far off. Without a moments hesitation, he made his way to the source in time to see a group of boys, around his age, beating a young woman.

She was in denim, her knees covered in the city’s grime. She was trying to crawl away, begging them to stop. The teens were yelling at her, calling her repulsive things. They kicked at her, hit her, grabbed and ripped at her shirts which were turning red.

Derek stepped into the fray, a sai poised to strike. He moved easily, like a dancer on stage, and sliced the first one he came to along his back, effectively immobilizing him. The scream that came from him lips alerted the others to his presence.

He jumped into the middle of them and took a hold on the woman, lifting her to a little roughly to his feet.

“Run,” he whispered in her ear. “Get to a phone and call emergency.”

His was not a request and she scurried quickly away. Another of the gang bangers tried to stop her, Derek didn’t falter in slicing him along his arm. The boy cursed and clutched his bleeding arm.

“Who the hell you think you are, f****r?!” The bleeding boy shouted.

“Just a figment of your imagination,” Derek grinned.

That was all it took to send the group attacking him from all sides. They treated him the same as the woman, beating him, kicking. Someone shoved him outside the fray, allowing him the ability to move more freely.

They started to jump him again, this time one by one. They had all taken out knives, this had just gone from a bad situation to a deadly one. These gang bangers weren’t going to stall in killing him, Derek was about to become a bloody smear in a back alley. If tonight was his night to die, then he’d die fighting.

There were only five of them -- four, since one of them had slinked off with a wicked tear in his back. The first one to bum rush was a tall punk with tiger on his shirt. His hand was wrapped round a length of chain. He swung it expertly and came after Derek with evil intent in his eyes.

Derek had no way of dodging every swing. The thick chain connected harshly with his right shoulder, nearly popping it from the joint. He grunted in pain, feeling a numbness nearly take control of his arm. He tangled his sai in the chain and ripped it from Tiger’s grip, swinging the chain himself to connect it with the head. Tiger, flushed and his eyes rolled back as he passed out onto the alley’s ground.


The next attack was from two. They both came at him, taking advantage of Derek’s injured shoulder and missing sai, as it had left him along with the chain. The pair managed to drag Derek to the ground, using their combined weight to keep him from moving, while the leader sauntered over. An evil grin had spread across his lips, a grin that Derek had seen before. The leader, whom Derek now recognized as Pedro Mendez, stood at the feet of our hero.

“So, what’s a brotha doin’ here? Goin’ all Bat Man and s**t.”

Derek winked and smiled, never showing the fear that starting to be pushed off by adrenaline.

“This is MS turf! And you just lost me a w***e. I’ll be generous though, just to show ya’ll that ‘Smallz’ Mendez is a good man.”

Mendez knelt over Derek, pulling a butterfly blade from his pocket and opening it with a flourish. Mendez dragged the blade straight down, drawing a line of crimson and ripping open Derek’s trademark shirt. Derek grimaced in pain, but didn’t utter a response. He just took it.

“You’re either strong or stupid, n***a!” Mendez yelled. “Let him go, I can take him.”

The two others backed off, letting their boss finish off the boy in black.

Still kneeling over Derek, Mendez raised the knife over head and sank the steel blade deep into Derek’s right shoulder. A shout of pain escaped his lips and he tried to roll away. The knife was ripped free and ground against a bone on it’s exit, making Derek cry out once more.

“Not so tough now are you?!”

Derek knew what would be coming. The next time the blade came to him, it would be the last. He knew this, as surely as he knew how to breathe. He’d been watching knife fights and been involved in enough of them to know what was going to happen next. Mendez would aim for the soft belly and stab continually till Derek was dead. He knew that there was one thing that most people did, and was hoping that Mendez would follow the suit.

Derek, already loosing far too much blood, had only the one shot to make this all work. Mendez raised his had again and leaned into the downward momentum of the strike. That was the mistake Derek was hoping for. With Mendez off balance, Derek grabbed at the right wrist and flipped himself so that he was now on top. With a fluid movement, Derek shoved the blade into the chest cavity of the Mexican gang leader.

He reached inside Mendez’s jacket pocket and tore out the .9 mil that was in the shoulder holster. He turned to his left and fired off two rounds. One bullet landed high and in the left of one boy, striking his heart and dropping him with a sickening thud. The second round was a glancing blow that slid along the last boy’s side, who then turned and ran out of the alley as if the devil himself were hunting him down.

Any energy reserves Derek had were being shut down, zapped by his loss of blood. He leaned to his right and fell over, feeling the sickness that crept along the alley’s floor. He looked up to the sky, black now with the night and thick clouds.

The sky started to release it’s tears, crying heavily. Derek laid on the cold ground, his hair damp from the rain and his body sore. Blood ran from the cuts across his arms and chest. Blood was leaving him too fast. A shadow was creeping up alongside him, reaching into his vision. His warm, electric blue eyes started to loose that spark until it was gone completely and they finally closed.

All he wanted to do was rest. It was time.

N. Strong

Reviews

[The Elder]

An interesting and exciting short story, well written with only a couple
of spelling errors, "... develop He knew it’s dangers, but that did little to detour (deter) him from putting a stop to it."
"..., he would dawn (don) his gear."
A surprising and disappointing ending. This had potential to develop into a much longer work.
Keep up the good work.