Night holds the empty streets.  A windblown Big Mac wrapper rolls down the street like a tumbleweed in a ghost town.  And for all the emptiness of this stretch of asphalt and concrete, it might as well be a ghost town.

A soft shuffling sussurates down the lonely street, gently echoing off the buildings like the feathery scrapings of a dove's wings.  In fact, it's very much like the failing, frantic wingbeats of a dying bird.  

Down that lonely stretch of urban abandonment lopes two figures:  a man, and a dog.  The man, is more boy than man, and the dog is more wild animal than domesticated pet.  Strangely, the two figures seem almost to be of one entity, or one mind.  The man-boy walks with long strides, face down, but eyes up as he gazes about his surroundings.  The "dog," a sandy lean animal, trots beside him in those quick, purposeful movements of an animal honed by instinct and stripped of any unnecessary thought or reason.  The two figures look half-wild, nomadic, vagabonds in from the frontier.

The figure of the man wears a pair of dirt- and grass-stained jeans, faded, frayed, and torn.  His white shirt, beneath his similarly worn denim jacket, is more grey-brown than actually white.  Something, like spare change, jingles in his pocket.  There's a dark blue cap that hides his eyes, a few locks of shaggy brown hair sticking out from under it.  Something looks out of place about the hat, but in the dark gloom and the intermittent light of the lamps, much detail can't be picked out about it.

He's been walking since the night began, since the cool moist soil crumbled away from him and he rose out of the loamy forest undergrowth.  And the night before, he was walking.  And the night before that.  Miles and miles and miles of ground disappearing under his loping, canine-like strides.  He can't remember the number of shoes he's worn out in the past year alone.  He doesn't really care.  He just keeps walking, walking, until the footwear falls away from his feet.  And even then, he just keeps walking.  Sometimes he stops, buys a new pair.  Sometimes he stops for awhile.

He's been to the coasts, back and forth, from one border to the other, and everywhere in between.  Through the empty forests, their sentinel trees untouched for decades, maybe centuries.  Through the prairies and the deserts and the plains.  Through towns great and small, and occasionally through the massive cities, in their own ways just as empty and bleak as the wilderness.

This is his penitence. To be the Wanderer.  The Nomad.  The Vagabond spectre of age and immortality.

And now the stranger, the nomad, has come here to this city.  This city whose name he does not know, or remember, or really care about.  He may have been here before:  a few years ago, decades, maybe a century ago.  Again, he can't remember.  New York looks much like San Francisco to him, and the Rockies much like the Appalachians.  The people are different, the accents, the climate.  But more and more it's all blending together into seamless stretch of memory.  There are a few points which stand out, like bright spots of blood on an otherwise featureless grey quilt.  

But the purpose of his footsteps left him long ago, if it had ever been there.  He used to follow a course, more or less, for those first few years.  But even that had been less of a purpose and more of just some kind of compromise with himself, some need to do something.

Funny to think it.  He'd hated walking:  the marching, that is, back in the days when he'd march.  But maybe all that was just because someone had been making him do it, telling him which way to go and at what pace.  Now he was free to make his own path.  And funny thing was, even though he had that power, he could now make no real decision.

But, if there's one thing he's learned through the long endless nights of wandering, it's that despite what he is, despite what he was made into, there is always a certain etiquette that must be followed.

He remembers those first few nights in the wild, waking sore, with that ravenous hunger inside him unlike anything he'd ever felt.  Not just a hunger in his belly like when he'd be on the march without food, but a hunger deep inside his soul.  He didn't know what had happened.  He only had hazy, feverish memories.  Lying on the forest floor, the trees standing silent and tall around him, the rocks like vague cancerous lumps rising from the ground.  The crack of rifles and the boom of artillery had faded long, long ago.  He'd been there, weaving in and out of consciousness, for how long he didn't know.  Could have been hours, days.  The sun had set, and the forest was dark and alive with the susurrus of July crickets.  He could smell the loamy soil of the forest, complete with rich decay.  And he could smell blood.  His blood.  Their blood.

And there was the shuffling, the rustling in the underbrush.  An animal perhaps, a coyote or raccoon, drawn to the smell of death.  But it sounded too much like footsteps, too regular.  He heard it rummaging through the bodies.  He tried to turn his head and fire shot through his body.  In the moonlight he could only make out a  vague huddled form, long lank hair framing a face he couldn't make out.  Was it...human?  But no, it couldn't be.  It was hunched over in a way that was all too reminiscent of some animal beast.  And it was naked, so he thought.  Caked, he thought, in dirt.  And then it turned towards him...

He shakes his head, driving those memories away.  In any case...in those early nights, he'd thought he was the only one.  Well, aside from the one who made him.  And then he was surprised to find more.  At first it was another like him, a wanderer, who had told him what indeed he was, and who had shown him how exactly to use the powers he'd been granted.  And then, even later, it had been revealed to him that there was an entire society of these things, these beasts.  And they had their own rules and laws.  They were like monsters wearing the coat of civilized beings.

But he's learned, no matter what he thinks of these creatures, that their rules must be obeyed above all.

The funny thing about these creatures, these fellow beasts he belongs to, is their knack for being able to go to ground, being able to hide so damn well.  They're right there in front of you in so many ways, and yet they are such experts at hiding.  But in order to adhere to their rules and their etiquettes, he must find them.  It's not that he's much of a stickler for the rules.  Especially not rules created by these monsters.  But he's found, over the years, that well, for the sake of peace sometimes its best to follow those rules.

And so, with each town and city and territory he moves into, he is faced with rooting these creatures out, like a hunter almost, finding their hiding places and the secret institutions they have erected to surround themselves.  Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's not.  Sometimes they find him.  And sometimes he never finds them, as if they're not there at all.

The "dog" has been loping back and forth across the street, nose to the ground, following a myriad of scents that the man is only vaguely aware of.  He glances at the animal as it sniffs around in a corner near an alley.  He continues on his way, walking down the road.  The animal will keep up, or it will go it's separate way.  In either case, he's not worried about it.

As he walks among the empty alleys and streets, he knows he'll need to find some place to hole up for the next few days...for however long he decides to stay.  Preferably someplace out of the way, quiet.  Some place where he can be alone if need be.  He's always preferred the wild places.  One of the reasons he's never much liked the cities like these.  Rural areas, and if need be suburbs, have always been his preferred hunting grounds and havens.  Reminds him of home, maybe.  But a city park will do just as well, if need be.

As he makes his way through the nighttime cityscape, he begins looking for such a spot, searching out for some secluded little corner of wilderness here in the middle of concrete, steel, and glass.  The "dog" lopes up past him, running briskly ahead, and he runs his fingers through its soft sandy fur.  

He opens his senses, raising his head in the air and sniffing.  The reeks and stenches of the city flood his nostrils:  sewers, feces, urine.  Oil, exhaust, gasoline.  But there, in a corner of the tapestry of scents, is the smell of grass, and trees, and a few city-dwelling critters...

((Will continue in Rape Street Park))