The First

by Glen Kenner

  -No. I’m not. Your tech won’t find Seconds. Seconds don’t want to be found, they don’t walk down the street and hang out in Starbucks, and they don’t give a shit about being accepted. They live to kill and that will never change.

  -This technology will find them. And, even more importantly, it will find the female First of the prophecy.

  Shit. The prophecy. That’s what was bouncing around in the back of my head a few hours ago. The fucking prophecy.

  -The prophecy isn’t real. You believe that ancient shit?

  -It is, Jonathan, and I do. But I’m not going to debate that with you. If you are willing to accept that it might be true, just a fraction of a percentage of the chance that it’s true, this technology, as I’ve described and in other ways we can’t even imagine in decades and centuries to come, will be the only warning we get. It’s like having a huge tornado warning speaker near your house. You have those here in St Louis, don’t you? You probably don’t even think about them because you think you’re indestructible, or because you have a death wish, but I bet your neighbors race down the steps into their basements and cellars when that warning goes off a couple of times every summer. The odds of your neighbor’s house getting ripped away from the face of the earth are infinitesimal, but the city put up the speakers, the weather agency runs the software, the government pays for the whole thing, and the people sleep soundly at night because they trust the system to warn them. And that’s what we’ll do. With or without you, we’ll do it. And when that siren goes off that the first female First is out there, I’m going to hunt her down and save us all.

  -You mean yourself.

  -I mean every First. And probably every Third. You think she will stop at just killing the Firsts? Once the Firsts are gone, there will be a large power vacuum. The female First will step into that vacuum and take over the world.

  He pauses and I’m wondering if he’s still talking about the prophecy or his own grandiose dreams.

  -I could really use your help, Jonathan. You are uniquely suited for this opportunity. For this chance to do something for all mankind. This is your time to right all those wrongs! That’s why you’re here, in St Louis. I know that. It’s honorable. Truly. Making amends, probably as a promise to someone you loved dearly. But imagine it on a world-wide scale that affects all of humanity for thousands of years to come!

  -Kingsley, you need help. And quick. I’ve seen this before. It never ends well.

  -I don’t say this lightly, Jonathan. You are either with us or against us. It’s that simple. It’s just that goddamn simple. One last time: are you with us?

  -No. But it’s been great. Let’s never do this again.

  Kingsley looks at me for a solid minute with so much emotion on his face. Anger, fear, confusion. It’s not like him to show his hand. I taught him so much better. And he really does need psychological help. If it’s not too late. It probably is. I’d pity him if I could summon any feeling other than contempt.

  Time for me to exit stage right. I pull the door handle but it doesn’t budge. Break it or use Kingsley’s head to break the window? Choices, choices. As if he is reading my mind, and the fucker is probably working on software to do that too, he pushes a button and one of the doors up front opens and closes. Then my door opens. Damn if this guy in front of me isn’t a big ugly shithead. And so I tell him that. He stands there, black slacks, nice white long-sleeve button down dress shirt, black tie, crew cut, too close to the door for me to get out without moving him. It’s raining just a bit. I didn’t realize it before. He’s getting wet and just standing there.

  -This is Pauley.

  Kingsley raises his voice to be heard over the patter of rain on the car roof.

  -That’s his surname. Pauley. He was a star football player and wrestler at the University of Arkansas. Being that he was so valuable to the school, when he started to get a fever, one of the coaches immediately sent him to the hospital on campus. By time he got there, they thought he was going to die. And 98% of boys like him do just that, right? Not that those doctors knew that. But all his organs were failing and he was having convulsions, so they hooked up a bunch of tubes and dosed him with a huge amount of sedatives and wheeled him into the ICU. He was going to die, they knew, but they eased it for him and made it look like they were trying. As we both know, the story turned out differently for Pauley. He survived. But he flatlined first, like we all do, and the nurse who just happened to be standing near him made the mistake of bending over to watch his last seconds on this earth. He popped back to life, shoved her back with both hands out of sheer reflex and caved in her chest. Just crushed it really. And that did something to Pauley. In all my time as a First, and all of the stories I’ve seen on the boards I set up on the dark web, I’ve never heard a story like this one. Pauley got out of bed, ripping his tubes from his veins and so on, and raped that nurse in the last seconds of her life. He confided in me that he had never been so sexually excited as when he killed that woman in such a torturous way. My words, not his. At any rate, he ran from the hospital minutes later and somehow survived from town to town throughout Arkansas. Another First found him in Little Rock. That was in, oh, 1972. Or ‘73. I’d ask him which year, but I told him several years ago never to speak again. And he hasn’t. He has been a very good boy.

  Well, I knew how this was going to go, I’m thinking. Really wish I hadn’t eaten so much and drunk all of that wine.

  -Pauley, please help Mr Smith out of the car. Our business, unfortunately, is done.

  I move as fast as I can. I duck out and try to shoot past him but a blind man could have grabbed on to me and Pauley seems to have excellent eye-hand coordination. He grabs me by the balls with his right hand and my hair by his left and picks me up and tosses me over the car twenty feet into an empty lot. To be fair to myself, once I realized that he was going to throw me, I let him. I didn’t try to hold on or punch him somehow. Throwing me got me as far away as I could’ve gotten on my own. It just hurts a bit.

  Pauley comes around the car. His shirt is soaked and sticking to his torso. He holds his head level, not down like a normal person would in the rain. Pauley doesn’t seem to register anything but me. That’s a bad sign. Just then Kingsley, from inside the limo with the window still halfway down, calls out Pauley’s name. Pauley looks back at him without turning his body. Kingsley seems to hesitate.

  -You better let him get it out of his system, Kingsley. If not, he may turn on you someday.

  I yell that from more than twenty feet away and my voice is deadened by the rain. It gets a small laugh out of Kingsley and so he says nothing more. Just looks at Pauley and nods his head toward me. Pauley turns his head back and I’m pretty sure, even though the light is bad and rain is in my eyes and I am still buzzed, the big dumb necrophiliac smiles. But not at my wit. He’s looking at my leg and the two inch sawed off copper pipe that I apparently landed on and is now sticking out through my right thigh. I wish I hadn’t seen that because now I feel it and it hurts like fuck.

  Pauley takes a step toward me and stops, loosens his tie, removes it, rolls it up, and puts it in this front pocket. That’s good training right there. Then he walks up to me faster than I would have thought and kicks me hard in the right thigh. Blinding pain explodes from my leg, up my thigh, and right into my brain. My back arches and my arms fling out instinctively grabbing for anything to help pull me away from the pain.

  My left hand wraps around something, a two by four I think, and I squeeze tight, sit up fast and swing it around wide and fast at Pauley’s temple. The two by four is one foot too short. He opens his mouth in a huge grin and cocks his foot back to kick me again when I throw the piece of wood and hit him right between the eyes. A perfect shot. This is the part where he dies. His head whips back and he stumbles backward a step and then another and then kind of slowly sits down. He’s not dead. But I must have disconnected a main wire in his head somewhere. But then faster than he went down, he gets right back up.

&nb
sp; Fuck me. I need to do the same.

  This is really going to fucking hurt. I try to go slow but the pain explodes again through my leg and into my head. White light, screaming, the whole nine yards. I open my eyes and Pauley is standing over me. He reaches down and grabs me by the underarms and pulls up. Lifts me off the ground. Higher. He’s holding me up like you would a toddler and I realize that he’s talking to me. Softly. Slowly. He says he’s going to kill me real bad. Real bad?

  -He’s talking!

  I yell out over Pauley’s head, through the rain, at Kingsley.

  -Pauley’s talking even though you told him not to!

  I think to myself, that’s funny. Really. That is funny. The idiot giant is going to hold me up like a child, I’ll act like a child. So I kick with my left foot and then my right and connect with his balls. It hurts him. I see it in his eyes. But he doesn’t move. I realize while kicking him, I’ve somehow lost my shoes. I’m barefoot. It’s ok, I don’t mind. I’ve been barefoot for long stretches of time in my life. But I really like those Vans. And that makes me mad. And being held up like this makes me mad. And Kingsley just sitting there in his limo, dry from the rain, having others do his dirty work, makes me mad. All that pain just sort of focuses in one spot in my brain and I pull back and headbutt Pauley so fucking hard that I think I cracked both of our skulls.

  He drops me and I land on my feet.

  I connect my right and then left fist with this nose and then land powerhouse punches on his kidneys. Over and over, faster and faster. His face is ground chuck and ribs on both sides have snapped. He lets out a moan and then a small yelp and falls backwards trying to press his elbows hard into his sides to stop the pain. He’s on his back and I grab up the two by four and like I did with Sarah earlier today, I stand on either side of him and bring down that wood on his forehead with the hopes that I really did crack his skull and it can be cracked even further. It makes a wet cracking sound and then, with no forethought, I spin around on my left foot until I’m standing at his side and thrust the two by four into his chest like a stake into the heart of a vampire.

  Pauley spits up blood and then goes still.

  -Fucker. Should have kept your mouth closed like your boss told you.

  -What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

  What? Who? Before I can turn around and see who is behind me, I’m picked up, yet again tonight, and thrown across the fucking lot right into an old free-standing brick wall. I must have turned a bit in the air, not enough to see who threw me but enough so that when I hit the wall, the bricks that I smash into sort of break away and I end up sitting there sideways, three feet off the ground probably, scrunched into a ball, my head just a foot from my knees. Sitting in a brick wall. In the rain. Shoeless. I look up and turn my head and see the guy who threw me. He’s walking my way. Hey, I know this guy. He was a pro wrestler for the WWF back in the sixties and seventies. I saw him on tv on Sundays when wrestling was just two guys climbing into the ring and maybe using a folding chair on each other. No pay-for-view specials. No grand entrances or cage matches. Just folding chairs and maybe sand to blind your opponent. Wrestling at the Chase every Sunday. Yeah. He’s German, I think. And he’s a friend of Maurice’s. Maybe-

  -John Smith.

  No German accent. Could the accent have been fake too? For fuck’s sake, of course it could.

  -This is going to be an honor. Killing the Eater of Hearts in battle.

  -Devourer of Hearts. I like that better. Devourer.

  -Maurice is always talking about you. Bragging about how strong and fast you are. And smart. But you look like a little pussy to me, John Smith. A little pussy that’s gotten by for far too long on a fabricated rep. I doubt you were ever in Rome. Lying little pussy.

  -Hey, look. We don’t have to do this. I’m a fan. The Fuhrer of Terror. Yeah, I caught you on tv every Sunday. Hell, Maurice and I were ringside down at the Chase half a dozen times.

  -Yeah?

  -Yeah!

  -Well la dee fucking da, John Smith. I’m pushing a thousand years and my time with the WWF doesn’t mean shit to me. I’m just sorry you never climbed into the ring back then and we could go at it in front of thousands of fans across the country.

  -Look, Fuhrer, you’re the expert here. Let’s just fake a few piledrivers, a chokeslam. A facebuster. Give Kingsley a show. Then I’ll lie still, you get back in the car, and life goes on. Just help me out from this wall. I’m kind stuck and my left arm seems to be broken in a few places, and we’ll-

  -I’ll help you out, John Smith.

  -Thanks, Fuhrer. Just call me Joh-

  He grabs me by the arms, sort of locking me in, and it hurts like hell because my humerus is crunched, and he pulls me out and holds me up. More holding me up. What is with this? And the Fuhrer is tall. Six ten, probably. A foot taller than me. So I’m dangling but I just go with it and sort of feebly kick my feet. Put on a show for Kingsley with my new friend.

  -What exactly, uh, is this move?

  Right then he takes a big step to the side, turns my body so that my head is pointing towards some solid brick, and starts to pound me head first into the wall. Over and over. And he’s slowly walking down the wall as he goes, making sure to smash my head into fresh brick every few slams. This is not what I thought we were going to do.

  I try breaking out of his hold but damn he’s fucking strong. And I am buzzed and bloated like a beached whale about to explode. So I make the best of the situation. My right hand’s pressed up against his stomach, so I pull it back as far as I can until it’s at his side and then I pull my fingers together tight and straight, lock those joints as best I can, and push my fingertips into his side. I can see his face and he hasn’t looked at me the whole time he’s been pounding my head into the wall but now he pauses for just a second and looks down into my eyes.

  I don’t know what’s going on in his over-sized melon but he starts to slam my head into the bricks faster.

  I push my fingers in more with quick movement and tear through the shirt fabric and then through his skin. He clenches that side of his torso a bit and keeps pounding my head into the wall. I push in further. And further. Warm wet flesh. Then bone. It’s a rib, one of the lower ones. Maybe number eight. Now’s he clenching in his side more, trying to bunch it up, but if he would just let go of my arms and drop me, my hand would come out.

  But he doesn’t.

  Fuck if he doesn’t slam my head so hard into the wall that my head goes through. Shit, that hurt. I’m looking at the other side of the brick wall. There’s a nice graffiti mural on this side. Huh.

  Then he pulls me back through and shifts his weight to his outside foot so that he can really put me through the wall this time. I fucking push my hand three more inches into his torso, wrap my fingers around that rib and yank it back so hard it snaps and comes right out. That gets his attention.

  Damn if he can’t howl with pain.

  He drops me and I land on the ground on my back at his feet. I look up and he’s bent forward a bit with one hand pressed against the hole in his side. Time to step up my game. I flip the rib around, sharp broken end pointing down and drive it through the top of his boot, through his foot, and all the way into the dirt.

  Oh shit, that must have hurt.

  His upper body doubles over so fast that he hits his head on the brick wall which makes him stumble backwards. Except that he can only move one foot and so he reflexively steps back toward me and reaches down for his foot. With my right hand still wrapped around the rib, I force my broken left arm up. Fuck me that hurts. I grab onto his tie. He didn’t take it off like Pauley did. Shame shame. I pull down hard, forcing his head even further closer to his own impaled foot, whip the rib out of his shoe, up and away, and then bring it back with all my strength and bury it into his temple. He makes no sound but his eyes go wide, his mouth freezes in a scream, and he falls over.

  I sit still for half a minute and then push myself up with my right hand.
>
  The limo is still next to the lot a good 70 or 80 feet away. The window is still half down, though I don’t see Kingsley’s face. I then see Pauley slowly cross in front of the limo, the headlights showing him hunched over, his clothes mud-caked, headed to the driver’s door. He survived a two by four to the chest at only, what, 50 years tops from First Death? That’s not supposed to happen. Not only survived, but walking 15 minutes later.

  And then he’s in the limo and drives away.

  What the actual fuck.

  I’m not the smartest First, but I haven’t made it this long by being careless. I shuffle a bit over to the Fuhrer, clench each side of his head in my hands and twist. More and more. Then the other way. Fuck he’s got a thick neck. Back and forth, cracking his cervical vertebrae bit by bit with muted crunching. Too weak with my broken arm to snap it, but back and forth until it’s all loose. Then with one foot on the back of his neck, I pull up and rip his head off and toss it.

  Hope the cops find it before some kids but you gotta do what you gotta do.

  I turn around and start walking across the empty lot. Probably ten miles back to U City to my truck. I can do that easily. I’ve done far longer a lot closer to death. Wish I hadn’t eaten so much. Drunk so much wine. But I can do this.

  Ten miles.

  In the rain.

  I’ll just sit down here on the curb a bit and rest and then walk that ten miles like it’s nothing. Maybe lie back first for a while. Get up in fifteen minutes. Close my eyes for just a few seconds. The air is cooler yet and the rain is letting up. It feels good on my face. It always feels good after a fight. Or a battle. Maybe because I’ve always lasted to the end. Came out alive.

  But Kingsley said I have a death wish. He’s not the first to say that. Others have.

  How do they know such things?

  5 - S’plaining

  I wake up. Slowly. Head pounding a bit but it clears and I open my eyes. Dark blue. All I see is dark blue. With a struggle I pull myself forward and out of a blue plastic tarp and stand up. I was rolled up in it. I don’t remember that. Something’s under my shirt and tucked into the front of my jeans. I pull it out. Aged raw steak. A big porterhouse, probably 16 ounces, wrapped in plain white butcher’s paper. Before I can think about where it came from, I dig in. Best I’ve had in a very long time. I eat a third of the steak just standing here. It’s early morning, a bit past dawn and I look around.