by C. E. Martin
“You sure you’re all right?” he said.
Josie hated that she had let herself get spooked in front of the guys. Once again, she’d become the girl of the group. She climbed to her feet and batted Jimmy’s hand away.
“Fine,” Josie snapped. Angry at herself, she stomped off to her tent.
***
In the midst of the boat wreckage, the formerly-stone man leaned back, breathing slowly in the night air. He finally opened his eyes- strange, almost black, dark-green eyes.
The man looked around him. At his clothes, the melted boat wreck, his one boot. He leaned forward and put his hands down. With great effort he lifted himself up. No sooner was he on his feet than he collapsed to his knees.
The man knelt in the sand for a few moments, catching his breath. He looked at the sand and wreckage around him. A military knife lay on the ground, the handle melted. The man pushed the knife aside and tried to stand again.
This time, the man was able to stay on his feet. But he had to hold his pants up with his right hand. They were loose and baggy- several sizes too large.
The man looked up at the moon, and closed his eyes, breathing in deeply. He slowly began to feel better.
The man opened his eyes and looked around him. Sighting a nearby rise in the sand, he started walking toward it.
Once he topped the rise, the man began to turn in a slow circle, eyeing the dark desert. In the distance, a tiny, orange glow could be seen. The man’s jaw set with determination. He began to walk forward, toward the distant campfire.
CHAPTER THREE
Several hours later, the stone man reached the distant fire he had seen. What had been a strong fire was now a barely-glowing collection of ash.
The man staggered, forcing himself to walk. His legs were sore, his throat dry. Despite his fatigue, he had forced his body on, toward the cluster of tents, trucks and motorcycles illuminated by the full moon.
The man plodded into the camp, past tents filled with sleeping teenagers. He looked around, panting lightly from the exertion of his long walk.
A small, metal can lay on the ground near a tent. The man carefully picked it up. Liquid sloshed in the can. Not much- maybe only a few drops.
The man held the can to his lips and tilted his head back, trying to drain the precious moisture out. The man made a face as he tasted the liquid. He looked at the can in the moonlight. His eyes refused to focus on the slender, tall can. Past the can, he saw something else. A cooler.
The man dropped the can and moved slowly toward the cooler. It was large, plastic. Cool to the touch. He opened the cooler. He could smell the water inside. He heard the gentle clatter of ice floating in water, bumping against the plastic sides. He saw the many bottles inside the cooler.
The man reached into the cooler and drew out an icy-cold bottle of water. The plastic bottle flexed in the man’s hand and he seemed taken aback. He examined the bottle as though it were some kind of alien thing. Then he grabbed the cap with his teeth and twisted it off.
The cold water went down his throat quickly. The man relaxed as he drained the bottle.
One was not enough, though. The man dropped the bottle and reached down for another. Again, he opened it with his teeth and drained out the cold water.
The man was starting to feel better. His vision was no longer blurred. He reached for another bottle of water. As he pulled it out, the other bottles shifted and thumped loudly against the sides of the cooler.
***
Josie awoke with a start in her tent. For her, that meant a sharp inhalation of air, and her eyes wide open. She had always been able to wake from the soundest sleep completely and immediately.
Her step-father told her it was the fireman coming out in her. Josie’s father had been a fireman, before he died when she was very young. But it was not a career she wanted. Putting out fires was dangerous- as her father had proven, with his life.
Josie lay unmoving in her tent, listening. She wondered briefly if she had dreamt about her father again. She’d been dreaming about him a lot lately. Something she hadn’t done since she was very young.
The more she thought about it, the odder it became. Dreaming about her father dying in a fire, then actually finding the remnants of a large fire in the desert and a dead man in the ashes. It was a strange coincidence.
Josie closed her eyes, hoping she could dream about something else. Then she heard a noise again. A plastic noise.
Josie’s eyes opened. She listened intently. The night desert was quiet and still. Except for plastic bottles bobbing in half-melted ice in the cooler.
Silence again. Then the sound of plastic. This time she recognized it- an empty water bottle falling against another. One of the guys must be thirsty.
Again, Josie heard sloshing in the cooler as another bottle came out. There was a short pause, then an empty bottle falling.
How thirsty were they? How many of them were up? Why weren’t they talking?
The hair on the back of Josie’s neck was up. She just instinctively knew something was wrong.
Josie quietly sat up in her tent and folded back her sleeping bag. She had slept in her motocross pants and a large t-shirt. She carefully reached for her boots and slipped them on.
Whoever was up was still drinking. Picking up full bottles from the cooler, then dropping empty ones.
Josie crawled slowly to her tent flap and began to unzip it. She could see a shape- a guy in the center of the campsite. He was standing by the cooler, drinking from a bottle.
She eased out of her tent.
As Josie climbed from her tent, she realized this was a stranger- not one of the guys. He was too tall. Then she realized he was bald and shirtless. He wore black pants, and one boot. Around the man’s feet lay almost a dozen empty water bottles. He held another in his left hand, and drank from one in his right.
Framed by the moon, the man’s features were hard to make out. But he appeared to be in his 30s. He had smooth skin- especially on his bald head. Josie watched as he drained another water bottle.
Was she seeing things? The man’s arm seemed to be swelling. As he drank from the bottle, she watched as his arms and chest were getting larger. Not swollen from drinking too much liquid, but more muscular.
Josie was suddenly scared. Then she noticed a gleam of gold around the man’s neck- a chain. And hanging from the chain, a gold, Christian fish pendant.
It was the burnt, stone man from the boat wreck.
The man dropped the empty bottle from his right hand and started to raise the bottle in his left to his lips. He stopped, turning his head toward Josie. Black-green eyes calmly regarded her.
The man put the bottle to his lips and began to drink.
As Josie watched, hair began to sprout over the man’s eyes. Eyebrows she hadn’t realized were missing suddenly reappeared- thick and black. On his head, hair began to grow- jet black in color.
The man dropped the empty bottle from his left hand and waved. “Good evening,” he said calmly.
The hair on the man’s head grew only a short length, into a very precise, military-style flattop, then stopped growing. It looked as though it had been freshly cut.
Josie screamed loudly. “Guys!”
Carlos, Kendall, Jimmy and Logan all started in their tents- kicking off blankets and being generally disoriented. They struggled to put boots on and stumble out of their tents.
The green-eyed man calmly pulled two more bottles of water from the now nearly-empty cooler and began to drink one.
Kendall was first out of the tents- dressed in a t-shirt and jockey shorts, hopping on one booted foot as he tried to pull on another.
“What is-?” Kendall started to demand. He stopped when he saw the overly muscled, shirtless, green-eyed man calmly drinking water.
The stranger dropped an empty bottle and nodded a greeting toward Kendall. “Evening. I think I owe you some water.”
Carlos was next out of his tent, rubbing sleep from his eyes and
wearing a long, over-sized t-shirt like it was a nightgown.
“What the hell?!” Carlos demanded.
As Logan and Jimmy spilled from their tents, the stranger began drinking water from another bottle.
Jimmy looked around, not knowing what to do. Like Logan, he had slept in his boots, pants and t-shirt because he was afraid of the rattlesnakes and scorpions in the desert.
Josie watched her puzzled friends as they looked at her then the stranger, then back to her again.
Josie sighed. “It’s him. The guy from the boat wreck!”
The guys all gave Josie dumbfounded looks.
Josie pointed to her own neck. “The necklace!”
Five sets of tired eyes looked toward the stranger’s neck as he finished another water bottle. His muscles rippled in the moonlight and his gold necklace glinted against his tanned skin.
Jimmy suddenly charged forward. “Get him!” he yelled. It was the bravest, and possibly stupidest, thing he had ever done in his life.
The stranger stepped calmly aside letting Jimmy charge past him. Jimmy immediately tripped over the many empty water bottles and fell onto his face in the sand.
The stranger dropped his last empty water bottle on the ground. “Hey, I’m sorry, but I really needed that water.”
Logan wasn’t about to stand there slack-jawed. He stepped forward and threw a roundhouse punch at the bulging, gigantic stranger.
The stranger snapped a hand up, almost not looking and caught the punch. With his other hand he pushed against Logan’s chest.
Logan suddenly flew backwards, nearly a dozen feet, collapsing a tent and landing with a heavy thud.
The stranger seemed genuinely surprised. He looked at his arm, then his chest. It was as though he had just discovered how overly-muscled he really was.
Kendall didn’t care how big the stranger was. He whipped out a knife from his back pocket, popping it open with his thumb.
“Stay back, man!” he nearly yelled. “I mean it!”
The stranger regarded Kendall with an eerie calmness. He raised his hands submissively.
“Calm down, son,” the black-haired water thief said calmly.
From behind the stranger, Jimmy had sprung back up. He charged again, ducking his head and tackling the much larger man- if by tackling one meant grabbing him around the waist and not budging him one inch.
Jimmy rebounded off the shirtless stranger, falling backwards to land roughly on his own bottom.
The stranger turned to face Jimmy, a curious look on his face. He then extended a hand, as if to help the teen up.
Kendall saw the stranger reaching for his friend and panicked. With skill born of countless years of practice, he flipped his knife up in the air, then caught it by the tip of the blade. With a flick of his wrist and arm, he threw the knife at the large stranger. The blade sank deep into the man’s back.
The stranger turned around quickly. Now he had an angry look on his face.
Josie nearly gasped. Not at the knife sticking out of the stranger’s back, but at the nickel-plated revolver Carlos had produced from somewhere. He held it in shaking hands, pointed at the stranger.
“Freeze!” Carlos demanded, his voice cracking.
The stranger became calm again. He started to raise his hands.
Blam! Carlos fired the revolver in fear.
Almost immediately, the stranger slapped his forehead with his right hand, as if squashing a mosquito.
“Ow!” The stranger declared. He pulled his hand away slowly, revealing a minor wound, that only seeped a small amount of blood.
The stranger lowered his hand, then opened it slowly. In his palm were the fragments of a bullet, and some blood. He was very surprised as the blood in his hand soaked into his palm and vanished.
As Josie, Carlos and the others watched, the blood on the man’s forehead retreated back into his skin as well. His head wound slowly closed up, leaving behind only a faint, gray bruise.
“That doesn’t seem normal,” the stranger remarked, dumping the bullet fragments from his hand.
Carlos panicked- then fired his pistol five more times.
Even with shaking hands and white knuckles, Carlos couldn’t miss at this range. His shots all hit the stranger’s bare chest. The bullets struck the dense flesh, tearing skin open but not managing to go more than a half-inch deep. Some fragments fell back out of the wounds after the firing stopped.
The stranger looked down at his chest. Again, what little blood had escaped his skin seeped back inside the stranger. The flesh of the gunshot wounds pushed back out, dislodging bullet fragments and healing over.
The stranger looked back at Carlos. “I’d really appreciate it if you’d stop doing that.”
CHAPTER FOUR
After shooting the water-guzzling stranger in their camp, Carlos had decided on a different course of action. Running away.
It wasn’t that Carlos was a chicken. He didn’t consider himself afraid of most anything. But this wasn’t most anything. This was a bullet-proof man that had come back from the dead.
That was definitely something to be scared of.
Carlos felt better about his decision to run away when he looked out from behind the rock he had chosen as his hiding place and saw his friends all doing the same thing. Everybody had run away.
Except Josie. And Logan.
Carlos wasn’t surprised. Josie never really seemed to be afraid of anything. And Logan had been thrown through the air like a rag doll. He probably was in no condition to run.
Now Carlos felt bad. Not bad enough to come out from behind his rock, but bad.
***
Josie was amazed.
Not because the stranger was still standing after being shot six times, but because of what was happening to him now. His wounds were healing.
The head wound- which wasn’t very deep at all- had closed up. Josie had watched the blood on the wound soak back into the stranger’s head. Like he was a sponge. What she had first thought was a bruise she now realized was something else. A splotch of gray that faded back to flesh color.
The chest wounds were different. Josie watched in fascination as the wounds swelled up from inside the stranger. Bullet fragments were slowly pushed out. What little blood had trickled down from the wounds soaked back into the stranger’s skin. Again, the wounds healed and turned stone-colored then back to flesh-colored.
The stranger seemed surprised too. He had been staring at bullet fragments from his chest, held in the palm of his hand. Then he looked down and watched his chest wounds silently heal.
He looked confused.
“What are you?” Josie finally asked, breaking the silence.
The stranger looked up at the sky, at the stars, for several seconds. Then he turned his strange black-green eyes to Josie.
“An American,” he said. “And judging from these stars, you are too?”
Josie’s throat felt dry. “Yes, Yes... No- I mean, how-?”
The stranger dropped the metal bullet fragments from his hand and pointed to his chest. “How’d I do this? No idea.”
“Who are you?” Josie asked, taking a slow step forward. It all seemed so surreal.
The stranger watched her closely. “I’m Mark. Mark Kenslir,” he finally said, extending his right hand.
Josie looked at the large hand for a second then reluctantly shook it. Despite his freakish strength and bulging muscles, the stranger’s grip was gentle. Firm, but not vice-like as she had worried it might be. The stranger’s hand was dry and smooth- and warm. At least he wasn’t a zombie.
“Are you sure?” Josie asked as she slid her hand away.
“To be honest,” the stranger, Mark, smiled, “I had to think about that.”
The stranger looked around the camp as he continued to speak. “When I first walked in here, I wasn’t sure who I was, or where I was.”
“You’re in Arizona,” Josie said. This was getting stranger and stranger.
Mark l
ooked at Josie again with his strange green-black eyes. “What’s your name, kid?”
Josie had never seen eyes like the stranger’s. Hazel eyes were green and brown. The stranger’s were green and black, with the green being a deep, emerald hue.
“Josephine Winters- Josie. My friends call me Josie.”
The stranger smiled warmly. “Pleased to meet you, Josie.”
Josie couldn’t help but smile back. Even though she knew she should be afraid, that she shouldn’t be talking to this odd man, she felt perfectly safe.
“Speaking of your friends- you think they’re coming back?” Mark asked, looking around.
Josie looked around. She hadn’t realized all the guys had fled the area. Well, almost all of them. Logan was laying on a collapsed tent, where Mark had thrown him.
“I don’t-” she started to say.
The stone man, Mark, pointed a thumb over his shoulder, at Logan. “Let’s check on that one.”
Mark turned and walked to the flattened tent Logan was laying in. He knelt carefully beside Logan.
Logan was lying in the tent, trying not to make noise, but holding his side. He had come down hard, and he was sure his ribs were broken. When he saw the stone man approaching, he panicked. His eyes went wide and he held his hands up defensively.
Mark smiled genuinely. “Relax sport, I’m not going to hurt you.”
Despite the fact this was the guy that had just thrown him through the air with no apparent effort, Logan relaxed and lowered his hands. He noticed Josie was standing next to the stranger, and didn’t appear frightened at all.
Mark gently probed Logan’s side, expertly feeling the ribs and not applying too much pressure. Logan winced but didn’t cry out in pain.
Mark stood up and faced Josie. “I don’t think anything’s broken- maybe just bruised. We ought to wrap the ribs... you have any first aid kits?”
Josie was relieved. She turned and cupped her hands to her mouth and began to call out for her friends. “Guys! Guys- we need your help! Logan’s hurt!”