The rebuke fell from above: a remote-controlled drone passed overhead and dropped a canister ahead of Max. The coast was in sight, a few gleaming structures and construction booms towering over the city’s stone and mud-brick buildings. He’d thought to avoid the highway, pick the heart of an outlying house for something to appease the Beast, and fly out the next day.
He was sure another local job had come up when he saw the premature contact. Things were always changing in his world. Perhaps, in response to Giyab’s death, another of his handlers had a complimentary assignment for him.
The message inside read: Are you playing with our enemy? Not on our time. Finish the job.
Max recognized Mr. Jung’s hand.
In the outlying house, he soothed the Beast’s outrage and replenished his supplies. This time, he took two camels, slaughtering a third in front of the other two to get the animals in the proper frame of mind for the trip.
He hoped he wouldn’t have to waste too much time tracking Giyab again. Camels were so often too stubborn to be intimidated for long.
His target came to him, this time. He’d tracked his man, calculated his path, raced ahead. Under the stars, wrapped in a cloak against the cold and to let the sand cover him, filled with camel meat and blood, Max waited until Giyab had passed to attack.
The man’s single camel bolted. He snapped his hand in the air to cool the bum the rope had left on his fingers.
There was nowhere for him to run. No one to help.
He bowed to Max and said, “I cannot die.” There seemed to be a hint of admiration, even anticipation, in the man’s posture and expression.
Max choked him, crushing his windpipe, squeezing long past the body’s last wheeze and spasmodic jerk. He studied the man’s face carefully. The wide, pronounced cheekbones, the flattened nose, the build and skin coloring were all the same. The bullet holes were still there, though much smaller. The scar across the neck was fresh, still red, and confirmed for Max that this was the man he’d killed twice before.
He stuffed sand down Giyab’s throat, cut open the belly, poured more into the stomach and intestines. He cracked the chest, encased the heart with handfuls of sand.
The Beast sampled the man’s organs, found nothing unusual other than a slightly sour taste. The killing lacked inspiration. Joy. Max might as well have been working over carrion.
He took the eyes, drove a knife deep into the brain, filled the holes with desert.
The Beast circled restlessly in Max’s chest.
Max kept watch over the body into the morning, then left it for the desert’s scavengers. If Mr. Jung was as smart as he thought he was, he’d send his movers and cleaners after the vultures.
“Are you losing your touch?” Mr. Jung asked. His smile was subtle, the eyes unreadable behind the sunglasses. The sand storm raised by the helicopter had settled. The chopper hovered far overhead, waiting for Mr. Jung’s signal to come back and pick him up.
The military fatigues and boots hardly suited Max’s image of Mr. Jung’s more sophisticated dressing habits, but it was evident the man was comfortable in them. The uniform was crisp, but slightly worn. Broken in. The bloodstains had been washed out, but the Beast still caught them.
The Beast also felt gun sights trained on them. There was no cover. Max always hated the desert for this reason. In the dead and barren places, there were so few options for hunters.
“I’ve been told killing a man isn’t easy,” Max said. The words were sand in his mouth.
“It hasn’t been for you.”
“Not so far.”
“Are you playing games with us, Max? Making secret deals with the others? Because, you know, despite our little rivalries, we’re all working for the same people. Sides change, like the breeze. But really, when it comes down to it, there is only them. The ones who own and run things. And us. And we’re the ones who always lose.”
“I’ve done my job. Three times.”
“And yet, Giyab still lives.”
“You’re not telling me everything.”
“What is there to say? Do your job.”
“You’re enjoying this.”
“We all have our secret pleasures.”
“Does the target have brothers? Am I killing off some kind of experiment? Something new? I’ve heard someone’s been playing with cloning sheep—”
“You give us too much credit. Nothing so complicated as any of that.”
“What’s wrong with Giyab?”
“Nothing.”
“Is that the problem?”
“Perhaps.”
“Is it true, what he keeps saying?”
“And what is that.”
“He can’t die.”
“That is a bold claim.”
“I’ve killed him three times.”
“Perhaps he’s stronger than you imagined. Maybe you’re finally losing your great power.”
“Others have tried, haven’t they?”
“We reserve only the most important missions for you, Max. Didn’t you think this one was important?”
“Why do you want him dead?”
Mr. Jung’s head pushed back a little, as if a wasp had just grazed his nose. He fingered the radio in his hand. The helicopter began its descent.
“Why does that matter?”
“The answer might help me do my job.”
Mr. Jung’s smile faded. “He must die because he lives.”
Mr. Jung returned to the landing zone. Three other figures met him, dressed in desert camo, bearing long rifle cases. The chopper released four lines and drew the men up before turning out to sea. Max took a deep breath. He’d never had a job like this one.
The Beast rolled through him, creating waves of nausea, signaling its displeasure at the prospect of any more encounters with his target. What was the hunt, it seemed to ask, without the kill?
Max waited until Giyab reached the city, where the both of them would have more resources. His target was not the one who needed help.
Max made calls. Spoke to contacts. He consulted with men and even women he’d heard about but never used before. He’d never had a reason, never believed they’d be useful. From Mr. Jung’s accounts, he arranged for payments to be made. Resources were allocated. Material delivered secretly, in the heart of night.
Plans were set up, and contingency plans. Escape routes were planned, reservations made, tickets delivered. He couldn’t believe he’d gone so far out of the range of his normal operations. Dug into memories of experiences he’d nearly forgotten looking for tactics, calling for help. The past was dead, and he could never trust anyone around him. Yet, here he was, relying on both to get him out of trouble.
He felt ridiculous. Already, he heard the laughter of all who’d ever feared or used him. The ghosts of victims and targets flickered at the corners of his vision, daring him to look, to recognize things he did not wish to see.
The Beast burst into a rage, blinding Max, driving him to his knees. When he regained his senses, he was in the cab of an overturned truck with three dead men he didn’t know. In the back of the truck, children whimpered.
He could only hope he’d done something that served his cause. He couldn’t remember clearly.
All he had left were plans. The simplest of them hardly required any effort.
In the sprawling tin shanty ghetto filled with itinerant workers, Max caught up to his target. In a tradition more common to the other end of the nearby continent, Max jammed a tire over Giyab’s shoulders, pinning his arms to his sides, and set it on fire. Giyab repeated his claim before flames seared his face. A few children watched from the far end of the street. Most of the nearby people quietly withdrew through the rear of their shelters, accustomed to sudden and unexpected death, wise enough not to tempt attention or bear witness.
Giyab screamed. There was that satisfaction. He rolled and writhed across the ground, the smell of charred flesh mingling with the bite of burnt rubber rising and spreading in a black clou
d.
The Beast danced before the fire, its unease momentarily subdued, like the children, by the spectacle of pain.
When the man finally stopped moving, Max loaded the scorched corpse into a small, three-wheeled truck, which he drove to a nearby warehouse next to the oil facility.
The warehouse was empty, except for what he needed. He dumped the body into a steel cage.
He checked the perimeter, set up and tested equipment left for him. The sounds he made echoed in the dusty air. He broke down, cleaned and reassembled weapons. Visited Giyab’s body. Listened to the occasional truck or car pass in the distance, the calls to prayer, helicopters landing and taking off. Machinery and generators worked through the night. He fell asleep.
In the morning, Giyab was still dead. Max ate, and concerned himself with the Beast, growing bored sitting in one place without the promise of a feast.
Max reassured his demon they’d soon carve their natures into yielding flesh. He started to regret working so hard, calling in favors and support, for a job that appeared to have required only a little more savagery.
Then Giyab came back to life. His body was still burned, and he winced and moaned as he rose and collapsed against the cage’s bars, but he lived.
Max dragged him out of the cell and held his head down in a tub of water until the thrashing had stopped and there were no more air bubbles. Giyab barely had time to repeat his claim, but managed to push out sounds that sounded like the familiar words through his ruined throat and mouth, before Max put him under water.
Following a suggestion made by an academic specializing in primitive cultures, who also belonged to the odd collection of amateurs, the Blood of Killers, Max encountered on occasion, he stuffed Giyab’s throat with poison and sealed his mouth shut.
The return from drowning was quick, but when he came back the poison was already killing him. The gag robbed whatever power his final words might have had.
He passed. And returned. And died again, on the same poison. And returned again. And again. And again. Through another day and night. There was laughter in the lines around his tearing, blood shot eyes every time.
The Beast, bored by Max’s efforts, gnawed and chipped at his resolve. It wanted one last try at the prey, an assault released from any of Max’s concerns for safety and survival.
They’d already passed safely through the truck episode, and that had been far more risky. In the warehouse, they were alone, protected, at least for a while.
He stopped the cycle of poisoning. Let the man recover for a day, until he was certain the poisons had been purged.
Giyab remained quiet. Mostly, he slept in the cage, as if wishing to slip quietly into his next murder. He didn’t plead for his life when
Max opened the cage. “You are insistent,” he said, instead, before repeating, “I can’t die.” And then his shoulders sagged, his posture curled around an inner turmoil, and he asked with what sounded to Max like hope, “Are you enjoying what we do?”
Max let the Beast answer. They tore the man apart, throwing limbs and organs into the far corners. Max fed on blood, on organs and entrails. He carved a hole into the skull, scooped out the brains, tasted them, smashed the rest. It was the kind of killing Mr. Jung discouraged him from indulging in, since it made controlling and decontaminating the scene difficult. It reminded his employers of the raw depths of his nature. They preferred their weapons simple and easy to handle, like a button that could end the world.
But what he and the Beast delivered to Giyab was the death that satisfied their true selves most deeply. The Beast dressed them in flowing scarlet during their sport, and demanded more prey after they were done.
A different kind of prey. But Max had made no plans for women. The job had proved enough of a challenge without accounting for appetites in this part of the world. He should have saved a few from Giyab’s cellar. Max calmed the Beast with tastings of the dismembered corpse as he gathered the remains and stuffed the parts into an industrial oven he’d had installed. Blazing heat transformed the body into ash and bone chips.
Giyab’s last question rose out of the hiss of gas jets. Max licked his lips and added his own answer, “Yes.”
He busied himself with personally cleaning the warehouse. He knew how, skilled from dealing with his personal appetites in a civilized world. And he didn’t want to face the professionals until he could give them, and Mr. Jung, a container of ash as proof that he was still the creature they all feared.
He took small pleasures from the work, letting the Beast dwell on what they’d done, and on past kills, both personal and professional. Unlike most other situations, there was time to linger. He had to wait to be certain Giyab did not return from the ashes.
When he was done, he tested the rest of the machinery in the warehouse once again. Exercised. Practiced shooting with silencers. The rhythm of hits served as a lullaby for the Beast, leading it into the soothing embrace of blood memories.
The day passed, and the night. Giyab stayed dead. Max paced the warehouse floor, tracking his own footsteps. He tried thinking he was in a hunter’s pattern, letting prey come to him. But he was only waiting for the dead to stay dead, which made him feel like a fool.
Rage circled itself, feeding on idleness, frustration, and the minor discomforts of the dry air and dust irritating his senses. The Beast sniffed at the minor distress, but he fed the demon memories of what they’d done to Giyab’s cellar merchandise before it became a nuisance.
Another day went by. The cycle of returning finally appeared broken. He thought it odd that Mr. Jung hadn’t appeared to congratulate him on the mission’s success. His employers were surely watching every move he made. He slept another night, the Beast stalking nightmares, promising to drive Max to the streets in search of prey if they weren’t released from graveyard duty the next day.
The sound of the oven door opening woke him.
Max raced to the incinerator. A body, thin, barely more than skin and bones, hung halfrway out of the open mouth of oven. Flakes of ash fell from its skin. The head pushed itself up. Empty eye sockets turned to Max. A lipless mouth grinned.
“I cannot die,” the thing said, hardly more than a croak.
The Beast within Max withered in the face of what it could not understand.
Max sympathized. His own rage flailed at the injustice of prey returning to life after a proper death. It wasn’t fair.
He should have mixed the ashes into the concrete being poured at a nearby construction site. In America, they liked to dispose of bodies in freshly poured concrete, if they didn’t need the body to send a message.
But then he would have had to wait to see if Giyab reappeared out of building dust, or separated himself from a wall. A part of him knew such things were impossible, the same part that, like the Beast, cringed at the reality that he was still trying to kill his target.
Shadows crawled across the warehouse floor as Max settled down to watch Giyab’s body recompose itself. The Beast shrank from the sight. Max appreciated the momentary peace. For all its power, the Beast had failed them. He needed the human parts of himself, not the raging primal spirit, to get himself through this crisis. Will, and a few tricks, were all that he had left.
Giyab had worked his bony hand into the oven door’s locking mechanism to release himself. The man had tricks, as well. And something perhaps better than will.
Max didn’t regret the contingency plans he’d made, anymore. Electricity. Radiation. Pressure changes in a barometric chamber. Water deprivation and starvation.
By his reckoning, Giyab had gone long enough without water during his time alive to die again from dehydration. Perhaps he hadn’t had the chance. Or Max hadn’t noticed. Whatever the case, denying food and water showed little promise.
Electricity and radiation proved ineffective. By the time Max put Giyab in the barometric chamber, he’d brought in enough cement from the construction site to try mixing in Giyab’s ashes from another incineration. But he
knew, as much by the Beast’s withdrawal as by Mr. Jung’s absence, that none of his plans would work.
Max went through the motions. Giyab returned. For weeks, months, Max explored the many ways a human body could die. His target always came back.
The cement disintegrated, as if Giyab’s remains destroyed the integrity of the concrete and used the material to reformulate a body. Instead of transmuting lead into gold, Giyab could change anything back into himself.
Max tried scattering smaller handfuls of his remains in larger mixes of concrete, with the same result. He tried metal. Grey, viscous matter separated from the blocks Max created, crawled like mud oozing downhill to each other, merged and transformed into another living Giyab.
He caught and froze the separate parts, burned them down again. Buried them in separate corners under the warehouse floor. The separated batches seeped through the warehouse foundation, joined, and Giyab rose from the middle of the building’s floor.
Max interrupted the process, repeatedly breaking down one and then more than one batch, but the others would start up, reassemble. He focused on continually destroying the remains. He withered under the tedium, felt closer to his own death than Giyab’s.
Giyab welcomed each attempt with a deepening calm that was more than resignation. He thanked Max, even as he reminded him that he could not die. Towards the end of program of death Max had designed, he seemed saddened by his killer’s despair. To his ear, it seemed to Max that Giyab tried to be less convincing in his claim that he could not die.
Max was left without options.
The emptiness of the warehouse, the desert, the world and all of the limitless space beyond the sky weighed on Max. He refused to believe he couldn’t kill.
The man was impossible. Everything died. Even Max. Though, of course, he’d proven harder to bring down than his employers and enemies ever anticipated.
The Beast, on the other hand—he didn’t know. He’d never considered his demon’s death. The idea didn’t make sense. What would kill an insubstantial feeling, an insatiable hunger? An ember of rage feeding on life?
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