The Erasable Man: Chronicles of Zachary Artemas

by Christopher Salch

  Pistol at the ready, I rolled out of my hiding place and unloaded eight rounds into Ed. He just laughed at me and took a plodding step forward—his wounds closing faster than I could inflict them. Anne had propped herself up behind the counter and had her tube trained on his head. One bolt from her—much weaker than I was expecting—and Ed turned toward Anne. By that point, I had a new magazine in my forty-five and peppered Ed with a couple of rounds.

  That was his limit. He turned and charged me full speed—his left arm and Paige extended in front of him as a human shield. I couldn't get a clean shot—not that my rounds seemed to do any good—and couldn't get out of the way fast enough to avoid being hit. Anne saw my predicament and fired a massive bolt from her voracious weapon—wild lightning reached out from its end to touch Ed. His right knee exploded in a cloud of liquefied, burning flesh just as his foot hit the floor. Unbalanced, his body fell forward and momentum sent him careening into the wall. I sidestepped in time to avoid taking the brunt of his attack but was still clipped by his remaining leg and the impact knocked me to the ground.

  Ed rolled over to face Anne as his knee slowly started to put itself back together. Paige screamed—her blood vessels glowing with reddish-gold sparkles that flowed into Ed's arm where it fused with her crossed arms. "The more you hurt me, the more of her I take!" he said smiling.

  Ed's shotgun was at my feet—he'd lost it when he fell—I grabbed it, checked the chamber—it was a slug, good—and fired into the joint of his elbow at point blank range. Blood and bits of bone splattered on my face—I was already so covered in the stuff from sliding around on the floor that a little more wouldn't matter. The joint was a mangled mess, but still attached and healing much faster than I liked. I shoved the barrel into the wound and fired—the next shell turned out to be buck shot, double-aught at least—and what was left of the joint exploded. Ed's forearm fell off and Paige—still conscious—had just enough sense left to scramble out of reach by pushing herself along the ground. Ed screamed in rage, but didn't move. Without a "toy" his regenerative powers ground to a halt.

  "That's twice you've surprised me!" he said. "You won't get a third—"

  "Shut up!" I racked the shotgun and put a shell through his throat. I knew better than to expect it to kill him, but it might keep him quiet for a while. "Paige, how are …"

  Anne fell to her knees, gasping. She looked gaunt, almost skeletal as though she hadn't eaten anything in months. "Damn it," she coughed. "There's not enough… not enough left …"

  I glanced at Paige, saw that she had already extricated one of her hands from Ed's mangled forearm, and rushed over to Anne.

  "What's going on?" I asked, trying to keep the shotgun on Ed while glancing at Anne.

  "It's my weapon," she said. "It feeds off life." She broke into a coughing fit, sending speckles of blood flying. "There's not enough of me left to feed it at full power. Lee did his best, but there wasn't much to work with in the first place." She was breathing steady but shallowly now. "There's something you… you should know… about Aden …"

  "She's not your daughter is she?" I said. "All those years ago, Lee was rebuilding your body, and I interrupted the process—broke the link. Lee couldn't restart it so he did what he could to save the two halves of you."

  "How long have you known?" Anne asked.

  "Since before you left," I told her. "Ruth told me just after …" I choked. "… just after she sacrificed what was left of herself to keep you alive."

  "Lee's repaired me four times since then," she said. "There wasn't enough of me left to keep this body stable for more than a few years."

  "Does Aden know?" I asked.

  "No," said Anne. "I could never bring myself to tell her. She got everything that made me what I was. Everything but the memories …" Her voice trailed off.

  "Don't worry," I told her. "We'll save her. She won't have to go through what you—"

  "How touching!" said Ed. "The long lost lovers finally making up."

  Anne's face went even paler at Ed's words. One look at her and I knew she couldn't fire again without using up the last of her strength. My pistol seemed to be about as useful against Ed as a pop-gun, and the shotgun only had a few shells left—either way, not enough to keep him down. Paige was alive, but out of the fight since her arms were still bound. It was well past time for us to get out of there, but so long as Ed was moving that wasn't an option.

  "You've got to be the most illtempered, stubborn, asshole who ever walked the streets of Pocketville." I said as I turned.

  Ed was on his feet, his shattered knee slowly flowing back together again.

  "And you're the idiot who didn't realize I've already had my fill of pain," stated Ed. "Taking my toy away won't work this time. I won't stop until that bitch is dead!"

  He charged us, spreading his arms wide in preparation for a lethal bear hug. I reached for Anne, her tube was pointed at me, and in the split second before I could grab her arm she fired. There was enough force in the bolt to knock me out of Ed's path and stun me for a crucial few seconds. The few seconds in which Ed scooped up Anne and slammed her frail body—she looked even more gaunt after the shot—into the far wall at full tilt. Sheetrock caved in around the pair, sending white, chalky dust all over the place. One of the I-beams in the wall—a structural steel beam, not a flimsy metal stud—bent backwards under the force of the impact and part of the ceiling sagged.

  Neither moved.

  "Anne!" I called and rushed over to the pair as quickly as I could. Paige had freed her arms, though it looked like she had to strip off all the skin to do it, and was rushing over as well. One glance at her, panting and dripping blood, told me she wasn't going to be any help if Ed got back up again. Anne was breathing, barely, but breathing nonetheless. I grabbed Ed's leg and pulled his body away from her, not caring about any danger he might represent. Anne's arm and a large part of the left side of her body were nothing more than skin and bones as if something had drained her muscle and soft tissues away. I glanced back at Ed, his face was gone, replaced by a blackened, smoking chunk of hamburger.

  "We have to get you to Lee," I said.

  "NO!" she coughed out. "He'll never stop. He's stayed alive all these years because of me. He won't stop until I'm dead."

  "Anne, you don't know what you're saying," I said. "You've been able to avoid him—"

  "That's all I've done," she spat. "Aden deserves more than that. How many of his victims are my fault?"

  "None of them. That was all him… Paige?" I yelled. "Can you call for help? Lee would be …"

  "No!" Anne interrupted me. "There's no point …"

  "Ruth will not be happy," stated Paige, frowning.

  "It doesn't matter anymore," answered Anne, grabbing my hand. "I'm dead already. There's not… enough of me… left… for Lee …" Her words faded with the light of her eyes. Paige looked at me for a moment and then back to Anne's body, frowning. Lee's work, as good as it was, started collapsing the moment Anne died. What little remained of her body seemed to fall in on itself like a building imploding. Thick, bloody ichor oozed from her her wounds until only a reddish-beige puddle indicated anyone or anything had been there at all. There was nothing more I or anyone else could do.

  "She's finally dead," came Ed's voice from behind us. "After all these years, it's finally over! The contract is fulfilled."

  I turned slowly, with my forty-five in hand. Ed was sitting cross-legged, smiling like the cat that ate the canary as his face grew back together.

  Paige glanced at Ed and then at me and frowned, blood dripping off her skinless arms. "I'm afraid I will be of little use to you in my present condition—"

  "You don't have to worry about that," interrupted Ed. "I'm done fighting. The compulsion leaves once my contract is finished."

  "Paige, you don't need to be here," I said.

  She glanced between Ed and me one more time, letting her cold eyes linger on me for a moment longer before nodding her assent. One step back an
d she was gone with a small pop as the air collapsed in on itself. For those who could, traveling between Pocketville and the outside rebuilt their body cell by cell—wounds, even mortal ones were completely healed in the process. Paige would be safe, but Ed was another story.

  "Now. We have some business to settle," I stated calmly, walking towards Ed. "For instance, I've always wondered—"

  "Don't push your luck," Ed cut me off. "I don't care about you anymore than that disappearing bitch. My contract is over. You don't want to have 'personal' problems with me."

  "'Personal problems'?" I spat out the words. "It's way too late for that. We've had 'personal problems' for years! You're the reason my life went to hell—"

  "Is that what you believe?" laughed Ed. "You're a bigger fool than I thought. Me, I'm just the symptom—the blunt instrument used to violently remove a life from the world. I get paid to kill people when nobody cares what happens along the way. Somebody wanted that bitch dead and sent me to do it."

  "Just a hired gun is that it?"

  "Something like that," he said. "When I'm on contract, nothing stops me—nothing."

  "When you're on contract," I said quietly. "What about now?"

  "Now? Well, I'm not on contract," he said. "I have options …" I'd been watching him closely, keeping my hand on the forty-five in case he made a move. The longer we talked, the less imposing Ed appeared. It was as if the bulk of his muscles were slowly deflating, leaving behind a lean, almost gangly frame. When it finally stopped, the man climbing to his feet looked like no one I'd ever met, much less the monstrous beast of an assassin who'd hunted Anne. "So, back to digging graves. I'd imagine they've found a new caretaker by now though."

  "There are no graveyards here," I said quietly. "No one dies in Pocketville, because there's no one alive!"

  I raised my forty-five and squeezed, barely taking the time to aim we were so close. One round, dead center in Ed's chest.

  Ed reached up and touched the wound with a curious expression on his face, as if his brain couldn't reconcile what was happening. He saw the blood, and stared at it quizzically for a moment before the skin of his hand started glowing golden orange. He tried to scream, but could only open his mouth wide while the fire burned through his lungs and the rest of his organs from the inside out. Seconds later, his body crumbled to ash as Anne's bullets finished their work.

  Even as heat washed over me, I felt cold. Ed was finally dead—at least as dead as anything else in Pocketville—but he had taken Anne with him—the only part of my past I still cared about.

  "I wish you hadn't done that," said the Man in White from behind me. I spun and stumbled backwards when I found myself nose to nose with him—he was standing so close to me that my arms were inside his ethereal chest up to the elbow. "Be careful. Now that my beast is dead, you've become an important part of my future plans. Perhaps not quite as ideal as Ed here was, but still quite effective. Unless you foolishly extinguish yourself too soon."

  "Shut up!" I yelled and walked straight through him towards the lobby elevators. He might be the most dangerous, most reviled being in all of Pocketville, but he was also powerless to interact with anything physical on his own.

  "That wasn't very polite," he said, following after me at a hurried pace.

  "I told you to shut up!"

  "And I have an opportunity for you, something that even a Tekcop like yourself can't pass up," he said.

  I just ignored him and mashed on the elevator button, hoping Ed's rampage hadn't damaged it.

  "What? Reversing the door? You know as well as I do that I would be outside right now if things were that simple," I said. "There's a little ball of cells locked away inside the womb of Ruth's statue—I've never seen that statue, but Janus told me she looked beautiful cast in basalt. That little ball? That's me! All of me that's on the outside is tied up in a few hundred cells. Now you try building an adult body out of the material in a blastocyst? Oh, and did I mention that Ruth has no fucking body here? Did I mention that?"

  "Ah, the Ossuarium. Your father spends a good deal of time there, mourning what he cannot have," he said. "And if you were anything other than what you are, you would be trapped here forever. But …"

  The elevator arrived with a soft ping. Inside were three men in drab suits, barely aware of their surroundings until the elevator doors opened. One looked at me—by this point I was as much of a gory mess as everything else—then to the blood splattered walls of the lobby, and finally landed on my forty-five. It took several awkward seconds for his idle brain to put all the pieces together and realize he'd just walked into nightmare. He started frantically pressing buttons inside the elevator as the other two occupants each came to the conclusion this was not where they wanted to be.

  "Out!" I snapped, blocking the door with my foot. "Get out… ow!" One of the men slammed his foot down on top of mine, and I sorely wished my shoes were steel-toe. The door started closing, buzzing angrily at having been held open too long already, and that was that. I cursed and punched the button again.

  "But what?" I asked.

  "There's another way," said the Man in White. "One that could bring an end to our imprisonment permanently, and you would still be you—not a barely living clump of tissue."

  I hoped another elevator showed up soon—this bastard was really starting to get on my nerves.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  0 Hour

  "Nothing from Pocketville can exist outside. You know that better than anyone," I said quietly.

  "True," he said with a smile. "But there's something on the outside that you can touch. You've already tasted it, seen the path to it without realizing it. It's hiding there in the depths of your mind. It's waiting for you. All you have to do is claim it, and that body will be yours!"

  The elevator pinged again—empty. Red and blue lights were flashing through the lobby doors, and I really didn't want to be here when they forced their way in. I smashed the button for the top floor hard enough that it hurt and waited the painful few seconds before the doors closed on the Man in White. Thirty floors up, I had to switch to another bank of elevators that ran to the top floor. The Man in White was already there, pretending to look at a non-existent pocket watch.

  "You're wasting time," he said. "If you set one foot out there without knowing what I have to tell you, it's all over for everyone in the City."

  "Since when do you care what happens to those 'worthless husks of a soul'?" I asked derisively.

  "Oh, I don't, but you seem to, and right now we need each—"

  "Shut up!" I yelled. The second elevator was taking its sweet time, and I was running out of patience. I could feel darkness welling up inside—boiling to the surface of my mind. It threatened to overpower my better judgement the way it had in the Wastes. That's when I remembered that I had the Phantom's eye—a dull, slightly warm weight sitting in my pocket next to the last couple of mags for my forty-five. My hand closed around it just as the elevator pinged its arrival.

  "I've warned you," said the Man in White. "One way or another, the Host will awaken, and this City will end."

  "Not if I can help it," I said. The elevator door opened onto an empty corridor, much to my relief. One step forward and someone coughed behind me. I spun around, firing two rounds through the Man in White who'd appeared in the corner behind me—thankfully they lost enough energy on their first pass through the elevator's wall that the bullets didn't ricochet inside. I could see he was laughing even though my ears were ringing so badly I could barely hear him.

  "I wouldn't do that if I were you," he said and pointed. There was a thin wire across the entry to the elevator just about ankle level and a two more near chest height. Further out into the corridor I could see other trip wires and small boxes peaking out from behind potted plants or light fixtures. Anne had trained her daughter well—the whole hallway was a death trap.

  "What are you …" I started to say, but the Man in White was gone. One floor down and the hallway was c
lear. The Man in White was standing by the stairwell door when I made it there.

  "I could have let you—die isn't the right word—be recycled?" he asked the world at large. "That isn't quite right either, but it will have to do. I could have let this place recycle your essence after it drained everything of value from your violently detached soul, but I didn't. You should thank me!"

  My fist clenched around the Phantom's eye—I hadn't even realized my hand was in my pocket—and I felt my anger boiling over. The Man in White smiled wider as my fist passed through his face and smashed into the cinder block wall behind. It hurt like hell and bloodied my knuckles, but the cinder block crumbled to dust.

  "Careful, you wouldn't want to hurt yourself," he laughed. "She's waiting for you. Waiting to kill whoever or whatever comes through those doors, and when she does, that's the end. There won't be anything left of you or this cursed City. Nothing at all, just an empty void and the souls of the damned."

  "That's what you want, isn't it?" I said. "What you've wanted since Pocketville was created." My fist wouldn't unclench. It was locked tight around the Phantom's eye, as if my hand were fused with it to form an unwieldy club.

  "Only half right," he said. "I want out, and you're my key." I felt his hand close over mine. I could feel as his mind forced its way in. "Your father was such a fool for thinking he understood what Pocketville is and what it was meant to be. Your mother was an even bigger fool for trusting him. And you! You've been playing my tune since the day you were born!"

  "Your creature tried this already," I said as his tendrils of thought pushed through my conscious mind's defenses. "The attempt ended him."