by Stuart Jaffe
He sneered at his reflection. “You’re going to have to be a careful mortal for a while.”
When he climbed back in the truck, Maggie frowned. “What took so long?”
“I had some clean up to do. Lots of bruises.”
“I can take care of that for you. Come on, let’s go back to my place. This has been a hell of a night. Besides, you can’t go back to the motel.”
“Why not?”
“You kidding? That bastard is still alive. You think he’s going to simply leave you alone? I mean, this was all about you, right?”
“And you think he’ll stakeout the motel. Wait for me to return.”
“Isn’t that an obvious thing to do? Get himself patched up and send somebody to watch for you.”
“Maybe. What about your car? We can’t go driving a stolen truck everywhere.”
“Yeah. My car will be enough of a risk.”
Nathan thought it over. “You’re probably right. But all they’ll do is watch. They won’t do anything serious until nightfall. It’s too open in the daytime. Too many chances of getting seen. And I know this much about that man and his group — they do not want to be seen. Even if it means waiting years to get what they’re after.”
They returned to the diner and observed from a distance for several minutes. With the head start and the truck, Nathan guessed they had enough lead time to be safe. Soon, though, somebody would be here.
Maggie jogged over to her rusting hatchback and drove off. Nathan followed her in the stolen truck back out of town. They ditched the truck by the side of the road in between towns. Then she drove him to a two-story building cut into four apartments. The morning sun shined bright as a bleary-eyed man wobbled into his gray Ford to head out for another grind at the office. He saw Maggie and offered a quick wave.
“My neighbor,” she said. Maggie parked and opened the car door. “Okay, then. Come on inside. You can rest up.”
“Thank you, but no. You’ve gotten caught up in this too much already. There’s no reason for you to risk anything more. Besides, I’ve got to figure out a few things before the evening hits.”
“Shut up and come inside.”
“I’m not trying some fake chivalry thing. I’m serious.”
“So am I. Look, you don’t have a car right now, and I’m not giving you mine. So, stop being a fool and come inside. I’ve got something I want to give you. It’ll help you survive whatever stupidity you’ve gotten messed up in here. You want to leave after that, get yourself caught and killed, that’s your choice.”
She got out and slammed the door shut. Nathan followed.
Maggie lived in a one bedroom apartment with a small kitchen area and even smaller bathroom. The main living area had a secondhand television, a secondhand couch, a secondhand coffee table, and a secondhand chair. Despite the sparse furnishings, Maggie had managed to make the place feel comfortable with several well-tended plants, warm-colored paintings on the walls, and plenty of soft pillows.
She pointed to the couch. “Sit,” she said and went to her bedroom.
Nathan sat. He noted the ashtray overflowing with the remains of cigarettes. “You’re taking all of this awfully well. If you weren’t already a smoker, I’d guess you’d be chain-smoking by next week.”
From the bedroom, she said, “I can be tough when I need to be. If it makes you feel any better, I’ll be drunk and crying in a few hours. But don’t worry, I’ll be fine after that. I’ve dealt with hard shit before.”
On top of the television set, Nathan saw a photo of a Marine. A handsome man, maybe twenty. Maggie returned with a wooden box in her hands. She stopped and looked at the photo.
“You know,” she said, “after losing Michael, nothing is so difficult anymore.”
“I’m sorry.”
She shrugged. “I told him not to enlist. Told him he wasn’t smart enough to get a really good assignment. He’d be sent to Afghanistan to do all the grunt work. ‘But Maggie,’ he said to me, ‘Marines aren’t grunts. They’re the elite.’ Well, all his elite status did for him was get him killed faster. And for me, well, that left me alone out here.”
“Now you got tangled up with me.”
A tiny grin lifted her lips as if amused by a private joke nobody else knew. “You aren’t the first guy passing through that I ended up in bed with. Every few months, when it really hits me, I find somebody to spend a night or two forgetting who I am. Just trying to feel something. But with you, we get kidnapped and fight our way out and all. It’s the first time I’ve felt alive.”
“Um, you’re welcome, I guess.”
She chuckled and sat next to him. “Before this all started, I mean long before I met you and before I fell into this rut of non-living I’ve been doing, before all of that, I had dreams and a future.
Michael and I met in high school. He got me to learn to fight and shoot. Always said I had to be able to protect myself in case he wasn’t around. He was handsome, even then. Most boys in high school are cute, but not handsome. That’s something that happens with maturity. Michael, though, he knocked me out with his looks. We planned to get married. He wanted to do custom carpentry — he could make anything out of wood — and I wanted to study psychology and get into helping at-risk children, that kind of thing. We figured that when he got out of the Marines, we could have saved enough to move down to Philly and get started on our lives. I never really considered that he might not come back. I mean I worried about it, a lot, but deep in my heart, I thought I somehow felt that he would be okay.”
Nathan said, “I lost someone, too — on the day I was going to ask her to marry me.”
“Then you know. It’s more than depression. It’s like your entire existence had been swiped away. Like you died but never left your body. Right?”
“More like you died and live in another body.”
Maggie’s face brightened. “That’s exactly it. And that person I had become was nothing but a mockery of who I had been. But I couldn’t do anything about it.”
“So you went through your days existing, searching for a reason to exist.”
“You do understand. I wanted to feel something, but everything I tried left me empty. Sometimes emptier than before.” She brushed back a tear that had slipped down her cheek.
“We don’t have to talk about this.”
“I want to. Really, I’m okay. This isn’t shock talking. Not much, anyway. I don’t know how to explain it. Going through all that tonight feels like, well, I guess it feels like my battery was jump-started. First thing I’m doing — no, I’m getting some sleep first — second thing I’m doing today is I’m going to quit that crappy diner job. Then, I’m packing up and getting out of here. Maybe I’ll go to Philly and look into schools. Time to start living again. After all, next guy I meet might not be able to fight as well as you.”
“You’re the one that saved us.”
“I’d say we did it together.”
“Fair enough.”
Her fingertips traced a circle on the top of the wooden box. “This may seem like a strange gift, but I want you to have this.” She opened the box. Inside was a black and silver handgun with a dark wood grip. It looked pristine.
“Beautiful,” Nathan said. After his intensive training with Octavia, he had gained an appreciation for a well-made firearm. He also knew them to be a basic necessity to his new life.
Maggie hefted the weapon out of the book. “It’s a Wilson Combat Classic — ten millimeter semi-automatic, eight round magazine, long nose stainless match-grade barrel, full-size carbon steel frame and slide with the High Ride Bulletproof Beavertail grip safety and Cocobolo double-diamond grip. It has a three-and-a-half to three-quarter pound trigger pull and a low-mount adjustable rear sight as well as a ramp front sight. If they had these back in the seventies, Dirty Harry would’ve loved it.”
Nathan picked up the gun. It was large and powerful and heavy. The kind of handgun used to permanently stop a charging animal or a vicious hum
an. “You can’t give this to me. It’s got to cost one or two grand at least.”
“Three thousand two hundred fifty. Michael bought it for me the day before he left. For protection. But it’s too big for me. The recoil would knock me to the ground. I have a .22 in my closet. I’m going to dig that out and keep it around. But you — you’re not done with all this, are you?”
“No.”
“And you’re the good guy, right?”
“I’m trying to be. That man who took us wants to hurt a woman. I’m trying to stop that.”
“Sounds like a good guy to me.”
“That part does. But I might have to do some bad things to get the job done.”
“Doesn’t that go with the territory? Heroes rarely get to stay clean.” She closed the box and handed over a full magazine. “Here. Michael said it was for protection, so go protect that woman.”
Nathan kissed her cheek. “Don’t sleep in too late. You won’t be safe until you get out of town. After that, there’s no reason for them to come for you.”
She nodded. “Don’t worry about me. I’m reborn. I’ve got a new life waiting somewhere else.”
He left the apartment and slid the Wilson Classic in the back of his waistband, then pulled his shirt over to conceal the weapon. He walked along the side of the road. The morning sun felt good on his face as he headed back to the motel. The weapon felt good against his back as if it had always been there.
Reaching behind, he touched the grip and nodded to himself. “I’ll call you Maggie.” He had never thought he would be one to name a weapon, but the urge came and he went with it. Seconds later, he dropped his hands and his face turned cold and focused. “Okay, Maggie,” he said, his pace quickening, “let’s go to work.”
Chapter Twenty
With several miles to walk back to the motel, Nathan had plenty of time to think and plan. He expected somebody would be waiting for him, but he wanted the few items he had stored in his rental car — his bag of clothes, the micro-binoculars, and a little bit of cash. He also wanted his Smith and Wesson MP. No matter how powerful Maggie turned out to be, and that Wilson Combat Classic looked plenty powerful, he knew that when night fell, he would need more than one weapon.
Above all else, though, he needed a second soul. He had already used up hours of life and several more lay ahead of him. The idea of agreeing with anything Larkin had said soured Nathan’s stomach, but he couldn’t deny one truth — the longer he went without a second soul, the older his body would get. Those precious seconds, minutes, and hours would never come back. If he wanted to live forever — and he did — then he wanted to do so in a vibrant, young body. Losing several hours may not seem like much, but he saw how that would stack up over an endless lifetime. If he didn’t hoard every last possible second as a dragon hoarded gold, then he faced an eternity of horrible living.
When he reached the Palace Motel, a clear solution presented itself — the guard. A beefy man in a plain suit paced the parking lot and smoked a cigarette. Nathan knew at once that the man belonged to the Larkin Group. The only other possibility was the FBI, and Nathan had no reason to believe the Feds were after him. Not yet, anyway.
He crouched behind a car parked near the diner. He had a fight coming up, no doubt about that, and it would be done in broad daylight. Worse, Nathan had to assume this man was an immortal. Larkin wouldn’t take any more chances, and if he sent a civilian, he would be handing Nathan an easy second soul. Which meant that Nathan needed to kill the man, force out his second soul, attempt to capture that soul before it left and before the man came back to life to continue the fight, knock the man unconscious, hide the body, and grab what he needed — all without being seen. This would not be easy.
Keeping low, Nathan scurried along the street and around the back of the motel. When he came around the corner, he found the guard facing the front entrance. Perfect.
Nathan walked straight up to the man and in one swift motion, he kicked at the ankle, sweeping the foot forward and up, and simultaneously, he arm-barred the man in the chest, sending his body back and down — easy and effortless. The man’s head hit the pavement hard enough to daze him. Before he had a chance to recover, Nathan dragged him into the motel room — the door still off its hinges from the previous night’s attack.
Nathan pulled out Maggie, then put her back. Too noisy. Also, he only had sixteen shots between the two magazines. He had to be sparing.
On the man’s belt, Nathan saw a holstered .38 and a pocketknife on a chain. He set the gun aside and opened the knife. The man groaned as he started to move. Nathan slit his throat.
As the blood gushed onto the bed, Nathan straddled the man and stared into his eyes. They glittered as the mist seeped out. Nathan concentrated on that mist, hoping to steal it before it could leave this world. That’s when the man gut-punched him.
Rolling to the floor, Nathan tried to keep his eyes wide open and on the mist, but the soul drifted up through the ceiling. No time for regrets. The man leaped over the bed and brought his knee onto Nathan’s chest. The blow forced out what little air he had left in his lungs.
“Not only did you make me lose my soul,” the man said, “but I lost a hundred bucks betting you wouldn’t be stupid enough to return here. I don’t like losing.” He ground his knee hard as Nathan strained for air.
He saw the man reach for his gun only to find the holster empty. Nathan grabbed Maggie and slammed her against the man’s head. As he fell to the side, easily dazed a second time, Nathan rolled over and clambered to his feet. With Maggie, he smacked the back of the man’s head twice. It was not clean, stylish, or displaying any control, but it did the job. The man was out and would stay out for a few hours.
Nathan sat on the edge of the blood-stained bed and breathed. He spent five minutes there, staring at the unconscious man. Most of that time, he fought the temptation to kill the man for his soul. His body craved that second soul like a drug addiction, but Nathan’s rational side argued against the move. Two main reasons: First, the man was an immortal, too. It was one thing to attempt to steal his second soul — most likely, a weak elderly person. But to steal the master soul meant bringing a seasoned veteran into his body. He would have spent the rest of his time fighting for control, and he probably would have lost. Second, and perhaps even more important, if he killed this man, it would be worse than killing Larkin. All immortals who found out about it, not just those in the Larkin Group, would come after him. Can’t have one of their own going around destroying the immortal bodies.
That settled it. Nathan found his bag in the bathroom. He dressed in his black recon outfit from the night before. The man’s wallet had no ID or cards, but he did carry one hundred fifty dollars. That, along with the man’s cell phone, went into Nathan’s pocket. He placed the man’s .38 as well as his own MP into the bag along with the binoculars, the extra clip, and the pocketknife. Maggie stayed against his back for now. If he survived the night, he would have to buy a holster big enough for her.
One more pat down located some handcuffs. Nathan dragged the big guy into the bathroom and cuffed him to the toilet fixtures. With that done, he tossed the bag into his car and drove off. He had a day to kill and some items to purchase at a hardware store. Then, when the sun set, he had a woman to save.
Chapter Twenty-One
The rest of the day went by without incident. He kept far from town, hanging out at a truck stop and going over his plans again and again. He knew from training and experience that his plans did not really matter much. Plans were always the first casualty once the shooting started. Yet, having some idea in his head of what he should try to do would help. Besides, it kept his mind occupied as the hours rolled along.
Twice he saw an old trucker pull in. Each time, he felt a twinge in his belly like a hunger-pang. He wanted those souls. But he managed to let them go.
Survive the night. That had to be the goal. Then he could sneak into a hospital and find a worthy candidate for his immor
tality.
When dusk arrived, he drove out to the spot along the fence that he had jumped the previous night. After parking alongside the road, he loaded up his weapons, shouldered his bag, and walked to the fence. As he approached, a simple thought hit him hard — Why am I doing this?
Yes, he wanted to help, but why did helping have to mean risking everything he had? Couldn’t he drop all this, go get a second soul, and then find other ways to help people, ways that didn’t include getting shot at? Just because the Larkin Group wanted to play at espionage and assassination hardly meant that Nathan had to do it, too.
With the tracking device removed from his body, he could disappear with ease. The Larkin Group would pursue him, but he could go off to live forever in some remote paradise on the beaches of India or the Philippines. Even if they found him, he would only have to deal with them once-in-a-while. That was enormously different than loading up and running into a fight.
This was madness. If he turned back, he could put the madness behind him.
And then what?
If he chose that route, all that remained would be existing. Forever. There would be great times, he imagined. Beautiful women, plenty of money, and days upon days of tranquility. He could smell the salt air and hear the ocean waves coming in with a steady rhythm.
But the women would grow old and die. The money would follow the cycles of all economies and dry up. The world would not rest, and so, his tranquility would be destroyed by those who wanted power over others.
“And I have a power,” he said.