The Price of Life

by T. M. Nienaber

  Then things started to feel even more wrong. Miriel was able to catch a glimpse of her tracker as he dove behind a tree, trying not to be seen. Hardly up to Lucian’s professional standards. Weapon drawn, Miriel looked around. The woods weren’t Miriel’s natural environment and she was having trouble seeing what was out of place and what was normal. This was never a problem in back alleys and broken into houses. She knew them well enough to know when the rats were rolling over in their sleep. Outside of the city things were entirely different. A shadow might be nothing more than a cloud and things weren’t organized by their owners into patterns of controlled chaos. Everything seemed out of place and Miriel had no idea which side to watch for an attack. She hadn’t thought about defense once she was out this far. She had no idea where to start.

  She was only waiting for a few more minutes before things were started for her. At least that was something to work with.

  “Why, Elle, what a surprise to find you here. Scampering off, tail between your legs. I guess things just got a little too real for you, eh?” Kristopher gave a smile only a man who knows he can’t die for long can give. Immortality looked good on him. He gestured for his men to come out and surround Miriel.

  “Those are Lucian’s men. They know me.” Miriel looked around cautiously but wasn’t too concerned. She recognized the boys’ faces. She knew they had seen her out with Lucian before. It had to be one of Lucian’s games. He was just playing with her one more time before the stalemate was drawn and things went back to the way they always were.

  “Of course they know you, Mi.” He emphasized the name as if that was all the proof she needed whatever happened next happened because Lucian wanted it to.

  “It’s Elle, Kristopher. You call me Elle.” She was only slightly annoyed and Kristopher was upset the name hadn’t shaken her like he intended it to.

  “Fine, Elle it is then. But that won’t matter for long, will it men?” Kristopher looked around for some sort of evil gleam or maniacal chuckle from his men but the show of evil minion power fell flat. One of the men even shrugged and took a few steps back. “Well,” Kristopher coughed and tried to recover. “I’d think it’s obvious why we’re here.” He paused for effect. “And who sent us.”

  “Really?” Miriel looked skeptical. Kristopher had a lot of work to do before he mastered the all powerful tyrant look. He lacked the command Lucian had to turn blood cold just by being in the room, although he was trying admirably. Just because the attitude was wrong didn’t mean he was any less deadly. A fact Miriel was slowly realizing, the men may have been nonchalant and somewhat apathetic but they weren’t backing down.

  “It is quite a reality, Elle. You can guess who sent us. I’m sure of that. He’s not as forgiving towards you as you thought.” If there was one thing Kristopher knew how to do after all his years in politics it was how to not tell the whole truth without actually lying. He never used Lucian’s name so, while he knew that was the person who would immediately jump into Miriel’s head, he couldn’t be held accountable for actually saying it.

  “Oh, well then.” Miriel nodded calmly and before Kristopher had time to react she had stabbed two of his three men in the stomach with her wrist blade. All without working up a sweat.

  Kristopher stood in shock, not at what Miriel had done but because he hadn’t seen it coming. The last remaining henchman, Alexander, quickly stepped up and had Miriel firmly held by the arms, her knife now laying uselessly on the ground. She hadn’t thought to bring more weapons than that. The knife was in case she ran into animals, it wasn’t much of a killing weapon. It still did a good job though, judging by the bodies of the two henchmen she’d already taken out.

  “What do you have to say for your Lucian now?” Kristopher glided in front of Miriel once she had been disarmed and restrained.

  “His man is holding you back and he didn’t even think enough of you to kill you himself.” Kristopher picked Miriel’s knife up from where it had been tossed away and pressed the blade to her cheek hard enough to draw blood but too light to do any real damage. “Tell me, Elle, what do you have to say to him now?”

  “Nothing I’d share with you.” Miriel was only half paying attention to Kristopher’s tease with death. The rest of her attention was focusing on a way to get out of the situation entirely. She didn’t want to believe Lucian had been the orchestrator here but right now that wasn’t the point to dwell on. She could dwell on that for years, but now it was time to make sure she’d have years left to do it.

  Kristopher continued to prattle on while slicing at Miriel’s face but she had him tuned out. The man holding her didn’t have his whole heart in it. If she struggled he wouldn’t put up much of a fight. His hold had gone slack because there wasn’t much resistance on Miriel’s end. Kristopher was far too distracted by his bad guy monologue to notice Miriel getting ready to spring away.

  “Are you listening?” Kristopher took the knife blade and jabbed it down into the fleshy part of Miriel’s upper arm. If the knife had a longer blade he would have seen the tip come out the other side.

  Miriel bit her bottom lip hard to keep from screaming. She had to stay focused. It had officially crossed the line of being one of Lucian’s games and if she didn’t get out on her own there was only one other outcome for her.

  Kristopher grinned at all the blood as he yanked the knife out. He was having fun now. He never got to make the messes himself. The knife hovered near Miriel’s eye now and she had to bit her lip again to keep herself from flinching. Kristopher brought the knife through the small space of flesh right under her shoulder joint and pulled it back out, smiling, “Tricked you!” He almost giggled.

  Miriel was starting to realize if she didn’t do something now she’d lose too much blood and not be able to put up a fight at all. She leaned her head on her chest in a feint and felt the man holding her loosen his grip even more. Thank god for amateurs. Kristopher chuckled and started to come in for the kill, the knife touched her stomach and Miriel turned, the knife landed deeply in her side, but nothing instantly fatal. She could still move. She kicked out Kristopher’s legs and ran, using every last store of adrenaline she had. Alexander looked at Kristopher and shrugged, ignoring his shrieks to ‘go after the bitch’. Instead, he turned toward the corpses of his friends and motioned for Kristopher to come over and help him.

  “Let the useless bastards rot! Go after her!” Kristopher continued to shriek, ready to turn on his remaining man. He would have used the knife but it was still in Miriel’s side.

  Alexander stared and him and grinned.“Lucian never told you about the catch did he?” The boy was bluffing but he had a hunch Kristopher would be too distracted to notice it was all a lie.

  It calmed Kristopher down quickly, his eyes unclouded and got sharp with anger as he glared. “What catch?”

  Alexander laughed as he explained, “You don’t have an unlimited supply of men which you get three at a time, you get us. If we don’t find a way to get these bodies back to Lucian for resurrection soon you’ll be down to me. And it’s $100,000 a corpse for outsiders like you. And they’ll only resurrect them in a 24 hour period.” This wasn’t entirely a lie, those were the rules for people coming to the cult for a favor. It’s how they made their money. The lie was that, as members of the cult, Alexander, Thomas, and Robert would be resurrect as many times as necessary and however long after death, as long as they stayed loyal. Kristopher didn’t have anything to worry about. As long as the three boys stayed loyal to Lucian he’d have his three men.

  “I’m sure Lucian will perform the ritual himself since you’re something of a V.I.P. customer. You really won’t have much of a risk. Lucian’s the best. He never messes things up.” Alexander smiled and Kristopher was sick to see the admiration and respect in the boy’s eyes when he said Lucian’s name, but he had more important problems than hero worship at the moment.

  “What problems?” Kristopher’s teeth were clinched tight and the question came out as more of a
hiss.

  “Normally the fee for Lucian himself to do a resurrection ceremony is half a million, but you get the promise of total restoration. Most people don’t put a price on the life of a loved one,” Alexander explained. These were still the rules for people from the outside coming in but they didn’t apply to members of the cult. When it came to them, there was almost no risk of the resurrection becoming botched because as members of the cult they knew what was expected of them even in death. “But you’ll always get Lucian since you two have an agreement. The others don’t have his experience or his skill and sometimes the corpses come back, well,” Alexander paused, trying to figure out what would scare Kristopher the most. “Have you ever seen The Night of the Living Dead?”

  “The Romero film? Sure, who hasn’t.” Kristopher’s eyes narrowed as he started to put the pieces together, “Zombies. You’re telling me they come back as zombies?” Kristopher somehow managed to yell through his clenched teeth.

  Alexander looked sheepishly at the ground. “It’s a hard skill to master and sometimes the body goes back but the mind, the spirit of who the person was, well. That’s harder to bring back. They aren’t exactly zombies in the traditional sense, more like reanimated corpses with the integral piece missing. Zombie is just the easiest way to describe them. They don’t go around eating flesh unless one of us tells them to.”

  “Where do we have to take these two for Lucian to get to them?” Kristopher signed, resigned.

  “Well, I guess we don’t really have to take them anywhere.” Alexander tried to avoid Kristopher’s eyes.

  “What!” He unceremoniously dropped the corpse he’d been in the process of picking up.

  Alexander went over to make sure Thomas and Robert were really dead and not just near death. Then looked back up at Kristopher. “We can call Lucian, and he’ll show up. We aren’t too far away, he’ll get here before the end of the day. I’m pretty sure he expected you to get us all killed pretty quickly anyway.”

  “Then call him.”

  “Alright, alright.” Alexander took out a cell phone and pushed several buttons in quick succession. “I sent him a text with our location and what you need. He’ll be here soon.”

  “A text? How old are you?”

  “Almost twenty. Thomas is seventeen. Robert’s twenty two.”

  “My god. And this is who Lucian gives me as help.” Kristopher held his head in his hands. “You know Lucian’s on his way, we don’t need to find a way to get these bodies anywhere?”

  “No, we just have to wait.”

  “Good.” Kristopher pulled out a gun that had been hidden underneath his jacket. Alexander looked wary but was too naïve to know exactly what Kristopher meant by the action. “Let’s make a deal,” Kristopher drawled the words, a smile flashing across his face. “You tell Lucian Miriel attacked us first and she fled, mortally wounded, into the woods. You tell Lucian your story and convince your friends to go along with it. Or I don’t pay your fee. And the three of you stay dead forever.”

  Alexander knew it was an empty threat but Kristopher would probably be even more angry if he knew Alexander had lied. If he had to work with Kristopher for long he’d have to play along. At least this way Kristopher might be more careful about getting them killed in the future. Alexander nodded solemnly and Kristopher pulled the trigger. Alexander fell dead next to his brothers.

  Now all Kristopher had to do was wait for everything to start falling into his hands. With Miriel out of the picture Lucian would become dedicated to the cause because he had nothing else to distract him. If Lucian was dedicated, his men would be too. An immortal army would be quite the political coup. Kristopher laughed to himself and tossed the gun in the direction Miriel had run. It would have been better if he’d had a body to hide, a nice motivator if Lucian ever tried to stray, but this would work almost as well. It all came down to patience now and he had plenty of time.

  8. Miriel and Lucian

  Miriel was lucky she ran in the right direction and even luckier to have been so close to the destination she never really planned on reaching. The trees thinned out and she came up against a wall. It was a stereotypical wall with barbed wire stretched across the top and two large main doors. There was a window at the top for sentries to lean out of and see if you were worth letting in or shooting on sight. Miriel wouldn’t have tried to get in if she hadn’t been in desperate need of something to disinfect and sew up the hole in her side.

  As far as Miriel was concerned there were only two things she could expect to see once she was on the other side of wall. The first was a semi-communist-agrarian-hippie society where everyone prayed to mother earth, claimed to be a vegan, and wore nothing if it wasn’t made out of hemp. The second choice was the bizarre time machine effect. This entailed a hybrid Puritan-Medieval society where technology and modern sanitation were banned for the greater good and everyone read Paradise Lost, jousted, and pretended this was Utopia. Neither one of these options sounded at all appealing as far as lifestyle choices went but both of them did promise some form of medical attention, or at least a witch doctor. Miriel had no other options. She wouldn’t be able to make the walk back to the city, especially with Lucian’s men waiting outside to finish the job. She knocked on the giant doors and focused on the tiny window to keep herself from blacking out.

  “Yes, ma’am? How can we help you today?” The voice was almost laughably formal and had the faintest trace of a fake British accent. The face was male, clean-shaven, and probably attached to a body that was impeccably dressed. It even looked like the head was sporting a top hat but that could have been a hallucination from the loss of blood.

  “Um?” Miriel was trying to understand how this man fit into either of her scenarios. Everything about today was wrong, like the world was momentarily off quilter.

  “Doctor. I need a doctor.” Miriel pointed to her side, stepping back so the knife in her side would be more visible to the face behind the wall. She tried to point to her side but her hand nudged the knife and sent it further inside. Miriel groaned and doubled over. She pulled the knife out and tossed it away in the grass, not thinking to keep her only weapon. She then brought both hands to her injured side and tried to keep the blood from coming out but wasn’t strong enough to apply much pressure.

  “Oh dear.” The face looked neither concerned nor disgusted. In fact, it didn’t look very interested at all. It just stared out for a few seconds, then disappeared to unlock some things before the door finally started to swing open.

  Miriel walked forward, still holding her side, and gazed back at the man who had opened the gate. He was wearing a top hat, Miriel was sure she wasn’t seeing things this time. He also had on a morning suit. He even had white gloves and a solid oak walking stick he used to emphasis his speech. “You,” he flourished the walking stick at Miriel. “Need a doctor.”

  Miriel looked at him and blinked. “Now.”

  “One more minute won’t kill you though.” The man turned back to the giant doors and made sure they were closed. “At least I don’t think it will,” he muttered with his back to her. The man securely replaced the bars and relocked all the locks, which went down the full length of the door, before returning his attention to Miriel. “Can’t have people sneaking in who don’t belong. Now then. Can you walk on your own?”

  Miriel nodded slowly, movement was starting to get painful and her peripheral vision was disappearing into a world of black. The black was starting to move in. It wouldn’t be long until her sight was gone.

  “Hurry up then, as fast as you can.” The man gestured forward with his walking stick. Miriel hoped she wouldn’t have to take directions from the stick the whole way.

  Miriel did eventually start to follow the man down a cobblestone street. It must have taken years to get this area of the forest prepared for a society like this. Not to mention cost. The clearing was artificially formed so there had to have been a massive deforestation and the ground would have had to be leveled for const
ruction. Then there was the construction itself. The gates were made of metal, probably solid steel all the way through, and from the inside the town looked enormous. The cobblestone looked authentic which meant it had to be laid out by hand and from what Miriel could see every street was paved with it, no cement fillers anywhere. Miriel was desperately curious about what kind of place she was in but her vision was going even faster and all of her strength was going toward following the man with the top hat. She didn’t even have strength to pray he would actually lead her to help, not that she said prayers often. The thought had crossed her mind he could just be leading her back to Kristopher, or to a death at the hands of some unknown enemy. The assassin had been very reckless to throw away the knife.

  “Doctor, this woman needs your help. I’m not sure she’ll make it on her own much longer.” The voice was still formal even in the midst of an emergency. There was no hint of urgency, no panic, no emotion almost like the man in the top hat was reciting lines from a script he had on what to say when seeking medical attention for an unknown but fatally wounded woman.

  “This way.” That same formal, unemotional tone came from the man who must have been the doctor.

  The man with the top hat used his walking stick to show Miriel she was now expected to walk through the door and follow the other man. Miriel walked through the doorway and was greeted by the smells of antiseptic, formaldehyde, used gauze, and medicine. At least it smelled like a doctor’s office. The world was now almost completely black and it was lucky the doctor had taken Miriel’s arm and helped her onto a cot. The cot felt like it was a leftover from World War I, not that Miriel was in a position to be picky.

  ***

  “What a mess you’ve gotten yourself into.” Lucian poked at the bodies of the men he had loaned Kristopher. “Do you treat all your gifts like this? Wear them out the first few weeks you have them and then expect new ones? It’s a little juvenile.” Lucian bent to examine the bullet wound on the last body.