Madman's Monster

by Michael Louis Weinberger

  He willed his finger to squeeze the trigger, but they wouldn't respond. He pinched his lips together, gritting his teeth and tried again, but still his fingers wouldn't obey him. He was about to squeeze the gun's trigger with all his might when a voice spoke to him from behind.

  "I always thought my timing was inherently poor."

  Zach froze as the sound of the words broke the serenity of the moment for him. He lowered the gun from his temple, slowly turning to see the source of the voice. The sight that met him had Zach initially thinking he was seeing a ghost. The man that stood calmly watching him was very tall, although not as tall as he, and big bodied, but once again, not as big as he. The man was dressed all in black, which accentuated how purely white his long hair and skin were against the dark cloth. Despite the gothic appearance of the stranger's skin and clothes, it was his eyes that commanded attention...or rather the two obsidian black orbs that sat in the sockets where his eyes should be. The appearance should have been frightening, but they instead appeared well rounded, having a life to them, expressing something other than horror. It was more along the lines of looking into the eyes of a stag, or a stallion, when the whites couldn't be seen.

  The man spoke again, "But this time I am glad to see that I haven't arrived too late."

  Zach cocked his head to one side, "Too late for what?"

  The stranger's eyes widened, "Interesting, I was told you weren't talking. I see you've found your voice."

  Zach nodded. A lot of things have come back to him since the fire in the lab, just like grandmother said they would. Zach looked away from the man and at his gun, "Are you here to stop me?"

  The man smiled, "Absolutely."

  Zach raised the gun up again and pointed it at the stranger, "Who are you?"

  The smile immediately left the stranger's face, "They call me Alpha now, but you once knew me as Alphonso Diemo, and later as the Comte de Navarre."

  The words were familiar to Zach, but with his thoughts, prior to the recent events being so jumbled, he couldn't place where he might have heard them before.

  Zach shook his head, but lowered the gun back down to his side, "You know me?"

  "Oh yes," the man called Alpha said warmly, "In fact, I believe I can say with complete confidence, that I know you far better than you know yourself."

  Zach smiled, "That...is not saying much."

  Alpha shrugged, "I suppose not, but would you like to know more?"

  Zach looked down to the gun in his hand, "Do you think it matters now?"

  Alpha looked into Zach's eyes, "I can see your eyes."

  "What?"

  "Oh nothing," Alpha said causally as he waved a dismissive hand in front of his face, "I was told that your eyes were nothing more than red spots in your head." Alpha confessed, "I'm going to have to tell my sources to double check the details of their information."

  "What sources?"

  "Two of the men you pulled from the crater belong to me."

  Zach winced, "Belong?"

  Alpha held up his hands, "As a part of my family, so to speak. They filled in the details and I was quite surprised by what they told me."

  "Why?"

  Alpha stood up from the boulder he had been sitting on and began to pace back and forth as he spoke, "Because it sounded so familiar. In fact, it sounded too damn familiar to be a coincidence. Memories, along with a guilt I have been holding onto for longer than any sane person should, told me that I had to find you."

  Zach raised an eyebrow, "How did you find me?"

  Alpha smiled, "I'm afraid that I have been very sneaky as of late. I really don't know much about computers, but that young man, Chris, is an absolute...what's the term?" Alpha looked at the sky as if the answer was written there and then snapped his fingers, "Hacker! That's it, a hacker. Anyway, he tapped into a few military satellite systems for me and we used their surveillance cameras to look for your heat signature. Took some time, but there weren't that many people who walked from the wreckage that had been the camp. In the end, you weren't that hard to track down."

  Zach eyed the man called Alpha nervously, "So, why track me down at all?"

  "As I said I needed to see you face to face."

  "And as I asked before, why?"

  "Because I had to know if it was really you. That you were alive."

  Zach chuckled and gestured with the Desert Eagle a couple of times, "Not for long."

  Alpha's face dropped and he looked very sad, "Yes, I noticed that." Alpha was silent for a few seconds and then asked, "Is this about the girl?"

  Zach turned away from Alpha and his voice cracked, "Of course it is...and what would you know about it anyway?"

  The emotion drained out of Alpha's expression and he answered in such a monotone that one might think he was otherwise completely apathetic.

  "I know that you always wanted a son...and a daughter."

  Zach chuckled, "Oh really? And how could you possibly know that about me?"

  The man named Alpha smiled, "Let me guess. You were going to make her English name 'Abigail'?"

  Zach froze. He had never written that down. Never discussed that with anyone, not even Pha. There was no way this man, strange though he might be, could possibly know that.

  Zach straightened, "How could you know that?"

  "Because Abigail was the love of your life. Your OLD life."

  The words played in Zach's head and a wave of vertigo threatened to overcome him. He dropped the gun, staggering to one side he dropped down to his knees. Just to keep him from falling over. Alpha knelt down next to him, saying, "Right now my own daughter is missing, and in the hand's of men who have only the worst of intentions for her." Zach shook his head in an attempt to clear it as he looked at Alpha who continued, "I know I need your help to get her back alive."

  Zach frowned, "The girl..." he searched his garbled thoughts for the name of the girl who had helped him and fought alongside him in the past few days, "Her name is Lei, right?"

  "Yes."

  "How exactly do you think I can help?"

  Alpha smiled at him and sardonically said, "You have your talents."

  Zach looked at the man, looked deep into those limitless black eyes and said, "No."

  Alpha's white eyebrows shot upward in surprise, "No?"

  Zach shook his head, "No. It won't bring my daughter back, and frankly, I just am too tired to care about anyone or anything anymore."

  He raised the gun back up to his temple, "Now if you do not wish to watch this I'd suggest you..."

  "Are you curious why your skin doesn't burn like all the others who were reduced to ashes?"

  Zach froze, his mouth still open with the half spoken word on his lips.

  "Or perhaps where you are from?"

  Again Zach's mouth moved, but no words came out as he tried to answer.

  Alpha spoke again, but now his voice changed and an accent that hadn't been present before colored all his words "Or, most of all, where the rest of your family is?"

  Zach's eyes shot to Alpha as a small moan found its way out of his mouth from somewhere deep inside him.

  Alpha saw the reaction, "Yes, your family Zach...or should I call you by your real name?"

  Zach felt as if the world had begun to spin as a sense of vertigo threatened to overwhelm him, "M-my real...?"

  Alpha nodded slowly, "Yes, your real name...William."

  Something inside his head, like a dam that had been blocking his thoughts, broke wide open as memories suddenly came flooding in all at once and Zach...no, not Zach...his name wasn't Zach...it was William. He said it over and over in his head, "William." It was his name...

  "William Bartholomew McCullen..." he said it out loud, as if he had always known it was his true identity. More memories came flooding in as he spoke and now there was nothing to hold them back and they swept over him. The last of the damage that Dr. Whelan's torture and the mind control treatments that held him in bondage was stripped away and William's arms dropped whil
e his body began to sway as he teetered toward the edge of the cliff. Alpha sprang forward, grabbed him by the clothes he wore before he could fall, and together they dropped back to their knees, as William began sputtering, his own rough English accent returning, "Good Lord...I remember." he looked to Alpha, "I remember it all.

  Alpha nodded, "I'm so sorry William. I had no idea you were still alive or I would have sought you out sooner."

  William was staring off into the distance remembering the past, "They...they burned me alive, didn't they?"

  "So they tried. So I had thought," Alpha confirmed, "When I had recovered from my injury I returned to our home and found you and Abigail dead in the front walkway. You were little more than a charred corpse...and Abigail..."

  William nodded, and tears filled his eyes again, "Oh Abi. My beautiful Abi. What they did to you."

  Alpha looked at William, "I am so sorry."

  William held up a hand, "Not your fault sir."

  "No. No 'sir’ to me. Not anymore." Alpha insisted.

  William laughed, "You are an honored Count, while I..."

  Alpha stiffened, "Are my brother, as certainly and stronger than if we had shared parents."

  William smiled, but then his face turned horror stricken, "Alphonso! I had a son! I-"

  Alpha immediately grabbed onto William and quickly said, "He survived that night! You had done it. Everyone that had been in our charge survived because of you and Abigail."

  A glimmer of hope seemed to flicker into William's demeanor, "My son...is...is he like us?"

  Alpha knew what William was asking and his face dropped. It was a very rare thing for any of their people to live without aging. True the aging process happened slowly for all, but only a select few would live on and on. Alpha didn't want to deliver even more grave news, but he knew William could always spot a lie, even a white one, "No, I'm sorry my friend but he died over four hundred years ago."

  William's head dropped, but Alpha continued, "William, look at me. Your son was nearly one hundred and fifty years old when he died and the father of three, grandfather of six, great grandfather of fifteen and great-great grandfather of thirty beautiful children. He was a strong, intelligent man who led our people to the new world, the Americas, and helped establish our presence there. I couldn't have been more proud of him, and I know you and Abigail would have been so very proud of the great man he had become as well."

  William had begun openly crying as he took all of that in and said quietly, "Are...are any of my..."

  "Your grandchildren still alive?" Alpha finished what William was having trouble saying, "After all this time families have become so diluted and integrated that I'm sure there are hundreds, but any direct decedents I simply can't say...with one exception."

  William looked up at Alpha and quickly wiped the tears from his eyes, "One? Truly? But if everyone is so... How can you...?"

  "Because in all the centuries we have lived the only ones from our community capable of resisting age are our descendents." Alpha smiled, "You have family my brother. You are not as alone as you think."

  William dropped the gun and looked out over the cliff at the view that was spread out before them.

  Alpha's face grew serious again, "There's more William, and I will tell you everything, but my daughter needs me and I need you."

  William didn't answer, but his head nodded and he fought to stand. Alpha helped him to his feet, "There's something else."

  William listened as he retrieved the massive sidearm from where he had dropped it and slid it into his belt, turning to look at Alpha. The expression on Alpha's face was a mask of anger as whatever he now thought about was burning a rage inside of him.

  "What is it?" William asked.

  "The man that escaped with my daughter, I had thought he was a CIA operative, but it turns out he was a mole for someone else."

  "A mole?"

  "A spy."

  "Ah, I see. So who has your child?"

  Rage overwhelmed Alpha and his voice came out in a hiss, "An enemy who has declared war on our people. His name is Dimitri Lagos and he, like us, is an ancient."

  William looked surprised, "There are others like us?"

  Alpha nodded, "The world is a much smaller place now. We know of our kind all over the world. Dimitri is the ancient of the Russian collective."

  William nodded more in understanding Alpha's words than in any sort of agreement, "But why would one of our kind want to war with another?"

  "He doesn't want us to interfere with what he is planning, and thought that by taking Lei he could guarantee our cooperation."

  William shook his head, "Stupid. So we kill them all, yes?"

  Alpha nodded, "Yes, but you should know something else."

  "What?"

  "When you were being experimented on by the late Dr. Whelan, he was manipulating your brain. It was, of course, his specialty and through all the torture and the drugs he used, you have to understand your mind was not your own."

  "So?"

  Alpha stepped back from William as if suddenly afraid of what the giant might do, "Your daughter...Pha. She's not dead."

  "WHAT?!" William roared and rushed forward, grabbing Alpha by the shoulders and lifting him effortlessly off the ground.

  "She's alive William. They tricked you into thinking they had killed her to break your mind and spirit, but they kept her as a prisoner in case they ever lost control of your mind. A security measure they could use against you."

  William was shaking all over, but he set Alpha down and growled, "Who?"

  "Initially I believe it was Whelan's plan, but now Dimitri has both our daughters, and by God, we are going to get them back!"

  William stood up straight with his body still quaking from the news that his daughter was still alive.

  "And then…” Alpha’s voice became a snarl, “Then we are going to kill them all!"

  Something around William's eyes twitched as he spoke, and Alpha watched in awe as the whites and pupils of William's eyes began to darken until they turned completely blood red.