by Lucia Ashta
The Unkillable Killer
Lucía Ashta
Awaken to Peace Press
Copyright 2018 Lucía Ashta
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction.
Cover design by Lou Harper of Harper by Design.
Edited by Ellen Campbell.
Awaken to Peace Press
Sedona, Arizona
I strive to produce error-free books. If you discover a mistake, please contact me at [email protected] so I may correct it. Thank you!
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For my beloved, who laughed first
Beneath the clothes, we find a man. And beneath the man, we find his nucleus.
Nacho Libre
Contents
The Unkillable Killer
MAKE A DIFFERENCE
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Acknowledgments
Books by Lucía Ashta
About the Author
The Unkillable Killer
Out of sight in the shadow of the control tower, I shook my hand, palm up, several times and was rewarded by a sharp communal shriek. The airplane’s passengers were prisoners of aluminum alloy, composite material, and my whims. It wasn’t the way anyone wanted to go.
Except for me. I’d take it.
The passengers’ screams continued, but I didn’t smile or tense. I felt nothing. I hadn’t felt anything worth feeling in far too long.
I shook my hand again and dropped it a foot before sharply raising it back to chest height. The plane plummeted, its nose nearly scraping the tarmac before bouncing upward.
Abruptly, most of the screams ceased. The passengers were too sick with fright or motion to clamor for their lives anymore.
Finally, the control tower personnel sounded the siren of alarm.
“It’s about time,” I muttered, even though there was no one there to hear me. If the control tower employees couldn’t hear the screams, they certainly wouldn’t hear what I said.
“You’d better hurry up, Z.” I was used to talking to myself since I spent so much of my time alone. “I won’t be able to handle this screeching horn for long.”
Idly, I walked away from the offending siren, skirting the edges of the airport’s buildings to avoid being noticed. I’d been on the news enough to last me several lifetimes. That wasn’t the kind of attention I sought. There was only one person I wanted to notice me.
I’d sweeten the stakes. The sooner this little show made urgent headline news, the sooner I’d be finished with it all.
I continued to jostle the hovering plane while I lifted my free hand. I pinched the air with a forefinger and thumb and yanked them toward me. A second plane, one that had been in the process of boarding, creaked and cracked until it was free of the sleeve that attached it to the boarding gate. Then it was airborne.
A stroller clattered to the ground below. A young mother clutched an infant to her chest with one arm while she held onto the lip of the plane’s open door with the other. Two flight attendants, flattened to the floor of the plane, reached arms out to pull the woman inside.
I chuckled, and even to my own ears, it was a mirthless, dead sound. “Good, good. This’ll make a fine news clip.”
I considered agitating the second plane before the flight attendants could secure the woman and her child inside it. I prepared my hand to do it. But even though I sent messages to my hand to move, to shake violently, to allow the blessing of death to deliver this woman and child to a better place, my hand or mind betrayed me. “Dammit,” I yelled.
By now, airport personnel dressed in all variety of uniforms were emerging onto the tarmac, like swarming ants, but no one looked my way. All attention was focused on the two planes and the heart-wrenching scene of the woman, who was insisting on handing over her infant child before they could pull her into the plane.
I needed to do it. I should do it. I should shake the crap out of both planes.
But again, I didn’t. “Ah, crap.” I dropped my hands in disappointment before thinking.
Immediately, the planes dove in a free fall.
I hesitated for a long, ugly second, waiting to see if I was capable of doing it, what I’d convinced myself needed to be done.
The people on those planes didn’t have another second, and I hated myself for it even as I snapped my hands back to chest level.
The momentum flung the young mother into the plane after her baby. A sickening crunch reached my ears. My heart hiccupped, and I wondered if I might feel something for the woman, her child, or the flight attendants.
But there was nothing. My heart was dead—or it should be.
“Look!” someone shouted from the tarmac. “Over there.”
“He’s coming to save the planes,” came another shout.
The roar of enthusiasm that followed was one filled with hope and energy. It, too, would make an excellent highlight to the newsreel.
The sighting, and I didn’t have to turn to realize who it must be, delivered hope to me as well. Finally, after all this time, this could end.
I waited until Zedekiah was almost certainly within saving range, and then I dropped my hands with a deathly finality. This was it for me. It was the action that would seal my fate, something I hadn’t controlled for too many anguished centuries. And it would be the moment when Zedekiah would shine.
Zedekiah drew purpose from this. He was made to save people. This was, perhaps, his destiny even.
He rocketed into view in indigo spandex and caught the planes a fraction of a second before they pounded against the tarmac. He hovered in the air between the two jets, his hands outstretched to either side, his muscled body the paragon of superheroness. His dark hair ruffled in the wind as he brought the planes down for a gentle landing.
This would make the best news clip of them all.
With the planes delivered safely, Zedekiah floated down to the ground.
The cheers that erupted were deafening compared to the shrieks of people that believed they might die. It was the same infatuation that had infected people for centuries: They wanted—needed—to believe in something outside of themselves. They searched endlessly for proof that there was something in this life beyond the mundane, that life mattered. Life contained tragedy, yes, but life also contained heroes, superheroes even.
I used to be one. Both a superhero and a person desperate to believe in something outside of myself, something that could make sense of the suffering and loss of this world.
Now, I didn’t want to be either. I just wanted it to be over. And once Zedekiah realized I was the one responsible for this, he’d end it.
Zedekiah played the role of superhero well. He accepted the people’s accolades and thanks with appropriate humility and grace. He gave the news cameras enough footage for some good highlights, but he didn’t linger long enough to enter the arena of conceit.
His muscles bulged revealingly beneath the spandex body suit, its indigo shade a nod to the sacred robes he and I once wore, what seemed like several lifetimes ago. What I’d considered sacred then had since revealed itself a farce.
My gaze upon my friend, I waited, knowing the moment would come when he’d step away from the limelight and search for me—unless he imagined someone else had levitated those planes. No, he’d put it together. Although there were other superheroes—and villains—out there in the world, none could do what we could in the same way.
My eyes were already locked on his face when he spotted me. I watched as his swarthy face drooped in confusion and his startling green eyes narrowed. He held my gaze for a few
beats before returning his attention to the cameras and microphones in front of him. He likely didn’t want their attention on me right now any more than I did.
The smile returned to his face for a few final comments. He was the media’s golden hero, even if his hair and skin were dark. The times were back to judging his looks handsome. The eras that heralded the pale skin and plump bodies of the wealthy, who had the privilege of avoiding hard labor beneath the beating sun, the measure of beauty were gone—for now. Like everything else, trends cycled back around. At some point, my pasty skin, limp blonde hair, and cushioned flesh would once more be the sign of beauty. Until then, the media would continue to relegate me to the role of “unlikely hero.”
But I was a hero no more.
Zedekiah turned from the eager reporters and bystanders, who filmed with their cell phones. Without another look toward me, which might draw the regard of others, he took off in flight, in the direction opposite me.
But I knew he expected me to follow him and meet, somewhere where we could avoid scrutiny.
The ants across the tarmac cheered. The rescued from the planes applauded. The fans of Z-Man worldwide went crazy, connected to each other through sound bites and screens.
No one noticed me take off in my own quiet flight, skirting the shadows, where I was most comfortable.
Zedekiah was already waiting for me, in the middle of a field of lush, green crops, where he’d etched a few symmetrical patterns before landing. I smiled at the “crop circle” that’d stump conspiracy theorists worldwide. My lips felt as if they’d crack my face. I hadn’t had reason to smile in a long time.
I set down next to him, satisfied with the place he’d chosen for our meeting. It was far enough from the airport that none of the spotters, whose only job was to look for superheroes or villains, would look for us here, and it was nearly harvest time, the corn plants tall enough to conceal us from random onlookers.
“What’s up, man?” Zedekiah said, reserved and cautious, an unusual state for him.
“Hey, Z,” I said. “It’s good to see you.” And I meant it, for several reasons. Z was my favorite. Of the eleven of us stuck with the same variety of superpowers, he was the most cheerful. He was easy to like, and that’s part of the reason the people of the world, even those on continents he didn’t frequent often, loved him. There was an entire line of merchandise—toys, clothes, and even cereal—that touted him the world’s savior. I’d stared at him on the box of my Z-Man Pops this morning over breakfast, preparing myself for my last day on earth.
“So what’s going on?” Again there was the uncommon caution. He must realize something about the day’s events wasn’t adding up.
“Nothing. Nothing at all’s going on, and that’s the problem.”
“What do you mean? Are you... sick or something?”
I laughed, a harsh and bitter sound. Even to my ears, I sounded maniacal and unhinged. “No, I’m not sick,” I snapped. “I’m obviously not sick. I can’t get sick, and neither can you. Neither can any of us. And that’s the damn problem.”
“You want to get sick?” he asked, obviously confused. “Isn’t not getting sick a good thing?”
“No, Z, not getting sick isn’t a good thing, not for me. I can’t take it anymore. I can’t take every damn day being the same, or some slightly different version of the same damn day replaying itself for centuries. I’m tired of growing to care for people only to have them die. No one can make a difference in the world because it all ends for them. They all die. We’re the only ones who don’t, and I can’t live like this anymore.”
“Whoa. What’s gotten into you? We’ll die. At some point. Eventually.”
“‘At some point. Eventually,’” I parroted. “When? Dammit, when?”
Z held his hands up in surrender. His green eyes begged me to calm down. But I was done calming down. I’d been calm for several centuries too long. I’d passed my breaking point. There was no going back now. “I can’t take it anymore,” I persisted. “Not for one second more.”
Z’s eyes were wide with alarm. “Really, man. What’s gotten into you? Did you get up on the wrong side of the bed or something?”
“That’s a ludicrous saying. It doesn’t matter what side of the bed you get up on. Life never changes either way. My day doesn’t change. Ever.”
“I think this, right here, is an argument that you can get up on the wrong side of the bed,” Z teased. “You’re definitely grumpy.”
“I got up on the right side of the bed and had Z-Man Pops, the breakfast of heroes worldwide. Can’t get any more normal than that,” I growled.
“All right, all right. Take it easy.”
We shared a few minutes of quiet, during which all we listened to was the breeze and its endless rustling of corn stalks. Ordinarily, it’d be a soothing sound, nature’s lullaby. But I was beyond ordinary soothing.
I was, I knew, beyond reach.
Finally, Z said, “So what’s really going on? Where’d all this come from? Tell me. I’m here for you. I’ll do whatever I can to help.”
“Good. I was hoping you’d say that. Because I want you to kill me.”
“You what?” he sputtered.
“I want you to kill me.” Hearing the words outside of myself, I was surprised by how much tranquility they instilled in me. I really did want to die.
Z studied me. “You’re serious.”
“Deadly.”
“Holy hell.” That was saying a lot, coming from Z. He’d always been the most pious among us. He was a true believer, even before these superpowers had descended in a lightning storm to strike our cloister. He’d been the first to announce them a gift from God.
I waited what I deemed a respectable amount of time before I said, “So? Will you do it?”
“What? No, I won’t do it! Of course, I won’t kill you. Are you crazy?”
“Probably.”
“No. Absolutely not. When I said I was here for you, I meant that I’m here to help you. Not kill you. Jeesh, Nic. What the hell.” Z sounded disgusted.
I tried another approach. “I need you to. You’re my friend,” I said gently. “I want it to be you.”
“Un-unh. No way.” He stood and started pacing across the flattened pattern of his crop circle. “You can’t seriously think I’d do that. We’re the way we are to save people, not hurt them. And I won’t hurt you.”
“Not even if I’m certain you’d be doing me a great service?”
“No, Nic. Life’s a blessing. A gift from God. I won’t do anything to interfere with that.”
“Maybe normal life is a blessing, for the short time it lasts. Or at least some of it can be a blessing. But lives like ours... nah, man. That’s a curse.”
Z stopped mid-step to reel to me. “How can you say that? We’ve been blessed with extraordinary powers. Super powers. Abilities few others in the world possess. We’re able to shape the world into a better place. How can you say that our lives, our powers, aren’t a blessing?”
“Because they aren’t. We can’t do anything to stop the horrors of the world at any level that makes a real difference, we’re just forced to watch humanity suffer—century after century after century. How many wars have we been through? How many millions of people have died while we’ve stood by with our ‘super powers,’ unable to save them from themselves. Our powers, the ones you think are so great, are a blasted curse.”
Z gasped, visibly affronted. “A... curse?” His bright eyes held my stormy, ordinary brown ones. “You can’t possibly mean that.”
“But I do.”
“But... But Nic, we were chosen by God for this. We were together, brothers in faith, searching for a better way in the dark world we lived in. He blessed us with the way.”
“Perhaps God blessed you,” I said softly. “But God cursed me.”
Z sucked in a sharp breath. It would have been comical—he in his spandex superhero suit and matching cape and aerodynamic boots—if his expression weren’t
so devastated. He brought a quick hand to the Z stamped across his chest. “That’s blasphemy. You’d be wise to watch your words.”
“Or what?” I pushed, experiencing the rush of recklessness. “God will punish me? I’ve already been punished.”
Z’s pious eyes bugged out. “Nic. No.”
“Z. Yes,” I said. “There’s no need to speak of God with me anymore.”
“But you’re a monk!”
“Was. I was a monk, a long, long time ago. I’m a different man now. I’m an old, old man who’s tired of learning new ways of speaking just to fit in with a new generation, to avoid persecution for being different.”
“What are you talking about? The people love us.”
“The people love you. They tolerate me.”
“They love you.”
“They call me Super Dough Man. Where’s the love in that?”
“All right. I admit that’s not the best name, but that’s only because you didn’t choose a better one for yourself.”
“Are you saying you chose Z-Man for yourself?”
“I didn’t, but that’s only because I happen to like Z-Man.”
“It’s a good one,” I conceded. Far better than Super Dough Man.
“The people will learn to love you. Just show them what a good heart you have.”
“I have a dead heart. And just as with everything else, the people will eventually turn on us. Just as they always have. It’s all an endless cycle. There’ll come a time when they’ll fear and persecute us again, and you know it. The people fear what they don’t understand. They always come back to fear. It’s their prevailing emotion.”
Z didn’t say anything.