Unkillable Read online

  Bruce closed the heavy freezer door. It slid into place with a rumbling boom. It was the kind of a noise you would feel throughout your whole body. Portents of doom echoing, and all that.

  “So who do you want me to go to go see?” I asked Bruce.

  “Y’know, somebody who can help you understand what has happened to you. Help you get in touch with your feelings, be a complete person again -- “

  And right there I tuned him out. I had listened to touchy-feely bullshit like this my whole life. I had been forced to spend time in rooms with people, sitting in circles, talking, talking, talking, talking. Endless talking. And what was the point, we were supposed to get in touch with our feelings? How do you feel now that your parents are split up? How do you feel about substance abuse, pre-marital sex, and diversity in the workplace? But nobody ever asked me how I felt about sitting in circles talking to people.

  “-- And she knows, man. She’s a beautiful human being, she just gets it, I can tell --”

  ‘Cause if they had, I would have lost it. I would have told the truth. And the truth is, just because you arrange a bunch of confused idiots in a circle and let them talk doesn’t mean they have anything to say. It’s not like they magically come up with the answer. What primitive superstition was this -- arrange the rocks and the dullards in a circle and they will sing the music of spheres like druids at Stonehenge? It was bullshit. Sitting in a circle didn’t make me smarter. It made me dumber. It made me angry. The next time someone asks you to sit in a circle, do yourself a favor. Check your horoscope; it’s quicker and less confusing.

  “-- And she knows, man, she knows about people like you. Y’know, the life-challenged individual --”

  I had no idea what Bruce was talking about, but for the first time I wasn’t confused about anything else. I knew exactly what I had to do. More to the point, I knew who I needed to do it to. I picked up a scalpel from Bruce’s work tray.

  “You mind if I borrow this?”

  “Wh- What are you going to do with that?”

  “I’m going to drum up some business for you.”

  * * * * *

  Chapter 6

  I laughed when I saw the line outside the club. My whole life, those lines had prevented me from going where I wanted to go. There hadn’t been a line the night before, that was for sure. Had it suddenly become popular? Where had this line of wannabe’s come from? Maybe they had just put two guys and a velvet rope in front of the door and it took off from there. Hot new spot. Undiscovered. A few hundred text messages later and it had come true.

  The living, they are such sheep.

  I walked right to the front of the line. Nice and slow. The two bouncers at the door looked at me in a way that suggested that I wasn’t cool enough to breathe the air in their vicinity. It was kind of marvelous, the way they could look at a person without acknowledging them. A rare skill but no matter how good at it they were, it wasn’t going to save them. My heart was warm with anger, my fist was bright with scalpel and I had come for revenge.

  For the first time since I died, I didn’t feel like I was completely screwed. Sure I was still in a shit ton of ill-defined trouble, but I was going to step through that door and kill the man who had stabbed me in the heart with a screwdriver. And anybody else who got in my way, including the rented pretty-boy thugs at the door. They didn’t think I was cool enough to be allowed into their transitory, bullshit, ecstasy-ladened paradise. But tonight, the low-grade electrical impulses that flitted through their brains masquerading as thoughts were irrelevant.

  As I grew closer, they had to work overtime not to notice me, and they weren’t very convincing. With every other step I took, the ancient knee brace made a terrible screeching noise. Oh yeah, everybody saw me, and they all were slavering for the entertainment of watching me be turned away. Sure they might be nothing more than supplicants, but they felt like they had a chance of getting in. They were still in the lottery; they could get lucky and still be cool tonight.

  But I saw it clear. They might be cool tonight, but tomorrow – when they woke up and their coke was gone and all they had left was the story of a wild night they would never remember in any detail – they’d have to chase it all again. Fuck them. Fuck their drugs. Fuck the tweakers and the skinny girls chomping on the inside of their mouths because their discount X was cut with speed. They looked down on me. They knew I wasn’t cool. I wasn’t. I was something better than cool. I was cold.

  I knocked the velvet rope over and kept walking.

  “Hey, hey, hey,” cried one of the bouncers as he reached out to stop me. I didn’t try to make it past his arms. I stepped right into his face. Preppy tough guy didn’t know what to do. Part of his brain was wondering how to deal with me, but more of it was thinking about how to keep me from messing up his suit. How he could do his job and look still cool for the people in the line? Shit like that.

  I slid the scalpel in between two of his perfectly sculpted abs. I didn’t twist. I didn’t slice. I just stuck it in about an inch and a half and pulled right back out. At first, he didn’t feel it. His mouth kept vomiting words. But even as he was trying to talk me into obeying him – showing off for the crowd, “Wouldn’t you be happier at some other club?” – the drop in blood pressure had registered in his hypothalamus. Even though this kid was too stupid to live, his body’s autonomic nervous system was going to try and keep him alive anyway. The blood drained out of his face.

  “Don’t make me hurt you, douche--” He never got to finish the word with “-bag.” He collapsed like a puppet after the strings had been cut.

  The other guy slammed me to the ground. My head bounced off the sidewalk. He yelled at me, but I couldn’t hear anything. I felt a foot on the back of my neck. When I opened my eyes I saw his other foot right in front of my face. I drew the scalpel across his Achilles tendon. As his leg gave way, I felt the foot on my neck grow lighter. I held onto it, and as he fell backwards, he lifted me to my feet.

  I looked at the people in line. They looked at me. They looked at the bouncers writhing in agony on the ground. Some of them even thought about helping, for about a second. But the bouncers didn’t have any more cool to dispense.

  I unclipped the velvet rope and rasped, “Open season.” Two girls rushed in first. Then the rest of the line stormed the place.

  With chaos as an advance guard, I entered the building.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 7

  The club wasn’t lit as much as it was punctuated by spotlights. Figures appeared in the harsh light and disappeared into the blackness, somehow in sync with the heavy envelope filter that modulated the music.

  The sound was so loud that it pounded through me. It almost felt like my heart was racing. As if I was alive again. As I made my way through the crowd it struck me that everyone here was trying to look like me, with pale skin and heavy eyeliner. They wanted to be dead. Only they couldn’t pull off the look. They cared too much. They moved too urgently. They cared about what he said, or she said. They got tired or thirsty.

  When you’re dead, you don’t care about any of that.

  Lights stabbed through the darkness and the sweat and the smell of stale beer. A girl wearing see-through clothes walked through a pool of light. The light bouncing off her body revealed a door leading into the back. Yeah, I was pretty sure they had dragged me through that door.

  I made my way towards the door. The lights flared again. Everyone on the floor writhed and contorted in time with the music. Everyone except for me and the guy guarding the door to the back. When the light hit him again and I realized that he was a different species than the guys at the front door. Where they were trying to look tough, this guy was tough. His neck rippled with muscle and an old scar crossed his head and arced down towards his left eye. Earlier I would have been scared by him, but not now. I had realized how fragile the living are. This man had no idea what's coming. It was almost enough to make me feel sorry for him.

  Then I remembered th
e feeling of a screwdriver twisting in my heart.

  I walked up to him and whispered a question. He couldn’t hear me so he leaned in. I could feel warmth coming off his body as his lips drew close to my ear. With a wave of my hand, I slid the scalpel through his jugular. The cut was so sharp; I don't think he even felt it. Blood sprayed across the wall, but the wall was flat black. No one noticed. I grabbed the handle of his gun as it sat in his holster. As he fell to the floor, the pistol stayed in my hand.

  I thought about dropping the scalpel but I didn’t. It was an emotional decision more than anything. Killing someone with a gun felt like it would be cheating. Too distant. Like watching someone die on a TV screen. I pulled the slide on the pistol and a bullet skittered across the floor. Guess there was one in the chamber already.

  Another man, a bigger, dumber, angrier man would have kicked the door in and started blasting. A man would have to be full of life, to do such a thing.

  I walked through and closed the door behind me. I felt a deadbolt and locked it. I didn’t want anything to interrupt my special night.

  The private room was lined with black velvet curtains. The thumping of the music was now bearable. In the quiet, I heard the man with the snake tattoo laugh before I saw him. I will never forget that laugh. Then the high giggles of several women. To my left was a low table surrounded by women. Vlade lifted his head out of the middle. Everyone at the table was talking, excited. They all looked like assholes. If I had a life, I would have bet it the table was covered with cocaine.

  Locked on to my target, I started walking towards the table. I felt that nothing could stop me now. My revenge was about to be claimed.

  I raised the gun thinking that it was going to be like in the movies. You know, perfect, in slo-mo. Maybe he stands up and vibrates back and forth while the lead of my righteous retribution punches through his body. But that’s not the way it worked. I pulled the first shot down and to the left, hitting a blond girl who looked like a model. As she crumpled to the floor, the shrieking started. There was no slow motion. Everything sped up.

  I didn’t feel bad for shooting the girl. But part of me felt like I should feel bad for shooting her. Whatever, I don’t want to shoot any more of them. I’m just after the guy who killed me. But now there were shrieking, scantily clad women running everywhere. I lost him in the chaos.

  Something punched me right below the collarbone and spun me around. When I got control of myself, I saw that was another thug. He looked like he could have been Tweedledumbest’s cousin. Did they import the guys by the container load from darkest Obscuristan? I fired three more shots wildly. Then it hit me. What did I care? It’s wasn’t like the thug was going to kill me. I opened my arms wide and yelled at him, “C’mon!”

  This scared the big man, in a strange way. Like he’d seen it before. I didn’t process at the time, but why else would he run? Sure, I looked pretty horrible, but he looked pretty hard himself. Like he didn’t have an inch of back down. For the first time in my life I sensed weakness and fear in another – weakness and fear that I had caused – and I liked it. I advanced towards him with open arms. His eyes grew wide and he turned to flee. I fired two shots into his back. What? It’s not like that fucking Obscuristani wouldn’t have done the same to me if he had the chance.

  As his body slumped to the floor, I felt something… no, not felt exactly. A thought had me. But it was interrupted by the rhythmic sound of flesh slapping flesh. I spun, and there was the man with the snake tattoo. He was applauding.

  “Bravo,” he said through a thick accent, “You kill girl. You kill bodyguard. This is impressive? No. But I applaud to make you feel better. Because now you will die.”

  I wanted to say something cool. You know, like they did in the movies. But nothing came to mind. The image of the bodyguard falling to the ground was all I could think of. And why? I stepped into the light. I showed the man with the snake tattoo my mangled face and body and said, “No, you die.”

  It did not have the intended effect. He did not recoil in horror. And I wanted it. I so wanted him to piss himself. To be afraid. To beg for his life as I had begged in the alley the night before -- shit had it been the night before, or was it two nights ago? It was all so blurry and confusing.

  “Wait a minute,” the Slav said with a note of genuine surprise and joy in his voice, “I know you. I have killed you before?”

  “You don’t remember?” I yelled.

  “I kill lot of people. It is not personal,” he said in a way that sounded like he was genuinely sorry for being rude. What was this guy’s deal?

  “Don’t worry. You’ll remember this time.” I raised the gun and pointed it at him.

  “No, no,” he said, but not in the begging way a person might say “no, no, stop, don’t.” He waved me in, “Closer, get closer, you don’t want to miss.”

  I had no idea what was going on, so I pulled the trigger. BANG! BANG! Two shots into his chest. He did a strange little twist, as if he was shaking it off, and then he giggled. Giggled? “Now is my turn!” He said with all the glee of a child playing a game. He pointed his gun at me and pulled the trigger. I felt a bullet hit my chest.

  So I shot him again. We stood there firing back and forth into each other maybe six or seven times each. Neither of us falling down. Why wouldn’t this warm-blood drop? Why wouldn’t he die? It was all happening very fast, and I just couldn’t figure it out.

  When my gun went click, he said, “Oh goody, now I get to shoot you in the head.” He started walking towards me. Then he stopped and coughed. When he opened his hand a bullet dropped to the floor. “Maybe I cannot kill you, but I am sure you will be much less trouble without a face.”

  Then a shotgun blast destroyed the door to the main part of the club. Men in body armor charged in. They were all shouting. Not exactly the same thing, but close enough. All a variation on, “Police! Drop the weapon! Lie down on the floor! DOWN ON THE FLOOR NOW!”

  Now what was I going to? The Slav who refused to die, looked at me and said, “You should not make deals with Rats. How did you think it would work out? Good for you?”

  If my spine could have gotten any colder, a chill would have run down it. How screwed was I? What could I do? And what were the cops going to say when they arrested a dead guy?

  “This is your last warning, LIE DOWN ON THE GROUND NOW!”

  I winked at the Slav, and did what came natural. I fell to the floor and played dead.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 8

  The detective pushed his long brown hair back across the top of his head and said, "But, I'm tired of talking to your lawyer, Vlade." Everything about the detective looked tired. He even had beat up shoes. When you're lying on the ground, pretending to be dead, you spend a lot of time looking at people's shoes. "How about you just tell me what happened here? You know, try the truth for a change."

  "Whats can I tell you Detective Marsten? There’s a lots of crazy peoples out there." Vlade was laying the accent on very thick for some reason.

  "Yeah, and they don’t come any crazier than the Russians, do they Vlade?” Vlade puffed up with pride. A little blood leaked out of one of the holes in his chest. “You want an ambulance there, big guy?”

  “No, I have no need for your decadent Western Medicine, Detective Marsten.”

  “Of course not,” said the Marsten as he ran a hand through his long brown hair, “It’s all cocaine and Vitamin C for you, right? Can you tell me something, Vladdy? Why does all the crazy shit in this town happen to you?”

  “Talk to my lawyer.”

  “Un-hunh.” The detective came and knelt down beside me. He moved easy and light for a big guy, but you could see that responsibility weighed on him. His honest face had such dark circles he might have been part raccoon. He poked at me with his pen and looked around the room carefully. “And what’s your story, little fella? Why’d you go all ape shit on Vladdy here? What’d he ever do to you?”

  I wanted to answer him. I
really did. To jump up and grab him by the shirt and say, “He killed me! He friggin’ killed me!” But I didn’t. That would have meant more questions. Questions I didn’t have answers to. On top of which, I was dead. I was pretty sure that meant I didn’t have any kind of rights any more.

  Detective Marsten searched through my pockets. It made me kind of upset. The nerve of some people. No respect for the dead. I don’t know why I should have been offended, it’s not like there wasn’t much in there.

  When a tiny crab crawled out of my shirt Marsten said, “Hunh.” Then he turned to Vlade. “Vlad-O! You know this guy?” Vlade shrugged like he invented the gesture. Marsten said the words the same time Vlade did, “Talk to my lawyer.”

  The detective looked at the brace on my leg. “Hmm,” he said, as he poked at a gap where the brace didn’t fit quite right. He made a note. Then he looked at my face. I struggled to continue staring at the same spot on the ceiling. It’s really hard is not to look around, and also, not to blink. I don’t think I really needed to blink anymore. But habits are hard to break. Then the nosy son-of-a-bitch leaned over and closed my eyes. As he did he whispered. “Something stinks around here and I don’t think it’s just you.”

  Marsten walked over to where Vlade sat, bleeding into his own couch. Marsten looked at him for a moment and then said, “Vladdy, I’m gonna get ya.” Vlade rolled his eyes and looked away with a smirk. Marsten grabbed his chin and brought his face back around. “You’re dirty Vlade, and I can smell it. I can’t prove it, but I damn sure can smell it. And I’m gonna keep after you until I can make it stick.”

  “So what, I should give up to you now?” Vlade said with a smile.

  “No,” said Marsten, “Leave. Go do, whatever it is you do, in some other city. Go be somebody else’s problem.”