He didn’t feel like chatting. He fired again as I threw myself to the floor, behind Ted.
I was busy calculating my odds of either, A: finding and reloading the shotgun, or B: throwing the Bowie knife with any kind of accuracy, before one of his arrows found home in a more unfortunate part of my body, when I realized Ted’s gun was on the floor next to my face.
I probably had time to see if it was loaded, but with the available options, it didn’t much matter. If it was empty, I was dead either way.
“Wait a second,” I said, raising a hand above Ted’s corpse.
He let me sit up, presumably because he didn’t know I had another gun.
“What if I paid you more than the bounty?” I asked. “Would that make a difference?”
“What bounty?” he asked.
“Really? Okay.”
I leveled Ted’s gun and fired.
He got off an arrow, too. This time, his shot went wide, while my bullets landed true. He sagged against the wall.
I got to my feet again, slowly. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure this was really over, so I stood motionless, gripping Ted’s gun and listening to my breathing, for about ten seconds. None of the goblin parts tried to jump up and attack, and nobody else came rushing in from the doors on either end of the hallway. It looked like I was in the clear, for at least a few minutes.
I put Ted’s gun down next to him—said a quiet thanks to his corpse for being good about keeping his gun loaded—and went about the business of extracting the arrow from my person.
Or rather, I tried to do that. It was stuck in the flak jacket and not me, so I took the jacket off and tried to pull the arrow out, found out that wasn’t going to happen without a set of pliers, and gave up.
The cut along the ribs was bleeding, but it was all surface wound. Nothing deep. Annoyingly, it was going to keep on bleeding for a while, though, because I had nothing to tape it shut with, and it wasn’t in a great place to tie off.
For good measure, I checked the rest of my body, in case my adrenaline was hiding another wound. I didn’t find anything. Then the phone in my pocket started to vibrate, and I jumped a few feet into the air.
I opened the line.
“Uh, yes?” I said.
“This is Han. I am keeping track of the police channels.”
“Oh. Okay, good. Good for you. How’s that going?”
“There has been a report of a disturbance at your location. You should get out of there if you can. I’ll meet you at the edge of the woods.”
“Sure, okay. Head there, I’ll let you know.” I was looking down the hall, and not in the direction of the stairwell.
“Adam, police are on their way.”
“I get it, but I’m not finished yet.”
There was the nagging problem of that room at the other end. Ted said there were two doors he wasn’t allowed to open, and we’d only checked one. Sure, the police were coming, but it was an underground lab, they couldn’t come in unless they had evidence of a crime, and we were something like six levels beneath the surface. Plus, five goblins had either just manifested out of empty space, or there was another way out of this place. Maybe that other way was on the other side of the door at the end of the hallway. The fact that the door was now open certainly lent credence to that argument.
Secret tunnel meant another way to escape without having to worry about the police. It also could mean more goblins, or something bigger, but I still liked the idea of checking behind that door better than I did fleeing the facility immediately.
I think it’s fair to say I wasn’t thinking entirely straight at this point in the evening.
First, I collected the shotgun—reloading it on my way to the door—and the Beretta, just in case I was right about both the tunnel and the possibility of more violence.
I pulled the door open. There was no tunnel on the other side; just a room. I stepped in.
It looked like a place that served no real function in either an office building, or a laboratory. There was a wooden table, and a wooden chair. On the wall opposite the door was a glass screen, but there was nothing on the screen. The other walls were metal, as was the back of the door I’d come through. Five armed goblins didn’t emerge from this room. I didn’t think they’d even fit in the room.
All things considered, it was pretty unsatisfying.
Then the glass screen jumped to life.
It acted like one of those old television sets, the vacuum tube ones, that went from unfocused to focused after several seconds. Someone fuzzy was on the other side of the screen.
He spoke before the image clarified, which gave me a little time to prepare for it. Not that preparation helped.
“You can at least give me this much, Jackie,” the man said. “I held up my end of the bargain. I stayed out of your way.”
I knew the voice, which was both terrifying and completely impossible. Then the face that belonged to the voice filled up the screen.
It was the man I knew as Herman Mudgett, looking no older than the last time we spoke, over a hundred years ago.
He hadn’t aged a day.
16
“It can’t be,” I said. “You’re dead.”
I kept blinking, like that would make it so I wasn’t seeing who I was clearly seeing. It didn’t help.
He laughed.
“Did you see me die?” he asked.
“No, but—”
“But everybody dies, I know. All except you. Honestly…Adam, now is it? Honestly, Adam, on the subject of immortality, you’re the last man on the planet I thought would require convincing.”
“But how?”
I was having a lot of trouble with this, if that wasn’t obvious. My logical mind was trying to convince itself that this was a grandson, who just bore a striking resemblance, and also appeared to have all of the knowledge of his grandfather. And his laugh. And his eyes. And his gestures. It wasn’t working.
“How am I immortal?” he said. “How are you immortal? I never knew the answer, did you? We simply are. Honestly, it’s been a great deal of fun, watching you parade about the planet as if you were something unique. The arrogance! Well and the redhead, but we both know she’s a little different.”
Eve was not, to my understanding, all that different. Just older. She also had a trick that I hadn’t learned yet, but that was all. Maybe I knew her better than he did.
“I would have come across you before,” I said. “Before this. The world isn’t that large.”
“You’re right! And you did. We’ve been friends on more than one occasion, separated by many, many centuries. I always enjoyed seeing that flicker of recognition, before you decided I couldn’t possibly be the same person you were thinking of.”
“I would have figured it out.”
“And yet, you did not! Here, I’ll tell you the first time we became friends. It was in Susiana, and I was a priest using the name Shif. You were a farmhand who stubbornly refused to learn how to read. You remember?”
“I do. But, no, you looked different.”
“As did you.”
“Not this different.”
I thought back to the last time Shif, and Haltamti, were on my mind. It was after I saw the Elamite script written in blood on the wall of the island hotel. I had a dream about Shif right after, and the dream version of him told me I wasn’t paying attention. I took it as a portent of doom, which seemed to be borne out by the tsunami that hit the island the next day.
Clearly, that was the wrong interpretation. I hadn’t been paying attention all right, but over the course of centuries, not days.
“Susiana was when I realized you and I were the same,” he said. “I’d been high priest for fifty years, and took note that two others in the city also did not age: our red-haired priestess; and a lowly farmhand.”
“All right,” I said. “Let’s say I accept what my eyes are telling me, and this isn’t some sort of trick.”
“What trick could it be?”
>
“You’re not here in person. You could be a simulation.”
“Why, I suppose that’s true! But someone would need to have digitally captured the entirety of Herman Mudgett, yes? In a time when such a thing was technologically impossible. On top of which, who else could possibly know all I know?”
“I agree. I’m only saying there is a theoretical explanation.”
“Very good. I always admired your adherence to the logical. I am unfortunately not going to be joining you in person today, which I expect would be the only evidence you’d find acceptable. Unless you were to then argue the existence of a lifelike robot.”
In the back of my mind, I could hear Han screaming that the police were already on their way, and I needed to get out of there. He was right, but I couldn’t get my legs to move toward the door. There was just too much I needed to know. The threat of long-term incarceration was about to become very real and I couldn’t move.
“You said we’ve known one another for centuries,” I said, “except nobody clued me in on our long-standing friendship. This wasn’t all about my failing to recognize you. I recognize you now.”
“Yes, because I’m allowing it. Do you know what a rakshasa is?”
“Of course I do. You’re not going to tell me you’re one of those, now, are you?”
Rakshasas are truly awful beings. They combine a taste for human flesh with an uncanny ability to disguise themselves, with the latter bordering on the supernatural. The only reason I don’t think it is magic is that magic isn’t real.
“No, but I studied under one,” he said. “This was not long after I parted ways with the temple in Susiana. I wandered…no, that isn’t accurate. I fled the city due to a minor religious disagreement concerning human sacrifice. Unimportant. I’d tell you to ask the redhead about it, as I’m certain she remembers, but you won’t have a chance. I fled, is the point, and I ended up in what’s now Northern India, where I came upon a family of rakshasas. They taught me everything they knew about deception, and in thanks for their hospitality, I murdered all of them.”
“That’s an odd way of saying thanks.”
“Well, I know, but they were rakshasas.” He shivered at the thought. “Can you blame me?”
I was kind of on-board with him on this one. I have learned to find something likable about very nearly every non-human species I’ve encountered. But not them.
“I thought of it as my final test,” he said. “I killed them one by one, each time impersonating another member of their own family. The only thing I didn’t do was eat any of them. Although I tried! Very gamey. Do you remember that animal…it was like a gigantic rabbit, only with claws?”
“I do. I think it’s extinct.”
It had been a good forty thousand years since I saw one, so this was a good bet. But what did I know? I couldn’t even spot another immortal man.
“Oh, very much so! I don’t think archeology has even discovered it yet. Just as well. Do you remember how the meat tasted?”
“We always hunted those as a last resort,” I said. “We would go after something twice as deadly first.”
“Yes! Take that flavor, only the meat’s spoiled. That’s what rakshasa tastes like. It’s no wonder they never tried cannibalism.”
“How old are you?”
“No idea! Old enough to remember that rabbit thing. Who can even count that high? But this is nice, is it not? Talking like this, after all our time on Earth? I bet you never expected to meet another man who even remembered that beast.”
“I didn’t, no. But, why did you wait so long to tell me? You could have done it at any time.”
“For the same reason I’m not there in person right now. I’m afraid we’re irreconcilable, my old friend. Not that I haven’t tried. But your perspective on things is simply impossible.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“It was right there, in Susiana. I aspired to a position of power. The redhead fashioned herself a goddess. You were a farmer. And you were content! It continues to boggle the mind. Don’t you understand that we are gods to these temporary things? We are forever. They’re flickering lights—mayflies, dead by the sundown. That you can bring yourself to care about even one of them is, well, it’s disappointing.”
“Is that why you’re trying to kill all of them?”
He laughed.
“You’ve figured it out, have you?”
“The merman in the tank down the hall. You’re not trying to cure him, right? Even though that’s what this company is supposed to be doing. The merman is where you got the strain of the disease.”
“I came across my first merman twelve thousand years ago, after a shipwreck that left most of my crew dead. The creatures came ashore to take our deceased. They like meat from the land, when they can get it, but are really quite gentle if you don’t bother one of their queens. I befriended them, and while I was stranded on that island, they kept me alive by bringing fish.”
“You befriended them how, exactly?”
“Very good! You know me better than you realize. I traded fish meat for human meat, and when I ran out of drowned shipmates, I started murdering them. Anyway, I learned some of their language, and further learned of the wasting disease. When the day came, I sought out a live sample. It took twenty years to capture the one you saw in the tank.”
“And then you modified the disease so that it could jump species,” I said. “You turned it into a weapon.”
“I wouldn’t call it a weapon. We manufactured our own plague is all.”
“That’s really the definition of a weapon.”
He waved his hand in the air, as if to say, never mind that. It was such an arrestingly familiar gesture, I couldn’t possibly deny that this was really him.
“It was released in small doses,” he said, “just enough to initiate a panic. In another year, Holitix will provide a cure, and for an exorbitant fee, mass inoculation will begin. The exorbitant fee is what sold the board on it.”
“That’s horrible.”
“It’s smart. We own the entire market, why not take advantage? And these species value secrecy above everything, including survival, which is frankly their own damn fault. Of course, there is no cure. The inoculations will kill all of them. That’s the part the board doesn’t know about.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Why NOT! My lord, you are so infuriating! What does it matter? They’re ants! Microbes! Don’t you see how weak your irrational concern makes you? I honestly think I would have an easier time explaining this to the other one.”
“Eve.”
He laughed.
“Is that what you’re calling her? How quaintly biblical of you. Yes, her. She was here too, you know. Not in this room; three floors up. She is far deadlier, and twice as ruthless. Made such a mess we just burned down the whole building rather than try cleaning it up. Bravo, on all the work you did in the hallway, incidentally. It was good to see the killer come out again. I wish you embraced him more often.”
“Come visit in person, and I will,” I said. I was a little annoyed that he thought she was more deadly, and yes, I know how dumb that sounds.
“Oh, I know. That’s precisely why I’m not there in person.”
“There’s time. I’ll find you, and figure out a way to stop what you’re doing.”
“Well. That’s your other weakness, isn’t it? Misplaced bravado. Ill-advised derring-do. An overactive sense of heroism. I can’t imagine you’re surprised to find that it has ended up being your undoing.”
I would never describe myself as a hero. Maybe once a century, I do something modestly selfless, but that’s all. I think the number of times I’ve headed away from danger far exceeded the number of times I turned towards it. But, if he’d been around me for as long as he claimed, the heroic moments probably stuck out.
“I’m still here,” I said. “I don’t know where you are, but I’ll find out.”
He was sitting before an annoy
ingly pedestrian background, behind a desk, with no windows in view. There was nothing on the wall behind him, and in fact it might have just been a sheet or something, since it was utterly featureless. Also, there was nothing on the desk. The chair was leather, and squeaked when he moved, but that wasn’t helpful.
He smiled at the suggestion that I could hunt him down.
“I could go on about how the police are right now surrounding the property,” he said, “or how ten minutes ago the door to the stairwell was unlocked remotely for them. Knowing you, you’ll murder your way out and come up with some absurd justification for your actions, like always. But none of that is going to matter, because you’re not leaving the room. The door locked behind you, and the walls are steel.”
I’d left the door to the room open, but he was right; it had since closed up behind me. I hadn’t even noticed.
“The screen isn’t steel,” I said.
“No, it’s glass, but the wall behind it is also steel.”
“Then I’ll knock until someone opens the door from the other side. As you said, someone’s already on the way.”
“You still don’t understand. This is goodbye, Adam. I wouldn’t have told you all of that if I expected to ever see you again; this isn’t a spy film. You’re standing in a kiln right now.”
“You’re joking,” I said, even as I tallied up the facts in support of this: the heavy door; the steel walls; the apparent lack of function. Even the wood furniture made sense in this context.
“I’m really not. Had it built after that mess the redhead left behind, as a better way to dispose of things. It’s also just plain fun.”
Something in the ceiling began to whirr. There were thin vents at the edge of the walls, and those vents had just opened. Hot air was pouring through.
“I picked this up from Henry, incidentally,” Herman said. “He was a flawed man, but also brilliant in his way. Body disposal was his finest feature. He built his own crematorium, and not only disposed of his dead in it, sometimes he actually put them in while still alive. He liked to hear their screams.”
“Is that what you’re going to be doing? Listening for my screams?”
Immortal From Hell Page 30
