by C. E. Martin
After several seconds, nothing happened. Josie was about to try again when the guys started to come back, tip-toeing around the tents cautiously.
Jimmy was first to walk over. He eyed the stranger, Mark, with great suspicion.
“Is he okay?” Jimmy asked, trying to see around Mark.
Mark nodded an affirmative. “He will be.”
Carlos and Kendall walked over, standing close to Josie. Kendall too was suspicious. Carlos was intrigued.
“Are you a super hero?” Carlos asked, excitedly.
Oh, great, Kendall thought to himself. Here we go.
“A what?” the stranger asked.
Carlos was confused. “A superhero... You know, cape, tights, super-powers.”
“I don’t do tights. Or capes,” Mark responded. “What do you mean by super-powers?”
Kendall couldn’t believe he was going to join this conversation. “Oh, I don’t know- like throwing people twenty feet through the air.”
“Or being bullet-proof,” Jimmy added.
“Do you even realize you have a knife sticking out of your back?” Carlos asked.
Mark twisted his head around and tried to look behind him. Sure enough, Kendall’s knife was still lodged firmly in his back, above his shoulder blade, the point maybe two inches deep. He reached back and was just able to pull the knife free.
Mark wiped the blade on his pants, cleaning off his blood. He folded the knife and then offered it back to Kendall. “Good throw.”
Kendall gulped and sheepishly accepted the knife. “Sorry.”
He shoved the knife into his pants pocket.
“Don’t worry, we’re jake,” Mark said calmly.
“Jake? I thought you said your name was Mark?” Josie asked, confused.
Mark frowned. “Jake. Okay... groovy?”
Mark eyed the kids carefully, for the first time really taking in their off-road motocross clothes. Their haircuts. Even their pop up tents.
“So you aren’t a superhero,” Carlos said, disappointedly.
Mark shook his head from side to side. “I’m still not clear on what a superhero is. Have you seen super-powers before?”
“Yeah,” Josie said. “All the time. On TV.”
Mark was shocked. “On TV?” The last show he could remember watching was about cowboys.
“Seriously, man,” Carlos asked, not ready to give up, “What’s your stage name?”
Dawn was just starting to break. Mark could see a lot better now. He scrutinized the two kingcab pickups in the camp. They were strangely shaped, with off-road tires. Nothing like the trucks he remembered.
Josie leaned back a bit, looking at the cut on Mark’s back. She noticed it wasn’t bleeding.
Mark pointed to the one of the trucks. “What year is that truck?”
Kendall looked around at his dark blue, dusty, Dodge 4x4 kingcab his dad had bought him. “It’s a 2005.”
Mark was surprised but kept his face straight. “Did you buy it new?”
“You’re trying to figure out what year this is,” Jimmy said in surprise.
Josie stepped behind Mark and grabbed a bottle of water from the cooler- one of only a few left. She uncapped it and started pouring water on the wound as the conversation continued.
“Jimmy, that is ridiculous,” Josie declared.
Mark sighed. Smart kid, he thought.
“You got me, kid,” Mark finally said. “So what year is it?”
Josie almost dropped the water bottle. Carlos and Kendall stepped around Mark, watching Josie pouring water on the cut.
“Uh, it’s 2013,” Jimmy said. He suddenly didn’t think he was so clever anymore.
“Really?” Mark was surprised.
Carlos leaned close to Josie and whispered. “What are you doing?”
Carlos’ eyes widened as the wound Josie was pouring water over turned gray and began to close itself. Once closed the wound turned back to the same tanned flesh tone as the rest of Mark’s skin.
Mark turned around to face Josie. She stopped pouring the water, nearly dropping the bottle again.
Kendall was helping Logan up- he held as much of Logan’s weight as he could while Logan held his left arm in close to his bruised ribs.
“I need to get to a phone,” Mark said.
Carlos shrugged and reached into a pocket and pulled out a slim flip phone and offered it to Mark. “Here, use mine.”
Mark looked at the small device, cocking his left eyebrow.
“I was thinking more of a payphone,” Mark said, wondering what the thing in Carlos’ hand was.
Josie pushed Carlos’ hand away. “I don’t think we’d get a signal out here anyway, Mist- Mark.”
Carlos shrugged and put his phone away.
“I think you need to get more help than a payphone has to offer,” Josie added.
“What do you mean?” Mark asked.
Josie swallowed nervously. “When we found you... You had a... head wound...”
“Found me?” Mark asked.
“She means in the desert,” Carlos said. “By that burnt-up boat.”
Mark looked from Carlos to Josie. “You were there?”
Josie looked down for a moment, embarrassed. “Yeah, we came across the boat and saw you th-“
“And you just left me there?” Mark asked, incredulously.
“You weren't exactly moving, dude,” Carlos remarked.
Confusion showed on Mark’s face. He looked from teen to teen. What kind of people are these? he wondered. Who would leave an injured man in the desert to die?
“You were stone,” Josie tried to explain. She had to admit, leaving someone stranded in the desert was pretty bad. Even if they did look like they were dead.
“Stoned?” Mark laughed at the absurdity of that. “I don't think so.”
“Not stoned,” Josie corrected. “Stone. Rock.”
Kendall frowned. He didn’t like where this really weird conversation was going. “Like a statue.”
Mark crossed his arms over his chest. “That doesn't make any sense at all. Are you sure you kids aren't stoned?”
Josie stepped close and put her fingertips gently on Mark’s bare chest, just below his sternum. His flesh was warm, but hard. Harder than any muscles she’d ever touched. Unnaturally hard.
“Mist- Mark, you had a big hole in your chest. And half your head was missing,” Josie said.
Jimmy did not like Josie touching all over the shirtless man with the bulging muscles.
“And he was all burnt up,” Jimmy added. “Covered in ash.” Josie was taking this way too calmly.
“Yeah, man, why weren't your pants burnt up too?” Carlos asked.
Mark stepped away from Josie, looking down at his black, cargo-pocket pants. He ran a hand over the fire-retardant material.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don't remember ever seeing this kind of material before.”
Josie was alarmed. First the stranger had problems with his name. Then he didn’t know what year it was. Now he didn’t even recognize his own clothing. Super-powers or not, coming back from the dead didn’t seem to be going so well for the shirtless man.
“Okay, so your name is Mark,” Josie said, calmly. “What else do you remember?”
Mark looked up at the girl. She could tell by the look in his eyes there was a problem.
“Not much,” Mark finally said, evasively.
“Maybe when you grew your head back, your memories didn't all come back with it?” Carlos suggested.
Kendall thought that sounded reasonable. “That makes sense- if he regenerated tissue, the neural patterns left by experiences wouldn't be there.”
Everyone turned to Kendall with puzzled looks.
Kendall was suddenly embarrassed. “I am going to school this fall for pre-Med, if you guys remember.”
Josie turned back to Mark. “Do you have any ID on you? Maybe something to jar your memory? What about that necklace?”
Mark looked down an
d held up a hand to touch the necklace. He covered it defensively. “I- someone close gave this to me...”
Every instinct told Jimmy they should run away, get in their trucks and leave this strange, stone man in the desert. But like always, Jimmy reluctantly followed Josie’s lead.
“Did you check your pockets?” Jimmy asked.
Mark gave Jimmy a skeptical look. He may not remember much, but he remembered waking up in the remains of the melted boat. Anything that hot would have burnt up anything in his pockets- even if the pants themselves were heat-resistant.
“He's right,” Josie agreed. “If your pants survived that fire, who knows?”
Mark shrugged and went to reach into his right pocket. His fingers stopped against plastic. Melted plastic- the pocket was fused shut. He pushed against the plastic, ripping it. The ripping plastic sound gave way to the sound of ripping velcro- the pants had a velcro closure. Mark’s hand slid in.
“I’ll be damned,” he said aloud. “Velcro.”
The pocket felt odd- lined with some kind of strange material, different from the pants. He felt around- there was a lump of something papery.
Mark pulled the object out- it was a wad of money. He fanned the bills out- several thousand-dollar bills, hundred-dollar bills, and even half-a-dozen twenties. There was close to four thousand dollars.
“Looks like just cash,” Mark said, holding the money up for the teens to see. “A lot of it.”
Mark peeled a hundred off of the wad of bills and offered it to Kendall. “Here's for all that water I drank.”
Kendall was shocked, but snatched out his hand and grabbed at the bill.
Carlos’ eyes were bugging out as he looked at the wad of cash. “Dude- what's with all the Benjamins?”
Benjamins? Mark thought to himself. He looked at the money and saw the image of Benjamin Franklin on the one-hundreds. Oh, more modern slang.
“When I was in Korea,” Mark said, some of his memory returning, “I always carried a wad of cash with me when I went out into the field. Just in case something came up.”
“When were you in Korea?” Josie asked.
Mark frowned. He hesitated to answer- no telling what these kids were going to think. He thought it was crazy himself.
“I got there in 1952 and stayed for a few years. The war,” he answered. He remembered every detail of it. Like it was only a few years ago- not more than sixty.
The teens all looked shocked. The super-powered stranger looked like he was in his 30s. For him to have fought in Korea would mean he was born long before their parents- maybe even their grandparents. Yet here he stood, not a wrinkle on him.
“You don't look that old,” Jimmy said, echoing what the others were thinking.
“I was thinking the same thing,” Mark admitted.
If the man could come back from the dead, could heal any wound and was strong enough to throw people around like they were footballs, being from 1952 didn’t strike Josie as being all that weird.
Josie reached over and took the one-hundred out of Kendall’s hand.
“Hey!” Kendall said.
Josie looked close at the bill. It was a modern one-hundred, printed in 2011.
Kendall snatched the bill back from Josie.
“That’s a 2011 bill,” Josie said, ignoring Kendall. “You didn’t get that in 1952.”
“What do you remember after the war?” Josie asked.
Mark sighed. “I remember dying. In 1962.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Mark Kenslir remembered dying only too well. The day of his death had come so unexpectedly. March 20, 1962- the day before his thirty-fourth birthday.
Seated in a chair outside the door to the bathroom of his small, shared apartment, Mark had been reading the newspaper while his new wife had been getting ready for work.
In those days, Mark wore green Army fatigues, clean and pressed. His boots were polished to a perfect shine.
The door opened and Maria finally came out, brushing her long, wavy, black hair. As always, she wore slacks, turtleneck and lab coat. Doctor Guerrero was as fetching as the day Mark had been assigned to protect her.
The Army should have seen it coming- locking a genius female scientist up in a secret lab, with a military intelligence officer as her twenty-four-hour-a-day, sole companion was bound to lead to complications. In this case, romantic complications.
Maria smiled at Mark as she brushed her hair. “Ready to go back to work?”
Maria was always excited about work. Until Mark had been assigned to her, it had been a passion that consumed her every waking minute.
Mark folded his newspaper and tucked it under his arm. He stood up, almost subconsciously running a thumb over his new wedding band. It still felt strange to wear a ring. Mark looked down at his new, slightly-older wife.
“Tired of me already?” he asked.
Maria laughed and handed Mark her hairbrush. She then turned and headed towards the apartment’s tiny kitchenette. Mark hurried to keep up with her.
“That was a great honeymoon,” Maria said, sitting at their tiny table. “I still can’t believe you got them to let me out.”
Maria hadn’t had a vacation, hadn’t walked outside the facility, in years. She’d remember her honeymoon vacation for a long time.
Maria picked up a piece of toast from the table, while Mark sat down across from her. He set her hairbrush and his newspaper in one of two remaining empty chairs.
“Until they find someone else like me, I’m pretty indispensable,” Mark said. “I tend to get what I want.”
“Oh, is that how you got me?” Maria teased.
Mark sputtered, embarrassed, unable to think of what to say. As he remembered it, it was the other way around.
Maria quickly changed the subject- putting a small box on the table she had pulled from a pocket of her lab coat.
“What's this?” Mark asked.
“My wedding present to you,” Maria said.
Mark picked up the small box, very surprised. He opened it- inside was a gold necklace, with a small, gold Christian fish pendant on it.
“How’d you get this?” Mark asked. Maria hadn’t been more than fifteen feet away from him since the day they met.
“You mean, how’d I get this when we're never apart?” Maria corrected, smiling mischievously. “I have lab assistants, remember?
“Put it on,” Maria directed.
Mark pulled the necklace from its box and slipped it over his head. He tucked it under his shirt to stay within uniform regulations.
“Why the fish?” he asked.
“I know how much you like the story of the bread and the fish,” Maria said.
“Thanks- I like it,” Mark said, smiling at his wife.
“I fig-” Maria started to say. She was interrupted by the ringing of a red phone, on a stand by the front door to the apartment. A red phone that was never supposed to ring.
Maria and Mark exchanged worried glances, then Mark all but ran for the phone.
“Kenslir,” Mark said into the phone pressed against his ear.
Mark listened intently to the person on the other end for several moments. His face became grim.
“I understand. I'll inform Dr. Guerrero,” Mark finally said.
He hung up the phone and turned to face Maria.
“There's been an accident in the lab,” he said sternly. “Someone dropped the basilisk eye into the Fountain.”
All the color drained from Maria’s face at the implication of that statement. Of all the accidents that could happen on this project, this was at the top of the her list of the worst possible.
“Is anyone hurt?” Maria asked, standing up from her chair.
“It fully regenerated,” Mark said solemnly. “At least three people were petrified before they lost communication with the chamber.”
Mark hesitated. “It’s sealed in now.”
Maria moved away from the breakfast table and all but sprinted for the door. Those were h
er people down there.
Mark grabbed her by the arm as she headed for the door.
“We've got to get down there!” Maria declared.
“We can't.”
Maria couldn’t understand- of all the people in the building, Mark was the one who could go down to the lab now. Why was he hesitating?
“Mark, those are my people down there! I can't just stay here!”
Mark shook his head from side to side slowly. “Protocol says we keep it locked in until nightfall. Then it's problem solved.”
“You have a protocol for someone dropping my basilisk eye in the Fountain and the whole creature regenerating?” Maria demanded.
“It's the Army,” Mark answered. “We have protocols for everything.”
Maria struggled to get free of her husband’s grip. “I need that eye, Mark,” she pleaded. “I’m so close to figuring out how it works!
“If we lose that eye, we can't get another one,” she added.
Mark considered his wife’s plea. He considered just how much time and how many resources had been put into the project. Reluctantly, he released his wife’s arm. She was right.
“So you want me to go kill it and cut out its eye?” Mark asked. He dreaded the answer, but knew what it would be.
“It was done once before,” Maria reminded him.
“What if I get petrified?” Mark asked. Not that he really worried about that. It was the fangs and teeth part that bothered him.
“That werewolf bite a few years ago didn't affect you,” Maria said calmly. “A lizard staring you in the eye shouldn't either.”
Mark sighed. This was a test of his abilities he didn’t really want to take. But his wife was right. He turned and walked to a nearby closet door and opened it. Inside was his cache of emergency gear. Pistols, rifles, submachine guns. Grenades, explosives, web gear. Everything he might need to fight his way to the surface in any circumstance. Except maybe this one.
Mark turned to his wife once more. “Fine, but you have to stay here. I'll know you'll be safe here.”
Maria walked up to Mark and his gun closet. She reached past her husband and selected an M870, .12 gauge shotgun.
“The safest place is right next to you, dear,” she said.
***
Many floors below Mark and Maria’s apartment, in the bowels of the Project, there was a long basement hallway. This hallway was nearly one hundred feet-long- lined with heavy blast doors that looked as though they could withstand most conventional munitions.
