by Tufo, Mark
I nodded, but I was thinking maybe I should have shaken my head instead. What more did I want to know? This guy had a black cloud hovering right over his head.
“The Lycan was ancient. The fur all around his muzzle and down his back was silver. When I cut him open, his joints were all calcified—he had arthritis. His teeth were yellow and worn down, at least the ones that weren’t missing.”
“He was on a Mojid.”
“A what?”
I wrestled with telling him. How convincing of a lie could I come up with on the fly? “I don’t think you want to know.” I was being honest.
“I think my family has earned the right to know,” he said hotly.
“He was out on his own because he’d been shunned by his clan. He was going to die soon.”
Mathieu looked at me long and hard; to see if I was messing with him I suppose. I’ve been called all manner of things; some of them true…well…most of them true. But never would I have stooped that low.
“Of course he was. I just wanted to feed my family.” He broke down into tears.
“How long ago was this?” The pain he showed was so raw I wouldn’t have been surprised if it had occurred last month.
“It’s been fifteen years.”
He must have seen the shock emblazoned across my face.
“There hasn’t been a day gone by I haven’t held this very knife to my throat and wanted to feel my flesh separate as I drew it across my neck. In the end that does not seem the right way to honor those I have taken.”
“What’s this all about?” I asked, picking up a chain and rattling it.
“I wandered from everything I knew that morning after I checked on the Lycan. Just kept going, had no destination in mind. Maybe I was hoping I’d walk off a cliff and what I was too much of a coward to do would take care of itself. The night before the next full moon I fell into a hole, not enough to kill me, but enough to break my leg. That should have been sufficient. I laid there, tears of relief flooding my face, figuring I was going to see my family again and soon. Then the moon, the damned moon, came right over that hole and I became the demon again. I couldn’t get out of the hole, not in that state anyway. When I awoke the next morning my broken leg was healed, barely even itched. I cursed the gods, but they ignored me as they’d already done as much as they could to me. Keeping me down seemed to be all they were interested in.”
I could sympathize. “We’ve traveled similar paths.”
“Did you...?”
I answered too abruptly. “NO. Umm, sorry, I just meant that I outlived all I’ve loved.”
“There’s a difference.”
“Yes, the end result is the same, though.”
He nodded, perhaps in commiseration.
“Hunger won out and I began to investigate where I was. I had found an old settlement called Titani.”
“Tie-tan-ee?” I asked phonetically. “Never heard of it.”
“How could you?”
“This is obviously a place that was created some time during my previous life.”
“How old are you?”
“Somewhere in the two hundred-year-old range, I guess.”
He produced an audible gasp.
“Yeah, I know, I don’t look a day past a hundred and ten.”
“That is impossible!”
“Yeah, that coming from the guy that doubles his size and turns into an animal once a month.”
“My pardons.”
“Don’t worry about it. Keep going.”
“There’s not much more to say. I found a corridor that led to a ladder, and I climbed out. Found some food, and while I was eating, the idea of hiding myself away in here came to me. I would no longer be a risk to other families. I began to panic when I wondered if what was inside of me would also be able to find its way out of here like I had, and that is when I fashioned those chains to hold me. Every month I chain myself up to make sure I do not harm another soul.”
“Full moon is never all that far away. What do you plan on doing with me or are we going to get all cozy for the night?”
He didn’t answer me, at least not right away.
“How does this work?” He was holding up my rifle.
“I’m glad you brought that back. It’s called a firearm, but without bullets, umm, these small lead projectiles that shoot out at high speeds, it’s basically just an unwieldy club.”
“Is this how you killed the Lycan?”
“One of them at least.”
“The other two with this?” He was holding my hand axe up.
“One with that.”
“And the last you drank.”
I nodded after a bit.
“Don’t start on me about the woman, I already told you that she attacked me, Mathieu. It was self-defense. How far or fast was I moving when you came along? Would I have been able to do anything to you?”
That seemed to strike a chord. “Why would she attack you? Weren’t you there to kill the Lycan?”
“I was. Let me start at the beginning.” I gave him the abridged edition of my life, and it still took the better part of an hour. I basically gave him a snapshot of my life before zombies. I gave him a detailed picture of that time frame, sped through most of my time sitting in Ron’s dilapidated house. I got to Tommy recruiting me for this war and my new role in it. I spoke of his death culminating in Bailey and my quest to kill Xavier, and ended with the two kids who found us. “So, that’s why I was there when I was. I’d been tracking them to see if I could save the kids lives.”
“You knowingly took on three Lycan?”
“I did not say it was a good idea.”
“You have honor in you. All of that does not, however, explain why that woman wanted to kill you.”
“Maybe there’s honor in me, maybe not, but all that woman saw was a monster. I was wounded to the point where I was most likely not going to live, and she was going to make sure that was the case.”
“You did not kill her to aid in your recovery?”
“Listen, you’re either going to have to believe everything I say or kill me. I have nothing to prove to you. I appreciate you getting me out of there, but if it was just to keep me chained to a wall, I’d rather you get this over quickly. Otherwise, you’re going to have to listen to me talk. Speaking of which, before you decide either way, do you have some water? I am so thirsty.”
Mathieu seemed to come out of a mild haze. “I am sorry. I have lived alone for so long I have forgotten about basic manners. I will be right back.”
“Yeah, you do that.” I quickly got to work. “Where the hell did he go for water?” I asked after I finished my task and was now waiting not so patiently.
Arriving several minutes later, he was sweating from exertion. He was carrying an old brass shell that looked like something fired from a howitzer or something equally as big. It was safe to say I’d never seen a casing that big. It had possibly come off a ship for all I knew.
“I was low on water stores,” he explained. “I had to go topside and collect some.” He reached over on to a shelf and handed me an old coffee mug after he dipped it into the cannon shell. It was a shock to see a faded out Spiderman logo.
“Did you sterilize the water?”
“Sterilize?” he asked, his head may have even tilted to the side, or I may have added that last part in for dramatic effect.
“What about this cup? Is it clean?”
“There wasn’t any mouse droppings in it if that’s what you mean.”
I looked down into the mug, noting the cloudy water. “I asked for water not tea.”
“Tea?”
“You’re just a barrel of laughs. Down the hatch I suppose.” I knew the vampire virus gave me immunity to just about any bacteria or viral agent. Right now, it was just about getting over my own hang-ups. I gagged as I drank, the water tasting like fish ass. Let your imagination run wild with that one. “Thank you for that,” I said as I choked down my third mug. I was still incredibly t
hirsty. However, I was sick of chewing my water, and the worst of it had been slaked.
He was looking over at me. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking, could have been he was trying to figure out how best to kill me for all I knew.
“So what now, Mathieu?”
“You understand my trepidation, right?”
“Sure I do.”
“If I am to believe everything you have to say, then my life is not in danger should I allow you your freedom.”
I didn’t say anything as this seemed more of an inner debate being spoken aloud.
“However, if you were lying, I could suddenly find myself quickly being overwhelmed and my life coming to a hasty end. Am I soulless like you?”
It took me a moment to realize he was asking the question of me. I sputtered out a “no” so it was safe to say it wasn’t a particularly effective argument.
“Well, it’s easy enough to see you don’t lie so well.”
“I’m not lying so much as I just don’t know. Until recently, I had no idea Lycan and werewolves existed, or that they were two separate and completely different animals…so to speak. No offense.”
He waved it off.
“If I were to die by your hand, or by other means, will I be able to reunite with my family? Or will they shun me?”
“I am not a holy man, Mathieu. I do not have answers to the questions you have posed. I do know your family will have forgiven you. You did not know what you were doing or possess any possible way of controlling yourself. What happened was not your fault.”
He had tears coming down his face. “I wish I knew that to be true.”
I assured him that it was. “They will just be happy to see you.”
He picked up my hand axe once again and then looked over to me. “I hope I do not regret this,” he said as he put the axe back down and walked over to me to undo the locking mechanism on the collar. He closed his eyes as if he expected me to immediately attack. I just rubbed my neckline where the collar had chafed against it.
“Glad you didn’t try to use that axe,” I told him, showing the end of the chain that I had unscrewed from the wall once he opened his eyes back up. Pretty comical to see how widely they opened in surprise. “Just because a werewolf can’t figure out how to unscrew things doesn’t mean I had any problems.”
“How long have you been able to get free?”
“About five minutes after you went to get water.”
“I thank you for not killing me.”
“Was never going to happen, I mean, unless you tried to kill me first.”
“Understandable. How is your leg? When I first brought you here, I did not believe you were going to live through that first night.”
“I guess that’s one plus on having vampire blood. Hold on. Did you say ‘first night?’ ”
He nodded.
“How long have I been here?”
“This is the morning of the third day.”
“Are you kidding me?” I nearly jumped up, but for once, I thought out my actions before I completed them. The pain of my broken leg would forever be etched into my brain no matter how long I lived. I would no sooner want to revisit that than I would want to go to Walmart on Black Friday when a new gaming system was available and four hundred people had lined up for one of the five consoles and everyone had to be barely clothed in leather apparel. I don’t know why I added that last part in, but just the thought of seeing some of the people that used to frequent Wally World in dominatrix attire scared the hell out of me. Let that marinate in your brain like a bulbous worm.
“I am not.” Mathieu took the chain from my slack hands and proceeded to screw it back into the wall.
“I need to get back to Bailey, to the world.”
Mathieu seemed to be hurt by those words, and then I realized that he’d been alienated for so long. He was not an active member of any society save his own. That he was still sane most likely rested on the shoulders of his werewolf virus, which must have had curative powers over not just his body, but his mind as well.
“You will need two or three more days until you are well enough to walk.”
He was right. Just the thought of putting weight on my leg made me break out in a cold sweat.
“For a few more days you will be my prisoner. I mean that in the loosest way possible. May I?” Mathieu asked, pointing towards my leg.
“May you what?”
“Check your leg.”
I was sitting on one of two metal tables Mathieu had brought over for me to use as a bed while I had apparently been unconscious.
“Sure.”
“Could you lie back down?”
“This isn’t a ruse to get me in a vulnerable position and do what you were maybe thinking about doing earlier, is it?”
“Are you always so trusting, Michael?” He showed me his empty hands.
“I know enough about people to know you should never really turn your back on them.”
“You have been dead to the world for nearly three days. I knew what you were the moment I saw that woman, yet I carried you back here and watched over you. If I wanted you dead there would not have been much to stop me.”
“Well, there you go, getting all rational on me.”
“Would you prefer irrational?”
“No, I was already married once.”
He laughed—a more genuine sounding chortle I cannot remember hearing. “I do believe out of all the creatures that roam this earth, female humans may be among the most strange. I guess not much has changed from your time to mine. Somehow, that is comforting.”
“Insanity is comforting to you? Just check my leg.” I sat up to look, observing where the Lycan had chewed still looked plenty raw. The wound was pretty big, almost the same size and color of a large steak open for display in a butcher shop, and that was only the part I could see. Most of the damage had been done to the back of my leg.
Mathieu carefully removed the wooden sticks he had tied to either side of my leg.
I kept my teeth gritted and my face scrunched waiting for the balls-smashing pain to follow. It was more of a glancing blow by a large insect rather than a full-on kick by a pro NFL kicker type of pain. I guess more of a discomfort than anything else.
“The puncture wounds have almost cleared up,” Mathieu was talking to himself, something I’m sure he was practiced in. He now switched his attention to me. “The skin has knitted back together nicely. The muscle had been pulled away from the bone all along the top of your femur. It was all I could do to stuff what belonged in your leg back in place before I threw in some stitches.”
“You stitched me up? Where is the string?” I was looking for it.
“I took it out last night. You were healing so fast I figured I’d better get it out of there before your skin grew over it. It was the setting of your leg that was the tricky part. By the time I got you back here, it was barely hanging on. I think if I’d twisted it back and forth one more time it would have come off.”
“Umm, thank you for not doing that.”
“You’d lost a lot of blood, and I needed to get your leg in place and close you up as quickly as possible. Even in your catatonic state, you nearly took my head off when I tried to touch your injury. I’m sorry, but I’d had to chain your arms down while I worked on you.”
“Don’t worry about it. I don’t even remember. Glad to see I didn’t decapitate you. I guess we’d both be long gone by now.”
With one hand, he pressed down on the top of my thigh; with his other, he pushed against the side of my knee. That…well, that fucking hurt, and I let him know in no uncertain terms what I thought of that particular test. He apologized, although I’m not sure if he knew what half of the things I called him even were. He may have repealed his conciliatory words, if he had.
He was shaking his head. “It’s amazing…this healing power you possess.”
“It has its bonuses. I’m no longer lactose intolerant.”
“Sounds serious.�
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“Could be if you were down wind after a big ice cream cone.”
His eyebrows were furrowed as he looked at me.
“Forget it. Not nearly as much fun when the other person doesn’t really know what you’re talking about.”
This was another indicator of what Tommy had been talking about when he said vampires hit a wall after a thousand or so years. It wasn’t that they would die; it’s that they would seek ways to die. Civilization would move so far past where they’d originated that they would feel even more alienated than they already were. Made sense, as Mathieu had no idea about the cultural references of which I spoke. I couldn’t bring up anything I’d ever read or seen in the movies or television, because none of it would make sense. Even though the ‘right now’ was technologically behind where I came from, we were still worlds apart.
“You alright?”
I told him I was fine. I did not want to dwell on the fact that I was nearly as alone in this world as he was. The only one I could relate to was Azile, and if I never saw her again, I’m not sure if I’d shed a tear. I was holding her directly responsible for Tommy’s death, whether she was truly culpable or not.
“It is nearly time for dinner, but I’m unsure of what you eat.” He hesitated.
“What do you have?”
“Salted venison and goat.”
“Salted like jerky?”
“Not quite as thin and cured, but yes.”
“Either…both are fine.”
Mathieu chatted me up almost the entire night. It seemed that he was enjoying the company as much as I was loathing it. He was a nice enough person, it’s just that I had more in common with the haunted hallways of this building than I did with him. Then it all changed in the blink of an eye when he spoke next.
“Do you like beer?”
“Excuse me?”
“Beer. Do you like it?”
“You’re not saying deer or bear like the animal, right?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, maybe they didn’t have beer back where you’re from. It’s an ale type beverage made with hops and—”
